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February 9, 2010 3:45 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
Last night a friend told me I was on the radio. Turns out it was the second episode of the BBC Radio 4 documentary "Robowars" for which I had been interviewed some time ago. I feature in the programme twice, once about 12 minutes in and second about 23 minutes in. They edited my words a little bit so I'm taken slightly out of context (I was mainly referring to quite hi-tech AI systems that may only appear in the future). However I think it's an interesting debate: if people are stupid enough to start wars, should we use robots rather than people?

You can listen to the mp3 file here.

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
October 22, 2009 9:26 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
On Monday I hosted this month's Royal Institution Cafe Scientifique as usual. This month we had controversial Fern Elsdon-Baker talking about her book: "The Selfish Genius" which criticises the style and approach of Richard Dawkins in his presentation of evolution. Having worked with Richard I did my best to keep the discussion as balanced as I could; I must admit I was uncomfortable when discussions focussed more on personalities than on science.

This was the last RI cafe scientifique for a while. Hopefully we will return next year.

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
October 16, 2009 9:41 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
Yesterday I was filmed for a promotional video for Apple Education to represent the EMEIA region, as all of their existing material is focused on American universities. They wanted to feature four aspects of UCL - leader, academic, IT administrator and student, and illustrate how apple products are used at UCL, with a focus on digital learning technology and innovation. I was chosen to be the academic in the video (and some of my collaborators were also filmed for the other roles on my suugestion). The filming took some time with a full film crew, and involved me getting makeup to the amusement of others at UCL. My student Arturo was also filmed and asked for a photo to be taken of us both in front of one of the cameras. I should have a link to the video in a month or three once they've done the edit.

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
September 24, 2009 12:30 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
This Monday I hosted this month's Royal Institution cafe scientifique as usual. Our guest was my editor at WIRED - Manjit Kumar, who came and talked to us about his book "Quantum." The audience was stunned into mild shock by the mind twisting nature of quantum physics. I wish Manjit and I knew more about the detailed science of the topic, but Manjit focusses on the history and people, and my main recollection was of taking a Quantum Physics course and finding the maths horrifyingly esoteric and removed from reality (or at least what I recognise as reality). You can see more details of the event here.

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
September 24, 2009 12:30 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
A couple of years ago I spent some time collaborating with Gordana Novakovic - an artist who specialises in working with scientists and engineers, using "new media" to help create her artwork. I helped get her the position of artist-in-residence at UCL and we obtained funding from various sources to work together. In the "Fugue" project we developed her vision of an interactive immune system. It used my artificial immune algorithms combined with a kind of swarm algorithm, which I created with other computer scientists such as Tony Ruto. "Fugue" became a fantastic-voyage-style immersive environment in which participants could see immune cells attacking pathogens and watch as their presence affected the movement of cells in the virtual system. Gordana has now exhibited this artwork all over the world and recently the work has been described in an article publised in Nature Immunology, doi:10.1038/ni1009- 1043.

You can see more of the work here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ENuXodq1PY

Gordana's website is here: http://www.gordananovakovic.net/

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
August 26, 2009 7:20 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
Not too long ago I was interviewed by up-and-coming broadcaster (and medical doctor) Elizabeth Hauke. My iStethoscope program will apparently be mentioned in her radio documentary on "The Sound of Disease" - I'll add a link when she's finished it. I was also interviewed about my book The Undercover Scientist (and a little bit about my background) for her radio show "Short Science" which is broadcast weekly on Imperial College Radio. I think my section appears in podcast number 11, which you can download from iTunes or listen from their website by clicking here. It also includes a nice review of the book. You can visit the radio webpage here: http://shortscience.co.uk/

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Categories: The Undercover Scientist (Why Sh*t Happens), TV Radio and public talks
 
July 29, 2009 8:03 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
Today I was a guest on The Moncrieff Show on the Irish radio station Newstalk. Nice to have a chat with an enthusiastic host. We also had another book review, this time in reFRESH magazine. It was written by book editor Janet Tester which seems like a very appropriate name. She clearly has good taste too.

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Categories: The Undercover Scientist (Why Sh*t Happens), TV Radio and public talks
 
July 24, 2009 5:22 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
On Monday I hosted the July cafe scientifique at the Royal Institution as usual. This month we were talking about science journalism and science. We had two panel speakers, Mark Henderson of the Times, and Gareth Mitchell from BBC radio. (We also had Alex Mansfield, someone I worked with at the beginning of the year on the Letter to Darwin radio programme, in the audience.)

It was a nice discussion, the journalists arguing that accuracy of reporting was the only way to maintain a reputation and hence sales. But it was revealed that, as in politics, the number of science degrees was exceedingly low in journalism. I'm biassed of course, but wouldn't it be nice if those who set policy or communicated on a topic actually had some background in the area?

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
June 18, 2009 5:36 AM
Posted By Peter Bentley
Monday evening I hosted the latest cafe scientifique, this month with Meg Pickard of guardian.co.uk. The topic was about social networking and whether sites such as twitter and facebook make us more or less social. An interesting discussion, with a good range of people from Internet-aware teenagers to Internet-phobic older contributors. I came away from the event with two main memories: first that the nice idea that even silly and seemingly pointless communication is useful social bonding and community-forming. Second, that during our coffee break instead of the audience doing the normal rush to the bar and chatting, we had a room full of people tapping into mobile phones. Hmmm! (Many did chat afterwards however.)

The audio should be made available online soon. The site is here:

http://www.rigb.org/contentControl? action=displayEvent&id=898

We also had a live twitter photo produced by a member of the audience just before we began. (I think I am hidden behind the bald head at the front of the room.)

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
June 13, 2009 12:32 AM
Posted By Peter Bentley
Yesterday I took part in UCL's first public engagement symposium where those of us at UCL involved in public communication briefly explained all the crazy things we do (TV, radio, books, working with schools). Here's the webpage:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/public- engagement/opportunities/opportunities/symposium

It was run by "London's Beacon for Public Engagement" based at UCL which aims to support our work with the media and provide a few much-needed links. It was surprising how many of us are actively involved in the media, and also at how isolated and somewhat unsupported many feel, as most academics do not understand the need to engage with broader audiences in this way. Hopefully that will change soon. However, the packed audience seemed to think the whole thing was great, from the feedback we received since. The picture I took is not very good - I only thought of taking a photo for the blog as I was leaving:

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks