The Carbon Neutral Lab: Science, culture, values
November 11, 2016
This week we held our yearly Synthetic Biology Research Centre (SBRC) Strategic Advisory Board Meeting. The meeting took place in the Carbon Neutral Laboratory which houses the Centre for Sustainable Chemistry. This building has become quite famous because it burned down last year, was rebuilt and opened this year. I should say from the outset …
Gene surgery – Genchirurgie
November 3, 2016
On 22nd October 2016 Roland Jackson tweeted that he was going to Berlin to participate in a trilateral meeting of English (Nuffield Foundation on Bioethics), German and French bioethics committees on gene/genome editing. I tweeted back and asked whether there would be a report; he tweeted an older press release by the German Ethics Council …
CRISPR and genome editing: Real and imagined
October 28, 2016
For several years now there has been a buzz around a new advance in genomics called genome (or gene) editing. “Genome editing is the deliberate alteration of a selected DNA sequence in a living cell.” Scientists have been able to do gene editing for a while, but to find and replace any sequence in any …
Searching for Zika: Where are the women?
October 21, 2016
Newsflash: Article based on more qualitative analysis now out!! Media coverage of the Zika crisis in Brazil: The construction of a ‘war’ frame that masked social and gender inequalities (open access) *** The Zika virus has attracted a lot of attention over the last year. For some people it’s a faraway threat, for some it’s a …
Crowdfunding Science
October 14, 2016
This is guest post by Mike S. Schäfer, Professor of Science Communication at the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research (IPMZ) and Director of the Center for Higher Education and Science Studies at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. Heather Richards was short of $3000, and she could still not realize her research project. The …
iGEM comes to Nottingham
October 9, 2016
I recently mentioned the ‘word’ iGEM when chatting with a ‘lay’ person about synthetic biology; whereupon the lay person looked at me quizzically and wondered what an iGEM was. Was it like an iPhone, but for gems? Somebody who overheard this exchange chipped in with a comment that made us all laugh. He said that …
Making Science Public: Opening Up Closed Spaces
October 6, 2016
This article summarising the Making Science Public End of Award Conference (22 June) first appeared in EASST Review: Volume 35(3) September 2016, and is re-posted here with permission of the EASST Review editor. ••• What does it mean to make science more public, open or accountable? How is ‘the public’ imagined and constituted? How does …
Molecular machines
October 5, 2016
As the BBC reported today: “The 2016 Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded for the development of the world’s smallest machines. Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa will share the 8m kronor (£727,000) prize for the design and synthesis of machines on a molecular scale. They were named at a press conference …
The Institute for Science and Society: Past, present, future
October 2, 2016
Many of you will have seen a new video of the brilliant work done at the Faculty of Social Sciences here at the University of Nottingham since about 1948. I was looking at this during my last days as Director of the Making Science Public programme and also through the eyes of a co-founder of …
Radhika, Kim and the quantum cat: Graphic nanoscience
September 24, 2016
Some months ago I wrote a blog post about a physics project I am involved in here at the University of Nottingham, led by Professor Philip Moriarty which we call for short: 3D printing with atoms. I am engaged with the project as a social scientist interested in examining how such difficult research is being …
MSP bookmarks
- Twitter May 8, 2017
- Social innovations in Europe #RRI November 3, 2015
- Harvey Graff, the undisciplinarian September 20, 2015
- Replacing Pesticides With Genetics August 31, 2015
- Addressing hazardous chemicals in the circular economy August 25, 2015
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