Sometimes it is nice to feel that you are ahead of the trend but on the other hand if what you have done in the past has not been picked up, maybe your work is not as good as you believe. 3D printing has excited the interest of the Economist magazine a number of times recently. Here for example is something abount printed electronics. I am not sure...

I sometimes wonder if Michael Gove, the current education secretary, is more dangerous than he appears. When he arrived in government he used the Machiavellian principle of getting all the bad news (e.g. withdrawing new school building projects in poor areas) out very very fast so that they would be old news by re-election time. He also has the education...

I spent this morning interviewing students for PhD positions. We have a policy of interviewing all students so that we can fairly distribute PhD awards to the best students. A good common question to ask is whether they can discuss some science related topic they may have picked up from news reports in the recent past. Maybe it is because they are nervous,...

I read in the Guardian today that the National Trust’s new visitor centre at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland makes reference to Young Earth Creationism in its presentation on the geology of the formation. Now I understand that in Northern Ireland religion and politics are intertwined in a manner unfamilair to the rest of the United Kingdom;...

After a years break from blogging the excitement of the Higgs announcement today has got me going again. The main effect of the announcemtnt that the higgs boson has been probably identified is a mushrooming of bad jokes built around the multiple meenings of the word mass. No, I won’t bore you with a poor selection of them. Judging by its influence...

Eric Schmidt gave the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Conference last week – see here for full text of lecture. A much publicised sound bite from the lecture suggests that the UK has lost its past glory when science and arts were combined in some Victorian golden era.Although I agree with the sentiment of the analysis I believe it to be historically...