Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #durhamuniversity, aggregated by home.social.
Accolade status for university’s Japanese exhibits
The Japanese collections at a university’s oriental museum have been awarded designated collection status by Arts Council England.…
#EuropeSays #Japan #JP #Barclay #BBCSounds #Chinese #DurhamUniversity #Egyptian #Japanese #Maeda #Museums #Oriental #OrientalMuseum #Supplied]"What #TheDurhamUniversity
https://www.europesays.com/japan/88213/
The day my world stood still [part one] : 7 October 1971 : Speech Day, Strode’s School, Egham
Thursdays meant a trip to the newsagent to purchase that week’s ‘New Musical Express’ and a dash back to my college room to read the issue cover-to-cover and then tackle the latest ‘NME crossword’. It was a weekly head-to-head contest between me and fellow Collingwood first-year student Keith Miller... [continues]
#Camberley #childhood #DurhamUniversity #GrantGoddard #Strodes
https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-day-my-world-stood-still-7-october.html
The day my world stood still [part one] : 7 October 1971 : Speech Day, Strode’s School, Egham
Thursdays meant a trip to the newsagent to purchase that week’s ‘New Musical Express’ and a dash back to my college room to read the issue cover-to-cover and then tackle the latest ‘NME crossword’. It was a weekly head-to-head contest between me and fellow Collingwood first-year student Keith Miller to prove our superior knowledge of popular music. I was no crossword fanatic. I had no competitive streak. However, I was sufficiently motivated to demonstrate there was one subject in which I had expertise, my university academic course and student life having quickly proven a major personal disappointment.
Both my friend Keith and I were fish out of water. We had both arrived at Durham University from state schools, me from Surrey and Keith from Essex. 95% of our fellow students had arrived from private schools and looked down their posh noses at us, just as they probably did their nannies, servants and chauffeurs [see blog]. We were invisible to them. We were not worth the time of day. They were loud, arrogant and domineering. We were the little people that they had been put on earth to lord it over. It must have proven a worse experience for Keith than for me. He appeared to be the only visible minority in our college of three hundred students. He was regularly ribbed by colleagues for having achieved a GCE certificate in ‘African Drumming’ at school.
Aside from my NME crossword years (1976-1978), I have never been a competitive person. In secondary school classes, I never shot my hand up in the air in order to prove to teachers or my mates how superior I must be. Graham Taylor, our Physical Education teacher, resented me because I had no interest in ‘winning’ at the ‘Games’ he forced upon us every Wednesday afternoon for seven years [see blog]. I tried to avoid his team sports. He once sent me to race in a Surrey County athletics championship where I demonstrated no interest in winning against other schools. My termly school reports criticised me for not participating more in class and not speaking up at the slightest opportunity. Was ‘taciturn’ an appropriate adjective for our headmaster to write about a boy whose results in many subjects were amongst the top five of his year of sixty students? Feeling under attack from such judgemental adults, I responded by engaging even less.
At the time, I failed to comprehend that my secondary school’s objective was not to turn its boy students into well rounded individuals, as experienced previously at my wonderful primary school on a Camberley council estate [see blog]. Although this grammar school operated within the state education sector, it emulated the British private school system, aiming to produce self-important ‘leaders’ who could confidently dominate any room they entered and shout loudly amongst their peers about their breeding and supposed superiority. In that endeavour, I was already a lost cause. It was not that I lacked self-confidence. One school report had even labelled me “a tower of strength”. It was just that I felt no need to wear my abilities loudly on my sleeve. Perhaps that was because my parents showed no interest in whether I performed well or badly at school. I was never called upon to show off at home that I was ‘clever’. Besides, I thought actions were supposed to speak louder than words. On that score, my term and exam results spoke for themselves. My motivation to do well came purely from inside me, not from my parents, family or peers.
