Monica’s Monthly Message

January 2015

Dear all,

Happy New Year! Sorry, once more I am in default and here we are coming to the end of February and I am offering you December and January’s news.

What else can I say? There will only be one more of these incorporating February and March’s news then Monica’s “Monthly” Message will be no more. I know one should not really report February’s news in the December newsletter, but I am very pleased to report that Dr Sally Jordan will be taking over as Head of Department from the beginning of April.

December and January were very busy months for the Department as you can see from the length of this newsletter. Looking through the news it mainly seems to be about our outreach activities which is great. However, we must also make sure that we are capturing our research and teaching (and scholarship) contributions as well. I note, despite my constant requests for people to tell the admin staff about their published papers, only two staff seem to have published anything in the last two months. I am almost certain that this is not the case. Please make sure that you send Georgina a link when a new paper is published. This is absolutely essential so that we can demonstrate our excellence. The same goes for our teaching – what is happening with specific people on our first level courses? We need to start thinking about projects for our space masters and I am going to ask Nick Braithwaite to write a short outline on what we are hoping to achieve with it for the next newsletter.

Anyway that is enough from me. There is a brief bullet‐pointed list of what I have been up to and, if you need any more details, you can follow me on Twitter.

Where has Monica been?

 Lots of Lunar Mission One campaign  Interviews on The Infinite Monkey Cage, Woman’s Hour, Hard Talk and Radio Leeds  Reviewing the Sunday papers on radio four  SmashFEST  Quizmaster for OU University Challenge team  Inclusion in The Debrett’s 500

People

I am very sorry to report that Jon Dawson died at the end of January, following another chest infection. Jon, who completed his MPhil in 2012 and was awarded the degree last year, having first joined Physics and Astronomy as a research student in October 2008. His widow, Karen, told us that Jon was very proud of all that he had achieved at the OU and valued the company of his fellow research students and other colleagues greatly during his time with us.

Congratulations to Marcus Lohr, Marc Cornwall, Jessica Barnes and Andy Clarke on the successful defence of their PhD theses. Andy Mason (OU PhD Astronomy 2010) and Yvonne Sutton (OU PhD Plasma Physics 2009) put the finishing touches to their joint research project, 10 Jan 2015.

We welcome Laura Alexander, who started work as a Science Staff Tutor on 1st December 2014, on an 11‐month 0.5 contract, in part covering for Sam Smidt’s absence. Laura is a tutor on S104 (Exploring Science) and a range of Engineering modules and she is a very welcome addition to the team of the growing band of physical science staff tutors. She will be looking after associate lecturers on SXRA288 (Practical science: physics and astronomy), plus some on most other physical science modules and she will also be developing a model to improve our support to resit students. Like Alan Cayless, Laura will be based at the Edinburgh Office. She will however be at Walton Hall for the DPS Academic Staff meeting on 11th February, so please look out for her then.

After 3 great years at the OU, Romain Tartese has left DPS to begin working on the oxygen isotope composition of the insoluble organic matter from Precambrian oceans, with Francois Robert and Marc Chaussidon at the Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris.

Adrian Brearley has joined the department as a visiting academic until 31.10.17 and he will be working in collaboration with the CRG group on meteorites.

Dave Rothery was pleased to receive the advance copies of his new book ‘Planet Mercury: from Pale Pink Dot to Dynamic World’ on 8 Dec, published by Springer Praxis. This book, partly written while on Study Leave, reflects expertise that Dave developed in his role as Lead Scientist for the UK instrument on ESA’s Mercury orbiter (BepiColombo) and as leader of ESA’s Mercury Surface & Composition Working Group. The book attempts to draw together our current understanding of Mercury near the end of NASA’s current MESSENGER mission, and looks ahead to the many issues left for BepiColombo to clarify.

Dave says, “There are many lines of evidence pointing to Mercury being rich in volatiles, but it has no right to be like that, so close to the Sun. It is a misfit planet, and I’m very glad that ESA’s next Cornerstone planetary mission will go there.”

