Sparks finally fly at the LHC

Despite false starts and warm ups, the LHC, a project that began more than 20 years ago, has finally begun to take and analyse data and the champagne is flowing in celebration.

The experiments in the more than £6 billion project, based at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, saw collisions at a record energy of 7 tera electron volts (TeV) at 1pm today. In a “gentlemen’s draw” all four experiments appeared to see the particles smashing together and flying out into the detectors at the same time, as the magnets brought the beams together to collide.

Physicists were primed for action from 4am this morning, but the sensitive safety systems, installed in the wake of the machine’s breakdown in 2008, twice aborted the attempt and reset the system before collisions could get underway.

But finally, the moment of truth came on the third attempt. It was communicated to the untrained eye only through the huge cheers erupting from the various control rooms and collaborators across the world, all linked up by webcam. But by 10 minutes later the first visual displays of colliding particles emerged, showing spaghetti strings of flying particles, tracked within 3D images of the detectors.

CERN researchers are still walking around holding laptops showing such displays and cradling them like newborn babies. The director general of CERN has even been beamed in via videoconference from Japan where he says he is eating an evening meal of crisps and wine, proudly displaying a now empty bottle of 1991 vintage red, the year the LHC got its first official go ahead.

But as the head of the CMS experiment, Guido Tonelli, said in the CMS control room just a few moments ago, the celebrations will be quick because what they are marking is that operation is now underway and it’s time for the experiments to get on with what they were designed to do.

There are now around 50 collisions happening per second within the detectors. At seven times the energy of its nearest competitor - the Tevatron at Fermilab in Illinois, US - the LHC is now by far the highest energy accelerator in the world. But, having been running since 1983, Fermilab still wins in the amount of data collected - a crucial factor in finding some of the most highly sought after particles, including the Higgs boson.

The LHC will now run until it gathers one inverse femtobarn (a measurement of the number of particle collisions) and beats that record. This is foreseen for the end of 2011, when the machine will be shutdown for a year of upgrades before, more than likely, we’ll be back to do this all over again at the optimum energy of 14 TeV.

MP gives Research Fortnight an election date hint

Ok, we all pretty much know that the UK General Election is going to be held on 6 May, to coincide with the local elections, just like last time. The timing of tomorrow's Budget offers another hint. But the government won't confirm it until Gordon Brown officially calls the election, so we're left to read the tea leaves to look for clues that support our suspicions.

I got one of those hints this afternoon. While meeting with my MP, Labour's Neil Gerrard, to discuss libel reform, he casually mentioned "we only have 8 sitting days left" in this parliament. Taking the Easter recess into account, this would put an election call on 8 April, four weeks before 6 May. What more evidence do you need?

Libel reform campaign gets boost from Jack Straw

The campaign for libel reform scored a victory today when justice secretary Jack Straw announced that the government would begin working on reforms to England's defamation laws, possibly through a libel reform bill.

The move came as the campaign organised a "mass lobby" in the Houses of Parliament, asking supporters to all request a meeting with their MPs at the same time to discuss the issue.

Straw accepted many of the recommendations of the Ministry of Justice's Libel Working Group report, including creating a "single publication rule" to prevent claimants from bringing a separate claim for every time a story is read on the internet. He would also like to create a statutory public interest defence, and curb the spread of "libel tourism", where claimants press their case in the English courts because they offer the most sympathetic venue.

Straw's announcement is a start, but the campaign still has much to do. David Howarth, the Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge, said he was concerned that the government's proposals did not include putting peer-reviewed publications on the list of those protected by qualified privilege, or ending the right of corporations to sue for libel.

No more will be done in parliament before this spring's election, though Straw promised to table a draft bill as soon as possible in the new parliament, should Labour win. His conservative shadow, Henry Bellingham, also promised to produce a draft bill by the end of the year if the Tories form the next government. But he urged campaigners to continue their efforts, perhaps suggesting that he would need their support to keep the issue on the agenda for a Conservative government.

My own MP, Labour's Neil Gerrard, who signed the early day motion in favour of reform back in December, told me in the House of Commons central lobby this afternoon that it was possible that the proposed reforms would be included in the Labour Party's manifesto. "Jack has moved," he said. "He's saying positive things." Indeed, just a year ago, Straw rejected the need for libel refrom, saying libel tourism was not a problem. He was apparently convinced by the case of Peter Wilmshurst, a British cardiologist who is being sued by a US company for comments made to a US website casting doubt on the effectiveness of a device made by the company. Straw called the case a "gratuitous disruption of scientific research".

Even if the a reform bill does not make it into the next government's programme, Gerrard suggested that a private member's bill would have a good chance of success, since all the main parties are broadly in favour.

