Podcasts about National Physical Laboratory

The National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI), in conjunction with their partners Data Edge, Timing Solutions and HEAnet, are hosting Ireland's inaugural Time & Sync Forum today, 11th Feb 2025, in Santry, Dublin. The event is bringing together a number of leading authorities in timing and synchronisation from Ireland, the UK and the European Commission to discuss key topics and policies relating to critical infrastructure on the island of Ireland. Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) technologies play a crucial role in modern economies, and enable over 10% of Europe's annual GDP, or more than €14 trillion*. Major industries such as communications, energy, transportation, public services and financial services are increasingly reliant on precise timing and timing distribution to deliver their services. Commenting on the event, Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Peter Burke TD said, "Position, Navigation and Timing technologies are a core part of the work of a number of industries that are cornerstones of the Irish economy. Earlier this year, the Programme for Government committed to delivering a strong enterprise and fiscal framework to support competitiveness and the growth of a strong industrial base which has created jobs, grown exports, promoted innovation, and raised our standard of living. I warmly welcome this event, focussed on building on the launch of the National Timing Grid, and its role in advancing Ireland's domestic capabilities to support industry." Following on from the successful launch of Ireland's first National Timing Grid in 2023, the NSAI is hosting the Forum to promote the continuing need for Ireland to have as much control over its timing infrastructure as possible, including the potential replacement of Greenwich Mean Time with a domestic equivalent. Keynote speakers include Dr. Leon Lobo, Head of the National Timing Centre (NTC) programme at Britain's National Physical Laboratory, who is delivering its national timing strategy. Dr. Lukasz Bonenberg, Space Programmes Policy and Scientific Officer, Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission, will also provide his expertise having worked on Galileo, the EU's Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Between them, Drs. Lobo and Bonenberg will provide an important overview of PNT resiliency across Europe. Along with Data Edge, Timing Solutions and HEAnet, NSAI are currently working on enhancing Ireland's PNT capabilities through the National Timing Grid and the distribution of verified global GNSS data to support compliance with the upcoming EU NIS2 Directive. This update to the EU's original Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive significantly expands cybersecurity obligations for critical infrastructure sectors. NSAI's National Metrology Laboratory (NML), based in Glasnevin, maintains the reference measurement standards for Time & Frequency and contribute their atomic clock data to the International Bureau for Weights and Measures (BIPM) who maintain and calculate Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Whilst Legal Time in Ireland is under the remit of the Department of Justice, the internationally accepted representation of the second in Ireland is maintained by the NSAI's NML. David Fleming, National Standards Authority of Ireland, Technical Manager for Time, said, "We expect this important gathering to provide valuable insights which help us to inform policy development at a Governmental level and outline the requirements for investment in key timing infrastructure for the country. In a time of disruption and major technological advancements, Ireland needs to be as self-sufficient in this area as possible, while also aligning fully with our international counterparts." "With this event, we are aiming to draw in and engage as many interested stakeholders as possible to determine the requirements across the diverse sectors dependent upon precise timing." See more stories here.

Tobias Lindstrom, Head of Science for the Department of Quantum Technologies at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK, is interviewed by Yuval Boger. They discuss the critical role of national measurement institutes in the quantum ecosystem. Tobias explains how NPL bridges the gap between academia and industry, delves into the complexities of quantum benchmarking and standardization, and explores advancements in quantum communications, sensing, and computing. They also touch on the evolving quantum supply chain, the role of neutrality in measurement services, and what the future holds for quantum technologies.

The world of quantum technology is not some science fiction flight of fantasy, it is an exciting field of science which is turning into a rapidly growing engineering sector. You might not know it but you can already buy quantum-dot TVs and mobile phones with quantum-enhanced encryption. Quantum technologies are poised to expand the realm of engineering in ways that were unthinkable until just a decade ago.         Dr Elizabeth Eso aligning an optical system to experimentally demonstrate a time-bin quantum key distribution system. Credit: Chris Watt Photography   Quantum engineering is the development of technology that exploits the laws of quantum mechanics (the behaviour of nature at and below the scale of atoms), using it as a toolbox for the development of quantum technologies, such as quantum sensors or quantum computers. There are many devices available which rely on quantum mechanical effects such as medicine, optical communication, high-speed internet, and high-performance computing, just to mention a few examples.       An IBM engineer adjusting on one of the company's quantum computers. Credit: Connie Zhou for IBM   After the technological advances that brought us lasers, MRI imagers and transistors, a second wave of quantum technologies is expected to impact society in a similar way. These new technologies will make use of quantum coherence (the regular and predictable behaviour of atoms), building on the progress achieved in the last century, to enable us to have greater control of these atomic-scale systems.   The burgeoning quantum industry requires a quantum-literate workforce; something that is in short supply at the moment. Those working in the field mainly come from either a physics or engineering background and have acquired their ”quantum engineering skills” by experience. Many of the companies that could benefit from quantum technologies already have a strong presence here in the UK, including those involved in new materials, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, aerospace, defence and financial services, but what other application will we as engineers be able to use quantum technologies for?       An IBM engineer working on the refrigerator casing inside of which the company plans to install a 1 million-qubit quantum computer by 2030. Credit: Connie Zhou for IBM.   Helen's Guests are Tobias Lindstrom, Head of Science for the department of Quantum Technology at the National Physical Laboratory and Sir Peter Knight, Professor of Quantum Optics and Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College London, and principal of the Kavli Royal Society International Centre.   Tobias received his PhD in Physics from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, before joining NPL as a Senior Scientist , then Principal Scientist and now head of department. During his time at NPL, Tobias has primarily worked on superconducting quantum technology.  In addition to conducting research relevant for the emerging superconducting quantum computing sector, he has also pioneered the use of precision frequency metrology methods for the study of noise in superconducting resonators and qubits. Tobias is also part of a global effort to develop international standards for quantum technologies.   Sir Peter is a leading academic in the field of quantum optics and has been described as "one of the UK's most influential scientists and leaders of scientific policy" by his peers. He has been the recipient of several major awards including the Royal Medal from the Royal Society and the Thomas Young Medal from the Institute of Physics. Sir Peter was President of the Institute of Physics from 2011 to 2013 and of Optica; The Optical Society of America and is also a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was also Chief Scientific Advisor until his retirement to the National Physical Laboratory and is Chair of NPL's Quantum Metrology Institute. He continues to act as an advisor to the British government.   Useful Links: NPL Quantum Technologies Quantum Computing & Simulation Hub  Bristol University - What is Quantum Engineering?     We would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this episode. If you would like to get in touch, email us at podcast@imeche.org You can find more information about the work of the IMechE at www.imeche.org 

In today's podcast we talk about the power of professional engineering and explore why a largely unseen and unsung profession increasingly has the power to change all our lives.If you think about the major issues and challenges facing the whole of society today, they all seem to come back to infrastructure and engineering. While the headlines may be being grabbed by pre-Election party politics, it is the need to tackle climate change and meet our net zero targets, the cost of energy, the challenge of mobility and public transport, that really stand in the way of our future well being.And the list goes on.  The health and well-being implications of water and air pollution, the demand for decent affordable housing, the need to rebuild the nation's biodiversity. All are key issues that simply will not be solved without the input from and, critically, the leadership by professional engineers. Yet as we see right now as the General Election moves into full swing, when it comes to discussing the big issues facing the UK - and the world for that matter - those professional engineers are largely in the shadows. Working hard and brimming with solutions but nevertheless resigned to taking instruction rather than leading. To discuss whether this is fair - or even whether it matters, my guest today is Sir Jim McDonald, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the fellowship organisation dedicated to and focused on championing excellence in all fields of engineering. As one of the UK's most accomplished engineers, Sir Jim co-chairs the Scottish Government's Energy Advisory Board with the First Minister, is Chair of the Independent Glasgow Economic Leadership Board and holds senior business appointments with the Weir Group, Scottish Power, the UK Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, and the National Physical Laboratory.So in short, Sir Jim is an authority on professional engineering and its power to make change – particularly when it comes to energy transition.ResourcesRoyal Academy of Engineering websiteThe Queen Elizabeth Prize for EngineeringScottish Government's Energy Advisory BoardUK Offshore Renewable Energy CatapultNational Physical LaboratoryUniversity of Strathclyde

