Mssv

One of the more annoying aspects of my PhD course at Oxford is that I have to go to these ‘Personal Development Course’ events every so often, which are about as bad as they sound. In fact, all new biology graduates have to go to them, perhaps fifty in total. The first one, held some [...]

I’ve just finished reading John Gribbin’s Science: A History, which is by all accounts a very well-written and interesting book. Gribbin could have probably done with making some of his sentences a little shorter and more readable, but other than that it’s an excellent review of science and the people who discovered it, starting from [...]

“The location of the Greenwich Meridian, that was decided arbitrarily, right?”
“I suppose. They put it there because our system of time or mapping or something like that was designed in Greenwich.”
“But if it was designed in, say, America or Russia, the ‘zero time’ could have been there?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“So, in a way, it’s [...]

In what must be a record for me, I finished Robert Sawyer’s Hominids in around three hours this weekend; that’s about 30 seconds per page. I don’t normally read that quickly, but Hominids was a particularly easy read and had several sections on the science of DNA and quantum physics, both of which I am [...]

It’s a great idea - create a fictional online journal of a 19 year old English girl who’s interested in science (and boys, etc etc) to get other girls into science. And that’s what the British Council has done with Planet Jemma.
Now, I don’t dare to presume that I have any special insight into the [...]

My 4 year DPhil here at Oxford is funded by a studentship from the Wellcome Trust. This is a great thing because it means I have enough money to, for example, live, and it also means that any research groups I join will not have to pay for me. It’s even better than that, though, [...]

The theme of today’s conference sessions was on attention, on which William James famously said, “Everyone knows what attention is.” (I never want to hear that phrase again. Ever. I heard it enough today)
I wasn’t too enamoured with the first three talks today, which were arguably given by the big-hitters of the conference. I didn’t [...]

So Bhisma has requested a few long posts on the cognitive neuroscience conference I’m currently attending in Oxford (that’s my life - one long, endless round of conferences…). The conference, properly named the Autumn School in Cognitive Neuroscience, began on Monday at the Department of Experimental Psychology. Some thoughts on the sessions:
First talk was by [...]

Planet Autism - a moving article at Salon on the realities of living with an autistic child; it’s not all Rain Man. The related MetaFilter thread has a comment from a parent about his experience with his autistic son.

What Galileo Saw - the New Yorker has a compelling account of the legacy of NASA’s Galileo deep space probe. The article describes the almost fatal problem the probe encountered in transit and the heroic effort of NASA scientists to try and salvage the mission, as well as the unparalleled discoveries it made at Jupiter.