The IBA prize for applied nuclear science

I noticed today in the electronic newsletter from the European Physical Society that the call for nominations for the IBA prize is mentioned there.  The prize is sponsored by the IBA company, whose business is in proton therapy, and it is awarded to one or several individuals for outstanding contributions to applied nuclear science including nuclear methods in medicine.  If any readers of this blog know of anyone that is deserving of the prize, please follow the link above to find the nomination form.  The deadline for nomination is 15th Jan 2017.

You can see a list of previous prizewinners here, and a picture of the last winner, Prof. Salehpour, accompanying this blog post.

"Do while" annoyances

Since I'm teaching a computing class this morning, here is a purely computer programming related post.  One of the students was having a problem with his code, using a do-while construct in the Fortran language.  This runs a block of code while a certain condition is true.  Here is a full example program which you can compile with e.g. the free gcc compiler:

PROGRAM dowhile

  IMPLICIT NONE
  INTEGER :: i, j

  i=1
  j=2
  DO WHILE (i<5)
     i=10
     j=20
  END DO
  WRITE(6,*) i, j

END PROGRAM dowhile

Now, the DO WHILE construct says that we run the code between the DO and END DO statements until the variable i is less than 5.  One may wonder, then, in the example, what value of j will be printed after exiting the loop.  If you know the rule that Fortran works by, then you know that the check of the condition i<5 takes place only each time the loop starts, and not continuously, so the line j=20 gets executed even though i<5 is no longer true at that point.  It is perhaps a little counter-intuitive, and can certainly lead to mistakes.  For that reason, I don't teach the DO WHILE construct in the year 1 computing course, but instead  "IF (i<5) exit", which can be inserted wherever in the loop the user wants the test to be done.  Enterprising students will, of course, find out about DO WHILE on the internet and make use of it. 

New isotope of lead discovered

Yesterday, the journal Physical Review C published a paper announcing the observation of the isotope ¹⁷⁸Pb – an isotope of lead with 96 neutrons and 82 protons.   This ratio of neutrons to protons is pretty extreme for such a heavy element, where the large positive charge of the 82 protons tend to prefer to be padded out with more neutrons than that.  126 neutrons is the number producing the most abundant isotope, so the one just discovered in a reaction at the laboratory at Jyväskylä University in Finland has an amazing 30 neutrons fewer than that most stable isotope.  At the other end of the scale, the heaviest lead isotope so far observed is ²²⁰Pb, with 138 neutrons.

The lead (no pun intended) author on the discovery paper is a PhD student, originally from Syria, who is studying at Jyväskylä.  Well done to all involved!

Books: An update

At the end of 2015 I posted about the books that I head read during the year.  I resolved to read more in 2016, and have managed to do it.  I expect I'll give a mini-review of them all at the end of the year here on the blog, and you can get a sneak preview on the Goodreads website, if you really want to.

As I noted in the 2015 post, I actually read loads of books, in the form of books for toddlers.  I can't realistically keep track of all such books I read, but for one month, in October, I attempted to do so.  Here is the list:

Miffy

Miffy at school 

My First Numbers

Peppa’s Easter egg hunt

The Fire Engine

Peppa’s Gym Class

Peppa’s Pumpkin Party

Daddy pig’s Fun Run

Daddy Pig’s Office

Daddy Pig’s Office

Mum’s New Hat

The Golden Touch

Ouch!

The Monster Hunt

Funny Fish

Poor Old Rabbit

I Can Trick a Tiger

Dad’s Birthday

Missing!

Little Miss Sunshine and the Wicked Witch

Little Miss Naughty and the Good Fairy

Danger Dragon

Hungry Floppy

The Spaceship

Dad’s Birthday

Missing!

Floppy and the Bone

Girls' Potty Time

Mr. Nobody

Mr Topsy Turvy

Mr Messy

Mr Tumble's Sunny Day

The black and white baby book animals

Bunny and Bee can't sleep

My First Trucks

Mr Grumble

Mr Perfect

Poor old rabbit!

Super dad

I can trick a Tiger

The Monster Hunt

Ouch!

Missing!

The old tree stump

The spaceship

My very noisy digger

Hungry Floppy

Silly Races

Dad's Birthday

Funny Fish

Mum's New Hat

Floppy and the Bone

Dragon Danger

Blue chameleon

Numbers

Frieda and Bear

Hello Kitty first words

Winter 

Guess how much I love you

Hello Kitty first words

Winter

Hello Kitty first words

Picnic Time

The snowman

Silly races

Dad's birthday

Funny Fish

Mums new hat

Hungry floppy

The spaceship

The old tree stump

missing!

Spike the spider

Baby Animals

Peppa favourite things

Peppa at home

Peppa at playgroup

peppa's garden

Peppa's Friends 

Peppa's family

Looking After Gran

Guess How Much I Love You

Winter

Hello Kitty First Words

Spike The Spider

Baby Animals

I can treat a tiger

The monster hunt

Dragon danger

Floppy and the bone

Miffy is crying

Miffy at the seaside

Miffy the fairy

Miffy at the zoo

Miffy and the new baby

Spike the Spider

Hello Kitty First Words

The Golden Touch

Picnic Time

Funny fish

Dad's birthday

Silly Races

The snowman

Bod's Dream

Bod and the cherry tree

Peppa's new neighbours

Peppa at playgroup

Peppa's friends

Peppa at home

Peppa's favourite things

Peppa's garden

Peppa's family

Lines that wiggle

Zog

Meg and Mog 

The golden touch

Mountain rescue

Looking after gran

Arctic adventure

Hello Kitty first words

Owl babies

Owl babies

Zog

Mr lazy

The very hungry caterpillar

The story of the little mole who knew it was none of his business

Mr noisy

Spot loves bedtime

Jack and the Beanstalk

Aye aye

Jack and the beanstalk 

Meg and Mog

Spot goes to school

Where's Spot?

Spot's First Christmas 

Zog

The golden touch

The hairy-scary monster

Arctic adventure

Pip and Posy The Snowy Day

Pip and Posy The Big Balloon

Dentist Trip

Super dad

Poor old rabbit

I can trick a tiger

The monster hunt

Dragon danger

Floppy and the bone

Spot says good night

Bread and jam for Frances

Peppa's Pumpkin Party

Miffy's bicycle

Miffy's birthday

Miffy in hospital

Miffy at School

Peppa's Easter egg hunt

The fire engine

Peppa's gym class

As you may have noticed, I read many books several times.  I include the cover of one of them at the top of the post, since I always like to have an illustrative picture when I make a blog post.