180 quotes found
"Would it not be better if one could really 'see' whether molecules...were just as experiments suggested?"
"One's tendency when one is young is to do experiments just to see what will happen, without really looking for specific things at all. I first set up a little laboratory in the attic at home just to grow crystals or try experiments described in books, such as adding a lot of concentrated sulfuric acid to the blood from a nosebleed which precipitates hemotin from the hemoglobin in the blood. That was quite a nice experiment. I still remember it."
"I once wrote a lecture for Manchester University called « Moments of Discovery » in which I said that there are two moments that are important. There's the moment when you know you can find out the answer and that's the period you are sleepless before you know what it is. When you've got it and know what it is, then you can rest easy."
"Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated."
"What’s the use of doing all this work if we don't get some fun out of this?"
"The results suggest a helical structure (which must be very closely packed) containing 2, 3 or 4 co‐axial nucleic acid chains per helical unit, and having the phosphate groups near the outside."
"Women qua women may remain, for the better continuance of life, subject to men; women as human beings demand to live as well as to continue life. To live effectively they must learn to know the world through and through, in order that, while side by side with men, they may fashion life to their common good."
"Greek writers of the fifth century B.C. have a way of speaking of, an attitude towards, religion, as though it were wholly a thing of joyful confidence, a friendly fellowship with the gods, whose service is but a high festival for man. In Homer sacrifice is but, as it were, the signal for a banquet of abundant roast flesh and sweet wine; we hear nothing of fasting, of cleansing, and atonement."
"Socrates, obviously unfair though he is, puts his finger on the weak spot of Greek religion as orthodoxly conceived in the fifth century B.C. Its formula is do ut des. It as, as Socrates says, a 'business transaction' and one in which, because god is greater than man, man gets on the whole the best of it."
"Professional and literary London I have known, academic Cambridge I do know. That other Youth—that is, happy peasants, coal-heavers, opulent stockbrokers, and the higher form of young barbarians—I do not know, and of them I do not speak. I accept my limitations."
"It is useless, or almost useless, to offer to Youth the treasures of experience gathered by Age. "When you are my age," says Crabbed Age, "you will know what I know, see as I see." Nothing could be more profoundly false. History does not repeat itself. Evolution forbids. When you are my age, you will not know what I know, but something quite different."
"One of the main functions of an analogy or model is to suggest extensions of the theory by considering extensions of the analogy, since more is known about the analogy than is known about the subject matter of the theory itself... A collection of observable concepts in a purely formal hypothesis suggesting no analogy with anything would consequently not suggest either any directions for its own development."
"A theory in its scientific context is not a static museum piece, but is always being extended and modified to account for new phenomena."
"These three assumptions between them constitute a picture of science and the world somewhat as follows : there is an external world which can in principle be exhaustively described in scientific language. The scientist, as both observer and language-user, can capture the external facts of the world in prepositions that are true if they correspond to the facts and false if they do not. Science is ideally a linguistic system in which true propositions are in one-to-one relation to facts, including facts that are not directly observed because they involve hidden entities or properties, or past events or far distant events. These hidden events are described in theories, and theories can be inferred from observation, that is the hidden explanatory mechanism of the world can be discovered from what is open to observation. Man as scientist is regarded as standing apart from the world and able to experiment and theorize about it objectively and dispassionately."
"It could plausibly be argued that far from Christian theology having hampered the study of nature for fifteen hundred years , it was Greek corruptions of biblical Christianity which had hampered it , and the attitude to nature."
"This of course has always been the method of empirical science, which has been suspicious of deductive argumentation unchecked by reference to experiment; but in a more general sense, and outside the practice of science itself, scientists have sometimes been the greatest offenders in adhering to dogmatic ideas against all the evidence, especially when they have tended to limit 'experience' to laboratory experiment."
"Regarding the question around, « did we know about stopping the immunization before it entered the market ? » No. You know, we had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market, and from that point of view we had to do everything at risk. I think Dr Bourla, even though he’s not here, would turn around and say to you himself, « if not us then who ? », Janine Small at European Parliament (Brussels, Belgium), Altiero Spinelli Building, hall 1G3, 10 October 2022."
"My favorite element is . That's mainly because of this organism... a ... a tiny... organism that lives in the surface of the ocean..."