“Adapting industries to, and preparing them for, a warmer world will be essential for the future successful functioning of societies of all nations.” Said Dr Tim Fox, co author of the IMechE's latest report on Climate adaption.   The report entitled 'Adapting Industry to Withstand Rising Temperatures and Future Heatwaves' was published in April 2023 and produced in conjunction with the IMechE's Process Division and a plethora of leading climate change and sustainability experts from across the globe. While many engineers work on technologies that will help mitigate the climate crisis itself, Authors Dr Fox and IMechE Policy advisor Dr Laura Kent believe that more should be done to prepare industry for future climate change-induced, heat-related impacts. Their work demonstrates how increases in ambient temperatures and more frequent, severe, prolonged heatwaves could have a devastating impact on industry and its workforce.   They outline the urgent need for engineering-related standards and design codes to be based on expectations of future climate rather than past climate, adaptation solutions to be sustainable and result in net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, and strategies to be developed to make workplaces and work practices comfortable and safe. Helen spoke with Tim and Laura about the climate adaptation report and discussed with them their reasons for bringing together such an international team of experts to advise on its content, what adaption technologies engineers are developing and how, as a leading voice in policy, the IMechE could galvanising political change.   Tim Fox is an internationally recognised expert in climate change mitigation and adaptation with specialist knowledge of clean energy, sustainable cooling, process engineering based industries and sustainable food system. He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the IMechE andthe immediate past Chair of the Process Industries Division. Tim represents the IMechE on the UK Infrastructure Operators Adaptation Forum and is a member of the Adaptation to Climate Change Group of BSI Committee.   Dr Laura Kent joined the Imeche in June 2022 as a Public Affairs and Policy Advisor. Prior to joining the IMechE, Laura held roles at the Government Office for Science and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy working on policies and advice to support innovation in the UK. Before starting a career in policy, Laura was a scientist at the National Physical Laboratory. Useful Links Adapting Industry to Withstand Rising Temperatures and Future Heatwaves Article Adapting Industry to Withstand Rising Temperatures and Future Heatwaves Policy Report 'The urgent need for climate adaptation solutions' article  

A new study has found that devices used to measure air quality in the environment also take in DNA material from the local area. Scientists say this collected DNA can be useful in identifying what plants and animals have been in the area. It could also help document changes in the environment over time. Researchers say the finding suggests air quality measuring devices have collected large amounts of biodiversity data. But the collection efforts have not been recognized until now, said Elizabeth Clare. She is a biologist at Canada's York University and a lead writer of the study.一项新的研究发现，用于测量环境空气质量的设备也会采集到当地的DNA物质。科学家表示，这些收集到的DNA可以用来识别哪些植物和动物曾在该区域出现。这也有助于记录环境随时间的变化。研究人员表示，这项发现暗示空气质量测量设备已经收集了大量的生物多样性数据。然而，直到现在，这些收集工作才被认知，伊丽莎白·克莱尔说。她是加拿大约克大学的生物学家，也是这项研究的主要作者。As animals and plants go through their life cycles, they leave small pieces of themselves in the environment. This includes materials such as fur, feathers or pollen that identify their genetic makeup. Scientists have long known this kind of environmental DNA can float in water. They have even used it to follow, or track, different species in lakes and rivers. But it has been much harder to get a genetic picture of animals living on land, said Kristine Bohmann. She studies environmental DNA at the University of Copenhagen. She was not involved in the latest study. In 2021, both Bohmann and Clare worked on similar projects to see whether they could pull animal DNA from the air. After setting up collection equipment in local zoos, the teams were able to capture and examine DNA from many different species.随着动植物经历其生命周期，它们会在环境中留下自身的小片段。这包括识别其基因构成的毛发、羽毛或花粉等物质。科学家们早就知道，这种环境DNA可以在水中漂浮。他们甚至利用它跟踪湖泊和河流中的不同物种。但是，要获取陆地生活动物的基因图谱要困难得多，克里斯廷·博曼说。她在哥本哈根大学研究环境DNA，但并未参与最新的这项研究。2021年，博曼和克莱尔都在做类似的项目，看他们是否能从空气中提取动物DNA。在当地动物园设立收集设备后，这些团队能够捕获并检测来自许多不同物种的DNA。After seeing success in that process, the researchers wanted to expand their efforts to larger areas. In the latest study, Clare and her team tested air filters from two measuring stations, one in London and one in Scotland. The two places are part of a large network that tests for pollution. After getting DNA from pieces inside the air filters, the team was able to identify more than 180 different kinds of plants and animals, study writer Joanne Littlefair said. She is a biologist at Queen Mary University of London.在这个过程中取得成功后，研究人员希望将他们的努力扩大到更大的区域。在最新的研究中，克莱尔和她的团队测试了来自两个测量站的空气过滤器，一个在伦敦，一个在苏格兰。这两个地方是一个大型网络的一部分，用于检测污染。从空气过滤器内部的片段中获取DNA后，该团队能够识别出180多种不同的植物和动物，研究作者乔安娜·利特尔费尔说。她是伦敦玛丽皇后大学的生物学家。The filter data identified many different life forms, including grasses, fungi, deer, hedgehogs and songbirds, Littlefair said. Now, the team hopes to capture DNA data on ecosystems all over the world. Clare noted that even though biodiversity issues affect the whole world, it is hard to carry out widespread testing. James Allerton is an air quality scientist at Britain's National Physical Laboratory. He told The Associated Press that it is much easier to use capturing systems that are already in place.利特尔费尔表示，过滤器数据识别出了许多不同的生命形式，包括草类、真菌、鹿、刺猬和鸣禽。现在，该团队希望能够获取全球各地生态系统的DNA数据。克莱尔指出，尽管生物多样性问题影响着全世界，但要进行广泛的检测是很困难的。詹姆斯·阿勒顿是英国国家物理实验室的空气质量科学家。他告诉美联社，使用已经存在的捕获系统要容易得多。Allerton noted that many countries have networks to measure air quality. Some also store their old filters for many years. He said such data could help demonstrate how ecosystems have changed over time. Fabian Roger is working on a similar project at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. He wrote in an email to the AP that more research will be needed to see if data from the filters can show real biodiversity changes over time. Roger added that he finds it exciting that an existing system could help track wildlife across large areas in the environment.阿勒顿指出，许多国家都有测量空气质量的网络。有些还存放了多年的旧过滤器。他表示，这些数据可以帮助展示生态系统随时间的变化。法比安·罗杰正在瑞士苏黎世联邦理工学院进行类似的项目。他在一封给美联社的电子邮件中写道，需要更多的研究才能看出过滤器的数据是否能真实反映生物多样性随时间的变化。罗杰补充说，他发现现有的系统能帮助追踪环境中大范围区域的野生动物，这让他感到非常兴奋。Biodiversity (生物多样性)Biodiversity is crucial for maintaining a healthy ecosystem.生物多样性对于维持健康的生态系统至关重要。Document (记录)Please document all the findings in this experiment.请记录下这个实验中所有的发现。Genetic makeup (基因构成)Your genetic makeup determines your physical characteristics.你的基因构成决定了你的身体特征。Species (物种)Many species are endangered due to climate change.由于气候变化，许多物种处于濒危状态。Ecosystem (生态系统)We should protect the ecosystem for future generations.我们应该保护生态系统以惠及未来的一代。Filters (过滤器)You should replace the filters in your air purifier every few months.你应该每隔几个月就更换空气净化器的过滤器。Hedgehogs (刺猬)Hedgehogs are small animals with sharp spines on their backs.刺猬是背上有锐利刺的小动物。Pollen (花粉)I always sneeze a lot during the pollen season.每到花粉季节，我总是打喷嚏打个不停。Fungi (真菌)Mushrooms are a type of fungi.蘑菇是一种真菌。Songbirds (鸣禽)In the morning, you can hear songbirds chirping.在早晨，你可以听到鸣禽的叫声。

How did an edition of More or Less from 2017 end up influencing the choice of official names for extremely large numbers? We tell the tale of how an interview between presenter Tim Harford and maths whizz Rob Eastaway did just that. Also featuring Professor Richard Brown, head of metrology at the UK's National Physical Laboratory. Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Jon Bithrey Editor: Richard Vadon Production Coordinator: Janet Staples Sound Engineer: James Beard Image: Large number, Credit: Getty Images

