The Chinese particle physicist Chen-Ning Yang died on 18 October at the age of 103. Yang shared half of the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics with Tsung-Dao Lee for their theoretical work that overturned the notion that parity is conserved in the weak force – one of the four fundamental forces of nature.

Born on 22 September 1922 in Hefei, China, Yang competed a BSc at the National Southwest Associated University in Kunming in 1942. After finishing an MSc in statistical physics at Tsinghua University two years later, in 1945 he moved to the University of Chicago in the US as part of a government-sponsored programme. He received his PhD in physics in 1948 working under the guidance of Edward Teller.

In 1949 Yang moved to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he made pioneering contributions to quantum field theory, working together with Robert Mills. In 1953 they proposed the Yang-Mills theory, which became a cornerstone of the Standard Model of particle physics.

The ‘Wu experiment’

It was also at Princeton where Yang began a fruitful collaboration with Lee, who died last year aged 97. Their work on parity – a property of elementary particles that expresses their behaviour upon reflection in a mirror – led to the duo winning the Nobel prize.

In the early 1950s, physicists had been puzzled by the decays of two subatomic particles, known as tau and theta, which are identical except that the tau decays into three pions with a net parity of -1, while a theta particle decays into two pions with a net parity of +1.

There were two possible explanations: either the tau and theta are different particles or that parity in the weak interaction is not conserved with Yang and Lee proposing various ways to test their ideas (Phys. Rev. 104 254).

This “parity violation” was later proved experimentally by, among others, Chien-Shiung Wu at Columbia University. She carried out an experiment based on the radioactive decay of unstable cobalt-60 nuclei into nickel-60 – what became known as the “Wu experiment”. For their work, Yang, who was 35 at the time, shared the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics with Lee.

Influential physicist

In 1965 Yang moved to Stony Brook University, becoming the first director of the newly founded Institute for Theoretical Physics, which is now known as the C N Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics. During this time he also contributed to advancing science and education in China, setting up the Committee on Educational Exchange with China – a programme that has sponsored some 100 Chinese scholars to study in the US.

In 1997, Yang returned to Beijing where he became an honorary director of the Centre for Advanced Study at Tsinghua University. He then retired from Stony Brook in 1999, becoming a professor at Tsinghua University. During his time in the US, Yang obtained US citizenship, but renounced it in 2015.

More recently, Yang was involved in debates over whether China should build the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) – a huge 100 km circumference underground collider that would study the Higgs boson in unprecedented detail and be a successor to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Yang took a sceptical view calling it “inappropriate” for a developing country that is still struggling with “more acute issues like economic development and environment protection”.

Yang also expressed concern that the science performed on the CEPC is just “guess” work and without guaranteed results. “I am not against the future of high-energy physics, but the timing is really bad for China to build such a super collider,” he noted in 2016. “Even if they see something with the machine, it’s not going to benefit the life of Chinese people any sooner.”

Lasting legacy

As well as the Nobel prize, Yang won many other awards such as the US National Medal of Science in 1986, the Einstein Medal in 1995, which is presented by the Albert Einstein Society in Bern, and the American Physical Society’s Lars Onsager Prize in 1990.

“The world has lost one of the most influential physicists of the modern era,” noted Stony Brook president Andrea Goldsmith in a statement. “His legacy will continue through his transformational impact on the field of physics and through the many colleagues and students influenced by his teaching, scholarship and mentorship.”

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Researchers in the US have discovered that a tiny jumping worm uses static electricity to increase the chances of attaching to its unsuspecting prey.

The parasitic roundworm Steinernema carpocapsae, which live in soil, are already known to leap some 25 times their body length into the air. They do this by curling into a loop and springing in the air, rotating hundreds of times a second.

If the nematode lands successfully, it releases bacteria that kills the insect within a couple of days upon which the worm feasts and lays its eggs. At the same time, if it fails to attach to a host then it faces death itself.

While static electricity plays a role in how some non-parasitic nematodes detach from large insects, little is known whether static helps their parasitic counterparts to attach to an insect.

To investigate, researchers are Emory University and the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a series of experiments, in which they used high-speed microscopy techniques to film the worms as they leapt onto a fruit fly.

They did this by tethering a fly with a copper wire that was connected to a high-voltage power supply.

