Blogs
Nature Network has been celebrating the Lindau conference, an annual event that pairs Nobel Prize winners with young scientists. In a new blog, which will be co-written with Andreas Trabesinger, Nature editor Ed Gerstner reflects on a Lindau meeting he attended two years ago, in which he was inspired by the comradely rather than pedagogical conversation between laureate Bill Phillips and young PhD scientist Hannah Venzl during an unusual film shoot:
Anyway, we’d booked Philips and Venzl to conduct their discussion on a ferry from Lindau, across the lake to Austria, and back again. It was a blazing hot day and at one stage the boat was overrun by a swarm of school children. Our producer deeply regretted the choice of location, certain it would be a disaster. It wasn’t. Once the two of them got going, they barely noticed the bizarre situation we’d thrown them into. And when they did, they both totally got their geek on — like something out of a bare-knuckle version of The Big Bang Theory.
This levelling of intellects is an important feature of the Lindau conferences, allowing the next generation of researchers to interact with the giants of their field on equal terms. Indeed, the Nobel Prizes can inspire in all kinds of ways, as explored in a recent editorial from Nature Network’s Of Schemes and Memes blog. Vishal Kalel gave his own take on the subject. He finds inspiration in the patterns of his toilet paper:
“At first, the pattern on the tissue seemed just repetitive, but on a closer look, the underlying hidden views emerged.”
As well as a general introduction to the Lindau conference, you can also read about the people behind Nobel Prizes, with further posts to follow. You can also follow on the Lindau aggregation page, which includes the official blog and also offers the opportunity to ask questions of Nobel Prize winners.
Other notable blog posts this week include Austin Elliott’s battle with stubborn commenters on the autism-vaccine issue, Brian Derby’s fears at losing the credit for his research after sharing data, and Jeremy Bentham, in his own imitated yet inimitable style, gets stuck into Craig Venter’s artificial life announcement.
Forums
The Lindau conference also has its own forum on Nature Network. Use this to introduce yourself to delegates, ask questions and follow the conference as it takes place.
And a reminder that Nature and the Royal Society are co-hosting a conference on 1 July focused on the future of UK science. The Tomorrow’s Giants meeting will look in particular at the career development of researchers, the metrics and indicators used to measure research success, and the issues surround sharing and privacy of data. If you have strong views on any of these areas, please comment on the Tomorrow’s Giants forum. Your opinions may be raised by panel members in an afternoon debate at the conference.
Nature Network stories are now being featured regularly on Nature’s Facebook page, which has over 11,000 fans. We’ll be highlighting the more opinionated, discussion-provoking or otherwise cool content, so this is your chance to reach a wider audience via blog posts and forum topics.
And finally…
Nicolas Fanget points us towards some food safety adverts inspired by sci-fi. Now wash your hands.
