Tag: Science Communication
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Jupiter and Juno
Once in a while I write a blog post about space missions – and there have been quite a few recently. I especially enjoyed the Rosetta mission to 67P and the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Now another mission has crossed my horizons, namely the Juno mission to Jupiter. While Pluto was believed to be…
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AMR, alarm and awareness
On 19 May the much awaited report on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), chaired by Jim O’Neill, was published under the title “Tackling drug-resistant infections globally: Final report and recommendations”. Headlines In the UK this report was announced by the newspapers under (not very snappy) headlines, such as “Warning: Rise of SUPERBUGS resistant to antibiotics poses ‘bigger…
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Science communication and the role of the Government
On 23 March 2016 the Science and Technology Committee launched an “inquiry on how the Government, scientists, the media and others encourage and facilitate public awareness of – and engagement in – science.” Science communication inquiry Two responses to this ‘Science communication inquiry’ have so far been submitted (as far as I am aware), one…
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Synthetic Biology and Responsible Language Use: An anthology of blog posts
Over the last couple of years I have written quite a few blog posts on synthetic biology and responsible research and innovation, focusing in particular on the use of metaphors in both science and policy/politics. I have now assembled them, DIY fashion, into a little ‘booklet’. If anybody has the time and/or inclination to do…
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Musings on language and life, with special reference to ‘programming’
This morning I opened the newspaper and read an article about a new language that lets researchers design novel biological circuits. I mumbled something about this over coffee and my husband said, oh but wasn’t that old hat, we all knew that DNA was a language, code etc. So what was new? I looked again…
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3D printing with atoms: Beginning a story
A while ago Phil Moriarty published a post here on the ‘Making Science Public’ blog to announce a new project in which we are both involved. He talked about ‘impact’, or rather, the ‘non-impact’ type public engagement work we want to do. The project deals with Mechanochemistry at the single bond limit: Towards deterministic epitaxy.…
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Making Science Public blog posts 2015: An overview
This year the Making Science Public blog has been dominated by two topics: climate change and synthetic biology. One topic is on the way out, so to speak, as the climate change focused project within our research programme is coming to an end. It will continue though in a new guise, in the shape of…
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The crucial role of culture in climate change
On Wednesday, I attended the US Ambassador’s ‘digital dialogue’ event on climate change at Winfield House, where policy wonks, journalists, NGO representatives and academics discussed their current hopes and frustrations. Beyond the usual grumbles about ‘bogus arguments’ against climate action, it was pleasing that some attendees outside of the social sciences chose to highlight the key role of cultural…
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Snapshots of the unknown – some holiday souvenirs
On holiday at the English seaside I read two very different books: a popular science book on Aristotle’s biology by Armand Marie Leroi (The Lagoon, 2014) and a novel by Jules Verne about a sea voyage to the North pole (Les Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras, 1864). While reading these books, I also came across an…
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Infectious futures
On Sunday (9 August) I did something for the first time. I went to a ‘con’ or convention: the Nine Worlds Geekfest 2015. How did this happen? A few months ago, Lydia Nicholas from Nesta approached me with a fascinating project. In collaboration with Joshua Ryan-Saha, the Assistant Manager of the Longitude Prize, she had…
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