He played crucial leadership roles in many projects, particularly in physics related development issues. He was Vice President of the IUPAP, and Chair of the C13 Commission on Physics for Development. He was primarily responsible for bringing to South Africa the iconic ‘Physics for Sustainable Development’ conference in 2005[2] as a part of the International Year of Physics. This conference cast a distinct spotlight on physics as an instrument for development in Africa.

We would like to specifically mention his tremendous contribution to two extremely important projects of the Institute. The first was the highly successful Shaping the Future of Physics, where he contributed to the design of the project and also served as chair of the Management and Policy Committee that oversaw the international review in 2003.

Professor Zingu began his physics career at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). He was a materials physicist, and with his collaborators at Cornell University invented a new method to study atomic diffusion by transmission electron microscopy[4]. Later he studied diffusion phase transitions in thin films due to induced thermal stress[5]. He had a period of employment at Turfloop, QwaQwa Campus, then as Head of the Physics Department and later Dean of Basic Sciences (1990-1993) at MEDUNSA. He later returned to UWC and served as Head of the Physics Department (1994-1998), and finally Vice Rector of Mangosuthu University of Technology in Umlazi, Durban until the time of his retirement.

Edmund was a pioneer for physics in post-apartheid South Africa, a visionary, a tireless campaigner for strengthening the discipline of physics* and, above all, a true gentleman. His leadership and contributions were characterized by sensitivity, perceptiveness, vision, ethics, wisdom, global standards and great industry. He will be sorely missed.

Martin Ebner, a doctoral student from the group headed by Vanessa Wood, a professor at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, has been examining the issue of the discharging and charging speed. In order to understand what influences it, he has been researching the microstructure of the electrodes of commercially available and home-made lithium ion batteries. Knowing this also enables us to understand the charging and discharging mechanism better and endeavour to produce optimised electrodes with more efficient batteries in mind.

The experimental breakthrough for studying the structural evolution of organic transistor layers was reported by a joint team of scientists from Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), including first author and CHESS staff scientist Detlef Smilgies. Other collaborators were from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and Stanford University.

Their paper, “Look fast – Crystallization of conjugated molecules during solution shearing probed in-situ and in real time by X-ray scattering,” was featured on the March cover of the journal Physica Status Solidi – Rapid Research Letters (Vol. 7, Issue 3).

The coating procedure, called solution shearing, is like the buttering of a slice of toast, Smilgies said: The knife and toast need to be well controlled, as well as the speed that the butter is spread. Their actual materials were a solution of a semiconducting molecule called TIPS pentacene, a silicon wafer kept at a specific temperature for the substrate, and the highly polished edge of a second silicon wafer acting as the knife.

The most-studied fullerene is C₆₀, a roughly spherical molecular shell made of 60 carbon atoms. Two years ago researchers used organic chemistry “surgery” to open C₆₀, insert a water molecule, and seal the incision, creating a structure designated H₂O@C₆₀.

Baoxing Xu and Xi Chen of Columbia University in New York City have now used computer simulations to explore the properties of this structure. Their simulation captures all of the interactions between the carbon atoms and the three atoms of the water molecule. The researchers treated the C₆₀ as a rigid structure, undistorted by its cargo, because the 1-nanometer-diameter cage is so much larger than H₂O. They then placed the simulated H₂O@C₆₀ inside an 8.2-nanometer-diameter carbon nanotube.

The Kepler-62 system has five planets; 62b, 62c, 62d, 62e and 62f. The Kepler-69 system has two planets; 69b and 69c. Kepler-62e, 62f and 69c are the super-Earth-sized planets.

Two of the newly discovered planets orbit a star smaller and cooler than the sun. Kepler-62f is only 40 percent larger than Earth, making it the exoplanet closest to the size of our planet known in the habitable zone of another star. Kepler-62f is likely to have a rocky composition. Kepler-62e, orbits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is roughly 60 percent larger than Earth.

The third planet, Kepler-69c, is 70 percent larger than the size of Earth, and orbits in the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. Astronomers are uncertain about the composition of Kepler-69c, but its orbit of 242 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our neighboring planet Venus.

