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Theme : science
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India: The uneven innovator
Indian science confounds easy clichés. Many Indias coexist, all moving at different speeds. World-class science exists alongside grinding poverty. But India’s uneven innovation brings significant strengths as well as weaknesses. Flows of people, ideas and culture, both within India and across its global diaspora, are generating new businesses, new opportunities and a growing sense of national confidence.
from : mollywebb
16th January 2007
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China: The next science superpower?
China in 2007 is the world’s largest technocracy: a country ruled by scientists and engineers who believe in the power of technology to deliver social and economic progress. The country is at an early stage in the most ambitious programme of research investment since John F Kennedy embarked on the race to the moon. But statistics fail to capture the raw power of the changes that are under way, and the potential for Chinese science and innovation to head in new and surprising directions.
from : mollywebb
16th January 2007
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The Atlas of Ideas
We used to know where new ideas would come from: established universities and corporate research centres in highly developed countries. Think again.
from : mollywebb
16th January 2007
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Where forwards please?
The new ad from Honda stars a cross between Mr Soft and a stormtrooper with sciatica. The robot struts (limps) his stuff among his dusty predecessors in a museum, and that chap from Lake Wobegon tells us that Honda are about "Onwards, upwards - anyway but backwards. Tapping progress on the shoulder and saying 'More forwards please'."It's a nice turn of phrase, but it rings my alarm bells. It reminds us how easy it is to fall into the trap of seeing science-in-society in a linear way....
from : jackstilgoe
4th January 2007
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Way upstream
Next week, I will be a mentor at the EPSRC's 'Ideas Factory' on Software Control of Matter. This takes me way upstream and puts me among a diverse group of scientists, who are coming together to consider how to approach an esoteric problem with potentially massive implications - building stuff nano-bit by nano-bit. The EPSRC, who distribute the engineering and physics part of the UK's science budget, have set aside money to fund the proposals that are produced. For the last year, we at...
from : jackstilgoe
3rd January 2007
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The Atlas of Ideas Final Conference
Join us for The Atlas of Ideas conference, where policymakers, business leaders, scientists and opinion formers from across Asia, Europe and the US will gather to debate the new geography of science.
from : mollywebb
3rd January 2007
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The expert patience programme
When you have a hammer of a pamphlet, every story looks like a nail. On Friday, we launched The Received Wisdom - Opening up expert advice. In the papers, Richard Doll's (expert par excellence) reputation was taking a battering, vCJD was back in contaminated blood and the expert report of the TeGenero inquiry was described as a whitewash. At the same time, the mobile phones health scare was sinking its nails into Wi-Fi as it slowly died.
from : jackstilgoe
12th December 2006
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The Received Wisdom
The modern world needs experts. They are everywhere. In government, we are told that they are a resource – ‘on tap, not on top.’ But experience over the last 20 years, from BSE to MMR and beyond, has punctured the old, ‘speaking truth to power,’ model of expertise. The policy response to BSE has been to open up. But are we making the most of openness?
from : markfuller
8th December 2006
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Are you feeling ‘lit by the brilliant light of science’?
The PM today delivered a big speech on science in Oxford, his first substantial contribution on this theme since 2002. The speech paints a detailed picture of the scientific state we're in, and has some good points to make about international collaboration, which are relevant to our Atlas project. The latter part of the speech, where he attacks the 'anti-science brigade', is the least convincing. In part, he seems to be arguing for a new approach to opening up decision-making and supporting...
from : mollywebb
3rd November 2006
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The new geography of science
from : mollywebb
3rd November 2006
