When I first heard about Journal Fire, I thought, Great! someone is going to take all the closed-access scientific journals and make a big bonfire of them! At the top of this bonfire would be the burning effigy of a wicker man, representing the very worst of the vanity journals [1,2]. Unfortunately Journal Fire aren’t burning anything just yet, but […]

Former Mancunian James Lovelock runs the kind of a laboratory most scientists can only fantasise about working in as they grind through the humdrum bureaucracy of peer-review and never-ending grant applications. Lovelock is fortunate enough to run a completely independent, self-funded lab located in the beautiful West Country. There’s a fascinating interview with him on The Life Scientific […]

The BBC is currently seeking external partners for collaborative innovation around BBC Online. This is happening through a series of events called BBC Connected Studio. It’s open to small, medium and micro businesses, individuals and digital agencies from the creative sector who want to work with the BBC developing new functions, features or formats for online […]

I love the convenience of mobile applications but hate the way they re-invent the wheel and are killing the Web. What can be done about it? I’m in love with the mobile Web I’ve been smitten with the Web since first venturing out on the information superhighway back in the nineties. This love affair is taken to […]

Bicycle sharing is becoming increasingly popular in cities around the world. London has Boris Bikes, Paris has Vélo Liberté: Vélib’ and New York should soon have thousands of new Bixi-bikes this summer. There are scores of public cycle hire schemes in other cities. With the health benefits of cycling well documented [1] and with the potential reduction of traffic congestion […]

According to Francis Maude, Open Data is the raw material for “next industrial revolution”. Now you should obviously take everything politicians say with a large pinch of salt (especially Maude) but despite the political hyperbole, when it comes to data he is onto something. According to wikipedia, which is considerably more reliable than politicians, Open Data is: “the […]

Thought for the day: be nice to nerds because you might end of up working for them. This sound advice comes from DARPA defector and newly appointed Googler Regina Dugan (see picture below). What’s that you say? You’re not sure exactly what a nerd is? There are many definitions but the graphic below sums it up better than the Oxford English Dictionary ever could. But beware!

Open Access (OA) publishing aims to make the results of scientific research available to the widest possible audience.

With more than three million Android devices activated on the 24/25th December 2011 [1] and something like 200 million (or more?) Android devices in total, there are nearly enough droids around to build a primitive brain. With all that processing power out there, I can’t help but wonder, like Philip K. Dick did, Does Android Dream of Electric Sheep? […]

The holiday season is upon us which means it’s time for the Royal Institution Christmas lectures. This year the lectures are on the meaty subject of how our brains work and are delivered by psychologist Professor Bruce Hood from the University of Bristol [1,2]. Broadcast over three episodes at 8pm on BBC4  (27th, 28th and 29th December) […]

Curryology, the branch of science that deals with curry, is an established discipline with a long and distinguished history.