Joe Winters is the IOP's Senior Press Officer

Today’s physics news: Neuroscience’s military applications, NASA on fission propulsion and maths teaching in the UK

Neuroscience could mean soldiers controlling weapons with minds A new Royal Society report, published today, says neuroscience breakthroughs could be harnessed by military and law enforcers.  The report by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, says that while the rapid advance of neuroscience is expected to benefit society and improve treatments for [...]

Swiss scientists prove durability of quantum network

Scientists and engineers have proven the worth of quantum cryptography in telecommunication networks by demonstrating its long-term effectiveness in a real-time network. Their international network, created in collaboration with ID Quantique and installed in the Geneva metropolitan area and crossing over to the site of CERN in France, ran for more than one-and-a-half years from [...]

Can neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light?

News reports today suggest that researchers working on the Opera Collaboration, an experiment designed to test the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations, have evidence which shows that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light. The experiment which involves sending neutrinos through the ground from CERN, Geneva, toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away in [...]

Job prospects sees physics Higher entrants increase

As the Scottish Qualifications Authority releases the results for 2011’s Higher examinations, the Institute of Physics has welcomed a 5% increase in the number of students choosing to take the physics course.   The number of students has risen from 9,014 in 2010 to 9,445 in 2011.  The Advanced Higher in Physics has also seen [...]

Today’s physics news: degree classifications could be thing of the past, a record-breaking quantum state, and more…

Scrapping the UK’s degree-class system Seven universities are set to accelerate plans to scrap the UK’s honours degree-classification system by replacing it with the US grade-point average model. Times Higher Education Academics to shape A-levels A Better Approach to Higher Education/Exam Board Interaction for Post-16 Qualifications has been released by Cambridge Assessment which suggests that [...]