Recently by Simon McDermott

The new IOP blog can now be found at www.iopblog.org

We recently came across a post on the Online Education Database's blog titled "Ten inspiring last lectures and commencement speeches everyone should watch" and feature a number of last lectures from a number of prominent scientists.

The idea of a Last Lecture rests on the idea that a professor will give the lecture as if it was his/her last opportunity to speak to the university community.

Speakers include Randy Pausch, a computer science professor, and Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple.

Visit this link for the full list: http://oedb.org/library/features/10_inspiring_lectures_and_speeches

During Anton Zeilinger's visit to the IOP in June we took the opportunity to talk to him about his life, his interests and motivations, and his views on the future of quantum theory and quantum information. Here's the interview:

Wired Magazine recently published a list of some of the best physics videos on the web. Featuring tesla coils, superconductors, raps and superfluids - the list proves that there's plenty of videos out there that will make many people go wow-wow-wow in wonder at what physics is all about. It's also a great resource for teachers looking for short video clips to impress the kids. Here's just a few of them:



Japanese astronaut Takao Doi proves that a boomerang will always return to the person who threw it -- even in outer space:


Superconducting levitation: A fantastic lesson about exotic materials and magnetism in just over six minutes:

Check out their user comments section also for other great videos that Wired didn't feature.

MyIOP has finally launched - you can check it out here: http://my.iop.org

To login you just need your membership login details, and this should take you to the MyIOP main page. From here you can interact with other Institute members, create any network of your choice, upload your own files - whether it be audio, video or text. It's the perfect way to find out what other members are doing, not only in the UK but around the world too.

On the first day more than 2,500 members logged in and updated their profile information - so if you haven't done that yet, make sure you do!

We've also created a number of short videos to show you have to use it. You can find these here: www.iop.org/Membership/tutorials/index.html

Remember though - it's your network- you decide how the network develops. If you've got any comments or suggestions just go to the Forums section of MyIOP and leave a comment.

In terms of the web, everyone's pretty busy putting the final touches to the soon to be launched IOP Member's Network - myIOP - and making sure that there are no glitches in the system when it goes live on the 23rd September.

One of the things that we'll hope to be doing is producing a number of short screencasts to show members how to use the system. Everything is very straightforward, so even the most technophobic out there shouldn't worry.

Having seen the system working, one of the things that impresses me is how easy it will be to connect to other member's not just regionally, but around the world too. Exciting times!

Today we've just had an interesting lunchtime talk by Adam Gibson who works in Optical Tomography at UCL's Medical Physics Department, who explained to us all the latest techniques used in medical imaging and how they all work together to help to diagnose and treat different conditions. Again, we hope to put the talk in the near future - so check back soon for the presentation!

I've also just come across CERN's Youtube channel - which is a great resource for any videos about what they're doing. No doubt you'll have come across some people out there who haven't got a clue what CERN is or what they're doing. Forward this video to them:

 

You can find Cern's Youtube channel by visiting our own Youtube channel and clicking on this link www.youtube.com/user/InstituteofPhysics and visiting our subscriptions.

Last week I went down to Cardiff to film the Eistedfodd where IOP Wales had a stand in the Science and Technology tent. It was my first visit to Cardiff and an Eistedfodd - I was pretty impressed, although the weather was a total let down - meaning many people were walking around soaked through to the skin and wandering around in wellies all day.

Nevertheless we managed to grab a few words with Angharad, the National Officer for Wales, who explained the reasons behind the IOP hosting a stand there. Here's the video:

 

 

We're still in the process of getting more videos on the iop.org site to help support any of our news items. Soon we'll be switching to Brightcove for most of our video content making it a lot easier for you to view all of our video content in one place. It will also make it a lot easier for you to embed and forward any of our content too.

IOP Publishing has also just started including video within their online magazines - one of the first to do this was Fibresystems.org. You can check out their interviews and video content here.  

As you may know, we're also improving our web-casting facilities at 76 Portland Place, so that in future we will be able to broadcast live any lectures or events that take place. As you can see, the guys are right in the middle of re-wiring both lecture halls with new audio and cameras:

 

 

We're hoping that many of the lectures that take place with the London branch will soon be available to all members where ever they are in the world! We'll keep you up to date as things progress!