Scientists from Oxford University, Princeton and the U.S. Department of Energy have paved the way for the world’s smallest storage device.
They succeeded in storing data for nearly 2 seconds in the nucleus of an atom. The process has been hailed as the “ultimate miniaturization of computer memory.” Tests involved using the electron and nucleus of a phosphorous atom embedded in a silicon crystal.
Previously, quantum information has only been stored in silicon for a fraction of a second.
Several colleges were without electricity after power failures throughout Oxford on Thursday.
Wadham, Mansfield, New, Keble, St John’s and All Souls were all affected by the power failure. Wadham College the worst affected; students were without internet all day and many were without lights or heating.
A spokesperson for the National Grid said, “55 electricity supplies were interrupted at about eight o’clock on Thursday morning and our engineers connected mobile generators. Approximately 17 electricity supplies are still not working.”
Torrents of hot water have flooded rooms in Wadham College, devastating students’ personal possessions and forcing finalists to change their accommodation.
Michael Wood, a languages and philosophy student, said, “there was water completely pouring through my ceiling. It was really hot and steamy but fucking weird at the same time.”
The water poured from the attic at the top of the staircase and completely soaked through two floors, reaching rooms as far down as the first floor of the building. Three student rooms were damaged, as well as Wadham’s JCR kitchen and laundry room. The conference office two floors below was also affected.
The deluge occurred after a cold water tank overflowed. The flood is believed to be related to work carried out on the main boiler the previous day by building contractors.
One student whose room was soaked said, “I first noticed the flooding when I heard what I thought was a tap that I had left on in my bedroom.
“I looked around and saw that there was a quick stream of water falling from the ceiling over my bed. Within half an hour, there was hot water falling from all the corners of my room. The atmosphere was like a tropical rainforest.
“I managed to move most of my valuables out of the room, but the people living above me, who weren’t in their rooms at the time, weren’t so lucky.”
Michael Wood said, “I was in the bar when I had a phone call from the girl who lives below me saying, ‘there’s water pouring through my ceiling'”. When he reached his room there was two inches of water on the floor and seams of water along the ceiling where the concrete blocks join.
“The water got into all my cupboards, my drawers… pretty much everything it could.” The effect, he said, was “a bit like a sauna but more like a steam room.” He added, “I didn’t get scalded but it washed all the product out of my hair. College had just turned on these 2 boilers that they’d been repairing to avoid this happening.”
Pauline Linières-Hartley, Wadham’s Domestic Bursar, said that the cause of the flood was still unknown. She said, “the contractors are still looking at what went wrong. This is a very unfortunate incident, but these things do happen.”
She declined to confirm whether the contractors who had been doing related work on the main boiler were to blame. Problems with water pressure had led to the tank overflow.
Sharp and Howse, the buidling contractors who are working on the boiler, said that the incident was not directly related to their work on the boiler, “but it was related down the line.”
The contracts manager for the company said Sharp and Howse had rectified the problem but, “it wasn’t Sharp and Howse’s problem.” They are still investigating the cause of incident.
Two of the students have been moved to new rooms on college premises. However, since there were no free rooms for finalists on the Wadham main site, the third has been relocated to nearby New College until the flooded rooms have been repaired.
She said, “College staff have been very apologetic, but it’s still a massive inconvenience to have to move all my stuff to a different college where I don’t know anyone and to have to get all my clothes and bedding laundered and dry-cleaned.”
Wadham has offered to pay damage costs and compensation to all three students whose rooms were affected. The college expects to be able to move students back into their rooms by this Thursday.
Michael Wood said, “college have been fantastic. They’ve said that anything damaged will be replaced. They’re given me a lovely bottle of wine.” He added, “not to sound too stoical, these things happen.”
Wadham College guarantees in-college accommodation to all freshers and finalists. Ongoing building work has harassed Wadham students this term. Wadham’s iconic front quad is currently being gutted as part of renovation plans for the college.
