Welcome to our blog from the British Science Festival. This year's Festival will be in Surrey from 5-10 September with hundreds events expected to happen at the University of Surrey campus and throughout the county. With workshops, hands-on fun, heated debates, talks, performances and field trips there's something for everyone!
Stay tuned for the latest news and developments from the British Science Festival.

from Yasmin and Natalie (Festival team)

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Do you know a brilliant science communicator?

Each year the BA honours five outstanding young communicators with the opportunity to present a prestigious Award Lecture at the BA Festival of Science. The Award Lectures aim to promote open and informed discussion on issues involving science and actively encourage young scientists to explore the social aspects of their research, providing them with reward and recognition for doing so. The Lectures are a very popular component of the Festival programme with an extremely broad audience ranging from school groups and interested public to retired academics and scientists from a wide range of disciplines.Nominations for the BA Award Lectures 2009 are now open. The 2009 BA Festival of Science will take place from 5th-10th September 2009 in Guildford and throughout Surrey , hosted by the University of Surrey.Visit the website for more details:
www.the-ba.net/festivalofscience.
Thanks and good luck!

Wednesday 19 November 2008

Latest news

Hi everyone

It's been a little while since our last post. We've been pretty busy here at the office with proposals coming in and deciding which ones to include in next year's programme.

We will soon be taking in nominations for the BA Award lectures where each year the BA honours five outstanding communicators with the opportunity to present a prestigious award lecture at the BA Festival of Science. So if you know a talented science communicator and think that they deserve the title of an Award lecture winner, then please nominate them!

More details are soon to follow on the website, Festival blog and Facebook group. So keep checking back for more details.

In the mean time if you have any questions or would like to subscribe to our Festival email list please email festival@the-ba.net

Thanks

Yasmin

Monday 3 November 2008

Goodbye Manchester...

So what about the rest of the week at the Manchester Science Festival? After ensuring the Award Lectures went smoothly, we got the chance to go to some other events in the Festival. We went on a city walk looking at Radical Manchester, which was run by Urbis and was very insightful. I went to a talk and discussion about tuberculosis and how it is worryingly on the rise again. This was fascinating, since there have been a lot of changes since I learnt about tuberculosis at University. I dropped into lots of exhibitions and went to a documentary and discussion called Cosmic Africa, which explored an African’s work in cosmology and his journey to find where this fit in with the culture and beliefs of many Africans. It was a great documentary and was great food for thought. There was some great food there too! I also got the chance to meet lots of other festival organisers and directors from all over the world which was very exciting. Attending as part of a British Council International Festival Directors symposium, they were at the Manchester Science Festival to see how the UK runs its Science Festivals and what the UK does in terms of public engagement with science. So, it was a great few days in Manchester – our Award Lectures went really well and it was good to have the opportunity to attend events at another Festival. Now back to thinking about Surrey...

Thursday 30 October 2008

Climate change and space in Manchester


Continuing on with all the happenings at the Manchester Science Festival... On Sunday Maggie Aderin delivered her BA Award Lecture; Climate change: what space can teach us about climate change. Maggie told us about how inspired by the stars she was when she was growing up and that it was a time of great excitement with astronauts going up into space. From then on Maggie’s passion for space seems to continue and she now works as an “instrumentalist”, working with a team in her company to build instruments that take measurements and readings in space. It was incredible to hear about the hard work that goes into producing something that has to go into space. Firstly, it has to be built with the right materials, which are often extremely expensive. These materials and the prototypes have to be tested to extremes; temperature, pressure, wind and other tests simultaneously, to ensure it will be able to stand the extreme conditions it will be exposed to in space. Once you have a finished instrument, you have to actually get it into space which again has huge costs associated with it. So, it’s no easy task.


Maggie’s work is very important in climate change research. Her work helps to monitor changes in climate on earth, by collecting data about CO2 levels and the movement of the wind amongst other things. This contributes to ongoing data which will help to put the bigger picture of how and why the climate is changing and what we can do to combat climate change. These instruments can also be used to collect data from other planets which help us to further understand our own. My particular highlight was a demonstration of how a bottle filled with CO2 heats to a much higher temperature than normal air, providing such a simple example of what increased levels of CO2 are doing and could continue to do to our planet.


Hopefully we’ll see more of Maggie next year at the Festival during the International year of Astronomy!

