The Cambridge Science Festival 2008
Around 30,000 people attended this year’s University of Cambridge Science Festival in March. The MRC was an associate sponsor and over 100 enthusiastic MRC scientists and other staff from nine MRC units and centres took part in organising and manning exhibition stands. As well as being great fun for all ages, the Festival offers a great insight to science and scientists, a chance to communicate the human story behind the scientific endeavour and a chance to guage public opinion at first hand.
The Festival covered The World of Science and was opened by Festival Patron Carol Vorderman. Other attractions included aliens from Doctor Who, Bjorn the polar bear marking International Polar Year and, to co-incide with the China Now festival, various exhibits on Chinese science and technology.
Dr Ann Prentice from the MRC Collaborative Centre for Human Nutrition Research presented Preserve the old, but know the new, a talk about osteoporosis in older people, highlighting new research from Cambridge, China and The Gambia on the links between nutrition, lifestyle and bone health.
On the main Saturday scientists from the MRC Centre for Behavioural and Clinical Neurosciences and the Department of Experimental Psychology presented The diverse world of cognitive neuroscience while in the Chemistry Zone, scientists from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology took part in Chemistry in action, another hands-on, drop-in event enjoyed by all ages.
In the Biology Zone MRC scientists were wowing visitors all day with a wide range of exhibitions and displays. These included the MRC Epidemiology Unit’s Get your pulse racing! Looking at what lifestyle means for our health. Investigating
how new cancer drugs are developed, the MRC Cancer Cell Unit explained how drugs go from the lab bench to patient bedside in From molecules to medicine, stopping cancer in its tracks. Scientists from the MRC Collaborative Centre for Human Nutrition Research explored The world of nutrition science with practical activities for all ages to get people thinking about the world of food. Statistics are routinely used to make the news in public health, criminal justice and other fields. In Biostatistics behind the news the MRC Biostatistics Unit explored how these statistics are obtained and why they are vital to us all for the future. In Where do we get our energy from? experts from the MRC Dunn Human Nutrition Unit showed how the body uses energy stored in food to produce ATP, the ‘energy currency’ in cells and explained the science behind it. The MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit meanwhile held an open house for Exploring Mind and Brain and welcomed an evening audience of 60 visitors to talk about how the human brain makes sense of spoken language, deals with emotions and stores memories.
A new poster display explained how people in the UK are living longer than ever before in a joint exhibit with the Babraham Institute, Lifelong health: the bioscience of ageing. ‘Ageing well’ is increasingly important and scientific research can help us to understand how to age healthily. This new poster display showed how work is progressing.
A huge ‘thank you’ to everyone in Cambridge who took part. They were:
Paul Margiotta, Graham Lingley, Joanna Westmorland, Annette Lenton, Michael Fuller, Sheila Bird, Fiona Matthews, Angela Frodsham, Luisa Bernardinelli, Linda Sharples, Daniela De Angelis, Rebecca Turner, Elizabeth Merrall, michael.sweeting, Jessica Barrett, yang.luo, Sarah Griffiths, Graciela Muniz, Lu.Gao, Daniel.Jackson, Krista Fischer, Mario Dorostkar, Ian.Fearnley, Gunter Kuhnle, Jerome Boyd-Kirkup, Lizzie Fellowes-Freeman, Martin King, Valerie Brandt, James Birrell, Annemiek Joosen, Tim Barrow, Charlotte Ridgway, Richard Pannell, Larissa Richardson, Ruth Watson, Esther van Sluijs, Rachel Curran, Rebekah Steele; Grace Jing Wang; Catherine Elks; Shengxu Li, Pinal Patel, Julie Leclert; Claudia Langenberg; Kate Westgate; Katrien Wijndaele, Kirsten Corder, Alison McMinn, Adrian Mander, Sylvaine Bruggraber, Joanna Kesten, Danielle Jackson, Katarzyna.Kopanska, Marilena Leventi, Polly Page, Claire MacEvilly, Becky Lang, Jenny Winster, Albert Koulman, Kirstin Hass, Kristina.Naumann, Rachel Woodward, Anna Rickard, Katherine Chan, Susan Jebb, Pierre Lao-Sirieix, Sally Haimes, Tony Mills, Emily Barker, Michael Monaghan, Anna Peterson, Chris Peters, Lara Peters, Samantha Wynne, Melania Capasso, Pauline Mullin, Roger Lucke, William Marslen-Wilson, Laura Hughes, Dean Mobbs, Jessica Fish, Sean Fallon, Matt Davis, Hilary Green, Jack Rogers, Mirjana Bozic, Emma Hill, Karolina.Moutsopoulo, Sami Boudelaa, Kevin Symonds, Simon Strangeways, Lucille Murby, Georgie Morrill, Mandy Carter, Megan Davies, Holly Margerison, Mercedes Arroyo, Karagavriliidou Konstantina, Chukwama Agu, Caroline Malone, Joanna Fowler, Scott Newman, Jane Savill, Nick Robinson and Christopher Hindley.