Matin Durrani

The Cape of good hope

A small scientific revolution is taking place at a former beach hotel in the seaside resort of Muizenberg near Cape Town, South Africa. The newly refurbished four-storey building is home to the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), which provides intensive research training to some of the continents most talented young science graduates that would be nigh-on impossible in their own countries.

Brighter than the Sun

Publishing a glossy, coffee-table book containing 100 large photographs of nuclear detonations seems, at first sight, a strange thing to do. Compiled by the American photographer and environmental lobbyist Michael Light, 100 Suns contains material from Los Alamos and the US National Archives in Maryland that was previously classified but is now in the public domain. Each photo is accompanied by nothing but the name, date and location of the test, along with its yield. Each was taken at the moment of detonation.

Lighting up medicine with lasers

If you have ever shone a torch onto the back of your hand, you will know that your palm glows red. Haemoglobin in the blood absorbs almost all visible radiation at wave-lengths below about 600 nm, letting only red light pass through. Disappointingly, however, bones and other anatomical structures are impossible to see. Light is scattered so strongly by soft tissue that even a parallel beam becomes diffuse after travelling just a millimetre into the skin.

118: a case of misconduct

When US researchers announced in 1999 that they had discovered the heaviest ever element, the news created headlines around the world. The scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory claimed to have created element 118 by firing a beam of krypton ions at a lead target. Now, however, lab director Charles Shank has admitted that the discovery was the result of fabricated research data and scientific misconduct by one individual.

Misconduct strikes the heart of physics

He seemed to have made some of the biggest breakthroughs in condensed-matter physics in decades. He had published over 60 papers in a two-year period, including 15 in Nature and Science alone. He had even been tipped to win a Nobel prize. But then the world of Jan Hendrik Schon – a physicist at the world-famous Bell Labs in the US – came crashing down around him.

Secret letters cast light on Copenhagen

When the author Michael Frayn spent two years writing Copenhagen, he had no idea how successful the play would become. He doubted that audiences would sit through a historical drama about a war-time meeting between Werner Heisenberg – head of Germanys nuclear programme – and his old mentor Niels Bohr in the Nazi-occupied Danish capital in 1941. But Frayns efforts paid off. Audiences and critics alike have thrilled at the way the award-winning play probes the historical uncertainty that surrounds the encounter.

Technology: Big science eyes industry

Particle physicists and astronomers need state-of-the-art equipment if their research is to be internationally competitive. But the instruments they need are often based on technologies not found in standard industrial products – and physicists often end up developing the relevant technology themselves. To encourage industrial firms to help researchers design new instruments, the UKs Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) published its first long-term technology plan last month.

Publishing: Terminal future for paper journals?

Researchers around the world can now gain online access to developments at the frontiers of physics from the comfort of their own desks. Institute of Physics Publishing has made all 31 of its journals available on the World Wide Web. IOPP, which also publishes Physics World, is the first mainstream publisher to put all its journals online with full text and graphics. Articles from journals such as Physics in Medicine and Biology, Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, Semiconductor Science and Technology, and those in the Journal of Physicsseries will be available electronically up to three weeks before they appear in print. Researchers can access them in either Acrobat or Postscript format. The service is free to scientists whose institutions subscribe to the conventional paper versions of the journals.

Foresight: Panels speak their weight

When 15 panels of top scientific and industrial experts spend nine months discussing their ideas for the future, they create several kilograms of hefty reports containing their predictions. That, so far, has been the physical manifestation of the UKs technology foresight exercise.

Education: Is science more testing?

A report commissioned by the UK Department for Education is expected to confirm the widespread belief that science subjects present a more severe test at A-level than other subjects. The report investigates the apparent relative difficulty of different A-level subjects using a statistical analysis of the results of 8000 students. A-level exams are sat by students at age 18, with the results determining whether a student will be accepted by a university.