Seven days in science - 8 July 2010

08 July 2010

The Summer Science Exhibition may have come to an end, but the Royal Society’s 350th anniversary celebrations certainly haven’t.

The Capital Science series See further with science continues at the The British Museum today (Friday 9 July) at 1.15pm in a gallery talk about the Lewis Chessmen. This is the penultimate talk in the series - the final talk, set to take place on 20 July, will discuss the Hebrew Astrolabe.

A new report into science and maths education at primary and early secondary level was published by the Royal Society this week. The report recommends that every primary school should have a science specialist teacher, but to enable this, the number of science specialist teachers must triple.  The Royal Society’s State of the Nation report, Science and mathematics education, 5-14, is the third in a series to assess the current situation for science and mathematics education in the UK. The report looks specifically at the structure and function of science and mathematics education for 5 to 14-year-olds and highlights some serious areas of concern.

Next week begins with the discussion meeting The sustainable planet: opportunities and challenges for science, technology and society, which will take place at the recently opened Kavli Royal Society International Centre at Chicheley Hall. Organised by Professor Judith Howard CBE FRS, Professor Ash Amin FBA, Professor Martyn Chamberlain and Professor Matthew Davidson, this meeting will review global sustainability in the context of: climate change; supply of essential materials, food and energy; and new disease patterns. The challenges to global societies will be discussed and the potential of advances in biology, chemistry, physics, medicine, energy technology and materials science to ameliorate these problems will be considered, together with the intrinsic limits of wholly scientific solutions.