At the end of my first year at Strode’s School, I was somewhat surprised to be awarded three School Prizes. As if to prove that British society was not founded on meritocracy, these book token prizes [see blog] were rarely given to students who had scored the highest examination or classwork results. Rather, they seemed to be determined by the whim of each subject teacher. This was proven by me being awarded the first-year ‘Religious Knowledge’ prize, despite having never read the Bible, having no belief in God and having attended church only once in my life [see blog]. During the first term of my second year, an event was held in the school hall to formally award boys the prizes they had won, dragging them onto the stage to receive a book token. It was called ‘Speech Day’ even though it was only the staff who made speeches. Parents were invited to watch their bright young things be acclaimed as ‘special’. That year, neither I nor my disinterested parents chose to attend.
One year later, things turned out different. I had been awarded no second-year School Prize. This outcome did not bother me. It merely confirmed my suspicion that the prize criteria were wholly subjective since my exam and classwork rankings in some subjects had improved over the previous year. Exactly how could I have achieved first place in Mathematics during the academic year but fail to be awarded that subject prize? Maybe the school was displeased with my demonstrated deficit of competitive spirit. Maybe me and my parents’ absence from last year’s ceremony had been grudgefully noted. Maybe the school had merely concluded that I was an ‘unworthy’ student as, during my remaining five years, I was awarded no prize.
The other difference that second year was that, despite my lack of prize, I attended Speech Day with my father. There was no compulsion for us to be present. I was confused that a father who took zero interest in his son’s education had unilaterally decided we both attend. I had explained to him that I was not receiving a prize that year but he remained firm. It felt very strange. This was the only occasion on which my father visited my school during my entire seven years there. He parked his ridiculously ostentatious American sports car [see blog] on the playground outside the main hall in which we sat together during a ceremony lasting several hours, me completely befuddled about why we were both there.
I had absolutely no inkling then that this one day would change the rest of my life. Not because of Speech Day. Not because of my school. Not because of me. Not even because of my father. Or even the silly car he had driven frighteningly fast and dangerously to and from the event. So what happened? The clue was in the absence of my mother that day at that event. Where was she and what was she doing?
To understand her absence, it proves necessary to go back in time thirteen years and 173 days to the occasion my mother gave birth to her first child in a semi-detached council house on the Old Dean Estate. I have no knowledge about the circumstances of that arrival because my mother refused to elucidate, except to accuse her husband of absenteeism because he was visiting a mistress due to give birth imminently to his child. Within months, my parents and their new baby were evicted for non-payment of rent, due to my father having unilaterally purchased an unaffordable car to impress his mistress. If my mother’s father had not bailed them out with accommodation, they would have become homeless.
Five years and 217 days later, my mother gave birth to her second child in Farnham Hospital, a facility Camberley (population 33,770) still lacked. During her absence, she entrusted childcare of her firstborn to her husband, despite him having never shown any paternal feelings for his offspring. Luckily, my mother’s parents now lived next door and ended up feeding and entertaining their grandson during his mother’s absence. Did her husband drive his son daily to the state infant school on Old Dean Estate he had started three months earlier, as asked? No, but he did warn his son not to admit this absenteeism to his mother when she returned a week later. Did he visit his wife in hospital? Not once. Was he busy with yet another mistress? Who knows.
Take a further leap forward in time to where my story started – Speech Day at my school in 1971 and the absence of my mother. Where was she? She was in hospital giving birth to her third child that day. My father would have done anything to avoid being alongside her in hospital, even if it meant him attending a function at my school for the first and last time. It proved convenient for him to be 21 miles and a 53-minute drive away from his wife on that day, armed with a suitably fatherly excuse, having demonstrated a sudden interest in my schooling. In retrospect, my two parents were already moving along divergent paths, that day merely widening the gulf between them and soon leading to the breakup of our now three-child family.
My mother had grown up during the War in a two-up, two-down suburban semi-detached house, sharing a bedroom with two older sisters in a loving working-class family. Together, the three children had shared homemade girly pastimes in an era before they had radio or television. They lived on a quiet residential street in a house with a large back garden, surviving the War with produce grown in their father’s well-maintained allotment at the top end of Barossa Road where he raised chickens. It had been an idyllic childhood, despite having to occasionally hide under the wooden dining table when the German bombers arrived to attack adjacent Sandhurst Royal Military Academy [see blog].