They found that a charge of a few hundred volts – similar to that generated in the wild by an insect’s wings rubbing against ions in the air – fosters a negative charge on the worm, creating an attractive force with the positively charged fly.

Carrying out simulations of the worm jumps, they found that without any electrostatics, only 1 in 19 worm trajectories successfully reached their target. The greater the voltage, however, the greater the chance of landing. For 880 V, for example, the probability was 80%.

The team also carried out experiments using a wind tunnel, finding that the presence of wind helped the nematodes drift and this also increased their chances of attaching to the insect.

“Using physics, we learned something new and interesting about an adaptive strategy in an organism,” notes Emory physicist Ranjiangshang Ran. “We’re helping to pioneer the emerging field of electrostatic ecology.”

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The theoretical physicist Michael Berry from the University of Bristol has won the 2025 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize for his “profound contributions across mathematical and theoretical physics in a career spanning over 60 years”. Presented by the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World, the international award is given annually for “world-leading contributions to physics by an individual of any nationality”.

Born in 1941 in Surrey, UK, Berry earned a BSc in physics from the University of Exeter in 1962 and a PhD from the University of St Andrews in 1965. He then moved to Bristol, where he has remained for the rest of his career.

Berry is best known for his work in the 1980s in which he showed that, under certain conditions, quantum systems can acquire what is known as a geometric phase. He was studying quantum systems in which the Hamiltonian describing the system is slowly changed so that it eventually returns to its initial form.

Berry showed that the adiabatic theorem widely used to describe such systems was incomplete and that a system acquires a phase factor that depends on the path followed, but not on the rate at which the Hamiltonian is changed. This geometric phase factor is now known as the Berry phase.

Over his career Berry, has written some 500 papers across a wide number of topics. In physics, Berry’s ideas have applications in condensed matter, quantum information and high-energy physics, as well as optics, nonlinear dynamics, and atomic and molecular physics. In mathematics, meanwhile, his work forms the basis for research in analysis, geometry and number theory.

Berry told Physics World that the award is “unexpected recognition for six decades of obsessive scribbling…creating physics by seeking ‘claritons’ – elementary particles of sudden understanding – and evading ‘anticlaritons’ that annihilate them” as well as “getting insights into nature’s physics” such as studying tidal bores, tsunamis, rainbows and “polarised light in the blue sky”.

Over the years, Berry has won a wide number of other honours, including the IOP’s Dirac Medal and the Royal Medal from the Royal Society, both awarded in 1990. He was also given the Wolf Prize for Physics in 1998 and the 2014 Lorentz Medal from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1996 he received a knighthood for his services to science.

Berry will also be a speaker at the IOP’s International Year of Quantum celebrations on 4 November.

Celebrating success

Berry’s latest honour forms part of the IOP’s wider 2025 awards, which recognize everyone from early-career scientists and teachers to technicians and subject specialists. Other winners include Julia Yeomans, who receives the Dirac Medal and Prize for her work highlighting the relevance of active physics to living matter.

Lok Yiu Wu, meanwhile, receives Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal and Prize for her work on the development of a novel magnetic radical filter device, and for ongoing support of women and underrepresented groups in physics.

In a statement, IOP president Michele Dougherty congratulated all the winners. “It is becoming more obvious that the opportunities generated by a career in physics are many and varied – and the potential our science has to transform our society and economy in the modern world is huge,” says Dougherty. “I hope our winners appreciate they are playing an important role in this community, and know how proud we are to celebrate their successes.”

The full list of 2025 award winners is available here.

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Researchers in the US have studied the physics of how cutting onions can produce a tear-jerking reaction.

While it is known that volatile chemicals released from the onion – called propanethial S-oxide – irritate the nerves in the cornea to produce tears, how such chemical-laden droplets reach the eyes and whether they are influenced by the knife or cutting technique remain less clear.

To investigate, Sunghwan Jung from Cornell University and colleagues built a guillotine-like apparatus and used high-speed video to observe the droplets released from onions as they were cut by steel blades.

“No one had visualized or quantified this process,” Jung told Physics World. “That curiosity led us to explore the mechanics of droplet ejection during onion cutting using high-speed imaging and strain mapping.”

They found that droplets, which can reach up to 60 cm high, were released in two stages – the first being a fast mist-like outburst that was followed by threads of liquid fragmenting into many droplets.

