Blog Post Index
105. What does it feel like to be a scientist?
Some late night reflections on what it feels like to be a scientist, broadcast on ABC Radio National in Australia on September 13th, and now available as a podcast at...
104. Of NASA, knee surgery, and the science of self-repair
In the days when I was an active experimental scientist, one of my areas of interest was in how things stick together – living cells, mineral particles, oil drops, etc. Another of my interests was distance running. Not that I was much good at it, but I did keep on...
103. Visual multiplication
The great English mathematician G.H. Hardy, speaking of his Indian protégé Ramanujan (see post 25) once quoted to his colleague Littlewood that “every integer was his [Ramanujan’s] personal friend”. “I like that,” said Littlewood “I wonder who said it?” “You did,”...
102. How Robert Boyle and I became chemists.
Adapted from Chapter 5 of "Weighing the Soul" When I am introduced to strangers as a “chemist”, most of them conclude either that I dispense prescriptions or that I spend my time in a smelly laboratory mixing “chemicals” together to see what will happen. If I were an...
Measuring science. REF? QR? A plague on both their houses
My (unpublished) Letter to the Guardian, July 28th, 2015 James Wilsdon writes “In defence of the REF” (Guardian, July 27th (2015)), as opposed to the IEA’s call for quality-related funding of scientific and other research. But neither scheme takes account the known...
What scientists need to know about talking to politicians
My article in Physics World (August 2015) with John Tesh, formerly of the UK Cabinet Office, giving 12 tips for scientists to have effective dialogue with politicians. Here is the original draft: How Do Politicians Think? Practical Tips for Communicating Science...
The f-index: Measuring Your Twitter Performance
Are you a successful tweeter? Here's how to work it out scientifically. There is an ongoing debate about how best to measure research performance, if indeed it can be measured, and if the measurements actually mean anything. I have had my fair say on this, and argue...
101. Tacit knowledge and the replication of results.
One thing that seldom gets talked about in the world of science is the notion of tacit knowledge – that is, know-how that is only, and sometimes can only, be passed on through direct experience. A recent example was described in the journal Nature (Vol. 514, pp. 139 –...
Let’s get REAL science on the public agenda
My friend Philip Ball has written an excellent post on the difficulties of communication at the journalist/scientist interface (philipball.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/silence-of-geronotologists.html …). But Philip is being too modest in describing himself simply as a...
100. Of cricket balls and icebergs
For my 100th post (how time flies when you are having fun!) here is another example of lateral connections. This one started when Matteo Rini, Editor of the American Physics Society’s Tip Sheet, told me about some experiments* where researchers had dropped ice-coated...
99. Sex on the motorway
When I first started on my quest to make science accessible by showing how scientists think about the day-to-day things that interest us all, my first thought was to do the science of food and cooking, about which I knew a little bit. But lots of other people were...
Galileo and Elsevier
Dutch Universities have announced a plan to boycott the Dutch publisher Elsevier. The firm now publishes a wide range of scientific books and journals, in which some of my own articles have even appeared. But how many people know of the role that they played in...
98. Necessary Mysteries
The remarkable experimental discovery that (in the quantum world at least) “future events can decide what happened in the past” (http://www.digitaljournal.com/science/experiment-shows-future-events-decide-what-happens-in-the-past/article/434829) has stimulated me to...
Pluto, Asimov, Hawking and you
Stephen Hawking is in the news again. He has been congratulating NASA’s New Horizons team on the successful flyby of Pluto, which produced some spectacular images, while simultaneously warning of us of the dangers of science to the future of human race, particularly...
The secrets of cooperation
Several years ago (well, OK, in 2012) I did an interview for “Nature and Health” on the subject of cooperation (http://www.natureandhealth.com.au/news/create-cooperation). Looking back, I am very impressed by how the interviewer paraphrased what I had to say, and I...
97. Archimedes meets the synchrotron
With the news that synchrotron X-radiation is being used to shed light on fading Modernist paintings (http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/jul/08/x-ray-analysis-sheds-light-on-fading-modernist-paintings#.VZ-GYYqngQY.twitter), it occurs to me that my followers...
