Day 4: I made it!

I thought I was going mad with signing up to nearly a dozen of sessions for today. :( But it was all because there are so many good and interesting sessions that I wanted to attend- is because it is the last day of the festival too... Anyway, I really enjoyed the day and perhaps has ended the week long festival on a high and tiring myself out.

 

"The secret to sporting success: talent, training or technology" session was chosen following on from my interest in the health area. Sport technologies were shown to illustrate its impact it has in the world of sport. Dr Bryce Dyer from Bournemouth University discussed whether or not the '10,000 hours rule' works with athletes in their training and whether or not success are from training or talent. Dr Dyer explained some of the controversies surrounding high tech sporting equipment and how future technologies can perhaps help generate more successes.

Dr Katherine Woolf from UCL delivered the Charles Darwin Award Lecture, "Games of clones: why should we care if our friends are similar to us?" Through an interactive session with the audience, Dr Woolf discussed if all of us are the same through homophily. Using cases studies and researches carried out with medical students, it was interesting to see the positive and negative effect of homophily within the population. One of the thing that amazed me were the feedbacks provided from students as well as their lecturers on the topic of homophily and its diversity.

Brains are always s special. Psychologist Professor Bruce Hood from the psychology section of the British Science Association gave a presidential talk on "Our shrinking brains: downsized by domesticity?" The development of our brains were explored to demonstrate its changes according to different factors. Behaviour of the brain was also explored to see they function in its domestication compared to social interactions. Consequences of ostracism and isolation on our physical and mental health also shown to have a contribution to our brain development.

No one likes failing. "The art of failing" was explored by Joseph Roche through different case studies and experiments. Interacting with the audience via the polling app, the lecture explored way how we can shake off the shackles and use the 'fear of failure' as a driver to succeed. It was weird but interesting as he revealed one experiment which failed miserably!!

At this point during the day, I think the cup of coffee I had during the morning have start to wear off...but on I go and into the next lecture...

"From molecules to medicine" gave some interesting facts for us to think about how quickly the world changes but yet, we are still lacking the effective medicines to treat diseases and illnesses. A panel from the pharmaceutical companies shared their views in the mission to develop the safe and effective drugs to discover the science underlying drug development. It was an eye opener to see how many steps are required from the moment drugs were developed in the labs to clinical trails and then selling it and providing them to patients.

Antibiotics are important to today's society. The session on "Living in a world without antibiotics" demonstrated that many diseases occurs and the impact of antibiotics are becoming obsolete. Dr Alan Roberts (University of London), Victoria Wells and Dr Lloyd Czapieski from FRSC explored how antibiotics can affect health and how scientists are working on initiatives to develop innovative solutions to help make a different. The campaign in which they are currently working on is antibiotic-action.com

To change the mood of today's session, the "Psychology of creativity" was chosen to help understand how whether or not everyone has a creative mind. Dr Val Lesk, Dr Lou Comerford Boyes, Jade Lorraine Kiou and Daisy Browness from the University of Bradford shared their experiences in using varies of concepts and tests to see how creative the audience was. Studying the brain on it creativity functions, it was interesting to find that certain professions had more creative minds than others!

The last talk attend was the "Presidential address: why education matters more than ever" by Professor Dame Athene Donald, the incoming president of the British Science Association. The president explored whether the fact that the English and Welsh education systems impose subject choices at an earlier stage than almost any other county has a broader impact. It was shown that is a culture divide between scientists and non-scientists and the effects it has on the graduates.













To round the event off, I went along to the CSI: Bradford event held at the National Media Museum. With the museum transforming its spaces into crime scenes including a morgue and opportunities to understand the concepts behind DNA and the smell of death. Opportunities including being a crime expert for the night to solve a murder, to understand how microscopes can be created using simple equipment such as a water bottle and being a code breaker.