The most energetic droplets were released during the initial contact between the blade and the onion’s skin.

When they began varying the sharpness of the blade and the cutting speed, they discovered that a greater number of droplets were released by blunter blades and faster cutting speeds.

“That was even more surprising,” notes Jung. “Blunter blades and faster cuts – up to 40 m/s – produced significantly more droplets with higher kinetic energy.”

Another surprise was that refrigerating the onions prior to cutting also produced an increased number of droplets of similar velocity, compared to unchilled vegetables.

So if you want to reduce chances of welling up when making dinner, sharpen your knives, cut slowly and perhaps don’t keep the bulbs in the fridge.

The researchers say there are many more layers to the work and now plan to study how different onion varieties respond to cutting as well as how cutting could influence the spread of airborne pathogens such as salmonella.

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Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize for Chemistry “for developing metal-organic frameworks”.

The award includes a SEK 11m prize ($1.2m), which is shared equally by the winners. The prize will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December.

The prize was announced this morning by members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. Speaking on the phone during the press conference, Kitagawa noted that he was “deeply honoured and delighted” that his research had been recognized. 

A new framework

Beginning in the late 1980s and for the next couple of decades, the trio, who are all trained chemists, developed a new form of molecular architecture in that metal ions function as cornerstones that are linked by long organic carbon-based molecules.

Together, the metal ions and molecules form crystals that contain large cavities through which gases and other chemicals can flow.

“It’s a little like Hermione’s handbag – small on the outside, but very large on the inside,” noted Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Yet the trio had to overcome several challenges before they could be used such as making them stable and flexible, which Kitagawa noted “was very tough”.

These porous materials are now called metal-organic frameworks (MOF). By varying the building blocks used in the MOFs, researchers can design them to capture and store specific substances as well as drive chemical reactions or conduct electricity.

“Metal-organic frameworks have enormous potential, bringing previously unforeseen opportunities for custom-made materials with new functions,” added Linke.

Following the laureates’ work, chemists have built tens of thousands of different MOFs.

3D MOFs are an important class of materials that could be used in applications as diverse as sensing, gas storage, catalysis and optoelectronics.  

MOFs are now able to capture water from air in the desert, sequester carbon dioxide from industry effluents, store hydrogen gas, recover rare-earth metals from waste, break down oil contamination as well as extract “forever chemicals” such as PFAS from water.

“My dream is to capture air and to separate air into CO₂, oxygen and water and convert them to usable materials using renewable energy,” noted Kitagawa. 

Their 2D versions might even be used as flexible material platforms to realize exotic quantum phases, such as topological and anomalous quantum Hall insulators.

Life scientific

Kitagawa was born in 1951 in Kyoto, Japan. He obtained a PhD from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1979 and then held positions at Kindai University before joining Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1992. He then joined Kyoto University in 1998 where he is currently based.

Robson was born in 1937 in Glusburn, UK. He obtained a PhD from University of Oxford in 1962. After postdoc positions at California Institute of Technology and Stanford University, in 1966 he moved to the University of Melbourne where he remained for the rest of his career.

Yaghi was born in 1965 in Amman, Jordan. He obtained a PhD from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, US, in 1990. He then held positions at Arizona State University, the University of Michigan and the University of California, Los Angeles, before joining the University of California, Berkeley, in 2012 where he is currently based.

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George Smoot, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2006 for his studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), died on 18 September at the age of 80. Smoot’s work on the blackbody form and anisotropy of the CMB radiation provided strong evidence that the universe was created in a massive explosion called the Big Bang.

Born in Yukon, Florida on 20 February 1945, Smoot studied mathematics and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating with a dual major. He then completed a PhD in particle physics at MIT in 1970.

Smoot then moved to the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he began working on the NASA-funded High Altitude Particle Physics Experiment. The instrument was designed to search for particle interactions at higher energies than accelerators could produce at the time.

After devising other balloon-borne detectors to search for antimatter, in 1973 Smoot switched to studying the CMB, which had been discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1964.

Smoot and colleagues conceived several experiments to detect possible variations in the CMB, which at the time was thought to be isotropic. This included using a differential microwave radiometer (DMR) aboard a Lockheed U-2 plane that could measure differences in temperature as small as one-thousandth of a degree in the microwave radiation between two points.

