A Rocket Lab Electron launched the latest in a series of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging satellites for a Japanese company Aug. 5.
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The company is positioning its existing missile defense portfolio as foundation for homeland shield
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Skyrora has become the first British company to secure a launch license from the U.K.’s Civil Aviation Authority, though a lack of available launch pads could push its first suborbital flight from SaxaVord Spaceport into 2026.
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NASA has formally ended a lunar orbiter smallsat mission more than five months after losing contact with it, another blow to the agency’s efforts at low-cost planetary missions.
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Rochester, N.Y./Ontario, N.Y. — Eoptic Inc. and Starris: Optimax Space Systems announce a partnering agreement to build end-to-end satellite imaging payloads that leverage the knowledge and space heritage of both […]
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Manchester — Military space operators worldwide need to more quickly identify aggressive actions on orbit and be more closely integrated with their counterparts in the air, land and sea domains if they hope to deter threats in the near future, a panel of space leaders said. The 1942 book “Victory Through Air Power” changed modern […]
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China completed a third launch of Guowang megaconstellation satellites in eight days Monday, marking the first such mission to involve a commercial satellite manufacturer.
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Dear Physics World readers, I’m going to let you in on a secret. I get anxious every time I see the word “networking” on a meeting or conference agenda. I’m nervous whether anyone will talk to me and – if they do – what I’ll say in reply. Will I end up stuck in a corner fiddling on my phone to make it seem like I want to join in but have something more important to do?
If you feel this way – or even if you don’t – please read on because I have some something important to say for anyone who attends or organizes scientific events.
Now, we all know there are many benefits to networking. It’s a good way to meet like-minded people, tell others about what you’re doing, and build a foundation for collaboration. Networking can also boost your professional and personal development – for example, by identifying new perspectives and challenges, finding a mentor, connecting with other organizations, or developing a tailor-made support system.
However, doing this effectively and efficiently is not necessarily easy. Networking can also soak up valuable time. It can create connections that lead nowhere. It can even be a hugely exploitative and one-sided affair where you find yourself under pressure to share personal and/or professional information that you didn’t intend to.
Like most things in life, what you get from networking depends on what you put in. To make the most of such events, try to think about how others are feeling in the same situation. Chances are that they will be a bit nervous and apprehensive about opening the conversation. So there’s no harm in you going first.
A good opening gambit is to briefly introduce yourself, say who you are, where you work and what you do, and seek similar information from the other person. Preparing a short “elevator pitch” about yourself makes it easier to start a conversation and reduces the need to think on the spot. (Fun fact: elevator pitch gets its name from US inventor Elisha Otis, who needed a concise way of explaining his device to catch a plummeting elevator.)
Make an effort to remember other people’s names. I am not brilliant at this and have found that double checking and using people’s names in conversation is a good way to commit them to memory. Some advance preparation also helps. If possible, study the attendee list, so you know who else might be there and where they’re from. Be yourself and try to be an active listener – listen to what others are saying and ask thoughtful questions.
Don’t feel the need to stick with one person or group of people for the whole the time. Five minutes or so is polite and then you can move on and mingle further. Obviously, if you are making a good connection then it’s worth spending a bit more time. But if you are genuinely engaged, making plans to follow up post event should be straightforward.
Decide the best way to share your contact details. It could be an iPhone air drop, taking a photo of someone’s name badge, sending an e-mail, or swapping business cards (seems a bit unecological these days). If there are people you want to meet, don’t be afraid to seek them out. It’s always a nice compliment to approach someone and say: “Ah, I was hoping to speak to you today; I’ve heard a lot about you.”
On the flip side, avoid hanging out with your cronies, by which I mean colleagues from the same company or organization or people you already know well. Set yourself a challenge to meet people you’ve never met before. Remember few of us like being left out so try to involve others in a conversation. That’s especially true if someone’s listening but not getting the chance to speak; think of a question to bring that person into the discussion.
Of course, if someone you meet doesn’t seem to be relevant to you, don’t be afraid to admit it. I’m sure they won’t be offended if you don’t follow up after the meeting. And to those who are already comfortable with networking, remember not to hog all the limelight and to encourage others to participate.
Let me end with a message to organizers, which – I’ll be honest – is the main reason I’m writing this article. I have recently attended conferences and events where the music is so loud that people, myself included, have gone with the smokers to the perishing cold outside simply so we can hear each other speak. Am I getting old or is this defeating the object of networking? Please, no more loud music!