My father was raised in a household filled with anger and violence. His brutal father beat his wife and his two sons, for none of whom he ever demonstrated love or affection. He knocked his wife down the stairs which killed her. A significant part of my father’s attraction to my mother and her family was that they were everything that he was not. She had loving parents, she had attended grammar school, she was beautiful and radiated a youthful, confident optimism. He had left school at age fourteen with few prospects and was desperate to escape the hell of his parents’ home. When the couple eventually married, once my father returned from Army conscription to the Suez Canal, my mother’s father refused to attend their Registry Office ceremony, believing that his much-loved youngest daughter deserved a partner with better prospects from a less abusive family.
When my mother became pregnant the first time in 1957, she hoped to have a girl with whom she could relive all the girly activities she had enjoyed with her sisters. She was disappointed to give birth to a boy. She persevered anyway, teaching me to knit, to sew, to bake cakes in the kitchen with her and to cut out clothes patterns with pinking shears. She passed down to me her and her sisters’ 1930’s childhood books such as ‘Heidi’, ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘Anne of Green Gables’. But I showed no interest in dressing up, sculpting elaborate hair-do’s or playing with makeup. I was a disappointment. As the youngest of three sisters, she had never experienced a baby in her household. She had no idea how to raise a boy, so she left me to my own devices most of the time, failing to instruct me in personal hygiene [see blog] or the three R’s. Our home possessed few books, but I consumed cover-to-cover the huge piles of 1960’s women’s magazine titles my mother bought, teaching myself to read and write. Once old enough to walk out by myself, the nearby local municipal library in Knoll Road became my saviour [see blog].
Five years later, after my mother gave birth to another boy, her sense of disappointment was even more self-evident. She committed even less effort to raising him than she had her firstborn, allowing him to grow up barely literate or numerate. He ran away regularly from primary school, showed destructive/self-destructive, violent tendencies and barely spoke to his older brother, despite them sharing a bedroom for six years. Much later in life, he was treated for addiction and was divorced by his wife. In the words of the song [Epic EPC7632]:
“One child grows up to be somebody who just loves to learn.
Another child grows up to be somebody who just loves to burn.”
Eight years later, my mother unexpectedly became pregnant for a third time. I learned this from hearing my parents arguing at night in their bedroom adjacent to mine. My mother wanted to keep the baby, hoping finally to have the girl she had always desired (there now being an 87% chance). My father was insisting she have an abortion. The arguments became more heated. Soon my mother refused to leave the house for a week due to a huge bruise across the right side of her face. On another occasion, she locked herself in the toilet, only for her husband to kick a hole in the wooden toilet door. The door remained that way for the next decade as a visual reminder of his violent behaviour.
My mother eventually won the argument and her third child, a girl, was born whilst I was sat with my father in the school hall, enduring Speech Day presentations. He took no interest in his newly arrived daughter nor, by extension, in her mother. Approaching the age of forty, he was riding a middle-age wave of selfish indulgence, fuelled by cash profits from dodgy property deals he was making with his new business partner, a local second-hand car dealer not afraid to employ mafia-style pressure tactics [see blog]. Flush with money for the first time since leaving school, he could at last satisfy his craving for fast sports cars, dinner parties, restaurant meals and foreign holidays. He took me with him on a flimsy pretext to Florida for a week, only to abandon me alone in a motel whilst he practiced a playboy lifestyle [see blog].
Within months, after increasingly unexplained and lengthening absences, my father walked away from his family altogether to pursue the hedonistic lifestyle he had evidently desired all along [see blog]. I did not miss him because he had played almost no role in my upbringing. He no longer had to pretend publicly that he loved his family. Instead, he decided to do everything possible to cause us pain and suffering, just as his parents had done to each other, to him and his brother. He now took zero responsibility for his former family, fighting in the courts not to provide financial support. He broke into our house and stole everything of value, including the car he had given my mother and most of her jewellery [see blog]. Our lives would never be the same.
