Recently by Beth Taylor

We're delighted to have Brian Masara from the South African Institute of Physics visiting IOP this week.  Brian is the SAIP's first executive, and is doing a bit of research into how IOP works, to help him plan how he wants to develop SAIP.  It's really interesting to talk to someone with a different perspective on physics and institute-type issues.  We all envy Brian the chance to build up something valuable from scratch, though we know he is going to have to face a lot of challenges on the way.

The international part of my job seems to be dominating my workload this week.  We're making plans for the General Assembly of IUPAP (the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics) which meets in Japan in the middle of October. 

We've already submitted nominations for UK and Irish representatives on IUPAP's 18 odd commissions, and we're holding a meeting of the current representatives here at 76 Portland Place on 16 September to identify any concerns or suggestions for the General Assembly.

 Then as soon as I'm back from Japan I'm off to Mexico to talk about IOP at the Congress of Latin American Physical Societies on 25 October.  This is a really good opportunity to explain our new policy - agreed at the July Council meeting - of offering low-cost digital membership to physicists from developing countries.  Wherever possible we want to organise this in partnership with their national physical societies.  So the Latin American Congress will be an excellent place to start.

Welcome to the IOP's first blog - as some of my younger colleagues would say, we are at last joining the 21st century!

I'm just back in the office from a great visit to the Diamond Light Source yesterday. I thought I knew a lot about Diamond beforehand, but until you actually see the scale of the facility, and get a flavour of the range of experiments that users will be able to do there, you can't really appreciate what a success story it is. Gerd Materlik showed us round, and we were comparing notes about interpreting fuzzy photographs of X ray diffraction patterns in the 1970's, compared to Diamond with its robotic sample changing every few minutes, and automatic data collection. I'm pretty envious. And thanks to everyone who showed us what they were working on and explained it with such enthusiasm.

Now I've got to get back to clearing my desk before I go on holiday next week. The main thing I need to do is sort out arrangements for a discussion we're organising in Parliament in October, to remind policy makers about the spin-off benefits you can get from fundamental research programmes. I need to find a really good chair - someone who can be firm but fair, and is a recognisable name, like a radio or TV journalist. Let me know if you have any ideas - or would like to volunteer yourself!