| Peter Higgs, UCL and William Waldegrave | Jon Butterworth We're not just looking for his boson, we also gave Higgs a fellowship and explained his mechanism to William WaldegraveI won't make a habit of writing about my meals. But yesterday I had a very nice dinner, most notable to me for the presence of Professor Peter Higgs*. For several years I have been trying to find out whether his ideas on the origin of mass and the unification of fundamental forces are correct, so I think a mention is excusable.The cocktail party analogy of the Higgs mechanism, featuring Margaret Thatcher as a particle. Cartoon: CernHiggs was a lecturer at University College London a long time ago, before he moved to Edinburgh and wrote his famous papers. On this occasion we were recognising his huge contribution by awarding him an honorary degree. He is a charming and modest man. I last met him trying to explain to John Denham and Ian Pearson (who were government ministers at the time) why science was important.The lecturing connection and our search for the boson are not the only links between UCL and Higgs. In 1993 when the government was deciding whether or not the UK would participate in the Large Hadron Collider, the then science minister William Waldegrave challenged particle physicists to explain to him how the Higgs boson gave things mass. Many particle physicists responded, and the most quoted of the winning entries came from Professor (now emeritus) David Miller at UCL, who was also there last night. The same explanation was re-used this year by a friend and colleague (and dodgy banjo player) Bob Stanek from Argonne National Lab, in Morgan Freeman's "Through the Wormhole" programme, with President Obama substituted for Margaret Thatcher.I can't really explain it better than David. It is an analogy for some beautiful mathematics, and it misses out some important stuff of course, but it is accurate as far as it goes, and it is certainly the best explanation I have ever seen of the relationship (and difference) between the Higgs boson and the Higgs (or possibly BEHHGK) mechanism. In an amazing example of internet durability, David's full explanation is still available here. Enjoy.* Ok, actually I was just as excited to meet some of the others there too.Jon Butterworthguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Cat binner charged with animal cruelty A British woman who was caught on camera dumping a cat into a rubbish bin has been charged with causing unnecessary suffering to the animal. abc.net.au |
Claims to BP Fund Attract Scrutiny People are submitting questionable claims that range from grocery money to $20 billion, with little documentation. feeds.nytimes.com |
Lucy Mangan: They can't pull the wool over my eyes. Well, not any more Maybe it's late-onset teenage rebellion, or some kind of early pre-menopausal hormonal adjustment, but a new questioning spirit is stirring within meI am not one of life's natural interrogators. It wasn't the way I was brought up. In fact, looking back, I suspect there were North Korean children who questioned aspects of the regime under which they laboured more closely than I did. It never occurred to me to ask why we couldn't have a drink with soup1, why bumphled cushions couldn't be sat on before 2pm2, why butter was for grown-ups and margarine for children3 and why napkins had always to be folded so the motif was in the bottom left-hand corner4. (Answers, extracted much later in life, below.)However. Things change. Maybe it's late-onset teenage rebellion, maybe it's some kind of early pre-menopausal hormonal adjustment, but of late I have felt a certain new questioning spirit stir within me, a light but distinct scepticism colouring my vision and displacing some of the head-bobbing compliance that has led so many to dismiss me, rightly, as eight-tenths mud turtle.Two recent stories have encouraged me across the threshold into this new world. First, there was the article in the British Medical Journal on how drug companies tried to parlay a claim that 43% of women suffered from "sexual dysfunction" into a lucrative market for Viagra-like pills among the female population. I remember thinking, back in 1999, when the survey in question first appeared, that it seemed more likely – based on anecdotal evidence, common sense and possession of a vagina – that most of those women were, in fact, suffering from "crap shag syndrome". Due to the simpler and happier arrangement of their genitals, men can enjoy themselves by putting said genitals more or less anywhere, as Portnoy's Complaint famously testifies. Julie Burchill once wrote a column opining, in passing, that most men would have sex with mud if there was nothing else on offer. She got a letter from one reader the next day saying that in his adolescence