LHC in the Independent

Cern breaks Energy record

On the 30th of March the Large Hadron Collider successfully was launched. At Cern and all around the world scientists are celebrating as a new energy record for a particle accelerator was set in the particle accelerator under Geneva.

This experiment took place in the 27 kilometre tunnel of the LHC and consisted of beams of protons that were directed at each other in opposing directions. Scientists all around the world hope to confirm old theories as well as finding new particles that will allow a new understanding of physics. The experiment is vital for scientific research and eventually will play a role in future technology.

The beams travelled at 99.9999991% the speed of light and consisted of trillions of Protons. The particles smashed each with an energy of 3.5 TeV (3.5 Trillion Electron volts) adding up to a total energy of 7 TeV which is three times the previous record. For frame of reference: a TV has about 20 000 electron volts.

The reason this experiment was preformed is that the scientists hope to find new particles such as the Higgs Boson, proof Super Symmetry and learn about dark matter amongst other objectives. The experiment was completely safe as the sun does exactly the same process on the earth’s outer atmosphere on a day to day basis.

The Independent Article

Housing market frozen until election

As the date of the election is approaching both house sellers and buyers are holding back and wait for the outcome to the election to do business again. This pushes the prices in the cities and the situation is most likely to change once the votes next week are counted.

This stalemate on the reality market created through the uncertainty of the outcome of the election is ranging back over almost 3 months now and independent oberservers start to see a lack in flow of business and as a result the housing prices in London and other major cities start to rise. The countryside seems not to be affected equally to the cities.

Although the economic situation is at the brink of recovering from the recession it is not fully stabilised yet and disturbing the business in the housing sector slows down the recovery rate. The realty market is with a 4% tax a profitable income source for country, especially from London, Manchester and Kent.

Mr. Smith, CEO of a well known business assessing firm explains: “An artificial business bubble was created at the last real estate crisis and pushed economy into turmoil. However this time we are not even close to a comparable situation, as the investors are simply anxious about the outcome of the election.”
Both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party have announced ambitious plans for the market policies which also would concern those in the housing business. Depending on who comes out of this election as a winner, the market will have to adapt to the new situation.

Depending on the value of the house, ranging from categories of 125 000 British Pounds to 500 000 British Pounds and upwards the tax differs from 1%-4%. This is expected to change with the government. A member of Halifax stated: “The market remains extremely challenging with low volumes of sales currently being agreed. The forecast budget cuts and potential for tax rises are causing many prospective purchasers to wait and see. The sooner an election the better.”

The Independent- Article analysis

“It is. Are you?” The Independent is published with the aim to deliver political neutral news; nevertheless it has a slight slant to the left political spectrum but also covers right wing themes. It is one of Great Britain’s broadsheet newspapers and is aimed at an educated audience dealing with national and international news which concern the educated readers they are aiming at.

The First article to analyse was the main story of the business section of the newspaper, concerning higher taxation for bankers in London and therefore threatening London’s position as an international financial capital. This article is both theme and form wise a typical article for The Independent. It deals with an issue concerning the high income workers of the cities since the tax primarily needs to concern income levels of half a million and higher. The thought that London might lose its position as an attractive business centre clearly is not of concern to the masses but to specific fields of the financial sector whose members are possible audience for The Independent.

Besides the theme the actual context of the article gives further indication to why it is a typical article for this newspaper. The complete detail section of the article deals with numbers and facts of institutes as well as the expert opinion of Ian Hopkinson. By naming the exact statistics and quoting an expert the risk of bringing in a political opinion is reduced significantly. It is both informative and politically independent speaking for the typical style of The Independent.

Another article concerned the trial against Lord Ashcroft, a story which has been building up in the weeks before this article. Indications for why this is an Independent article are once more the theme but also how they display it. The theme itself is interesting for a broader range of readers than the previous article, however the piece is written in a way requesting prior knowledge and displaying the scene in a more sophisticated light. The fact that the article deals not only with Lord Ashcroft but also with the Conservative Party confirms the slight left wing slant of the paper.

