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In which I do my bit

Posted on 1 March 2011 by Jennifer Rohn

For me, one of the highlights of Science Online 2011 was meeting @HistoryGeek – Holly Tucker, an Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University who teaches French and the history of medicine, and whose upcoming book Blood Work, a tale of murder and medicine in the Scientific Revolution, is coming out imminently from WW Norton. In fact, I’m not ashame Continue reading →

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On the hairy nature of light

Posted on 1 March 2011 by rpg

One of the least strange physical phenomena is that light behaves like a wave. Some of the time, at least. (The Younger Pawn asked if she could surf on light, if it was a wave. I said only if she was really really small.)

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Posted in laser, light. wave, Pawns, science | Comments Off on On the hairy nature of light

Monaco film festival award

Posted on 28 February 2011 by Frank Norman

I was surprised to see some familiar faces on the front cover of my local freesheet newspaper recently. This paper, The Archer, is not a typical freesheet, but a community-produced monthly newspaper which has a good deal of local content, not just advertising. The photo on the front page of the February issue showed three local people: the well-kn Continue reading →

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Bad sports?

Posted on 28 February 2011 by Steve Caplan

When we first moved to Omaha, Nebraska some years ago, and settled into our new house, it was a Friday. By Saturday noon, we had made an initial stab at organizing a few essential boxes, and wanted to relieve the “cabin fever” by taking a drive to familiarize ourselves with our new surroundings.

On this July afternoon, we drove downtown Continue reading →

Posted in education, Football, health, Lincoln, Nebraska, omaha, science, sports, university sports | Comments Off on Bad sports?

Frontlines

Posted on 28 February 2011 by Henry Gee

Just got time to carve a word, or not even that – simply to mark two stories I found today on teh interwebs. This one, on the teaching of evolution in US schools following the 2005 Dover trials; and this one, on the religiously motivated attack on a teacher who taught religious education in classes in London at which Muslim girls were present Continue reading →

Posted in educayshun, extremism, hats, Politicrox, religion, Science Is Vital | Comments Off on Frontlines

Read the Question

Posted on 28 February 2011 by Athene Donald

One of the first things we tell children as they start to do exams is ‘read the question’. As they get more sophisticated we go further, and say think about what the examiners want and how to express key points clearly – or at least we can say that if they are doing more than multiple-choice questions. As examiners we have all read scripts i Continue reading →

Posted in committee work, CV, form-filling, promotion, Science Culture | Comments Off on Read the Question

Discrimination

Posted on 28 February 2011 by Henry Gee

Those of you who know me well will realize that any signs of feminism that might make themselves felt in the mind of Crox are soon tempered by the brute facts of biology.

Equality of opportunity, equality in the workplace, equality in the home – well, I’m for all these things. What sane person wouldn’t be?

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Posted in feminism, insurance the colour-neutral gender-neutral person's burden, Politicrox, Science Is Vital | Comments Off on Discrimination

Gaelic names are always the hardest to pronounce

Posted on 27 February 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I’m spending all weekend in the office, working on a couple of grants that are due tomorrow. Being even more in need of sanity breaks (such as this quick blogging break) than usual, I took a nice refreshing walk in the snow yesterday lunchtime to a nearby Safeway. The cashier was new, and unusually chatty as she rang up my sandwich, milk (tea Continue reading →

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Patterns

Posted on 27 February 2011 by Henry Gee

The summer after my second year as an undergraduate I had the amazing opportunity of a summer job, working in the Natural History Museum, at the Department of Palaeontology. It was an excellent introduction to fossils for this wannabe palaeontologist. My job was to reorganize the collection of pteraspid fishes according to a newly published thesis. Continue reading →

Posted in Apparitions, Cromer, Cromer East Beach, Domesticrox, Football, pteraspid, purine nucleus, Research, Science Is Vital, soccer | Comments Off on Patterns

The Perutz Effect

Posted on 27 February 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 Perutz.

Guardian website: NewtonTV video on Max Perutz

The discussion was part of a video that you can see at The Guardian web-site and is intercut with previously unseen interv Continue reading →

Posted in History of Science, Max Perutz, Protein Crystallography, science, Science & Media, video | Comments Off on The Perutz Effect