Living Symphonies is a sound installation which aims to portray a forest ecosystem in an ever changing soundscape – reflecting, in real time, the interactions of the natural world. In this film, Nature Video takes a peek under the hood of Living Symphonies, at the science which makes it possible; and asks how projects like these could influence the way that both the public and … Continue reading Living Symphonies
One of the chapters in the A level (final year of high school) Salters Chemistry in the UK was drug discovery and clinical trials. The story line book covered this topic in 5 or so pages. What was not mentioned were the actual difficulties and the hurdles that the scientists underwent to discover a new drug. This article published in ‘The New Yorker‘ takes us … Continue reading The life and times of a pharmaceutical drug
What happens to people when they become government science advisers? Are their children taken hostage? Is a dossier of compromising photographs kept, ready to send to the Sun if they step out of line? I ask because, in too many cases, they soon begin to sound less like scientists than industrial lobbyists. The mad cow crisis 20 years ago was exacerbated by the failure of … Continue reading Politics & Science
Michael Faraday’s lectures at London’s Royal Institution in the early 19th century were so popular that the carriages dropping people off to see him used to choke Albemarle Street in Mayfair – as a result, the street was designated the first one-way road in London. Faraday was a master communicator who thrilled audiences with the latest discoveries in chemistry and electricity. He was as much a brilliant … Continue reading Science Education
Few articles, that I came across recently on inquiry based teaching and learning. Science magazine (www.sciencemag.org) from the US has started a competition on this topic: Teaching Real Science In this issue of Science, we are publishing the first of 15 winning entries for the 2011 Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction, a laboratory module entitled Light, Sight, and Rainbows. Created for introductory college science courses, each module can be readily … Continue reading Inquiry based learning
Source: The New Yorker If the science truly succeeds, it will make it possible to supplant the world created by Darwinian evolution with one created by us. The first time Jay Keasling remembers hearing the word “artemisinin,” about a decade ago, he had no idea what it meant. “Not a clue,” Keasling, a professor of biochemical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, recalled. … Continue reading Synthetic life
Perpetual Motion of Thought 