Dave Rothery, pictured with his current Mercury students Becca Thomas and Emma Fegan, in front of the large Mercury image mosaic in K Block. He also gave an interview about the book to New Books in Astronomy, which is part of the New Books Network of podcasts (www.newbooksnetwork.com), which turned into an hour long discussion about Mercury http://newbooksinastronomy.com/2014/12/28/david‐a‐rothery‐planet‐mercury‐from‐pale‐pink‐dot‐ to‐dynamic‐world‐springer‐2014/

And also a 14 min podcast on Physics Central http://physicscentral.com/explore/multimedia/podcast.cfm?uid=20150128113132 about how to get a spacecraft to Mercury, to which he contributed.

There are lots of stories about members of DPS in the annual report:‐ http://www.open.ac.uk/about/main/sites/www.open.ac.uk.about.main/files/files/ecms/web‐ content/about‐annual‐report‐2013‐14.pdf

Manish Patel, Mark Leese and Jon Mason delivered the UVIS instrument as part of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission for 2016. UVIS is a highly miniaturised UV and visible spectrometer which will measure ozone, dust and clouds in the martian atmosphere, and will now be integrated into the main instrument (NOMAD) in the following few weeks. UVIS has a mass of just 943 grams (yes, grams – that’s it in my hand…) and is testament to the fantastic work (= blood, sweat and tears) put in by the OU UVIS team of Mark, Jon, Tim, Adam, Dan and Brijen over the past several years.

Sally Jordan has been appointed as Chair of the Assessment Pool of Experts in the EADTU (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities) Empower Programme and attended the first meeting in Brussels just before Christmas. Sally is also now on the committee of the Institute of Physics Higher Education Group (as is Sam Smidt) and has been asked to join a recently‐formed IoP Advisory Group on Higher Education.

M4 proposals ‐ Colin Snodgrass was one of the lead proposers on Castalia, a mission to a main belt comet.

As part of their STFC Impact Acceleration Account pathfinder project, ‘From Mars to the Mountains’, DPS researchers Axel Hagermann and Erika Kaufmann, accompanied by Knowledge Exchange Fellow Ross Burgon, visited the headquarters of DemacLenko in Selva, Italy. DemacLenko is a top European developer of turnkey snowmaking systems for the worldwide skiing industry. The purpose of the visit was to investigate potential opportunities for collaboration and knowledge exchange in the area of artificial snowmaking, which Axel and Erika have been researching for a number of years as part of their work investigating the Martian polar icecaps. The trip was a great success and the team are hopeful that building on the knowledge gained will help inform their research and develop further collaboration opportunities with DemacLenko and other companies in the skiing industry.

The CEI has designed and received from manufacture its first image sensor, a silicon integrated circuit based on advanced CMOS technology. The sensor is intended for imaging applications in space and in particular Earth observation and low light level imaging. This is also the first time an integrated circuit of any kind has been designed at The Open University. This featured also on the OU News on 22 December:

http://intranet.open.ac.uk/ouintra/story.aspx?id=28410

Following The Times naming Nigel (Farage) as Briton of the Year, the OU’s Rosetta team has been suggested as a possible nomination for Milton Keynes people of the year 2014. Apparently one can vote online but goodness knows what Nigel would think of this highly‐successful pan‐European collaboration… http://www.mkweb.co.uk/NIGEL‐FARAGE‐BRITON‐YEAR‐6‐suggestions‐Milton/story‐ 25774711‐detail/story.html

The Centre for Electronic Imaging (CEI) and e2v held their annual Technology Exchange Event at e2v’s headquarters in Chelmsford. The event, spread over a day and a half, gives CEI researchers, students and e2v engineers and opportunity to present and showcase their work, discuss new advances in imaging sensing technology, network and socialise. Every year the event goes from strength to strength with this year seeing upwards of 70 CEI and e2v staff members attending, the highest number in the 10 years of the collaboration.

We're delighted to report that Lunar Mission One has just achieved its crowd funding goal on Kickstarter with over £600,000 raised and over 6500 backers world‐wide. This will enable the project to proceed to Phase 2 over the next 3 years during which it will confirm and agree the lunar science and develop the instrument package. It will plan and research the online public archive, get commercial partners on board to design and develop the spacecraft and pilot the education programme along side preparing the sales and marketing campaign that will secure the future funding required. The OU continues to support the project through contributions to the science and education teams and we are confident there will be opportunities for further involvement as the project develops.

Seems this project is not quite the blue moon some may have thought!

Seminar Speakers

December saw a number of very interesting speakers: Evelyn Füri (Nancy, France), Dimitra Rigopoulou (Oxford), Stefano Caprasseca (University of Pisa), and Malcolm Sperrin. We start our series of 2015 seminars with a combo! On Thursday Prof. Els Peeters (University of Western Ontario, UWO) will talk about PAHs in reflection nebulae, and on Friday Prof. Jan Cami (UWO) will give an extra seminar on Cosmic fullerenes. These two talks will be followed by Dr Adam Kirrander (The University of Edinburgh) speaking about “Ultrafast imaging of quantum dynamics; from theory to experiments”.

Journal Club

Journal Club takes place at 12:00 in the Robert Hooke seminar room on Wednesdays.

Next Institute of Physics lecture

Tuesday 10th March 2015

Professor Peter Richmond

Physics Outside Physics

Aristotle, Copernicus, Newton and many other scientists also made important contributions to economics and finance. Much of this work was forgotten during the industrial and quantum revolutions, but the application of physics to social and economic problems is presently undergoing a rebirth following new understanding of so‐called complex systems. This talk will explore aspects of this recent work and show how physics is giving new insights into finance, economics and social science.

Juno/Athena SWAN update The JAS team has been focusing attention on actions relating to recruitment, promotion and CDSA.

Recruitment: The team reviewed the recruitment data and found the following: • The proportion of women that are appointed is below the proportion of women applicants. • Central academic positions attract a lower relative proportion of women than researcher roles (numbers are very low for this to be statistically significant though). • DPS appears to be more attractive to internal women applicants than external. • A decrease in women appointed into direct appointments suggests that numbers of women who are ‘named candidates’ funded by external grants has decreased.

We have some work to do that will support our external image and show we are an attractive place for women researchers and this includes launching our JAS webpage (Nicci Potts is working on this) and including more images of women (or indeed people!) on the DPS website.

The team also looked at recruitment training, since the Department is committed to ensuring that everyone involved in staff and research student recruitment is appropriately trained.

HR offer two recruitment training sessions for staff: ∙ Recruitment and Selection online module (0.5 days) ∙ Selection interviewing skills (1 day)

More information can be found on the HR Learning and Organisational development website: http://intranet.open.ac.uk/aps‐sites/human‐resources/hrd/p3_2.asp

Looking at the training records we found that: • Only 15 of the current 59 academic/research staff have completed any recruitment training since 2010. • Only 1 member of staff has completed the Selection Interviewing Skills (1 day) training.

In light of this, DPS management have approved the following: 1. Any staff that have not taken recruitment training in the last 3 years, will need to take the online Recruitment and Selection online module (0.5 days maximum), which replaces the previous 2 day face‐to‐face training if you are expecting to be involved in recruitment activities in the near future (including recruitment of research students). All staff involved in recruitment in DPS are expected to have up to date training, otherwise you will not be permitted to sit on interview panels in the future. 2. For those staff that have completed the online module in the last 3 years, we recommend that you register for the one day follow up course on Selection Interview Skills. We expect all panel chairs to have completed this course.

Your can register directly through the Learning Management System by going to http://staff‐ lms.open.ac.uk/staff‐lms/. Please note, for the online module, you will need to complete all eight modules and the quiz in order for the course to be registered in your learning and development record.

Should you be unsure of whether you have, or have not, completed the required training, please ask Louise Hobbs. We will be monitoring uptake of training as part of our actions.

Promotions: The team has also been looking at promotions and career development support, and part of our action plan was to investigate the feasibility of all academics and research staff submitting CVs annually for consideration by the DPS management team. This approach is used (very successfully) in MCT so we consulted Toby O’Neil (former Maths and Stats Head of Department) who initiated this same process there.

On the basis of its evident success in MCT in ensuring career development opportunities are identified, and that there is transparent consideration of all staff for advancement, DPS has decided to adopt the same approach.

Therefore, all staff and research students were asked to submit a copy of their latest CV to Louise for management team to review. Although academic‐related staff and PhD students are not eligible for consideration under the academic promotion scheme, this was an opportunity for all members of DPS to be reviewed with regards to career development needs.

CDSA (Career Development and Staff Appraisal): In our JAS submissions in 2013, we recorded CDSA completion of 75% (meeting held) and 40% (completed paperwork). We are committed to determining ways in which this can be improved.

One of the ’quick wins’ from our action plan was to adopt a system of recording CDSA progress (kept by DPS admin team) from the date that the meeting was held, to the date that paperwork is recorded in the Faculty. Unfortunately, the data for the last year suggests a decline in the number of completed CDSAs. It also shows that meetings are held, but the paperwork is not completed either by the staff member or the appraiser (not Faculty sign‐off).

Specifically for JAS activities (data from November 2014): • 20 women and 36 men (from the academic/research staff cohort) were eligible for CDSA. • Of these, 16 women and 23 men (80% and 64% of those eligible, respectively) are recorded as having had a CDSA meeting. • Of those women that have had an appraisal meeting, 63% of them (10) have had paperwork sent to the deanery, compared with 48% (11) of men appraised. • It therefore appears that women are more engaged in the CDSA process than men, but we are still not at 100% completion.

Other news: • We have decided to push for Juno Champion status in 2015, with the submission deadline in November. If we are awarded Champion, it will ‘automatically’ give us Athena SWAN Silver as the two schemes are linked • Liz has recently sat on a Juno review panel, and Vic on an Athena SWAN panel, so the team should get some further insights into activities at other universities that should help our future submissions. • National Women in Engineering Day is on the 23rd June 2015. More information here: http://www.nwed.org.uk/ • The 2015 round of L’Oréal‐UNESCO For Women in Science UK & Ireland Fellowships has just opened (closing date 13th March). More information here: http://www.womeninscience.co.uk/ • DPS will host the inaugural IoP Juno Practitioners Network meeting in April (date tbc).

Funding successes

Konstantin Stefanov has received a £176K grant from the Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation and Space Technology (CEOI‐ST), funded by the UKSA. The grant is for the development of new CMOS image sensor with high quantum efficiency, based on the filed patent from the Regional Growth Fund programme. The work is supposed to start this January and last one year.

Rebecca Thomas has been awarded two travel awards to attend LPSC 2015 (the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference). One is a Bursary from The Volcano and Magmatic Studies Group, and the other is a Lunar and Planetary Institute Career Development Award.

Nicci Potts has also been awarded an LPI Career Development Award.

Outreach

Taff Morgan was interviewed for BBC Science Cafe on Radio Wales. Glenn White hosted a themed evening, and also gave an invited talk to an audience of over 1000 opthamologists at the Retina 2014 conference titled ‘How far can mankind actually see’.

Natalie Starkey gave a departmental research seminar at Imperial and two outreach talks at Stowe School for GCSE and A‐level ages.

Glenn White presented coverage of the Orion Spacecraft launch on Al Jazeera English News on December 5th.

On January 5th the Wellingborough Ogden Trust School‐University partnership held a teaching training day for all the science teachers and technicians in the 5 schools in the partnership. Liz Parvin, the DPS representative in the partnership, persuaded Andrew Norton to run a session on ways of teaching the electromagnetic spectrum. This gave him a chance to use some of the SEPnet outreach kit including the infra‐red camera, the spectral lamps and the microwave oven (to estimate the speed of light using chocolate). His was one of four sessions, all of which generated plenty of discussion and were well received by the teachers and technicians. Many thanks to Andrew for doing this.

Glenn White gave an invited open public talk at Fjellnas, Sweden. in January on 'Life, The Universe and all that Jazz'

Colin Snodgrass did a short radio interview on comet Lovejoy and TV interview on the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Taff Morgan gave a Public Understanding of Science Lecture at St Paul’s School, Milton Keynes. An audience of 65 enjoyed his “Down to Earth” talk about Rosetta.

