New Home
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Tom Hartley
I am starting to get cross!
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
What you want, baby I got it. UK researchers produce more output (citations, articles etc.) for less money (GERD) than anyone else. Source: BIS Report. What you need - you know that I’ve got...
My Scientific Personality
This (from whalefish) was one of my favourite questions from I'm A Scientist in the summer of 2010. I am pasting it here because it was one that really made me think about what makes me tick as a scientist...
Faces of ICOM 5
A gallery of images from this summer's ICOM 5, the world's largest ever specialist conference on memory research, held at the University of York.
Grid Cells
If you are at all interested in how the brain or mind works, for example if you study psychology, neuroscience or philosophy of mind, then you know should about grid cells. I know I said that already...
Place Cells
If you are at all interested in how the brain or mind works, for example if you study psychology, neuroscience or philosophy of mind, then you ought to know about place cells...
The tailwind and the headwind.
It’s probably not apparent to the outside world, but scientific research is a cut-throat business. Most research funds provided by government and by charities are allocated through a competitive process...
Five Minutes of Fame.
It's the end of a very busy and exciting week in which I helped organize a huge conference on memory at the University of York. The ICOM conference was, we think, the biggest ever specialist conference...
ICOM and the Quirks of Memory
I've been involved in preparations for ICOM5 a major international conference on memory taking place in York next week. As part of this I was asked to do a live radio interview with BBC York, and this...
The Knowledge
In 2000 and again in 2006, Professor Eleanor Maguire of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging published papers showing that London taxi drivers brains are structurally different from other people...
Science is Still Vital!
A DNA sculpture frozen like the science budget. Last year’s Science is Vital campaign was launched to defend Britain’s scientific research from cuts in the Comprehensive Spending Review that the...
Where is the hippocampus?
A lot of my research involves the hippocampus, part of the brain that is important for forming new memories. This video is part of a work in progress explaining the vital part the hippocampus plays...
My Brain
This is my brain. I am excited this morning, because I have finally begun to get to grips with Freesurfer a package for processing brain imaging data created by the Martinos Center. Freesurfer...
Inspiration
The BBC made an excellent documentary, about a great scientist. The clips below tell the story of the the teacher who inspired her. They're worth watching, and the whole documentary is highly recommended...
How to change other people's minds.
Scientists are involved in finding out how nature works by looking at and generating new evidence. The idea is to build up a set of well-founded, testable beliefs about the natural world. This system...
Resisting the Dark Side
This post was stimulated by Stephen Curry's excellent article on the angry response to pseudoscience on his blog at Occam's Typewriter. I originally posted this as a comment on that post. I'll edit...
My Definition of a Boombastic Mode of Rational Inquiry
My Chambers dictionary (I paid for the app, so I may as well get some mileage from it) defines science as: 1. Knowledge ascertained by observation and experiment, critically tested, systematized...
Which A-Levels should you study if you want to get into a top university?
I don’t think university is for everyone, but I do believe that in every school in the country there are young people who would enjoy university life, who would succeed academically and who would benefit...
"System" isn't jargon, either
“System” is one of the words that appear in noted science writer Carl Zimmer’s list of banned words - these are words that he believes should be avoided when writing about science for a general audience...
"Process" isn't jargon
Science writers Ed Yong and Carl Zimmer know their business - they write about science for a general audience. They get through by avoiding technical language and using concrete examples and metaphors...
