Richard Sear - comp physics academic
@rpsear.bsky.social
Soft matter/biological physics academic at the University of Surrey in the UK
I don't know if RAGbots, ie LLM powered chatbots that suck in eg lecture notes, and answer questions on them, are the future of education, but they are easy to do yourself. Blog post w link to Python notebook:
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/11/30/j...
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/11/30/j...
Jumping on the LLM bandwagon with a RAGbot to answer questions on my lecture notes
Unless you have just emerged from a cave you will have heard of ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, etc – collectively LLMs (Large Language Models, also called Generative AI models). Wikipedia ca…
chanceandnecessity.net
December 2, 2025 at 10:18 AM
I don't know if RAGbots, ie LLM powered chatbots that suck in eg lecture notes, and answer questions on them, are the future of education, but they are easy to do yourself. Blog post w link to Python notebook:
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/11/30/j...
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/11/30/j...
Ideally a hospital isolation ward for a disease transmitted across the air (COVID) would be the one place that's adequately ventilated to reduce transmission. Sadly not in Wales it isn't, I measured 1200 ppm CO2 - about 400 ppm above recommended
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/10/27/p...
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/10/27/p...
Poor ventilation in a COVID isolation ward of NHS Wales
My mother is in a COVID isolation ward in Morriston Hospital in South Wales. COVID really knocked her out but she was mostly back to normal when I visited on Sunday (26th Oct 2025), which is a reli…
chanceandnecessity.net
October 27, 2025 at 10:03 AM
Ideally a hospital isolation ward for a disease transmitted across the air (COVID) would be the one place that's adequately ventilated to reduce transmission. Sadly not in Wales it isn't, I measured 1200 ppm CO2 - about 400 ppm above recommended
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/10/27/p...
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/10/27/p...
Closing date for our medical physics teaching fellow is this Wednesday! See:
jobs.surrey.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
jobs.surrey.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
Job Vacancy at the University of Surrey: Lecturer A in Medical Physics (Teaching Track)
The University of Surrey is a global community of ideas and people, dedicated to life-changing education and research. We are ambitious and have a bold vision of what we want to achieve shaping oursel...
jobs.surrey.ac.uk
June 16, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Closing date for our medical physics teaching fellow is this Wednesday! See:
jobs.surrey.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
jobs.surrey.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
Surrey is hiring! We are appointing a teaching fellow for our longstanding Medical Physics MSc. For details, address for enquiries etc, see:
jobs.surrey.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
jobs.surrey.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
Job Vacancy at the University of Surrey: Lecturer A in Medical Physics (Teaching Track)
The University of Surrey is a global community of ideas and people, dedicated to life-changing education and research. We are ambitious and have a bold vision of what we want to achieve shaping oursel...
jobs.surrey.ac.uk
May 22, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Surrey is hiring! We are appointing a teaching fellow for our longstanding Medical Physics MSc. For details, address for enquiries etc, see:
jobs.surrey.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
jobs.surrey.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
Best guess - using our limited knowledge of COVID transmission - is that a study 4 times larger than the Cambridge study would be large enough to prove air filtration reduces transmission in a hospital
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/03/18/h...
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/03/18/h...
How many need to become infected, to declare air filtering a success?
This post is, basically, a part II to the previous post on the study of Brock et al. on the effect of installing room air filters, on COVID transmission in hospitals. Brock et al. found that the ai…
chanceandnecessity.net
March 18, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Best guess - using our limited knowledge of COVID transmission - is that a study 4 times larger than the Cambridge study would be large enough to prove air filtration reduces transmission in a hospital
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/03/18/h...
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/03/18/h...
Cambridge hospital study found ~ 30% (+ error bars!) reduction in COVID transmission when air filters were used. This is expected if: a) this halved the airborne virus, b) the same variation of transmission w dose found in NHS app data applied in hospitals
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/03/03/m...
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/03/03/m...
