Brian Clegg's Blog, page 69

Names and associations

Valerie at a serious location, back in the black and white daysAs I was sitting on the bus heading for the station the other day, I contemplated the way that associations can completely change how we view a particular name.

This came to mind as the bus headed past Cheney Manor. Given that name alone, my suspicion is that a rather splendid Tudor mansion would come to mind, either in beautifully laid out formal gardens, or possibly going a bit to seed as the owners couldn't keep it up. Definitely a des. res.

But if you know Swindon, you will probably be aware that Cheney Manor is not a distinguished old house, but an area of the town that has seen better days and whose most notable occupant is a small trading estate. The only obvious 'Manor' is one of those not entirely welcoming looking modern pubs. All-in-all, it's not exactly a National Trust tourist destination. (Sorry to any Cheney Manor residents - I'm sure it's a lovely place to live.) Suddenly, given the context, the name feels very different.

I experienced something similar as a student, but with a person's name. From my youth, I had very negative associations with the name 'Valerie'. This may have been because we had someone in our junior school class called Valerie who had an unfortunate bladder condition. Or just because it's one of those names. Either way, it felt like a name to avoid.

Then I met Valerie, who sang in the same choir. Like half of my college (or so it seemed) I fell head over heels for Valerie. And suddenly I couldn't understand my previous attitude to the name. It was a lovely name. Possibly one of the nicest girls' names ever.

Sadly for me and that half of the college, Valerie married a musician from another college, who (it was generally considered in our college) was unworthy. Strangely, soon after, the name was once more one that I really didn't like too much.

As it happens, I now know a couple of exceedingly nice Vals, and that seems a fine name to me. But I'd be grateful if they didn't tell me that it was short for Valerie.

Attend a virtual lasers and accelerators symposium

LA3NET Fellow (see below for silly acronym) Jakob Cramer checking
a magnetic lens for particle beamsAccelerators like the Diamond Light Source and high power laser facilities are at the glamorous end of physics, so what better way to get a taster for some of the amazing career opportunities for scientists and engineers than a symposium for sixth formers exploring this remarkable world?

Unfortunately the symposium at the Liverpool Convention Centre this Friday is sold out, but the good news is that you (or students you teach) can still 'attend' in a virtual way via webcast. That will be available here, and they've even got Brian Cox, so who could resist?

If you'd like some more details, here is the inevitable press release:

FROM PIECING THE COSMIC JIGSAW TO IMAGING PROTEINS Lasers and Accelerators symposium set to inspire next generation of accelerator scientists and engineers says Cockcroft Director
“You could be working at the forefront of human knowledge in a science that is unlocking the mysteries of the Universe and that has applications in healthcare, materials, and drug development among others;” that is the message from the Cockcroft Institute to sixth formers attending the ‘Lasers and Accelerators for Science and Society’ symposium, 26th June 2015.  
There is a shortage of engineers and scientists with skills in this exciting area, and industry is keen that young people consider it as a career.
Professor Carsten Welsch, Associate Director of the Cockcroft Institute in Daresbury, an internationally renowned centre for accelerator science and technology, says that the symposium aims to inspire people with the possibilities of this rapidly evolving science.
He says: “Accelerator science is a young discipline and the people pushing back the frontiers of knowledge are also often only in their twenties. There are real opportunities not only to discover something new but also to see its application in healthcare or industry within a relatively short time-frame.”
With the popular appeal of recent films such as “The Imitation Game” and “The Theory of Everything” generating interest in scientists and their work, Prof Welsch is hoping that meeting real scientists involved in blue-sky and applied research will lift the ambitions of students.
“We have chosen speakers such as Professor Brian Cox who are good at making science accessible and that are at the forefront of their fields.  They also include Professor Katia Parodi who has pioneered image-guided radiotherapy for targeting cancer tumours and Dr Ralph Aßmann who is working on a new generation of compact particle accelerators that will be economically viable in new markets.”
Prof Welsch has been leading three pan-European programmes, which are creating fellows with vital skills in particle acceleration, beam technologies and laser science.  Along with their research, the fellows have also enjoyed training in project management, networking and presenting to ensure they are highly employable.
The fellows have each been set challenges by project partners – drawn from industry and research – and the symposium marks the completion of these endeavours.  
Fellows from two of the programmes – oPAC (optimization of particle accelerators), and LA3NET (lasers for applications at accelerator facilities) – will get an opportunity to present their results in a poster session. 
oPAC fellow Manuel Cargnelutti, graduated in 2012 and has a masters in Electrical Engineering. He was initially considering software programming when he saw details of the scheme; “The field of particle accelerators was totally new for me, and the final application is fascinating,” he says. 
“The oPAC programme offers a very unique combination of the industry and science worlds, aiming to improve both technical and secondary skills. This was just what I wanted.”
Posters will include work from the following projects:
Femtosecond x-ray imaging – x-ray crystallography has been widely used to improve our knowledge of the structure and function of many biological molecules including vitamins, proteins and DNA itself, but the technique is limited to materials that can create a crystalline form. Also the samples are static, so it cannot be used to understand the motion of proteins. 
These problems can be overcome using ‘free-electron lasers’ but these are very large, sophisticated facilities, of which there are only a few in the world. 
LA3NET fellow Andreas Dopp is developing a system that generates intense pulses of x-rays that last only a few femtoseconds (10-15 or one millionth of a billionth, of a second) and would be capable of imaging a protein unfolding in real time which would advance our knowledge of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer.
In future this work will help to produce an alternative source of x-rays, with similar properties to those from free-electron lasers, but potentially smaller and cheaper.
A magnetic lens that focuses high-energy particle beams - a particle beam needs to be sharp in order to be effective. LA3NET fellow Jakob Kramer is designing, building and testing a magnetic lens that works with a new type of accelerator, which uses high-power lasers to accelerate a particle beam. This magnetic lens would increase the precision and power of the beam within a more compact accelerator. 
Unravelling secrets of the cosmic jigsaw – we still do not know what 85% of the matter in the universe consists of.  To try and understand this cosmic jigsaw scientists have been working on a ‘standard model of particle physics’ which describes all the fundamental particles we know and their interactions. 
The gigantic Large Hadron Collider was built in order to do experiments that tested the model but now a more advanced accelerator is required to go even further and two oPAC fellows Emilia Cruz Alaniz and Alessandra Valloni are working on this; the design of a new electron-proton collider. 
For those not able to attend the symposium there will be an opportunity to follow the talks via webcast: www.cockcroft.ac.uk/symposium-on-lasers-accelerators-for-science-and-society

Do writers dream of electric souls?

Having just watched the sometimes excellent movie Ex Machina, I am tempted to wonder if a lot of writers who use artificial intelligence (AI) themes are unconsciously playing out Descartian duality, assuming that we have souls and that, lacking a soul, an AI would act purely selfishly.

Of course, this assumption is not true of all such fiction. In the curious Kubrick/Spielberg handover film AI, the Pinocchio-like AI's search for the chance to be a real boy has as much soul as it does schmaltz. But in Ex Machina, the Ava character (I'll try to avoid too many spoilers) demonstrates an 'inhuman' lack of concern when there was an opportunity to save someone who had cared for and helped her, at no cost to herself.

Would a true AI with human-like intelligence really do this? There are good evolutionary reasons for the existence of altruism and mutualism, and to totally ignore them would not really be logical. Of course it could be that Ava was not an AI at all - one of the big themes of the movie - but merely a machine that was very good at simulating being conscious, in which case such an outcome was perhaps more likely.

I'm certainly not knocking the film (though the ending seemed to forget the tiny problem of the need for power sources). It was great at portraying the kind of culture that pervades organizations like Google, Microsoft and Apple - including the degree to which a search engine company particularly can abuse its position - and there was some genuinely thoughtful conversation about the nature of artificial intelligence, plus good playing by all the leads. But my suspicion is that Ava was intended to be a genuine AI, which despite all the superb CGI, the writer still saw as a tin woman without a soul.