"[A]ll of these platelets, this really intricate structure... is made of so calcium is incorporated into this structure..."
"This organism lives, and it dies, and quite often when it dies, the broken fragments... drift down... and... can build up... on the floor of the ocean, and over geological time these beautiful little platelets of calcium carbonate become squashed into rocks of calcium... [A]s techtonic plates move around and seas come and go, those rocks can get lifted up and so this... is what the White Cliffs of Dover are made of..."
"[M]ost of the south coast of England is underlain by a great layer of this calcium carbonate, mostly made of this one amazing organism."
"So after the calcium has been part of the cliffs it can crumble down... It goes back into the ocean and this cycle starts all over again."
"Humans have found this a very useful material. Drawing this diagram with this piece of is a lovely thing to do because... I drew it with itself. So the tiny... fragments of old marine creatures sitting around in here are now what's stuck to the blackboard making up my drawing of the . So calcium is my favorite element, just because of this cycle."
"[T]here are these very famous images in ' of s swimming, and they've always got these trailing bubbles. ...[N]o one really thought about it until a few years ago at the University of Bangor, a couple of fluid dynamicists... had a bit of think, and it turns out that what the penguins do is really... cool! ...They are constantly preening. The feathers are the most important thing a penguin has because they are its insulation and they are a large part of how hydrodynamic it is. How easy it swims through the water. ...Before the penguin goes down to dive, and they can be quite long dives, the penguins all fluff up their feathers and trap gas... bubbles underneath."
"And then they go down, and they go hunting for fish... [I]t comes time to go back up to the surface and hop out onto the ice past the s."
"[A]s they're starting that swim upwards they... unfluff their feathers and... release... a coat of bubbles... [T]hose bubbles... are inducing . It's just like the same reason a golf ball has dimples, the bubbles are reducing the drag on the penguin and a penguin that is producing bubbles can travel 50% faster... So it stands a much better chance of getting past the leopard seals now, onto the land."
"So this is brilliant, because it's this wonderful interaction of all sorts of things. It's a physical process. The reason the bubbles come out as the penguin swims up is because the pressure is decreasing, and the bubbles are expanding, so they can come out of the feathers."
"They are reducing... drag, which is one of the most complicated problems in , and the penguins just... do it."
"And... it changes the ecosystem because the penguins can then survive in conditions they would not otherwise be able to survive in."
"So penguins use bubbles, and I think that's brilliant!"
"We live on the edge, perched on the boundary between planet Earth and the rest of the Universe. ...Every human civilization has seen the stars, but no one has touched them. Our home on Earth is the opposite: messy... full of things... we touch and tweak... The physical world is full of startling variety... But this diversity isn't random. Our world is full of patterns."
"If you pour milk into your tea and give it a quick stir... liquids mix in beautiful swirling patterns... not... merging instantaneously. ...If you look down on Earth from space, you... often see... similar swirls in the clouds... where warm... and cold air waltz around... instead of mixing directly. In Britain... they form at the boundary between cold polar air... and warm tropical air... We know these swirls as depressions or s..."
"[S]imilarity in patterns is... a clue that hints at something... fundamental. ...[A] systematic basis for all such formations... This process of discovery is science: the continual refinement and testing of our understanding, alongside the digging that reveals even more..."
"[[w:Scorpion|[S]corpion]]s... have pigments in their that take in light that we can't see and give back visible light... . The blue-green glow is thought to be an adaptation to help... at dusk. ...[I]t can detect its own glow and so... needs to do... better... hiding. It's an effective... signalling system..."
"Look at... cyclists; their high visibility jackets... oddly bright... as though they're glowing... It's... the same trick the scorpions are playing..."
"[A] nugget of physics... isn't just an interesting fact: it's a tool... useful anywhere..."
"[[w:Tonic water|[T]onic water]] glow[s] under ultraviolet... because the ... is fluorescent. ... ink is also acting as an ultraviolet detector..."
"A toaster can teach you some of the most fundamental laws of physics..."
"Physics is awesome... because the same patterns are universal... in the kitchen and in the furthest reaches of the universe."
"Learning the science of the everyday is a direct route to the... knowledge... every citizen needs..."
