Latest posts

10 Things You Should Know about Election to the Royal Society

Posted on 20 April 2012 by Athene Donald

There has been much consternation today in the Twittersphere -  and no doubt elsewhere too  – about the fact that there were only two women this year in the list of 44 new Fellows elected to the Royal Society. It goes without saying that this is deeply disappointing. I know that this is a view held by many, including (possibly particularly) t Continue reading →

Posted in election, Equality, FRS, Royal Society, Women in science | Comments Off on 10 Things You Should Know about Election to the Royal Society

Communication, communication, communication

Posted on 19 April 2012 by Sylvia McLain

Alice Bell wrote a provocative piece in Times Higher Education, ‘Wider open spaces’, where she calls for science communication to be MORE open, rather than just opening access to specialist journals. The open access ‘movement’ (for lack of a better term) has recently catapulted its call for scientific journals to be accessib Continue reading →

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Why We Need to Start Young

Posted on 18 April 2012 by Athene Donald

Recently the Royal Society of Edinburgh released its report looking at the position of women in STEM in Scotland and what ought to be done by their Government; it also looked more broadly at the situation across the UK.  The report, Tapping all Our Talents, covers all too familiar territory. It rehearses the well-documented loss of women along the Continue reading →

Posted in Athena Swan, Delusions of Gender, Equality, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Tapping all our Talents, Women in science | Comments Off on Why We Need to Start Young

Comic genius

Posted on 18 April 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I’m currently working on a progress report for a collaboration that spans multiple projects and sub-projects. As usual I copied the final version of my last report to a new folder, then renamed it “DRAFT April 2012 report.doc” and started to update it, starting with the easiest sections. In the past I’ve kept track of which Continue reading →

Posted in career, Silliness | Comments Off on Comic genius

With Fresh Ears, Eyes and Hands

Posted on 15 April 2012 by Athene Donald

In the run-up to Easter I happened to catch part of a broadcast of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. This is a work I was steeped in as a teenager, attending the annual Bach Choir’s performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London several years on the trot, as well as other performances around the country. To begin with I loved it but, for various familia Continue reading →

Posted in advice, freedom, Interdisciplinary Science, Research, supervision | Comments Off on With Fresh Ears, Eyes and Hands

What’s your favourite colour?

Posted on 14 April 2012 by Stephen

What’s your favourite colour? Anyone who has socialised with small children will have been confronted with this serious-faced interrogation at some point. It’s the sort of question that erupts as soon as young kids learn to verbalise the jumble of perceptions filling up minds that are untidier than their bedrooms. It’s the sort of Continue reading →

Posted in Colour, Protein Crystallography, science, X-ray crystallography, X-rays | Comments Off on What’s your favourite colour?

In which necessity’s a MoFo

Posted on 13 April 2012 by Jennifer Rohn

Reality check and status update: I’m still a lab head, and I’m still poor.

But after knocking around in this new position for nearly three months, I have to admit that it’s rather good fun being poor. When you lack items that you’ve always taken for granted, you have to come up with all sorts of creative workarounds to do yo Continue reading →

Posted in Scientific method, Silliness | Comments Off on In which necessity’s a MoFo

A very retro seminar

Posted on 13 April 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

(now that Big Complicated Grant has progressed to the next stage and I can draw breath again, let’s see if I can remember how to write about anything other than hockey!)

I believe I’ve mentioned in the past that I work in the same building as my postdoc supervisor; this proximity means that I often run into her and other old friends fro Continue reading →

Posted in cancer research, career, evolution, genomics, original research, science, technology | Comments Off on A very retro seminar

Breaking into the Lab

Posted on 12 April 2012 by Athene Donald

What follows is a book review which first appeared in Times Higher Education on April 12th 2012

Breaking Into the Lab: Engineering Progress for Women in Science
By Sue V. Rosser
New York University Press
264pp, £23.99
ISBN 9780814776452
Published 25 April 2012

Larry Summers, then president of Harvard University, stirred up a storm in 2005 by sugge Continue reading →

Posted in book review, leaky pipeline, US universities, Women in science | Comments Off on Breaking into the Lab

Relativity Theory

Posted on 12 April 2012 by Steve Caplan

How many times have we been told in the course of our lives “It’s all relative?”

I hear that over and over. And I suppose that there’s a lot of truth in that statement. If we push aside considerations of moral issues, the “Non-Einsteinian Theory of Relativity” probably holds true in many cases. Continue reading →

Posted in grant, grant review, international, proposal, relative, relativity, Research, science | Comments Off on Relativity Theory