October 2010

Lost in the Maize

by Andrew Maynard October 29, 2010

A weekly reflection on life in academia Most of this last week was spent in San Francisco, at the NISE Net (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) network-wide meeting – possibly my favorite meeting of the year (I might have mentioned that before).  This year I had the additional pleasure of opening the meeting in a [...]

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What happens when you cross a spider with a goat? Complete the story:

by Andrew Maynard October 27, 2010

Complete the following: Setting: A well known and sometimes off-beat technology commentator explores new breakthroughs on a popular TV science and tech show. Story: Spiders’ silk is incredibly strong, but in short supply (ever tried harvesting silk from a spider?). So why not take the gene responsible for making spider silk, and splice it into [...]

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Beyond the obvious – lessons from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

by Andrew Maynard October 25, 2010

The immediate lessons from the Deepwater Horizon disaster are pretty obvious – we (or at least somebody) messed up!  But what about the less-obvious lessons – especially those concerning technology innovation and how it’s handled?  The Fall 2010 issue of Findings – the University of Michigan School of Public Health Alumni magazine – contains a [...]

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Lost in the Maize – Poster Day at the UM School of Public Health

by Andrew Maynard October 22, 2010

A weekly reflection on life in academia Today was my first Poster Day at the School of Public Health.  For those readers not intimately attuned to the School’s calendar (i.e. most of you), it’s a chance for second year Masters students to present and talk about their Summer field experiences (something all students are required [...]

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Limited resources and emerging technologies: China does the math

by Andrew Maynard October 20, 2010

New technologies depend on uncommon materials, and society depends on new technologies.  Which means that economies that develop the former and control the latter have something of an upper hand in today’s interconnected and technology-dependent world. This has clearly not escaped the notice of the Chinese.  China, which controls around 90% of the world’s rare [...]

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Lost in the Maize

by Andrew Maynard October 15, 2010

A weekly reflection on life in academia. Ann Arbor in the fall is beautiful. It’s possibly the closest I’ve come to an English Autumn since arriving in the US nearly eleven years ago. Walking the dog the other morning, there was a definite scent of damp, decaying leaf-litter in the air; a scent sharply reminiscent [...]

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Rehabilitating “Risk”

by Andrew Maynard October 14, 2010

Now that I’ve had some time to get to grips with my new position as Director of the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, I thought it was high time I started letting people know something about where the Center will be heading over the next few years.  Cross-posted on the Risk Science Center’s home [...]

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Nanotechnology 2.0: The next ten years of nano risk research

by Andrew Maynard October 13, 2010

Sometime in the past couple of weeks – I’m not entirely sure when as accounts are conflicting – the World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC) posted a draft of a new report examining the long-term impacts and research directions of nanotechnology.  The “Nano2″ study was supported by the National Science Foundation under the direction of Mike [...]

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Lost in the Maize

by Andrew Maynard October 8, 2010

A weekly reflection on life in academia This week I’m well and truly lost – tomorrow I’m being initiated into the mysteries of collegiate football, and I’m terrified! Just in case you are one of the 6.5 billion people in the world who doesn’t eat, drink and sleep American football (a perceived minority, if not [...]

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Lost in the Maize

by Andrew Maynard October 1, 2010

One thing they don’t warn you about going into academia is the business of making sense of your paycheck. When I started working for the US government in 2000, I was bowled over by the bureaucracy. Compared to the lean, mean government of a UK emerging from the Thatcher years, it was like going back [...]

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