At a recent conference in France, scientists and government representatives voted to scrap the leap second by 2035. Leap seconds are added periodically to synchronise atomic time and astronomical time, which get out of sync because of variations in the Earth's rotation. Madeleine Finlay speaks to JT Janssen, the chief scientist at NPL, the National Physical Laboratory, about the differences between these two times, and what can go wrong when leap seconds are added to our clocks. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod

Choosing the name of a new-born can be a challenging process for any parent. It's a big decision. You are branding your child with a bunch of letters for the rest of their life. But have you ever wondered what a physicist must go through, when trying to come up with a new word that will be accepted and approved around the world? Sean was joined by Dr Richard Brown, Head of Metrology at the U.K.'s National Physical Laboratory, who was recently challenged with bringing 4 new words to the metric system…

Choosing the name of a new-born can be a challenging process for any parent. It's a big decision. You are branding your child with a bunch of letters for the rest of their life. But have you ever wondered what a physicist must go through, when trying to come up with a new word that will be accepted and approved around the world? Sean was joined by Dr Richard Brown, Head of Metrology at the U.K.'s National Physical Laboratory, who was recently challenged with bringing 4 new words to the metric system…

A new non invasive technique to pick up breast cancer has been unveiled by UK scientists. Breast cancer is the most diagnosed form cancer in the UK. Dense breast tissue, particularly common in young women, is difficult to image using existing techniques. Now scientists at the National Physical Laboratory have developed a new technique , using ultrasound. Risa Bagwandin spoke to senior research scientist, Daniel Sarno... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

More FP&A teams should take advantage of the secret power of Monte Carlo simulations, argues Jamie Genge, Head of Financial Planning and Analysis at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL). Genge runs FP&A at the NPL which employs 775 scientists to provide research in science, engineering and technology to support scientific and commercial innovation in the UK. Some of the world's most significant innovations have origins at NPL, including radar; packet switching, the forbearer of the internet; the ACE computer; and the cesium atomic clock. Jamie's start began studying Human Geography before moving to audit at PwC. Jamie went to work for the National Physical Laboratory in the UK where over 11 years he has held multiple roles, including his current role as head of financial planning and analysis for the National Physical Laboratory (NPL).  In this wide-ranging interview Jamie provides his take on Moving from audit to FP&A How FP&A acts as bid support in governmental organizations such as the NPL His passion for Monte Carlo analysis,  a mathematical technique to account for risk and upside in decision making How Monte Carlo is used in the sales funnel, with examples from NPL How NPL conducts its budget and forecasting Bottom up vs Top Down budgeting  The pride of building a team in FP&A as one of the greatest career achievements The challenges and opportunities in FP&A at this crossroads Jamie's gardening project as an analogy for FP&A Follow Jamie on LinkedIn Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn Follow Datarails on LinkedIn FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails. Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models. With Datarails  you get improved data integrity and visibility helping your relationships with your internal business partners and external stakeholders; real-time latest version of all your company's data in one place, with version control, audit trail and records, ensuring errors and multiple versions are avoided; the ability to let your data tell your story through proprietary, built-in visualization of critical KPIs in real-down; and drill-downs to answer questions on underlying data on the spot. Get in touch at www.datarails.com Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news Read the Full Program Transcript Watch the Full Episode on YouTube To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Leader being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com

Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory have released research that utilises existing subsea telecommunications cables as environmental sensors, for example to detect earthquakes. These cables exist in many parts of the world already, so this finding has the potential to revolutionise seafloor earthquake monitoring. Research scientist Giuseppe Marra explains how it all works and Laura Kong, the director of the International Tsunami Information Centre, tells Gareth how this could improve tsunami warning systems. Healthcare delivery drones in India India's first organised medical drone programme was recently completed in the state of Telangana. Over the course of the 45-day trial, drones delivered different medical supplies including vaccines. What are the takeaways from this trial? Could this technology be used in other parts of the world? Gareth speaks to Rama Devi Lanka, Director of Emerging Technologies of Telangana government, and India lead for aerospace and drones at the World Economic Forum, Vignesh Santhaman. AI translating African Bantu languages The African continent has over a thousand languages and many of these are spoken by small populations. Abantu AI is a startup in Nairobi aiming to broaden the access to translation services by training AI on datasets of Bantu languages. Founder James Mwaniki tells Gareth how translation into these smaller African languages might be used in the future. Presenter: Gareth Mitchell With expert commentary from Bill Thompson Producer: Florian Bohr (Photo: Underwater fibre-optic cable on ocean floor. Credit: imaginima/Getty Images)

You are surrounded by stickiness. With every step you take, air molecules cling to you and slow you down; the effect is harder to ignore in water. When you hit the road, whether powered by pedal or engine, you rely on grip to keep you safe. The Post-it note and glue in your desk drawer. The non-stick pan on your stove. The fingerprints linked to your identity. The rumbling of the Earth deep beneath your feet, and the ice that transforms waterways each winter. All of these things are controlled by tiny forces that operate on and between surfaces, with friction playing the leading role. In her new book, Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces, physicist Laurie Winkless explores some of the ways that friction shapes both the manufactured and natural worlds, and describes how our understanding of surface science has given us an ability to manipulate stickiness, down to the level of a single atom. But this apparent success doesn't tell the whole story. Each time humanity has pushed the boundaries of science and engineering, we've discovered that friction still has a few surprises up its sleeve. Steve Scher and Laurie Winkless discuss sticky situations of all kinds in the 129th episode of Town Hall's In the Moment podcast.  Laurie Winkless is an Irish physicist-turned-science-writer, currently based in New Zealand. After her post-grad, she joined the U.K.'s National Physical Laboratory as a research scientist, where she specialized in functional materials. Since leaving the lab, Laurie has worked with scientific organizations, engineering companies, universities, and astronauts, amongst others. Her writing has featured in outlets including Forbes, Wired, Esquire, and The Economist. Her first book, Science and the City, was published by Bloomsbury Sigma in 2016. Steve Scher is a podcaster and interviewer and has been a teacher at the University of Washington since 2009. He worked in Seattle public radio for almost 30 years and is Senior Correspondent for Town Hall Seattle's In The Moment podcast. Buy the Book: Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces from Bloomsbury Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

You are surrounded by stickiness. With every step you take, air molecules cling to you and slow you down; the effect is harder to ignore in water. When you hit the road, whether powered by pedal or engine, you rely on grip to keep you safe. The Post-it note and glue in your desk drawer. The non-stick pan on your stove. The fingerprints linked to your identity. The rumbling of the Earth deep beneath your feet, and the ice that transforms waterways each winter. All of these things are controlled by tiny forces that operate on and between surfaces, with friction playing the leading role. In her new book, Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces, physicist Laurie Winkless explores some of the ways that friction shapes both the manufactured and natural worlds, and describes how our understanding of surface science has given us an ability to manipulate stickiness, down to the level of a single atom. But this apparent success doesn't tell the whole story. Each time humanity has pushed the boundaries of science and engineering, we've discovered that friction still has a few surprises up its sleeve. Steve Scher and Laurie Winkless discuss sticky situations of all kinds in the 129th episode of Town Hall's In the Moment podcast.  Laurie Winkless is an Irish physicist-turned-science-writer, currently based in New Zealand. After her post-grad, she joined the U.K.'s National Physical Laboratory as a research scientist, where she specialized in functional materials. Since leaving the lab, Laurie has worked with scientific organizations, engineering companies, universities, and astronauts, amongst others. Her writing has featured in outlets including Forbes, Wired, Esquire, and The Economist. Her first book, Science and the City, was published by Bloomsbury Sigma in 2016. Steve Scher is a podcaster and interviewer and has been a teacher at the University of Washington since 2009. He worked in Seattle public radio for almost 30 years and is Senior Correspondent for Town Hall Seattle's In The Moment podcast. Buy the Book: Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces from Bloomsbury Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

Scientists at the UK's National Physical Laboratory are using monitoring equipment to track our impact on the planet more accurately than ever before.

Scientists at the UK's National Physical Laboratory are using monitoring equipment to track our impact on the planet more accurately than ever before.

