Newsletter - May 2006 (A) SAIP matters Jaynie Padayachee : secretary@saip.org.za 1. Web-Site - Call for Information In an attempt to improve the SAIP web-site (by featuring, hopefully, useful information), information is required for the following: 1.1. Student's Page A Student's Page has been added to the SAIP web-site (http://www.saip.org.za/Students.html). One of the intentions is to add a section that is updated monthly where students can share their research. Students can contact Attie Combrink (attie@hartrao.ac.za) if they are interested in having their work featured. The format will allow text and figures, and should give a brief overview of the research, important results as well as how the research relates to real-world applications. 1.2. Department Pages on the Web-Site I would like to add a section of department pages to the SAIP web-site, giving a summary of: (a) Research done in the department (b) Equipment and expertise available (c) Bursaries/scholarships offered by the department or university for physics (d) Details of person to be contacted for more information. If you would like your department's information listed, please submit information under the above headings to Jaynie Padayachee (secretary@saip.org.za). 1.3. Physics Scholarships and Bursaries Information Wanted I am trying to build up a database of physics scholarships and bursaries offered by universities and industries in South Africa. If your department, institution or company offers funding for studying physics, please submit the following information for display on the web-site: (a)Name of Bursary/Scholarship (b)Closing date for application (c)Details of award (d)Contact details for application forms to Jaynie Padayachee (secretary@saip.org.za) 2. Report on Ministerial Visit to Slovakia and Romania (submitted by N. Chetty - chettyn@ukzn.ac.za) I recently accompanied deputy minister of Science and Technology, Mr Derek Hannekom, on a trip to Eastern Europe to sign bi-national agreements with Slovakia and Romania. I was specifically charged with investigating areas of mutual co-operation in the field of physics. The report to the minister may be downloaded from "http:\\www.saip.org.za\documents\Report-Ministerial Visit to Slovakia and Romania.pdf". You are welcome to direct any queries N Chetty 3. Membership Myths Myth 1: Members need to re-apply every year. Fact 1: Membership of the SAIP is continuous, with membership terminated only by request or if the member is in arrears for two consecutive years. Myth 2: The secretary and treasurer can read minds to know when members change jobs or move from country to country (see Funnies below). Fact 2: It is the member's responsibility to keep the SAIP informed of their current contact details to ensure effective communication. Myth 3: The secretary and treasurer work full-time on SAIP membership matters. Fact 3: The secretary and treasurer (as well as all other members of Council) perform their SAIP duties over and above their normal professions. Rules like posting forms (instead of faxing or emailing), informing the secretary of new contact details, informing the Treasurer when you have transferred fees into the SAIP account, etc are there to make these duties slightly easier. 4. Funnies from the Secretary and Treasurer Japie and I would like to share the following with you. We think that these moments that cause us to pull out our hair should not be kept to ourselves. Some content has been censored (indicated by [cut]). The first is from a member who wonders why he/she has not been receiving communication from the SAIP. "Attached find my abstract for the 2006 Saip conference. Also note that I have a new e-mail address ([cut]), which works more efectively compared to the previous one ([cut]). I recommend that you use this new one from now henceforth. I also noted that I have not been able to receive any correspondence from you recently, which my colleagues got. I wonder what could have been the problem. I nearly did not meet tomorrow's deadline because I did not know." Then there are the members who think that we can read minds and can intuit their new contact details: "Dear Sir/Madam, The above subject refers to an enquiry about the SAIP membership. I was registered as a member through [cut] and since then I haven't received any communication regarding membership fees. I completed the [cut] program and am currently a PhD student based at [cut]. Consequently, my email address changed since last year and I can no longer receive communication from you." Another test for our mind-reading abilities... "I left South Africa [cut] to study abroad and I was under the impression that if one did not actively renew one's SAIP membership each year, it would automatically lapse. However, I see from this invoice that I should've informed you that I was leaving the country so that my membership could have been suspended." Fortunately, there are some members who make what we do worthwhile. This was received following the treasurer's bilingual message regarding an error in the invoices: "Dear Prof Engelbrencht/Molo Njingalwazi Engelbrecht Thanks for your mail.I will pay sometime before the end of this week or next week. Enkosi nge email yakho.Ndizobhatala phambi kokuphela kweveki okanye kwiveki ezayo. Dankie/Enkosi" 5. Newsletter Poll The February issue of the SAIP newsletter had very few contributions and has prompted the following questions: *Do members feel that the newsletter should be continued or not? *If yes, do you think that the format should be changed? Please send responses to secretary@saip.org.za before 1 June 2006. 