Smoot then proposed a space-based mission to measure possible anisotropies. The probe eventually became NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which went into space in 1989 containing a DMR instrument that Smoot led.

Following two years of observations, in April 1992 the COBE team announced that the CMB still bore the black-body signature, albeit at a much lower temperature (2.7 K) due to the ongoing expansion of the universe. The COBE researchers also announced that they had detected tiny temperature fluctuations – as small as one part in 100 000 – in the CMB.

For the work, Smoot together with John Mather who worked on another instrument aboard COBE, shared the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”.

After COBE, Smoot led another balloon experiment – the Millimeter Anisotropy eXperiment IMaging Array – that refined the measurements of the anisotropies of the CMB.

Smoot also collaborated with the journalist Keay Davidson on the 1993 book Wrinkles in Time, which chronicled efforts to measure variations in the CMB.

Media star

After winning the prize, Smoot continued his studies of the CMB as one of the founders of the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, which launched in April 2009. He also worked in other areas of cosmology such as the study of gamma-ray bursts.

In 2007 he became founding director of the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, in which he used the money from his Nobel prize as seed cash. Two years later he joined Université Paris-Diderot VII (now known as the Université Paris-Cité) where he founded the Paris Center for Cosmological Physics.

Smoot also made several media appearances throughout his career including playing himself on the hit-TV show The Big Bang Theory and in a TV commercial for Intuit TurboTax. He also appeared in the TV show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? where he bagged the top $1m prize.

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London-based artist Oksana Kondratyeva has created a new stained-glass artwork – entitled Discovery – that is inspired by the detection of the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012.

Born in Ukraine, Kondratyeva has a PhD in the theory of architecture and has an artist residency at the Romont Glass Museum (Vitromusée Romont) in Switzerland, where Discovery is currently exhibited.

In 2023 Kondratyeva travelled to visit the LHC at CERN, which she notes represents “more than a laboratory [but] a gateway to the unknown”.

“Discovery draws inspiration from the awe I felt standing at the frontier of human knowledge, where particles collide at unimaginable energies and new forms of matter are revealed,” Kondratyeva told Physics World.

Kondratyeva says that the focal point of the artwork – a circle structured with geometric precision – represents the collision of two high-energy protons.

The surrounding lead lines in the panel trace the trajectories of particle decays as they move through a magnetic field: right-curved lines represent positively charged particles, left-curved lines indicate negatively charged ones, while straight lines signify neutral particles unaffected by the magnetic field.

The geometric composition within the central circle reflects the hidden symmetries of physical laws – patterns that only emerge when studying the behaviour of particle interactions.

Kondratyeva says that the use of mouth-blown flashed glass adds further depth to the piece, with colours and subtle shades moving from hot and luminous at the centre to cooler, more subdued tones toward the edges.

“Through glass, light and colour I sought to express the invisible forces and delicate symmetries that define our universe – ideas born in the realm of physics, yet deeply resonant in artistic expression,” notes Kondratyeva. “The work also continues a long tradition of stained glass as a medium of storytelling, reflecting the deep symmetries of nature and the human drive to find order in chaos.”

In 2022 Kondratyeva teamed up with Rigetti Computing to create piece of art inspired by the packaging for a quantum chip. Entitled Per scientiam ad astra (through science to the stars), the artwork was displayed at the 2024 British Glass Biennale at the Ruskin Glass Centre in Stourbridge, UK.

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More than a quarter of UK university physics departments could be shut down within the next couple of years, according to a survey carried out by the Institute of Physics (IOP). It also reveals that almost 60% of departmental heads expect physics degree courses to close within that time, while more than 80% of those questioned say they expect to see job losses.

The survey findings are published in a new report – Physics Matters: Funding the Foundations of Growth– that says UK university physics is a “major strength” of the UK university system and vital to “national security and technological sovereignty”. The UK currently has about 17,000 physics undergraduates and more than 6000 physics department staff, with about 1 in 20 jobs in the UK using physics-related knowledge and skills.

However, the report adds that this strength cannot be taken for granted and points to “worrying signs” that university physics has started to “punch below its weight”. This is compounded, the IOP says, by a drop in the number of students studying physics at UK universities and flat grant funding for UK physics departments over the past decade.

