National Science and engineering week

Second visit to local school. Spoke to 4 classes (~100 pupils) and discussed Science.
Very impressed by their knowledge and their grasp of the problem that we discussed (Food Security). Seems like my colleagues had a good time as well.
Feeling pretty exhausted though as it was very intense.

School Science talk - Countdown 439

As part of countdown 439 (also part of National Science and Engineering week) I gave a talk on Science, being a scientist and how science relates to Food Security.
I had an hour slot and broke talk into 3 pieces with activities where the class of about 25 pupils participated.
I tried to tackle stereotypes about scientists and explain how I got into science as well.
Seemed to go OK - have got four more classes to talk to tomorrow

Keeping busy...

I'm finishing off a scientific conference poster for some work on the EU biotracer project and preparing some material for schools visits as part of Countdown 439 - two very different audiences. Plus I'm working hard on my OU Maths course...

PhD Student visiting

Xavier, a PhD student is visiting our group for a few months. My boss has a project lined up for him on variability. This will be modelled in NetLogo (http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/) so I'm helping him get up to speed with it (as we've used it for a few projects). It is a very good package for Agent Based Modelling. It is written in Java but the models are written in a flavour of Logo. Finished models can easily be deployed as Java Applets. It delivers a reasonable GUI without the modeller having to do much programming, leaving them free to concentrate on the underlying science and the modelling process.