Acceleration, autonomy and responsibility
March 18, 2016
In recent emails and meetings there has been a lot of talk about ‘acceleration’, both about the rhetorical use of acceleration in the context of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and about the reality of living in an accelerated academy. In this post I will examine ‘acceleration’ a bit further, especially in the context of …
3D printing with atoms: Beginning a story
March 8, 2016
A while ago Phil Moriarty published a post here on the ‘Making Science Public’ blog to announce a new project in which we are both involved. He talked about ‘impact’, or rather, the ‘non-impact’ type public engagement work we want to do. The project deals with Mechanochemistry at the single bond limit: Towards deterministic epitaxy. …
Sock puppets, muzzles and the impact agenda
February 24, 2016
This is a post by JOHN HOLMWOOD A new threat to the contribution of university research to public debate has been identified. This derives from Cabinet Office rules that would prevent bodies in receipt of grants from Government from lobbying. It has been suggested that this could muzzle academic research. Ironically, the rules derive from …
Ripples of rumour and ripples in space: LIGO and gravitational waves
February 11, 2016
For some days now I have been seeing announcements on twitter that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) would make an announcement about the detection of gravitational waves today. (The best description of these self-referential announcements can be found on Mark Hannam’s blog!) In 2014 I got a bit excited about an announcement that gravitational …
Antibiotic resistant infections in the news
January 22, 2016
In 2015 issues relating to antibiotic resistance and antimicrobial resistance have been widely discussed in the media, by medical experts and policy makers. 2015 ended with reports that antibiotic resistant gonorrhoea is becoming increasingly difficult to treat and that scientists in China discovered a gene in E. coli that makes it resistant to a class of …
Ash dieback (Chalara), science, and plant biosecurity
January 11, 2016
Much has changed since the trade-related arrival of ash dieback (Chalara) at a nursery in Buckinghamshire, England, in February 2012. On the negative side, 652 sites across England, Scotland and Wales are now known to contain trees infected with the potentially fatal disease. Also, it is now accepted that the spread of the disease cannot …