ESOF: Winding down, looking ahead
The Euroscience Open Forum is over for this year. The 1500 participants are starting to scatter out of Munich. But they´ll meet again in two years — in Barcelona, for ESOF2008. Read more
The Euroscience Open Forum is over for this year. The 1500 participants are starting to scatter out of Munich. But they´ll meet again in two years — in Barcelona, for ESOF2008. Read more
Last night Alison Abbott, Nature´s senior European correspondent, arranged to take a group of us to see Metamagicum, a show that blends magic with science. Read more
Thankfully, WHOI´s HROV now has a real name. Read more
One of today´s featured speakers, Syrian philosopher Sadik al-Azm, wasn´t able to make it out of the Middle East to give his keynote presentation. But he did get to an internet cafe and email it in. So Wim Blockmans of the Netherlands read aloud al-Azm´s lecture on “Islam and the science-religion debate in modern times”. With the focus here on European science, it´s a shame a leading Middle Eastern voice was missing. Read more
Gerry Gilmore, an astrophysicst at Cambridge University, gave a lunchttime talk in the aviation hall of the Deutsches Museum today. He seemed unfazed by the breadth of his topic: the entire history and future of the universe. Then again, his job title suggests he´d be up for the challenge: He´s a professor of “experimental philosophy”: https://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~gil/. Read more
Here´s something to mark on your planner for the middle of next year: The possible first sighting of a earthlike planet orbiting another star. Read more
Virtual reality, once a techno-toy for the curious and wealthy, is becoming an important tool for helping people cope with stressful situations. Here at the ESOF meeting in Munich, a pair of researchers presented some intriguing new work on how to treat phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder using virtual reality. Read more
The EuroScience Open Forum (https://www.esof2006.org) isn´t like most of the science meetings I´m used to attending. Normally I´d be sitting in three hours of the latest research into paleoclimatology. Here, the focus is on celebrating European science and bringing it to the public in a most informal fashion. Read more
Alexandra Witze, senior news and features editor for Nature, will be in Munich from July 15-19. Check back here for her postings from the EuroScience Open Forum, a kind of pan-European festival of science. Read more