Why science writers write
Why do writers write? Is it, as Edward Gibbon claimed , to seek immortality, or is there some other reason? Charlotte Bronte said that she wrote because she could not help it. George Orwell put it more strongly when he said that “Writing a book is a horrible,...
The impostor syndrome: are you a sufferer like me?
The impostor syndrome is the feeling that you are a fraud. That you’ve slipped through the system undetected, and any minute now someone is going to find you out. That on the surface you may look deep, but deep down you know that you are shallow. It’s a feeling that I...
The true place of science in gastronomy
My contribution to a panel discussion at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, Sunday July 5th, 2015. We don’t need to understand science to enjoy our food, but quite often we need science to provide us with food that we can enjoy, and understanding the science...
96. . Is there a scientific method? Yes: you use it every day.
In Posts 18 and 19 I argued that was NO single scientific method, because scientists use many different methods in their attempts to understand how the world works, as I hope this series of posts has shown. Here, though, I am going to argue YES, because all of science...
95. On silver ants, astronauts and the corner cube reflector
A recent story on Saharan silver ants Cataglyphis bombycina (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27748-silver-coat-lets-saharan-ants-withstand-scorching-desert-heat.html#.VZPPM6bDs7A) has set me wondering on the uses of geometry in nature. The silver appearance of...
The awesome power of multicrastination
Stanford philosopher John Perry was awarded a spoof IgNobel Prize for his theory of “structured procrastination.” It took the organizers fifteen years to get round to awarding him the prize, but finally happened in 2011. Now I am getting around to writing about....
94. Woodquakes and earthquakes
Two upcoming papers in Physical Review Letters shed a light on the way that scientists can use analogies to understand fundamental physical processes. Some analogies can be just plain barmy, as with Newton’s analogy between the number of notes in a musical scale and...
93. Kurt Gödel and the hole in the U.S. constitution
The Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel upset the world of mathematics, and came close to upsetting the world of U.S. politics. In mathematics, he took the final step in a long line of upsetters of apple carts that stretched right back to Euclid, who came up with the...
How To Eat Your Mummy
I am a regular speaker at the annual Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, where famous food writers, food historians, and other food enthusiasts share their ideas and experiences in the cloistered dignity of St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. Well, it would be...
The Problem of Trust
Notes for Talk at Granada seminar “Physics meets the Social Sciences: Emergent Cooperative Phenomena, from Bacterial to Human Group Behaviour” (Wednesday, June 17 (2005)). This has been a staggeringly interesting meeting from my point of view, because I’m in the...
TV interview: We need to fund diverse networks of science
The Australian ABC television programme Lateline is a unique news analysis and investigative programme, somewhat akin to the BBC's Panorama except that it is on every weeknight. Following my Ockham's Razor radio programme "Precious Petals," where I criticized...
Linking science solely to practical outcomes misses the point
My latest "Ockham's Razor" talk on Australian ABC radio contains a very important message about how science works and how it needs to be supported. I argue that Australia (and the world) need two types of science in order to flourish. The first must be concerned with...
92. The art and science of dunking
June 5th On this National Donut Day in the U.S., here is the first chapter of my prize-winning "How To Dunk a Doughnut": an illustration of how scientists think about the problems of everyday life. One of the main problems that scientists have in sharing their picture...
91. Our beautiful minds
Scientists at the University of Virginia have found a previously unsuspected network of lymphatic vessels connecting the brain directly to the immune system (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14432.html). Why is this so important? For a...
FIFA and Tosca: Two dramas with the same plot.
The dramatic events at FIFA have some very interesting parallels with Puccini’s opera Tosca. Tosca, the heroine of the plot, is faced with an unenviable choice. Her lover Cavaradossi has been condemned to death by the corrupt police chief Scarpia. Tosca is left alone...
90. Millikan and Ehrenhaft: a lesson in scientific thinking
Today (June 2nd) is the 102nd anniversary of Robert Millikan’s publication of his measurements of the charge of the electron. But he had a competitor – the congenial Viennese physicist Felix Ehrenhaft, a frequent host to Einstein and others. So how come Millikan got a...
