Monthly Archives: October 2012
Finding fieldwork centres
Eva Sharpe, HE Policy Officer at the Society of Biology, discovers an excellent resource from the Royal Geographical Society Recently we asked our members working in Higher Education what else we can do to support the bioscience learning and teaching community. One suggestion was for us to set up a database of fieldwork centres available … Continue reading
Is panda PR a good idea?
by Rebecca Nesbit, Press Officer, Society of Biology Panda conservation is not ‘greenwash’ read the headline of BBC Nature’s thought-provoking write-up of the Biology Week debate ‘should we save the panda’. This referred to the evening’s extensive discussion about the use (and misuse) of pandas in conservation PR. Whether or not you think it is … Continue reading
How does Chris Packham’s garden grow?
Since the completion of the human genome project, DNA sequencing has become much faster and cheaper, opening up exciting possibilities for medicine and our understanding of human biology. But it goes far further than that, as is demonstrated by this video, first shown at the Biology Week launch event in Parliament held in partnership with … Continue reading
I promise you really said that!
By Rebecca Nesbit, Society of Biology As this blog goes live, a record attempt is taking place for the world’s largest memory game. This is the climax of Biology Week and involves hundreds of children and adults. It is designed to be fun, but also has a serious side, collecting data for Professor Bruce Hood … Continue reading
ScienceGrrl calendar launched
by Rebecca Nesbit, Press Officer at the Society of Biology Not only is this week a very successful first Biology Week, it is also a good week for gender equality in science. In 2010 UKRC/WISE reported that only 12.3% of the skilled workforce in science, engineering and technology are women, a disturbing figure. The problem … Continue reading
Farming and the environment: Biology Week Q&A
Dr Frances Downey, Public Liaison at Sense About Science, writes about the Biology Week event: Environmental scientists answer your questions: How does farming affect the environment? This summer, when plant scientists from Rothamsted Research appealed for discussion not destruction when their GM wheat crop was under threat, the public came out in support. More than … Continue reading
What you said about Open Education Resources
Dr Eva Sharpe, HE Policy Officer at the Society of Biology, reports on the results of our survey into the use of Open Education Resources Earlier this summer, I blogged about a Society of Biology project to promote the use of Open Education Resources (OER) by the bioscience community. As one strand of the project … Continue reading
Podcast: should we save the panda?
by Rebecca Nesbit With just five days to go until the Biology Week debate, ‘Do we need pandas? Choosing which species to save’, the votes on the Society of Biology website poll are swinging in favour of the panda. To help me decide which way to vote, I produced this podcast in which I interview … Continue reading
bTB or not bTB? How to control it is still the question
Guest post by Catherine O’Connor, Epidemiologist for the Health Protection Services, discussing the badger cull As an epidemiologist, my job is to understand the how, what, when, where and whys of disease transmission. Though we now possess much fancier tools than those used by the father of epidemiology, John Snow (he of the Broad Street … Continue reading
What can you tell from a KIS
by Natasha Neill, Qualification & Skills Officer at the Society of Biology The past few months for universities all across the UK must have involved hours with reams of data from past students, as everyone counts down the days till the 31st October. By then all universities in the UK will make their Key Information … Continue reading