A quick heads-up about the second in a series of events organised by the Royal Institution and Nature Network London.

On 4 October, we’ll be at the Apple Store on Regent Street talking about search.

Specifically, how are scientists using sophisticated search techniques to make sense of seemingly overwhelming amounts of experimental data?

Speakers include Dr Ewan Birney from EMBL, who describes ways to search the human genome and compare it with those of other species. Dr Jonathan Hare from the University of Southampton discusses recent methods for searching images based on their content. And Nature’s own Timo Hannay describes ways of mining existing literature for new patterns. By looking at, say, word frequency and positioning you can start to see connections between fields and concepts that you otherwise wouldn’t know were there.

This is a free event, and there’s no need to book in advance.