In addition, UK universities are being hit by financial challenges and funding shortfalls caused by inflationary pressure and a drop in international student numbers. Given that physics comes with high teaching costs, the report states this threatens a “perfect storm” for university physics departments.

Close to breaking point

The survey of 31 departmental heads, which was carried out in August, found that three unnamed departments face imminent closure, with a further 11 anticipating shutting courses. When asked to look ahead over the next two years, eight say they expect to face closure, with 18 anticipating course closures.

One head of physics at a UK university told the IOP, which publishes Physics World, that they are concerned they are “close to breaking point”. “Our university has a £30m deficit,” the anonymous head said. “Staff recruitment is frozen, morale is low. Yet colleagues in our school continue to deliver with less and less and under increasing pressure.”

Jonte Hance, a quantum physicist at Newcastle University, told Physics World that the threat of closures is “horrifying”. In 2004, Newcastle closed its physics department before reopening it over a decade later. “Worryingly, this approach – ignoring, or even cutting, any departments that don’t make a massive short-term profit – doesn’t just seem to be a panicked knee-jerk response on the part of vice-chancellors, but part of a concerted and planned strategy, aiming to turn universities into business incubators,” adds Hance.

Towards a cliff edge

The IOP is now calling on the UK government to commit additional funding for science and engineering departments to help with the operation, maintenance, refurbishment and building of labs and technical facilities. It also wants an “early-warning system” created for departments at risk as well as changes to visa policy to remove international students from net migration figures, retain the graduate visa in its current form, and make “global talent and skilled worker” visas more affordable.

While we understand the pressures on public finances, it would be negligent not to sound the alarm

Keith Burnett

In addition, the IOP wants the UK government to develop a decade-long plan that includes reform of higher-education funding so universities can fund the cost of teaching “important subjects such as physics”. Keith Burnett, the outgoing IOP president, warns that without such action, the UK is “walking towards a cliff edge”, although he believes there is still time to “avert a crisis”.

“While we understand the pressures on public finances, it would be negligent not to sound the alarm for a national capability fundamental to our wellbeing, competitiveness and the defence of the realm,” says Burnett, who is former vice-chancellor at the University of Sheffield and former chair of physics at the University of Oxford. “Physics researchers and talented physics students are our future, but if action isn’t taken now to stabilise, strengthen and sustain one of our greatest national assets, we risk leaving them high and dry.”

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NASA has launched a two-year mission to study the boundary of the heliosphere, a huge protective bubble in space created by the Sun. The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) took off today aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida.  The mission is now on a four-month journey to Lagrange point 1 (L1) – a point in space about 1.6 million kilometres from the Earth towards the Sun.

The solar wind is a stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun into space that helps to form the heliosphere. IMAP will study the solar wind and its interaction with the interstellar medium to better understand the heliosphere and its boundaries, which begin about 14 billion kilometres from Earth. This boundary offers protection from harsh radiation from space and is key to creating and maintaining a habitable solar system.

IMAP, which is 2.4 m in diameter and almost 1 m high, will also support real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles that can harm satellites as well as disrupt global communications and electrical grids on Earth. From L1, IMAP will provide a 30-minute warning to astronauts and spacecraft near Earth of harmful radiation.

To do so, IMAP contains 10 instruments that capture data on energetic neutral atoms, the solar wind and interstellar dust.

They include a high-energy ion telescope, an electron instrument as well as a magnetometer that has been developed by Imperial College London. It will measure the strength and direction of magnetic fields in space, providing crucial data to improve our understanding of space weather.

“Our magnetic field instrument will help us understand how particles are accelerated at shock waves and travel through the solar system,” notes Imperial’s Timothy Horbury. “I’m especially excited that our data will be made public within minutes of being measured over a million miles away, supporting real-time space weather forecasts. It’s a great example of how scientific measurements can positively impact society.”

The IMAP mission is led by Princeton University and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory with contributions from 25 institutions across six countries.

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Photographers Weitang Liang, Qi Yang and Chuhong Yu have beaten thousands of amateur and professional photographers from around the world to bag the 2025 Royal Observatory Greenwich’s ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year.

The image – The Andromeda Core – showcases the core of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) in exceptional detail, revealing the intricate structure of the galaxy’s central region and its surrounding stellar population.

