The latest Nature Network Boston pub night was a resounding success. Around 60 people turned up to discuss what kind of science they would do if they weren’t constrained by resources. Antoine van Oijen of Harvard Med School wants to take a ‘fantastic voyage’ through the body to watch individual proteins in action. MIT’s Andreas Mershin, meanwhile, nominates “do-it-yourself” solar cells to provide low-cost solar energy to the developing world. Join in the discussion over on the Boston blog.
Over in the Science Writers forum, Maxine Clarke points us towards a superior article in the Guardian about climate change, in which novelist Ian McEwan argues: “After years of living in fear of climate change, we are fast acquiring the weapons to defeat it. But the only one who can unite humanity for this life-or-death struggle is Barack Obama – and he must act now.”
Sticking with the political theme, Hilary Spencer in the Visualization and Science forum presents a series of ingenious maps showing US voting patterns.
Blog post of the week goes to Stephen Curry, who provided a captivating glimpse into the world of Count von Rumford. The Count made pioneering investigations into thermodynamics, and wrote them up in a style rather different to that of modern-day scientific papers:
It would be difficult to describe the surprise and astonishment expressed in the countenances of the by-standers, on seeing so large a quantity of cold water heated, and actually made to boil, without any fire.
Heat convected throughout the blog section this week; in another post, Jenny Rohn’s USB-controlled mug warmer came in for a thermodynamic critique.
We also welcomed new bloggers Katherine Haxton and Bernard Baars.
And finally…
The London blog gained a new, yet old, face this week. ‘Deceased legislative genius’ Jeremy Bentham, whom locals will recognise as the preserved body on display in University College London’s cloisters, has decided to start blogging on Nature Network. The 18th Century polymath provides insights into the scientific world from his somewhat unique perspective.
If you’d like to nominate a conversation you’ve read or taken part in on Nature Network for next week’s roundup, please email us at network [at] nature.com