89. What is stress?
What is stress? Reality is the leading cause of stress Lily Tomlin (“Trudy the Bag Lady”) What is stress? How does it wreak its havoc? How can we tell when it is reaching dangerous levels? Is it the same for human relationships as it is in the physical world? Many...
88. On unexpected connections
Three upcoming papers (as of May 27, 2015) in Physical Review Letters and Physical Review Applied illustrate beautifully how ideas from one branch of science can inform and catalyze advances in another quite different one: When brittle materials fracture, the rough...
John Nash obituary
26.5.15 I have just written an obituary of John Nash and his wife Alicia for the U.K. Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/25/john-nash It describes Nash's contributions, not only to game theory, but also to mathematics. Here is the original draft:...
87. Earth viewed from Mars and the Total Perspective Vortex
NASA has produced the first picture of the Earth taken from Mars (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA17936). The very insignificance of our planet is overwhelming, and reminds me of Douglas Adams’ invention of the Total Prespective Vortex in The...
86. Anacondas, piranhas and a plastic-eating fungus
The Ecuadorian rainforest holds many surprises. When I visited it on the way to the Galapagos one of those surprises was a 20-foot anaconda on the banks of a lake where we were swimming. It slithered slowly into the water on one side of the lake as we climbed rather...
Food Museums: An Eclectic List
I love museums. They link our past, present and future, reminding us of what was, helping us to understand what is, and providing a foundation for what is to come. Museums take many forms, and few people know about one of those forms - the food museum. So to help you...
85. Necessary mysteries
The world is full of mysteries. Until the last few hundred years, these were thought to be the prerogative of religion and philosophy. But with the advent of science, a new category has come into being - "necessary" mysteries. Many of the odd, sometimes...
84. On hot apple pies, exploding kedgeree and the birth of a new idea
I haven’t yet finished with Count Rumford, because his encounters with heat didn’t end with brass cannons. Apple pies were also on the menu, and their properties puzzled him: When dining, I had often observed that some some particular dishes retain their Heat much...
83. Suicide, beer and a honeymoon: the human side of thermodynamics
Scientific ideas can come to anyone, and come from anywhere. In the case of the nineteenth-century German physician Julius von Mayer, they came from seeing horses sweat as they pulled a heavy load up a hill. Stimulated by his observation, he was the first to conceive...
The world’s most evil scientific paper
A 33-page paper that gives a refined estimate of the mass of the Higgs boson to ±0.25% has just been published (Aad, G. et al. (ATLAS Collaboration, CMS Collaboration) Physical Review Letters Vol. 114 191803 (2015) 191803. The work itself, some of which was done by...
Game theory and our future: The Glugs of Gosh
Few people outside Australia will have heard of the Australian poet C.J. Dennis, creator of that wonderful rough diamond “The Sentimental Bloke”. But Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis wrote one of the great social parodies in his set of poems “The Glugs of...
Altruism: the key to our future
There is much debate about altruism. Does it really exist? Why should it exist? If it does exist, is it really disguised self-interest (Mother Teresa once claimed that her main motivation was looking after her own feelings)? Or does it have a genetic/Darwinian basis,...
Tasting and the brain
This post also appears on the Oxford Symposium for Food and Cookery blog A recent paper in Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13873.html) tells us for the first time how taste sensations on the tongue are transmitted to the brain. It...
82. Manipulating water drops for fun and profit
I’ll get back to Rumford and the story of heat shortly, but having been distracted by the wonderful Fibonacci clock, I find myself even more distracted by the beautiful structures that water droplets can form themselves into when trapped inside larger oil drops. The...
81. The wonderful Fibonacci clock: could there be an even better design?
The wonderful Fibonacci clock (http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2015/may/09/fibonacci-clock-can-you-tell-the-time-on-the-worlds-most-stylish-nerd-timepiece) is a geometric arrangement which uses the fact that the first five numbers in...
Sardonic laughter: a modest proposal
Scientists are often seen as having a sardonic attitude towards ordinary mortals. Seeking an origin for the word "sardonic", I came across this from Vladimir Propp's "Theory and History of Folklore"...
