What is the American Nuclear Society?

The Secretary of State (currently Hillary Clinton) and his/her staff have a website on which is posted their daily schedule.

Today, Assistant Secretary Gottemoeller attends the American Nuclear Society Winter Meeting and participates in a panel on Treaty Verification and Arms Control Policy.

What is the American Nuclear Society?

From their website: http://www.new.ans.org
A Brief History of the American Nuclear Society
The Beginnings
The American Nuclear Society was launched in the mid-1950s, a time of growing interest in employing peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology for bettering the lives of people in the United States and around the world.

President Eisenhower had presented his dramatic 1953 "Atoms for Peace" speech to the United Nations, proposing international knowledge-sharing for development of civilian nuclear science and technology. While a number of associations already had nuclear divisions or groups, many people felt that a new organization was needed. Following its establishment in 1954 as a not-for-profit association of individual members, the Society quickly added breadth and depth to its activities, resulting in an organization that was both influenced by and had an influence on the burgeoning nuclear field.

The name of the organization generated considerable discussion back in 1954. Among the other names suggested were Society of Nuclear Engineering, American Society of Nuclear Technology, Institute of Nuclear Engineering, Association of Nuclear Engineers, Association of Nuclear Science and Technology, and Society of Nuclear Scientists and Engineers. Ultimately (in October 1954) the name American Nuclear Society won the day -- and the decades.

In the mid-to-late 1950s, ANS was already putting in place many of the elements that still make up the organization. In June 1955 ANS held its first Annual Meeting and elected its first President, in March 1956 launched its first journal (Nuclear Science and Engineering), and in November 1956 formed its Standards Committee. By the end of the 1950s, ANS had three professional divisions, 14 local sections, and 11 student branches.

During the 1960s ANS grew rapidly, driven in no small part by the construction of many nuclear plants in the United States and elsewhere for generating electricity, and also by the research in using the technology for a variety of other uses, from aerospace to merchant ships to medicine. By the end of the 1960s, ANS had 12 divisions, 28 local sections, 40 student branches, three periodicals (two journals and a magazine), and was running two national meetings and several topical meetings each year.

Each succeeding decade has brought changes both to ANS and to nuclear science and technology. In the 1970s, ANS became even more international minded than it already was, and also took its first formal steps in outreach activities. The 1980s became a time of focus on operating the plants, since there were no new U.S. plant orders, and an increased emphasis on radioactive waste management; the U.S. federal government enacted major legislation about both low- and high-level wastes and ANS started its Fuel Cycle and Waste Management Division.

In the 1990s, amid consolidation in the industrial area, ANS increased its visibility in Washington, D.C., carried out its first professionally directed strategic planning, and worked on shoring up the supply of qualified people for the nuclear field.

While ANS is national and international in its scope, its base is its headquarters in La Grange Park, Illinois. It did not start there, however. As with many associations, ANS moved around some during its early years. ANS's first "home" was in space provided by the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies in Tennessee. In 1958 the headquarters were moved to small offices in downtown Chicago, and in 1964 the headquarters were moved to larger offices spaces in Hinsdale, Illinois. Finally, in 1977 the Society moved to its own headquarters building (owned by ANS) in La Grange Park.

Today
ANS has made, and continues to make, important contributions to the use of nuclear science and technology, and consequently to the larger society beyond ANS. It achieves this through its many products and services, including meetings, publications, standards, outreach, honors and awards, scholarships, teachers workshops, Organization Members, and representation in Washington, D.C.

ANS continues to be a professional organization of scientists, engineers, and other professionals devoted to the peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology. Its 10,500 members (in 46 countries) come from diverse technical disciplines ranging from physics and nuclear safety to operations and power, and from across the full spectrum of the national and international enterprise, including government, academia, research laboratories, and private industry. Making it all succeed are a Board of Directors, 21 standing committees, 18 professional divisions (and one technical group), 54 local sections (including 7 overseas and one affiliated society), 34 student sections, 24 plant branches, liaison agreements with some 30 non-U.S. nuclear societies (and one organization), and a headquarters staff of about 50 people.

Advanced School and Workshop on Nuclear Physics Signal Processing 2011

From IAPS.com: Advanced School and Workshop on Nuclear Physics Signal Processing 2011
21-24 November 2011

Acireale (CT), Sicily, Italy

We are glad to announce that the Advanced School and Workshop on Nuclear Physics Signal Processing, ANSiP-2011, will be held on November 21-24, 2011 in the Sicilian town of Acireale, close to Catania (Italy).

The meeting is organized by the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Catania and Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (LNS), the Dipartimento di Fisica ed Astronomia of the Università di Catania and the Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano.

The meeting will be structured to cover introductory base concepts followed by cutting edge electronics contributions and open discussions on the topics outlined above. Due to the educational character of the meeting, participation by students, postdocs, technical staff and engineers is strongly encouraged.
Submitted abstracts will be selected by the organizing committees for oral or poster presentations.

A cocktail & poster session will be held on November 23rd. A final exam may be organized, on request, for PhD students attending the school.

Registration deadline: 7 November 2011

Fukushima radiation higher than thought

From Press TV: Fukushima radiation higher than thought

The wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have released twice as much radiation into the atmosphere as was previously estimated by the Japanese government.


The European and the US experts in their new estimation said the amount of the radioactive isotope caesium-137 released at the pick of Japan's nuclear crisis has been 35,800 terabecquerels; this comes while Japan's nuclear regulator had reported the release of 15,000 terabecquerels of caesium-137 in June.

According to the report published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, the new estimated amount of nuclear release is equivalent to 42 percent of that from 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in Ukraine during the soviet era.

The Japanese nuclear crisis began on 11 March 2011 after a 9-magnitude earthquake and a following tsunami hit the country including Fukushima Island.

The waves from the tsunami, which hit Fukushima nuclear plant 45 minutes after the quake, shut down the back-up generators. The early damage disabled the reactor's cooling systems, leading to meltdowns, explosions and radiation leaks.

The new study, on the other hand, says that the devastated plant had started releasing radioactive earlier due to the damages caused by the quake.

“This early onset of emissions is interesting and may indicate some structural damage to the reactor units during the earthquake,” said Andreas Stohl, an atmospheric scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research who led the study.

The new study has not considered the health aspects of the nuclear crisis because of the difficulty in measuring the radiation amounts people have received.

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has not yet commented on the new report.

The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) have not updated the figures on the amount of radiation discharged from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station.

Tepco said last week that the amount of radiation being released has fallen to about 8 million times less than that at the height of the disaster.

Einstein’s speed of light tested again

From Hindustan Times: Einstein’s speed of light tested again

Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), who recently claimed that the speed of light is quicker than estimated by Albert Einstein, are testing their findings once more following criticism from the scientific community. According to Einstein, the cosmic speed
limit is 186,282 miles per second - the speed of light. But last month CERN scientists claimed that they’d measured neutrino particles zooming along even quicker.

Critics argued that the organisation’s measurements were simply wrong, so the experiment is being run again.

“The new test began two or three days ago. The criticism is that the results we had were a statistical quirk. The test should help (us) address this,” the Daily Mail quoted Stavros Kasavenas, deputy head of France’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics as telling a news agency.

In the original experiment CERN fired the neutrino particles from an accelerator in Switzerland to a detector in the Gran Sasso cavern in Italy, 434 miles to the south - and amazingly they arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than light would have done.

The results of the experiment, which were re-checked many times over a period of six months, left the scientific community in a state of disbelief.

Celebrity scientist Brain Cox said that if the results are confirmed it would be ‘one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time.’

However, others like Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey, were more dismissive.

“Let me put my money where my mouth is: if the CERN experiment proves to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV,” said Al-Khalili.

A nuclear education

From Rebel Yell: A nuclear education
Harry Reid Center highlights importance of its research, studies

An event sponsored by the College of Sciences and the Harry Reid Center highlighted the importance of nuclear studies.

“All Things Nuclear” at UNLV looked to show students the opportunities that nuclear programs at UNLV have to offer after they finish their undergraduate education. The event included a special guest appearance from IndyCar driver Simona De Silvestre, driver of the Entergy Nuclear car and recipient of the 2010 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year Award.

“We have several different disciplines that are involved in doing research that has nuclear applications,” said Dawn Barlow-Curtis, Director of Communications and Special Events at the College of Engineering. “I think that the majority of the student body here at UNLV really isn’t even aware of these various programs within the College of Sciences and the College of Engineering.”

To help students increase their knowledge on the topic, UNLV teamed up with Entergy Nuclear, a company that produces nuclear, clean air electricity in an attempt to expose students to the value of the nuclear programs the university offers.

“When I was approached by Entergy Nuclear [and they told me] they really wanted to come and talk to students about the importance of needing future engineers and scientists in this area … I thought what a great opportunity [this would be] to bring attention to these different programs,” Barlow-Curtis said.

The graduates’ nuclear program at UNLV is a growing and robust field of study in need of more exposure to the rest of the student body on campus, said John Herron, CEO of Entergy Nuclear.