The Industrial Revolution gave us the rise of factories all over the world in the 1800s. Life was moving faster and we were engineering complex solutions to mass produce items. And many expanded from there to engineer complex solutions for simple problems. Cartoonist Heath Robinson harnessed the reaction from normal humans to this changing world in the forms of cartoons and illustrations of elaborate machines meant to accomplish simple tasks. These became known as “Heath Robinson contraptions” and were a reaction to the changing and increasingly complicated world order as much as anything. Just think of the rapidly evolving financial markets as one sign of the times! Following World War I, other cartoonists made similar cartoons. Like Rube Goldberg, giving us the concept of Rube Goldberg machines in the US. And the very idea of breaking down simple operations into Boolean logic from those who didn't understand the “why” would have seemed preposterous. I mean a wheel with 60 teeth or a complex series of switches and relays to achieve the same result? And yet with flip-flop circuits one would be able to process infinitely faster than it would take that wheel to turn with any semblance of precision. The Industrial Revolution of our data was to come. And yet we were coming to a place in the world where we were just waking up to the reality of moving from analog to digital as Robinson passed away in 1944 with a series of electromechanical computers named after Robinson and then The Colossus. These came just one year after Claude Shannon and Alan Turing, two giants in the early history of computers, met at Bell Labs. And a huge step in that transition was a paper by Alan Turing in 1936 called "On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” This would become the basis for a programmable computing machine concept and so before the war, Alan Turing had published papers about the computability of problems using what we now call a Turing machine - or recipes. Some of the work on that paper was inspired by Max Newman, who helped Turing go off to Princeton to work on all the maths, where Turing would get a PhD in 1938. He returned home and started working part-time at the Government Code and Cypher school during the pre-war buildup. Hitler invaded Poland the next year, sparking World War II. The Poles had gotten pretty good with codebreaking, being situated right between world powers Germany and Russia and their ability to see troop movements through decrypted communications was one way they were able to keep forces in optimal locations. And yet the Germans got in there. The Germans had built a machine called the Enigma that also allowed their Navy to encrypt communications. Unable to track their movements, Allied forces were playing a cat and mouse game and not doing very well at it. Turing came up with a new way of decrypting the messages and that went into a new version of the Polish Bomba. Later that year, the UK declared war on Germany. Turing's work resulted in a lot of other advances in cryptanalysis throughout the war. But he also brought home the idea of an electromechanical machine to break those codes - almost as though he'd written a paper on building machines to do such things years before. The Germans had given away a key to decrypt communications accidentally in 1941 and the codebreakers at Bletchley Park got to work on breaking the machines that used the Lorenz Cipher in new and interesting ways. The work had reduced the amount of losses - but they needed more people. It was time intensive to go through the possible wheel positions or guess at them, and every week meant lives lost. Or they needed more automation of people tasks… So they looked to automate the process. Turing and the others wrote to Churchill directly. Churchill started his memo to General Ismay with “ACTION THIS DAY” and so they were able to get more bombes up and running. Bill Tutte and the codebreakers worked out the logic to process the work done by hand. The same number of codebreakers were able to a ton more work. The first pass was a device with uniselectors and relays. Frank Morrell did the engineering design to process the logic. And so we got the alpha test of an automation machine they called the Tunny. The start positions were plugged in by hand and it could still take weeks to decipher messages. Max Newman, Turing's former advisor and mentor, got tapped to work on the project and Turing was able to take the work of Polish code breakers and others and add sequential conditional probability to guess at the settings of the 12 wheels of an Enigma machine and thus get to the point they could decipher messages coming out of the German navy on paper. No written records indicate that Turing was involved much in the project beyond that. Max Newman developed the specs, heavily influenced by Turing's previous work. They got to work on an electro-mechanical device we now call the Heath Robinson. They needed to be able to store data. They used paper tape - which could process a thousand characters per second using photocell readers - but there were two and they had to run concurrently. Tape would rip and two tapes running concurrently meant a lot might rip. Charles Wynn-Williams was a brilliant physicist who worked with electric waves since the late 1920s at Trinity College, Cambridge and was recruited from a project helping to develop RADAR because he'd specifically worked on electronic counters at Cambridge. That work went into the counting unit, counting how many times a function returned a true result. As we saw with Bell Labs, the telephone engineers were looking for ways to leverage switching electronics to automate processes for the telephone exchange. Turing recommended they bring in telephone engineer Tommy Flowers to design the Combining unit, which used vacuum tubes to implement Boolean logic - much as the paper Shannon wrote in 1936 that he gave Turing over tea at Bell labs earlier 1943. It's likely Turing would have also heard of the calculator George Stibitz of Bell Labs built out of relay switches all the way back in 1937. Slow but more reliable than the vacuum tubes of the era. And it's likely he influenced those he came to help by collaborating on encrypted voice traffic and likely other projects as much if not more. Inspiration is often best found at the intersectionality between ideas and cultures. Flowers looked to use vacuum tubes where the wheel patterns were produced. This gave one less set of paper tapes and infinitely more reliability. And a faster result. The programs were stored but they were programmable. Input was made using the shift registers from the paper tape and thyratron rings that simulated the bitstream for the wheels. There was a master control unit that handled the timing between the clock, signals, readouts, and printing. It didn't predate the Von Neumann architecture. But it didn't not. The switch panel had a group of switches used to define the algorithm being used with a plug-board defining conditions. The combination provided billions of combinations for logic processing. Vacuum tube valves were still unstable but they rarely blew when on, it was the switching process. So if they could have the logic gates flow through a known set of wheel settings the new computer would be more stable. Just one thing - they needed 1,500 valves! This thing would be huge! And so the Colossus Mark 1 was approved by W.G. Radley in 1943. It took 50 people 11 months to build and was able to compute wheel settings for ciphered message tapes. Computers automating productivity at its finest. The switches and plugs could be repositioned and so not only was Colossus able get messages decrypted in hours but could be reprogrammed to do other tasks. Others joined and they got the character reading up to almost 10,000 characters a second. They improved on the design yet again by adding shift registers and got over four times the speeds. It could now process 25,000 characters per second. One of the best uses was to confirm that Hitler got tricked into thinking the attack at Normandy at D-Day would happen elsewhere. And so the invasion of Normandy was safe to proceed. But the ability to reprogram made it a mostly universal computing machine - proving the Turing machine concept and fulfilling the dreams of Charles Babbage a hundred years earlier. And so the war ended in 1945. After the war, The Colossus machines were destroyed - except the two sent to British GHCQ where they ran until 1960. So the simple story of Colossus is that it was a series of computers built in England from 1943 to 1945, at the heart of World War II. The purpose: cryptanalysis - or code breaking. Turing went on to work on the Automatic Computing Engine at the National Physical Laboratory after the war and wrote a paper on the ACE - but while they were off to a quick start in computing in England having the humans who knew the things, they were slow to document given that their wartime work was classified. ENIAC came along in 1946 as did the development of Cybernetics by Norbert Wiener. That same year Max Newman wrote to John Von Neumann (Wiener's friend) about building a computer in England. He founded the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Victory University of Manchester, got Turing out to help and built the Manchester Baby, along with Frederic Williams and Thomas Kilburn. In 1946 Newman would also decline becoming Sir Newman when he rejected becoming an OBE, or Officer of the Order of the British Empire, over the treatment of his protege Turing not being offered the same. That's leadership. They'd go on to collaborate on the Manchester Mark I and Ferranti Mark I. Turing would work on furthering computing until his death in 1954, from taking cyanide after going through years of forced estrogen treatments for being a homosexual. He has since been pardoned post Following the war, Flowers tried to get a loan to start a computer company - but the very idea was ludicrous and he was denied. He retired from the Post Office Research Station after spearheading the move of the phone exchange to an electric, or what we might think of as a computerized exchange. Over the next decade, the work from Claude Shannon and other mathematicians would perfect the implementation of Boolean logic in computers. Von Neumann only ever mentioned Shannon and Turing in his seminal 1958 paper called The Computer And The Brain. While classified by the British government the work on Colossus was likely known to Von Neumann, who will get his own episode soon - but suffice it to say was a physicist turned computer scientist and worked on ENIAC to help study and develop atom bombs - and who codified the von Neumann architecture. We did a whole episode on Turing and another on Shannon, and we have mentioned the 1945 article As We May Think where Vannevar Bush predicted and inspired the next couple generations of computer scientists following the advancements in computing around the world during the war. He too would have likely known of the work on Colossus at Bletchley Park. Maybe not the specifics but he certainly knew of ENIAC - which unlike Colossus was run through a serious public relations machine. There are a lot of heroes to this story. The brave men and women who worked tirelessly to break, decipher, and analyze the cryptography. The engineers who pulled it off. The mathematicians who sparked the idea. The arrival of the computer was almost deterministic. We had work on the Atanasoff-Berry Computer at Iowa State, work at Bell Labs, Norbert Wiener's work on anti-aircraft guns at MIT during the war, Konrad Zuse's Z3, Colossus, and other mechanical and electromechanical devices leading up to it. But deterministic doesn't mean lacking inspiration. And what is the source of inspiration and when mixed with perspiration - innovation? There were brilliant minds in mathematics, like Turing. Brilliant physicists like Wynn-Williams. Great engineers like Flowers. That intersection between disciplines is the wellspring of many an innovation. Equally as important, then there's a leader who can take the ideas, find people who align with a mission, and help clear roadblocks. People like Newman. When they have domain expertise and knowledge - and are able to recruit and keep their teams inspired, they can change the world. And then there are people with purse strings who see the brilliance and can see a few moves ahead on the chessboard - like Churchill. They make things happen. And finally, there are the legions who carried on the work in theoretical, practical, and in the pure sciences. People who continue the collaboration between disciplines, iterate, and bring products to ever growing markets. People who continue to fund those innovations. It can be argued that our intrepid heroes in this story helped win a war - but that the generations who followed, by connecting humanity and bringing productivity gains to help free our minds to solve bigger and bigger problems will hopefully some day end war. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We hope to cover your contributions. Drop us a line and let us know how we can. And thank you so much for listening. We are so, so lucky to have you.

