Whenever I disconnect my mobile phone from its charger, it tells to me to unplug the charger “to save energy”. I obey. But how much energy am I saving? Very very little.
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Scientific research by blog
As this is a blog, maybe a suitable topic for a post is doing scientific research, or slightly more accurately, reviewing scientific research, by blog. In December 2010, NASA-funded scientists published a paper in Science. In an article, a senior NASA administrator said “The definition of life has just expanded,”. The response in blogs of scientists […]
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Randomness and why tortoiseshell cats are always female
In this weeks’s Nature there is an article on X-chromosome silencing. This sounds very technical, and it is, but it has fun consequences, namely tortoiseshell cats (and tortoiseshell-and-white or calico cats, as seen in the picture). You may know that tortoiseshells are almost always females, but you probably don’t know why.
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Unwinding DNA in Zurich
I was in Zurich last week, attending a workshop at ETH (= Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, the university Albert Einstein went to). I enjoyed it. It was quite a small conference, around 30 people, allowing for lots of informal chatting about people’s results and what are the outstanding problems.
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Graduation for postgraduate students
I have just come from the 2011 graduation ceremony for postgraduate students both in the Physics Department and other Departments in our Faculty (Computing, Maths and the Engineering Departments). I think it was over 300 students getting their Master and PhD degrees, including a PhD student of mine.
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A week in Glasgow
Universities have two basic roles: teaching and research. These two activities are closely related. For example, our research leads to an ability to teach cutting edge material to undergraduate students, and to supervise a research project in their final year of study. As well as undergraduate students, we also have postgraduates studying for masters or […]
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