Seven days in science - 8 October 2010

The Local Heroes event Sounds of Space started at Town Hall Symphony Hall in Birmingham last night; a weekend of music, talks and events inspired by the wonders of our universe and beyond.

Other Royal Society anniversary free public events coming up include ‘Rise of the Machines’, a robotic evening of discussion, demonstrations and drama on 15 October at the Royal Society, and ‘An evening with Joseph Swan’ on 8 October; part of the Story of London festival.

Two Royal Society Fellows and a Royal Society University Research Fellow won Nobel prizes this week. Fellow of the Royal Society Professor Robert Edwards won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology. The 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics was won by Andrei Geim FRS, a Royal Society 2010 Anniversary Research Professor, and and Konstantin Novoselov, a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. There is an image gallery for the 2010 Nobel Prize on the Guardian webpage.

This year’s Clifford Paterson Lecture will be given by Professor David MacKay FRS, University of Cambridge, on the subject of human-computer interaction systems on Tuesday (12 October). Professor McKay will discuss the inefficiencies of keyboards and present alternatives that have been designed, using information theory, with the aim to maximize the number of bits per second conveyed from user into text.