In amongst the epic scenes of bloodied skeletons, flayed bodies and multiple Hitlers, an emaciated Stephen is sitting on a tank-like variant of his wheelchair on a desert island, with a beach hut and several multi-headed bikinid ladies for company.

The catalogue (now sadly sold out, so this is from memory) describes Stephen as being in Hell is he is in intellectual isolation – and makes great play of him being an incredible human being not just for his intellectual abilities (Lucasian Professor of Mathematics etc) but also his confinement to a wheelchair.

It seems Stephen is the ultimate pop reference for science – this noble brain understanding the world, while we mere mortals have trouble understanding his own existence.

In the context of the Chapman’s exhibition, though at first sight he seems a little incongrous, it makes a nice counterpoint to the (“traditional”) white coated scientists doing unspeakable things in their dirty factory, elsewhere in the diorama.

Twenty years ago today, just before 10pm, a gas leak, fire and a series of explosions on board the Piper Alpha oil rig, ruptured a gas pipeline from another platform, practically destroying the rig. It all took just 22 minutes and is the worst offshore disaster ever – yet.

The 248 workers had to pick which way to die – whether to stay on board or leap into the darkness. 167 died, some from the jump. 61 of those that jumped, survived, many with horrific burns.

I grew up 90odd miles away from Aberdeen, the Scottish (or should that be UK?) hub of the North Sea oil business, but the shockwaves emanated out to us. Many of our neighbours worked offshore – as had my dad and as does my eldest brother. The atmosphere in town in the days after, I remember clearly – although I was young and naive enough not to appreciate it fully.

So naturally, thoughts turn to the important matters of who has the best freebie.

My favourite so far? Leeds Met’s Can electrical stimulation of the skin reduce pain? exhibit has promotional plasters. Memorable and appropriate!

What’s your favourite conference or exhibition freebie?

Balloons (handily in the shape of sponsor Orange’s four mobile phone account logos) race across participating web pages. There’s a map of the pages, though I don’t quite understand how they fit together. And the closest to a science website I’ve found so far is Celebrity Backwash, which will certainly keep the geneticists and paternity testers amongst us happy.

Charles has a bit of catching up to do, but here’s hoping evolution trumps out, eh!

Two chemicals widely used in cleaning agents for homes, offices and hospitals cause birth defects and fertility problems in mice whose cages have been in contact with them, according to Patricia Hunt at Washington State University in Pullman.
...
[They] were identified after an exhaustive search for what was causing a massive drop-off in mouse fertility after Hunt moved her research animals to Pullman from Case Western Reserve Medical School in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2005. The chemicals were in the disinfectant Virex used in the facility.

And it is only, presumably, because she moved that this came to light.

But wait! There’s more! She’s had a serendipitous discovery before – egg defects in her research animals caused by a “chemical that began leaching from plastic water bottles after a high-pH floor detergent was mistakenly used to clean them.”

So how important is serendipity to science, and to your work?

30% peat free, Tesco’s pile of compost proclaims. Which means 70% peat. Beautiful, non-renewable, unsustainable peat.

So imagine my delight at being able to combine that obsession with my day job, with eight boxes of these, fresh from Jane Asher’s oven:

I’m making a note here, HUGE SUCCESS.

Oh, and the winners were:

• Junior Prize winner: Big Book of Science Things to Make and Do by Rebecca Gilpin and Leonie Pratt, (Usborne)

• General Prize winner: Six Degrees by Mark Lynas (Fourth Estate/Harper Collins)

It’s odd, the night before a big event. Because… well, though I am planning to be in work very early (by my standards) tomorrow, most of the work is already done, and the success of the event is pretty much out of my hands.

It’s like when a friend took me to the opera as her “plus one”, and we were both guests of the director. I was somewhat surprised to be sitting in the middle of the stalls some three or four seats away from him. “There’s nothing he can do now,” my friend explained, “everything he could do, he’s done.”

I thought I’d left that behind when I moved from my last flat, which was basement level. Whoops.

Can someone hurry up and invent self-healing tarmac, please? Henry, can you have a look in your slushpile, just to be sure?

The most telling take-home message was that it is not always the obvious things that have the most impact, environmentally.

Now, my knowledge of Kent geography is poor, but I had never heard of Lydd Airport.

