Category Archives: Protein Crystallography

The Speed of X-rays

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Stephen

I was back at the Diamond Light Source today — the synchrotron that we use to blast protein crystals with X-rays to figure out the structures of protein molecules. The beamlines at the synchrotron where we do our experiments have … Continue reading →

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The Perutz Effect

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Stephen

I have Jim Franks of Newton TV to thank for the opportunity to sit around a table with some of the current scientists at the world-famous MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology to talk about the legacy of its founder, Max … Continue reading →

Posted in History of Science, Protein Crystallography, Science, Science & Media | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Prize Your Imagination

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Stephen

On Wednesday last I was fortunate to find myself an outlier among the great and the good at the Wellcome Trust Image Awards for 2011, where hefty glass slabs were being handed out by Adam Rutherford as prizes to imaginative … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Small and Very Far Away

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Stephen

As Father Ted might have explained it to Dougal, this one is very small: Atom but that one is far away. Mars (NASA) And yet it is the distant planet and not the nearby atom that seems to excite the … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , , | 54 Comments

Padding times three

Posted on January 8, 2011 by Stephen

Henry started it by banging on about his iPad. Somehow the subject of blogging came up and I mentioned the BlogPress app, so here I am testing it out. I used it once on MT4 but this is my first … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogging, Fun, Protein Crystallography | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Snapshots of 2010

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Stephen

I wasn’t going to do a review of the year’s blogposts but, on the off-chance that the recent move to the shiny new site at Occam’s Typewriter has attracted some new readers, I thought I would provide a brief guide … Continue reading →

Posted in AltMed, Astronomy, Blogging, History of Science, Libel Reform, Protein Crystallography, Science, Science & Politics, TV review | 5 Comments

Monsters in the details

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Stephen

I promise I won’t make a habit of just posting links to stuff on other sites but I am childishly proud of having a piece about macromolecular crystallography in the Guardian Science Blog.

Posted in Protein Crystallography | Tagged | 4 Comments

A molecule of life and death

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Stephen

Walter Clement Noel was famous in the wrong circles for the wrong reasons. He died in Grenada in 1916 aged just 32. Over fifty years later, in the first decade of my life, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was far and … Continue reading →

Posted in History of Science, Protein Crystallography | 18 Comments

A MAD day

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Stephen

This is a quick one. The internet’s not working terribly reliably at home so, in case you missed it on Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed, here is a short film about what myself and some of my group got up to … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Scientific Life | 18 Comments

Making Movies

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Stephen

For three days last week I was at the EMBL in Heidelberg taking a fantastic course on data visualisation. As is often the way with scientific training, the course was intense: lectures and practicals from 9 in the morning till … Continue reading →

Posted in Fun, Protein Crystallography | 13 Comments

Homeopathy: That’s Numberwang!

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Stephen

This morning I attended a my first ever publicity stunt. The 1023 overdose event, initiated by the Merseyside Skeptics, was held in cities around the UK and the rest of the world. Our particular group assembled in the lightly frosted … Continue reading →

Posted in AltMed, Protein Crystallography | 61 Comments

Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Stephen

On Friday evening the structural biologists of Imperial College and the friends of the structural biologists of Imperial College gathered together for a screening of the film, Naturally Obsessed. Filmed over three years, this hour-long documentary tracks the lives of … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema, Protein Crystallography, Science, Scientific Life | 10 Comments