However, Barlow-Curtis said these nuclear programs are not yet available to undergraduate students.

“We do not have an undergraduate program in nuclear engineering,” she said. “But we do have it available as a Ph.D. and a master’s degree.”
Barlow-Curtis said that graduate students from the College of Sciences were invited to discuss related topics, such as health physics, in hopes of introducing these programs to students and getting them more involved in these fields of study.

Representatives at the Harry Reid Center also found an interest in the importance of UNLV’s nuclear programs on campus.

“I think that this is a growing program in nuclear areas,” said Leader of NSTD National Security Group at the Harry Reid Center Steven Curtis. “There is a huge amount of radio chemistry going on right now, which is about the biggest program in the country.”

Curtis added that the Health Physics Department has been going for over 10 years and has a robust program.

He emphasized the economic stimulation that nuclear programs could bring to the country’s economy if only more attention were brought to them.

Curtis said that nuclear programs are of high importance in the state of Nevada and largely deserve more exposure not only at the college level, but from the U.S. as a whole.

“It is [vital] for students here at UNLV to know how important nuclear studies are in our country and the kinds of different aspects of [nuclear studies] that are important to the economy and national security,” Curtis said.

Despite the current lack of enthusiasm on the topic of nuclear studies, Curtis said he remains hopeful of its eventual success.

“I think there is a great deal of opportunities available in all things nuclear that Nevada, particularly Southern Nevada can capitalize on but hasn’t yet,” he said. “Personally, I would like to see that become a part of our economy.”

Experts Unite to Examine Nuclear Energy

From Daily Nexus: Experts Unite to Examine Nuclear Energy

The Santa Barbara & Tri-Counties Chapter of the United Nations Association hosted a forum on nuclear energy featuring several notable speakers and activists on Saturday in recognition of United Nations Day.

Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility and UCSB’s Physics Dept. gathered in Santa Barbara City College’s Fe Bland Forum to speak about nuclear safety, the Fukushima reactor meltdown and the future of nuclear energy. The event was co-sponsored by UCSB’s Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies and SBCC’s Global Studies program.

Geoffrey Shaw, a representative for the International Atomic Energy Agency Director General, said the global agency has seen a spike in concern about nuclear safety following destructive reactor meltdowns at various Japanese nuclear power plants in March.

“The question over the safety of nuclear energy is timely in light of the accident in Fukushima,” Shaw said. “It created an enormous amount of public concern. Just how safe is it? The media and public concern is understandable.”

According to Shaw, the IAEA wants to focus on implementing measures to ensure safety in the field of nuclear power, especially as the global need for alternative energy sources increases.

“Nuclear power is already here with us; the IAEA expects growth in the use of nuclear energy,” Shaw said. “The question that needs to be asked is, ‘Can we make safer reactors?’ In other words, we need a viable action plan for nuclear regulation and the IAEA has already adopted a twelve-point action plan.”

Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility Outreach Coordinator David Weisman said shortcuts in regulatory processes are a main concern when moving forward with research into nuclear energy.

“Damage claims against Tokyo Electricity in the Fukushima reactor meltdown have already exceeded $24 billion — can we afford that kind of damage here? Insurance will not cover such incident,” Weisman said. “When an earthquake happens, how much can we get by without the nuclear power plants? What if Fukushima happens here? Our electricity bill will soar through the sky.”

However, according to Shaw, these considerations need to be put in perspective by considering other issues related to nuclear energy, including the expansion of nuclear power in some countries.

“This concern over safety needs to be considered with interrelated issues on the nuclear agenda,” Shaw said. “For example, developing countries need energy to develop. Australia and Germany intend to gradually phase out nuclear energy, but India and China intend to expand its use. It is because China is an energy-scarce country.”

While each nation has the right to choose whether or not to use nuclear power, safety and regulation are paramount to energy needs and often must extend beyond national borders, Shaw said.

“Nuclear energy can be part of the long-term plan for many countries and nuclear safety is the responsibility of national governments,” Shaw said. “The U.N. leadership reaffirmed the rights of nations to choose their own energy resources, but safety and regulatory measures and high standards of security need to be developed first before the introduction of nuclear energy. IAEA works with those governments to help them toward this end.”

According to Shaw, nuclear power is in especially high demand in countries struggling to provide energy sources to develop modern infrastructures.

“Many countries have asked us for nuclear reactors — mostly in the developing countries — but IAEA is not in the business of selling nuclear reactors so we had to decline these requests,” Shaw said. “Energy polarization is widespread and in Africa it is especially severe.”

Nuclear energy has a broad range of applications that make it desirable to developing nations, Shaw said.

“Nuclear energy is used widely for [purposes] other than energy, such as environment, health and water management,” Shaw said. “For example, nearly a billion people lack fresh water supply and nuclear technology can be used to detect sustainable water sources. In food and agriculture, nuclear energy is used to develop better seeds.”

According to Weisman, local voices are essential to the debate on nuclear energy, particularly in areas like Santa Barbara that are in close proximity to nuclear power facilities.

“We are 90 minutes south of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant,” Weisman said. “Most of us are paying for electricity to Southern California Edison and thus for nuclear power. We are well placed and this is a local issue.”

Benjamin Monreal, an assistant professor of high-energy physics at UCSB, said while the Diablo Canyon facility is a liability, nuclear energy in general is not always a negative option.

“Diablo Canyon is dangerous because it is on the San Andreas fault line,” Monreal said. “[However], having a safe, controlled reactor away from population centers can be a good idea.”

Monreal said widespread use of nuclear energy is a growing reality, especially as a viable alternate for carbon-based energy sources.

“Nuclear energy is growing and carbon energy is still growing,” Monreal said. “Can solar and wind energies shrink the usage of carbon energy? I am skeptical. I really hope that wind and solar can do a lion’s share of replacing nuclear energy as the alternative to carbon energy, but it is really impossible. Unless conservation is really happening, turning off nuclear power is only increasing the share of coal.”

Despite these benefits, Weisman said the Diablo Canyon facility highlights a central question of accountability in the process of authorizing and regulating nuclear power.

“When Diablo Canyon was up for relicensing, the state asked the company to do a full seismic safety study, but the company simply bypassed the state regulators and got relicensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the federal level,” Weisman said. “Do we trust our regulators? That is the fundamental question. Diablo Canyon represents everything that is wrong about the process.”

According to Weisman, a mistake during the planning of the Diablo Canyon, plant has sapped local taxpayers money since the 1980s.

“When the company designed the Diablo Canyon plant, they Xeroxed the blueprint upside down, so they had to build the exact same thing twice — with our money,” Weisman said. “This is an economic issue — an unfunded mandate coming out of our own pockets. Since 1988, you’ve all been paying for a $4.4 billion blunder by a utility company.”

In situations such as this, advocacy groups struggle to raise public safety concerns against the lobbying power of multinational energy companies, according to Weisman.

“This issue is where local meets global,” Weisman said. “NRC and utility companies say that public safety doesn’t matter and advocacy groups like ours are out-funded by these utility companies by a million to one in lobbying, so local control over this issue is important.”

According to Monreal, the drawbacks of nuclear energy — including safety and economic concerns — should be viewed from a perspective that takes into account the negative aspects of other energy sources.

“It’s a matter of risk,” Monreal said. “Two past failures of nuclear reactors have killed 10,000 plus in cancer deaths. Coal power has killed 6,000 miners every year in China alone since 1970 and countless more in air pollution in places. We quantify and balance environmental health, safety and ethics tradeoffs all the time. Nuclear power should be in this same ballpark.”

JMuse draws crowd for nuclear talk

From BreezeJMU.org: JMuse draws crowd for nuclear talk

Sara Williams, assistant director of public services at Carrier Library and JMuse Café logistics coordinator, told her colleagues to be happy if 20 students attended the first JMuse discussion and to be thrilled if 35 attended.

Williams wasn't prepared for about 75 students to crowd in the flex space of East Campus Library on Wednesday night for JMuse Café, an event involving professors and students discussing the safety of nuclear power.

The topic, "After Fukushima, What About Nuclear Power?," was sparked by the full meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Dalichi nuclear power plant following a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami in March.

Steve Whisnant, head of the physics department, discussed the scientific background and implications of nuclear power.

"Nuclear reactors have such promise because we have a way to produce this energy very efficiently," Whisnant said, "but they are also very scary because you have the radiation left around."

Kevin Borg, a history professor, argued that nuclear power is an inherently political technology.

"The fact that nuclear power evens exists ... either as bombs or to generate electricity requires a huge state project," Borg said.

Faculty discussion leaders picked a subtopic, and students divided into groups based on what they would like to discuss. Subtopics included future implications of nuclear power and the environmental effects of nuclear power.

Paula Kiser, a reference assistant at Carrier, presented her group's views on nuclear power. She believes a decision made on nuclear power should be decisive and final.

"People need to make a decision and stop complaining about it," Kiser said.

The purpose of the event was to give people different viewpoints and to raise intelligent questions on the subject.

"Answers start with good questions and a good view," Williams said. "That's what we provided."