"Put the egg down on a smooth, hard surface and set it spinning. ...[W]hen you stopped the raw egg, you only stopped the shell. The liquid never stopped swirling... so... the shell started rotating again... dragged around by its insides. ...It is a principle of physics that objects continue the same... movement unless you push or pull on them. ...[[w:Angular momentum#Conservation of angular momentum|[C]onservation of angular momentum]]."
"The ... has produced many... spectacular images... But when you're floating... in space... how do you hold your position... How do you know... which way you're facing? Hubble has six s, each... a wheel spinning... Conservation of angular momentum means that those wheels will [tend to] keep spinning... and the spin axis will stay pointed in... the same direction... The gyroscopes give Hubble a reference direction..."
"The physical principle used to orient one of the most advanced technologies... demonstrated with an egg in your kitchen."
"This is why I love physics. Everything you learn will come in useful somewhere else, and it's all one big adventure..."
"As far as we know, the physical laws we observe... on Earth apply everywhere... You can test them for yourself."
"In the past, information was treasured... These days we live on the shore of an ocean of knowledge... with regular s that threaten out sanity."
"The basic principles alone often won't provide specific answers, but they'll provide the context needed to ask the right questions. And if we're used to working things out... we won't feel hopeless when the answer isn't obvious..."
"Critical thinking is essential... especially with advertisers and politicians all telling us... they know best."
"We are responsible for our civilization. We vote... choose what to buy and how to live... collectively [as] part of the human journey."
"No one can understand every... detail of our complex world, but the basic principles are fantastically valuable tools..."
"This is what separates science from other disciplines—a scientific hypothesis must make specific testable predictions. ...[Y]ou have to look hard for consequences that you can check for, and especially... that you can prove wrong."
"Science is always trying to prove itself wrong, because that's the quickest route to finding what's actually going on."
"You don't have to be a qualified scientist to experiment with the world. Knowing some basic principles will set you on the right track... [I]t doesn't even have to be an organized process..."
"This book is about linking the little things we see every day with the big world we live in."
"Science is not about 'them', it's about 'us'... we can all go on this adventure in our own way."
"[B]eing at sea during the , when it arrived in the UK... back in 2013. I was on the in the North Atlantic and the swell... the during that storm was 10 meters during the middle of it."
"Being up on the bridge and watching these waves roll in... We were sitting bow into the wind. We were studying high wind gas exchange so... we'd gone out there for those conditions. The chief scientist was incredibly happy when that storm came around."
"[J]ust being on the bridge when that storm came along... and watching those waves roll towards the ship and... rear up in front of us. It wasn't everyone's favorite thing, but I felt privileged to be there."
"[W]e have all these dry numbers and significant wave height is one of them... [W]atching what it really means for a significant wave height to be 10 meters and thinking about how small that is compared to the depth of the ocean... It's like... having a swimming pool and... blowing tiny ripples across the top. ...Being in that situation was... fascinating and fun... I wouldn't want to do it every day, but it was... a special experience."
"We know how that graph goes... Wind speed... along the x-axis, some measure of gas flux... along the y-axis, and we knew at the time that the graph only went so far to the right... [W]e were putting dots... on the graph that had not been there before... So there's that added thing of being there with the right equipment at the right time to... measure something that has not been measured directly before..."
"It wasn't my first time at sea. It was my first time in waves that big."
"It's not a linear path. I did my PhD... in experimental explosion physics... I was interested in the , which was much harder then than it is now. This was before CCDs and CMOS sensors were built into things like high-speed cameras... [Y]ou had to do it the old-school way. ...[I]t was interesting and challenging and I liked building that kind of experiment. Looking at small things that were too quick... to see directly. But I never wanted to do [explosion physics]..."
"So after I finished my PhD I looked around for another topic, and I found bubbles... [T]hat... took me to Scripps, to the lab of Grant Deane and he... showed me the ocean... indirectly... I was in that lab. I had these experiments on bubbles. They involved things I understood, s and tanks and... s... [T]here was this frame by the door... and after three weeks they all started fussing around it, and I realized this thing, which I now know is just a surface following buoy, was their gateway to another world."
"The day they carried... [the surface following buoy] down to the beach... and I had never thought about what really might be underneath [the ocean]... [T]hen I understood the context for them and... became an ocean scientist by the back door. ...Then I had opportunities to go to sea and I continued the research..."