I also urge event organizers to have places where people can connect, including tables and seating areas where you can put your plates and drinks down. There’s nothing worse than trying to talk while juggling cutlery to avoid a quiche collapsing down the front of your shirt. Buffets are always better than formal sit-down dinners as it provides more opportunity for people to mix. But remember that long queues for food can arise.
So what has networking ever done for me? Over the years the benefits have changed, but most recently I have met some great peer mentors, people whom I can share cross-industry experience and best practice with. And, if I hadn’t been at a certain Institute of Physics networking event last year and met Matin Durrani, the editor of Physics World, then I wouldn’t be writing this article for you today.
I’ll let you, though, be the judge of whether that was a success. [Editor’s note: it certainly was…]
The post Honor Powrie: ‘So what has networking ever done for me?’ appeared first on Physics World.
We should rethink how to send humans to Mars — a goal now getting much discussion. With proposed budgets and current technical difficulties in human spaceflight development making such a goal unrealistic, it may be time to change the focus from humans getting to Mars to sustainable exploration of Mars by humans. To that end, […]
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For decades, metal additive manufacturing (AM) has promised to revolutionize aerospace by offering lighter, more complex, and faster-to-produce components. But for much of its history, AM in the space sector […]
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Three European companies that have proposed combining their space businesses say they are still in discussions after missing a July deadline for a “go/no-go” decision on the merger.
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Evaluating electrocardiogram (ECG) traces using a new deep-learning model known as EchoNext looks set to save lives by flagging patients at high risk of structural heart disease (SHD) who might otherwise be missed.
SHD encompasses a range of conditions affecting millions worldwide, including heart failure and valvular heart disease. It is, however, currently underdiagnosed because the diagnostic test for SHD, an echocardiogram, is relatively expensive and complex and thus not routinely performed. Late diagnosis results in unnecessary deaths, reductions in patient quality-of-life and an additional burden on healthcare services. EchoNext could reduce these problems as it provides a way of determining which patients should be sent for an echocardiogram – ultrasound imaging that shows the valves and chambers and how the heart is beating – by analysing the inexpensive and commonly collected ECG traces that record electrical activity in the heart.
The EchoNext model was developed by researchers at Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in the US, led by Pierre Elias, assistant professor at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and medical director for artificial intelligence at NewYork-Presbyterian. EchoNext is a convolutional neural network, which uses the mathematical operation of convolution to generate information and make predictions. In this case, EchoNext scans through the ECG data in bite-sized segments, generating information about each segment and subsequently assigning it a numerical “weight”. From these values, the AI model then determines if a patient is showing markers of SHD and so requires an echocardiogram. EchoNext learns from retrospective data by checking the accuracy of its predictions, with more than 1.2 million ECG traces from 230,000 patients used in its initial training.
In their study, reported in Nature, the researchers describe running EchoNext on ECG data from 85,000 patients. The AI model identified 9% of those patients as being in the high-risk category for undiagnosed SHD, 55% of whom subsequently had their first echocardiogram. This resulted in a positive diagnosis in almost three-quarters of cases; double the rate of positivity normally seen in first-time echocardiograms.
EchoNext also outperformed 13 cardiologists in making diagnoses based on 3200 ECGs by correctly flagging 77% of structural heart problems while its human colleagues were only 64% accurate – a result so good that it shocked the researchers.
“The really challenging thing here was that from medical school I was taught that you can’t detect things like heart failure or valvular disease from an electrocardiogram. So we initially asked: would the model actually pick out patients with disease that we were missing? I have read more than 10,000 ECGs in my career and I can’t look at an ECG and see what an AI model is seeing,” enthuses Elias. “It’s able to pick up on different sets of patterns that are not necessarily perceptible to us.”
Elias instigated the EchoNext project after an upsetting incident in which he was unable to save a patient transferred from another hospital with critical valvular heart disease because they had been diagnosed too late. “You can’t take care of the patient you don’t know about. So we said: is there a way that we can do a better job with diagnoses?”
EchoNext is now undergoing a clinical trial, based in eight hospital emergency departments, that ends in 2026. “My number one priority is to produce the right clinical evidence that is necessary to prove this technology is safe and efficacious, can be widely adopted and has value in helping patients,” says Elias.
He stresses that it is still early days for all AI technologies, but that even in these trial phases EchoNext – which was recently designated a breakthrough technology by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – is already improving patient lives.
“It’s a really wonderful thing that every week we get to meet the patients that this helped. Our goal is for this to impact as many patients as possible over the next 12 months,” states Elias, adding that since EchoNext is successfully detecting 13 types of heart disease, a similar system should be useful in other healthcare domains too. “We think these kinds of AI-augmented biomarkers can become something that is routinely ordered and used as part of clinical practice,” he concludes.
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