Amanda Martensen, a junior anthropology major, said she had some general knowledge about nuclear power before the event, but she learned a lot from JMuse Café.

"I really enjoyed the discussions and hearing everyone's different viewpoints," Martensen said.

Williams has plans to change some aspects of JMuse in the long-term. She would like to have student interns working for the program and for locals to become involved in these discussions. She also wants to bring in guest scholars.

"If we talk to people who are living these things every day it will help us understand the entire spectrum,"Williams said.

She's impressed with what she saw at the first event.

"It makes you feel really good about where you work that the students are of this caliber," Williams said.

The next JMuse Café event is held Nov. 11, and the tentative topic is "Public Funding for Pure Science and the Arts: How Much is Enough?"

Promoting Effective China-U.S. Strategic Nuclear Dialogue

From Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Promoting Effective China-U.S. Strategic Nuclear Dialogue

Since the late 1980s, the United States and China have pursued strategic nuclear dialogues at various levels, ranging from track I government-to-government negotiations to track II exchanges among non-governmental security experts. Strategic nuclear dialogues between the two countries are important for stabilizing nuclear relations as they help clarify suspicions and build cooperation. The importance of these exchanges has been demonstrated several times, including during the negotiation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1994-1996 and at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 1995. Despite this positive record, the two countries have evolving and diversified interests in the agendas and formats of these dialogues, a situation which requires careful management.

Currently, U.S. officials want more frequent and direct high-level military-to-military strategic nuclear dialogue between the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Chinese Second Artillery (SA), the branch of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) responsible for operating land-based nuclear and conventional missiles. But the SA has not been as active or forthcoming in strategic nuclear dialogues as DoD has wished even though the two have exchanged visits a few times in the last several years. It is important for the United States to consider why the SA has been a reluctant participant and how to promote a more effective dialogue with the Second Artillery.

To help answer these questions, it is useful to compare the experiences of China’s nuclear scientific establishment and the SA, which shows that building expertise is the key to shaping the attitude of these organizations toward such dialogues. For this reason, it is important to cultivate experts in the SA and other nuclear branches of the PLA (the nuclear navy and nuclear air force) in order to improve military-to-military strategic nuclear dialogue between Beijing and Washington. By the same token, placing pressure on China to move faster than it is ready to will not work in this case and may make the situation worse.

China’s Nuclear Establishment
One prevalent American hypothesis is that the SA is reluctant to participate in strategic nuclear dialogues because it worries about possible U.S. pressure and follow-on demands for much broader transparency. But comparing the evolving attitude of the SA toward nuclear dialogue with that of the Chinese nuclear establishment shows this hypothesis to be false. Historically, the attitudes of these two institutions toward international dialogue have been quite different, but neither national security sensitivities nor international pressure can explain the difference.

Both institutions work on equally sensitive and important national security programs and could use the same arguments of national secrecy to avoid international dialogues if they were skeptical about the purpose or consequences of such exchanges. Both have also been subjected to similar international pressure to participate in the past. Thus, the only reasonable explanation for the differences in their patterns of participation is that the Chinese nuclear establishment and the SA had very different levels of expertise and institutional culture and experience when it came to international dialogue.

In the late 1980s, the Chinese nuclear establishment, including the Beijing Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics (IAPCM) and China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), began to send its scientists to international dialogues involving scientists from around the world. The tradition and expertise in exchanges in the science community encouraged the Chinese scientists to engage with their peers from other countries on strategic nuclear issues. At the beginning, the Chinese scientists chose to join discussions only on topics of a more technical nature, for example, the consequences of nuclear war and verification of nuclear reductions.

The Chinese scientists utilized the common tools of scientific exchange, such as graphs and formulas, to engage with their counterparts. In this process, they developed friendship with and trust in scientists from other countries. They gained experience and confidence in dialogue on nuclear policy issues and came to understand the importance and benefits of these dialogues. They also realized that some special expertise is needed to engage on strategic issues.

With the assistance of scientists from Italy and the United States, among others, Chinese nuclear institutions began to apply for funding from international foundations to organize their own international nuclear dialogues and to train their students on strategic nuclear issues. They also sent their young scientists to receive training on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation at American universities such as Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and the University of Maryland, at non-governmental organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists, and at the U.S. national labs, in particular the Cooperative Monitoring Center at the Sandia National Laboratories.

These trainees are now mid-career and most of them play important roles in strategic nuclear dialogue between China and other countries. The expertise in strategic dialogues built in the Chinese nuclear establishment gives their leaders the confidence to encourage participation in such dialogues at all levels and in different formats. The 1999 U.S. Cox Commission Report, which accused Chinese nuclear scientists of spying, among other charges, interrupted the nascent U.S.-Chinese lab-to-lab dialogue. The Chinese nuclear establishment has set as a precondition to resume the dialogue that the U.S. government formally acknowledge the benefits of the prior U.S.-China lab-to-lab exchange. Although the United States has yet to meet this precondition, scientists from the Chinese nuclear establishment never mind talking with and hosting scientists from U.S. national labs at various nuclear dialogues.

The active posture of the Chinese nuclear establishment on international nuclear dialogues comes from its confidence in the ability of its experts to participate effectively in these discussions. These institutions are always prepared to send their experts to strategic nuclear dialogues no matter whether the dialogues are multilateral or bilateral, track I or track II, or on contentious or agreeable topics. Such confidence does not arise from international pressure. Instead, foreign assistance in cultivating experience and expertise in international dialogue was very useful in shaping the long-term active posture of the Chinese nuclear establishment.

The Second Artillery
Unlike the Chinese nuclear establishment, which is made up of scientists who have become accustomed to international scientific exchanges, the SA’s major cadres are professional military officers who do not have the same level of experience in international nuclear exchanges, and therefore less expertise to draw on when called to participate in these exchanges. This has even led to a divergence in the nuclear lexicons used by the SA and nuclear establishment. For instance, whereas the SA and most parts of the PLA (for example, PLA’s National Defense University and Academy of Military Science) use native words to describe strategic nuclear issues, the nuclear establishment uses words directly translated from Western literature and United Nations documents. This results in serious confusion about the meaning of some terms, with perhaps the best example being the term “deterrence.” The nuclear establishment uses the term “weishe” (威慑) for the meaning of “deterrence.” However, for the PLA, “weishe” means “coercion.”

This situation began to improve in the late 1990s with the initiation of some new track “1.5” strategic dialogues between China and the United States. These meetings take the format of an academic meeting, but participants include both governmental officials and non-governmental experts on strategic nuclear policy issues. The Chinese-U.S. track 1.5 dialogues allowed the SA to send its officers to observe how people from different countries discuss sensitive strategic nuclear issues. The early observers from the SA, who were mostly officials in charge of foreign affairs, returned with important and useful experiences. After SA leaders became more familiar with and confident in strategic nuclear dialogues, the SA made two significant changes in its approach to the track 1.5 dialogues.

The first change was to send the nuclear strategy experts who teach strategic issues at the colleges under the SA to the track 1.5 dialogues. The second change was to upgrade these military professors from backbenchers to formal participants of the dialogues with permission to join discussions with their American counterparts. Besides enhancing the SA’s nuclear policy expertise, these professors started to publicly publish articles discussing nuclear strategy and the role of these international dialogues.

For example, following one of these dialogues a Chinese participant from the SA published an article encouraging China to increase its transparency about its nuclear strategy, arguing that “seclusion and excessive secrecy are but an expression of a lack of self-confidence.”1 Besides these military professors who sit on the front row of the dialogues, young scholars from the SA were in the back row observing the discussion and learning from the experience. This process has been invaluable in building the SA’s expertise. It is wrong-headed to think, which some Americans probably do, that these track 1.5 dialogues are responsible for the SA’s reluctance to participate in formal, government-to-government or military-to-military exchanges.

It is worth noting that the track 1.5 dialogues also serve another important function: to promote interagency discussion in China between the SA and other Chinese organizations and individual experts on nuclear strategy. Prior to each track 1.5 meeting, experts from the SA and other organizations hold preparatory meetings to better understand their respective positions and hold frank discussions. This is another way in which the SA has accumulated expertise.

Building on these experiences, the SA is quickly developing its expertise in strategic dialogue. It sends its officers to various international forums on strategic nuclear issues. It invites military and civilian experts on strategic dialogues to give briefings to its officers who may work on strategic dialogue. It hosts workshops on nuclear strategy and opens them to non-governmental scholars. It sends its younger officers to Ph.D. programs at civilian universities to study international security. All these efforts are aimed at gaining expertise in strategic dialogue.

Toward Effective Dialogue
The experiences of the Chinese nuclear establishment and the PLA Second Artillery in strategic nuclear dialogue suggest that expertise is a key variable shaping their attitudes toward dialogue. Foreign pressure, on the other hand, cannot explain the evolution of their attitudes. To encourage the SA to be more active in strategic nuclear dialogues at both track 1.5 and track I levels, it is important to help the SA and other PLA nuclear branches develop their expertise and build a culture that embraces such dialogues. The track 1.5 dialogues were very useful places for the SA to gain relevant experience and should continue to serve this function.