Scientists do not know whether life could exist on the newfound planets, but their discovery signals we are another step closer to finding a world similar to Earth around a star like our sun.

Various experiments worldwide have proven this fundament of quantum theory. However, up to now last doubts could not be ruled out completely. Advocates of “local realism,” by which the classical world is governed, refer to several “loopholes” which have been identified in order to save their world view. Now, physicists from the group of Prof. Anton Zeilinger at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Vienna, Austria, have closed an important loophole in photonic experiments which use quantum entanglement to rule out a local realistic explanation of nature.

The work got theoretical support from Dr. Johannes Kofler from the group of Prof. Ignacio Cirac at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany, and experimental assistance from researchers at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig Germany, as well as the National Institute of Standards (NIST) in Boulder, USA. The results are published this week in Nature.

For today, post a marathon that's existed since 1897, I know nothing else to say...for the sad deaths and injury of innocents. Donne seemed appropriate, as we lose forever collectively our innocence.

"In 1945, Jackie played one season in the Negro Baseball League, traveling all over the Midwest with the Kansas City Monarchs. But greater challenges and achievements were in store for him. In 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey approached Jackie about joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Major Leagues had not had an African-American player since 1889, when baseball became segregated. When Jackie first donned a Brooklyn Dodger uniform, he pioneered the integration of professional athletics in America. By breaking the color barrier in baseball, the nation's preeminent sport, he courageously challenged the deeply rooted custom of racial segregation in both the North and the South."

"As the youngest and only son of four children, Edward Alexander Bouchet was born to William and Susan (Cooley) Bouchet in New Haven on September 15, 1852. During the 1850s and 1860s New Haven had only three schools that black children could attend. Edward was enrolled in the Artisan Street Colored School, a small (only thirty seats), ungraded school with one teacher, Sarah Wilson, who played a crucial role in nurturing Bouchet's academic abilities and his desire to learn. He attended the New Haven High School (1866-1868).

As a SyFy novel, it's not for the faint-of-heart, nor slight of attention span, as in you really need to know your Trek Universe. Without giving up too much of the plot, it does raise some interesting caveats: it points out in its fictional realm authoritarians typically want control over others, and fight any change - Warp Drive or 1st Contact, even the kind that insures the survival of the species. This Zephram Cochrane is more like the one in TOS versus the TNG/Borg Paramount version. It's kind of like reading The Pursuit of Happyness, and then seeing the movie (I did). As in "Pursuit," both remarkably different from each other, but each deeply satisfying in their own right.

How does it relate to this post? One way is the well worn cliche "life imitates art," but the other that concerned me as I flew through this enjoyable novel: what forces would try to resist this next "giant leap for mankind?" If I've learned anything, science is political, and our current in-species prejudices could quickly (and disastrously, I'm afraid) become xenophobia.

I'd love to live to see this happen. Wars are either fought over limited resources, or in our nature. Initially, a Moon or Mars base, then further out like Titan, a candidate for microbial extraterrestrial life as well as Terraforming; also a base of operations further from the sun's gravity well, like growing crystals on the ISS in Earth orbit could lead to physics experiments essentially macro scale versions of what's proposed above.

The world (and the universe) would indeed become a very small place.

Thank you Dr. Mae Jemison and Dr. Miguel Alcubierre.

Wine grape production's sensitivity to climate makes it a good test case for what could happen over the next several decades. And the land suitable for viticulture in current major wine producing regions could be reduced by 20% to 70% by 2050, depending on the amount of greenhouse gases produced, the researchers said this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

An increasingly affluent global population is likely to create more demand for wine and ensure that wine grapes will continue to be grown in current areas as much as possible and be grown in new areas as well, the researchers said.

The strategies elucidated are not just applicable for graduate school, but the struggle for education and therefore true freedom, a brighter future and self-empowerment ("knowledge is power"), which is beyond one particular subject, or group. I found it enlightening; I hope you do as well, and I sincerely hope it helps inspire action and the next leaders in science.