Stephen Lewis was interviewed by Robert Elms for BBC Radio London about the urban microclimate of London and weather in the UK more generally between 12:15 and 12:30 on Tuesday 27 January 2015 (available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p001d7kb/broadcasts/2015/01).

Andrew Norton has been busy with a range of outreach events in the last month. At the start of the school term, he helped with a teacher training event at the Sir Christopher Hatton Academy in Wellingborough, which was organised through the Wellingborough Ogden Schools partnership, with around 60 science teachers and technicians from various schools in Wellingborough. He also gave demonstration talks to 60 KS2 children at Upton Meadows School, Northampton; 20 KS4 children at Walton High, Milton Keynes; and 150 KS4 children at Stantonbury Campus, Milton Keynes. The Walton High visit was hopefully the first of a series of regular space‐themed visits which we have set up with what is one of the nearest secondary schools to the OU campus.

The observatory dome was (finally!) repaired after several months delay, and we hosted visits there from Woburn Sands Brownies and Heath & Reach Beavers. Another Observatory training session was held for DPS postgrads (and other staff) interested in using the various telescopes in the observatory in future events.

Planning is underway for another “Bring your kids to work” morning of Lab tours, scheduled for Wednesday 18th February. After offering the first tickets to those who were on the waiting list from last year, the remaining (free) tickets “sold out” within half an hour of the advert appearing on the intranet. Many thanks to those who will act as guides in the various labs – we do still need more volunteers to act as “tour guides” with the 8 groups who will be circulating round the labs from 10am – noon. Please volunteer to help if you’re free.

Also – here is advance notice of events for Friday 20th March. On that morning there will be a partial solar eclipse visible (weather permitting) from the UK. We plan to have on‐site solar eclipse viewing for OU staff on the cricket pitch. We also hope to have a couple of lunchtime lectures on the theme of the Sun and Moon, also for OU staff, to follow‐up the morning’s events. Then we plan a session of “stargazing” for the Friday evening which will be open to the general public, and will coincide with this year’s BBC Stargazing Live programmes. As with last year’s National Astronomy Week event, we hope to have a mix of talks, observing, planetarium shows, and other hands‐on activities. Please watch out for requests to help staff this event too.

Monica’s on the Infinite Monkey Cage on Radio 4 on 2nd February ‐ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050zy3x

Dan Andrews provided some info to Science Careers over the last few weeks for a career profile story. Turns out it’s part of their Breakthrough of the Year publicity along with several OU mentions: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2014_12_19/cared it.a1400316

Taff Morgan, Dave Rothery and Jessica Barnes gave the CEPSAR Science Matters Lecture on campus.

Monica Grady and Andy Morse when interviewed by ITV ahead of the paper publishing the first results from the Rosetta mission. Monica was also interviewed by the BBC.

Monica was interviewed for the Mark Forrester show on how space enriches our lives. This was syndicated to regional BBC radio stations.

