My first proper full-time job was working in the big bad world of scientific publishing for a family run company based in Oxford called Blackwell Science Limited, or blacksci.co.uk which is now part of wiley.com. Consequently, I’ve a few friends and former colleagues who still work in various parts of the publishing industry.

In my inbox this morning, an intriguing email from Timo Hannay, Tim O’Reilly and Chris DiBona: Duncan, We’d like to invite you to join us for Science Foo Camp (or “Sci Foo”), a unique, invitation-only gathering organized by Nature, O’Reilly Media, and Google, and hosted at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California.

Slides from the seminar today, for those that asked for them. Thanks to everyone who came, we had a good turn out, much better than expected.

Casey Bergman suggested it, Jean-Marc Schwartz organised it, so now I’m going to do it: a seminar on our Defrosting the Digital Library paper as part of the Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics seminar series. Here is the abstract of the talk: After centuries with little change, scientific libraries have recently experienced massive upheaval.

A Fistful of Papers is a Journal Club with a simple recipe We pick interesting papers We read them We periodically meet to discuss said papers in the pub local saloon It’s all good fun, if you’d like to join us, details of the next gathering on Friday 27th February, can be found over at […]

In a curious case of mistaken identity, Google seems to think I’m Maurice Wilkins. Here is how. If you Google the words DNA and mania (google.com/search?q=dna+mania) one of the first results is a tongue-in-cheek article I wrote two years ago about our obsession with Deoxyribonucleic Acid.

I’m not much of a fan of Janet Street-Porter, neither am I a regular viewer of the BBC Money programme but right now they are screening an interesting series of three half-hour programmes on the impact of the internet on newspapers, books and television.

Despite what some people think (see “the myth of the lone inventor” in [1]) most scientists are usually pretty sociable people. Science is an inherently social activity [2], just take a look around you. Most laboratories are full of like-minded people working on related problems, our lab is no exception.

Donald Braben was in Manchester last week, to give a seminar on scientific freedom, here is the abstract of his talk: Every major scientific discovery came unexpectedly out of the blue.  Until a few decades ago, creative researchers were free to explore. The unpredicted harvest was prodigious.

Data Integration in the Life Sciences (DILS 2009) is the sixth in an international workshop series that aims at fostering discussion, exchange, and innovation in research and development in the areas of data integration and data management for the life sciences.

One of the most important Christmas traditions in Europe, aside from drinking too much, excessive eating and generally conspicuous over-consumption, are the Royal Institution Christmas lectures. This year, they are being given by Professor Christopher Bishop (pictured right), Chief Scientist at Microsoft Research and are on the subject of the Quest for the Ultimate Computer.