On the move
Sir Brian Follett, vice-chancellor of Warwick University, has been appointed non-executive chairman of the Arts and Humanities Research Board, and David Eastwood, pro vice-chancellor and chair of...
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Me, me, me
Satirical science magazine Annals of Improbable Research has asked readers whose DNA they believe Celera Genomics sequenced to produce a working draft of the human genome. Craig Venter, Celera...
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Poetry in motions
A debate on the National Health Service, which followed allegations of ministerial in-fighting, has inspired Mary Scanlon, Conservative spokesperson on health in the Scottish Parliament. The former...
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More poetry in motions
Among the stickier issues to be tackled at the "Theoretical Archaeology Group conference" in December will be "The Origin of Faeces: The Archaeology of Bodily Waste Products". The organisers from...
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The Ox-files
Oxford University's public orator Jasper Griffin has detected a sinister pattern in recent Oxford college head appointments. Colleges used to elect lawyers and philosophers as their heads, seeing the...
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In the news
William Foyle's private collection of more than 4,000 volumes dating from the 12th century was treated like a shrine by his daughter Christina, the more well-known face of Foyle's Books. Christina's...
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Transcription factor chorus
Reading the genome is nothing new - nature has been doing it for billions of years. If only we knew how. Robert Tjian, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, has been grappling with...
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Commercial breaks
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY. 'Beyond the Genome', Birmingham July 16-20. Details www.iubmb2000.org Is Craig Venter's style of privately funded science the way...
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Ability to recite fails to excite
With the advances in biology andchemistry, Ellis Bell argues thatstudent scientists must research as they are taught and learn to understand, not just memorise, to advance the genome revolution. The...
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Learning a foreign lingo
The metaphor that the genome is a genetic book of life is very useful, but it breaks down when confronted with the complexity of its reading. The various processes that make and power us are...
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Your very own silent partners
Not every gene has something useful to contribute. In fact, most of your genes, for most of the time, are silent. This is crucial if an organism has any chance of functioning properly - different...
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Now to write the manual
Next week, biologists will meet to map out future instalments in the book of life, writes Keith Gull. Three thousand biologists from around the world will meet in Birmingham next week at the 18th...
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That special everyone
The decoded genome is only a first step to understanding the variety of human life, writes Robert Foley. Scientific achievements come in many forms. Some, such as Darwin's theory of evolution,...
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Free Cuban food fills a gap
A gap year can be the best of your life, but do not expect it to be all highs and no lows, warns Nicholas Scott With so many ex-volunteers and students saying that their pre-university gap year was...
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Eyewitness
Until ten years ago safeguarding Venice was considered an architectural problem. Then micro-algae turned the canals into breeding grounds for mosquitoes, threatening tourism and emphasising the need...