Episode 1538: Our article of the day is National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom).

Who is today's guest? "Born in South Africa, I started my academic career at the University of Cape Town where I triple majored in Statistics, Economics, and Philosophy. I realised fairly late on that my passion was in physics, so I moved to the Uk to complete my undergraduate in theoretical physics at Queen Mary University of London. During that period I worked for Artificial Intelligence companies, where I developed deep-learning algorithms and published articles on the connection between neuroscience and the workplace, and for the National Physical Laboratory, where I was involved in building part of a Quantum Computer. Over the last year, I've been working on the black hole information paradox under Prof. Malcolm Perry, one of the world's leading physicists. In the process, I discovered an infinite set of zero-energy particles so to speak - the soft chromoelectric and chromomagnetic charges. I'll be continuing this research with Prof. Perry at the University of Cambridge later this year, where I plan to study Quantum Gravity, a description of microscopic spacetime, as part of my PhD research."

This week on Energy Unplugged we have a special episode on modelling energy markets and the broader complexities of modelling for future scenarios. Our Head of Digital Solutions Mateusz Wronski chats with Jonathan Black, our Head of Modelling. Jonathan’s role is to set the vision and strategy for our market models and their developments. Besides managing our international team of modellers he has extensive experience in modelling for a breadth of physical systems, with a background as a Research Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory and a PhD in Applied Mathematics. Mateusz and Jonathan discuss: • Credibility of modelling outside academia • Our motivation for building our own models • Modelling role in decarbonisation of the energy sector

Paul is Chief Executive of the National Nuclear Laboratory. He is also Chair of the Association of Innovation, Research and Technology Organisations (AIRTO), Chair of BHR Group and a Non-Executive Director at the National Physical Laboratory.  If that wasn’t enough, he also holds a professorial position at the University of Manchester in nuclear technology.Paul lives in Cheshire with his wife Victoria and three boys.He studied Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Birmingham before beginning his career working on the European Fusion Programme where he completed his PhD in nuclear physics.He then moved to BNFL Instruments at Sellafield and subsequently worked in Japan on technology transfer in the semiconductor industry and also the Japanese nuclear programme and later worked for BNFL product development. Following this Paul went to work for Dame Sue Ion in the Energy Unit.Paul co-founded the Dalton Nuclear Institute and worked for the US organisation Battelle alongside US National Laboratories on management and operation (M&O) contract development. In 2009, he was part of the M&O team that was awarded the contract to run NNL. Paul was appointed as Chief Executive for NNL in 2011.He has extensive experience in the nuclear industry working on sites in the UK and overseas covering operations, commercial and research portfolios. He has worked with a broad range of stakeholders across Government, industry and academia and more recently has worked in the research, technology, and innovation sector beyond nuclear.In his spare time Paul enjoys riding his bike and playing hockey.To find out more visit: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/paul-howarth-35322048

As a science writer with The Scientific American, a primary concern for John Horgan is how science both supports the evolution of human understanding, and he is also very interested in exploring the shortcomings of science as a methodology and the limitations of the scientists whose conclusions have a direct impact on the world. In this conversation, we discuss the current pandemic and how crisis and trauma shift innovation and the scientific ideas that inform the zeitgeist. One of John's primary interests is the limitations of science, with emphasis on how much time and energy we need to be investing in discovering what might be, unanswerable questions about reality and the universe. He proposes that we would be better served to solve the problems of war, diseases, and inequality – to name a few. Balancing optimism and realism, how humanity may approach the aftermath of the current COVID crisis, the nature of positivity and pessimism, we explore a few political and social outcomes from this crisis, the importance of addressing climate change and the overwhelming expenses designated to national defense and military spending, terror management theory, crisis and the spiritual attitude, times when people are more attracted to authoritarian leadership, the ways in which the awareness of death influences an individual's core philosophies, spirituality and nihilism, mysticism, consumerism, and social control, politics and society, the value of paradox in our psychology, the value of measured skepticism and doubt to transcend fundamentalism. Bio: John Horgan is a science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey. A former senior writer at Scientific American (1986-1997), he has also written for The New York Times, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Slate and other publications. He writes the "Cross-check" blog for Scientific American and produces "Mind-Body Problems" for the online talk show Bloggingheads.tv. He tweets as @horganism. Horgan's most recent book, Mind-Body Problems: Science, Subjectivity and Who We Really Are, takes a radical new approach to the deepest and oldest of all mysteries, the mind-body problem. Published in September 2018, it is available for free online at mindbodyproblems.com, for $5 as an Amazon e-book and for $15 as a paperback. Horgan's first book was The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Science in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, which was republished with a new preface in 2015 by Basic Books. Originally published in 1996, it became a U.S. bestseller and was translated into 13 languages. Horgan's publications have received international coverage. He has been interviewed hundreds of times for print, radio, and television media, including The Lehrer News Hour, Charlie Rose, and National Public Radio's Science Friday. He has lectured at dozens of institutions in North America and Europe, including MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Dartmouth, McGill, the University of Amsterdam, and England's National Physical Laboratory. http://www.johnhorgan.org Band of the Week: Quaker City Nighthawks https://quakercitynighthawks.com Music Page: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/quaker-city-night-hawks/536022674 Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Brought to you by: https://www.thecenterforhas.com Website for The Sacred Speaks: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ @thesacredspeaks Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/

In This episode Pranoti sits down with Vivian Tong, who was a Higher Research Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK at the time of recording, to take a deeper dive into Vivian‘s research journey. This vintage episode of the Under the Microscope podcast was originally released on 22.04.2020.

This episode's guest is Vivian Tong, who was a Higher Research Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK at the time of recording. This vintage episode of the Under the Microscope podcast was originally released on 19.04.2020.

This month, I'm chatting with Dr. James Claverley! James is a "scientist at heart" based at the National Physical Laboratory. He now puts skills learned working in metrology (the study of measurements) to good use in the offices of NPL. James is also on the IOP's Diversity committee. He's been working on a report from last year's LGBT+ physical sciences climate survey. In this episode, we talk about the importance of redefining the kilogram, queer STEM heroes, and James teases some of the findings from the LGBT+ physical sciences climate survey. If you want more from James, you can find him, and plenty of pictures of his dog, River, on Twitter as @DrClaverley. BIG NEWS! SciCurious is recording a live show! To see what it's about, check out SciCurious.fm/live, and get tickets through the the Glasgow Science Festival event page. You can, of course, find more from the podcast of Twitter as @SciCurious_pod, and you can send emails to scicurious.pod@gmail.com Music, as ever, was by Austin Weber. Find his music on iTunes and Spotify. Keep an eye out for his new album, Love Songs for No One, dropping on May 11th. If you enjoyed this episode, please head over to iTunes, and leave a 5-star review and say something nice about the show. iTunes weights ratings in their algorithms when deciding which podcasts to promote, so it really does matter. And thanks as ever to IOPScotland, for making SciCurious possible!  