Minimising hospital-acquired COVID in Cambridge
Hospitals are full of both infected people, and very susceptible people – people whose immune systems are, due to age or illness, very weak. This is a terrible combination but unavoidable. An…
chanceandnecessity.net
March 3, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Cambridge hospital study found ~ 30% (+ error bars!) reduction in COVID transmission when air filters were used. This is expected if: a) this halved the airborne virus, b) the same variation of transmission w dose found in NHS app data applied in hospitals
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/03/03/m...
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/03/03/m...
Reposted by Richard Sear - comp physics academic
In this world of shrinking research budgets, academic layoffs and failing universities, Elsevier is still making an obscene profit.
If anything has radicalised me to green it's these numbers.
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-worl...
If anything has radicalised me to green it's these numbers.
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-worl...
Elsevier parent company reports 10% rise in profit, to £3.2bn - Research Professional News
Scientific arm of Relx reports adjusted operating profit of £1.17 billion in 2024
www.researchprofessionalnews.com
February 25, 2025 at 7:03 AM
In this world of shrinking research budgets, academic layoffs and failing universities, Elsevier is still making an obscene profit.
If anything has radicalised me to green it's these numbers.
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-worl...
If anything has radicalised me to green it's these numbers.
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-worl...
Cold fusion is back on! But rebranded as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). Oh wait it is just The Guardian printing a letter from slightly loopy Nobel Laureate & friends www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Cold fusion may be a viable energy alternative to end reliance on fossil fuels | Letters
Letters: A number of companies have been able to make these low-energy nuclear reactions work reliably, write Brian Josephson, David J Nagel, Alan Smith, Dr Jean-Paul Biberian and Yasuhiro Iwamura
www.theguardian.com
January 29, 2025 at 5:10 PM
Cold fusion is back on! But rebranded as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). Oh wait it is just The Guardian printing a letter from slightly loopy Nobel Laureate & friends www.theguardian.com/environment/...
I estimate that a chat with someone infected with COVID gives a 1% chance of infection. This is a very very rough estimate, and uses pre-vaccination data, so should be lower now.
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/01/08/h...
PS AI image generation is getting less bad, below is for virus in droplet
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/01/08/h...
PS AI image generation is getting less bad, below is for virus in droplet
January 8, 2025 at 10:59 PM
I estimate that a chat with someone infected with COVID gives a 1% chance of infection. This is a very very rough estimate, and uses pre-vaccination data, so should be lower now.
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/01/08/h...
PS AI image generation is getting less bad, below is for virus in droplet
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/01/08/h...
PS AI image generation is getting less bad, below is for virus in droplet
Reposted by Richard Sear - comp physics academic
January 6, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Welsh hospitals declared a"critical incident" due in part to so many flu cases occupying beds. Mostly this is due to austerity but amateurish attempts to reduce flu transmission like giving out surgical masks not the mire effective FFP2s don't help. Blog post
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/01/02/t...
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/01/02/t...
January 2, 2025 at 9:47 PM
Welsh hospitals declared a"critical incident" due in part to so many flu cases occupying beds. Mostly this is due to austerity but amateurish attempts to reduce flu transmission like giving out surgical masks not the mire effective FFP2s don't help. Blog post
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/01/02/t...
chanceandnecessity.net/2025/01/02/t...
@natureportfolio.bsky.social research highlight on my paper estimating that populations that mask up with FFP2/N95s reduce effective reproduction number for COVID by about a factor of 9
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What if everyone had masked up? Analysis of app data has an answer
Modelling study based on almost 250,000 positive COVID-19 tests in the United Kingdom shows that universal masking could have cut transmission markedly.
www.nature.com
December 5, 2024 at 3:42 PM
@natureportfolio.bsky.social research highlight on my paper estimating that populations that mask up with FFP2/N95s reduce effective reproduction number for COVID by about a factor of 9
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Reposted by Richard Sear - comp physics academic
“Masks don’t work”? Or “Cochrane methodology applied in the absence of common sense will mislead”? Looks like it’s the latter.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...
www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...
What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis?
The Cochrane Library, a trusted source of health information, misled the public by prioritizing rigor over reality
www.scientificamerican.com
October 18, 2023 at 10:36 AM
“Masks don’t work”? Or “Cochrane methodology applied in the absence of common sense will mislead”? Looks like it’s the latter.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...
www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...