It’s a great honour to make the cut, and I’m really looking forward to the award ceremony on 23 July. I’ve been working as a freelance science and technology writer for nearly a year now, and I put at least part of my success down to the many hours spent working on this very blog.

Unfortunately posting levels have died down recently, but that’s because I’ve been very busy elsewhere. Here are some of my recent articles, if you haven’t already seen me spamming them on Twitter:

Proof at last for Boltzmann’s 140-year-old gas equation – New Scientist

Drinking coffee doesn’t make you more alert, caffeine study reveals – The Guardian

First replicating creature spawned in life simulator – New Scientist

Michael Grätzel: Give people access to cheap solar power – The Observer

If you just can’t wait until then, why not head over to the Science Online London 2009 website? We enjoyed they day’s sessions, and now you can too, as some have been put up in video form. Here is the session with Dave Munger beaming in from Second Life:

I was slightly miffed to find out the “breakfast” promised by the programme was little more than coffee and biscuits, but was soon chatting to various science bloggers, including Just A Theory’s Sam and Colin. After a while we headed up to the RI’s famous Faraday Theatre for the first of the day’s sessions.

This was supposed to be a talk on the benefits of blogging, but due to technical difficulties it was switched with a discussion of the legal and ethical issues surrounding blogging. A slightly dry topic to cover so early in the morning, but speakers Petra Boynton and David Allen Green (aka Jack of Kent) were fairly informative. Although they did make me slightly concerned about being sued for libel…

As a lawyer, David was concerned people might rely on what he said for legal advice, and insisted we did not liveblog or tweet his advice. Of course, this lead to lots people tweeting along the lines of “in a session, but can’t talk about it!” As befits an conference on online matters, Twitter was out in full force throughout the day. Apple seem to do well amongst the science community, as the Faraday Theatre was lit up with the glow of Macbook icons and iPhones, for the most part. That did get a bit annoying later in the day when someone forgot to switch off their ringtone…

The technology was kicked up another notch at the start of the next session, when we were joined by a gaggle of Second Lifers. If you’ve never heard of Second Life, it’s a sort of online virtual reality. Video from all of the sessions (besides the first, for the aforementioned legal reasons) was streamed to those who couldn’t actually attend in person.

This included one of the speakers, Dave Munger, who had to pull out at the last minute. Mark Henderson of The Times stepped in to replace him, but Dave was still able to join in through Second Life. Listening to his voice boom through the speakers was a bit strange, but allowed him to talk about his site Research Blogging, which we make use of here on Just A Theory. Other interesting nuggets came from Mark, who revealed the quality of comments on his blog posts was much higher than normal news stories, and Daniel MacArthur of Genetic Future who discussed the difficulties of managing your online and offline identities.

As tends to happen, my note taking became increasingly sloppy as the day went by, so I will refer you to the extensive online coverage for detailed analysis of the other sessions. These included the role of scientific institutions online, community management, citizen science, and more.

We were also treated to a live demo of Google Wave, the latest tool for collaboration from the web giant. Like many of the audience I didn’t quite “get it”, but some people were very excited about the possibilities for writing future science papers online. Anyone care to explain to me what it’s all about?

The day was naturally rounded off with a trip to the pub round the corner, where drink flowed and conversation continued. I finished the evening with a good natured but heated debate with Tim about the relevance of Second Life, and whether we’d all eventually be living in a virtual reality or an augmented one. We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds. I can’t imagine much will have changed by the time Science Online London 2010 swings round, but I’m sure I’ll be heading along next year for more interesting conversations.

I began this morning with a session on the future of science journalism. Hosted by Robert Lee Hotz, science columnist for the Wall Street Journal, it was probably the highlight of the week for me. Discussing the issues were Laura Chang, science editor for the New York Times, editor of The Times James Harding, former editor-in-chief of Scientific American John Rennie, and Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s head of newsgathering.

Common themes were that the current problems of science journalism are shared by general journalism and the wider media. The combination of the internet and falling advertising revenues will bring about a “mass extinction” of media outlets, according to Rennie. Those that want to survive need to evolve.

Chang told us about the NYT’s efforts to become an information portal in addition to a news source. Information about health forms a big part of this, and page views for the NYT website Health section have tripled as a result.

It’s not just health that gets the hits however. Both Chang and Unsworth mentioned the Large Hadron Collider as a massive science story – indeed, the BBC’s coverage received so many views that their stats counter broke!

Whilst this is all good to hear, it’s unclear how it makes any money. Of course, as Unsworth pointed out the BBC don’t need to worry about this, but everyone else must come up with new business models. No one had any real answers – if they did they would be implementing them – so the future of science journalism still remains uncertain. Even so, it was great to see such excellent speakers speculating on what might happen.

After this it was back to the book stall for a bit before I went to steward a session on the coverage of climate change and it links science, policy and politics. Again, because I was working I couldn’t make very good notes. One of the speakers was Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC, who made a very good point about the real environmental story: us.

The growth of the world’s population leads to an increase in resource use and more and more expansion in to natural habitats. Climate change and other problems can be linked directly to this issue, but we rarely see articles calling for a slowdown in growth.

Next was my final stint on the book stand. Everything was reduced to £1 and I managed to shift all of the books, though eventually we did end up giving the last few away for free. These rather unpopular volumes still took a while to get rid of, despite not costing a penny!

The last event of the conference was the farewell party. For some unknown reason this was Wimbeldon themed, which meant us stewards had to change from our garish orange polo necks to white ones, and don a tennis visor. Slightly silly, but I guess that’s just how these things work.

I’ve had a great week. It’s been hard work, but good fun, and I got to witness and take part in many thought-provoking discussions. My whole body aches, I’m extremely sleep-deprived, but I’d definitely do it all again. The next conference is to be held in 2011 and hosted by Cairo. I’ve no idea what I’ll be doing then, but I hope I can attend!

After a brief – and I mean literally five minute – lunch, I went along to the ABSW’s session on how to publish a popular science book. Chaired by Sara Abdulla, Chief Commissioning Editor at Nature, and featuring the author John Gribbin, agent Peter Tallack and Penguin editor Will Goodlad, the session focussed on moving from an idea in your head to a published book, and all the steps in between.

All the panellists stressed the importance of writing a detailed outline that you can peddle to agents and publishing companies. This allows you to present your ideas in full without having to write the entire manuscript first! Anything that helps you stand out from the crowd is an advantage, especially in a world where, according to Abdulla, up to one million books are looking for an agent at any one time.

Part of the discussion revolved around books written by scientists versus those written by science journalists. Publishing companies like to have a “name” behind the book to increase marketability, and the book buying public supposedly like to hear about research directly from the scientists doing it. Having said that, there is still a place for journo’s who want write something more substitutional than a feature piece.

If they can’t find a publisher though, they could always do it themselves. On the topic of self-publishing, the panel were mixed. Goodlad thought it was a good idea – despite the questioner asking if it made him worry for his job – simply because there are so many books out there, and traditional publishers can’t put them all out. Gribbin meanwhile said he was “too lazy” to self-publish, and the general consensus was self-published books can’t achieve real commercial success.

Immediately following this session was another that asked “Is the growing influence of PR on science journalism in the public interest?” Ben Goldacre was there, along with Simon Denegri, Chief Executive of the Association of Medical Research Charities, Andrew Jack of The Financial Times, and John Clare, Managing Director of Lions Den Communications. It was chaired by Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust.

I was actually working on this session as a steward thus I wasn’t able to make notes, so please forgive my lack of details. Goldacre gave his usual entertaining spiel, pointing out stories masquerading as science that had been manufactured by PR agencies, whilst Denegri and Jack were made slightly less inflammatory comments. Clare had a decent go at defending the PR industry, despite technical difficulties that left him without his Powerpoint presentation for a while, and me running about in search of a technician. I’m not sure how much of it I bought though.

The audience responses were interesting. The journalists complained that PR often won’t let them speak to the scientists they want to, especially if the story is bad news, and that their editors force them to write up the PR-produced stories as news, else it will be passed to a non-specialist and end up even worse! Also present were various press officers, who complained that they don’t like being tarred with the same brush as PR, and that “P” is badly defined anyway. It made for an interesting and heated session – not just because the room was sweltering!

