Blogs

It’s been a busy week in the UK. A major spending review by the government apparently spared the research budget, ringfencing the pot for four years. Jennifer Rohn, one of the chief campaigners to protect funding under the Science is Vital banner, declares that her heart is light. Nicolas Fanget provides a handy summary of the spending review’s implications for science. Lee Turnpenny conjures up a (perhaps) imaginary conversation between the Queen and Prime Minister about the funding situation. And both Stephen Curry and Richard Grant wrote to their MPs on the matter.

On World Statistics Day, Bob O’Hara writes in support of his discipline:

To me it’s obvious that we need good quality independent statistics. Governments need to plan where to spend resources in the future, so they have to know how much money they have (this is related to GDP, of course), how much they will bring in in taxes, and where they need to spend it. So knowing how many people there are over 60 means they can plan for how much to spend on pensions and other services for the elderly. Of course, we want to make cross-border comparisons: how much does government spending on science influence overall GDP, for example? Or how do different national approaches to AIDS prevention work? For all of these, we need statistics.

Tom Webb has more thoughts on the Frontiers of Science conference, the Fourth Paradigm blog speaks to Tony Hey of Microsoft Research, Frank Norman rounds up various science book and poetry prizes, and Barbara Ferreira remembers Benoît B. Mandelbrot who passed away last week.

Cities and Science

Nature this week published an article on the academic performance of various cities around the world, choc-full of fun info-graphics to play with (and prompting NN blogger Nicolau Werneck to muse on other graphs). Science in the city is, of course, a theme we’re keen on here as well. This week, we published the 11th entry in our series charting scientific hotspots, with a map of Hong Kong by Gabriel Wong. If you’d like to add a map of your own city, please contact Matt Brown on i.am.mattbrown@gmail.com.

And Finally…

Jennifer Rohn and Richard Grant pose on the steps of 10 Downing Street, after lobbying ministers to protect the science budget. Just you wait, reads Richard’s caption.

(Image by Joe Dunckley, reproduced under Creative Commons license.)