The understanding of biochemical and other networks is an important part of systems biology, and I enjoyed attending an interesting seminar on “network-based drug design” by Péter Csermely of Semmelweiss University, where I was alerted to a number of his papers such as this one, and even a book, that had passed me by. Not for the first time, one is led to lament the difficulty of keeping up with the voluminous literature.

We had a meeting of the Chairs of the Institute Assessment Panels. Council also met.

I attended the launch by Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts of the Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth paper (pdf), which set down a number of important initiatives for the research base. [...]

TW3, for those old enough to remember, was a pioneering piece of TV satire that took a wry look at (mainly political) events of the previous week. While this blog has no such aspirations, it has often tended to follow a style that looks back at previous events. At this time of year, and given that this blog is a little over a year old, it is reasonable to reflect on some of the stories that we highlighted this year, whether in our news or via media releases. Some were about awards to our scientists, including the Jim Gray award to Carole Goble, Honours at the New Year and the Birthday Honours, The Times Higher Research Project of the Year to Bill Davies and his team, and 3 Queen’s Anniversary Prizes.

A number of other stories were about funding announcements, including the £100M for the Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright, the £10M towards ELIXIR, the £10M Bees and other pollinators initiative, and the funding pulse we announced for important short-term research into H1N1 swine flu. Happily, as I discussed in my blog in May, twice, and in June, swine flu thus far has proved not to be as virulent as was predicted by some. I note that we were already funding work that produced some significant advances this year, e.g. work for H1N1 vaccine discovery by expression in plants, and genomic studies of H1N1 evolution. [...]

As already mentioned in my first blog, an increasing number of means now exist for putting out messages to selected (and especially self-selected) audiences. We already make our press releases and other material available via RSS feeds, as well as via the website. A comparatively recent innovation, which seems well suited for some of these purposes, is twitter. For those not already in the twitterverse, twitter allows brief 140-character ‘tweets’ (posts) that can be viewed by those who have chosen (signed up) to do so. BBSRC is @BBSRC and I am @dbkell. In its simplest form, the ramblings of other tweeters are seen by any tweeter only if they have signed up to follow them, so twittering can involve more of a fractured monologue than a dialogue. It does however allow all recipients to see the discourse ‘instantaneously’ and thereby capture the zeitgeist (for literature citations this has been called the citegeist…), possibly assisting the generation of the supposed Wisdom of Crowds (and at least access to one’s readership). [...]

I had the privilege yesterday, on Darwin Day, of attending a breakfast meeting where the discussion topic was the development of the World Wide Web Foundation (W3F). Other discussants included Tim Berners-Lee, the revered inventor of the Web itself and now based at MIT, and Bob Geldof, the musician-philanthropist. The W3F has lofty goals (its slogan is ‘humanity connected’) as it ‘seeks to advance the Web to empower all people and benefit humanity’. Much has already been achieved with Web 1.0 as we transition to Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web, though a significant fact is that 80% of the world’s human population does not presently have internet access. [...]

(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

It is not news (Toffler’s Future Shock was published in 1970) that professional life is getting faster and faster, and that the increased availability of electronic communications has contributed to this. Why do I then choose to add to this flux of information with a blog? There are a number of reasons. First, it is a medium that allows me to air thoughts or facts that others may find interesting, and in a manner that also allows them to provide feedback without the time commitment, formality, downright sluggishness and occasional capriciousness of the peer review processes of scientific publishing. Secondly, it allows one to perform various kinds of pilot experiments (as at Nature) regarding web-based dissemination, since Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web are coming and it is important that we catch the wave. Thirdly, it is simply a form of self-expression, but in an essay style that differs from that of scientific papers, allowing freedom in the use of a judicious bon mot here and there. And, finally, it is true that comparatively few Professors write blogs, some are beginning to, more of us probably ought to, and it is even becoming respectable. [...]