During the months leading up to his departure, my father had been regularly playing on the living room stereo a vinyl single he had bought by The Fifth Dimension called ‘One Less Bell to Answer’ [Bell BLL1137] whose lyrics included:
“I only know that since he left
My life’s so empty
Though I try to forget
It just can’t be done
Each time the doorbell rings
I still run
I don’t know how in the world
To stop thinking of him
‘Coz I still love him so
I end each day the way I start out
Crying my heart out”
Only in retrospect did I realise these words represented the pain my father had been planning for some time to inflict upon his wife. During the previous two decades, she had ignored his regular philandering. Now, having finally gained the daughter she had long desired, he was determined to make her pay. He secretly visited each of her relatives and friends to convince them that his wife had done something heinous that had forced him to leave her and their three children. Most ignored his pleas but some, notably my mother’s older sister Sheila, bought his lies and refused contact with my mother for decades [see blog]. The outcome was that my mother became isolated, lacking moral support she should have received from the people in Camberley she had known her entire life. Meanwhile, my father set up home on an affluent private estate with a runaway teenage bride who had lived only a few doors away from us [see blog].
My mother could not adjust to our changed circumstances. Until the day she died half a century later (or, more accurately, until the day my father died eight years before her), she continued to believe that her husband would one day knock on her front door and come back to her. He never did. Her father having disapproved so publicly of her marriage choice, she had tried to do everything to prove him wrong, even ignoring the mistresses my father had accumulated over many years and the unknown children he had sired. The remainder of my mother’s life was lived in a sad, darkened interregnum in which she awaited a resumption of her pre-1971 ‘happy family’ married lifestyle. It never happened.
Although her daughter was not yet one year old, my mother was forced to take two jobs to generate income to feed her family because her spiteful husband was paying nothing. Her full-time day job was as bookkeeper for British Car Auctions in Frimley. Her evening job was cleaning offices in Yorktown. Her retired parents, who stuck by her, looked after my baby sister during weekday daytimes. Year after year from that moment, all my mother seemed to do was work to try and make ends meet. Having lost her own car to her husband’s new mistress, she had to borrow her father’s 1963 Austin Cambridge car just to get to work. Fortunately, my eight-year-old brother’s school was within walking distance of our home.
Although she possessed the skills to administer her new single-parent life, the result of having previously been employed in bank and accounts offices, my mother now abdicated all responsibility for her affairs. Almost all of the mail she now received were bills, red reminders and threats of court action. Not only did she refuse to open them, she would stuff them all into a drawer in the living room, never to be retrieved. Out of sight, out of mind. Neither was this a temporary reaction to her struggling situation. Until the day she died half a century later, she refused to deal with any paperwork she received or was required to action. It was a blatant refusal to adapt to a life in which her household budgets and accounts needed to be balanced, paradoxically the very work she performed for her employer five days a week.
Not once did my mother ever ask me to take on the responsibility of managing her affairs. She could not have cared less. I realised that her strategy was irresponsible and would doubtless drive our family into disaster. Unopened letters stuffed into a drawer would inevitably lead to court actions, debt collectors and bailiffs. My mother would lose her jobs. We would lose our home. Me and my siblings would be placed into care. We would all have to change schools. Perhaps that was the exact outcome that my cruel father wanted. I was the oldest child of our family. I was clever. I had already received more formal education than any of our relatives. I was barely fourteen. By default, I had become the ‘head’ of the family, a role I had never wanted but which was now thrust upon me.
Within months of my attendance at my school’s Speech Day alongside my father, my whole world was turned upside down. My supposedly carefree teenage years and adolescence were taken away from me. I was suddenly a young adult. Never again would I observe my life as similar to that of my peers. I had responsibilities. Huge responsibilities. My own personal ambitions had to be subsumed to the struggle for mere survival of our family unit. There was nobody with whom I could share this responsibility or even explain the tasks I now had to do. My schoolfriends would never have understood. School staff were already unsympathetic towards me, having sent me home occasionally for wearing the wrong colour socks, the wrong colour shoes, slip-on’s instead of lace-ups and having hair touching my collar [see blog].
Events that took place on that one day, 7 October 1971, events over which I had no control would impact the entirety of my life. I did not realise it then. At the time, I thought I was simply doing ‘the right thing’ whilst those around me seemed hellbent on doing ‘the wrong thing’. I had no idea that a life of making small personal sacrifices as a teenager would lead to making bigger and bigger sacrifices as the years passed and end up stealing away so many opportunities to satisfy my own life.
After my father walked out and disowned his family, I could have just ignored the consequences and retreated into my own world, as my younger brother chose to do. But I was old enough and wise enough to understand the outcome of that route. Our circumstances would fall into irreparable disaster and we might all be split up and sent to children’s homes. Our mother might be imprisoned for unpaid debts. I decided to do my best to stop those disasters happening. Nobody else was there to help. It was me alone who had to try and keep us all together. So I tried.
[to be continued…]
[First published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-day-my-world-stood-still-7-october.html ]
#Camberley #childhood #DurhamUniversity #GrantGoddard #StrodeSSchool
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics
Wilson lines with endpoints in 3d CFT
Nabil Iqbal, Navonil Neogi
SciPost Phys. 21, 046 (2026)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.21.2.046
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics
Integrable models from 4d holomorphic BF theory
Lewis T. Cole, Ben Hoare
SciPost Phys. 21, 044 (2026)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.21.2.044
'I'm a playfulness expert - here's why grown ups need to have more fun'
'I'm a playfulness expert - here's why grown ups need to have more fun'
Milky Way flipped in collision with dwarf galaxy 10bn years ago, astronomers say https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jul/21/milky-way-disc-flip-collision-dwarf-galaxy-astronomers #Astronomy #Space #Science #DurhamUniversity #UkNews #EuropeanSpaceAgency
Milky Way flipped in collision with dwarf galaxy 10bn years ago, astronomers say
By Ian Sample Science editor
Durham University researchers find cataclysmic direct hit with Gaia Sausage sent Milky Way into its current position
#Astronomy #Space #Science #DurhamUniversity #UKnews #EuropeanSpaceAgency #TheGuardian #IanSampleScienceeditor
Vast Hidden Structure Discovered Under Miles of Ice in East Antarctica
Scientists have uncovered a gigantic hidden structure beneath East Antarctica, linking several enormous basins buried under miles of…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Science #Antarctica #DurhamUniversity #Geology
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/698601/
https://www.europesays.com/uk/1020585/ Vast Hidden Structure Discovered Under Miles of Ice in East Antarctica #Antarctica #DurhamUniversity #Geology #Science #UK #UnitedKingdom
Parents warned over baby carriers and slings after deaths
https://www.europesays.com/britain/42638/ Metal Detectorist Finds Huge Hoard That May Reveal the Lost Power of Britain’s Iron Age Queens #AncientBritain #archaeology #Brigantes #Britain #CelticArchaeology #CelticTribes #chariots #DurhamUniversity #HistoricEngland #IronAgeBritain #IronAgeHoard #MelsonbyHoard #MetalDetecting #NorthYorkshire #QueenCartimandua #Stanwick #YorkshireMuseum
Getting children to eat their vegetables starts in the womb, researchers suggest https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/may/13/children-eat-vegetables-starts-in-womb-researchers-suggest #Health #ParentsAndParenting #MedicalResearch #Children #Vegetables #Food #Family #LifeAndStyle #Science #DurhamUniversity #Society #HigherEducation #UniversityOfCambridge
These County Durham gardens are ‘the best in the North East’ to visit right now https://www.allforgardening.com/1765423/these-county-durham-gardens-are-the-best-in-the-north-east-to-visit-right-now/ #CottageGardens #DurhamCastle #DurhamUniversity #garden #google #NorthEast #ParkAndGardens #PublicGardens #RabyCastle #RoyalHorticulturalSociety #SecretGardens #VisitorFacilities #WildflowerMeadow
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics
Photoproduction in general-purpose event generators
Ilkka Helenius, Peter Meinzinger, Simon Plätzer, Peter Richardson
SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 23 (2026)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCommRep.23
#JyväskyläUniversity #HelsinkiIOP #DurhamUniversity #UZH #ViennaUniversity #UBG
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics #Codebases
NNLOJET: A parton-level event generator for jet cross sections at NNLO QCD accuracy