The International year of light & light based technology 2015

The International year of light & light based technology 2015 (IYL2015 – light2015.org) is officially started and the Open University, as gold associate sponsor of the year, is getting ready to celebrate the year with a number of projects and events. The IYL2015 international opening ceremony has taken place last 19th‐20th of January at the UNESCO head quarter in Paris. Dr Lucia Marchetti and Dr Stephen Serjeant have attended the ceremony as delegates of the Open University (see pictures below from the ceremony). It was a great honor to be there in such a prestigious context and between such honorable guests and speakers. The ceremony has welcomed 1000 delegates from all around the world and have hosted talks of ministers of education, ambassadors, UNESCO representatives (among others, Ban Ki Moon, general secretary of UNESCO, who sent a video message for the ceremony) and Nobel prize winners (a full list of the speaker and the program of the event can be found at this link: www.light2015.org/Event‐Programme). Particularly inspiring was the thematic session “Light Solutions” where NGO organisations have addressed how innovative (and sometimes very simple) solutions using light‐based technologies can have dramatic impact in solving problems in developing countries. After the ceremony, Dr Lucia Marchetti has attended a meeting with the IAU “Cosmic light” IYL2015 working group (http://www.iau.org/iyl) to discuss the international astronomy plans for the year. The international ceremony has been followed by the UK IYL launch on the 28th of January, that has officially started the UK IYL plan for the year. This ceremony has been organised at Saint James Palace in London and Prince Andrew, HRH the Duke of York, has attended the ceremony as the official patron for the IYL in the UK (see http://www.iop.org/news for more details). The others notable guests of the UK launch were the UK Minister of Science, Greg Clark, the chair of the IYL steering committee Professor John Dudley (President of the European Physical Society ‐ EPS) and important delegates from photonic industries and Universities in the UK (here some more details on the event: blog.physicsworld.com/royal‐approval‐for‐the‐international‐year‐of‐ light). Dr Lucia Marchetti and Professor Hazel Rymer have been invited to attend the ceremony as delegates of the Open University. Dr Ben Dryer also attended the launch manning the OU stand about GAIA and the OU research in light imaging technology. This event has been a exceptional window for the Department of physical sciences stand that shared the floor with few other protagonist of the year: the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, the UK’s NOG “Solar aid", IPEM and m2lasers. The ceremony was attended by 200 people and has been organized with the aim to get together honorable representatives of Science and Education from all around the UK who are now called to work together to create a new legacy around light and light technology for science and society development that should last also beyond 2015. The ceremony has been a great success for everybody who attended and for the UK IYL National committee, chaired by the Institute of Physics – IOP, who has organized this event since long. Dr Lucia Marchetti is member of the IYL UK National committee where she is chairing the “Education & Outreach” group and helping the IoP in the general coordination of the year.

The Open University and in particular the Department of Physical sciences is deeply committed towards the year and many are the IYL2015 events already organized at the Open University. Some examples are: an outreach evening on the 31st of March during the 42nd IOP Plasma Physics Conference hosted by the Open University (http://plasma15.iopconfs.org/321513) and events linked with the National astronomy week in March. Besides Dr Lucia Marchetti and the Open University, in collaboration with SepNET and the Royal Astronomical Society, is producing a cartoon (expected to be ready in February 2015) to present the 6 Physics anniversaries celebrated during the IYL2015. Moreover Dr Lucia Marchetti and the Open University have already collaborated as educational partner in the organization of an “art meet science” festival, The story of light festival, that has taken place in Goa (India) from the 16th to the 18th of January. This festival was one of the first event promoted internationally during the year.

There are many ways to get involved and follow the IYL program and messages, here some links: the UK IYL website, the International IYL website, the IYL blog and some twitter accounts such as @light2015UK, @IYL2015. For more details (and ideas) please contact Dr Lucia Marchetti ([email protected] ; twitter: @Luci_aMarchetti)

Figura 1: The light projection of the Auroras on the UNESCO building in Paris during the IYL opening ceremony.

Figura 2: The Open University stand at the UNESCO during the IYL opening ceremony.Rosetta outreach

Ross Burgon was invited back to The Bishop’s Stortford High School (where he used to be a Physics teacher) to give a presentation on the Rosetta mission. The event was attended by ~70 sixth form students who showed great enthusiasm for the mission and space exploration in general.

Andrew Morse and Dan Andrews showcased their Rosetta/Ptolemy work at the launch of a new ‘Engineering Your Future’ gallery at the Science Museum in London. The private launch event was attended by around 400 of the Science Museum’s VIP patrons including Prince Charles, who gave the keynote address. The OU exhibit was so well received that we’ve been invited back for another event in January and been asked to ‘donate’ the rubber duck (a comet 67P shape analogue) for the Science Museum’s permanent collection!

Andy Morse was interviewed on Sky TV news regarding the first results to come from Rosetta.

On 28th January Simon Sheridan and Andrew Morse hosted a “Landing on a comet” stand at the Science Museum Lates event. The event was attended by 4310 members of the public.

Colin Snodgrass did BBC TV & radio interviews on the Rosetta Science papers (he was co‐author on 3 of them).

Andy Morse gave a Rosetta presentation to a parents group at Highgate school on the 19th January. This was attended by about 30 people including some keen (potentially) future engineers/scientists.