A quick websearch reveals:

• It was the first airport to have air ferries (planes that carried cars for individual passengers) fly from it. Auric Goldfinger’s gold car is loaded in such a plane on the Lydd tarmac in Goldfinger.
• Sheikh Fahad al Athel has the controlling interest in Lydd Airport
• It has its own airline Lyddair
• It has only one scheduled destination – Le Touquet (a purpose-built town with its own fascinating history)
• It has plans for expansion, which has spawned both Lydd Airport Action Group (LAAG). (“LAAG represents people who are opposed to the expansion of Lydd Airport”) and Friends of Lydd Airport Group (“Friends of Lydd Airport Group has been set up to support the “Silent Majority” and to counter the scaremongering and half truths being told about the development of Lydd Airport.”) Their websites are interesting for what they say and don’t say about the developments.
• Its nearest rival is Kent International Airport which used to be RAF (and USAF) Manston. (Which, coincidently, doubled for a North Korean airbase in another James Bond film, Die another day).

I find it quite intriguing. There’s a bit of me that wants to fly from Lydd to Le Touquet, just because I can (though I know the Eurostar is more fun and more envirofriendly). But I also like that in this there’s a story of British commercial/industrial history, defunct methods of travel, film history, politics, environmentalism, and local protest/negotiation.

And all I went looking for was some ideas for what to do with some Walkers Brit Trips points. Ain’t the web wonderful?

But imagine my delight that there is a small cross-disciplinary field of what might be called ‘eurovisiopsephology’ incorporating insights from politics, sociology and computer science.

Yes folks, those voting patterns can be analysed and simulated and predicted. Hurrah for science!

Science & business boffins: solve companies’ problems for pay. Boost your income update

So shouts the headline in the latest newsletter from MoneySavingExpert.com. It goes on:

Many companies put problems online and offer cash to people who can come up with an effective solution. While not a guaranteed way to grab cash, these can be a fun, interesting, lucrative way to spend your spare time if you’re a business or science boff. Current cash on offer includes £150,000 if you can find a new Travelodge site location and £20,000 for a way to reduce the sugar content of baked goods, but keep them tasty. This and more MoneyMaking tips in the Article: Boost Your Income Forum Section: Up Your Income Also save yourself a fortune: Money Makeover

So can being a ‘boffin’ finally pay?

Science centres are something that we in the UK should be proud of. We didn’t exactly invent them (the Exploratorium in San Francisco is usually thought of as the grandparent of the modern science centre), but we have a long heritage of them and are rather good at them – British science centre workers export their exhibits and expertise around the world. We have bred a diverse and populous ecosystem of them, aided by a Millennium-funded bloom.

Some science centres are large, some are small and some are inbetweeny. The overwhelming majority are not-for-profit, and many live a precarious hand-to-mouth existence reliant on short-term funding and non-core income generation – be that a popular car park, conference venue or gay bar. With the exception of the museums, very few receive Government funding – as they don’t have collections, they don’t count as museums (and so don’t get museum funding), as they are not schools, they don’t get school funding, and weren’t really considered ‘sciencey’ enough for the DTI. (Indeed, until recently, it wasn’t clear which minister was responsible for science centres – the Minister for Science and Innovation in DIUS recently volunteered to take on the role).

But collectively, they are an important part of the science communication landscape, as a set of recent reports by Ecsite-uk, the trade body for science centres, show. And they could be worthy of our (the taxpayers) support.

And it’s about bleeding time. Marks and Spencer is finally owning up to being one of the most research-intensive retailers in the UK.

I’m trying, I really am, to engage with the Mayorial elections. I’ve read the London Elects booklet, I’ve read Nature Network’s own City Hall and Science series, and I’ve even looked at a couple of videos on Youtube of the party political broadcasts (even those of the English Democrats ).

But I’m just not excited, this time round. It feels like I’m trying to pick the least worst candidate, rather than the best.

There’s no easy way for me to say this, but I think it’s time we split up – I think it’d time for you to go. I’m sorry.

It’s not you though, it’s, well, it’s me. You see, I’ve changed, I’m just no interested in the same things any more, and, I, I just don’t think it’s fair to keep you hanging around.

It struck me that the tumble dryer is a device that hasn’t changed much in… oooh, a very long while.[1] It’s basically a big perforated drum, which rotates over a heat source, with a special area for one of your socks to get trapped in when you’re taking everything else out.

So is this it for the tumble dryer? Why hasn’t the technology moved on? Well, it has, but the tumble dryer seems to be a classic example of ‘incremental innovation’ – where small, steady improvements are made to a basic concept over time. Indeed, a quick search of the worldwide patent database shows a steady stream of new patents for tumble dryers – at least 12 last year, and one already this year. But none are the ones that, if you excuse the pun, set the tumble dryer world alight. No drying using nuclear fusion, genetic modification, anti-gravity or superconducting gizmos, as far as I can see.