The United States might consider some ideas for cooperating with its Chinese partners to cultivate the expertise of the SA and other PLA nuclear branches in strategic nuclear dialogue. First, American universities and non-governmental organizations might invite young officials from the SA as visiting scholars to help them develop their personal expertise in strategic issues, similar to opportunities created for the Chinese nuclear establishment in the 1990s. The U.S. government could help facilitate the visas of these Chinese visiting scholars. Second, the Pentagon could invite the PLA to develop a glossary on nuclear strategy terminology similar to the one completed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Scientists Group on Arms Control.2

The glossary offers Chinese translation of nuclear terms used by the Chinese nuclear establishment, but it is not fully accepted by the Second Artillery. And third, the United States could acknowledge publicly the importance it places on track 1.5 nuclear dialogue in cultivating expertise in nuclear dialogue in the SA and continue to give full support to these exchanges.

The growth of expertise of the SA in nuclear dialogues should give its leaders great confidence and lays a solid foundation for the two militaries to develop effective and high-level strategic dialogue in the near future. Enhancing the partnership through ideas like those proposed here may speed up the process.


1. Yang Chengjun, “More Transparency Will Benefit the PLA,” China Daily, September 27, 2007. p. 10.
2. The English – Chinese & Chinese – English Nuclear Security Glossary is available at http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/cisac/PGA_050966.

A physicist in the cancer lab

From Symmetry (Dimensions of Particle Physics): A physicist in the cancer lab

Nicole Ackerman thought she would always be a particle physicist—until a newfound interest in biology drew her toward medical imaging. Her research on Cherenkov radiation, the blue glow from charged particles outracing light, could aid development of cancer treatments.

Nicole Ackerman is a serious physics geek. As a graduate student at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, she ran computer simulations for EXO, the Enriched Xenon Observatory, an investigation into the nature of neutrinos; blogged for the particle physics website Quantum Diaries; and led lab tours. Her Gmail handle is neutrinoless, for the type of radioactive decay EXO is intended to detect. A tattoo of an equation called the Taylor series expansion circles her left arm because, she says, “it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever learned.”

So what is she doing at the Stanford University School of Medicine? One of two researchers with particle physics training on an interdisciplinary team, Ackerman is helping to develop a new form of imaging that could be useful in testing cancer treatments.

In one sense, she hasn’t strayed far from her roots: she studies a phenomenon called Cherenkov radiation, bluish light associated with fast-moving charged particles. Ackerman and other researchers are exploring whether Cherenkov light from radioactively tagged molecules could aid tumor imaging and drug development.

While her transition to biology has posed some challenges, Ackerman believes her training in particle physics simulations will allow her to make unique contributions to the field: “It feels like it’s filling a niche that was previously empty.”

Thinking outside the box
Ackerman became interested in physics in middle school, reading popular science books about quantum mechanics and string theory. As an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she traveled to CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, to work on one of the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle collider in the world. Then she spent a summer at SLAC working on BaBar, an experiment investigating the universe’s puzzling shortage of antimatter, before starting her graduate studies there in 2007.

But after a few years, she began to wonder if she was suited to research in a field where a single experiment may span decades and involve hundreds or even thousands of people. “To imagine spending my entire life on one project—I don’t think I could do that,” she says.

Then a new opportunity appeared.

At the June 2010 Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, Ackerman heard a speaker describe antibiotics binding to a molecule on a bacterium. The depth and complexity of molecular biology “blew my mind,” she says.

As she saw more talks and spoke to more biologists, “for the first time in my life, I appreciated what biomedical research looked like,” and how interesting it was.

About a week later, at a conference in Italy, she heard another talk about applications of particle physics in medical imaging and nuclear reactor monitoring. Ackerman had heard about these applications, but hadn’t realized the work was happening in universities, not just in industry. She decided to switch fields and pursue applied particle physics for her PhD.

To learn more, Ackerman contacted scientists working in medical physics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, including molecular imaging researcher Ted Graves. When Graves told her his lab was studying Cherenkov radiation, she recalls, “My reaction was to kind of squeak and say ‘Cherenkov! Cherenkov’s my favorite!’” She joined Graves’ lab and began working on a PhD project in fall 2010.

That strange blue glow
Cherenkov radiation is a “really bizarre phenomenon,” Ackerman says. Named for Russian physicist Pavel Cherenkov, who studied it in the 1930s, it occurs when a charged particle zips through a particular medium faster than light does. “People get upset and say, well, things can’t travel faster than the speed of light,” she says. While that’s true in a vacuum, light becomes more sluggish in materials such as water, and in some cases a charged particle can outrun it.

As the particle moves through the material, it distorts surrounding atoms by pulling or pushing away their electrons. The atoms relax back into place after the particle passes, releasing a bit of electromagnetic radiation. Normally, these emissions aren’t visible, just as tiny ripples on the ocean can’t be seen from a plane. But if the particle breaks the light barrier, the radiation adds up to a bluish glow, analogous to a large ocean wave that is visible from far above.

To physicists, Cherenkov radiation is nothing new. BaBar, the experiment at SLAC, used Cherenkov light detection to help identify particles, and the South Pole observatory IceCube looks for Cherenkov light from particles produced by neutrinos hitting atoms in the ice. But in the medical community, it was largely ignored.

Eye-opening experiment
That changed in 2009, when a team led by researchers at Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts reported they could detect visible light emanating from mice injected with molecules labeled with a radioactive isotope. Radioactive labels are often used in medical research to follow molecules of interest—a potential drug, for example—through an animal’s body, and in the clinic to evaluate cancer patients. Doctors may inject a patient with a radioactive form of glucose, which accumulates in sugar-hungry cancer cells and makes them stand out in an image.

“My reaction was to kind of squeak and say ‘Cherenkov! Cherenkov’s my favorite!’”

“I can look at the physics side of it and say, guys, this is your best-case scenario.”
In this case, the team suggested the light was Cherenkov radiation, produced when the radioactive isotope decayed and emitted high-energy charged particles called positrons. The study suggested that the light offered a way to “see” radioactive decays in an animal’s body. The team called the new technique Cherenkov luminescence imaging, or CLI.

While researchers already obtain similar information with other techniques, such as positron emission tomography, or PET, CLI is cheaper. It provides a bridge between the world of PET and other nuclear imaging techniques and the world of optical imaging, says medical physicist Simon Cherry at the University of California, Davis. Some researchers hope to use CLI to image tumors in human patients during surgery, so doctors can check whether all the cancerous tissue has been removed before closing up a patient. However, this will be challenging since the light is very weak and can’t penetrate far through tissue.

Running the numbers
Many CLI studies have been performed with mice. But Ackerman focused on studying Cherenkov light in the virtual world by running simulations with Geant4, software created primarily for particle physics. Developed in the 1990s, Geant4 allows researchers to simulate the behavior of particles. As a virtual particle moves through matter, the program essentially “rolls the dice” to determine what might happen at a given instant, repeats the process to plot the particle’s path and decay, and then does this for many particles. Geant4 has found a variety of uses outside particle physics, such as estimating the amount of radiation astronauts receive in space and verifying radiation treatment plans for cancer patients.

Ackerman had already used Geant4 during her time on EXO to simulate parts of the data-gathering process. In Graves’ lab, she focused on radioactive isotopes called alpha emitters, which scientists hope to use to kill cancer cells but currently don’t have a good way of imaging. With her simulations, she was able to confirm that the alpha emitter actinium-225 could also indirectly produce Cherenkov light through high-energy electrons released by its daughter isotopes. Scientists developing alpha-emitter treatments could use Cherenkov imaging to watch a drug’s path in mice and ensure it’s reaching the tumor, she says.

Ackerman has also used Geant4 to study other potential cancer treatments. For example, scientists hope to increase the effectiveness of radiation treatments by injecting patients with gold nanoparticles that accumulate in the tumor and intensify the radiation dose to the area. Ackerman’s simulations allowed her to estimate the size of this effect: It could increase the radiation dose to the tumor cells’ nuclei by about 2.5 times. By trying different nanoparticles in Geant4 and determining an upper limit on the effect, Ackerman might be able to save researchers time and money in the lab.

“I can look at the physics side of it and say, guys, this is your best-case scenario,” she says. “If you’ve gotten that, you don’t need to keep trying to make different types of nanoparticles to see if you do better.”

Geant4 isn’t the perfect tool for Ackerman’s research. The standard Geant4 models of physics processes typically deal with higher energies than those seen in radiation treatments for cancer. But Ackerman plans to investigate how much these limitations affect her data and whether the models could somehow be modified to address them. She also hopes to program a virtual mouse into Geant4 so she can simulate processes in mice, the standard lab animals.

A new start
According to Graves, the traditional curse of biology is that it’s a qualitative science; physicists like Ackerman bring a more quantitative mindset to the research. But Ackerman has also been eager to learn about biology. “That’s refreshing and important,” says Rehan Ali, a postdoc in Graves’ lab. If you’re coming from a particle physics background and want to contribute to biomedicine, “you have to really spend time getting to know the field first, and she’s done that.”

