That was different! Yesterday no-one expected the sky to be clear enough to see the transit, but see it we did. We had an early start – herded onto buses and shipped up to Uawa/Tolaga Bay – a rather poignant place to see the transit, given that’s where Captain Cook arrived in 1759 after viewing […]
Continue readingI learned this interesting factoid last week in a seminar by Les Kirkup on student-led learning. Sticky tape emits x-rays. Honest, it does. It’s in Nature. You can watch the movie here. It’s all to do with triboluminesence. This week I’m at the Transit of Venus forum in Gisborne, along with about 900 other delegates […]
Continue readingMonday morning was one of those strange days where for some non-obvious reason there was far more traffic than normal. Maybe there had been an accident somewhere, or there was some event on, but, for whatever reason, it took nearly half an hour to crawl through the Hillcrest roundabouts. All that start-stop on the car […]
Continue readingThis week has seen some icy mornings in Cambridge – a reminder that we are sliding into winter. Our heat pumps have been going, especially first thing in the morning to warm the place up a bit, and the cat has relocated his primary sleeping spot from a chair by a window to a rug closer […]
Continue readingA couple of days ago I checked the tyre pressures on our new car for the first time since buying it (several weeks ago). Obviously we want about the right pressure in the tyre to get it to do its job properly and to help get the best fuel economy out of the car. However, […]
Continue readingA few weeks ago when I was visiting Dunedin I was in conversation with a new PhD student and her supervisor. The PhD student was saying how she felt everyone should help each other in their research – share all their data, share all their methods and know-how, to make the world a better place […]
Continue readingOn Saturday I took the train out to Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains. The train journey certainly gave me a feel for just how vast Sydney is. An hour out of central station, and one is still in the Sydney suburbs. But suddenly the end of the city comes abruptly – the train is suddenly […]
Continue readingYesterday afternoon I visited Westmead Hospital and talked to a couple of psychiatrists on the use of electromagnetic fields in treating certain conditions. Treatments like the controversial but effective electroconvulsive therapy for depression, and transcranial magnetic stimulation for Parkinson’s and stroke, are becoming well used. However, there is little understanding of why they work. It’s a case […]
Continue readingI learned a new word today: virga. It was used in a short article in one of the Sydney newspapers, discussing yesterday’s weather. Virga is simply precipitation that evaporates before it hits the ground, and we had some here yesterday. So it was raining, but we didn’t get wet. Virga can rapidly cool the air […]
Continue readingI arrived in Sydney yesterday. I’m based at the University of Sydney for the next two weeks while on study leave. My first morning here was pretty-well taken up by walking round getting administrative things done like getting a key to my office and getting a computer account and internet connection for my laptop. It […]
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