The image was taken with a long focal-length telescope from the AstroCamp Observatory, Nerpio, Spain.

“Not to show it all − this is one of the greatest virtues of this photo. The Andromeda Galaxy has been photographed in so many different ways and so many times with telescopes that it is hard to imagine a new photo would ever add to what we’ve already seen,” notes astrophotographer László Francsics who was a judge for this year’s competition. “But this does just that, an unusual dynamic composition with unprecedented detail that doesn’t obscure the overall scene.”

As well as winning the £10,000 top prize, the image has gone on display along with other selected pictures from the competition at an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum observatory that opened on 12 September.

The award – now in its 17th year – is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with the astrophotography firm ZWO and BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

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“Picture the world of Avatar, where glowing plants light up an entire ecosystem,” describes Shuting Liu of South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou.

Well, that vision is now a step closer thanks to researchers in China who have created glow-in-the-dark succulents that recharge in sunlight.

Instead of coaxing cells to glow through genetic modification, the team instead used afterglow phosphor particles – materials similar to those found in glow-in-the-dark toys – that can absorb light and release it slowly over time.

The researchers then injected the particles into succulents, finding that they produced a strong glow, thanks to the narrow, uniform and evenly distributed channels within the leaf that helped to disperse the particles.

After a couple of minutes of exposure to sunlight or indoor LED light, the modified plants glowed for up to two hours. By using different types of phosphors, the researchers created plants that shine in various colours, including green, red and blue.

The team even built a glowing plant wall with 56 succulents, which was bright enough to illuminate nearby objects.

“I just find it incredible that an entirely human-made, micro-scale material can come together so seamlessly with the natural structure of a plant,” notes Liu. “The way they integrate is almost magical. It creates a special kind of functionality.”

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An astrophysics PhD student from County Armagh in Northern Ireland has combined his passion for science with Gaelic football to help his club achieve a historic promotion.

Eamon McGleenan plays for his local team – O’Connell’s GAC Tullysaran – and is a PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he is a member of the Predictive Sports Analytics (PSA) research team, which was established in 2023.

McGleenan and his PhD supervisor David Jess teamed up with GAC Tullysaran to investigate whether data analysis and statistical techniques could improve their training and results.

Over five months, the Queen’s University researchers took over 550 million individual measurements from the squad, which included information such as player running speed, accelerations and heart rates.

“We applied mathematical models to the big data we obtained from the athletes,” notes McGleenan. “This allowed us to examine how the athletes evolved over time and we then provided key insights for the coaching staff, who then generated bespoke training routines and match tactics.”

The efforts immediately paid off as in July GAC Tullysaran won their league by two points and were promoted for the first time in 135 years to the top-flight Senior Football League, which they will start in March.

“The statistical insight provided by PSA is of great use and I like how it lets me get the balance of training right, especially in the run-up to match day,” noted Tullysaran manager Pauric McGlone, who adds that it also provided a bit of competition in the squad that ensured the players were “conditioned in a way that allows them to perform at their best”.

For more about the PSA’s activities, see here.

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Errors in some of this year’s A-level physics exam papers could leave students without good enough grades to study physics at university. The mistakes have forced Tom Grinyer, chief executive of the Institute of Physics (IOP), to write to all heads of physics at UK universities, calling on them to “take these exceptional circumstances into account during the final admissions process”. The IOP is particularly concerned about students whose grades are lower than expected or are “a significant outlier” compared to other subjects.

The mistakes in question appeared in the physics (A) exam papers 1 and 2 set by the OCR exam board. Erratum notices had been issued to students at the start of the exam in June, but a further error in paper 2 was only spotted after the exam had taken place, causing some students to get stuck. Physics paper 2 from the rival AQA exam board was also seen to contain complex phrasing that hindered students’ ability to answer the question and led to time pressures.

A small survey of physics teachers carried out after the exam by the IOP, which publishes Physics World, reveals that 41% were dissatisfied with the OCR physics exam papers and more than half (58%) felt that students had a negative experience. Two-thirds of teachers, meanwhile, reported that students had a negative experience during the AQA exam. A-levels are mostly taken by 18 year olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with the grades being used by universities to decide admission.

