In which we debate the historical usefulness of hashtags, especially in connection with scientific conferences like IUPS 2013.
I occasionally get asked, within my University and even beyond it, to pose as some kind of social media expert. Which I’m not, of course – I’m more like a person with far too much familiarity with f!*ting Continue reading
Not IUPS-related tonight – but something that should concern the people there – should concern *us*. Especially the people WITH senior positions.
Scientific research has a lot going for it as a job.
Continue readingThis whole blog of mine was meant to be about interdisciplinary science. At least, when I started it up, 3 years ago next month, that was what I had in mind as my major theme. In fact, like so much of my life, it hasn’t panned out quite as envisaged. In the early days there were a number of posts on the topic; more recently practically none. Continue reading
Here is my third Day in the Life post this week (see Tuesday’s post, and Monday’s post for some background).
I came in first thing to find a few emails from my boss in my inbox. One was a reply to my request for a quote about our retiring Assistant Director, so I was able to add it in and publish that news item. Another was about the M Continue reading
The increasing frequency with which I hear scientists misuse the word “agnostic” is starting to annoy me. It’s usually used to mean “I don’t have a strong preference”: for example, “I’m agnostic as to protocol – I could go either way if someone else has a strong opinion” when discussing how to conduct an experiment.
This is not what agnostic means! Continue reading
Here goes with my second Day in the Life post this week (see Monday’s post for some background).
I had planned to get in super-early this morning, but a disturbed night thanks to the thunderstorms put paid to that. I arrived at my desk about one hour before my visitors were due to arrive. This gave me time to make a few tweaks to the blogpos Continue reading
If you like your popular-science authors to call a spade a spade, and lay out everything as clearly and plainly as possible with no ambiguity and no contradictions, then you’re sure to have a few titles by Brian Clegg on your shelf. Clegg is to unnecessarily flowery language what giraffes are to unicycles, so when I heard he’d written a Continue reading
A dispatch from the IUPS conference in Birmingham.
I have to admit to some trepidation when it comes to big international mega-conferences like the IUPS (International Union of Physiological Sciences). They have never entirely agreed with me. The first conference I ever attended, the IUPAB (B for biophysics) in Bristol in 1983, was one of the mega- Continue reading
Sadly the Library Day in the Life project has ended. It provided a chance twice a year for librarians round the world to explain what they did each working day for a week. I took part twice, in 2011 and 2012. The project ended earlier this year – it had grown quite large with many participants and its originator realised that it needed new g Continue reading
Beekeeping in a busy city centre? It doesn’t sound right to me, but there’s a growing trend to put beehives on the vacant roofs of city centre shops and museums. I recently had a chance to find out what’s behind this trend when bees arrived on the Princesshay shopping centre in Exeter. There are now three beehives on the roof of this busy shopping Continue reading