Demise of Lomborg “consensus centre”
May 8, 2015 Bjorn Lomborg's "consensus centre" at the University of Western Australia, intended to provide academic respectability for a preconceived position held by the Australian Government, is dead. I had been involved with other members of the Royal Society of...
80. Seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought
I collect encyclopedias. They occupy a wall-length bookcase in an upper room of my house, whose floor had to be reinforced to take them. I collect them because I am interested to see how knowledge and understanding have changed over time. That change is nowhere better...
Numbers with character
There are all sorts of numbers to which we have attached names that suggest that they have almost-human characters (the correct technical term is personification). So there are perfect numbers, real numbers, complex numbers, and even narcissistic numbers* Narcissistic...
Some thoughts on the importance of good food and good drink
From Douglas Adams in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: ‘... you know, Beeblebrox. You want to meet the man who rules the Universe.’ ‘Can he cook?’ asked Zaphod. On reflection he added: ‘I doubt if he can. If he could cook a good meal he wouldn’t worry about...
79. Science in society
In my last-but-one post I asked why we should care about scientists think. Looking back, I see that I answered a different question: how can we get people to care how scientists think. But the why is equally important, and it is a question that is by no means easy to...
The Higgs boson of biology
The discovery of the Lokiarchaeota, a new "missing link" phylum lying between the prokaryotes and the eukaryotes (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature14522_F1.html) is surely close in importance to biology as was the discovery of the Higgs...
78. Do androids dream of electric sheep? What our computers might be thinking.
In the early seventies the computer lab in my laboratory had a cartoon stuck on the wall. It showed two scientists standing next to a huge computer (they were huge in those days), staring at a printed tape that it has just produced. One scientist turns to other, and...
77. A tale of two Watsons
There is a new cookbook out: Cognitive Cooking with chef Watson. The underlying idea is that IBM’s supercomputer “Watson” has looked at the individual flavour compounds in different foods, and created new dishes by matching up the foods that have flavour components in...
76. Why we should teach students how scientists think.
When I started this series of Mini Stories, I did so out of pique. Not one, but two agents had told me that people would not be interested in a book about how scientists think. I thought that they would be – or, at least, that they ought to be, and would be if someone...
How much wine can you get into a bra?
Some years ago I presented a radio programme for BBC Radio 4 on the design of the perfect sports bra. One of our problems in preparing the programme was to work out the appropriate cup dimensions, which I was doing surreptitiously while talking to my producer by...
Meet Count Rumford III: More on gravestones
And finally, here is the historian's perspective on Rumford and his gravestone bread ovens. It seems that Rumford's reputation is on the line!
Meet Count Rumford. II: What is heat?
Following the last post, here is Rumford's own description of how he worked out the true nature of heat.
Meet Count Rumford I: Rumford’s original bread oven
Count Rumford, aka the American adventurer Benjamin Thompson, is famous in scientific circles for elucidating the nature of heat, and in food circles for his invention of the Rumford stove. But seldom do the twain meet, as I discovered when I entered into...
75. Manufacturing nanostructures – our clumsy imitations of Nature
Scientists are fascinated by patterns in Nature. We are only just beginning to understand how the cells in our bodies and those of other animals arrange themselves into elaborate patterns, but we have made rather more progress in understanding the patterns formed by...
The essential humanity of science
I see science as one of the humanities. I hate the phrase “science and the arts,” as if they were separate entities, pursuing different objectives. But both need … imagination, the engine that propels science, just as it propels all other creative activity....
Toiling in the shadow of the corkscrew
Does wine enhance the creative spirit? Stephen Fry has no doubts: Wine can be a wiser teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books. Stephen Fry “The Fry Chronicles” (London: Michael Joseph (2010)) p. 122. A notice outside a bar near Bath’s Theatre Royal...
New Encyclopedia article: Climate change and future food supplies
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Food Issues, edited by food historian Ken Albala, has just been published (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book239023?subject=W00&fs=1). It is loaded with interesting and useful material. My own contribution is an article in which I...
Some thoughts on rejection
Writers get used to rejection, even if it hurts at the time. But a Chinese economics journal found a way of not making it hurt so much: We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any...
