How (not) to Build an Expert:Personal Reflections on a Terminated Physics Career

The social contributors to the formation of expertise are often a taboo subject when practitioner communities interact with outsiders, making the exploration of these inputs a difficult endeavour. When exploring scientific communities, one resource that many STS and HSTM scholars can draw from is their personal experience as students of science – experts in waiting. I will draw on my personal experience as a physics student at a Russel Group university from 2014 to 2018, with a year abroad at a US institution. The UK physics course instilled in me an image of physics expertise that is hyper-specialised, apolitical, and ‘pure’. This was achieved through the choice of curriculum, the content of internal displays, and the culture of the department as mediated by informal interactions. This vision of expertise resonates with corporate entities whose interests are in experts that can function as stable commodities, rather than volatile political actors

"UoSLinux – A Linux LiveCD distribution for use in higher education"

It is commonplace within most University computing schools to find different computer platforms coexisting peacefully with each other. UNIX as well as Linux workstations, PC’s and Apple Macs all have their place within an educational curriculum. Students generally find themselves using at least two major platforms at different times during a typical undergraduate programme. In distance learning, however, such practice would be considered extravagant with most students only having access to one platform, more often than not a PC running a version of the Windows Operating System. Lack of access to required hardware can lead to compatibility issues between courses run on-campus and their equivalent courses run offcampus. There are also issues relating to illegal use of software. While every effort is made to ensure the legality of software used on-campus, even a simple request that students submit their work in Word format can be interpreted as condoning software piracy in countries where legal software is expensive and where ‘bootleg’ copies are easily available. This paper describes a project to help address these issues. We look in detail at a project concerned with the building of UoSLinux for use within certain programmes at the University, both on-Campus as well as off-Campus. This so-called LiveCD is based on the Knoppix/Debbian distribution. Keywords: Linux, LiveCD, distance learning, software pirac

Reid Bryson: The crisis climatologist

From Wiley via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2021-04-15, rev-recd 2021-09-24, accepted 2021-09-28, pub-electronic 2021-10-25Article version: VoRPublication status: PublishedFunder: Economic and Social Research Council; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000269; Grant(s): ES/P000665/1Abstract: Reid Allen Bryson (1920–2008) was a forceful orator who consistently fought against institutional pressures to get his messages out to the public. In the 1960s, Bryson was a leader in the wider academic turn toward politically charged interdisciplinarianism. To the dismay of many of his colleagues, he publicly made climatological prognoses in the 1970s, becoming a significant figure in the media landscape. He was not swayed by the arguments for global warming, even as the framing became the recognized face of climate change in the late 1980s. By examining the controversies that Bryson instigated and the currents that he swam against, we can see the wider community crystallizing and promoting positions that may have previously gone unstated. In addition, Bryson's personal contribution to the rise of climate discourse has been underexplored in the historical literature. Bryson was instrumental in bringing climate onto the political radar during the World Food Crisis of 1973, shocking both the US and Canadian political establishments into paying more attention to the issue. Bryson's narrative linking climate change to both food supply and a series of climate anomalies in the 1970s remained predominant in the first World Climate Conference of 1979. Bryson also helped break a seal on climatologists speaking directly to the media, leading to unprecedented climate discourse in the 1970s and giving climate change a springboard to become one of the defining issues of the 21st century. This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Thought Leader

Rapid Circumstellar Disk Evolution and an Accelerating Star Formation Rate in the Infrared Dark Cloud M17 SWex

We present a catalog of 840 X-ray sources and first results from a 100 ks Chandra X-ray Observatory imaging study of the filamentary infrared dark cloud G014.225$-$00.506, which forms the central regions of a larger cloud complex known as the M17 southwest extension (M17 SWex). In addition to the rich population of protostars and young stellar objects with dusty circumstellar disks revealed by Spitzer Space Telescope archival data, we discover a population of X-ray-emitting, intermediate-mass pre--main-sequence stars (IMPS) that lack infrared excess emission from circumstellar disks. We model the infrared spectral energy distributions of this source population to measure its mass function and place new constraints on the inner dust disk destruction timescales for 2-8 $M_{\odot}$ stars. We also place a lower limit on the star formation rate (SFR) and find that it is quite high ($\dot{M}\ge 0.007~M_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$), equivalent to several Orion Nebula Clusters in G14.225$-$0.506 alone, and likely accelerating. The cloud complex has not produced a population of massive, O-type stars commensurate with its SFR. This absence of very massive (${\ge}20~M_{\odot}$) stars suggests that either (1) M17 SWex is an example of a distributed mode of star formation that will produce a large OB association dominated by intermediate-mass stars but relatively few massive clusters, or (2) the massive cores are still in the process of accreting sufficient mass to form massive clusters hosting O stars.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figures, accepted to Ap

An integrative modelling framework for multicellular systems

Ph. D. Thesis.Multicellular systems exhibit complex population scale behaviour that emerge from the interactions between constituent cells. Integrative modelling (IM) techniques are a valuable tool for studying these systems capturing processes that occur at many temporal and spatial scales. The application of IM to multicellular systems is challenging as it is knowledge and resource intensive, additionally there do not exist effective frameworks or tools, inhibiting its wider application in Systems and Synthetic biology. This thesis presents Simbiotics, a novel IM framework for the modelling of mixed species bacterial consortia. Simbiotics is a spatially explicit multi-scale modelling platform for the design, simulation and analysis of bacterial populations. A library of modules simulating features such as cell geometries, physical force dynamics, genetic circuits, metabolic pathways, chemical diffusion and cell interactions is implemented, that the modeller may compose into their own custom models. Common modelling methods such as Boolean networks, differential equations, Gillespie models and SBML are implemented. With the platform in-silico experiments can be conducted with programmed experiment interactions, data collection and analysis. The framework is extendable and modular, allowing for the library to be updated as knowledge progresses. A novel file format for the reuse and communication of multicellular models and simulation methods is also implemented. Additionally an intuitive graphical user interface, Easybiotics, has been developed allowing for multicellular modelling with minimal programming experience. Four novel case studies are pursued with Simbiotics studying the emergent behaviours of multicellular systems. The effect of physical cell interactions are characterised in the first two studies. Investigation into how chemical signalling and intracellular dynamics influence population dynamics and patterns are studied in the final two case studies. These studies demonstrate how Simbotics can be integrated into a Systems/ Synthetic biology workflow, facilitating the studying of natural systems and as a CAD tool for developing novel synthetic systems.EPSR