After splashdown at 4:51 pm on 24th July 1969 the Apollo 11 astronauts returning from the first moon landing  had to don full-body Biological Isolation Garments before they could leave the conical command module that was bobbing in the Pacific Ocean. Having transferred to the dingy that had come to meet them, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins then had to scrub one another’s suits with diluted bleach.

I recently came across a film on YouTube called ‘Unedited footage of the bombing of Nagasaki (silent)’. It is one of the dullest and most horrific things I have ever seen. The film shows US servicemen on Tinian island performing the banal tasks needed to prepare the Fat Man bomb before it was dropped on Japan.

I may not know much about art but I know what I like and I like the work of Joseph Mallord William Turner — all the more so now that I have seen the Turner and the Sea exhibition at the National Maritime Museum.

I’ve reached that age where my eye is drawn to the obituary column every time I open the newspaper. It hasn’t been a conscious move but, having arrived at my fiftieth year, I am increasingly aware of the hopes of youth shedding and floating away, like leaves from a tree, and find myself more often looking back over the road now travelled than peering into the future at the way ahead.

This is the original version (with the original title) of an article that has been published at The Conversation. Having climbed all the way to the Nobel prize on a ladder made of Nature, Science and Cell papers, biologist Randy Schekman has turned around and declared that he is going to boycott these ‘luxury’ journals in future because of the way that they damage science.

The internet was all aflutter last week because Elsevier has sent thousands of take-down notices to Academia.edu, a social networking site where many researchers post and share their published papers. This marks a significant change of tack for Elsevier.

There has been a flurry of articles of late listing important things that scientists, politicians and the public should know about each other. I am logging them here because I enjoyed each of the pieces and think it likely that I will want to consult them in future.

The Royal Institution has made a rather lovely film about William and Lawrence Bragg, the father and son Nobel laureates who came up the method of structural analysis by X-ray crystallography around 100 years ago. The film is constructed around an interview with Lawrence Bragg’s daughter Patience, a delightful lady who has very fond memories of her father and some wonderful stories about him.

Tense, nervous headache? Feelings of confusion? Mood swings from warm optimism to a gnawing sense of futility? You’ve been reading about open access again, haven’t you? I know because I have and I recognise the symptoms.  Open access week came and went in the latter part of October and brought with it a plethora of events, publications and blogposts. The worldwide verbiage on this topic increased once again.

Nature has an interesting news feature this week on impact factors. Eugenie Samuel Reich’s article — part of a special supplement covering various aspects of the rather ill-defined notion of impact — explores whether publication in journals such as Nature or Science is a game-changer for scientific careers. The widely-held assumption is that they are.