Furthermore there was a third article dealing the fashion at the Oscars award ceremony. This is a rather unusual topic for The Independent as theme edges at celebrity gossip and is not the usual metier of the paper. However this article deals in a broadsheet style with the issue. The format includes paragraphs with up to 80 words and takes a business point of view on the Oscar fashion. It deals with the PR speculations of the designer labels as well as the financial interest of the fashion industry. The journalist took a very simplistic theme and instead of writing about the gossip took a more sophisticated approach that interests the audience of The Independent. This theme enlarged the range of readers but still held a broadsheet level.

All three articles were major stories in The Independent and covered the Business, the Political and Lifestyle section of the paper. All three articles were aimed at the typical audience for a broadsheet and indeed remained independent whilst being highly informative. The level of sophistication in diction and syntax both suggest the high education level of the readers.

Full article broadsheet

McLeod launches cleaning project, students should take action
The upper school principal called a short term scheduled assembly to introduce the planned solution.

The ZIS Upper School principle, John McLeod, called an unscheduled assembly in the theatre on last Tuesday, involving grades ten through twelve, in which he addressed the issue of littering in the school.

The solution that was presented, divides the school up in different sectors that are assigned to different grade levels. Every week a different advisory is picked, whose students clean up the area that is assigned to the grade level they are in. This concept met strong opposition amongst some students.
Furthermore he admitted that the solution was not ideal, but he encouraged the students upon their grumpy response to take the initiative and come up with solutions, but no suggestions have been handed in so far
Previously to this meeting there had been a number of announcements during advisory time, encouraging students to clean after themselves, however hoping for a feeling of responsibility in the students and stressing the importance of the community did not lead to the hoped results.
The incident that had triggered the discussion in the first place, was a tour for parents that wanted to send their children to the Zürich International School. However at the end of the tour the decided against ZIS, upon the behaviour of the students they saw and the mess that was produced by them. They stated that the conditions were unacceptable
One major flaw that students pointed out was the way the sections of the school were distributed. While on the second floor there rarely are large amounts of rubbish found, the cafeteria often is left in a battlefield, but the cafeteria was not assigned at all.
One theory that has been established to explain why the students are that careless is the lack of rubbish bins in the beginning of the school year, as well as the absence of any recycle bins. Since then the situation has improved drastically, but they are not being used as frequently as they should be.
Conversations among the students indicate how unhappy they are with the situation, not with the rubbish, but with the fact that they have give up five minutes of their lunch time to check if everything is cleaned up. They are not willing to do so and this attitude is contributing to the probability of this project not improving the situation at all. Most of the older students give the majority of the blame to the ninth graders, who previously have been proven to be immature in their behaviour. In addition the density of litter is the greatest in the areas that are usually occupied by the ninth and sometimes tenth graders.
Another problem that soon will arise is the fact that it is getting warmer and students will start too spent more time outside. As the students migrate outside, so does the rubbish. It has already been seen during the first two months of school that the current student body left the steps in front of the school and football field in a mess. Empty crisp bags were forgotten; lunch plates, empty plastic bottles and gum turned this usually pleasant space into a rather disgusting area. This is most probably going to repeat and no solution has been worked out for this scenario as to this day.
This problem has occurred multiple times in the past and usually the turned out to improve slightly after action was taken, but there was no real effect on a long term base. This incident is unlikely to be the last of its kind if there is not attitude change happening amongst the students.

Broadsheet article

McLeod launches cleaning project, students should take action

The upper school principal called a short term scheduled assembly to introduce the planned solution.

The ZIS Upper School principle called an assembly on last Tuesday, involving grades ten through twelve, in which he addressed the issue of littering in the school.

The solution that was presented, divides the school up in different sectors that are assigned to different grade levels. Every week a different advisory is picked, whose students clean up the area that is assigned to the grade level they are in. This concept met strong opposition amongst some students

Heralde Tribune

Headline:
Active verb
Alliteration
More sophisticated title, longer
Load of language
1st paragraph
Who: Obama
When: Tuesday
Where: Washington
What: address issues
2nd paragraph:
Listing advantages
Why: ongoing discussion


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/health/policy/03health.html?ref=todayspaper

tabloid article about meeting

Rich rubbish kids should clean up

This Tuesday an assembly in the theatre was called by Mr. McLeod to enforce a further burden on the students, they are forced to clean up every lunch. This punishment is put on a different assembly every week.
Apparently the school has been to dirty and parents refused to send their children to this school. Therefore action needs to be taken as a “community” and all should work together. A hopeless task as students started to fall asleep and talk during the assembly

Headlines

Prison Break by Two Party Penguines
Miraculous Match- Girls team slaughters varsity boys
Brutal Blizzard-“The Georgian” only one at school
Scandal-Seniors win once more- Ukuleles out
Holmes hamsters Laptops-30 student’s tablets stolen
Pandemic back-free shots for school

Headlines

Times-BBC signals an end to era of expansion
Financial Times- Goldman role in Greek crisis probed
Financial Times-China forces shortages of migrant workers
The Guardian-Gadaffi calls for Switzerland jihad

Nature of Science

Science is never fully right, but it is the best bet. Greg Craven states a very valid point with this statement. In the discussion around climate change it should be considered that science, although it is never completely certain, it has always proven to have the best chances of predicting future events. Especially the first part of The Nature of Science deals with this issue. He stresses multiple times that scientists constantly revise theories and try to improve the precision and accuracy of the measurements to decrease the uncertainty but also acknowledge the fact that an absolute certain measurement is impossible to achieve. Since there is always an uncertainty this leaves room for argument, unfortunately also for climate critics. As the physics teacher argues, this allows the unreasonable scepticism that is in the world right now. Instead of holding this uncertainty as a flaw, it rather should be acknowledged that the scientific predictions and theories have the lowest uncertainty out of all claims. For that reasons science is usually well trusted and itself very picky about the measuring methods and claims. Some of the predictions made by scientists about the climate destabilisation might turn out to be wrong; however this does not prove the whole theory wrong, since it was clear from the beginning that there would be uncertainty in the predictions.

Consequently one of the most vital actions to take is revising and editing the theories. Greg Crave states two important aspects in connection to this, trying to disprove an argument makes it stronger, such as the theory of gravity (video 2, 1:50) and admitting that one was wrong makes the argument more reliable. When looking for the evidence for a particular theory it is important to try to prove it wrong and look for counter arguments to the point one is making. If trying to disprove a theory consistently does not work and the counter arguments, such as those to climate change, come from non reliable sources, then it only strengthens the point. If it indeed can be disproved or there are found flaws that do not mean the theory is disproven, it just needs to be revised. Admitting into the mistakes and changing them makes the source more reliable and that constantly happens with the climate theories. He makes an excellent point that is not only relevant on the big scale and in science, admitting in to the mistakes allows improvement.

Modern society is a society of specifying, there is a huge supply of people and necessary to specify in order to make a living. There are specialists and experts for almost any topic in the world and when help is needed people trust these experts. As Craven correctly points out, many people have doubt in the scientists, the experts; because they think they know better than the experts. However the situation is very complex and climate change a severe topic, therefore it is vital to rely on the experts and almost all reliable scientists confirm climate destabilisation. Not relying on the expert opinion counters all logic thinking and Greg Craven is trying his best to open people’s eyes.

One reason why there are so many sceptics is that everybody has some sort of bias. As the physicist demonstrates in a row of examples, that can be seen in Part 1 and the beginning of Part 2, we all have assumption we make. He quotes Douglas Adams on “Assumptions are the things you don’t know you have” and those assumptions make us unconsciously bias. When humans have an opinion or a believe about a topic they look for evidence to back it up. Since they already have an opinion they are valuing the evidence that speaks for their opinion more than other evidence although that might be stronger. This way individuals think that their believe is true, although based on the real evidence is not. Assessing data is critical and therefore it is necessary to know the assumptions one has in order to draw the right conclusions of the evidence. It needs skill as well as experience, both factors that science and scientists have developed and therefore are better analyzers of the situation.