One 2nd year said, “Back Quad is literally just portacabins since midsummer. It’s meant to be finished by May 09. The work is causing a lot of noise.” Another student commented, “Back Quad looks pretty awful. It’s eaten up by scaffolding.”
Atrocious speller can now blame their genetic make-up, after new research into dyslexia was published this week by Oxford University.
According to John Stein, Professor of Neuroscience at the Medical School, spelling, reading, or any form of activity associated with the written word foxes our brains because the skills are relatively recent, and human brains had to adapt quickly to them.
As opposed to linguistic ability, 30-40000 years old, the written word has only been around for around 5000. The study also labelled nutrition and proper sleep as major factors.
A girl from Christ Church was found unconscious and with severe injuries after a night out.
The second-year was discovered lying in the middle of Pembroke Street, bleeding from the head.
She was with a fresher who was trying, unsuccessfully, to pull her up from the ground, whilst cars were driving past.
They were discovered by two third years, Ashley Grossmann and Caroline Stevens, who were on their way back from the bar at about 11.30pm.
Stevens described how, seeing that the two were in trouble, Grossmann went into the middle of the road and successfully carried the injured girl off the road.
She said that the girl had appeared to have slipped and smashed her head on a drain, which was also drenched in blood, and was bleeding heavily from the back of her head.
Stevens recounts that she and Grossmann were “a bit concerned” as the injured girl was not responding to anything and her breathing was “erratic”: “she didn’t know where she was or who she was”.
Grossman and Stevens phoned for an ambulance and had to carry out first aid over the phone until more help arrived.
The girl was taken to the John Radcliffe hospital and had to be kept overnight.
Grossmann who saved the girl from the road last Friday said it was “no big deal” and that “any guy who saw it would have done the same”.
A spokesperson for the Oxfordshire ambulance services warned of the dangers of drinking following the incident.
She said, “all over the country, there have been peaks of activity during fresher’s week.”
“We understand that people want to go out, have a good time and do whatever but they have to be careful
“Our call rates have gone up in the last few weeks and drunken accidents really make the difference.”
A mystery Oxford University don is putting a lost painting by Sir Winston Churchill up for auction, after finding it in a dusty attic where it had been left untouched for decades.
The anonymous professor discovered the impressionist landscape wrapped up in a bin bag, but decided to sell the unsigned picture because he didn’t like it.
He then took the oil painting to an auction house, only to be informed that the portrayal of the first home lived in by The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh after they married had in fact been painted by the wartime Prime Minister.
Sir Winston’s landscape depicts Windlesham Moor, a luxury mansion near Ascot, Berkshire, which is now worth in excess of £60 million pounds and owned by Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum of the United Arab Emirates royal family.
Auctioneer John Dickens said that the retiring professor had asked him to sell the painting, before adding that there was a story in the family that it might have been painted by Churchill.
Churchill in the attic
“It had been in his attic for about 30 years,” said Mr Dickens.
“The owner’s mother apparently told him, ‘Winston Churchill painted this. It was given to me and I’m giving it to you.'”
Trying to explain why the work had lain untouched for so many years, the auctioneer added, “I think it’s generally easier to fall in love with something you know the name of.”
“The owner, who I believe is in his late 50’s and terribly shy, said he didn’t like the picture so I suppose it is understandable why it should be uncovered for so long.”
“To be honest with you, I think he’s rather embarrassed about the whole thing.”
Months of research confirmed that the portrait had indeed been painted by the former Conservative statesmen.
It is believed to have been painted in the late 1930’s rather than the 1940’s, as it is beleived that Churchill didn’t paint very much during the war.
“it’s definitely his”
“It’s certainly Winston,” said Mr Dickens. “It has all of the usual hallmarks: water and stone arches, a notable residence – it’s definitely his.”
The 37-year-old auctioneer has now valued the portrait at approximately £150,000 pounds, but expects the estimate to be well surpassed at auction.
“It is without doubt the most exciting piece I’ve come across in 10 years in this business,” he said.
“The estimate could be a little light, especially as Churchill works have risen steeply in value over the last 10 years but I won’t particularly mind if it goes for more.”