"I've looked at basic bubble physics, and optics... the dynamics of what bubbles do underneath waves, and particularly, sensing them in very difficult conditions like that big storm. ...Acoustical and optical devices for detecting bubbles... just under... [Y]ou're interested in the top meter, but the top meter is going up and down, or in the case by 10 meters. So it's not an easy place to get to. But that kind of challenge, studying bubbles in difficult situations... in the ocean, that's what I do now."
"I was indignant because I hadn't even read about it. ...I was that kid who had read every physics book, every science book, I'd read every copy of ' and whatever else... I was the... kid who had really read everything, and nobody had ever mentioned the ocean."
"Once I understood. Once I looked at the ocean differently... I was cross. Why had no on ever told me about this? Because this is clearly the biggest story on Earth!"
"I set out to learn. I went around Scripps... I knocked on people's doors and I said "Hello, I'm a physicist. ...I'm learning about the ocean. If you've got a book you would recommend..." and people recommended books to me... [O]ne of them was Jacques Cousteau's Silent World and a whole bunch of others... Once I knew I wanted to learn, I was in exactly the right place to begin that journey."
"I was on the Kilo Moana, out of Santa Barbara, on a preparatory cruise for a bigger one... [W]e were in... calm water off Santa Barbara and the Kilo Moana... has swath holes, so a very stable platform kind of a ship, more of a platform than a ship in some sense... [T]hat was the first time I'd ever... hung an instrument over the side... in order to try and measure something... [I]n the second cruise... I made a video of the cruise, like a... mini-documentary..."
"I never wanted to go into filmmaking. It was just that I had the opportunity... I found the visceral nature of it very appealing... [Y]ou're in the middle of something directly experiencing it at the same time as studying it... [T]hat was really interesting to me."
"I think that video... We made little DVDs of it that got shared around the participants on the cruise. They were all... interested in it, and... this was long before I'd done any stuff for the and... I didn't think of filmmaking as something I would want to do. But in retrospect... there was a story to tell, and I was interested in telling that story."
"It's interesting how you can look at the sea and not see it. There's this phrase... that the Merchant Marine use, which is sea blindness... [T]he UK is especially guilty of this... We talk of ourselves as an island nation and we talk... of having this maritime history, and yet we never actually look at the sea... This idea that it can be right there and yet we're somehow blind to it... I was totally guilty of that... being sea blind."
"I come from in the north of England... a long way from the coast. ...I learned to scuba dive at Scripps. I learned to sail in . I hadn't done any of that before, so I was about as much a landlubber as you can get, but I was up for the adventure... That's the reason I'm doing what I'm doing... because it not only involves very interesting physics, but you are right in the middle of... experiencing it while it's happening..."
"I've always studied the physics in the middle, even when I was doing my degree. ...I passed my exams in quantum mechanics and cosmology, but I knew I was never going to touch those things, but with the ocean it's something you can directly experience... I'm much more interested in the everyday world than in... s or something."
"It's very, very important to make the point that there are lots of ways to be an oceanographer. You don't have to go to sea... I would say to people, "I'm a physicist. I'm not an oceanographer." and they would go, "Oh you go to sea, so you're an oceanographer." But actually now we have much better data availability, data visualization... There are lots of people involved in coding and modeling and building devices and the engineering, who don't go to sea. But they are part of the ocean science community, and it's very, very important that they are there."
"[W]e're past the point now where we say you have to go to sea to be an oceanographer, because it's not true, and it's actually very important that it isn't true."
"[P]eople can experience the ocean in lots of ways, and... that's the important point. It's the experience of the ocean in some sense, so... it's not just a computer game..."
"[P]eople can contribute in lots of ways... [W]e're at the stage now, especially with any environmental science and... designing the future of society... where we... need all the help we can get... [S]o it is ludicrous to rule people out because they get seasick, for example. ...That's something of the past and... we have to move on from that."
"Alongside being a researcher for the past 10 or 12 years, I've also had the opportunity to make a lot of documentaries for the . ...This is not my first book. I've written science columns for years, for Focus magazine and '..."
"[N]o one was talking about the ocean, and when I went looking for popular science books... about , there really is close to nothing. There's lots of things about fish and whales and about pollution. Everything except the water itself, and that seemed to be the most ludicrous omission... I was sure the stories were there, but... to tell the story, to paint a picture of the ocean."
