My first and very interesting appointment of last week was to attend and speak at a wonderful symposium – Visions of a (Semantic) Molecular Future – held in Cambridge to celebrate the visionary activities of Peter Murray-Rust. Peter long ago recognized the power of computers in helping us to attack complex biochemical problems in drug discovery, and therefore started developing e-science long before it became known as such. The symposium was streamed and will be available online in due time, though since it was tweeted pretty effectively, it is easy to get a feel for events by following the hashtag #pmrsymp. Inspection of the programme suggests that this is probably the first occasion in which both the Chair and Chief Executive of BBSRC have given scientific talks at the same symposium! My own talk focused on the use of semantic technologies to describe biochemical networks in a principled manner, and how such knowledge could assist our understanding of how pharmaceutical drugs get into cells and how this can explain the very clear drug-metabolite similarities that exist. [...]

Today’s title refers to the perhaps unexpected origins of the recent swine ’flu outbreak, that apparently  comes not from the widespread intermingling of wildfowl and table ducks in Asia but via as yet uncertain processes in the western hemisphere. In the previous blog, I summarised some of the issues of swine flu as I saw them. Meanwhile, the e-print scientific literature is starting to become populated with some epidemiological and related analyses (I thank Fiona Tomley of our Institute for Animal Health for drawing my attention to some of them). The general consensus remains that the present outbreak is of a strain that is not excessively virulent, but that during the northern summer (southern winter) a reservoir of infection (in pigs, birds and humans) will build up and the likelihood of mutations or reassortment events producing something considerably nastier will increase significantly. [...]

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. [...]