The Time Torch - review

This is a curious but likeable little book. That 'little' is not a condescending remark. The book is physically small - about two thirds of the width of a normal paperback - with large print that means it's almost like reading on a Kindle rather than a normal printed copy.
I am always a little wary about self-published titles, which this is, but it has been well proof read, with no more typos than I see in books from mainstream publishers. What particularly attracted me to it is that it's a story involving a time machine - I love time machines - and the blurb said that it made an attempt to make the science as close to realistic as possible, which got my science writer antennae twitching... and it turns out that this is a reasonable claim.

So we've some interesting science and a satisfying if fairly simplistic plot. The Time Torch was a short enough read to get through all of it on a train journey (it verges on being a novella), and it was entertaining enough in the storyline and intriguing enough in that science content to mean that I genuinely enjoyed the experience.

I have to admit, though, that the book isn't without faults. The main characters aren't particularly likeable. Even though a major plot point is reminiscent of the backstory of Batman, the characters don't reflect the superhero ethics shown in the Spider Man's reflection that 'with great power comes great responsibility.' And the writing style is idiosyncratic to say the least. The author likes to be very specific about some things and lacks sophistication in his writing. To get a feel, here's the opening of the third chapter, where we are introduced to the girlfriend of main character Ben:

Ben rang his girlfriend, Melissa Harper. Melissa was a tall elegant woman with an athletic frame. She was in a smart business suit seated at a table with five other people. She felt her phone vibrate on the table. She had a quick look at the screen and saw it was Ben.

I'm not going to pick out detail, but it's not the most elegant writing and time and time again through the book the essential fiction editor's plea 'Show, don't tell,' is roundly ignored.

As for the science, like any science fiction the plot has to come first, so the physics isn't 100% accurate, but it was a noble attempt and very clever concept. The author starts by telling us that for matter to travel through time is impossible - which is simply wrong, but that's not too much of an issue. Instead, though, our hero sends photons into the past. He uses a general relativity approach (the only potential way we know to get something into the past, so that's good) to get his photons back in time. But the clever bit is that they are in a state of quantum entanglement with photons that remain in the present. When the spray of photons (his 'time torch') hits an item in the past, it shows up in the twinned photons that remain in the present.

This nicely reflects the real experiment in which a picture of a cat was generated using photons that never encountered a cat-shaped slot thanks to entanglement. In practice there are a number of reasons why the approach wouldn't work. Entangled photons lose their entanglement when they interact with atoms. So though it was possible to produce an image of a slot, where the entangled photons didn't hit anything, it's not possible for an entangled photon to hit, say, a person and reflect off her to produce an image from its entangled partner - both because the entanglement is lost and the 'reflected' photon isn't the same one that was emitted by the 'torch'. If such imaging were possible, you could use entanglement to send messages faster than light, which has all sorts of interesting implications and doesn't happen. The other big snag is that general relativity techniques can only send things back as far as the point in time that the device was first switched on, making it impossible to work in the way that was required for the story.

These science notes are minor niggles, though, which are absolutely fine to make the plot work. It doesn't stop the idea of the 'time torch' being very clever, along with the interesting details that you could see into the past, but only in black and white and without sound, giving the fictional inventor some worthwhile challenges.

So what we have here is a really interesting science fiction concept and a reasonable plot, but an undeveloped style. If you can set the unpolished writing aside, it's well worth a go.

You can find The Time Torch at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com on Kindle or at Lulu as a paperback.

Stop blaming police and government

I am getting decidedly fed up of the reporting of the immensely sad case of the three women and nine children from Bradford who disappeared into Turkey, and probably Syria on their way back from a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. (I ought to emphasise that we should be doing all we can to get these children returned home.)

I keep seeing press and politicians saying ‘The police didn't do enough to prevent them,’ or ‘The government isn’t doing enough to prevent radicalisation.’ Last night on the news a reporter's main question to someone in Bradford was 'Are you angry with the police?' And a couple of days ago, Baroness Warsi was quoted as saying that the Government was failing to offer sufficient collaboration with Muslim communities in Britain to ensure it could combat the threat of radicalisation.

