Category Archives: Uncategorized

The firework screamed upwards into the night sky and burst, with an almighty crack, into a vibrant spray of light and colour. Everyone looked up. Some people cheered. And then the murmur of conversation resumed. Is that what happened with the … Continue reading →

Despite having a physics degree and some notion of the stretchiness of space and time in Einstein’s theory of special relativity, I’ve never felt comfortable with these ideas. In particular, I have never really had a good feel for why … Continue reading →

The Science is Vital Campaign has caught the grim mood of the scientific community and focused the energy of opposition to light a fire of protest. The campaign petition was gathering about 1,000 signatures a day just after the launch … Continue reading →

It starts tomorrow. The floodgates will open and will not close again for two whole weeks. I mean of course that “I’m a scientist, get me out of here!” starts tomorrow morning. I have signed up to submit myself for … Continue reading →

This is, to my mind, a quite astonishing report about Nature Publishing Group (NPG) hiking its proposed 2011 journal subscription charges to the University of California (UC) by 400%. (NPG is the company that runs the Nature Network blogging platform). … Continue reading →

Wunderkind of audiovisual media that I am, I confess to being rather late in getting around to this one. Even I hesitated at the narcissistic self-absorption of it. But as a blogger, I must learn to overcome such hesitations. Here, … Continue reading →

Confused by the title? I’m not surprised. I’m a little confused myself. Though this is a common experience in science and nothing to be ashamed of. I was thinking about the Boomtown Rats since I was using their celebrated second … Continue reading →

I saw this and thought of you… …Steffi.

Ha, this’ll make you laugh. Having spent my last blogpost in wistful reflection on the endless judgements that I find myself subjected to as a working scientist, I have just signed up–quite voluntarily, of my own free will and with … Continue reading →

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 →