Posts tagged as:

Communication

24 questions and answers on nanotechnology safety

February 12, 2010

Well I guess I set myself up good and proper – I should have realized that in asking people for their questions on nanotechnology safety last week, they would actually want answers!
Having failed miserably to compile a catalog of websites that provide clear and concise answers to the questions asked in last week’s blog (I [...]

Read the full article →

Nanotechnology safety: We’ve got the answers, now what was the question?

February 12, 2010

Last Friday I posted 24 questions on nanotechnology safety provided by folks on Twitter and FaceBook, in a naive attempt to see if people could find matching answers on the web.  Predictably perhaps, there weren’t too many responses.  This wasn’t too surprising – I’m beginning to realize that asking for feedback on the web is [...]

Read the full article →

No Small Matter – a taste of the nanoscale

January 18, 2010

To accompany the review just posted of Felice Frankel and George Whitesides’ book “No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale” the authors kindly allowed me to post this series of excerpts.  What I wanted to capture here was the synergy between the images and the prose – and how together they pull the reader in.

Read the full article →

No Small Matter – A connoisseur’s guide to delicate work

January 18, 2010

How do you write a book about something few people have heard off, and less seem interested in?  The answer, it seems, is to write about something else.
Felice Frankel and George Whitesides have clearly taken this lesson to heart. Judged by the cover alone, their new book “No Small Matter:  Science at the Nanoscale” is [...]

Read the full article →

Daily Mail Science Reporting – Deconstructed

January 8, 2010

Hype, scare mongering, obfuscation and just plain misinformation – the scientific community are reasonably clear about what they think of Tabloid science reporting much of the time.  So I wasn’t too surprised to see the headline “‘Grey goo’ food laced with nanoparticles could swamp Britain” in today’s Daily Mail, following the release of a new [...]

Read the full article →

Scientists and social media – This is not a case study

January 4, 2010

By Ruth Seeley, No Spin PR.

A little over a year ago, Ruth Seeley – a freelance communications consultant – rather bravely approached me with a proposition:  She would help me develop a social media strategy for 2020 Science, if I would let her write the experience up as a case study.  Was she mad?  [...]

Read the full article →

Researchers are real people too – thoughts on interviewing scientists

November 29, 2009

Andréia Azevedo Soares has just posted an excellent blog on how to interview scientists over at YS Journal – an on-line journal written, edited and published by students.  The piece is aimed specifically at students from 12 to 20 years old who are engaged with the Young Scientists Journal project from around the world, and [...]

Read the full article →

Science: So what? – So what?

November 27, 2009

I sat down this morning to write a light-hearted blog about the UK government’s “Science: So what? So everything” campaign.  The angle was going to be:
Why write about this when people want to read about this?
But the more I dug around, the more apparent it became that this is an initiative that seems to have [...]

Read the full article →

Speaking power to truth – the unfortunate case of David Nutt

November 1, 2009

Sitting 3000 miles away from London in Washington DC, I’ve been following the dismissal of Professor David Nutt as the UK government’s senior scientific advisor on the misuse of drugs, with interest.  Not being steeped in British drugs politics, I was only vaguely aware of the tensions between the Advisory Council on the Misuse of [...]

Read the full article →

Risk Innovation… You what?! (Desparately seeking advice!)

October 23, 2009

Here’s something I’ve been chewing over for the past few weeks:  How do you capture succinctly the idea of developing innovative new approaches to identifying, assessing, managing and otherwise dealing with risks to human health?
What I’ve ended up with is “Risk Innovation” – but I’m not convinced it works.
So I thought I would see if [...]

Read the full article →

Riding the wave: Rethinking science & technology policy

October 15, 2009

Part 8 of a series on rethinking science and technology for the 21st century
Much to my embarrassment, I’ve just realized that it was over four months ago that I wrote the previous blog in this series – a series that was supposed to evolve over just a few weeks!  Most inconveniently, other priorities ended up [...]

Read the full article →

Do peer review journals need a media code of conduct?

October 14, 2009

Since when did peer review journals start to put press hits before published data?
Scientific peer review journals are a cornerstone of modern science – providing an authoritative repository of scientific discovery that researchers and others can examine, test and build upon.  Publication in peer review journals is the primary route by which new science is [...]

Read the full article →

So you’re curious about nanotechnology…

September 28, 2009

Curious, concerned or just plain confused about nanotechnology?  The new website Nano & Me might be just what you are looking for.

Funded in part by the UK department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and developed by the Responsible Nano Forum, Nano & Me is aimed at providing clear and balanced information on an emerging [...]

Read the full article →

Hooked on science – ten things that inspired me to become a scientist

September 3, 2009

How exactly did I get hooked on science?  It’s not something I’ve thought about too much before. But an invitation to discuss how to inspire the next generation of scientists, technologists and engineers next week has got me thinking…

Read the full article →

Ten things everyone should know about nanotechnology safety

August 29, 2009

Asked to conclude the Fourth International Conference on Nanotechnology, Occupational and Environmental Health in Helsinki this year, I rather rashly came up with the above title for my talk—thinking that I would find inspiration in the multitude of new research on nanotech safety being presented at the meeting.
As it turns out, events conspired against me [...]

Read the full article →

Graphically comparing 523 scientwists’ Twitter stats

August 24, 2009

Following on from yesterday’s update on my quest to track science influence on Twitter, I’ve posted a bubble-chart of the August “influence stats” for all 523 scientwists in David Bradley’s list over at Many Eyes.
Using the chart, you can quickly explore the number of followers, secondary followers, social capital and a handful of other Twitter [...]

Read the full article →

Science influence on Twitter – August update

August 23, 2009

It’s the middle of August, and time for my regular two-monthly update on science tweep influence on Twitter.
Back in April I posted data on three indicators of “influence” for ~400 science-focused Twitter users – based on David Bradley’s list of “Scientific Twitter Friends.” This is the third update of the indicators – the second was [...]

Read the full article →

TED talks future-tech

August 20, 2009

I‘ve just posted a series of five attention-grabbing talks on future technologies from TED (the Technology, Entertainment, Design conferences) over at Mashable, where I contribute the occasional guest blog.  If you are more interested in the transformative power of technology than the latest gizmo from Apple, you might want to check them out.  Speakers include [...]

Read the full article →

TED talks science – 5 classic science talks, plus a couple of bonuses

July 22, 2009

The internet is littered with videos of science lectures and science talks – witness the recently posted “100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists” for instance.  But it’s not easy to sift through the tedious, the impenetrable and the down right boring, to arrive at a core of science talks that really are worth [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries