I have been a long-time admirer of the Open University; my mother completed a degree with them when I was a child and another of my relatives was one of the first ever cohorts of OU students. At a recent conference a presentation on the OU’s new “Science Investigations” module* was truly inspiring – the [...]
What IS the most important scientific breakthrough of last fifty years?
It seems odd to accuse the BBC of “hiding” a television programme in a prime time slot on their flagship channel, but amidst the hype for their Christmas schedule I saw no advertising whatsoever for the latest Robert Winston vehicle How Science Changed Our World (BBC1, 20:00, 23rd December, 60 mins). This is a huge [...]
Science and Television: friend or foe?
I’m a big fan of both science and television and have blogged previously about their inter-relationship (e.g. Science on the telly and A new model for interaction of scientific research and TV?). I was therefore very interest to hear Physicist and former pop star Prof Brian Cox delivering the 2010 Huw Wheldon lecture on the [...]
A new model for interaction between science research and TV?
A fascinating thing occurred this week. The website of top-notch scientific journal Nature uploaded the preprint of a paper on research looking into the alleged benefits of brain training games. In and of itself this news may not sound revolutionary; Nature frequently publishes articles on neuroscience (and, I suspect, will be doing so more and more in [...]
Science on the Telly: “And the winner would be…”
At the risk of sounding like a Carlsberg advert, “The Journal of the Left-handed Biochemist doesn’t do award ceremonies, but if we did…” – what would be the winner of “Best Science programme” during the last 12 months? In truth, I think it has been a bumper year for science programmes. There has been a tangible [...]
