Posts

September 03, 2011

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11:38 AM | Light Reading, and a bit of inspiration from #solo11

Every time I attend Science Online London (#solo11) I come back determined to reinvigorate my blog and keep writing regularly and this one is no exception. At least this time there is an added element of realism - I know...

October 06, 2010

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11:17 AM | Things I don't know - Science is Vital

Working at Diamond I know quite a few science success stories. New protein structures are solved, telling us how viruses spread through the body, how certain cancer drugs might (and might not) work, what makes a virus jump species. I...

September 28, 2010

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12:45 PM | RS Web Science day 2 - afternoon session

Ramesh Jain starts by defining life as a set of events from which we gain experiences. Human history is that of communicating experiences, using s developing experience of tools, from language written language, printing press, telephone to the internet. At...

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8:16 AM | RS Web Science: a new frontier Day 2

Pierre Levy, a philosopher from the University of Ottowa began the first session with "The Nature of Collective Intelligence." He begins by showing layers of symbolic tools, from orality, writing, alphabet, mass media to a digital medium. He looked at...

September 27, 2010

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12:46 PM | Royal Society Web Science meeting #2

The afternoon session is all about Engineering the web, starting with Jianping Wu on Towards a next generation internet. He started with the stats - 2 billion people are now online (June 2010), although this is significantly skewed by geographic...

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8:55 AM | Royal Society Web Science meeting - a (semi) live blog...

Today I find myself at the Royal Society for a discussion meeting on Web Science: A New Frontier (Twitter #RSWebSci). This is part of a series of seminars the RS are holding as part of their 350th anniversary celebrations on...

August 15, 2010

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12:26 PM | Come and see

Just a few weeks to go until Science Online London, which I am very much looking forward to, there is an exciting programme and I'm only disappointed that I can only attend on the first day, particularly missing Evan Harris...

July 18, 2010

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8:25 AM | Don't you miss doing proper science?

This is a question that was posed to me recently and it's led to a lot of thought on my part. It has been a busy few weeks. I have been helping out at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, explaining...

June 28, 2010

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7:22 AM | Flying penguins, ancient clams and strawberry pea cocktails

Just back from my first full day at the Royal Society's Summer Exhibition, this time held at London's South Bank. I'm something of a veteran at these events, this is my third time as an exhibitor, once before with Diamond,...

May 12, 2010

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2:09 PM | So long Dr Harris, for now

I am feeling guilty. I am not entirely to blame, but this is the guilt of inaction rather than action. You see, last Thursday my MP lost his seat by a miniscule 176 votes. My guilt stems not from not...

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12:30 PM | One hundred years of Dorothy

Today (12 May 2010) is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Britains only female Nobel prize winner, Dorothy Hodgkin. With a career spanning seven decades, she pioneered the field of structural biology, particularly the use of X-rays to establish...

April 13, 2010

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9:03 PM | Bad Law

Just got back from my very first Oxford Skeptics in the Pub experience, and I would have to say, I'm very impressed. The speaker was the excellent, and very familiar Jack of Kent, aka David Allen Green, on our favourite...

March 09, 2010

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8:40 PM | Crystallography for beginners

This afternoon finds me in a packed lecture theatre in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History lecture theatre, which has to be one of my favourite venues. I'm here to listen to Professor Elspeth Garman, a biophysicist and president...

March 04, 2010

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10:58 AM | A bit of lift relief

I am a regular user of the lift at Diamond, and it always annoys me that the announcer, well, lies. Many is the time a calm male voice declares "This lift is going up", despite the down button being pressed....

February 28, 2010

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4:29 PM | Straightening out light sources, and how others do it

Following my recent post, I am now back at home in the UK, still slightly jetlagged and wondering if I'll be awake in time for work tomorrow. I will cover what we discussed some other time, but in the meantime,...

February 21, 2010

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7:01 PM | San Francisco and synchrotron social networks

So today sees me staring out from my hotel room at a decidedly murky San Francisco. It's my first visit to the city and I'm on my own, currently pondering whether to brave the inclement weather (I'm sure they told...