The title of the John Horgan's book, The Mind-Body Problems, with the addition of the “s”articulates the core of the mind-body problem – that it is plural. John Horgan is not content with one story that solves for the myriad problems we humans encounter when we explore reality and hunt to discover who we are and what matters most. John has been a scientific journalist for over 35 years and as someone who is paid to be curious he has commented on, written about, queried, and learned about some of the most ubiquitous and obscure scientific theories and discoveries science and human thought have brought to the foreground. Bio: John Horgan is a science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey. A former senior writer at Scientific American (1986-1997), he has also written for The New York Times, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Slate and other publications. He writes the "Cross-check" blog for Scientific American and produces "Mind-Body Problems" for the online talk show Bloggingheads.tv. He tweets as @horganism. Horgan's most recent book, Mind-Body Problems: Science, Subjectivity and Who We Really Are, takes a radical new approach to the deepest and oldest of all mysteries, the mind-body problem. Published in September 2018, it is available for free online at mindbodyproblems.com, for $5 as an Amazon e-book and for $15 as a paperback. Horgan's first book was The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Science in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, which was republished with a new preface in 2015 by Basic Books. Originally published in 1996, it became a U.S. bestseller and was translated into 13 languages. Horgan's other books include The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation, 1999, translated into eight languages; Rational Mysticism: Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for Enlightenment, 2003, which The New York Times called "marvelous" (see outtakes from the book posted on this site); and The End of War, published in paperback in 2014, which novelist Nicholson Baker described as "thoughtful, unflappable, closely argued." Horgan's publications have received international coverage. He has been interviewed hundreds of times for print, radio, and television media, including The Lehrer News Hour, Charlie Rose, and National Public Radio's Science Friday. He has lectured at dozens of institutions in North America and Europe, including MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Dartmouth, McGill, the University of Amsterdam, and England's National Physical Laboratory. His awards include the 2005 Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship in Science and Religion; the American Psychiatric Association Certificate of Commendation for Outstanding Reporting on Psychiatric Issues (1997); the Science Journalism Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1992 and 1994); and the National Association of Science Writers Science-in-Society Award (1993). His articles have been selected for the anthologies The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Science Writing. Horgan was an associate editor at IEEE Spectrum, the journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, from 1983 to 1986. He received a B.A. in English from Columbia University's School of General Studies in 1982 and an M.S. from Columbia's School of Journalism in 1983. http://www.johnhorgan.org https://meaningoflife.tv/programs/current/mind-body-problems https://mindbodyproblems.com Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the week: The Deathray Davies Music page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/the-deathray-davies/6557498 Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/

The northern white rhinoceros is the world's most endangered mammal. The death earlier this year of the last male of this rhino subspecies leaves just two females as its only living members. New research out this week has adopted new techniques in reproductive medicine as a last ditch attempt to preserve these animals. Thomas Hildebrandt from Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and Terri Roth, Director of Conservation Research at Cincinnati Zoo, discuss the ambition, and how realistic this approach is in future animal conservation. Earthquakes are scientifically measured with seismometers, but few are present on the sea floor, where earthquakes that can cause tsunamis originate. But could communication cables traversing the oceans fill in the gaps? Giuseppi Marra from the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, discusses his accidental discovery that fibre-optic cables might be registering the earth's vibrations. For the first time in the annals of science, a tweet was the key reference in a paper reporting on a discovery that a rare wild variety of the gardener's favourite - Heuchera, thought to be limited to a few rocky outcrops in Virginia - is actually abundantly present 100km away. It's all come about because of a picture shared on Twitter. Reporter Roland Pease retraces the tale of the tweets with the key players. Can the size of a roar be used to accurately determine physical strength?' Or can a roar deceive, and make you sound tougher than you actually are? That's what Jordan Raine from the University of Sussex decided to find out, not with lions or tigers or bears but in us. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

TWO NEW PROOF OF CONCEPT AGREEMENTS SIGNED In this interview Guy Meyer, Head of Business Development Catenae (AIM:CTEA) speaks with @ZaksTradersCafe about todays news announcment. Catenae (AIM:CTEA), the AIM quoted provider of digital media and technology, is pleased to announce the signing of two proof of concept agreements; 1) Mobile Business Solutions Catenae’s Mobile Business Solutions division, which operates remote workforce management tools, has signed a proof of concept agreement with a provider of building management and inspection services. The solution will integrate a licenced version of the Digital Asset and tracking system developed by Catenae’s subsidiary Trust in Media (“TiM”) with the client’s software application. The client wishes to create an immutable database of assets, their inspection records and audit information as required under the BS9999 and The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and as recommended in the independent review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety report led by Dame Judith Hackett following the Grenfell Tower fire. The system will record the details of 37 inspection points required for each asset as well as confirming physical location and timestamping. This is the first example of the product being utilised outside of the traditional digital media world and allows the client to provide tamper proof records. 2) Trust in Media Trust in Media (“TiM”) has is pleased to confirm the signing of a proof of concept project agreement with a service provider in the Image Licensing sector to trial the embedding of the Digital Asset Registration and Transactional Tracking technology within the provider’s operations. This allows users to record the digital asset copyright information as an immutable record for each individual image and track details of where those assets are downloaded and utilising smart contracts to record the transactional value attributed to the purchase. Tony Sanders, CEO, commented: “It is pleasing to see that our recently released blockchain solution is attracting interest from a number of disparate industry sectors. We will continue to look to extend the product’s reach, introducing licencing models and white-label versions as the product matures. We look forward to converting the proof of concept agreements to revenue generating licences in the near future. One of the key areas when looking at blockchain solutions is the ability for the application to write and confirm the data transactions at a sufficient rate. When Bitcoin network purportedly runs at 3 transactions per second it is easy to see why this may not be sufficient for high speed financial or audit transactions. The proof of concept projects mentioned above will utilise the private block chain platform which was tested by the National Physical Laboratory in conjunction with Toronto Stock Exchange in October 2017, where it time-stamped financial stock trades using the atomic clock, achieving 25 Billion transactions per day with the transactions recorded directly on the distributed ledger. Whilst way in excess of most requirement, we believe this capability will allow our solutions to penetrate markets so far excluded from the blockchain program.”

In apertura chiamiamo Giuseppe Marra, del National Physical Laboratory britannico, e Cecilia Clivati, dell'Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca in Metrologia a Torino. Su Science hanno pubblicato una ricerca riguardante i cavi di fibra ottica che solcano gli oceani: pare possano essere usati come sismografi. Gli abbiamo fatto qualche domanda. - Tre settimane fa annunciavamo gli eventi che a Trieste ricordano Margherita Hack. Abbiamo parlato di lei con Simona Cerrato del Medialab della SISSA.

In apertura chiamiamo Giuseppe Marra, del National Physical Laboratory britannico, e Cecilia Clivati, dell'Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca in Metrologia a Torino. Su Science hanno pubblicato una ricerca riguardante i cavi di fibra ottica che solcano gli oceani: pare possano essere usati come sismografi. Gli abbiamo fatto qualche domanda. - Tre settimane fa annunciavamo gli eventi che a Trieste ricordano Margherita Hack. Abbiamo parlato di lei con Simona Cerrato del Medialab della SISSA.

In the third episode we're looking at the concept of zero carbon buildings with guests Anna Parkin and Farai Mwashita. Anna has recently finished a PhD in Bulding Physics and works at the National Physical Laboratory. Farai is a mechanical design engineer in the building services industry. Listen if you’re curious about construction, zero carbon buildings and the circular economy.  Shownotes: bit.ly/CuriousAbout If you enjoyed what you listened to please like and review, it really helps :) Share it with your friends using #CuriousAboutPodcast Music: "Upbeat Funky Loop - Electronic" by ispeakwaves is licensed under CC BY 3.0. Modified.

The ohm, amp and volt are now understood around the world. In this interview Sir Richard Glazebrook, a key figure in the international standardisation and determination of electrical quantities, discusses his research and committee work to define how electricity is measured today. Sir Richard was the first Director of the National Physical Laboratory, the first Chair of the Advisory Committee on Aeronautics and the 2nd Wilbur and Orville Wright Memorial Lecturer. Sir Richard Glazebrook talk was recorded in 1934 and the podcast was released courtesy of the IET Archive. The original film version of this recording can be viewed via the National Physical Laboratory YouTube channel. The podcast was edited by Mike Stanberry FRAeS and it was digitised thanks to a grant from the Royal Aeronautical Society Foundation.