However, by the time the police need to act it’s too late - the mindset is in place. And should the government need to be thought police? Surely it’s time that a culture that makes a significant number of individuals think it’s okay to act this way undergoes major change? And that can’t come from the government, it has to come from within.

When I taught creativity in large companies, I would sometimes talk to the management and essentially say 'I can come and do the training if you like, but nothing will actually change unless the company culture changes - and that has to come from inside.' It's not enough to have tools and rules imposed from outside, you have to that cultural will to make something happen. And that can only happen if the people involved collectively commit to do so. It's exactly the same here.

We hear a lot, for instance, about the slick Internet videos of ISIS that convince people that places like Raqqa and Mosul are lovely peaceful cities where you can live a much better life than in the UK. Why would individuals believe iffy internet videos over the constant stream of horror images we see on the news, making it clear what IS has in store, particularly for women and children? Surely it can only be because, for whatever reason, these individuals have been brought up to consider anything framed as Islamic, however far it may be from the true religion, to have greater significance than information originating from civil society? That's not down to the police or the government.

There is a very clear lesson that time after time isn't being learned.

In praise of 'general relativity'

This year marks the centenary of Albert Einstein's groundbreaking general theory of relativity. As the C. P. Snow quote on the back of John Gribbin's excellent book on the topic, Einstein's Masterwork points out, 'If Einstein had not created the general theory (in 1915) no one else would have done so... perhaps not for generations.'

Generally speaking I am in total agreement with Dr Gribbin on all matters scientific (it is dangerous to do otherwise, as he is surely the head of the UK science writing equivalent of Cosa Nostra), but there is one point on which I have to part company.

John gets decidedly vexed when someone refers to 'special relativity' or 'general relativity.' He points out that the correct terms are 'the special theory of relativity' and 'the general theory of relativity', and that the contraction is an abomination, because it is the theory that is special or general, not the relativity.

Now scientists are notoriously picky about definitions to avoid error. But I honestly don't think there is a problem here. No one looks at the word and ponders over exactly what is general or special. And it is a very useful contraction to be able to say 'general relativity' when referring to 'the general theory of relativity', just as we make use of many other contractions to avoid being over-wordy.

The reason this occurred to me is that I had written 'Einstein’s gravitational theory, general relativity' in a book due out later this year. As I was checking the proofs, I thought 'John wouldn't like that.' But it would have read much more clumsily as 'Einstein's gravitational theory, the general theory of relativity.'

I am, technically, without doubt in the wrong. But good communication sometimes benefits from slight bending of precision to gain better effect. So long live special relativity and general relativity.

Now, where are the keys to my fallout shelter?

Was he right to try to kill me?

The other day a van driver did his best to splatter me on the road... and I'm not quite sure who was in the right.

I was at the yellow arrow, about to cross the road dead ahead from one footpath to the other, on my way to the Post Office. That's the kind of exciting daily life I have.

The van had entered the roundabout at the red arrow, heading in my direction.

It's not clear from the picture, but there is a lot of foliage on the roundabout, and it was only when the van reached about the 3 o'clock position that I saw him. By this time I was already part way across the road, though not past the halfway point.

So the question is - did I have right of way or should I have got back off the road? As it was, I carried on and he clearly thought that I shouldn't be there as he showed no sign of slowing down and just missed me.

Clearly he wasn't correct in not slowing down, whoever had right of way, but what I'm not quite sure about is whether I had right of way once I had started across a piece of road with no traffic in sight? Since I can't be bothered to lay my hands on a copy of the Highway Code, I throw it open to your judgement and wisdom...

Atheism after Christendom - review

At first sight you might imagine that a book titled Atheism after Christendom, written by Simon Perry the chaplain of Robinson College, Cambridge, might be a throwback to the days when it used to be joked that one thing you could be certain about with trendy Church of England vicars was that they didn't believe in God. But despite the book being in praise of atheism, it also manages to be pro-Christianity, because Perry argues that Christianity is atheist. What's more, he argues that 'New Atheists' like Dawkins and Dennett are actually theists. Confused? You may not agree with the author - and I certainly don't on all counts - but his premise is certainly interesting.

