Author Archives: Ian

Minor Tick Labels in Matplotlib

By Ian | Published: February 28, 2011

This is a slightly more technical post than usual but having figured out how to do something quite esoteric in Matplotlib I thought I would write it down to save me remembering. I have been making quite a few plots recently for a paper which should hit the arXiv very soon. The Python plotting package [...]

Posted in Tools | Tagged code, graphs, logplot, matplotlib, plotting, python | Leave a comment

Adam Christopherson awarded prestigious RAS fellowship!

By Ian | Published: February 17, 2011

Many congratulations to Adam Christopherson who has been awarded the prestigious Sir Norman Lockyer Fellowship of the Royal Astronomical Society. The three year fellowship is awarded “to enable an outstanding research worker to conduct a self-directed programme of research in any astronomical topic”. Adam joined Queen Mary as a PhD student a year after I [...]

Posted in QMUL | Tagged Adam Christopherson, fellowship, Nottingham, QMUL, RAS | Leave a comment

Science Cuts: One Day Left

By Ian | Published: October 19, 2010

The results of the Comprehensive Spending Review are being announced tomorrow and the feeling in the astrophysics community is increasingly pessimistic about the size of the cuts to research funding. With one day to go until the broad outline of the cuts is given, rumours are running wild that STFC will have to cut major [...]

Posted in Campaign, Research | Tagged budget, campaign, CSR, funding, Research, science cuts, scienceisvital, STFC, universities | Leave a comment

Inspire Beta: New Interface to SPIRES database

By Ian | Published: October 12, 2010

A colleague mentioned today that the front page of the venerable SPIRES database of High Energy Physics papers is now promoting the new Inspire interface which was announced a few years ago. The website for the current beta phase of the project is http://inspirebeta.net. It is unclear to me whether “Beta” is part of the [...]

Posted in arXiv, Research, Tools | Tagged arXiv, bibliography, bibtex, citations, inspire, inspirebeta, journals, spires, tools for academia | Leave a comment

Scientists on the march*

By Ian | Published: October 11, 2010

On Saturday many bemused tourists wandering around Westminster were treated to the unusual sight of scientists roaming free from their offices and labs to gather in protest at the government’s planned cuts to research funding. The rally was organised by Science is Vital who are also organising a petition and lobby of MPs which I [...]