Most innovation is like that though – it builds on what’s been built on before – not so much standing on the shoulders of giants, as rebuilding those shoulders to be able to bear more weight (with apologies to those in the Analogy Preservation Society). Radical innovation (the n-dimensional nanoparticle plasma dryer which doesn’t even need to be near your clothes to dry them) is much rarer.

One day, maybe there will be a revolution in tumble dryer technology. But meanwhile, we’ll take those small improvements, those small steps (or spins) forward, hopeful that in amongst all the tumble dryer research in the world, there’s someone out there dreaming up the next big thing.

¹ I can’t find (I haven’t looked hard) who invented the tumble dryer. Several websites all state that “a Frenchman named Pochon” created a hand-cranked one in 1799. About gives more details, but I’m suspicious that none cite a reference, and Pochon seems not to have any more details – like a first name.

And the funny thing is, I hadn’t realised it until today.

Dear Scott, I thought you’d appreciate some chocolate today!

My stomach turned. The trustees were meeting today to finalise our budgets for next year. What did my valentine know that I didn’t?

So when I received a mailing from Crusaid, requesting funds for their HIV/AIDS work in Namibia, I was tickled to see that the envelope manufacturer was Crusade.

I still remember it sort-of fondly. The hotel was lovely, overall, and they were able to accommodate us all. But when you’re the project manager, the buck stops with you…

As a Computer Science student, the furthest I went on a field trip was to the basement. However, there was some consensus amongst all present, that modern geologists need to have undertaken fieldwork, especially mapping, as an undergraduate. To get a feel for terrain, and to be able to visualise and understand what maps and 3d and 4d models are showing, you need to have trampled over what the models are, well, modelling.

That’s not what struck me the most though. What stuck me most was the relationship between a small village in the North West Highlands of Scotland, and the career of a British Geologist.

_{(Image courtesy Advencap on Flickr used thanks to a CC licence)}

I’ve listed it on NNL as I thought it might be of interest to some of the folks here. Is anyone on NNL London in that position?

To test that curiousity, although we usually charge for attending our events, the first 10 people to book by 4.30pm on the day, quoting NATURE in the reference box, will get in for free.

I’ll manually mail you to confirm this – assume you’re in unless you hear otherwise.

No hard sell, nothing like that. No fairy cakes either – though last time, the caterers did provide cake rather than biscuits.

Over in the arts, Howard Davies, the LSE director, caused a storm in literary circles when, in his speech at the at the Man Booker awards dinner, he laid in to the authors-reviewing-authors cosiness of the book review world.

So should science and the arts rely on peers to assess the quality of the work?

BBC News Online’s published a guide to Build your own Sputnik in a biscuit tin.

Featuring a Tomy Baby Monitor (should they be recommending brands?) a balloon, a mercury thermometer and tin foil (but a disappointing zero quantity of sticky-backed plastic and washing-up liquid bottles), they say:

Do you fancy building you own Sputnik? We’ve given you an idea how easy it could be, now the Magazine wants to hear from willing volunteers. We can even come and film you putting it together. We’ll also investigate how to get your Sputniks launched.

Well, it looks like it might happen again with the latest technodanger – Wi-fi:

“If they don’t do a thorough investigation, people will see it as a whitewash,” Mr Parkin (the general secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers) said. “What we want is a thorough investigation that can either confirm there is something to worry about, or completely assuage any fears people might have about Wi-Fi.” (My emphasis)

This quote, from the Guardian, is in response to the Health Protection Agency’s announcement that it is going to find out what wi-fi exposure levels are likely to be in the real world, from actual use. This follows a controversial, criticised BBC Panorama programme on the possible dangers of wifi in schools.

Now, “Is it safe?” is one of those questions that few scientists feel comfortable answering absolutely. And getting over the nuances of relative risk, likelihood and doubt in a soundbite ain’t easy. It’s why, apparently, Newsnight journalists are no longer allowed to ask it, and is a question that even our Lords considered in their landmark Science and Society report.

But Minister, is it safe, is it something to worry about, or can you completely assuage any fears people might have?

I really hope people aren’t going to be asking that on Newsnight any time soon.

There seem to be many connections between knitting and science, especially maths – and not just that loads of mathematicians and lots of scientists knit!