Churchill is widely known to have been a keen artist, first taking up a paint brush to stave off the “Black Dog” of depression following his resignation as First Lord of the Admiralty, after the failed Dardenelles expedition of 1915.
A date for the sale of the picture has not yet been set after a previous auction had to be cancelled due to technical difficulties.
The title itself suggests a place at odds with itself. Madrid should be a place of sunlight and siestas and a certain effortless luxury.
It seems appropriate then that this unseen side of Spain should form the backdrop for one of the unseen dramas of WWII. At the mention of that defining conflict, the Anglo-Saxon imagination leaps to the Battle of Britain, ‘our finest hour’. That saga, however, is almost completely absent from Sansom’s narrative.
Yet the novel does not concern itself with evoking the Spanish consciousness, and instead uses it as a blank slate upon which it projects British concerns and sees how they play out. The main strands of pre-war British thought are present in the form of Bernie Piper, staunch class warrior and Communist, Harry Brett, awkward champion of the ruling classes, Sandy Forsy, the ruthless capitalist, and Babara, compassionate paragon of femininity.
Apart from the smattering of Spanish words and place names there is nothing that really transports the reader, apart from the opening chapter, a superb and compelling piece of writing. The piece as a whole is largely successful in crossing time and place, taking in Rookwood (a fictional public school), London, Cambridge, the heady days of Socialist Madrid and the grinding tyranny following the Fascist takeover. Each setting has its ideological point to prove; at first Sansom seems to idealize Rookwood, only to reveal that its money came from the slave trade.
While Sansom does claim that if he could be any historical figure it would be Clement Atlee, he is also keen to stress the limits of Socialism. The Spanish Civil war is presented as a human tragedy rather than the triumph of evil. Sansom has created not only a historical meditation but also a compelling spy thriller with a cast of interesting, although not fully fleshed out, characters.
However, if you are looking for a flavour of Spain you will be surprised to find an unexpected, if not exotic, taste in your mouth.
Three stars
The government could have to drastically cut student grants and freeze the number of university places available, it has been reported this week.
The move follows accusations that the government has made huge miscalculations about the costs of higher education.
The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills has an annual budget of over £17bn, but is believed to be in debt of £100m.
It has been reported that the department was not allocated enough funding to cover the new grants scheme and that it was also unprepared for the huge rise in university applications witnessed this year.
“outrageous”
The revelations quickly sparked anger from students. Wes Streeting, the President of the National Union of Students has called the move “outrageous.”
He said, “in a serious economic downturn it’s shocking that one of the first groups to be picked on could be the poorest students in higher education. In terms of social justice this would be a complete setback.”
Previously, students had to come from families with an income of under £17,500 to receive a full grant, but the government has now raised the threshold to include students whose families earn up to £25,000.
As a result, it has been estimated than from this academic year one third of university students will be receiving full grants of £2,825.
A further third of students whose families earn up to £60,000 are now also able to claim a new partial grant on a sliding scale.
Increase in applications
This year saw an unexpected 10.5% rise in the number of students starting university, which has put massive pressure on government funding. The largest increase in applications was found among students from poorer backgrounds.
A spokesman for Oxford University commented, “the number of undergraduate students at Oxford University has remained static in recent years and there are no plans to increase undergraduate student numbers.”
This year Oxbridge applications went up by 12%, and Cambridge has raised income thresholds for bursaries.
This is a frustrating book, but it couldn’t be any other way. Most other popular science writing is about questions answered, perhaps with a few unknowns left over.
This book, about how we perceive music, is about mysteries with no real explanation. Sacks’ writing style doesn’t help matters; he opts for the atheist-mystical prose style all too popular in this genre: meditative, introspective, it rapidly becomes the literary equivalent of listening to Coldplay on repeat, made worse by his tic of describing all his male patients as ‘eminent’ and all his female ones as ‘gifted’.
