MaNEP e-Newsletter for members - Published monthly Issue Nr. 9 - May 2006 / page 6

Reading tips
UniGE Campus journal / Promoting women in the NCCRs
How is the "women issue" handled in the 3 Geneva-based NCCRs, namely MaNEP, Frontiers-in-Genetics and Affective Sciences ? The question is covered in the last issue of UniGe's internal magazine Campus.

[ PDF - Pôles cherchent femmes désespérément]		 On the same subject - promoting women in science - please notice the SNF proposal for the mentoring programme for women in the MaNEP News section.

Good to know / A selection of science news
20-Year-Old High-Temperature Superconductivity Theory Verified ?

A French-German team of experimental scientists claims that it has verified the central prediction of a theory on high-temperature superconductivity developed by Chandra Varma (picture), distinguished professor of physics at UC Riverside (USA).

Extract :
' [Chandra Varma's] theory concluded that the quantum-mechanical fluctuations are the fluctuations of these current loops. (...)
Bourges's group directly observed the current loops in experiments involving the diffraction of polarized neutrons. In these experiments a beam of neutrons changes direction as well as the direction of its magnetization in a manner that is closely related to the geometrical arrangement of the current loops inside the material in which the beam is made to pass (...) '

[ full text on physorg.com ]

 Are parents more successful engineers and scientists ?

Engineers and scientists with children are more successful in their career than their colleagues without children.

This is true for men as 62% of fathers are successful against 34% of childless men, but also for ladies as 38% of mothers but only 27% of childless women are successful.

Mothers seem to achieve this under difficult conditions, as only 4% of them indicated to live with a partner.

These are some results from a German report also showing that highly qualified women are particulary disadvantaged by the reigning working culture.

[ PDF : the complete report (in German) ]

Carbon nanotubes : the hottest topic in physics according to new ranking

Carbon nanotubes are the hottest topic in physics, according to a new way of ranking the popularity of different scientific fields. Nanowires are second, followed by quantum dots, fullerenes, giant magnetoresistance, M-theory and quantum computation.

The new ranking has been developed by Michael Banks, a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Solid-State Physics in Stuttgart, Germany.

He thinks the new index could be a quick and simple way of determining the most important subject areas in physics and could even help graduate students choose which field to do their PhD (...)

[ full text on Physicsweb.org ]
Go to...
Cover 1
MaNEP news 2
Free Column 3
Publications 4
Applications 5
Reading tips 6
Jobs 7
Agenda 8











Send your own reading tips to the editor, thank you !