Adam Rutherford talks to astrophysicists about the astronomical discovery of the year, if not the last couple of decades: the collision of two neutron stars and the cosmic gold-forging aftermath. The discovery of this long-hypothesized event on 17th August came from the much awaited marriage of the capabilities of the gravitational wave detectors LIGO and Virgo with those of ground-based and space-based telescopes. Samaya Nissanke of Radboud University, Sheila Rowan of the University of Glasgow and Nial Tanvir of the University of Leicester take Inside Science through the story. What made the infamous 1883 eruption of Krakatoa so devastating? Roland Pease meets the earth scientists trying to answer the question by recreating in the lab the conditions under the volcano prior to the eruption. Following a temperature-related faux pas by Adam in the last episode, Michael de Podesta of the National Physical Laboratory explains the difference between Celsius and Centigrade. Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

It sounds like a simple question – what is the time? But look closer and you realise time is a slippery concept that scientists still do not fully understand. Even though we now have atomic clocks that can keep time to one second in 15 billion years, this astonishing level of accuracy may not be enough. The complexity of computer-controlled systems, such as high-frequency financial trading or self-driving cars which rely on the pinpoint accuracy of GPS, could in future require clocks that are even more accurate to ensure everything runs ‘on time’. But what does that even mean? As Anand Jagatia discovers, time is a very strange thing. He visits the origins of modern time-keeping at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and meets scientists at the National Physical Laboratory who have been counting and labelling every second since the 1950s. He meets Demetrios Matsakis, the man who defined time and visits the real-life ‘Time Lords’, at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Paris to find out how they co-ordinate the world’s time and why the leap second is ‘dangerous’. Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk

What are 'Standard International units'? Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia The seven Système International d'Unités (SI) base units: second, mole, metre, kilogram, kelvin, candela, ampere (National Physical Laboratory) The seven Système International d'Unités (SI) base units: second, mole, metre, kilogram, kelvin, candela, ampere (Wikipedia) The base units (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures) The SI system kicked off after 1799 (The National Institute of Standards & Technology) Moon Unit Zappa, child of Frank Zappa (Wikipedia) The 'cubit' was the length from the tip of one's middle finger to the bottom of the elbow (Wikipedia) History of length measurement: From cubits to lasers (National Physical Laboratory) A history of all the weird units of measurement from ye olde ancient times (Encyclopaedia Britannica) A history of the kilogram (National Physical Laboratory) Standard time was introduced from the mid-1800s around the world with the coming of the railways (Wikipedia) The Allegheny Observatory used to provide accurate time updates via telegraph in North America (Wikipedia) A history of timekeeping devices (Wikipedia) The second used to be defined as 1/86,400 of a day, but now it's "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (Wikipedia) A brief history of the second (The National Institute of Standards & Technology) "A new optical clock ticks so consistently that if it had started at the dawn of the universe, it would have lost less than two minutes" (The Independent) The strontium optical clock (OSA Publishing) Where are atomic clocks? They're everywhere now (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University) Clock synchronisation around the world is really important for computers & stuff (Wikipedia) International Atomic Time tells us at which speed our clocks should tick (Time and Date) What is needed to synchronise time across atomic clocks in the world? (Quora) How to improve time accuracy on iPhone & Apple Watch (iPhone Tricks) Security implications of the humble computer clock (Network World) Who invented the second? Claudius Ptolemy around 150 C.E. (Reference) Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes, yet there are only 24 hours in a day? (Scientific American) The book Johnny was talking about by Dava Sobel: 'Longitude: The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time' (Wikipedia) See John Harrison's original clocks in the museum at Greenwich, London (Royal Museums Greenwich) We had the second for ages, then the kelvin was first defined in 1743, the kilogram & metre followed in 1793, the amp in 1881, the mole in 1900, & the candela in 1946, but they've been refined now (Wikipedia) The metre was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole (Wikipedia) The metre is now defined as the distance travelled by light in 1/299,792,458th of a second (Wikipedia) A brief history of the metre (The National Institute of Standards & Technology) The speed of light: 299,792,458 metres per second (Encyclopaedia Britannica) People debating pool tolerance & why timing isn't more accurate in swimming (Reddit) Meet the kilogram - a.k.a 'La Grande K' or 'Big K' (Wikipedia) There did used to be someone who went around checking stuff - the 'city meter' - "checking both the weights of goods as sold & the accuracy of the metal weights used" (Hall Genealogy Website) The International Prototype Kilogram (IPK) & its copies - Australia has one (Wikipedia) If someone knocks a chunk off the IPK, the definition of a kilogram changes (Wikipedia) A list of the prefixes for metric units of measurement: e.g. 'kilo' just means a thousand (The National Institute of Standards and Technology) "The magnitude of many of the units comprising the SI system...are highly dependent upon the stability of a 137-year-old, golf-ball-sized cylinder of metal stored in a vault in France" (Wikipedia) The new kilogram is due out in 2018 - stay tuned (The National Institute of Standards and Technology) Redefining the kilogram: Mass, Planck & Einstein (The National Institute of Standards and Technology) Redefining the kilogram: The 'Watt balance' (The National Institute of Standards and Technology) After a fraught few years, experiments to redefine the kilogram have reached agreement (Nature) What is a mole? Not the burrowing kind with small eyes (The National Institute of Standards & Technology) Avogadro's number & the mole (Wikipedia) What is a mole & why are moles used? (About Education, Chemistry) Hello kelvin - this unit is 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water (The National Institute of Standards & Technology) What is the triple point of water? (Wikipedia) What is Celsius? (Wikipedia) Deep breath: "The ampere is that constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross section, & placed 1 metre apart in a vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 x 10-7 newton per metre of length" (The National Institute of Standards & Technology) What is the difference between voltage & current (amperes)? (The Charging Point) Everything you wanted to know about charging your iPhone or iPad (Apple, Communities) iPhone & iPad chargers appear to be around 1-2 amps according to this (Apple, Communities) I believe you now Johnny: Turns out the coloured rings for electric toothbrushes really are to tell family members' brush heads apart (Electric Teeth) Meet the candela, "the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 x 1,012 hertz & that has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watts per steradian" (The National Institute of Standards & Technology) What is black body radiation? (Cosmos, Swinburne University) We can use luminous intensity to measure how far away stars are (Science, How Stuff Works) 'Intrinsic luminosity' is how bright something is & 'apparent brightness' is how bright it looks - knowing these details helps us measure how far away stars are (Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Penn State) Stellar brightness (Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University) Brightness, luminosity & the magnitude scale (Department of Astronomy, Cornell University) What is a standard candle? (Cosmos, Swinburne University) (non SI) Units for quantities that describe biological effects (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures) The future - proposed redefinition of SI base units (Wikipedia) A more fundamental International System of units (Physics Today) Corrections Sorry Johnny, you got latitude & longitude mixed up - latitude is north-south, longitude is east-west (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Cheeky review? (If we may be so bold) It'd be amazing if you gave us a short review...it'll make us easier to find in iTunes: Click here for instructions. You're the best! We owe you a free hug and/or a glass of wine from our cellar

Laurie Winkless is a physicist and writer, currently based in London. Following a degree at Trinity College Dublin, a placement at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre, and a masters in Space Science at UCL, Laurie worked at the National Physical Laboratory, specialising in materials. Laurie has been communicating science to the public for more than a decade, working with schools and universities, the Royal Society, Forbes, and the Naked Scientists, amongst others. She's given TEDx talks, hung out with astronauts, and appeared in The Times magazine as a leading light in STEM. Science and the City is her first book See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Long before the heroics of the world wide web, the internet was born out of a mixture of American ambition and British thrift. Packet Switching was the name coined by Welsh computer scientist Donald Davies in an effort to link the early computers in the labs of the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington. Presented by Hannah Fry Produced by Alex Mansfield.

The atomic clock runs on caesium, and has redefined the very meaning of time. But it has also introduced a bug into timekeeping that affects everything from computerised financial markets to electricity grids, to satellite navigation, to the Greenwich Meridian. Justin Rowlatt travels to the birthplace of modern time, the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England, to speak to Krzysztof Szymaniec, the keeper of the 'Caesium Fountain', and Leon Lobo, the man charged with disseminating time to the UK. He also hears from Felicitas Arias, director of Time at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in Paris, about plans to abolish the “leap second”. And the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, explains why even the atomic clock can never hope to provide an absolute measure of time.