Musicophilia begins by asking why humans are the way we are. What is the point of humans being evolved to be interested in music? Why is it so important to us? Why do tunes get stuck in people’s heads, when photographs and paintings just don’t? Why is our processing of speech and sound so separate, so people who cannot speak due to a stroke can sing perfectly, or can understand speech but hear music as a cacophony?
Theories exist, and Sacks mentions them, but the main focus of the book is a series of case studies, which show how abnormalities can throw a little light on how our minds perceive music. All different, many terrifying (imagine being unable to stop hearing music in your mind), their bare facts alone give tantalising hints of how brains work.
Brain damage can suddenly give people a talent for music they did not have before; mescaline can make emotional music overpowering but destroy perception of classical music’s structure; amnesia victims unable to remember anything for more than a few seconds can conduct a choir perfectly.
Ultimately, the fascination, scope, and sheer strangeness of the book’s subjects transcend its flaws: Musicophilia gives a real sense of where science might go next, and how little we understand of what goes on inside our heads. Big mysteries, frustrating though they might be, are fascinating in a way a small answer can’t hope to match.
Four stars
The transposition of graffiti art from the urban jungle to the gallery wall is often a lazy, uninspired one, redolent of both slapdash GCSE projects and local authority youth outreach schemes, so I came to Cuban artist Jose Parla’s debut UK show with some trepidation.
When I discovered that his following includes Eric Clapton, Tom Ford, and the international doyen of cheap, mass-produced, consumerist ‘art’ himself, Takashi Murakami, my fears were only increased. Art that attracts celebrities, particularly when those celebrities are as dull as Clapton, as vapid as Ford or as heavily associated with the very worst aspects of contemporary art as Murakami, should set anybody’s critical alarm bells ringing.
When he says things as pretentious as ‘we believe ourselves to be on the cusp of evolution but perhaps we are only experiencing an involution’ or as downright obvious as ‘the marks on the walls of our cities are perhaps a testimonial, like scars of a wounded civilization’ it gets difficult to approach a show like this with anything other than abject dread.
Yet approach it I did, and was glad I had at least attempted to do so with a fairly open mind, because Parla’s art, when left to speak for itself, free of celebrity endorsements and his own navel-gazing balderdash, is really rather special.
Parla spent his formative years in Miami and Puerto Rico, trained as an artist in Savannah, Georgia, and began his graffiti career in 1985 in New York, where he still lives and works. There really does seem to be a sense in which the characters of all the places Parla has lived his life are tangibly present in the pieces he presents in Adaptation/Translation.
Grey and beige backdrops play the role of weeping New York concrete, and underpin every scene without overpowering any one. They are necessary for the life of the works, but do not seek to dominate. Transcending the near-monochrome of the backgrounds, sometimes merely puncturing it, often obscuring it almost entirely, is a riot of colour that seems to evoke New York graffiti less than it does the vibrancy of Florida and the Caribbean, where Parla spent his youth.
Parla’s art’s real strength lies in a feeling, pervasive throughout, that what the viewer is looking at is somehow deliberately divorced from any specific truth: everything in this exhibition is suffused with a certain unreality that is simultaneously unsettling in its falseness, and comforting in the anonymity it offers. This is so because Parla’s works only superficially appear to be real pieces of graffiti.
Those New York concrete backgrounds are in fact nothing of the sort, they are mere impressions of the real thing, made on wood and board. These aren’t graffiti-covered walls, they are, defiantly and self-consciously, images of graffiti-covered walls.
Whilst real graffiti is about singular displays of identity, expressed through tagging, the ‘writing’ on Parla’s pictures forms only contorted, unreadable calligraphic messes, only ever suggesting real words or statements, and often obscuring legible writing beneath.
Yet this continual emphasis on an absence of reality never makes for an absence of truth; the lack of language in Parla’s works only universalises them; they could have been inspired by graffiti on any wall in any city.
The pieces that make up Adaptation/Translation transcend any single spoken language; like Rothko and Pollock before him, both of whom he evokes, Jose Parla’s works establish their own visual code of communication, with which they speak both to the viewer and, most powerfully, to each other.
Four stars
