17th July 2014 Washington DC, USA
Yesterday marked 50 days to go until we host the NATO Wales Summit. In Parliament, the UK Minister’s for Europe, David Lidington, addressed Parliament on preparations ahead of the Summit, which will be the largest gathering of international leaders ever to take place in the UK. Over 24,000 room nights have been reserved in over […]
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17th July 2014 New Delhi, India
The recently announced federal budget by the newly elected Government of India has unveiled a slew of initiatives to boost growth of India’s scientific capabilities. The focus is particularly on improvement of agricultural productivity, biotech clusters, capacity creation in health and education, clean energy initiatives and development of water resources and river conservation. Most of […]
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13th July 2014
This week I hosted former Ethiopian scholars at the British Residence to mark the 30th Anniversary of the #British Government’s flagship #Chevening Scholarship programme. The Chevening Scholarships are the #UK government’s global scholarship programme, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (#FCO) and partner organisations. The programme targets outstanding scholars with leadership potential from around […]
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11th July 2014 Toronto, Canada
The 2014 Longitude Prize, a £10 million fund dedicated to solving one of the greatest challenges of our time, was recently assigned to antibiotics. Why is this issue so significant, and what is the UK doing about it? Antibiotics are one of the finest achievements of modern medicine, killing the bacteria and other microorganisms that […]
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10th July 2014 New Delhi, India
Set on the outskirts of Puducherry, the former French colony which retains a significant Gallic flavour and hosts some seriously warm weather at this time of year, is the Jawaharal Nehru Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER). I visited the institute earlier in the month with my colleague, Vimal Subramanian, to understand what […]
4th July 2014 Toronto, Canada
As we look forward to Toronto’s Smart Week 2014 in October, it’s worth reviewing what’s been going on in the UK around the Internet of Things. Briefly, the term Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the rapid proliferation of network-enabled devices and the Internet-like structures that enable them to communicate with each other. For example, […]
27th June 2014 Houston, USA
I will start off by saying that I am obsessed with the World Cup. OBSESSED. Every four years, nothing matters more than making sure I am able to watch important World Cup matches. I grew up watching the tournament back when most Americans had no clue that it existed. My family emigrated from Mexico to […]
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25th June 2014 Toronto, Canada
This article originally appeared in the Whitsun 2014 (Vol 71 No 2) edition of Science in Parliament, the journal of the UK’s Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. You’re browsing a news site, and see the following link: 12 risky British discoveries that changed our world. Do you click it? Even though it’s recognisably link bait, carefully […]
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25th June 2014 Washington DC, USA
“What do British people hate?” A straightforward question – but context is everything. When posed by an earnest thirteen-year-old North Korean schoolboy, in a Q&A discussion with British diplomatic visitors, it took me by surprise. But then much of what my colleagues and I experienced during a week-long familiarisation visit to the Democratic People’s Republic […]
19th June 2014 Washington DC, USA
When Google unveiled its latest prototype of a self-driving car in May, it marked a new stage in the relationship between humans and autonomous vehicles in a very public way. But it is just one visible piece of the technical progress in areas such as autonomous systems, advanced manufacturing, and in the thinking on how […]