Making the transition from particle physics to biology hasn’t been entirely easy. After signing up for an imaging anatomy class that required her to identify organs, Ackerman says, “I thought, oh crap, how am I ever going to learn all our squishy bits inside? Because they all kind of look the same.” And when trying to simulate the behavior of an imaging instrument, she ran into difficulties getting information from the manufacturer. “Coming from particle physics, the guy next to you wrote the code and the guy on the other side built the system,” she says. “So it’s been very strange trying to model this system and not knowing all the details.”

Even in her new environment, Ackerman maintains ties to her particle physics past and follows news in the field. While she misses the particle physics community, she says she likes contributing to a field where her simulation skills are less common. “I might be the only one thinking about some of these details,” she says. If her alpha-emitter studies help researchers develop a cancer treatment more quickly, “that’ll make a difference to people I know,” she says. “The work I do matters more.”

Italy's Nuclear Physics Chief: We Can Afford SuperB

From Science Insider: Italy's Nuclear Physics Chief: We Can Afford SuperB
Particle physicist Fernando Ferroni takes the reins as president of Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) at the end of the month. Ferroni, 59, is a professor at the Sapienza University of Rome, and has worked on experiments at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, and INFN's Gran Sasso laboratory. INFN plays an important role in CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), as well as operating the Virgo gravitational-wave detector near Pisa, but perhaps Ferroni's greatest challenge will be to steer the construction of the SuperB electron-positron particle collider which is due to break ground near Rome this year. As Italy's economy teeters on the brink, can the country afford an expensive machine to investigate the balance between matter and antimatter in the universe? Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: What are your priorities as president of INFN?

F.F.: One is the budget. This has remained flat over the past couple of years and so is decreasing in real terms. Then there is the problem of getting jobs for young researchers. Last year the government brought in a law that means only about one-fifth of research positions that become vacant can be filled. This means that the number of researchers is reducing all the time.

Q: What will you do about this problem of turnover?

F.F.: I will put all the pressure I can on the government to reverse this. My idea is deregulation. It is the government's right to decide what the INFN's annual budget should be (currently it is about €270 million). But inside this number let me do what I think is best for this institution. If I need to replace 50 researchers I will do that but if not I will replace 20 and spend the rest on research. The problem is that the government applies its general or budget laws to the public sector as a whole, and we are part of the public sector. They always forget to make a distinction between research and public administration.

Q: SuperB has been estimated to cost between €500 million and €600 million. Where will this money come from?

F.F.: The Italian government has committed €250 million towards the cost of the accelerator, and the U.S. should provide in-kind funding in the form of parts from the decommissioned PEP-II facility at SLAC. As well as money from the Italian Institute of Technology for synchrotron lines, we also expect money from several other countries, including Russia, France, Spain, and possibly the U.K. But the funding situation is very delicate and until you sign the memorandum of understanding you don't know what the total will be.

Q: What form will the Italian government's funding take?

F.F.: This will partly come from the INFN, with 8% of its annual budget dedicated to SuperB (all research institutes in fact will have 8% of their budgets used for large-scale infrastructure projects). But of course the government will have to put in more, since with just this funding you couldn't build the machine. I hope the government knows where to find the rest of the money.

Q: Some physicists have warned that SuperB will deprive other experiments of funding. Is this a danger?

F.F.: We probably won't be able to start up as many other experiments as we would have liked in the past. But once we know the spending profile of SuperB we can adjust to it. We will have a complicated path to navigate and we will have to find €25 million from our research budget of €400 million over 6 years to build the detector. This €25 million will impact other projects. SuperB will perturb the system, but it would be strange for a big project not to do that.

Q: The project is due to be completed within 6 years. Is this realistic?

F.F.: That depends on when we start. I worked on the BaBar experiment at SLAC (which was fed by PEP-II) and there construction started in 1993 and by 1998 we had collisions. I don't see why in principle our machine can't be built as quickly as the one in America.

Q: Might SuperB be trumped by an upgraded Belle (the Japanese rival of BaBar)?

F.F.: The Japanese machine will switch on first. But its intensity will be lower, so eventually there will be a crossing point [when SuperB has collected more data]. If the Japanese machine starts 2 years earlier then that is not a reason to question SuperB. But any longer than that and there could be a problem.

Q: What other plans does the INFN have for future experiments?

F.F.: We want to consolidate and follow up on our big investment in the LHC. We also want to follow with extreme attention the search for gravitational waves in Virgo. And we are also assessing the possibility of building a kilometer-cubed-scale neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean. Plus, we have the best laboratories in the world at Gran Sasso for research on neutrinos and dark matter. These two areas of physics will stay at the top of our list.

Q: How important was the recent result by the OPERA [Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus] collaboration appearing to show that neutrinos travel faster than light?

F.F.: I'm not able to contribute anything on such a delicate measurement. Let us wait for the outcome of other experiments. Even at Gran Sasso we will try to redo the experiment with other detectors such as Borexino or LVD.

Q: Do you think OPERA was right to announce its results before publication in a journal?

F.F.: Speaking personally, and not as president of the INFN, I would have done it another way. I would have taken my evidence, got on a plane, and discussed the results with researchers at Fermilab, asking them to repeat the experiment before perhaps publishing two papers simultaneously in the same journal edition. But everybody has a different style. It's very easy to say, 'I would have done things differently;' I was not under that stress and tension.

Cheap power: An overnight revolution

From Computer World: Cheap power: An overnight revolution

In a couple of weeks the world could be forever changed by power too cheap to meter. Or not.

Every now and then along comes a technology that is revolutionary and changes everything. But a very few of these new technologies cause fast change. Mostly they seep out of the lab, into the arms of early adopters, and then ooze out into the world in general.

For example, the first internal combustion engine was (arguably) the Pyréolophore invented by Nicéphore and Claude Niépce in 1807, but car ownership wasn't really commonplace until the first decade of the 1900s.

So, while the internal combustion engine is one of the key technological achievements that define Western culture, it took more than a century for the impact of the technology to become widespread. As technological revolutions go, that one was pretty slow.

The "Singularity is Near" website has a number of charts illustrating the pace of technology adoption. One of the most interesting concerns the mass use of inventions, which shows the number of years required for various technologies to be adopted by one-quarter of the U.S. population.

We can see from this that electricity transmission and use, which was developed in 1873, took 46 years to reach a mass market, while the telephone (1876) took only 35 years. The radio (1897) took only 31 years, television (1926) took 26, the PC (1975) just 16 years, the mobile phone (1983) a mere 13 years, and the Web (1991) a blisteringly fast seven years.

Now, in IT we're used to change and revolutionary (or rather what appear to be revolutionary) changes at that. I won't labor the statistics of technology evolution other than to point out how the cost of rotating disk storage has fallen from 158 bits bytes per dollar in 1956 to 25GB per dollar today!

All the forgoing was just to provide perspective and frame what might be about to happen: a technological advance that in terms of societal impact could be greater and far faster than pretty much anything else we've witnessed in human history. That thing could come ... and I'm not kidding ... in the shape of a steam engine.

An Italian inventor named Andrea Rossi and his scientific consultant, physicist and emeritus professor, Sergio Focardi, have demonstrated a device called the E-Cat or Energy Catalyzer which, according to a 2008 patent application, involves "a method and apparatus for carrying out nickel and hydrogen exothermal reactions," with the production of copper as a result.

The device is said to work by heating hydrogen to an "ignition temperature" using an external heat source, after which a catalyst, which has yet to be explained, causes the hydrogen atoms to "penetrate" the nickel and transform it into copper, producing energy in the process -- essentially a nuclear fusion reaction -- that is self-sustaining (i.e. the external heat source can be removed and the device will continue to function).

Water fed into the reaction chamber comes out as steam with which you could drive a turbine, and voila! You have a generator. Or you could use it for motive power. You could also use the heat to drive a Stirling Engine, but for whatever reason, this option hasn't been much discussed.

The whole idea of generating power from nuclear fusion has been, if you'll excuse the pun, a "hot" topic for a long time. Most attempts to build fusion power generators have been mainly "Big Science" experiments costing millions of dollars, such as the National Spherical Torus Experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor and the Polywell.

All of these designs rely on the creation of extreme environments where a high-temperature plasma (a very hot "gas" of ionized particles) is confined by a powerful magnetic or electrostatic field. This is not engineering you do casually. Or cheaply.

But hot fusion is not what the E-Cat does and, while much of the commentary on this device characterizes it as "cold fusion," Rossi claims that it isn't actually cold fusion at all but involves a Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (I can't figure out what the difference between cold fusion and LNER might be from the research I've done).

Cold fusion, a nuclear fusion reaction at low energies or temperatures, is the alternative to hot fusion and includes Muon-catalyzed fusion and "generally cold, locally hot" fusion.

Experiments using these methods of cold fusion have, in common with hot fusion, so far not shown a net energy gain, although the experiments have been much cheaper.

A much-celebrated claim for a working cold fusion reaction became a huge brouhaha in 1998 when two established scientists, Martin Fleischmann, one of the world's leading electrochemists, and Stanley Pons, also a respected electrochemist, claimed to have observed cold fusion in a table-top experiment.

