Category - Science

The New Optimists Forum: Scenario planning and what it can teach us

For the forthcoming New Optimists Forum event, we’re going to be looking at Food and Cities as our theme. To help us make sure we get some useful results from the forum, we need to take into account current trends and think about the trends and needs which are likely to come into play in the future.

To do this, we’ll be using a tool called scenario planning as a way of helping to stategise and develop viable solutions for the future. Kate Cooper has written about the helpfulness and history of scenario planning, which you can read here for further information.

The New Optimists Forum: Why food and cities?

We’ve already announced that the first New Optimists Forum is going to be on the subject of Food & Cities. But why have we chosen this?

Here’s some more information about the reasons behind this, specifically about Carolyn Steel’s work on the impact which food has on our lives and the places where we live. You can see her TED talk on this topic above, and we’ll be covering more soon about how she’s going to help us address the subject at the first Forum event.

Round-up: Face to Face with the New Optimists

Here’s a quick recap of the interviews we’ve posted so far in our Face to Face series. We’ve got more of those coming soon, and if you click here you can leave your questions which you’d like us to ask the New Optimists.

Jack Cohen talks about reproductive biology:

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What’s coming up for the New Optimists

There are lots of exciting things coming up for the New Optimists in the next few months. As well as more Face to Face interviews with some of the scientists who have contributed to the project, there are some other big things which we’re very excited about.

• There will be some activity over the coming months to tie in with the first Kindle book, Challenging Cancer. We’re also going to be working on forthcoming Kindle books, which will cover topics such as renewable energies, ageing, and how scientists view the world.
• The New Optimists Forum is something we’re really looking forward to – a series of unconference-style gatherings where we bring together scientists to talk about viable approaches to deal with challenges which we will face in our near future. The first Forum theme is the prevalent topic of Food & Cities.
• There’s also a book in the pipeline about stem cell research, covering epigenetics and how our environments reprogramme the human genome.

Challenging cancer – Ask the New Optimists!

We’ve already done a few interviews with the New Optimists for our Face to Face series and we’re going to be doing some more very soon, with some of the contributors to our Kindle book on cancer. And we’ll also be doing an interview with Kate Cooper, the woman behind the project.

Is there something you’d like to ask the New Optimists? Leave your questions in the comments section and we’ll put them to the scientists on your behalf!

Face to Face with the New Optimists: Kenny Webster talks about Thinktank

The latest scientist we’re meeting as part of our Face to Face series is Kenny Webster, resident scientist at Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum. In this video, Kenny talks about science education activities for young people at Thinktank, working with adults at Cafe Scientifique, and what it is that he’s optimistic about.

You can read more from Kenny over at the Birmingham Post science blog, where he’s a regular contributor.

Face to Face with the New Optimists: Andrew Peet

Continuing our Face to Face series where we meet with the New Optimists, this is a short video clip which was filmed at the launch of the hard copy of the book last year, at the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham. In it, Dr Andrew Peet – an oncologist at Birmingham Children’s Hospital – talks about his optimism and what made him want to contribute to the book.

His chapter, ‘Brain tumour imaging – the dawn of a new era’, will be included in the forthcoming Kindle book on Challenging Cancer, which will be available soon.

Face to Face with the New Optimists: Peter Sadler

Another scientist featuring in our first Kindle book The New Optimists: Challenging Cancer is Professor Peter Sadler FRS, an inorganic chemist.  In this video clip, he talks about what makes him optimistic.

Like many scientists, he’s far more excited by what he doesn’t know than what he does. Chemists know very little about how the eighty or so elements of the Periodic Table play a part in living organisms — yet a greater understanding, Peter argues, will lead to radically more effective drug treatments.

For example, every Agatha Christie fan knows that arsenic is poisonous. But lobsters (lobsters!) make some arsenic compounds that are

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Face to Face with the New Optimists: Paul Moss on controlling cancer

Our first Kindle book, The New Optimists: Challenging Cancer has just been released so it’s a good time to continue our Face to Face series by getting to know some of the scientists who have contributed essays on the topic.

We’ll be interviewing some more of the New Optimists over the summer, but here’s a video we first posted before the launch of the book last year – it’s an interview with Paul Moss, Head of the School of Cancer Sciences at the University of Birmingham, and Director of the Birmingham Cancer Research UK Centre.

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Stop, look, listen and laugh – science on the pod

One of the more irreverent science-based treats on radio is BBC Radio 4′s The Infinite Monkey Cage, hosted by physicist Dr Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince. It finished its fourth series earlier this month but if you haven’t heard it before it’s worth catching up with the past two series, which the BBC has made available via podcast.

There’s talk about genetics, neurology, going into space and

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