Research funding shifts to major players in HEFCE allocations

England's top universities will get a boost in the research portion of their block grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England in 2010-11, according to the funding council's preliminary funding allocations, published today.

The University of Oxford came out top, with a £7 million - 6 per cent - rise in research funding. The University of Cambridge gained 3.7 per cent, University College London 4.3 per cent, Imperial College London 3.3 per cent and the University of Manchester 2.4 per cent. These institutions, the top five in terms of research funding, between them took 33 per cent of the £1.6 billion pot, a marginally larger share than last year.

Most of the rest of the Russell Group of large research intensive universities also saw increases, though the Universities of Liverpool and Newcastle saw small declines. Losses to other universities were generally small, and were spread among many smaller institutions.

The change was mainly due to HEFCE's decision, in response to the government's desire for greater concentration of research funding, to increase the "slope" of the formula used to determine research allocation to more heavily favour the highest quality work as determined in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.

Few universities, however, saw large increases in their overall block grant funding. The overall pot of £7.3bn is 1.6 per cent down on last year, though both the teaching and research components rose. This is the first time HEFCE's grant has fallen since Labour came to power in 1997. The majority of the losses come from capital funding and other "special funding". This means, for example, that despite Oxford's impressive gain in research funding, its overall block grant is up just 1 per cent, mainly due to losses in funding for old and historic buildings.

Overall, around half of universities in England will receive less money than last year, with the other half posting small gains in cash terms. But many of those gains are less than inflation, so are essentially a cut in real terms. A few universities will see larger percentage cuts, for example the University of Reading and the London School of Economics. This is due to the end of "moderation" funding, which was used to smooth out drastic changes in grant allocations last year. The £20m in moderation funding HEFCE has available this year is being used to smooth out changes in other areas.

Tories start to fill in the blanks in science policy

Adam Afriyie started to put some meat on the bones of Conservative science policy at the third debate between the main parties' science spokesmen last night.

He made a “personal commitment” to researchers that they would “get the resources you need”, though he added that the first priority of a Conservative government would be to fix the economy. “Until the deficit is under control, all public spending will be constrained,” he said.

Afriyie promised that the Tories would offer stable funding with a “multi-year” ring-fenced science budget. He did not say how many years it would be, but told me afterwards that it could be longer than the three years offered by the Labour government's comprehensive spending reviews. Afriyie also attacked the government's decision not to hold a CSR ahead of the election to set out its spending plans beyond 2011.

Both Paul Drayson, the science minister, and Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat science spokesman, said cuts to public spending – including the science budget – this year would be dangerous and risk a double dip recession. George Osborne, the Conservative shadow chancellor, plans to introduce an emergency budget within 50 days of the election, which would likely include deep cuts.

All three agreed that Labour had been generally good for science and research over the past decade, but Harris pointed out that talk of a doubling of the science budget was misleading. While the budget may have doubled, spending in real terms was only up 40 per cent, and was stuck at 1.8 per cent of GDP. “Science has only got its fair share,” he said.

Drayson called the upcoming election the most important choice the country had faced in a generation. Political exaggeration? Perhaps. But judging by the standing room only audience – many of them young scientists and first-time voters – it is an idea that at least the scientific community has taken to heart.

Fourth time lucky for EPO president

Benoît Battistelli, director general of the French National Institute of Industrial Property, has been elected president of the European Patent Office.

The French civil servant achieved a required three-quarters majority on 1 March, in the EPO’s fourth attempt to elect a successor for Alison Brimelow, who is to leave the organisation in July. Three previous attempts in October, December and February failed to produce a majority for one of the three candidates.

The election process kept European researchers and IP consultants on their toes as the EPO stoically refused to change its election process even though it became clear after the second attempt that no candidate achieved clear majority. The required three-quarter threshold, high by any election standard, was out of reach for the prospective presidents. 

The EPO could have greatly sped up the process by simply dropping the candidate with the least support after each funding round. But the organisation's administrative council would not hear of it and stoically stuck to protocol, even after Jesper Kongstad, director general of the Danish Patent and Trademark Office, pulled out after the December vote.

In the eyes of the public, the four voting rounds were a tremendous waste of time and money, especially since the fourth round required a crisis meeting in Munich, which over 30 administrative council members had to attend. But there is hope that Battistelli, who was previously tipped to become the head of the World Intellectual Property Organization, can turn the boat around and push the EPO from being the laughing stock of Europe to becoming a serious player in EU and international patenting law. Strong leadership is required - not least because the EPO is planning to kick-start negotiations on the Community Patent this year, which have been in total deadlock since 2004.

Bastistelli will start his five-year term at the EPO on 1 July.