Taff Morgan gave the following interviews following the discovery of Beagle 2:‐

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, Paul Stainton at ~11:20 am (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p02gb2sc)

BBC Radio Bristol, John Darvall at ~11.40, my bit followed on after a discussion on potentially having a Blue Plaque put up for Colin in Bristol (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gf97g)

Anglia TV Evening News ‐ Russell Hookey ‐ interviews and footage with myself and Andrew Morse in front of "Miranda" and with the Flight Spare Gas Analysis Package (GAP).

Prior to these, I had a 45 minute telecon with Sue Nelson (Boffin Media) for a feature article on my translational activities ‐ commissioned by Space:UK magazine for UKSA‐ she is keen to talk further as she also gets other commissions such as the following:

Boffin Media’s latest BBC Radio 4 programmes: ‘Save the Moon’ and ‘Rockets in the Desert’ Our Planet Earth Online podcast http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/ Space Boffins podcast http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/astronomy/ Twitter @spaceboffins and also on Facebook

Publications

WEBSTER, C. R., MAHAFFY, P. R., ATREYA, S. K., FLESCH, G. J., MISCHNA, M. A., FARLEY, K. A., CONRAD, P. G., CHRISTENSEN, L. E., PAVLOV, A. A., MARTIN‐TORRES, J., ZORZANO, M.‐P., MCCONNOCHIE, T. H., OWEN, T., EIGENBRODE, J. L., GLAVIN, D. P., STEELE, A., MALESPIN, C. A., ARCHER, P. D., SUTTER, B., COLL, P., FREISSINET, C., MCKAY, C. P., MOORES, J. E., MESLIN, P.‐Y., SCHWENZER, S. P., BRIDGES, J. C., AND THE MSL SCIENCE TEAM (2014): Mars Methane Detection and Variability at Gale Crater.– Science, published online 16 Dec. 2014, DOI:10.1126/science.1261713.

BRIDGES, J. C., SCHWENZER, S. P., LEVEILLE, R., WESTALL, F. WIENS, R., MANGOLD, N., BRISTOW, T., EDWARDS, P., , BERGER, G. (2014): Diagenesis and clay formation at Gale Crater, Mars.– Journal of Geophysical Research, DOI: 10.1002/2014JE004757.

NEWSOM, H. E., MANGOLD, N., KAH, L. C., WILLIAMS, J. M., ARVIDSON, R. E., STEIN, N., OLLILA, A. M., BRIDGES, J. C., SCHWENZER, S. P., KING, P. L., GRANT, J. A., PINET, P., BRIDGES, N. T., CALEF, F., WIENS, R. C., SPRAY, J. G., VANIMAN, D. T., ELSTON, W. E., BERGER, J., GARVIN, J. B., PALUCIS, M. C., AND THE MSL SCIENCE TEAM (2014): Gale crater and impact processes – Curiosity’s first 360 Sols on Mars.– Icarus, 249: 108–128, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2014.10.013.

ANDERSON R., BRIDGES, J. C., WILLIAMS, A., EDGAR, L., OLLILA, A., WILLIAMS, J., NACHON, M., MANGOLD, N., FISK, M., SCHIEBER, J., GUPTA, S., DROMART, G., WIENS, R., LE MOUÉLIC, S., FORNI, O., LANZA, N., MEZZACAPPA, A., SAUTTER, V., BLANEY, D., CLARK, B., CLEGG, S., GASNAULT, O., LASUE, J., LEVEILLE, R., LEWIN, E., LEWIS, K. W., MAURICE, S., NEWSON, H., SCHWENZER, S. P., AND VANIMAN, D. (2014): ChemCam results from the Shaler fluvial sedimentary outcrop in Gale Crater.– Icarus, 249: 2–21, doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2014.07.025.

Power coupling and electrical characterization of a radio-frequency micro atmospheric pressure plasma jet' by D Marinov and N St J Braithwaite (2014 Plasma Sources Science and Technology 23, 062005) has been selected by the journal’s Editors as one of their twelve 'Highlight papers' of 2014.

Social

The department talent show will be on Friday 27th Feb, to sign up email Sci‐DPS‐Hooke‐ [email protected] . There will be £100 worth of prizes!

The DPS House Band will be playing in the Hub Theatre on Friday 13th March. More details soon!