6. SA Women in Science Awards Details and nomination forms may be downloaded from http:\\www.saip.org.za\Wip.html. Deadline: 15 June 2006. (B) NEW KAROO RADIO TELESCOPE TO PUT SA SCIENCE ON THE WORLD STAGE Marina Joubert : marina@southernscience.co.za Together with Australia, China and Argentina, South Africa is on the shortlist to host the world's largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array, or SKA. "Competition in this bid is tough, as the winning country will attract a billion Euro investment and one of the most ambitious science projects ever," says Dr Bernie Fanaroff, South Africa's SKA Project Manager. "The winner in the SKA bid will only be known by 2008, but in the mean time we are planning to build the Karoo Array Telescope, or KAT, in the same region where we hope to site the core of the SKA" says Dr Bernie Fanaroff. The KAT will have about 1% of the SKA's receiving capacity, but it will still be a powerful radio telescope in its own right. It will also prove that South Africa is committed and ready to host the SKA. Alongside the new Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), KAT will further boost South Africa's profile as a premier astronomy destination. "Our government recognizes the power of astronomy as a tool to put South African science on the world stage and to boost development within the country," Dr Fanaroff adds. A radio telescope has to be as far away as possible from man-made sources of radio waves. For months the SKA team worked closely with the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to measure radio frequency interference (RFI) levels in some of the most remote parts of South Africa as part of the process to find the best place to build the telescope. They have identified three sites in radio quiet valleys in the Karoo, where surrounding mountains provide extra shielding against radio waves from metropolitan areas. The team will select the final site after RFI results and infrastructure costs have been compared. The challenge is to find the best balance between science benefits and investment. According to Dr Fanaroff, KAT must perform first light experiments by the end of 2009. "To achieve this, we have to move the first dishes for the full 20-dish KAT array, onto site by May 2008," he says. By then the basic infrastructure, such as roads, electricity, water and sewage must also be in place. The KAT team and other contractors around the country are working towards these deadlines. While some are developing the sophisticated software and digital signal processing hardware and firmware, others are doing research to develop state-of-the-art receiver and feed systems, designing the dishes or refining the work on the selection on the physical site. The KAT software will evolve through a series of prototypes, starting with the Production Equivalent Demonstrator (PED) to be tested at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Cape Town. A single 15 m prototype dish to test feeds, signal processing equipment and software will be built by IST Dynamics (Pty) Ltd at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO). "This dish will not only be the test bed for all KAT components, but it will also strengthen our industry's capacity to design and construct large dishes," says Anita Loots, KAT Project Manager. This will make it possible for South African industry to compete for contracts on SKA. The KAT prototype has to be ready by mid 2007. According to Kim de Boer at the SKA project office in Johannesburg, there will be many opportunities for postgraduate students to get involved in the KAT project. "KAT will be commissioned in phases and along the way we expect many exciting research opportunities to open up," she says. The KAT team is working closely with radio astronomy teams in Australia, the UK, Netherlands and the USA. Collaboration with international partners will greatly reduce the cost and risks of building KAT. KAT enjoys the support of several local research organizations and government departments, but the team is also working hard on finding more funding partners to make KAT a truly world class instrument. The project operates under the auspices of the Department of Science and Technology. Key contacts (a) SKA Project Manager: Bernie Fanaroff (bfanaroff@ska.ac.za) (b) KAT Project Manager: Anita Loots (aloots@ska.ac.za) (c) Bursaries and Grants: Kim de Boer (kdeboer@ska.ac.za) (d) Media enquiries: Marina Joubert (marina@southernscience.co.za) (e) Contact the SKA office in Rosebank, Johannesburg on (011) 442-2434 (f) Contact the KAT office in Pinelands, Cape Town on (021) 531-7282 Find out more about the SKA and KAT at www.ska.ac.za (C) Researsh at NECSA Chris Franklyn at franklyn@necsa.co.za The Radiation Utilisation group of the Applied Nuclear Science and Technology Department at Necsa is striving to increase R & D opportunities at its beam line facilities at the SAFARI-1 research reactor and van de Graaff accelerator. Our main themes of research are: * Neutron and X-ray Diffraction (amventer@necsa.co.za) * Neutron and X-ray Radiography/Tomography (fdebeer@necsa.co.za) * Small angle neutron scattering (tjatji@necsa.co.za) * Ion beam analysis and SEM (sps@necsa.co.za) * Fast neutron science (franklyn@necsa.co.za) We have opportunities for students at graduate (Hons), Masters, PhD and post-doc level to undertake short and long term projects at our facilities. We also have job opportunities for graduate scientists and engineers. For further information contact any of the above or the Group Head, Chris Franklyn at franklyn@necsa.co.za or phone 012-305-5848. (D) Report from the South African H.E.S.S. Group Unit for Space Physics, North-West University (NWU), Potchefstroom Okkie de Jager : FSKocdj@puknet.puk.ac.za "Trouble at First Light after Big Bang" The highlight of April 2006 for the H.E.S.S. Collaboration was the announcement in Nature (20 April 2006) of a significant constraint on the extragalactic background light(EBL) level, showing that energetic events associated with Population III stars, the "First Stars" after the Big Bang, was most likely overrated, as proposed earlier by some theories and apparently supported by COBE and IRTS. In 1992 de Jager (NWU) and two colleagues from the USA predicted that the EBL can be constrained with ground-based gamma-ray telescopes, if we observe Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) up to a redshift (z) of at least 0.1, since the gamma-ray spectra from such AGN will then suffer specific absorption effects. Recent observations of AGN by the European-Southern African H.E.S.S. Collaboration in Namibia of two AGN at z=0.165 and 0.186 have subsequently shown the visible and near infrared part of the EBL cannot