The World is f*&^ing Beautiful March 30, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy . Add a commentBBC2 are currently screening a series of programmes called Wonders of the Solar System, presented by Brian Cox (twitter), Physics Professor at Manchester University. From what I’ve seen (not all of them as iPlayer is not accessible here – grrr), the basic premise is that Brian travels to beautiful and remote parts of the world and tells us something about the amazing stuff that goes on in our Solar System, including right here on Earth. Definitely worth a watch.
Anyway, that aside, here’s an alternative take on it. Headphones advised if you’re in a public place!
Tuesday Observations March 30, 2010
Posted by sarah in: random . Add a comment
1. Why are the Lorentz Center advertising for Viktor & Rolf? Are they sponsoring this workshop? That would be awesome. But unlikely.
2. There is no need for high-heeled clogs. Ever. If you are in any doubt as to how hideous these things are, watch the fashion show here (although having lighting rigs mounted on their shoulders can’t have helped with the models’ comfort).
Ada Lovelace Day 2010 March 24, 2010
Posted by sarah in: science, women . 4commentsToday is Ada Lovelace Day, commemorating the 19th century British Countess who became one of the pioneers of computing. The first Ada Lovelace Day was held last year, as an international day of blogging about inspirational women in science and technology. I read some really great pieces last year, so decided I’d make a bit more of an effort too this time round.
When I started my PhD at University College London, I joined the astronomy department’s instrumentation lab. Not many astronomers knew where to find us, we were way down in a dark windowless basement. At the time the group was in the final throes of building an instrument for the 8-m Gemini South telescope. Behind my tiny little desk in our large office was a much larger cubicle with a desk, and on, under and all around it was truly the largest amount of paper I have ever seen. Somewhere buried beneath was a computer, and judging by the muffled but incessant ringing, a telephone. That was the desk of the scientist who was managing the project, and that person was Maggie Aderin-Pocock.
APOD: Cold dust, Hot image March 22, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, pics . 1 comment so far
Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is this stunning image of a section of the Galaxy as seen at far-infrared wavelengths. The high-resolution parts come from the recently launched Planck satellite, the rest from the older infrared satellite IRAS. The bright material shown in the image is very cold gas and dust, whose radiation peaks at these long infrared wavelengths.
Image: ESA, Planck HFI Consortium, IRAS
Astrobetter guest post: Mendeley March 22, 2010
Posted by sarah in: me, reviews, science . 3commentsStaying on top of the literature, even in a narrow field, is one of the biggest challenges we face in research today. Do you have an ever-growing pile of astro-ph papers on your desk you’ve meaning to read? Yeah, we all have that. In recent years a number of software packages and web applications have come on the market to help researchers organise their literature: Papers, Reference Manager, Jabref, and Zotero. Past AstroBetter posts have introduced Papers and discussed Papers vs. BibDesk. A recent addition that’s been getting good press lately is London-based Mendeley.[...]
I wrote a guest post on literature-management-slash-science.fm-software Mendeley for the Astrobetter blog. Go read it here!
More screenshots are in my public Astrobetter notebook, alongside those I did for the Evernote post.