A. Huss et al.
Paper:
SciPost Phys. Codebases 69 (2026)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCodeb.69
NNLOJET-v1.0:
SciPost Phys. Codebases 69-r1.0 (2026)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCodeb.69-r1.0
#CERN #UZH #DurhamUniversity #ETHZurich #SDU #MPP #KIT #TUD #LisbonUniversity #LIP #BUW #GAU #INFNMilano_Bicocca #UNIMIB #JagiellonianUniversity #PSI
https://www.europesays.com/ie/451406/ Astronomers Create Entire Synthetic Universe “Indistinguishable” From Our Own #CarlosFrenk #DurhamUniversity #Éire #ExpandingUniverse #IE #Ireland #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope #Researchers #RoyalAstronomicalSociety #Science #Space #StandardCosmologicalModel
https://www.europesays.com/britain/7927/ Mum, 40, taking on ultramarathon from Durham to London then running London Marathon in memory of cousin lost to suicide #DurhamUniversity #London #LondonMarathon #MentalHealth #Mind #RuthWilson
Mum, 40, taking on ultramarathon from Durham to London then running London Marathon in memory of cousin lost to suicide
A woman who lost her cousin to suicide aged 32 has raised nearly £70,000 of her £100,000 target…
#UnitedKingdom #UK #Europe #EU #DurhamUniversity #GreatBritain #London #londonmarathon #mentalhealth #mind #RuthWilson
https://www.europesays.com/2901675/
https://www.europesays.com/2901675/ Mum, 40, taking on ultramarathon from Durham to London then running London Marathon in memory of cousin lost to suicide #DurhamUniversity #GreatBritain #London #LondonMarathon #MentalHealth #mind #RuthWilson #UnitedKingdom
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics Community Reports
Les Houches 2023 – physics at TeV colliders: Report on the Standard Model precision wishlist
Alexander Huss, Joey Huston, Stephen Jones, Mathieu Pellen, Raoul Röntsch
SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 21 (2026)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCommRep.21
#CERN #MSU #DurhamUniversity #FreiburgUniversity #UNIMI #INFNMilano
https://www.europesays.com/ie/379278/ Durham University to Lead UK Quantum Simulation Research Program #DurhamUniversity #Éire #IE #Ireland #QuantumSimulatorResearch #Science #SimonCornish #UKQuantumResearch
Yesterday we had a lot of fun at our first #Holi festival, invited by a good friend. I had my face painted and traditional henna on my hand. We all ended up covered in colour after the powder throw - still finding it everywhere! 😁 Beautiful day for it too. Thanks to staff at the Oriental Museum, Durham for a great day of activities. #Holi2026 #HoliFestival #DurhamUniversity
Woman felt 'dehumanised' after Musk's #Grok AI used to digitally remove her clothes
It has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos videos with nudity, sexualised content, it was previously accused of making a sexually explicit clip of Taylor Swift
Clare McGlynn, a law professor at #DurhamUniversity, said X or #Grok "could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to", adding they "appear to enjoy impunity"
#AIdeepfakes,
Laura Cress
Technology reporter
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics Community Reports
gg → ZH: Updated predictions at NLO QCD
Benjamin Campillo Aveleira, Long Chen, Joshua Davies, Giuseppe Degrassi, Pier Paolo Giardino, Ramona Gröber, Gudrun Heinrich, Stephen Jones, Matthias Kerner, Johannes Schlenk, Matthias Steinhauser, Marco Vitti
SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 16 (2026)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCommRep.16
#KIT #SDU #IFT #CSIC #UAM #UNIPD #INFNPadova #DurhamUniversity #UZH
#DSTShandong #COST #FundaciónCarmenSeveroOchoa #MUR
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics #Codebases
One-loop calculations in effective field theories with GoSam-3.0
Jens Braun, Benjamin Campillo, Gudrun Heinrich, Marius Höfer, Stephen P. Jones, Matthias Kerner, Jannis Lang, Vitaly Magerya
Paper:
SciPost Phys. Codebases 62 (2026)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCodeb.62
GoSam-v3:
SciPost Phys. Codebases 62-r3.0 (2026)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCodeb.62-r3.0
