Search for "AI"
Chanting to the choir: The dialogical failure of antithetical climate change blogs
April 20, 2020
This is a guest post by Jennifer Metcalfe on a paper she just published. The article explored the potential for people commenting underneath two very different, even antithetical, blogs dealing with climate science, to chat about and engage with climate science. *** My paper, Chanting to the choir: the dialogical failure of antithetical climate change …
A Whole New (re-cycled) World? An interdisciplinary conversation about the Circular Economy, Synthetic Biology and Sustainability Goals
August 21, 2019
This is a guest post by Penny Polson, Carmen McLeod, Sarah Hartley and Eleanor Hadley Kershaw *** Introduction to the Circular Economy The notion of a ‘circular economy’ has been gaining a lot of traction lately. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, in particular, has raised the profile of this radical rethinking of how consumer goods are …
Anticipating public reactions to emerging sciences and technologies: Nano, synbio and AI
September 14, 2018
In around 2003 I woke up to nanotechnology because I was watching my son play a computer game that involved ‘nano-armour’. That pricked my curiosity. Later I came across a quote from Howard Lovy, then editor of Small Times: “Nanotechnology, independent of its development as a science, is spreading as a cultural idea and icon. …
Air con and the apocalypse
July 3, 2018
I have recently spent a lot of time in official spaces, GP surgeries, hospitals etc. Where in the past one would sit with a window or door open, there is now air conditioning. In Eye Casualty the other day, I heard the head nurse tell a junior: “Didn’t you read the memo? We are not …
Brains, organoids and cultural narratives
May 4, 2018
For a while now I have been observing developments in neuroscience, stem cell research and tissue engineering, in a rather desultory fashion. Behind my back things began to happen and grow. Organoids In 1989 the journal Science reported on research into ‘organoids’ (or, as the OED defines them, the “growth of cells or tissue in culture …
Climate change politics and the role of China: a window of opportunity to gain soft power?
April 8, 2018
This is a guest post by Adrian Rauchfleisch (National Taiwan University) & Mike S. Schäfer (University of Zürich) In our new publication we analyse the nexus between climate change and soft power with specific emphasis on China. We discuss the role of soft power in the Chinese context and elucidate how international climate change politics is …
Designer babies? Not again!
August 2, 2017
Preface: I had just put the finishing touches to this post and I was doing the washing up, when I heard on the six o’clock news that the paper I’ll talk about below has now been published in Nature. I’ll still publish this post though. It would be great to compare the pre-paper news coverage with the …
CRISPR – and the race is on (again)
July 25, 2016
At the weekend I was reading an article in the Guardian about a team of Chinese scientists trying to use CRISPR/gene editing for the treatment of cancer; and I sighed. The article contained some of the standard and, I believe, quite worn-out tropes that pepper coverage of advances in biotechnology: playing God, designer babies…, as …
Science and politics in an uncertain world
June 19, 2016
Our end of award conference is taking place on Wednesday 22 June and I know that I should be writing something cheerful and upbeat about our programme, what we have done and are still doing. However, the conference is happening at a difficult time, and somehow I have lost my blogging enthusiasm. The conference is …