Oxford Physics researcher Andrew Steele will be competing in the UK final of FameLab on Wednesday evening. His three-minute talk on a scientific topic will be pitted against those from nine other national finalists, selected at heats around the country.

The final will take place at the Royal Institution in London, for those who can’t make it to the capital, it should also be viewable as a live stream online.

In an article highlighted on the home page of the Physical Review Letters web site, Roger Johnson and co-workers report the highest magnetically-induced ferroelectric polarisation ever observed in a multiferroic, bringing these materials one step closer to applications in information technology. Magnetism and ferroelectricity are widely used properties to store digital information - for example in computer hard disks and chip-and-pin cards.

Professor Andrew Boothroyd has been awarded the 2011 Institute of Physics Superconductivity Group Prize for his contributions to our understanding of the interplay between magnetism and superconductivity using neutron scattering techniques. Recent important contributions include studies on iron-based superconductors that show that the spin excitation spectrum extends to sufficiently high energies to mediate high-Tc superconductivity and on magnetic stripes that show they are a key ingredient in understanding the magnetic scattering in the copper oxide superconductors.