Wednesday 29 October 2008

Colour - bubbles, butterflies and more


Well, what a week. We’ve been at the Manchester Science Festival and thought I would give a little update of what we’ve been up to. At the weekend, we took two of our fantastic BA Award Lectures to the Manchester Science Festival. First up, Pete Vukusic from the University of Exeter giving his talk Evolutionary colour: Evolutionary colour: understanding nature's use of light. He joined us on Saturday at the Manchester Museum to look at colour, how colour is formed, how we see it and the different types; namely pigments and structural colour. Pigments produce a colour as a result of different wavelengths of light being absorbed. Structural colour works by producing a colour when light interacts with different layers of an object. When light hits the object at different angles the colour can appear to change. A great example is soap bubbles and some butterfly wings. We had great fun painting some audience members’ face with paint and looking at it under UV light, creating bubbles, watching cars change colour and watching creatures disappear. We then found out about the different ways that colour cold be applied in science including use in make-up (no butterflies were harmed!). We had some younger members in the audience than we thought we would and Pete’s ability to adapt the content of his talk and present information for the different age groups throughout was impressive. He was a really engaging scientist, bringing light to his area of work and inspiring the audience – especially the younger ones. I think we have a few budding scientists as a result!

Friday 24 October 2008

Manchester Science Festival

Hi everyone,

We're off the Manchester Science Festival today, where we're taking two of our Award Lectures that took place at the Festival in Liverpool this September. Catch Pete Vukisic's talk on exploring nature's colour on Saturday and Maggie Aderin's talk on Sunday looking at climate change from a new angle. Both these events are free and so if you missed them the first time round get yourself to Manchester this weekend!

2009 Festival: We will soon be taking in nominations for next year's Award lectures, so keep checking the website and blog for the latest news from us.

Thanks

Yasmin, The Festival team

Wednesday 15 October 2008

2009 proposals...

Proposals are coming in thick and fast for next year's Festival. Climate change, space, comedy, communication, language, drama, film.... and we've not even reached the deadline (tomorrow) yet. For more info about running an event... www.the-ba.net/festivalgetinvolved

Tuesday 7 October 2008

Goodbye Liverpool... hello Manchester


This month we are taking two of our fantastic Award Lectures to the Manchester Science Festival. So, if you didn’t catch them first time around or you are in Manchester during the week, get yourself along.

Pete Vukusic, from the University of Exeter will be exploring the nature’s use of colour and its applications in technology, from feathers to fish scales and cosmetics to camouflage in the BA Lord Kelvin Award Lecture, Evolutionary light: understanding nature’s use of colour. Saturday 25 October 14:00 – 15:00, Manchester Museum.

Maggie Aderin will look at climate change from a whole new angle as we find out how space scientists like Maggie make science count in the battle against climate change in the BA Isambard Kingdom Brunel Award Lecture, Climate change: what space can teach us about planet Earth. Sunday 26 October 14:00 – 15:00, Manchester Museum.

Both of these events are FREE and will be held at the Manchester Museum .To book please call 0161 275 2648. For more information about the Manchester Science Festival check out their website: http://www.manchestersciencefestival.com/

Creativity, innovation and evolution

That's our theme for next year's BA Festival of Science which will be in Guildford, Surrey, hosted by the University of Surrey. Now we've finished this year's Festival, it's time to think ahead. There is still some time left if you would like to get involved in next year's Festival. You can submit a proposal to run an event at the Festival. The deadline is 16 October and more info about the proposal process can be found at www.the-ba.net/festivalgetinvolved.

Natalie

Tuesday 30 September 2008

Best of the fest in Liverpool



Now that this year’s Festival is well and truly over and we’ve had a bit of a breather I thought I would add a few of my favourite highlights from Liverpool. Liverpool is a great city. Arriving in the city for the Festival, there was such a great buzz about the place. With the arrival of La Princess (see pic), thousands of people descended on the city to see the mechanical spider weave its magic throughout the city. I hate spiders, but it was pretty cool. Even though the Spider had nothing to do with the Festival is brought thousands of people into Liverpool, which we used to our advantage! Science buskers and butlers were out in force performing on the streets, shopping centres, museums and the train station. We also had a Science Explosion at the World Museum – a weekend of fun, hands-on family science activities. Taking a wander round was great fun – lot’s of families and a great atmosphere.