he had done exactly that. Quod erat, possibly on a bit of boggy wasteland near you, demonstrandum.Until they are much older, wiser and/or forcibly instructed otherwise, men approach ladies' bits in the same gung-ho manner. Disappointment is bound to ensue. Such a survey makes you suspect that there are no women involved in science at all. Anyone who has been drinking with her girlfriends and heard the vastly differing sexual experiences that dwell within any one of them, let alone the group, will tell you there's no such thing as a genital attrition rate of 43%. It's all down to chemistry (in the metaphorical rather than pharmaceutical sense) and the dextrous or otherwise wielding of the penoid. I knew that. We all did. But an assertion came from an authoritative-looking group and I thought, "Oh well, there must be something in it." Fool.Ditto the news last week that women being "too posh to push" was a myth. Again, I always thought that one didn't stack up. I know a lot of women. I know quite a lot of doctors. And knowing what I did about them all, I never could visualise a situation in which they'd ask for and agree to (respectively) a caesarean in order to avoid the messy business of natural birth. But again, I presumed that somebody, somewhere knew better. And now, new research reveals, they don't. The vast, vast majority of C-sections are apparently done for medical reasons. That makes a lot more sense.Of course, eventually I shall have to question the new answers, but for now I'm going to concentrate on following up old questions. At last, I'll have a hobby. I'm going to start by asking my mother why the napkins always have to be folded so that the motif lies in the bottom left-hand corner. "Because that's the right way" will no longer suffice. It is a new dawn, and I need answers.1 Because soup's a drink and a meal. 2 To make the bumphling worthwhile. 3 Because of the war. 4 Because that's the right way.Medical researchSexual healthHealthRelationshipsLucy Manganguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Women's lung cancer rate catching up with men's Research shows dramatic increase in women diagnosed with UK's biggest killer, as they fail to heed no-smoking messageWomen have been urged to take anti-smoking messages more seriously after new research showed lung cancer rates rising among the female population but declining among men.Lung cancer has traditionally been an overwhelmingly male disease, but growing numbers of women are being diagnosed with what is the UK's biggest cancer killer. The trend has alarmed senior doctors, who are urging female smokers to quit and calling on the NHS to do more to warn women of the dangers of taking up the habit.Alexander Ives and Dr Julia Verne, of the NHS's South West Public Health Observatory, used data from the UK Association of Cancer Registries to identify women in England diagnosed with the disease between 1985 and 2006. They found that: "Lung cancer incidence for females increased significantly from 1985-87 (32.3 per 100,000) to 2004-06 (35.4 per 100,000)", a 10% rise. Most recent figures give the rate for men in England as 60 per 100,000.There is great variation between regions. For example, it is expected that by 2030 lung cancer rates in the south-west will be similar among men and women. That is partly because in the last 20 years the disease has soared by 30% among females from poor backgrounds in the region but remained steady among better-off women."There's a problem here with women," said Dr Paul Beckett, chair of the British Thoracic Society's lung cancer and mesothelioma specialist advisory group. "Women need to take on board that lung cancer is not a disease of men, it's a disease of smokers, and either not take up smoking in the first place or quit cigarettes as a matter of urgency."Lung cancer claims more Britons' lives than any other form of the disease. Every day about 108 people are diagnosed with it, and of those 95 die. In the 1950s men diagnosed with lung cancer outnumbered women by six to one.Data released last week by the Office of National Statistics showed that while heart and circulatory problems claim more men than anything else, cancers are now the commonest cause of death in women, accounting for 159 deaths per 100,000 annually. The historic popularity of smoking in Scotland means it has the UK's highest rates of lung cancer, while cancer generally claims 181 lives per 100,000 women north of the border.Other research to be unveiled at the thoracic society's winter conference this week will show that there is still a postcode lottery deciding which patients receive radiation or chemotherapy treatment, or undergo surgery.Lung cancerCancerMedical researchHealthSmokingNHSDenis Campbellguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |