The month in science

Captain Scott, crime statistics and prize-winning poetry
December 14, 2011
In January 1912, Captain Robert Falcon Scott staggered towards the geographical South Pole, only to find the Norwegian flag already fluttering there. Roald Amundsen had beaten him to it by a mere month. Scott and his four frozen, exhausted and starving companions died on the return journey. The Natural History Museum in London is putting on the definitive centenary exhibition from 20th January, with a recreation of Scott’s base-camp hut, which still stands in Antarctica (www.nhm.ac.uk/scott). Just don’t tell your family, on exiting the hut, that you may be some time.

If burglars have given your home a minimalist makeover, you might expect a crime researcher to come knocking. But cuts mean that the Home Office is reducing the number of people interviewed in the annual British Crime Survey from 46,000 to 35,000. The department is consulting about whether the change, which could come into force in April, will affect the quality of the statistics. Have your say by emailing crimestats@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk by 12th January.

Does slapping an early patent on university research slow down drug development? If Big Pharma shifts jobs to the developing world, is that bad news for British patients? Academics and industry figures will debate these issues on 5th-6th January at the Drug Discovery conference in Oxford. It’s hosted by the Structural Genetics Consortium, a non-profit organisation that finds human proteins that make potential drug targets—and puts them in the open-access Protein Data Bank for anyone to play with.

Congratulations to Damian Kenny, winner of Prospect’s science poetry competition (November). He receives the shortlist for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, won by Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s The Wavewatcher’s Companion. Damian’s winning ditty was:

Could it be that out of sightNeutrinos travel faster than light?Though slight, the data did excite,But maybe Einstein is still quite right?