be much more than the total light obtained by counting individual galaxies in deep fields, so that a dominant contribution from unresolved "First Stars" in baby galaxies to the diffuse EBL is ruled out. Read also Piero Madau's "Trouble at First Light" in News and Views of the same issue of Nature. The next step is to use SALT spectroscopy to increase the number of known AGN in the southern sky, so that H.E.S.S. and successive gamma-ray telescopes can constrain the galaxy/star formation rate to the earliest epochs of cosmic evolution. For the H.E.S.S. discovery of the month, see the official H.E.S.S. web page at http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/hfm/HESS/public/som/current.htm (E) Stratek Company news stratek@mweb.co.za Dr Kelvin Kemm, CEO of Stratek, was invited to the USA in April where he was guest speaker at the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington DC. He also spoke at a Congressional Briefing on Capitol Hill. This was followed by public presentations at five University campuses in four states. He was also the guest on a one-hour radio phone-in show. All of this related to US environmental legislation and its effects on Africa, and also to South African progress with the development of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR). (F)Stobie-SALT Scholarship for PhD Study in Astronomy and Astrophysics 2006 Kevin Govender : kg@saao.ac.za The Stobie-SALT Scholarship Programme in Astronomy and Astrophysics is an initiative aimed at producing the next generation of South African astronomers and astrophysicists through the provision of scholarships for doctoral level study at local and international universities. The scholarship programme is named after the late Dr Bob Stobie, former Director of the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) and former Chair of the Board of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). SALT was inaugurated by President Thabo Mbeki on 10th November 2005 and is the largest single optical/infrared telescope in the southern hemisphere, requiring appropriately trained astronomers and astrophysicists. The Stobie-SALT Scholarship is offered through a funding partnership between the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) and Southampton University in the UK. It provides the necessary support to enable its recipients to pursue a PhD degree in the Astronomy Graduate Programme at Southampton University. The scholarship will cover full tuition, student living and medical costs, and round-trip travel between South Africa and Southampton University. Scholarship support will be provided for a maximum period of three years, subject to satisfactory progress. Applications are invited from South African citizens to take up the scholarship and preference will be given to applicants who are from historically disadvantaged communities and/or female. Applicants should possess a minimum of a good Honours (preferably Masters) degree in Physics, Mathematics and/or Engineering. Contact Kevin Govender at the South African Astronomical Observatory for more information (kg@saao.ac.za /0214609350). (G) BURSARY / INTERNSHIP IN MEDICAL PHYSICS Dan Jones : jones@tlabs.ac.za Do you wish to become a Medical Physicist? If you are in possession of a completed B.Sc. degree in Physics, iThemba LABS will be able to provide you with a bursary in order to obtain the following: * A one-year Honours Degree in Medical Physics at a recognised SA University * A two-year internship training as a Medical Physicist leading to professional registration with the Health Professions Council of South Africa OR If you are in possession of a B.Sc (Honours) degree in Medical Physics, an exciting opportunity exists for a Medical Physicist Internship: The training will be undertaken at iThemba LABS, accredited Universities and Hospitals. This is a unique opportunity to join a team consisting of Oncologists, Physicists, Nurses, Radiographers and Technologists involved in the care of patients from diagnosis and treatment planning to beam delivery, quality assurance and follow-up activities. It offers active involvement in most aspects of Radiotherapy Physics with particular emphasis in Particle Therapy. Requirements: * A conscientious, focussed, self disciplined individual * Good communication skills * Ability to work with minimum supervision and as part of a team * Ability to work accurately and with attention to detail * Analytical thinker * Good problem-solving skills * High level of commitment and enthusiasm On successful completion of the internship programme you could be offered a position within iThemba LABS in line with its Recruitment Policy. Please forward a detailed CV, with supporting documents to: iThemba LABS Human Resources Department P O Box 722 Somerset West 7129 Tel: 021-8431000; Fax (021) 8433756; e-mail: mirencia@tlabs.ac.za; www.tlabs.ac.za/jobs/ iThemba LABS is an equity driven, affirmative action employer The closing date for applications: 26 May 2006 (H) University of South Africa Andre Botha : bothaae@unisa.ac.za It is of interest to the Physics community to be aware of the planned relocation of the College of Science, Engineering and Technology at the University of South Africa (UNISA). According to management's strategic plan the college is to be relocated to UNISA's Florida campus in Roodepoort (West of Johannesburg) before the end of 2006 (See link to "Strategic Plan" at http://staff.unisa.ac.za/). The Florida campus was recently incorporated into UNISA as part of the merger with the former Technikon Southern Africa and Vista University's Vudec Campus (1 January 2004). Under the new structure the College of Science, Engineering and Technology includes the Departments of Physics, Chemistry, Statistics, Mathematics and the School of Computing; which are all currently located on the Mucleneuk campus in Tswane (Pretoria). The physical relocation of the college is thus very likely to uproot a large number of research scientists, and to create a considerable number of vacant, academic positions. The move will also be detrimental to all serious scientific and teaching activity at UNISA for the next few years.