Reflecting photonics: reaching new audiences through new partnerships – IYL 2015 and the Royal Horticultural Society Flower Show

The ‘Reflecting Photonics’ show garden was exhibited at the 2015 Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Flower Show in Tatton Park, UK, to celebrate the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies. Elks-Smith Garden Design alongside landscapers ‘Turf N’ Earth’ collaborated with researchers, marketing and outreach professionals from the University of Southampton to design, construct and exhibit a photonics-themed garden. The garden and supporting exhibition united science and art to reach new audiences – particularly family groups alongside other key influencers to the young – and showcased the world-leading research in optical fibers at the university in an accessible manner. Researchers and a publicity professional, funded by the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Photonics, developed an integrated approach to the event’s public engagement and marketing. The overarching aim was to influence a positive change in the attitude of the garden visitors towards physics and photonics, with additional focus on promoting careers for women in STEM. The show garden won an RHS Gold Medal award and the coveted ‘People’s Choice Award’ for the best large garden. The project subsequently won the South East England Physics Network Public Engagement Innovation Project Award. Approximately 80,000 visitors saw the garden, with a further three million television viewers on a popular British gardening show. There were also over 75,400 Tweet impressions on social media. This paper discusses the project aims, explores the design of the garden and its relationship with the research, describes the work of the public engagement team, and outlines the impact of the event

S2 measurement of higher order mode content in low loss hypocycloid Kagomé hollow core photonic crystal fiber

We present the first detailed investigation of modal properties in hypocycloid Kagomé fibers; even with an optimized input launch, higher order modes propagate over long fiber lengths, indicative that these modes have low attenuation

All-Optical Programmable Disaggregated Data Centre Network realized by FPGA-based Switch and Interface Card

This paper reports an FPGA-based switch and interface card (SIC) and its application scenario in an all-optical, programmable disaggregated data center network (DCN). Our novel SIC is designed and implemented to replace traditional optical network interface cards, plugged into the server directly, supporting optical packet switching (OPS)/optical circuit switching (OCS) or time division multiplexing (TDM)/wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) traffic on demand. Placing the SIC in each server/blade, we eliminate electronics from the top of rack (ToR) switch by pushing all the functionality on each blade while enabling direct intrarack blade-to-blade communication to deliver ultralow chip-to-chip latency. We demonstrate the disaggregated DCN architecture scenarios along with all-optical dimension-programmable N × M spectrum selective Switches (SSS) and an architecture-on-demand (AoD) optical backplane. OPS and OCS complement each other as do TDM and WDM, which can support variable traffic flows. A flat disaggregated DCN architecture is realized by connecting the optical ToR switches directly to either an optical top of cluster switch or the intracluster AoD optical backplane, while clusters are further interconnected to an intercluster AoD for scaling out

Anatomy of STEM Teaching in American Universities: A Snapshot from a Large-Scale Observation Study

National and local initiatives focused on the transformation of STEM teaching in higher education have multiplied over the last decade. These initiatives often focus on measuring change in instructional practices, but it is difficult to monitor such change without a national picture of STEM educational practices, especially as characterized by common observational instruments. We characterized a snapshot of this landscape by conducting the first large scale observation-based study. We found that lecturing was prominent throughout the undergraduate STEM curriculum, even in classrooms with infrastructure designed to support active learning, indicating that further work is required to reform STEM education. Additionally, we established that STEM faculty’s instructional practices can vary substantially within a course, invalidating the commonly-used teaching evaluations based on a one-time observation

SN 2022oqm: A Multi-peaked Calcium-rich Transient from a White Dwarf Binary Progenitor System

We present the photometric and spectroscopic evolution of SN 2022oqm, a nearby multi-peaked hydrogen- and helium-weak calcium-rich transient (CaRT). SN 2022oqm was detected 19.9 kpc from its host galaxy, the face-on spiral galaxy NGC 5875. Extensive spectroscopic coverage reveals a hot (T >= 40,000 K) continuum and carbon features observed ~1 day after discovery, SN Ic-like photospheric-phase spectra, and strong forbidden calcium emission starting 38 days after discovery. SN 2022oqm has a relatively high peak luminosity (MB = -17 mag) for CaRTs, making it an outlier in the population. We determine that three power sources are necessary to explain SN 2022oqm's light curve, with each power source corresponding to a distinct peak in its light curve. The first peak of the light curve is powered by an expanding blackbody with a power law luminosity, consistent with shock cooling by circumstellar material. Subsequent peaks are powered by a double radioactive decay model, consistent with two separate sources of photons diffusing through an optically thick ejecta. From the optical light curve, we derive an ejecta mass and 56Ni mass of ~0.89 solar masses and ~0.09 solar masses, respectively. Detailed spectroscopic modeling reveals ejecta that is dominated by intermediate-mass elements, with signs that Fe-peak elements have been well-mixed. We discuss several physical origins for SN 2022oqm and favor a white dwarf progenitor model. The inferred ejecta mass points to a surprisingly massive white dwarf, challenging models of CaRT progenitors.Comment: 33 pages, 17 figures, 5 tables, Submitted to Ap