Grinyer says that the IOP is engaging in “regular, open dialogue with exam boards” to ensure that the assessment process supports and encourages students, while maintaining the rigour and integrity of the qualification. “Our immediate concern,” Grinyer warns, “is that the usual standardization processes and adjustments to grade boundaries – particularly for the OCR paper with errors – may fail to compensate fully for the negative effect on exam performance for some individuals.”

An OCR spokesperson told Physics World that the exam board is “sorry to the physics students and teachers affected by errors in A-level physics this year”. The board says that it “evaluated student performance across all physics papers, and took all necessary steps to mitigate the impact of these errors”. The OCR claims that the 13,000 students who sat OCR A-level physics A this year “can be confident” in their A-level physics results.

“We have taken immediate steps to review and strengthen our quality assurance processes to prevent such issues from occurring in the future,” the OCR adds. “We appreciated the opportunity to meet with the Institute of Physics to discuss these issues, and also to discuss our shared interest in encouraging the growth of this vital subject.”

Almost 23,500 students sat AQA A-level physics this year and an AQA spokesperson told Physics World that the exam board “listened to feedback and took steps to make A-level physics more accessible” to students and that there “is no need for universities to make an exception for AQA physics outcomes when it comes to admissions criteria”.

“These exam papers were error-free, as teachers and students would expect, and we know that students found the papers this year to be more accessible than last year,” they say. “We’ll continue to engage with any feedback that we receive, including feedback from the Institute of Physics, to explore how we can enhance our A-level physics assessments and give students the best possible experience when they sit exams.”

Students ‘in tears’

The IOP now wants A-level physics students to be given a “fair opportunity” when it comes to university admissions. “These issues are particularly concerning for students on widening participation pathways, many of whom already face structural barriers to high-stakes assessment,” the IOP letter states. “The added challenge of inaccessible or error-prone exam papers risks compounding disadvantage and may not reflect the true potential of these students.”

The IOP also contacted AQA last year over inaccessible contexts and language used in previous physics exams. But despite AQA’s assurances that the problems would be addressed, some of the same issues have now recurred. Helen Sinclair, head of physics at the all-girls Wimbledon High School, believes that the “variable quality” of recent A-level papers have had “far-reaching consequences” on young people thinking of going into physics at university.

“Our students have exceptionally high standards for themselves and the opaque nature of many questions affects them deeply, no matter what grades they ultimately achieve. This has even led some to choose to apply for other subjects at university,” she told Physics World. “This is not to say that papers should not be challenging; however, better scaffolding within some questions would help students anchor themselves in what is an already stressful environment, and would ultimately enable them to better demonstrate their full potential within an exam.”

Students come out of the exams feeling disheartened, and those students share their perceptions with younger students

Abbie Hope, Stokesley School

Those concerns are echoed by Abbie Hope, head of physics at Stokesley School near Middlesbrough. She says the errors in this year’s exam papers are “not acceptable” and believes that OCR has “failed their students”. Hope says that AQA physics papers in recent years have been “very challenging” and have resulted in students feeling like they cannot do physics. She also says some have emerged from exam halls in tears.

“Students come out of the exams feeling disheartened and share their perceptions with younger students,” she says. “I would rather students sat a more accessible paper, with higher grade boundaries so they feel more successful when leaving the exam hall, rather than convinced they have underachieved and then getting a surprise on results day.” Hope fears the mistakes will undermine efforts to encourage uptake and participation in physics and that exam boards need to serve students and teachers better.

A ‘growing unease’

Rachael Houchin, head of physics at Royal Grammar School Newcastle, says this year’s errors have added to her “growing unease” about the state of physics education in the UK. “Such incidents – particularly when they are public and recurring – do little to improve the perception of the subject or encourage its uptake,” she says. “Everyone involved in physics education – at any level – has a duty to get it right. If we fail, we risk physics drifting into the category of subjects taught predominantly in selective or independent schools, and increasingly absent from the mainstream.”

Hari Rentala, associate director of education and workforce at the IOP, is concerned that the errors unfairly “perpetuate the myth” that physics is a difficult subject. “OCR appear to have managed the situation as best they can, but this is not much consolation for how students will have felt during the exam and over the ensuing weeks,” says Rentala. “Once again AQA set some questions that were overly challenging. We can only hope that the majority of students who had a negative experience as a result of these issues at least receive a fair grade – as grade boundaries have been adjusted down.”

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