The WISE Festival – Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

The following is happening at the British Library on Tuesday 11th February. 

Laugh, sing and think at this mini festival celebrating and raising the voices of women in science.  

Drop in to our free Entrance Hall sessions throughout the day, including fun scientific presentations, hands-on activities and a chance to create your own (bio)selfie using the bacteria swabbed from your cheek. 

Then join us for an evening of talks to hear from women past and present about their experiences of working in the sciences.

For more information on events and activities visit the British Library website: https://www.bl.uk/events/wise-festival

10 reasons to love libraries

The British Library held and event, For the Love of Libraries with authors authors Philip Pullman, Salley Vickers and Jacqueline Wilson along with the CEO of the Reading Agency, Sue Wilkinson. The blog post 10 reasons to love libraries summarises the event.

Talkscience@Christmas - British Library Christmas Science Quiz

Any science students fancy getting together in a team and having a go at the British Library's Christmas Science Quiz? It's a chance to flex your brain biceps and find out how knowledgeable you are when it comes to scientific concepts, findings and general trivia.

Tue 8 Dec 2015, 18:30 - 21:00. Tickets are £10 per team of up to five people.

Details and booking here http://www.bl.uk/events/talkscience-at-christmas-lets-get-quizzical

Access To Understanding science writing competition winners

Fancy reading some great science writing over the Easter break? The winners of the British Library's Access To Understanding science writing competition, which encourages early-career scientists to write a plain-English summary of a biomedical research article,

Encouraging early-career scientists to write a plain-English summary of a biomedical research article. - See more at: http://www.access2understanding.org/competition/#sthash.xWNxOuxY.dpuf

Encouraging early-career scientists to write a plain-English summary of a biomedical research article. - See more at: http://www.access2understanding.org/competition/#sthash.xWNxOuxY.dpuf

have been announced and you can read the winning entries on the BL's blog post:

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/science/2015/03/access-to-understanding-2015-in-summary.html

Future Flemings - new post from the British Library's Science blog

An interesting post from the British Library's Science blog:




Antibiotic resistance poses one of the biggest threats to medicine in the 21st century. In this blog post, Boudewijn Dominicus explores the exciting new strategies scientists are developing to combat this threat, ranging from new antibiotic classes to bacterial decoys - See more at:


http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/science/2015/03/future-flemings.html

Science writing competition - now open for entries!

The British Library have now launched their science writing competition for this year - if you're a PhD student or post-doc, why not have a go? See the extract from their blog post below.

Science writing competition - now open for entries!

We are excited to announce the launch of 2015's Access to Understanding science writing competition - a prestigious, international competition aimed at PhD students and early career post-doctoral researchers where the challenge is to summarise a cutting-edge research article for a non-specialist audience.

The winner will receive an iPad and have their entry published in eLife. 

See more here

Access to Understanding - British Library Science blog

Access to Understanding is a science writing competition that challenges early career researchers to summarize a recent biomedical research article for a public audience.

The competition is delivered by the British Library in partnership with Europe PMC – the free life sciences information resource.

This blog post from the BL (link below)
gives you this year's winners and advance notice of next year's competition.
Access to Understanding - Science blog

Use of bioscience PhD theses in research - survey

The British Library and the Society Of Biology are running a survey on the use of bioscience PhD theses. Whether you have never used a bioscience PhD thesis, or if you use them every day, they would love to hear your views. You could win a £50 BL shop voucher!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MGR6VSZ

TalkScience at the British Library

Discuss scientific topics with like-minded people at the British Library's TalkScience evenings.
TalkScience@BL are café scientifique style events where an expert provides a short yet provocative introduction, followed by a discussion amongst the audience.

The next event is Patently Obvious? on 4th March
Scientists have long used patents to protect their inventions and allow them opportunities to commercialise their work. However, recent attempts to patent human gene sequences have raised questions over whether a sequence of DNA is an invention or a discovery and highlighted some of the challenges in assessing the patentability of biomedical developments.

More details and booking:
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/experthelp/science/talkscience/talkscience.html