74. The nematode solution
If you have ever heard of nematodes, it has probably been in the context of gardening, where these little worm-like creatures are used to control slugs by the unpleasant process of crawling into the slug’s body through its various orifices, releasing a bacterium that...
Some skeptical thoughts about technology and society
A few skeptical thoughts about our understanding and use of technology: I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way that the...
Taking a jaundiced view
Herewith a few sceptical quotes to mull over: I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when...
73. Getting back to Turing
Getting back to Turing: Turing’s “reaction-diffusion” model for morphogenesis has inspired many mathematicians and computer scientists to get interested in biology – the first, because Turing’s non-linear equations are interesting to grapple with, and the latter,...
The science of Uri Geller
One of my favourite quotes, from Tim Healey (ed.) “Strange but True: The World’s Weirdest Newspaper Stories”, Octopus Books, London, 1984, p.93. I have been trying to trace the origin of the above story, but so far without success. In the meantime, may I quote my own...
Science quotes I: Piet Hein
Piet Hein was a Danish architect, designer, and polymath. His contribution to this series lies in his "grooks" - short, punchy poems that hit at the heart of a question. The definition of a good after-dinner speaker in Denmark is someone who can talk for half an hour...
72A The ultimate chimera – but there is a serious point
Of course, photoshopping has added a whole new dimension to the art of fake taxidermy .... But it does raise a serious issue. People are increasingly getting their "information" from sources not un-akin to this. It strikes me that there is a parallel with history,...
72. Make your own mermaid
The pattern of cells in our bodies, and indeed in that of all living beings, is a result of self-organization, which we are only just beginning to understand. More of that anon, and of the thinking behind it. In the meantime, I cannot resist a brief interlude on the...
Game theory is about people, not just mathematics. It needs a new name to reflect this
Game theory is all around us. Despite its innocuous-sounding name, it is not just a theory, and it deals with far more than traditional games. It is, in fact, about the real-life strategies that we use in our interactions with other people. Originally proposed by John...
71. The attraction of repulsion
When we think of self-organization, we tend to think of objects attracting one another to get together and form patterns. But, as Terry Prtachett pointed out in The Color of Magic, ‘hate is an attracting force, just like love’. And when I came to study particles that...
Scientists should be required to write lay summaries of their publications
Two scientists from the University of Washington in Seattle have come up with a simple, but revolutionary idea: that all scientific articles should be accompanied by lay summaries accessible to the interested non-scientist (http://www.pnas.org/content/112/12/3585). I...
70. Patterns from nowhere
How does the zebra get its stripes? How does the leopard get its spots? And why should a mathematician be interested? In Alan Turing’s case, it was because this particular mathematician had an idea. And, as befits someone with a mind so thoroughly adapted to lateral...
A machine that learns to cook by watching you
The personal touch seems to be imperative in cooking. From childhood we learn by watching and imitating, trying for ourselves. But with advances in robotics, could a machine learn to cook by watching you? The answer, in my opinion, is "probably yes". The real question...
My article on “Global Warming and Future Food Supplies” from the new SAGE Encyclopedia of Food Issues
Extract from Article (Vol.2, pp. 719-723) Future Policies to Mitigate the Effects of Climate Change on Food Supplies The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Create It. Neelam Chaturvedi Many studies have shown that the largely negative effects of climate change on...
69. Bath foam, beer foam and the meaning of life
Plastic balls on an escalator can form themselves into patterns, but what about the molecules that make up our bodies and our world. Can they also self-organize? The answer is a resounding yes. Long string-like protein molecules fold themselves into neat balls. Even...
68. The gömböc society
Meet the gömböc (pronounce goemboets). It is a three-dimensional object that self-rights. If you put it down on a horizontal surface, its clever shape ensures that it will start wobbling around until it has safely reached its equilibrium position, no matter what...
How I was murdered
Very pleased to find that I was murdered in an episode of Columbo (http://www.columbo-site.freeuk.com/msmoke.htm) through touching an electrified iron fence while walking down a wet street. A very fitting end for a scientist!