There are two keys to that title, because this book depends on very careful use of words. One is 'atheism', of which more in a moment, and the other is 'Christendom'. It's 'after Christendom', not 'after Christianity.' Perry argues that where initially Christianity was considered atheist by the Romans, because it ran counter to the gods of the state - and Perry effectively defines atheism in this way, as denying the gods of your state - with its establishment by Constantine, Christianity became watered down and in that form, as Christendom, provided the state god, so was a worthy target for atheism. However, since the Enlightenment and particularly in a modernist secular society, the Christian god is no longer the god of the state. Instead, Perry suggests, our  modernist state gods are Mars and Venus, as represented by everything from military force and shouty domination on the one hand to commerce and greed on the other. (And these are the 'gods' he suggests the New Atheists follow.)

By contrast, Perry suggests, at the heart of Christianity is acceptance of the 'other' - looking outside ourselves rather than inwards, reaching out to the rest of humanity, the universe and its creator (if it has one). And this, he suggests is the real way forward, the only true justification for existence in what otherwise is a short life with little meaning. He suggests that by taking this approach we avoid the errors of deism - suggesting God could exist, but only starting things off before leaving things alone, the god of the gaps - and of theism, where God is constantly interfering, answering random prayers and has to be held to account for all the horrible things in the universe. Perry's God creates the universe in the way it has to be because there is no denying evolution - violent - but is accessible if we begin to truly care for the 'other' - to consider all humanity of equal importance and to live accordingly. It's not, he says, about 'pie in the sky when you die' but about making our world better with this outward looking stance.

Along the way, Perry throws out a lot that will shock many traditional Christians. He suggests that much of the Old Testament, for instance, that makes it clear that God is a nasty, vindictive mass murderer, is a product of a flawed human interpretation by those who wrote it. And I suspect the majority of Christians' beliefs through the centuries will also be considered flawed, influenced as they have been by the strongly theistic picture that has dominated the church for much of its life.

Some of the specifics in the book I have problems with. There is an assumption throughout that this pursuit of 'otherness' is a good thing, and that the modernist individual-centred approach is wrong. I'm not saying I entirely disagree with this, but I never saw any argument to justify this assumption - it is, as far as I can see, a given. If we accept that for a moment, Perry suggests that the Bible, and particularly the New Testament is built on this acceptance of 'the other' - and yet while Judaism may embrace 'the other' in the form of God, it isn't usually considered a religion with such an outward facing approach to other people. Even Jesus demonstrates this: 'The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”' Is that about embracing 'the other'?

Similarly, I struggle with Perry's attitude to science. While I accept that scientists can verge on scientific imperialism as he mentions, and that the really interesting thing about science is not facts but the exploring, I can't really go for the statement that 'science is simply one means of understanding who we are. There are other equally important and no less valid means of experiencing the world.' It's true in a trivial sense - the joy of seeing a sunrise over a beautiful landscape is an 'important and valid means of experiencing the world.' But it isn't comparable to science, it's a totally different thing. And science is uniquely valuable in many ways. Certainly the author gets in a bit of a tangle when he takes on science, telling us that the LHC enables us to produce and trace the paths of quarks (nope), or when he doesn't spot that black holes aren't observed phenomena that challenge general relativity, but rather were predictions of general relativity that may explain observations.

Overall, the book gives the reader a lot to think about. I don't think that it will be of interest to New Atheists, which is a shame, as a lot of what Perry says about the nature of atheism is very insightful, but they would be put off by the amount of the book that is explicitly Christian. (I do wonder if Perry's dismissal of the New Atheist/Western governments' attitude to Islamic terrorism stands up to the atrocities of ISIS.) However, this is a book that all thinking Christians should read (the left wing politics that it's hard to separate from the original version of Christianity might not go down well in some quarters, though). The only danger for them is that, if they accept Perry's view, they may totally change their viewpoint. Is, for instance, going to church more about Christendom than Christianity? (This is something Perry doesn't address explicitly.)

However you look at it, this is a book to challenge the thinking of atheists and Christians alike, and as such is very welcome.