Alas, after many attempts by other researchers to duplicate the findings, as well further work by Fleischmann and Pons at a cost of more than $44 million, it transpired that their results could not be replicated and they and their experiment were discredited ... as was the idea of cold fusion.

But all of these failures in both hot and cold fusion haven't stopped research because, if nuclear fusion can be made to work, we could have essentially unlimited energy for next to no cost beyond infrastructure costs (generator production, transmission, facilities, manpower, waste management and so on). So far, no joy. Not one experiment has demonstrated what is termed "over unity" output -- that is, the ability to produce more power than is input.

It is in this netherworld of physics that Rossi's system has appeared and, no surprise, along with it, a three-ring circus of media, science and speculation. At the center of the show is the E-Cat device which has been demonstrated a number of times and appears to be very simple.

One of the demonstration attendees, Bologna physics professor Giuseppe Levi, described as "an expert on nuclear physics, energy physics and sub-nuclear physics," has publicly defended Rossi and Focardi as well as the project.

There's now quite a furor over how the E-Cat might really work (or not), with some critics predicting that eventually the system will not perform as claimed and accusing the inventors of being deluded, or worse, frauds.

The results of the demonstrations have received a tremendous amount of analysis and commentary but, for now, the metaphorical jury is out.

Rossi has another demonstration scheduled in Bologna, Italy, for Oct. 28 for which he has partnered with a U.S. company, AmpEnergo, to build what is claimed to be a 1MW plant in a shipping container.

So, here's the question: Let's assume Rossi's E-Cat works. What then?

From the demonstrated prototypes it appears that you could build E-Cats small enough to power a car or a house. Bundle a lot of them together and you could power a truck, a ship or an office block. Imagine a data center where each row of racks has its own really cheap power generator.

Now you have a world where oil only matters as a raw product for things like plastics so the oil economy as we know it could be dismantled within a few months. Production costs for anything would fall. The power grid would become obsolete. Power stations of all kinds would no longer be an environmental problem. The balance of economic power worldwide would change and, for example, OPEC would become a historical footnote.

The only risk, assuming that the E-Cat doesn't become horribly radioactive after extended operation or produce some other kind of hazardous byproduct, could be global thermal pollution from so many power generators (if they are very cheap and not dangerous then niceties such as minimizing waste heat would be ignored).

We could see a world where ubiquitous power generation is so cheap it wouldn't be worth metering (as a consequence, Rossi would become the wealthiest man in the world, assuming that all of the vested interests in the existing oil and power economies didn't have him bumped off).

It remains to be seen whether this is really all some kind of mistake, which seems unlikely, or a hoax, which seems equally implausible because, if it is all bogus, then there's no obvious upside for Rossi or any of the others involved.

So, Oct. 28 will be a big day. If the demonstration goes ahead as planned either we're going to be really disappointed or we'll be on the brink of something that will change the world forever.

You thought the adoption of the Web was fast? This could change everything overnight.

Hunt for physics' holy grail

From the NZHerald.co.nz: Hunt for physics' holy grail
The US$10 billion ($12.58 billion) particle accelerator has operated for a year, generating billions of pieces of data in the hunt for the Higgs boson, nature's building block. But it hasn't been found and scientists are running out of places to look.

For almost 20 years, Bill Murray has been hunting for the elusive subatomic particle that is thought to give mass to the basic building blocks of nature.

In those two decades, the 45-year-old Edinburgh-born researcher has watched the search for the holy grail of physics narrow to a tight group of targets - a process of elimination that has peaked over the past 12 months with the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory.

An avalanche of nuclear collisions - created by beams of high-energy protons smashing together - have been generated. But no trace of the Higgs - the so-called "God particle" - has been found in the resulting nuclear debris.

Only a very narrow range of Higgs targets are now left - and some scientists are beginning to get twitchy, including Murray.

"In 1993, I got a job by telling people that I wanted to find the Higgs," he says. "It is only in the last month that I have started to think that it might not exist after all."

Murray is not alone.

"In the last year, we have eliminated most energy ranges that could contain the Higgs," says Sergio Bertolucci, Cern's director of research.

"It is like pumping water out of a pond. We have virtually emptied the pond and have only a couple of muddy puddles left in which to find the Higgs. If it is not there, we will have to admit it does not exist."

Physics has clearly reached a dramatic juncture. In the next few months, the Higgs boson - the last major particle in the standard model, the current theory of subatomic physics, that has still to be observed - will either be found or its existence disproved.

Theoreticians will be shown to be right and will earn Nobel prizes. Or their work will have been demonstrated as being wrong - accepted science will be overturned, forcing scientists to devise some new and exciting theory to explain why objects - and humans - have mass.

Not surprisingly, these prospects are having a profound effect on the 10,000 scientists who work at Cern; a jumble of office blocks, laboratories and meeting halls outside Geneva.

Data is pouring from the collider beneath their feet. But which group will be first to make sense of that information is unclear. Hence the buzz around the centre, an effect that is particularly noticeable in its large, neon-lit cafeteria which, day and night, is filled with shifts of technicians, researchers and theoreticians.

Seated at long tables, earnest young researchers swig beer and argue over the minutiae of particle physics. Some fiddle with their laptops, others scribble on notepads. Many gaze at huge plasma screens that display details of the behaviour of the collider's particle beams.

"The tensions that are being created inside the experiments are now very serious," admits Murray, who acts as Higgs convenor for the Atlas experiment group.

"There are certainly plenty of intense verbal discussions going on."

The Higgs particle was postulated by a group of physicists - who included Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University - in 1964 to explain how other subatomic particles have mass. The theory hypothesises a sort of lattice, referred to as the Higgs field, that fills the universe. A particle moving through this field creates distortion, in the form of a boson, and that lends mass to the particle.

The idea was accepted, grudgingly, by scientists - despite a lack of evidence to support it. The problem was the absence of any means to create energetic enough collisions to create a heavy particle like the Higgs.

Finding the Higgs was one reason - but certainly not the only one - for spending around £5 billion ($9.9 billion) to build the Large Hadron Collider, an instrument built on the scale of London's Circle line but constructed to an accuracy of a billionth of a metre.

It has now been running perfectly for the past year, generating five times more data than expected.

When its beams of protons smash together, billions of collisions are produced every second - spraying particle debris through dense layers of detectors.

"It is the job of our computers to retain details of the interesting collisions and only the interesting ones," says Pierluigi Campana, spokesman for the LHCb, one of the collider's main experiments.

Details of about 3000 events a second are retained.

And somewhere in this great inventory of digital signals - which are distributed weekly to computing centres round the world - lies the secret of the Higgs boson.

"Every week, we collect data from about 75 million potentially interesting collisions," says Guido Tonelli, spokesman for CMS, another of the collider's main experiments.

"First we validate that data. Then we release it to physicists so that they can try to spot signs of a Higgs or another interesting particle.

"Occasionally, they find an interesting anomaly, so we call all the groups together - and we try to kill it. In other words, we try to show that any anomalous result is a product of a software error or a glitch.

"Only when such a result survives this scrutiny do we accept that we are on to something. To date, no sign of a Higgs boson has survived that scrutiny."

The Higgs hunt therefore rests on the business of disproof. Thousands of scientists, working with one of the world's most sophisticated devices, have laboured like this for the past year.

"Matter and energy are interchangeable and we measure subatomic particles in terms of their energy," says Fabiola Gianotti, head of Cern's Atlas experiment.

"Once we study more and more observations, the subtle behaviour of the Higgs will eventually be revealed, I believe."

In general, most Cern scientists agree. Certainly, Murray remains confident.

"My wife Hazel has put a bottle of champagne aside for the day we find the Higgs. I still believe that by this time next year I will have opened that bottle."

Collision course

The Large Hadron Collider will run on full power next year.

Two sets of scientists at Cern are competing to find the Higgs. One is involved with the Atlas experiment, the other runs the CMS project.

Both labs are based in a 27km circular tunnel built below the French-Swiss border. This is the Large Hadron Collider.

Subatomic particles called protons are accelerated in both directions, and at the Atlas and CMS sites these beams cross over and smash into each other. The resulting collisions generate new types of particles, including - possibly - the Higgs. These pop fleetingly into existence before disintegrating.

The greater the energy generated by a collider, the bigger are the particles it creates. And most predictions suggest the Higgs is relatively big, hence scientists' past failure to produce them.

At present, the LHC's beams are running at half power. Next year, the machine will run at full power and should be able to produce the elusive particles, if they exist.

Are you a nuclear physicist looking for a job?

Physics TOday has a jobs section, at: http://careers.physicstoday.org/jobs/4537897/assistant-professor

Hartwick College is looking for a physics professor.

About Hartwick College

An independent, residential liberal arts college enrolling approximately 1500 full-time undergraduates, Hartwick embraces the teacher-scholar model, with teaching excellence as the first priority. Located in the scenic Susquehanna River valley in Oneonta, NY, near the northern foothills of the Catskill Mountains, the College recently adopted a new Liberal Arts in Practice curriculum and aspires to “be the best at melding liberal arts education with experiential learning”.

