Valentine’s Day reality check — questioning true love and monogomy
February 14, 2014
It’s LGBT History Month at the moment. The LGBT Staff Network have organised various events to celebrate — including film screenings and an exhibition ‘Queer Sounds: the importance of music in LGBT history’. Dr Max Biddulph is network chair, and he’ll be giving an LGBT History Month public lecture on the 28th. Here he gives …
Human/agent interactions – disaster planning and response
January 21, 2014
Some interesting collaborative research taking place in the Mixed Reality Lab over in the School of Computer Science. Researchers are working on on a national project called ORCHID, which looks at what it calls human/agent interaction. Basically, how people and computers interact to respond to specific situations. Joel Fischer, one of the ORCHID team at Nottingham, has made …
Ye olde football league….
January 9, 2014
We did a story a couple of issues ago on the Key to English Place Names (KEPN) — a resource developed by the University’s Institute for Name Studies. It’s a web resource and smartphone app which which gives the history of the place-names of more than 16,000 cities, towns and villages across England. It’s great. Arranged by county, …
Interacting Under Canvas
August 21, 2013
THE JOY OF BEING UNDER CANVAS I’m just back from a short camping trip and reflecting on how exciting it is to live under canvas. There is a visceral thrill to being in a tent as the thin fabric leaks noise, light, heat and shadows. Laying awake in the dark you become aware of nearby …
Technician – and proud!
August 8, 2013
The blog post below first appeared on the Guardian’s Higher Education Network last week. Written by Kelly Vere, a senior technician at the University, it outlined the technician’s lot and painted a picture of an invisible layer of University and research sector employees of whom little is heard. But it’s very clear that, without them, …
Banjos and Discrete Technologies
August 7, 2013
A CONFESSION I begin this post with a confession. I play the banjo. There, it’s out in the open and I feel better already. Actually, I play the tenor banjo in Irish style, although this is a distinction that probably only banjo players care about (but boy will they care). You’ll often find me on …
Trajectories into Practice
July 26, 2013
Research impact Maybe it’s an age thing, but I’m increasingly bothered by the question of how my research might make a difference – why might a professional working at the coalface of user experience design be bothered about what I am doing? Of course, there are probably other reasons why this is bothering me too …
Conference examines the impact of science on our society
July 22, 2013
An international conference that brings together researchers examining the complex relationship between science and modern society is taking place at The University of Nottingham today and tomorrow (July 22 and July 23). Brigitte Nerlich, Professor of Science, Language and Society, and former Nottingham academic Professor Paul Martin, now at The University of Sheffield, discuss this …
Gurkhas get lunch!
July 19, 2013
Some nice pics here on the Practical Action Flickr stream. UoN engineers are working with Practical Action and Kathmandu University on the Score-stove – which is designed to be a clean cooking stove. This is of particular relevance in Nepal as cooking on open fires in popular – and as it’s so cold there, this …
The 11 building blocks for reducing greenhouse gas emissions
July 16, 2013
A new study, coordinated by the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and co-authored by Nottingham’s Professor Reiner Grundmann, has identified 11 ‘building blocks’ for policymakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You can read the report, THE VITAL SPARK, online. The recommendations are in response to the failure of the Kyoto Protocol – an …