"[T]he problem with the ocean... is that it's too many things to sum up in a sentence... [Y]ou can say logically what it is. It's a layer of water about this thick that covers 70% of Earth. Fine, it doesn't mean anything. But to convey to people what it means to have an ocean, what it means to be a citizen of an ocean planet, you... need lots of different types of stories..."
"[T]he way I started to think about it... sometimes you get those kind of special effects where little pictures start appearing, making a , and then there's a shape left in the middle, and once you've got enough little pictures you can see the shape. But... until you've seen all those little pictures, you can't see anything. ...[T]he ocean's ...like that. The only way to really understand it, and we take this for granted as ocean scientists, is that you have to see it in lots of different ways. It's like the blind man and the elephant... One finds a trunk and thinks it's a snake. One finds a leg and thinks it's a tree. Yet you need all those perspectives, and then you start to build up a picture of what it means for an ocean to be there. ...[I]t ...bugged me that no one had done that and I thought I could find those stories."
"I paddle outrigger canoes with the and I also do that here in London. I work on research ships. I've worked on many of the world's oceans. ...I've had the privilege of working at Scripps and at the Graduate School of Oceanography... at NOC, or the University of South Hampton... and it felt like no one had told those stories, so I wanted to tell those stories... because I wanted people to see. I was so frustrated of people assuming that the ocean was just a place where the fish lived, or assuming that the ocean was just a big empty pond... and I realized, "Why would they see?" because no one had told them."
"I think it's not an approach that many people have taken. I think oceanographers take those stories for granted. ...[W]e don't tell our own history..."
"I did my degree in physics and... the telling of the history and the philosophy... is built into the telling of the subject, partly because of quantum mechanics, and partly because some of these ideas in physics are so big, you almost can't not discuss the philosophy of it... [T]he... mind blowing moment when Einstein presents general relativity and... unites these things, or these moments where Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is being worked out... [Y]ou've got to go and see why it's called that... [T]hese stories are built into physics, and in ocean science it's not really the same, and it's... not the same across the biology and chemistry and physics of the ocean, because they tend to be taught... separately..."
"[E]ven the ocean scientists don't really know all the little stories, the places where it's mattered in history... [S]o I went looking for those."
"So... The Blue Machine is the story of the ocean told through its messengers, passengers and voyages... [I]t's a mixture of natural history... human culture and human history... It's... a textbook dressed up as a bunch of stories."
"[T]hey came back with these two photos. One from , which was ', which was the Earth rising over the surface of the moon... before they'd landed on the moon, and the other on , the last of the Apollo missions, where they had the... full disk, the fully illuminated disk... '. ...That was when people started referring to the Earth as a "Blue Planet" because you couldn't look at that and not see that it was blue... [T]hen we spent 50 years not talking about the blue."
"[T]he called two or three... great series, '... but when did they actually say "What is the Blue?"... Not ever addressed."
"And so this time NASA... the Artemis missions are... very much gearing up to go back to the moon. Different setup, different politics... but fundamentally, this time... for the first time in 50 years, we're going to be far enough away to look back at the Earth and to see... this blue planet. And this time we have to see that blue for what it is. ...[T]he timing of the book... from the point of view... of the arc of human history, this time... we have to understand the blue itself, is the point."
"Any alien visitor to Earth... would look at the ocean first. Any alien visitor who wants to know the dynamics of planet Earth would look at the ocean before they looked at the land. And yet, we don't see it. ...We don't see this engine that completely defines our planet, and that has to change. ...Now is a good time for that to change."
"I've collaborated with many people from NOC over the years... I visited Steph Henson and the group she works with that study ... [W]hat was great... was seeing the variety of practical ways of doing things, and this... contrasts with what looks very crude... these... big yellow plastic funnels, and then the technology that's coming down the line. This... holographic camera and other things that will let them watch marine snow as it's falling, rather then waiting for it to be scooped up and put on the sample plate. ...The huge benefit... of being at NOC is that you've got all these people, it's such an interdisciplinary place. You've got all these people right next to each other that can learn from each other... I definitely miss that, not being in Southampton any more."
"My [publisher] actually said she was very moved by... the scale of trying to track these tiny bits of that are drifting around in the ocean... [S]he found something about that very... awesome, in the traditional sense of the word "awe"... The enormity of it really caught her."