Archaeologists discover signs of Roman industrial hub at site in Sunderland https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/08/archaeology-roman-whetstone-offerton-sunderland-river-wear #Sunderland #Archaeology #RomanBritain #DurhamUniversity #UkNews #ManufacturingSector #History
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics Community Reports
Threshold improved ZH production at the LHC
Goutam Das, Chinmoy Dey, Meduri C. Kumar, Kajal Samanta
SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 14 (2025)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCommRep.14
https://www.europesays.com/ie/202455/ Scientists issue dire warning about looming threat to coastal communities: ‘Would likely generate’ #ChrisStokes #CoastalCommunities #communities #DurhamUniversity #Éire #GlobalIceLoss #GlobalTemperatures #IceLoss #IE #InternationalCryosphereClimate #Ireland #RisingSeas #Science
Scientists issue dire warning about looming threat to coastal communities: ‘Would likely generate’
A new international report warned that current temperature targets to reduce global overheating may not prevent catastrophic ice…
#NewsBeep #News #Science #CA #Canada #ChrisStokes #coastalcommunities #communities #DurhamUniversity #globaliceloss #globaltemperatures #iceloss #InternationalCryosphereClimate #risingseas
https://www.newsbeep.com/ca/309347/
Let your fingers do the walking … in the cash register : 1976-1978 : Kay, DSU Bookshop, Dunelm House, Durham University
FIRST YEAR. I had landed in a ‘one-bookshop town’. The lone academic book retailer in Durham City was bizarrely named ‘SPCK’, aka the ‘Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge’ founded in 1698 by English clergyman Thomas Bray. Naturally, it was packed with books about... [continues]
#DurhamUniversity #GrantGoddard #journalism #Palatinate #student
https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2025/11/let-your-fingers-do-walking-in-cash.html
#Antarctic #SouthersOcean #OceanCurrents #CircumpolarCurrent #OverturningCirculation #SeaIce #penguins #DurhamUniversity #COP30
#ICCI lecture: Basics on #Antarctica, and #climatechange consequences
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3jN-P27znM
#climate #ClimateScience #ClimateEmergency #ClimateCrisis #ClimateBreakdown #ClimateDisruption #globalWarming #globalHeating #ExtremeWeather #polycrisis #EcosystemCollapse #systemcollapse #ecocide #fossilfuels #Co2 #Co2Emissions #methane #GreenhouseGases #KeepitInTheGround
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics #Codebases
EERAD3 version 2: QCD corrections in hadronic colour-singlet decays
Benjamin Campillo Aveleira, Aude Gehrmann-De Ridder, Thomas Gehrmann, Nigel Glover, Gudrun Heinrich, Christian T. Preuss
Paper:
SciPost Phys. Codebases 59 (2025)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCodeb.59
EERAD3-v2.0:
SciPost Phys. Codebases 59-r2.0 (2025)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCodeb.59-r2.0
The Passage of Time
The start of this term has been so busy that I forgot that October 1st was the 40th anniversary of the day I officially started as a research student at the University of Sussex (1st October 1985). Reflecting on that event I realized with something approaching horror that 1985 is halfway between 1945 and 2025, so I started my PhD DPhil closer in time to the end of World War 2 than to today. Yikes!
Before travelling to the Sussex to embark on my research degree, I spent a couple of weeks at a summer school for all the new Astronomy PhD students. These are still held annually, although they are now just a week long instead of a fortnight. They are now sponsored by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) but the one I attended was before that came into being, and even before its predecessor, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research PPARC. The Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) summer school I went to was held at Durham University; we all stayed in St Mary’s College, just over the road from the Physics Department. I remember it well and indeed still have the notes I took during the lectures there.
