I look at the world and I notice it’s turning While my keyboard gently weeps With every mistake we must surely be learning Still my keyboard gently weeps Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh, oh oh Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is on the road this autumn in London, Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow and Cambridge. Potential applicants, grant holders and any other interested parties are strongly urged to attend and learn about BBSRC’s plans for the future including new procedures and new Committee structures.

I’ve been hunting all over the interweb looking for Professors that have blogs. While it would be a good thing if there were more, (see the science blogging challenge 2008), there are surprising amount of big boffins that already blog. I should say that by big , I mean (full) professor.

The artist Andy Warhol once said: “In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes”. This well worn saying has been quoted and misquoted in hundreds of different ways in the forty years since Warhol first coined it [1]. Bad Scientist Ben Goldacre, in his keynote speech* at Science Blogging (sciblog) 2008, highlighted […]

Nature Publishing Group are organising a workshop on science blogging, this Saturday 30th August 2008 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. Why would you care? Because there are: Lots of interesting people… …talking about a range of interesting subjects … .. in a distinguished venue that has recently been refurbished. It is also home to the fantastic Christmas lectures and much more besides.

Organic chemist Jean-Claude Bradley is currently touring the UK. He is doing various talks up and down the country, including one in Manchester on Friday September 5th 2008 at the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB). So, if you’re interested in novel uses of web technology, including Open Notebook Science to facilitate drug discovery, come along and join the fun.

A fictional scene from the future : The Olympic games, London 2012. A new candidate sport is on trial, joining skateboarding, rugby and golf at their debut Olympic games. It is challenging discipline called Science , a sport more ancient than Olympia itself. The crowd awaits eagerly in the all new Boris Johnson Olympic stadium.

Fantasy Science Funding is a fun game that anybody can play. You select a Science funding body of your choice, imagine yourself as its all powerful chief executive, and decide which areas of scientific research you would “hire and fire”. What could be easier?

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is full of scientists. All kinds of scientists working in biology, chemistry and physics, as well as plenty of mathematicians, engineers and technologists too work in the UK. They make their living in good old Blighty, pushing forward the boundaries of human knowledge, wherever and whenever they can.

A thought experiment with lots of money The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is the United Kingdom’s funding agency for academic research and training in the non-clinical life sciences. It supports a total of around 1600 scientists and 2000 research students in universities and institutes in the UK. The head of our laboratory, Douglas Kell, has recently been appointed Chief Executive of the BBSRC [1].

With sincere apologies to Jamaican reggae singer-songwriter Eric Donaldson, “ChEBI, Oh ChEBI, Oh Baby, don’t you know I’m in need of thee”? Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) is a dictionary, controlled vocabulary, database, ontology of small (low molecular-weight) chemical entities that are considered to be biologically interesting, (like amphetamine (CHEBI:2679) for example). After a couple of recent meetings, ChEBI is going