After some more book selling and some general milling about I head off, along with everyone else, to the Gala Reception at the Natural History Museum. Whilst a very impressive location, the acoustics weren’t quite suited to the various speeches given, and it was hard to hear what was being said. The food however was excellent, including a mini fish and chip canapé!

Another enjoyable if lengthy day then. Tomorrow is the last proper day of the conference, and I’ll try to blog as much as I can. See you then!

• Science Minister Lord Drayson gave his and the government’s support to the WCSJ.
• The BBC’s Pallab Ghosh believes that science journalism can change the world.
• The panel discussing whether science journalism is in crisis concluded “yes”, “no” and “maybe”. They stressed that whilst traditional funding models (i.e. advertising) are drying up, “new media” offers new possibilities. How these possibilities are funded, I’m not quite clear.
• Quentin Cooper of the BBC’s Material World gave entertaining introductions to conference sponsors, who were as exciting as you might expect.

That’s about all I managed to scribble down during my day’s escapades. I’ll try and come up with something a bit more substantial tomorrow!

Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s because my Chinese flatmate Will gave me some medicine. When he first offered me some I half expected a herbal remedy. But no, he produced a packet of tablets which consisted of two types: white tablets for the day time and black tablets for the night time.

I’m the kind of person who always reads the label on medicines. Not because I understand the technical jargon you find on them, I just find it reassuring to pretend I’m capable of deciding what the tablets might do to me. In this case though my knowledge of the Chinese language (i.e. none) prevented me from undergoing this ritual.

As a result I was apprehensive about taking the tablets. Which I found worrying in itself, because I completely trust my flatmate and know he wouldn’t give me anything dangerous. So why was I afraid, and what was I even afraid of? What’s more, I was more apprehensive about taking the black tablets than the white tablets. I thinks it’s probably because I’ve never taken (or even seen) a black tablet before.

In the end I just took both the tablets anyway, after realising that a) I was being irrational, and b) I felt so crappy that I was prepared to try anything. But because I couldn’t read the ingredients I wasn’t really convinced they would work, and instead thought ‘at the very least the placebo effect might kick in and make me feel better.’

When I told Colin this story we both got a bit unsure of whether the placebo effect can take place if you’ve already considered that the thing you are taking might work as a placebo. I’ve had a similar thought before about headache tablets. If I have a headache and take two headache tablets I always start to feel better about 20 minutes later (the only exception being when I’m hung-over).  But, I always ponder, is this simply because I assume they will work, stop worrying about my headache and get on with things. Or is it because the paracetemol, caffeine and so on in headache tablets actually works on me. I imagine it’s mainly the latter, but live in fear that if I ever lose my confidence in headache tablets that they will no longer work on me.

In the case of the Chinese flu tablets, I did feel better the next day. It might be because of the stuff in them, or it might be because of some placebo effect. Or it might be that I had a good nights sleep for once. But I still decided to not take any more, and left it up to time and nature to get me better.

So what is the point of this rambling parable? Well, I feel like I learned a few things. First, being able to read labels makes me feel much happier about taking medicine. Second, black tablets are slightly intimidating. Third,I don’t care if its a placebo effect thats getting me better as long as I feel better. Finally, I should buy medicine before I get sick.

A quirk of architecture – a flight of five stairs – made moving said boxes an almost farcical affair. To get everything to the exhibition hall, we had to take the goods lift from the ground floor to the third floor. A short circuit of the building later to a regular lift, it was down from there to the first floor. Repeat as necessary.

Besides the various materials needed for the exhibition stands, we also had to put together around 800 delegate bags. This required an assembly line of various leaflets, but when the bags were ready they had to be taken to the reception area. Whilst everyone else toiled away stuffing bits of paper together, the job of shifting them all fell to me. So if you’re attending the WCSJ, when you pick up your nicely packed delegate bag, remember that I personally lugged around every single one of them!

Not much in the way of science then, and I unfortunately had to miss the conference reception at the Science Museum. It’ll be an early start tomorrow, but I’m hoping to blag my way into at least a few sessions. All will be reported in the evening.

• Run-down of the latest science news
• A look at the weird world of string theory
• The always fantastic Call My Scientific Bluff
• Interview with Andrew Maynard about nanotechnology
• Discussion with our studio guest of the week, Stuart Clark about astronomy and his latest book, The Sun Kings
• And a roundup of the latest Web2.0 news

Next week will be the final edition of Mission Impossible, so be sure to listen online, Tuesday 1pm at ICRadio.

Wallace & Gromit, the nation’s most beloved plasticine duo, have arrived at the Science Museum. I went along with I,Science editor Mico Tatalovic to check out the new exhibition, Wallace & Gromit present A World of Cracking Ideas.

The duo are known for their crazy inventions that inevitably go horribly wrong, and it seemed that the Science Museum’s lifts were getting in to the spirit of things. As we waited for a ride to the exhibition floor one of the Museum’s sleek glass lifts arrived, but refused to open its doors before shooting off again. It eventually returned and we step aboard, only to find ourselves stuck between floors. “Perhaps we’ll get the stairs next time,” I said to Mico. Thankfully we were not trapped for long and, for the rest of the morning at least, the inventions on display behaved themselves.

Working in collaboration with Wallace & Gromit creators Aardman Animation, the Science Museum have recreated their home, 62 West Wallaby Street, and stuffed it full of things to see and do. With funding from the Intellectual Property Office, the £2m exhibition is designed to inspire the nation’s creativity and get us all inventing.

Visitors will find “Idea Stations” in each room of the house where they can scribble down their new creations, before sending them off to Wallace & Gromit through a suitably wacky delivery process, the Eureka Brainwave. This overhead conveyer belt channels ideas through the exhibition to the Thinking Cap Machine, which…turns them into paper hats. A bit of a let-down if you have just submitted your idea for the next iPod killer, but kids will love it.

As well as coming up with your own ideas, you can play around with Wallace & Gromit’s. In the living room you’ll find the Tellyscope, their answer to the television remote. After throwing enough balls at a target (both myself and Mico were hopeless throws), a television will move towards a massive sofa. Take a seat, and a series of levers move a gloved hand to select the button of your choice, which will play a short video clip. Very silly, very Wallace & Gromit. Other fun things include a slide down the plughole from the bathroom to the garden, where you’ll be to take part in a modelling clay activity.

It’s not just Wallace & Gromit’s inventions on display though. The Science Museum have dug through their extensive catalogue to find examples of weird and wonderful inventions from the real world. Displays range from an early electric kettle to 1960’s food packaging. You can also track the development of inventions like the telephone, from Alexander Graham Bell’s original to the latest shape-shifting Nokia prototype – unfortunately a model, and not the real thing just yet!

If old inventions aren’t your thing, there’s still a lot on show for Wallace & Gromit and fans. Sets from the films are lovingly displayed, and simply walking through the house really feels like you’re taking part in one of their crazy adventures. It would be very easy to spend almost two hours taking in everything the exhibition has to offer.

I have just one very minor criticism, of an ideological nature. A message throughout the exhibit is the importance of protecting your intellectual property by registering inventions with the Intellectual Property Office, and I have no qualms with that. Up in the bathroom, in a display all about music, was a poster that left me feeling rather different.

Nestled in a corner, away from the karaoke disco in the shower and a charming vinyl jukebox, it said that the music industry is the only way for artists could “avoid losing out to copycats” and “benefit from hitting all the right notes”. In other words, sign a record deal or go broke. In a world where internet exposure and digital distribution is making the music industry increasingly irrelevant, it struck me as nothing more than an out-of-place attempt at propaganda. I’m sure though that kids will just run past without a second glance as they head for something fun to do, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.

My woolly liberal sensibilities aside, Wallace & Gromit present A World of Cracking Ideas is well worth a visit. You might not learn anything as such, but you’ll be too busy having fun with all the crazy contraptions to care. The exhibition will run until 1st November 2009, and the usual fees apply: Adults £9, Concessions £7, with extra deals for families. Cracking good time, Gromit.