mssv

  • Adrian’s crazy day

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    2–4 minutes

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    3 comments on Adrian’s crazy day

    Today I had to give two presentations; one summarising a paper about systems consolidation in memory, and another covering my research project this year. The research project presentation had been prepared for quite a while in advance, but as luck would have it, yesterday afternoon we struck on a different way of statistically analysing my…

  • A few good ways

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    3–4 minutes

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    Yesterday, I went to an interesting talk by Simon Conway Morris (Professor of Evolutionary Paleobiology at Cambridge) – it was one of those great lectures that starts off from a simple premise, in this case convergent evolution, and then takes that idea on a wonderful journey that touches upon the inevitability of intelligence, culture, social…

  • How to get rich

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    1–2 minutes

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    How to get rich – an interesting lecture by Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel (a very good book, on the whole). Fairly woolly, but it has some useful points.

  • Army of Penguins

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    1–2 minutes

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    4 comments on Army of Penguins

    Such is the power of Google; I go to a lecture by Steve Jones tonight, and five minutes after I get back I can find the exact same image of a bull elephant seal surrounded by its army of penguins used by Steve.

  • Spiritng Neal Stephenson Away

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    9–13 minutes

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    A review of a lecture by award-winning SF author Neal Stephenson, on ‘Newton/Leibniz’, together with a review of Miyazaki’s film ‘Spirited Away’.

  • An Evening with George Dyson

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    3–4 minutes

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    2 comments on An Evening with George Dyson

    A review of a lecture given by George Dyson about Project Orion, America’s planned nuclear bomb-propelled spacecraft.

  • The BA Festival of Science

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    9–14 minutes

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    Thanks to a generous grant from Trinity College at Cambridge University, I was able to attend the full week-long British Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Festival of Science in Leicester this year, from September 9th to 13th. This is a brief report of what I learned there.

  • Neuro and Psych

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    2–3 minutes

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    There were two things that caught my attention today in lectures. The first was a list of symptoms of mania (an abnormal emotional state, the opposite of depression): i. Unfounded elation ii. Hyperactivity iii. Talkativeness and “flight of ideas” iv. Distractivility v. Impractical, grandiose plans vi. Inflated self-esteem vii. Reduced sleep …and I thought, ‘I…