Latest posts

Father’s Day

Posted on 16 June 2013 by Austin

I must admit I hadn’t noticed it was Father’s Day until I switched on the computer this morning, what with us being a notoriously ‘Something’s Day’-averse lot at Chez Elliott. I was, BTW, not woken with croissants and coffee. let alone a gift certificate for a year’s subscription to Private Eye (ah well – n Continue reading →

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Peggy Wheelock-the ultimate in research and mentorship

Posted on 15 June 2013 by Steve Caplan

This blog has been long in the making. Long, because until recently, I’m not sure I would have been able to type out these words without flooding my keyboard with tears. But the time has come for me to write down a few personal thoughts about Peggy Wheelock.

This week, about four and a half years after Peggy’s untimely death, we had the Continue reading →

Posted in education, leadership, mentorship, Nebraska Center for Cellular Signaling, Peggy Wheelock, Research, science | Leave a comment

The Two Opposing Sides of the Desk

Posted on 15 June 2013 by Athene Donald

At different times in one’s life one is more likely to be an interviewer or an interviewee, but these things are never immutable. As it happens I have been the subject of several interviews recently, something which has made me think a bit differently about how to tackle these things and reminds me what it feels like to be the one put on the Continue reading →

Posted in Communicating Science, interviews, Science Culture, The Life Scientific | Leave a comment

It Has Not Escaped Our Notice #7

Posted on 11 June 2013 by cromercrox

This picture has been the subject of a number of eructations on social media recently. I felt it too good to pass up. I regret that I cannot find a credit for it (if anyone can find this out and tell me I’d be grateful.)
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Fitting Interpersonal Skills into Academia

Posted on 9 June 2013 by Athene Donald

There is much talk in higher education about the importance of transferable skills. For a PhD student this means that you receive training in things beyond your own particular field of research. Typically this would include being required to consider your writing and presentation skills; additionally, maybe you would be exposed to ideas of project Continue reading →

Posted in management style, research student, Schlumberger Faculty of the Future, Science Culture, team building | Leave a comment

Iain Banks (1954-2013)

Posted on 9 June 2013 by cromercrox

All things must pass, but some things pass too soon. Two months ago, Scottish author Iain Banks announced that he had terminal cancer and had at best a year to live. He is now dead, at 59. So passes a waspish talent in literary fiction – and a towering voice in SF.

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Posted in Against A Dark Background, Complicity, Consider Phlebas, Iain Banks, Iain M Banks, Matter, Science-fiction, The Player of Games, The Wasp Factory, Use of Weapons, Writing & Reading | Leave a comment

The curious case of the barbecue and the toilet seat.

Posted on 7 June 2013 by Philip Strange

Bbq chicken wings

The prospect of a weekend with some warmer weather sends us Brits in to a frenzy of outdoor eating. So, in this spirit, and ignoring the light rain, I went searching for our barbecue and found it under a pile of old flowerpots in the garden store. As I struggled to extract the barbecue from the tangle of pea sticks and garden tools, I noticed our Continue reading →

Posted in Daily Mail, Fun, Guest posts, hygeine, misleading, poor journalism, Pseudoscience | Leave a comment

Archicebus

Posted on 7 June 2013 by cromercrox

The course of the news was slightly perturbed recently by the description of the 55-million-year-old fossil primate Archicebus achilles, which was published in Nature. (DISCLAIMER: I was the handling editor, and steered the paper from submission, through peer review, until the time when it was brought blinking into the light.)

Here is the BBC TV ne Continue reading →

Posted in ancestor, Archicebus, Darwinius, evolution, haplorrhine, missing link, phylogeny, primates, Science Blogging, Science Is Vital, strepsirrhine, Teilhardina | Leave a comment

In which we reach the brink – chemists add their voices

Posted on 6 June 2013 by Jennifer Rohn

As 26 June draws nigh, I’m starting to get a little nervous about the outcome of the UK Treasury’s decision on the 2015-2016 budget, which will decide how much public spending will be allocated to the science budget. Science is Vital has been hard at work trying to sway hearts and minds with our latest campaign – for those of you Continue reading →

Posted in Science Funding, Science Is Vital | Leave a comment

Book Prizes, Gender and Personality

Posted on 5 June 2013 by Athene Donald

The long-list for the Royal Society Winton Book Prize was announced last week which, if the publishers blurbs listed in the write-up in the Guardian are to be believed, represent a real cornucopia of delightful reading. As it happens, I am in the middle of reading one of the long-listed books at the moment (Life’s Ratchet by Peter Hoffman) an Continue reading →

Posted in book review, Communicating Science, EO White, Frank Fraser Darling, Peter Hoffman, Royal Society, Tim Birkhead | Leave a comment

Literary Locations

Posted on 2 June 2013 by cromercrox

Heartened this morning by a couple of very nice customer reviews for By The Sea, as well as by some sunshine, I went to the beach with the Canes Croxorum. On the way I took some photos of places that feature, if slightly modified, in the novel.

This view is taken by the cliffs, looking east, just to the east of Cromer. The cliffs are on the left of Continue reading →

Posted in Blog Norfolk!, by the sea, Cromer, Cromer East Beach, location, reading and writing, the sigil, Writing & Reading | Leave a comment

ehCloud: why Canada (and every other country) needs its own cloud computing tools

Posted on 2 June 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I recently helped one of our scientists put together an application for an industry-partnered bioinformatics grant. I understand the company in question to be more or less universally recognised as the leader in its field and therefore the obvious partner for this grant, but because it’s based in the US we had to complete a one-page justifica Continue reading →

Posted in Canada, communication, genomics, grant wrangling, science, technology, the wonders of technology | Leave a comment

In which the data get an outing

Posted on 31 May 2013 by Jennifer Rohn

For the past few weeks I’ve been traveling the globe at back-to-back conferences – hence the silence here. The conference universe has its own natural laws, and time flows differently as its strict routines overwrite all of your own normal ones.

ConferenceAuditorium

Instead of thinking about experiments, papers and grants in the familiar environment of you Continue reading →

Posted in careers, Scientific method, Scientific thinking, The profession of science | Leave a comment

Advice from the Great and Good

Posted on 31 May 2013 by Athene Donald

Not so long ago I stumbled across a very enthusiastic review of a new book by the renowned entomologist EO Wilson. The book was not about ants as such, his speciality, but its content can be deduced from the title: ‘Letters to a Young Scientist‘. With such an elegiac review to encourage me, I bought the book (to read on my iPad) and loo Continue reading →

Posted in advice, book review, career progression, EO Wilson, Peter Medawar, Science Culture | Leave a comment

Alfred Russel Wallace – the forgotten man of evolution?

Posted on 29 May 2013 by Philip Strange

Following on from Sylvia McLain’s recent post on Richard Dawkins, here is more on evolution. My piece concerns Alfred Russel Wallace, who was intimately involved in the early thinking on this topic. The timing of the two pieces is entirely coincidental.

 

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Posted in alfred russel wallace, Bill Bailey, centenary, Charles Darwin, dorset, evolution, Guest posts, natural selection, wallace 100 | Leave a comment