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Job Description
Physics: The Department of Physics at Hartwick College invites applications for a full-time, tenure track appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor starting in September, 2012, pending final administrative approval. We seek candidates with expertise in experimental physics, preferably in optics or atomic and nuclear physics, and with preference given to those with a demonstrated ability to work with undergraduates on research projects. Minimum qualifications include at least one year of post-doctoral research or college-level teaching. Specific teaching assignments will include introductory and upper level physics courses, and possibly general education courses, including First Year seminars. Teaching load will average 20 semester credit hours or their equivalent per academic year, and all faculty members teach during the Colleges distinctive four-week January term. The successful candidate must be committed to excellence and innovation in undergraduate teaching, active engagement in scholarly or creative activities, and working closely with students in a small college environment. Committee service and academic advising are also expected for tenure and promotion.

Hartwick offers health benefits to domestic partners of employees, and prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation/preference and gender identity/expression. Hartwick is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and members of underrepresented groups are especially encouraged to apply. The College permits “shared positions” so partners may apply individually or for one shared appointment. Additional information about Hartwick (an institutional member of the Council on Undergraduate Research) and the Department may be found on our web site at www.hartwick.edu.

To apply, please send a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statements of teaching philosophy and research interests, evidence of teaching and scholarly excellence or the potential for it, and three letters of reference sent directly by your referees. All materials should be sent to Dr. Lawrence Nienart, Department of Physics, Johnstone Science Center, Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY 13820. Review of applications will begin December 1, 2011 and continue until the position is filled.

Brother: French Physicist Denies Terror Plans

From ABC News.com: Brother: French Physicist Denies Terror Plans

Colleagues and relatives of a nuclear physicist detained in France since 2009 on suspicion of associating with members of al-Qaida's North Africa branch expressed hope Tuesday that the case against him would be dropped, even as they voiced anger over the two years Adlene Hicheur has already spent in prison without trial.

An investigating magistrate will decide Wednesday whether the case against Hicheur should be closed or handed to a prosecutor, who would have up to one more year to prepare a trial.

French authorities say the 34-year-old has acknowledged to investigators that he corresponded over the Internet with a member of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

His brother, Halim Hicheur, dismisses the claim.

"Adlene does not acknowledge any preparation of a terrorist act or any intention to prepare something like that," the younger sibling said. "He exchanged political opinions about the situation in the world in general."

Colleagues at the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva — best known under its French acronym CERN as the site of the world's biggest particle collider — and at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL, where Hicheur was based, told The Associated Press that the scientist was an example of excessive anti-terror laws.

"Independently of what Adlene may have done or not, it seems clear to me that the way he was treated in the past two years will have a profound negative impact on him, not to talk about his academic career, which is now seriously compromised," said Olivier Schneider, a colleague at EPFL.

"If they cannot establish that he is truly a dangerous individual for society, and it seems that indeed they are unable to do so, otherwise they would have charged him already, then they should release him," he added.

At CERN, where Hicheur was one of the many outside scientists sifting through results gleaned from its $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, Monica Pepe Altarelli said she was shocked at the Frenchman's treatment.

"For me it is a scandal, even if legal under French law," she said.

A brief acquaintance before his arrest, Altarelli said she now regularly sends scientific journals to Hicheur's prison near Paris so he can stay informed about progress in CERN's efforts to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

"Adlene has worked for many years preparing to take data at the LHC, but then could not really share with us the success of the experiment and the joy and pride of its physics results," she said. "We try to make him feel that he has not been forgotten by his friends and colleagues and encourage him to have the strength to resist this difficult situation."

CERN itself offered only limited support for the scientist.

"CERN has obviously followed from the beginning the case," said spokeswoman Corinne Pralavorio. "However, Adlene Hicheur is not a CERN employee, and we are not informed of the evolution of the case," she said. "The initiatives taken by some physicists are personal and not taken on behalf of CERN."

Hicheur's brother Halim claims it was precisely his role as a physicist that put him in the crosshairs of French intelligence.

At the time of his arrest, media reports portrayed him as a dangerous genius capable of harnessing his knowledge of nuclear physics to destructive ends. CERN insists Hicheur never had access to dangerous materials.

Colleagues and relatives of a nuclear physicist detained in France since 2009 on suspicion of associating with members of al-Qaida's North Africa branch expressed hope Tuesday that the case against him would be dropped, even as they voiced anger over the two years Adlene Hicheur has already spent in prison without trial.

An investigating magistrate will decide Wednesday whether the case against Hicheur should be closed or handed to a prosecutor, who would have up to one more year to prepare a trial.

French authorities say the 34-year-old has acknowledged to investigators that he corresponded over the Internet with a member of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

His brother, Halim Hicheur, dismisses the claim.

"Adlene does not acknowledge any preparation of a terrorist act or any intention to prepare something like that," the younger sibling said. "He exchanged political opinions about the situation in the world in general."

Colleagues at the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva — best known under its French acronym CERN as the site of the world's biggest particle collider — and at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL, where Hicheur was based, told The Associated Press that the scientist was an example of excessive anti-terror laws.

"Independently of what Adlene may have done or not, it seems clear to me that the way he was treated in the past two years will have a profound negative impact on him, not to talk about his academic career, which is now seriously compromised," said Olivier Schneider, a colleague at EPFL.

"If they cannot establish that he is truly a dangerous individual for society, and it seems that indeed they are unable to do so, otherwise they would have charged him already, then they should release him," he added.

At CERN, where Hicheur was one of the many outside scientists sifting through results gleaned from its $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, Monica Pepe Altarelli said she was shocked at the Frenchman's treatment.

"For me it is a scandal, even if legal under French law," she said.

A brief acquaintance before his arrest, Altarelli said she now regularly sends scientific journals to Hicheur's prison near Paris so he can stay informed about progress in CERN's efforts to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

"Adlene has worked for many years preparing to take data at the LHC, but then could not really share with us the success of the experiment and the joy and pride of its physics results," she said. "We try to make him feel that he has not been forgotten by his friends and colleagues and encourage him to have the strength to resist this difficult situation."

CERN itself offered only limited support for the scientist.

"CERN has obviously followed from the beginning the case," said spokeswoman Corinne Pralavorio. "However, Adlene Hicheur is not a CERN employee, and we are not informed of the evolution of the case," she said. "The initiatives taken by some physicists are personal and not taken on behalf of CERN."

Hicheur's brother Halim claims it was precisely his role as a physicist that put him in the crosshairs of French intelligence.

At the time of his arrest, media reports portrayed him as a dangerous genius capable of harnessing his knowledge of nuclear physics to destructive ends. CERN insists Hicheur never had access to dangerous materials.

The paper Le Dauphine Libere reported shortly after his arrest on Oct. 8, 2009, that Hicheur discussed targeting a French army brigade specialized in mountain combat, and whose members were deployed in Afghanistan.

The possibility of striking French businesses was also raised, according to the report, confirmed by prosecutors.

Switzerland, which opened its own investigation into Hicheur following his arrest, chose not to press charges.

Jeannette Balmer, a spokeswoman for the Swiss Federal Prosecutors Office, told the AP that the case was suspended last year.

On travel til Wednesday

I'm visiting elderly relatives in Box Elder, SD who do not have internet.

Will try to sneak out now and again to an internet cafe to post, but more than likely will not be posting until Wedneday.

California Physicist Shares 2011 Nobel Prize

From ABC News: California Physicist Shares 2011 Nobel Prize
Saul Perlmutter won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday, but it wasn't until the California scientist was awakened by a telephone call from a reporter in Sweden that he learned of the distinction.

"How do I feel about what?" the 52-year-old Perlmutter remembered asking the reporter before dawn from his Berkeley home.

His wife looked online and told him it wasn't a hoax.

"Nobody really expects a Nobel Prize call," Perlmutter told The Associated Press by telephone shortly after the announcement in Stockholm.

Perlmutter was one of three U.S.-born scientists who won the prize for a study of exploding stars that discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

The finding overturned a fundamental assumption among astrophysicists that gravity was slowing the rate of expansion, and that scientists might be able to predict when the universe would come to an end.

"The result was nothing that we expected," Perlmutter, who heads the Supernova Cosmology Project at the University of California, Berkeley, said during a morning teleconference with reporters.

Perlmutter's research relied on massive cosmic explosions called supernovas to serve both as interstellar distance markers and a way to gauge which direction the universe was moving and how fast.


AP
Nobel Prizes winner for physics Saul... View Full Caption
Nobel Prizes winner for physics Saul Perlmutter smiles as he poses with his daughter's telescope at his home in Berkeley, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011 after hearing he had won. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said American Perlmutter would share the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award with U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt and U.S. scientist Adam Riess. Working in two separate research teams during the 1990s, Perlmutter in one and Schmidt and Riess in the other, the scientists raced to map the universe's expansion by analyzing a particular type of supernovas, or exploding stars. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) CloseInstead of gaining clues to when the universe would begin contracting rather than expanding, he discovered that the universe was still growing, and at a faster rate.

