The 2011/2012 academic year ended yesterday. I think it is my 12th at Surrey – time flies. There is still some marking to do, and the undergraduates will only learn their exam results next week, but semester is mostly done. The undergraduates are off home, to summer jobs, on holidays etc, and in the case […]
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I have just finished watching Apples: British to the core. A fun BBC4 program on apples. First of all, I didn’t realise that commercial apple trees are Frankenstein-like monsters with the fruiting top part of the one plant grafted onto a root from a different plant. Guess this is because I am an ignorant physicist.
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I was helping a PhD student of mine with a talk yesterday. I was doing the usual stuff, saying you basically want one slide per minute of your talk, that it should tell a story, just make a few points clearly, not try and make too many points and confuse the audience, etc. I am […]
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We humans are keen both on controlling our environment (building houses, central heating etc), and on moving about (planes, trains and automobiles). We are not the only species to do some of this, beaver build dams, bees build hives, many birds migrate, etc. Friends at Surrey, Joe, and Bath, Douglas, independently drew my attention to […]
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A few years ago I did some research modelling evolution. A lot of the modelling of evolution is done by physicists not biologists, as we have more of the quantitative modelling and computational skills. One of the things I was looking at was the question of how good evolution is. Basically: Can evolution produce perfection, […]
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