The atomic clock runs on caesium, and has redefined the very meaning of time. But it has also introduced a bug into timekeeping that affects everything from computerised financial markets to electricity grids, and satellite navigation to the Greenwich Meridian. Justin Rowlatt travels to the birthplace of modern time, the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England, to speak to Krzysztof Szymaniec, the keeper of the 'Caesium Fountain', and Leon Lobo, the man charged with disseminating time to the UK. He also hears from Felicitas Arias, director of time at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in Paris, about plans to abolish the 'leap second'. And, the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, explains why even the atomic clock can never hope to provide an absolute measure of time.

Melting Antarctic Ice Shelf Nothing can stop the collapse of the Antarctic Western Ice shelf. That’s according to NASA this week. Key glaciers in Antarctica are irreversibly retreating, and according to the scientists studying this region they’ve reached a state of irreversible retreat - the point of no return. Brain enhancing devices If given the option, would you think faster or increase your attention span? Neuroscientists now say that non-invasive brain stimulation using electrical currents could do just that. The technology is still fairly new but is now being sold by commercial companies often marketed to gamers suggesting that it could increase your attention and make you think faster. But do they actually work? Inside Science sent Melissa Hogenboom to Oxford try one out and to discuss the science behind the hype. Black holes How big can black holes get? A listener asks and Professor Andy Fabien, Director of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University answers. Optical and atomic clocks At this week’s ‘Quantum Timing, Navigation and Sensing’ Showcase at the National Physical Laboratory, researchers are working on sensors that allow us to see through walls; super-accurate atomic clocks the size of matchboxes; and GPS trackers that can elude an enemy jamming the signal. We sent Inside Science reporter Tracey Logan to work on her time management. Bat jamming moth noises and other insects that go bump, chirrup, squeak in the night Inside Science’s resident entomologist, Dr. Tim Cockerill has been exploring a whole soundscape that’s hidden from our limited hearing range. Including, eavesdropping on a secret sonic arms race between echo-locating bats and bat-jamming acoustics created by the genitals of a hawkmoth. Producer: Fiona Roberts

Two keepers of atomic time at the National Physical Laboratory look to the future

There are always surprises when we sort through Seth's wine cellar – who knows what we'll find! In this cramped cavern, tucked between boxes of old fuses and a priceless bottle of 1961 Chateau Palmer Margaux, we discover the next generation of atomic clock … the key to how solar storms disrupt your cell phone … nano-gold particles that could make gasoline obsolete … and what NASA's Kepler spacecraft has learned about how our solar system stacks up to others. Tune in, find out and, help us lift these boxes, will you? Guests: •  Chris Sorensen – Physicist, Kansas State University •  Anne Curtis – Senior research scientist, National Physical Laboratory, U.K. •  Jonathan Eisen – Evolutionary biologist, University of California, Davis •  Karel Schrijver – Solar physicist, Lockheed Martin, Advanced Technology Center •  Jonathan Fortney – Astronomer, University of California, Santa Cruz •  Sanjoy Som – Astrobiologist, NASA Ames Research Center Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are always surprises when we sort through Seth’s wine cellar – who knows what we’ll find! In this cramped cavern, tucked between boxes of old fuses and a priceless bottle of 1961 Chateau Palmer Margaux, we discover the next generation of atomic clock … the key to how solar storms disrupt your cell phone … nano-gold particles that could make gasoline obsolete … and what NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has learned about how our solar system stacks up to others. Tune in, find out and, help us lift these boxes, will you? Guests: •   Chris Sorensen – Physicist, Kansas State University •   Anne Curtis – Senior research scientist, National Physical Laboratory, U.K. •   Jonathan Eisen – Evolutionary biologist, University of California, Davis •   Karel Schrijver – Solar physicist, Lockheed Martin, Advanced Technology Center •   Jonathan Fortney – Astronomer, University of California, Santa Cruz •   Sanjoy Som – Astrobiologist, NASA Ames Research Center

Alan Turing, born 23 June 1912, is famous for his key role in breaking German codes in World War II. But for mathematicians, his greatest work was on the invention of the computer. Alan Turing's brilliance at maths was spectacular. Aged 22, just a year after his graduation, he was elected a fellow of King's College Cambridge. And it was just a year after that, that he turned his attention to problems in the foundations of mathematics and ended up showing that a simple machine, set up to read and write numbers and to run a few basic functions, could in principle do all the things that are do-able in mathematics. His 'universal' machine was just a concept - a paper tape that could be read, interpreted and acted on robotically. But the concept was profound. World War II shortly afterwards took Turing's talents into other directions, but even while designing machines at Bletchley Park to break the German Enigma codes, he was wondering how much more a computing machine might do - play chess for example.And although the war work might have delayed Turing's academic work, it greatly accelerated progress in electronics, so that in 1945 he returned to his first love, creating a complete design for what he expected to be the world's first fully programmable computer, the National Physical Laboratory's ACE - the Automatic Computing Engine. In the end, beset by hesitation and bureaucratic delays, the ACE was overtaken by a rival team in Manchester, whose Small Scale Experimental Machine first ran on 21 June 1948. But the Manchester Baby as it became known, fulfilled the requirements laid down in Turing's seminal 1936 paper, and in a handful of instructions had the power to do any kind of maths or data processing, like a computer of today does. Turing soon joined the Manchester team, and again with remarkable prescience started work on artificial intelligence, wondering whether electronic machines could be programmed not just to do maths, but to think in the way human minds do - a hot topic of debate even now. Those explorations were cut short by his death in 1954, two years after he'd been prosecuted for his homosexuality. His death at a time when official secrecy still hid his code-breaking work, and when the history of computing was already being written meant that few appreciated his central role in today's dominant industry. But some enthusiasts hope they can write him back in where he belongs.In this second of two episodes devoted to Turing, the BBC's Roland Pease follows the events following Turing's design for the ACE machine at NPL, and the race against the Baby Computer in Manchester.(Image: Alan Turing. Credit: Bill Sanderson/Science Photo Library)

Alan Turing - born a hundred years ago on June 23 - is most famous for his key role in breaking German codes in World War II. But for mathematicians, his greatest work was on the invention of the computer. Discovery explores the legacy of the great man with a two-part special.Alan Turing's brilliance at maths was spectacular. Aged 22, just a year after his graduation, he was elected a fellow of King's College Cambridge. And it was just a year after that, that he turned his attention to problems in the foundations of mathematics and ended up showing that a simple machine, set up to read and write numbers and to run a few basic functions, could in principle do all the things that are doable in mathematics. His 'universal' machine was just a concept - a paper tape that could be read, interpreted and acted on robotically. But the concept was profound. World War II shortly afterwards took Turing's talents into other directions, but even while designing machines at Bletchley Park to break the German Enigma codes, he was wondering how much more a computing machine might do - play chess for example.And although the war work might have delayed Turing's academic work, it greatly accelerated progress in electronics, so that in 1945 he returned to his first love, creating a complete design for what he expected to be the world's first fully programmable computer, the National Physical Laboratory's ACE - the Automatic Computing Engine. In the end, beset by hesitation and bureaucratic delays, the ACE was overtaken by a rival team in Manchester, whose Small Scale Experimental Machine first ran on June 21 1948. But the Manchester Baby, as it became known, fulfilled the requirements laid down in Turing's seminal 1936 paper, and in a handful of instructions had the power to do any kind of maths, or data processing, like a computer of today does. Turing soon joined the Manchester team, and again with remarkable prescience started work on artificial intelligence, wondering whether electronic machines could be programmed not just to do maths, but to think in the way human minds do - a hot topic of debate even now. Those explorations were cut short by his suicide in 1954, following prosecution for his homosexuality. His death at a time when official secrecy still hid his code-breaking work, and when the history of computing was already being written meant that few appreciated his central role in today's dominant industry. But some enthusiasts hope they can write him back in where he belongs.In this first of two episodes devoted to Turing, producer Roland Pease follows the events leading up to Turing's design for the ACE machine at NPL.(Image: Alan Turing. Credit: Bill Sanderson/Science Photo Library)

In the mid-late 1960s, a team at the National Physical Laboratory invented the means by which all data is transferred across networks.This is the story of packet-switching by the men who pioneered it.Queen's Printer and Controller of HMSO. 2009Included audiovisual material reproduced with permission of the presenter.