A comprehensive assessment of somatic mutation detection in cancer using whole-genome sequencing.

As whole-genome sequencing for cancer genome analysis becomes a clinical tool, a full understanding of the variables affecting sequencing analysis output is required. Here using tumour-normal sample pairs from two different types of cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and medulloblastoma, we conduct a benchmarking exercise within the context of the International Cancer Genome Consortium. We compare sequencing methods, analysis pipelines and validation methods. We show that using PCR-free methods and increasing sequencing depth to ∼ 100 × shows benefits, as long as the tumour:control coverage ratio remains balanced. We observe widely varying mutation call rates and low concordance among analysis pipelines, reflecting the artefact-prone nature of the raw data and lack of standards for dealing with the artefacts. However, we show that, using the benchmark mutation set we have created, many issues are in fact easy to remedy and have an immediate positive impact on mutation detection accuracy.We thank the DKFZ Genomics and Proteomics Core Facility and the OICR Genome Technologies Platform for provision of sequencing services. Financial support was provided by the consortium projects READNA under grant agreement FP7 Health-F4-2008-201418, ESGI under grant agreement 262055, GEUVADIS under grant agreement 261123 of the European Commission Framework Programme 7, ICGC-CLL through the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN), the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) and the Generalitat de Catalunya. Additional financial support was provided by the PedBrain Tumor Project contributing to the International Cancer Genome Consortium, funded by German Cancer Aid (109252) and by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, grants #01KU1201A, MedSys #0315416C and NGFNplus #01GS0883; the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research to PCB and JDM through funding provided by the Government of Ontario, Ministry of Research and Innovation; Genome Canada; the Canada Foundation for Innovation and Prostate Cancer Canada with funding from the Movember Foundation (PCB). PCB was also supported by a Terry Fox Research Institute New Investigator Award, a CIHR New Investigator Award and a Genome Canada Large-Scale Applied Project Contract. The Synergie Lyon Cancer platform has received support from the French National Institute of Cancer (INCa) and from the ABS4NGS ANR project (ANR-11-BINF-0001-06). The ICGC RIKEN study was supported partially by RIKEN President’s Fund 2011, and the supercomputing resource for the RIKEN study was provided by the Human Genome Center, University of Tokyo. MDE, LB, AGL and CLA were supported by Cancer Research UK, the University of Cambridge and Hutchison-Whampoa Limited. SD is supported by the Torres Quevedo subprogram (MI CINN) under grant agreement PTQ-12-05391. EH is supported by the Research Council of Norway under grant agreements 221580 and 218241 and by the Norwegian Cancer Society under grant agreement 71220-PR-2006-0433. Very special thanks go to Jennifer Jennings for administrating the activity of the ICGC Verification Working Group and Anna Borrell for administrative support.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1000

The Eighteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: Targeting and First Spectra from SDSS-V

The eighteenth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS) is the first one for SDSS-V, the fifth generation of the survey. SDSS-V comprises three primary scientific programs, or "Mappers": Milky Way Mapper (MWM), Black Hole Mapper (BHM), and Local Volume Mapper (LVM). This data release contains extensive targeting information for the two multi-object spectroscopy programs (MWM and BHM), including input catalogs and selection functions for their numerous scientific objectives. We describe the production of the targeting databases and their calibration- and scientifically-focused components. DR18 also includes ~25,000 new SDSS spectra and supplemental information for X-ray sources identified by eROSITA in its eFEDS field. We present updates to some of the SDSS software pipelines and preview changes anticipated for DR19. We also describe three value-added catalogs (VACs) based on SDSS-IV data that have been published since DR17, and one VAC based on the SDSS-V data in the eFEDS field.Comment: Accepted to ApJ