The rest of the weekend was great too. On Saturday we had a real mix of events from heart health checks with the British Heart Foundation and the Search for extra-terrestrial life to the Science of superheroes and Adam Hart-Davis talking about the history of the vacuum (not the Hoover). At the Adam Hart-Davis event, there were lots of questions from children. Best question of the day from a little girl in the audience: “how big is space?”.

On Sunday, I went along to Going Green with the Strawbridges. There were quite a few female members of the audience in the front row – Dick and James have a quite a following. Now I have never really watched their TV show, but after hearing their escapades with eco-toilets, living with camera crew and sticking bio-diesel in their cars (the sample they brought did stink a bit), I think they have a new fan. Following this, was The gr8 GM db8 and the entertaining Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. The GM debate was quite heated with panellists from the Food Standards Agency, Friends of the Earth, Gene watch UK and SciDev.net. It was a really good mix of panellists, with great questions from the audience.

My three favourites from Monday were the Joseph Lister Award Lecture; Txt crimes, sex crimes and murder, The truth about hypnosis and Climb every mountain with Sir Ranulph Fiennes. The BA’s Award Lectures are lectures given by five early career scientists who are great communicators in their field. Tim Grant from Aston University is part of some really cutting edge work in the field of text message analysis and the event provided a fascinating insight into this. I attended the hypnosis event held in the lovely Bluecoat as did last year. I am a bit of a skeptic, but presenter Peter Naish provides a lovely history and overview of hypnosis through the years and whether you may or may not be susceptible to hypnosis. Last year, I was so tired that I apparently was not hypnotised, but fell asleep. So this year I went again and I was excited about the prospect of being hypnotised, as it would be all the proof I needed that it worked. There were indications that it was working for some people (I won’t spoil it for you by describing what they did), but this year I was too awake and every little noise distracted me and I wasn’t hypnotised. Finally I went along to see Ranulph Fiennes speaking at the Playhouse. With another full house of about 650 people, there was a great atmosphere was great. He was thoroughly entertaining and had some great images of both the environments he had explored and the scientific equipment (including those used for collecting bodily fluids) as well as all the gory ones of swollen limbs or toes with frost bite. His tales of exploration were very interesting and got quite a few laughs from the audience.

Tuesday brought another day of varied and interesting events. I had been very excited about the Murder, Mystery and Microscopes events – one on the university campus during the day and the other in the Bluecoat in the evening. Both were great. With a line up of forensic experts from the Macaulay Institute and three top British crime writers, Val McDermid, Margaret Murphy and Peter James. I went to the evening event and it kicked off with a look at crime scenes and how the criminal can leave plenty of evidence behind. We had a video of someone blowing themselves up accidentally and a fiery demonstration. We got a sneaky peak into new technologies used to combine maps with detailed location information such as the soil and vegetation type which is helping to solve crimes. We then had readings from the various authors with questions and discussions on the science behind the books and the accuracy of the science portrayed in crime novels. There was some excellent discussion around this topic with mixed responses to the level of accuracy of the science covered, with some authors being noted for their more “fictional” side. Those authors present had a very good understanding in the science and speaking with Peter James, some aspects of their research, such as shadowing detectives to visiting morgues seemed fascinating. There was plenty of time for one to one questions at the end with all the panel members, so it was great to see people asking their burning questions.

Two days left and we have appearances from Robert Winston and Phil Redmond discussing the role of science in culture and its impacts locally. Also, we were treated to not one, but two Award Lectures! Neil Ferguson explored epidemics and how we can control viruses spreading in light of recent new diseases. Maggie Aderin took us on a technological journey through space as she looked at the research beyond our planet to investigate climate change on planet earth. To end the day the world famous Cavern Club was packed out as some scientists, a singer, a comedian and Quentin Cooper delved into people’s memories of the Beatles, how the brain generates music, and looked at music and addiction. A few months earlier we launched a national experiment, the Magical Memory Tour (http://www.magicalmemorytour.com/) where people of all ages could add their memories of the Beatles to investigate the link between music and memory. They found that memory and music were definitely linked. They also discovered that most of the memories were from when people were teenagers, indicating this is when music has the strongest influence on you and was younger than anticipated. There were too many memories for me to pick a favourite, apart from my own which was about Paul McCartney in the video for the Frog Song. To view this memory and all the others check out the website.

It’s the final day and it’s nearly over. And it was a day of ageing… well we only got a day older, but got he chance to explore research into ageing, from the biology behind why we age and how we can age better to what the built environment can do for us and how long may we live in the future. SPARC presented an afternoon of talks and workshops followed by a talk from Tom Kirkwood who is the man behind the disposable soma theory on ageing. His insights into the biology of ageing are fascinating and highlight how a healthy lifestyle full of exercise, healthy eating and social activity is really helps keep us in tip top condition for longer. Hugo Spears, one of our Award Lecturers explored the Sat-Nav in our brains where we listened to the sound of taxi-drivers and got an insight into their brains as they travelled round London. And keeping with the brain Richard Wiseman entertained us with Mind Magic – tricks and tales of the magic and the brain, and the secrets of sorcery. The venue was fantastic – in the new Victoria Gallery and Museum at the University of Liverpool. There was a lot of history to the building and an eery feel as the audience was going in.

Throughout the whole Festival the Liverpool audience were great – so many questions put to the experts and they immersed themselves in the debate. There was a huge buzz around the campus and in the city from those attended the Festival and other Capital of Culture 08 activities.

We hope to see you next year, but stay tuned for Festival developments throughout the year.

Natalie, Festival team

Thursday 11 September 2008

Guardian podcast

Hear what the President of the BA has to say about this year's Festival and much more in the Guardian's podcast.

Friday 1 August 2008

Evidence informed law - Can '12 good men and true' understand the nuances of statistical evidence?

Just this afternoon Barry George has been found not guilty of the murder of Jill Dando in a re-trial. Once again, as often happens when I read the news, I was reminded of an event due to take place at the Festival which looks at the role of evidence in a court of law.
One significant difference between Barry George's first trial and his second trial was the admissibility of a key piece of forensic evidence - a single particle of firearms discharge in his coat pocket - which was vital in securing his conviction in his first trial. The particle was a perfect match with others found in the TV presenter's hair. It was, said the Crown, "compelling evidence" of his guilt. At the scene of the crime, forensic scientists also found a single strand of fibre that matched George's trousers.
I wonder how much the original jury understood about the significance (or otherwise of this evidence). I’m sure the nuances of statistics and probability would have passed me by. It would be easy to fall into the so-called 'Prosecutors fallacy' which confuses a small probability of finding the evidence on an innocent person with a small probability of innocence for someone on whom the evidence is found. It seems that while advances in forensic science have undeniably helped in crime detection we still need to be very careful when forensic evidence is presented as concrete fact.
Other talks in this event investigate 2 other aspects of statistics in law enforcement. Firstly how can banks detect potentially fraudulent activity among the millions of transactions they process each day? And secondly some statistical evidence to back up your opinion on the ever controversial speed cameras – life savers or revenue raisers?

Cultural and social evolution - Katie Price got me thinking

Quite often as I read the news I pinpoint Festival events which address the issues which seem to take up much of the column inches of the papers and about which many people have much to say. A couple of stories caught my eye this week.
Earlier this week Katie Price (aka Jordan, glamour model and reality TV star) was refused access to a polo tournament despite the fact she had paid for a table. I have to admit to being surprised that this kind of thing still happens in Noughties Britain (I don't move in those sorts of circles!), but I was more surprised at how blatant the snobbery of the management was. Apparently she was not the type of person they wanted there!
As I was reading about this I thought about the event we have in the programme which sees zoologists, anthropologists and psychologists examining our cultural and social evolution. How and why have our societies evolved from small groups, confined to people we were related to and who were the same as each other, to huge political and social units? How has dramatic economic development changed the social environment and what is the complex sequence of cultural changes known as ‘modernization’?
Apparently the Social Brain Hypothesis states that large brains have evolved as a response to complex social environments. It’s funny how you can be large brained, yet small minded.

Tuesday 22 July 2008

Start new topic

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Tuesday 1 July 2008

Bookings now open

Hi

Booking of events is now open. Visit the website for more details on how to book and for event details. www.the-ba.net/festivalofscience.

We are regularly updating the website so keep checking back for the latest news from the Festival.

Wednesday 25 June 2008

Programme search live

Hi everyone,

The searchable online programme is now available. Tickets can be booked in the next few weeks. Feel free to let us know what you think of the programme.

Keep checking the website for the lastest information.

From

The Festival team