Sir Mark Walport, the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser issued his first annual report this past week, entitled Innovation: Managing Risk, Not Avoiding It. In this short report, he makes a number of quite useful points regarding risk, hazard, exposure and … Continued
This week I thought I should propose something different for your blog contribution. Originally, I thought I should assign everyone the same goal: write a short ‘letter to the editor’ based on an article that you feel the urgent need to comment … Continued
With 2015 looming, I couldn’t resist taking a look at the UN’s Millennium Development Goals for this week’s topic. The international community agreed these goals back in 1990 with a twenty-five year horizon (not long after the fall of the Berlin … Continued
A number of my tweets and retweets this past week have focused in different respects on the notion of evidence-based policy. Most with any training in the sciences may well be confused by the very concept since it implies that there is, … Continued
The topic for this week was inspired by a short article in the FT about Amazon’s decision to site a data centre in Germany to create more confidence in Amazon’s ability to protect the data of Europeans and comply with data … Continued
Last week, we used driverless cars (which even a few year’s ago seemed more science fiction than reality) as a case for how a disruptive technology might challenge existing industry structures and may be leading firms to take R&D more … Continued
In my original tweet, earlier today I responded to Anne Glover, the EC’s Chief Scientific Advisor, who was pointing out the importance of the automotive industry to European R&D. She was undoubtedly referring to work of the Joint Research Centre, which in … Continued
Welcome to Cambridge! Summer may be over, but it seems fitting to begin the academic year with our summer reading list since that is meant to provide the most general overview and entry point to the programme and to thinking about the interactions … Continued
I have generally tried to stay away from EU Science and Technology Policy issues since that is the focus of TP3 in Easter term, but following on the DG-Connect talk, some of the legal and policy questions we touched on … Continued
Is banning coal an objective in and of itself or just one of many measures to address climate change and local and regional pollution problems? Is a war on coal a proxy for a war on climate change and, if … Continued