You can find Atheism after Christendom at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com 

Eleven Minutes Late review

I felt distinctly misled by the blurb on the back of Eleven Minutes Late. I picked the book up from a pile occupying a whole table in a large bookseller, so it must be doing well (especially as I later discovered the book first came out in 2009, and this is only a lightly updated version) and thought it sounded ideal. The bumf made it sound like 'Bill Bryson does the railways' - as a lover of both, I thought it would be excellent. It was very good, but it didn't do what it said on the tin.

The author Matthew Engel, a journalist with the right kind of connections to be able to interview John Major for the book (probably because Engel had been editor of Wisden's, the cricket almanac) starts in the expected vein, taking us on a trip from Penzance to Thurso with a week's railrover ticket in hand. Just the idea of the ticket really brought back the memories - when I was 15, two friends and I bought these and spent almost all of a week on the railway network. However after a couple of shortish chapters, the book settles down to being an analytical history of the messy development of Britain's railways and it is only a good 200 pages later that he finishes of his journey.

Having said that, if you are interested in railways, the history part is very good. It takes a distinctly cynical dive into the politics of railways and is more about that aspect than the nuts and bolts of the permanent way - which is likely to make it interesting to a wider audience than those who just like trains. Engel gives the reader real (and painful) insights into who the railways are in the shape they are in today by tracing a rarely planned and often brainless set of decisions and ideas, from the original railway mania through to the harebrained privatisation that separated track and trains and constantly pushed train operators to apply higher fares.

In fact, when I read the final section where he returns to travelogue mode, I realised I was glad most of the book was the history, because Engel isn't actually great at the Brysonesque bit. He has a couple of tiny vignettes that are entertaining, one featuring what must be the rudest buffet car (sorry, The Shop) attendant ever, but that apart we just get rather dull descriptions of his journey. Provided, then, you come at this book not expecting what it says on the cover, it is great. I would highly recommend it for its history, although it does leave the regular train traveller so frustrated as it becomes pretty obvious that the British political system is never going to get trains right.

I don't know why, but books about rail disasters have always made great reading. (I'm thinking particularly of Rolt's classic  Red for Danger .) This is a book about a different kind of rail disaster - the politics, planning and management of railways and is equally compelling. I realised as I typed that sentence why the blurb was made a bit misleading. Would you sell many books about 'the politics, planning and management of railways'? But in its entertaining, curmudgeonly way, this book does the topic justice while keeping the reader happy.

You can find Eleven Minutes Late at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com - also on Kindle at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Press release of the month

I'm no fan of press release journalism, but sometimes a title catches your eye. I mean, who could resist 'World's largest rat eradication project completes baiting'?

So here we go:

On 23 March 2015, despite turbulent sub-Antarctic weather, the final bait pellets were sown via helicopter on the island of South Georgia by an 18-strong group of international specialists known as ‘Team Rat’ in what is the world’s largest rat eradication project to date, funded by small UK-based NGO, the South Georgia Heritage Trust (SGHT).
Only days later South Georgia was announced as the fifth UK Overseas Territory to be included in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This ratification to the CBD was significantly aided by the dedication and hard work of the Trust and its commitment to protect the biodiversity of the island, by ridding it of invasive rodents preying on native seabird populations.
South Georgia Heritage Trust and its USA sister organisation Friends of South Georgia Island are hosting a press conference including members of the now returned ‘Team Rat’. The press conference will provide a comprehensive update on the latest phase of the Habitat Restoration Project which successfully spread 95 tonnes of bait over an area of 364 square kilometres, including a 227 kilometre stretch of sinuous coastline.
There remains a further two year monitoring period before the project can be marked a complete success, but it is possible that South Georgia is now rodent-free. There have already been significant discoveries and sightings of native species recovering on the island which will be discussed during the press conference.
Go Team Rat! And 'Boo!' to invasive rodents. Okay, rats can be a serious problem when accidentally introduced into an environment where they have no natural predators. But am I the only one who is highly suspicious about the gratuitous, and not entirely comprehensible use of the word 'ratification' in the second paragraph? Could we have a PR person with a sense of humour? Probably not.
The press conference is on 25 June, so there may be even more excitement at that point.