But Perlmutter said he didn't immediately trust his results. Instead, he thought continued data analysis would eventually bear out that the universe's rate of expansion was decreasing. But months later, it became clear that wasn't the case.

"That was the extended four months of 'aha,'" he said. "That's got to be the slowest 'aha (moment)' you've ever heard."

Perlmutter also explained that The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the prize, was slow to contact him because it was calling the wrong cellphone number. The academy got that number from a Swedish colleague of Perlmutter's, who didn't realize it was outdated, Perlmutter said.

"They tried to reach me for 45 minutes before going through another route," he said.

Perlmutter will share the $1.5 million award with U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt and U.S. scientist Adam Riess, according to the acadmey, which credited their discoveries with helping to "unveil a universe that to a large extent is unknown to science."

Asked how he would spend the money, Perlmutter said he hadn't had time to think about that yet. He spent the morning on the phone and appeared at a news conference later in the day at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"We knew Saul would win it one of these years," said Paul Preuss, a spokesman for the laboratory. "We just didn't know it would be this year. We are, of course, elated."

In addition to his prize money, Perlmutter will also get one of the coveted reserved parking spaces on campus that UC Berkeley gives to its Nobel winners.

"Which of course is the only reason to win a Nobel Prize, to be able to park on campus," Perlmutter joked.

The award was the 22nd Nobel Prize received by a UC Berkeley faculty member. The first was nuclear physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, whose name graces the national lab where Perlmutter works.

Should Researchers Blog? Should Their Employers Encourage Them?

This blog entry received quite a few interesting comments. Check it out at the link below.

From Science 20: Should Researchers Blog? Should Their Employers Encourage Them?

About Tommaso
I am an experimental particle physicist working with the CMS experiment at CERN and the CDF experiment at Fermilab. In my spare time I play chess...

Tomorrow I will fly to Frascati, where are the headquarters of INFN, the italian institute for nuclear physics. I will attend to an event there, called "Incontri di Fisica" (Physics meetings), where high-school teachers meet researchers and receive training, as well as discuss ways to improve science education and popularization in schools and outside.

I will be discussing the subject of "Science popularization with blogs" on Wednesday afternoon and then, two days later, I will be the last speaker with another short talk, where I will try to summarize some ideas on the matter. And you might help for this latter presentation.

In fact, the idea of the organizers is to have me blog about the event, and collect reactions from the blog readers. Yes, that means you.

I have no idea whether this is going to work at all, since time is short (the conference lasts three days) and I do not think I will be blogging about everything I hear, since I am interested only in part of the program. Anyway, I will try to comply.

For the moment, I would like to bounce off you, dear reader, a couple of ideas on the subject of science outreach performed with blogs. Maybe you may follow up with insightful commentary, criticism, or new ideas. Please comment on-topic in the thread.

1) The value of communicating with the general public the importance of basic research, and trying to get laymen interested in the science we do, is generally recognized. However, researchers who blog are usually frowned upon by their employers. Blogging is considered a pastime, is potentially dangerous, and is often discouraged. Should INFN, and similar funding agents in other countries, instead try to change their attitude, encouraging researchers to distribute their knowledge to the public in blogs ? Is it thinkable that one day a INFN researcher can write on his monthly time sheet "blogging" as a justification for a couple of hours of work off-site ? (You should know that INFN researchers are allowed work from home and claim the working time, if they provide a summary of what they did).

2) A topic that is dear to me is whether it is acceptable for a blogger to distribute a freshly approved public result by his or her collaboration, before the main author of the analysis has a chance to present it at a physics conference. Mind you, we are discussing about PUBLIC results here, but ones which do not make the headlines of newspapers, thus remaining unknown until presented at conferences. Am I "stealing" the spotlights if I take the result and explain it in my blog, making the world aware of it ? Is it despicable if I do that, considering that although I am a co-author (along with the 3000 colleagues of my experiment) I did not work explicitly on that topic ?

I think these two items may be enough to generate some discussion here, if you pay me the courtesy of expressing your views. Much appreciated. Thanks!

Omega Laser measures fundamental nuclear-collision properties, does it better than particle accelerators

From LaserFocusWorld: Omega Laser measures fundamental nuclear-collision properties, does it better than particle accelerators

Rochester, NY--Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge, MA), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL; Livermore, CA), and the University of Rochester (U of R) have used the U of R's Omega Laser Facility at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics to do a fundamental nuclear-physics experiment -- the first time such a feat has been achieved using a high-energy-density laser facility. Normally, such a thing is done using a particle accelerator.1

The scientists made precise measurements of the elastic scattering of neutrons off deuterium (D) and tritium (T) ions. They did this by using the Omega Laser to create a hot, dense plasma: the laser's 60 beams caused a 1 mm glass capsule filled with D and T to implode. A small fraction of the D and T ions fused, creating 14.1 MeV neutrons. Some of the neutrons scattered from the surrounding D and T ions, allowing a highly accurate measurement of the nuclear-collision process to be made.

Accelerator-based measurements were also used, although just to normalize the absolute cross-section. Once normalized, the shape of the low-energy cross-section was obtained with more accuracy than possible with accelerators. The results are important for nuclear astrophysics and fusion-energy research.

Next could be the fusion of 3He and 3He ions, important because it is the dominant energy-producing step by which the sun and normal-sequence stars generate their energy.

REFERENCE:
1. J. A. Frenje et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 122502 (2011).

Texas nuclear physics student on trial in Iran

From Reuters: Texas nuclear physics student on trial in Iran
(Reuters) - An Iranian studying nuclear physics in the United States went on trial in Tehran on Tuesday for having contact with "hostile countries," his lawyer said.

Omid Kokabi, 28, a University of Texas graduate student, was arrested at departures at Tehran airport in February. He is also charged with receiving "illicit payments," lawyer Saeed Khalili told Reuters, calling the accusations "illogical and baseless."

Judiciary officials were not immediately available for comment.

Iran is locked in a dispute with Washington over its nuclear program which many countries fear is aimed at building atomic weapons, a charge it denies.

Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been the target of bomb attacks that Tehran has blamed on Israeli agents seeking to sabotage its nuclear work. Israel has declined to comment.

In another incident that remains shrouded in mystery, Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri said he was kidnapped in June 2009 when on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia and transferred to the United States.

He said he was offered $50 million to remain in America and "to spread lies" about Iran's nuclear work, but he returned to Iran in July 2010. Washington said he had been living freely in the United States.

Khalili was unable to give more details on the case. "Unfortunately, I was denied access to visit my client or study his file over the course of the eight months," he said.

Syria 'targeting Homs scientists'

From BBC News: Syria 'targeting Homs scientists'

A nuclear physics professor has been killed outside his home in the Syrian city of Homs, the latest in a series of deaths of scientists in the city.

One activist said government snipers were to blame for Ous Abdel Karim Khalil's death, but another said it could have been a revenge attack.

His killing was reported as fighting continued between security forces and deserters in the town of Rastan.

Meanwhile, Russia attacked a watered-down plan for a UN resolution on Syria.

European countries proposing the resolution had dropped demands for immediate sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad's government.

The draft, proposed by the UK, France, Germany and Portugal and backed by the US, threatens sanctions only if the repression of protests does not end, and was aimed at winning the support of Russia and China.

But Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the proposed resolution would encourage violence, and was "a continuation of the Libya policy of regime change".

Deserters 'fighting back'

Inside Syria, security forces have been pressing on with efforts to quash protests that began six months ago.

In Rastan, a strategically important town that has seen frequent protests, soldiers who have deserted were reported to be engaged in heavy fighting with security forces for a second day.

AdvertisementFootage has emerged that appears to show Syrian soldiers announcing their defection
"They have got a foothold in the southern part of Rastan, but the Free Syrian Army is fighting back and has destroyed three armoured vehicles," one resident told Reuters news agency, referring to the deserters.

The army entered Rastan, near the central city of Homs, early on Tuesday, after besieging it for two days.

Video has emerged purportedly showing a group of soldiers announcing their defection.

The video, which cannot be independently verified, shows a man identifying himself as Captain Youssef Hammoud flanked by about eight men in uniform.

In all, hundreds of armed citizens and deserters are said to be confronting government troops in Rastan.

Foreign journalists have largely been prevented from covering the turmoil in Syria, and reports from inside the country are hard to verify.

But observers say there are growing signs that some opponents of the regime are resorting to force, believing that peaceful protests will not be enough to bring down the government.

'Trying to sow chaos'

The UN estimates that more than 2,700 people have been killed across Syria since the crackdown began.

The Syrian government says it is battling "armed gangs" that have foreign backing.

The state news agency, Sana, said the nuclear scientist, Mr Khalil, was "shot in the head by a terrorist group as his wife was driving him to work".

But some activists blamed the regime.

"They are trying to sow chaos, fear and terror in the hope that protesters will be cowed into retreat," said Syria-based activist Mustafa Osso.

The head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the killings of Mr Khalil and three other scientists were part of an attempt by the regime to "provoke confessional discord in Homs".