Another difference in those days was that we got our stipends paid by cheque – every three months, if I remember correctly – directly from the Research Council. Nowadays STFC gives block grants to universities and other research institutions, who then pay the students.
Anyway, here is the summer school conference picture:
Unfortunately (for such a rare and valuable document) it is slightly damaged on the left -hand side. I leave it up to my readers to identify the people in this group who are still in the business 40 years later. I can see quite a few – Moira Jardine, Alan Fitzsimmons, Melvyn Hoare, Jon Loveday and Alastair Edge, among others! A more complete list can be found here.
I don’t think I’m the only member of this group who is thinking of retiring fairly soon. This post was occasioned by the 40th anniversary of the start of my DPhil; my plan is to retire 40 years after the date of the completion of my thesis. That’s less than three years from now…
"What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. "
from Little Gidding V, Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
#DurhamUniversity #PhDStudents #PPARC #SERC #STFC #SussexUniversity
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So much for the Oxford v Cambridge boat race, and the “prestigious universities”. Bring on a new contest between St. Andrew’s and the LSE.
Oxford University pushed out of top three in UK university rankings for first time https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2025-09-19/oxford-university-pushed-out-of-top-three-uk-university-ranking-for-first-time?utm_source=NewsApp&utm_medium=SocialShare
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics Community Reports
State-of-the-art cross sections for t tbar H: NNLO predictions matched with NNLL resummation and EW corrections
Roger Balsach et al.
SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 10 (2025)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCommRep.10
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🚀🔭 Breaking news: The universe isn't planning a cosmic car crash after all, so put away your intergalactic insurance forms! Meanwhile, Durham University is busy redefining "study" by listing everything except actual research. 📚😅
https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/physics/news/new-study-casts-doubt-on-the-likelihood-of-milky-way-collision-with-andromeda/ #cosmicnews #intergalacticinsurance #DurhamUniversity #studyhumor #astrophysics #HackerNews #ngated
Students! Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved : 1976 : Durham University
It is a sad fact that, alongside other by-products of the affluent society in which we live such as the National Health Service and Unemployment Benefit, education has come to be regarded as a natural phenomenon that is in constant and seemingly endless supply. Perhaps our forefathers would not have regarded the existence of ‘free... [continues]
#DurhamUniversity #GrantGoddard #Palatinate #student
https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2025/05/students-get-up-get-into-it-get.html
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics
WZW terms without anomalies: Generalised symmetries in chiral Lagrangians
Joe Davighi, Nakarin Lohitsiri
SciPost Phys. 17, 168 (2024)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.17.6.168
Students at Durham University have been supporting each other to add content to the Wikimedia projects. They're covering topics about North-East England, while also catering to their personal interests. The project has a new lead as it continues to grow 👏
#DurhamUniversity #student #volunteering #academia #wikipedia
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Robust independent validation of experiment and theory: Rivet version 4 release note
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SciPost Phys. Codebases 36 (2024)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysCodeb.36
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics
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SciPost Phys. 17, 102 (2024)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.17.4.102
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics
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SciPost Phys. 17, 100 (2024)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.17.4.100
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics
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SciPost Phys. 17, 085 (2024)
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New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics
Non-invertible symmetries and higher representation theory II
Thomas Bartsch, Mathew Bullimore, Andrea E. V. Ferrari, Jamie Pearson
SciPost Phys. 17, 067 (2024)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.17.2.067
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics
Hydrodynamic fluctuations and topological susceptibility in chiral magnetohydrodynamics
Arpit Das, Nabil Iqbal, Napat Poovuttikul
SciPost Phys. 17, 042 (2024)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.17.2.042
New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics
Aspects of categorical symmetries from branes: SymTFTs and generalized charges
Fabio Apruzzi, Federico Bonetti, Dewi S.W. Gould, Sakura Schäfer-Nameki
SciPost Phys. 17, 025 (2024)
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