67. The idea of “self-regulation” is a myth – in nature, economies or societies!
The man with mutton-chop whiskers pulled strongly at the oars of his small wooden boat, thrusting his way through the thick mat of weeds that hindered his progress across the shallow Illinois lake. Even on this cold February day he was perspiring in his black frock...
66. Beauty is a treacherous guide to truth
In Douglas Adams’ Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the editors of The Hithchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy justify one of the book’s more outrageous and misleading claims by saying their version is more aesthetically pleasing, and summon a qualified poet to testify...
65. Does sex make men’s beards grow?
Several years ago I gave a radio talk entitled Humour in Science (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/1-april-2012/3919790). My idea was to illustrate Isaac Asimov’s famous dictum - The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that...
Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets: My Article on Sugar in Cosmetics
The brilliant Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (https://www.facebook.com/Companion2Sweets) is now out. Packed with useful and interesting information - in the latter category, my articles on unusual uses of sugar. Here's the one on cosmetics (look out for the...
64. On getting your units right
The incident of the Mars Climate Orbiter, described in the previous post, shows that it pays to check your units, and get them right. One spectacular miscalculation, which fortunately ended with no loss of life, was when Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel on a...
63. On spinach and spacecraft
What do spinach and spacecraft have in common? Well, they both contain a lot of iron, right? Wrong. The myth that spinach is a good source of iron goes back to the 1890s, when the first analysis was performed in Germany. Unfortunately, when the data were published, a...
62. An addendum on dragons
Just a day after I wrote the last post, an article “Here be dragons” appeared in Nature online (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7545/full/520042a.html). The theme: That dragons are merely asleep, and are likely to be reawakened by climate change, and the...
61. The science of dragons
Meddle not in the affairs of dragons For you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. That advice from an anonymous author sounds pretty good to me. Yet many scientists have meddled in the affairs of dragons. Which is odd, considering that they don’t exist (dragons,...
60. What is the Nash equilibrium? Why does it matter?
If you want to understand the Nash equilibrium and why it is so important to our society and our lives, the one thing that you should not do (unless you are a very serious mathematician indeed) is to attempt to infer these qualities from Nash’s incredibly short...
59. What did John Nash do? Part 2: John Nash and Tosca
The problem that John Nash analyzed concerned situations (all too common in real life) where cooperation would produce the best overall outcome, but where individuals can be tempted by the logic of self-interest to cheat on the cooperation. When both sides cheat,...
58. What did John Nash do? Part 1: The background
John Nash has recently been awarded the prestigious Abel Prize (the “mathematicians Nobel") at the ripe old age of 90 for “for striking and seminal contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations and its applications to geometric analysis.” But...
57. An Enemy of the People
On November 26th, 1998, I was named by the London Times newspaper as “an enemy of the people” for using physics to work out the optimum way to dunk a biscuit. It was my first venture in using food as a vehicle to help communicate how science works. To date it has also...
56. The true story of the levitating frog
When Professor Michael Berry gave a seminar in our department at Bristol on the physics of levitation, the emphasis was all on the physics. And so it should have been, because his profound insight had overturned a belief that physicists had held for more than a...
55. How to win an IgNobel Prize (by one who “succeeded”)
In the last post I suggested that the use of blue light to stimulate erections was a sure-fire candidate for an IgNobel Prize. But what is an IgNobel Prize? How does one go about winning one? And should one want to win one? When they were initiated in 1991 as a parody...
54. Erections in the Year of Light
Erectile dysfunction, the subject of many a cartoon, is in reality a very distressing condition that affects more than 150 million men worldwide. But now, in this Year of Light, light has come to the rescue. But first, a little history. Some of the early devices that...
53. Terry Pratchett on science
An updated version of the tribute below has now been broadcast in The Science Show on Australia's ABC Radio National: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/tribute-to-terry-pratchett/6456458 Terry Pratchett, who died on March 12th, lived in a...
52. The man who fed Prozac to clams
Harvard has slipped to sixth in the Times Higher Education’s list of the world’s top universities (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2017/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank_label/sort_order/asc/cols/rank_only). I wonder whether...