Last week, the excd.lab sent a team to “Big Bang Bristol“, a two day science, technology, engineering, and maths extravaganza. Guest post by Shakti Puri & Lucy Harries. The fair had the purpose of introducing children to research through hands-on experiments, activities, and live demonstrations. Our stall, entitled the ‘Science of Culture’, consisted of … Read more
There’s an engaging conversation in Nature this week with four science-fiction writers who concentrate on the life-sciences in their writing: The biologists strike back. I have this tremendous block about sci-fi. I have dabbled on the fringes and read Neal Stephenson and Iain Banks like everyone else, but virtually no classic sci-fi. Genre fiction intimidates … Read more
The piece by Harry Kroto is actually entitled “The wrecking of British Science“, but it contains positive messages as well as cautions. In the Guardian: Many think of the sciences as merely a fund of knowledge. Journalists never ask scientists anything other than what the applications are of scientific breakthroughs. Interestingly, I doubt they ever … Read more
Apparently so, because there are a number of bug posts on this blog. Via Grow-A-Brain, a video of the amazing Megalopyge opercularis, a moth so fuzzy and furry I squealed a little at how cute it was. Of course, that fuzz is out to get you, as the “fur” is actually venom-carrying prickles that’ll have … Read more
The Wellcome Trust’s Biomedical Image Awards. I used to love the photo-identification round (“what is this strange wire contraption?” an egg-beater!) in quiz shows like University Challenge or W3 when I was younger, but I’m pretty sure none of these would be identifiable but anyone but their respective experts. I particularly like the aspirin and … Read more
A “vagary”, according to The Source, is the collective noun for ‘impediments’. More pages that collect collective nouns are here and here. I am amused that a group of submarines is called a wolfpack, and that a group of sheldrakes is a doading (shoutout to my friend Duckie!). Henceforth a group of links to things … Read more
Went to Natural History Museum today. Disappointed like a seven year old when realised the new ANIMATRONIC DINOSAURS weren’t on show until the weekend. Was also annoyed by the dustiness and not-working lihgts in the gemstone collection. Consoled self with the zen of watching the leaf-cutter ants. Now you can too.
A non-biologist friend of mine, on proofreading bits of the thesis-in-progress, got terribly excited about the program Mr Bayes. "Mr Bayes!" she exclaimed. "That's the perfect name for a tabby cat!" Her comments on the section where I actually described Bayesian methods in phylogenetics consisted mainly of 🙁 and >.< faces. "The words seem to … Read more
Continuing my trend of providing free advertising to people who make science cool and accessible: Made With Molecules. ThinkGeek already did the t-shirt thing with their caffeine molecules, but the jewellery is very lovely, especially the earrings and simple necklaces (I loathe charm bracelets). Putting on my once-was-jewellery-designer hat, I'm all for putting a premium … Read more
Eagleton, C. & Spencer, M. 2006. Copying and conflation in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Treatise on the astrolabe : a stemmatic analysis using phylogenetic software. Studies In History and Philosophy of Science Part A [link] Chaucer’s works seem to be the focus of what one might call literary phylogenetics. This new paper uses network methods to try … Read more