Seven days in science - 17 June 2010

A live performance of BBC Radio 4’s Infinite Monkey Cage will take place at 7.30pm on the opening day (Friday 25 June) of See Further: The Festival of Science + Arts.

The Royal Society and Southbank Centre are coming together to explore science and our human impulse to understand the world we live in. See Further: The Festival of Science + Arts is a unique festival celebrating 350 years of the Royal Society. The festival explores links between the sciences and arts and features a host of cross-disciplinary collaborations, scientific and artistic events. At the heart of the celebrations is the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition which gives everyone the opportunity to meet some of the scientists who are leading the UK's cutting edge research. More widely, for ten days, Southbank Centre is filled with science-related performance, comedy, discussion, symposia, film, literature and art installations. For further information and to book tickets please visit the festival website seefurtherfestival.org

Listening to a man’s voice allows you to accurately guess how strong he is, according to research published in this week’s Proceedings of the Royal Society B.  While previous experiments have shown that a man’s height and weight can be guessed from the sound of his voice, the new research shows that upper body strength can be guessed even more accurately than his physical measurements.

The third lecture in the Capital Science series of talks on Asian contributions to scientific thought at Asia House takes place next Wednesday (23 June) at 6.45pm. Dr Vivienne Lo explores the changing face of Chinese medicine over two thousand years.

The joint Royal Society and Royal Botanic Gardens Discussion Meeting ‘Science and development of government policy post-Global Strategy for Plant Conservation: lessons for the future’ will take place at Kew next week (21-22 June). To register for this event, click here.

The third of the 2010 Reith lectures ‘What we’ll never know’ aired on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday (15 June) at 9am. Martin Rees explored the limitations of our scientific knowledge and discussed how the result of the search for extra-terrestrial life will transform humanity’s sense of self. Podcasts of the first three lectures are available for download now. The final lecture in the series will air on Tuesday (22 June) at 9am on BBC Radio 4.

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