News and Updates

To Bradford for an Ellen MacArthur Foundation session at the British Science Festival.  One refreshing thing about the EMF is its steadfast refusal to use words and concepts like eco / sustainable / green – largely on the grounds that...

I wasn't going to go to the 2012 UN Jamboree in Rio anyway, as my personal carbon budget will not bear the cost.  However, had I been looking for an additional reason (other than avoiding the existential horror of yet...

When even English Heritage is moved to dump on you from its rarified height, even this government must recongise something's up.  EH has joined the NT in rubbishing the draft national planning policy framework.  Although its website remains silent on...

There have been news stories in the past week about one of CERN's less obscure experiments, but with one of the most contrived acronymns around: CLOUD [ Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets ] – quite ridiculous, but then these are physicists....

Before the Blog had a short break, I had planned a post to celebrate my success at getting one of my papers into EER's top ten downloads chart.  The journal keeps track of those of its papers that are most...

The Simon Langton grammar school in Kent has shot to national consciousness recently with its cosmic ray monitoring experiments that are soon to be above the earth on a satellite.  NASA, it seems, is embarrassed.  Clearly, monitoring earth-bound high energy radiation...

This week's THE has an informative article on the differences in university funding across the UK, and the emerging issues around the flow of students throughout the UK.  In "Toll Barriers", David Matthews writes: Increased tuition fees could dramatically alter...

In this week's (informative as ever) Higher Education Academy Education for Sustainable Development e-Bulletin we find news of another ambitious EAUC initiative to set alongside its LIFE project.  This is the Sustainability Exchange which is a 2 year HEFCE-funded project...

News this morning from BBC Wiltshire that Stonehenge was "the most visited paid for tourist attraction in the South West" in 2010, beating the Eden Project into second place.   This must be doubly galling for the never knowingly over-sold Eden,...

A press release dated 10th August 2009, from the Office for Strictures and Control on Fodder and Food (Ofscoff), welcomes the government's promised new regulations on disability in the food chain (England). A spokesperson for Ofscoff, Dr Isabella McTarry-Wilson, is...