"But you have to try... [T]hat's the lesson of ocean science... It was never going to be easy. If you go back to Challenger, we're now 150 years on from the Challenger expedition... something like 400 stations around the globe... That's like going around the and checking what color the paint is... on 400 dots along the ceiling... and the Sistine Chapel doesn't change every season... and people did try, and there are fundamental principles behind it all, and so it's worth it to try."
"[T]he ocean world is not good at talking about itself... [A] lot of ocean scientists... assume that people should care about the ocean, because they should... [A]ctually it's much more interesting than that. There are much more interesting things to say, but you've.. got to frame it right... [I]t's the framing that we miss in these conversations. ...You ...need a skeleton to hang pieces of information on, and for most people ...you say the ocean, they've got literally nothing... It really is a void. They're just like, "I don't know what to think about that. I don't know where to even start thinking about it, so I... forget everything I hear about it. ...I ...know it's all going wrong somehow ..." ...[T]he opportunity that NOC has is to earn a place in people's perception of what their world is like, by providing some of that context. ...[T]he most powerful thing that NOC has is... the collective."
"Scientists always think that the most important thing about what they do is the individual things that they're learning. That's not true. The most important thing... actually the gift that you have as a scientist that you've been given through the training, is a perspective on the world. ...[W]hat NOC has is an amazing opportunity to share a perspective, and not to dumb it down or to sugarcoat it, but just to say, "This is what it is." and to say that really well... [T]hat's... where you really can change people's idea of what it means to live on planet Earth, if you do that well..."
"[I]t's not just about pretty fish. We all like pretty fish, but... it's much more interesting than that, and we are shortchanging people if we don't really show what the ocean is. We all take it for granted as ocean scientists... So it's that opportunity that NOC has to do something really important. That's why I'm on board."
"Ocean scientists... who have read it said they learned lots of things. So there is this assumption that popular science books are for the people who don't know anything, and that is not true because the oceanographers know the oceanography, but they don't know the stories, and I think that the stories are worth it."
"Helen Czerski's engaging debut book seeks to demystify physics in everyday life... this should be an invaluable primer. ...Dealing with the everyday... enables Czerski to offer a mixture of erudition and enthusiasm... keeping the discussion light, accessible and interesting."
"Helen Czerski has the coolest job in science—she's a bubble scientist. Or... full title... a physicist and oceanographer at University College London. When she's not doing that... a science presenter for the BBC. ...[S]he also plays badminton competitively."
"Keeping everything in balance is one of the functions of the blue machine, but the... gradual raising of world temperatures poses a significant threat... It is only at the very end of her book that Czerski directly addresses the environmental changes... Her concern up to that point has been to set out clearly and calmly the design of the ocean engine. But... her... closing chapter on ‘the future’... is clear... the blue machine is... resilient, but will suffer permanent damage from rising temperatures. ...sea levels; currents... diverted; the fishy inhabitants... disperse and... disappear; tropical storms.. increase in frequency and power; sub-surface areas... de-oxygenated—all... alongside... the ocean as... dumping ground for plastic and... detritus. The oceans absorb carbon... breathe out carbon dioxide... determine global temperatures, but there are limits to their capacity..."
"Czerski... frames the ocean as a , the blue machine, driven by the difference in solar heating between the equator and North and South poles, with complications from tidal forces, wind, differences in salinity—which, like temperature, affects density—and shape of continental land masses and undersea crust. They generate complex effects... in a great, layered mass of water that is in constant motion. ...It all adds up to a persuasive case that Earth-dwellers need to understand the ocean and work with it..."
"She replied 'to those who argued that women did not want independence' with a rhetorical question that '"If the bird does like its cage and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?"'6"
"The visitor to Oxford goes to see, amongst the wonders of that historic but by no means old-looking city, the college established there by in 1274. It boast several attractions. Besides the chapel, pre-eminent for the beauty of its Decorated English architecture, there is the founder's treasure-house, with its ashlar roof, the ancient ironwork of the hall door, and the wondrous old library in the Mob Quadrangle, where Duns Scotus succeeded in that dangerous and hazardous feat of raising the devil."
"The limestone cliff of , surrounded by sandbanks and shallows, is not so favoured by breeding birds, but the jackdaw and dove—doubtless the stock-dove—are busy about its niches in nesting time. And in autumn and winter the mud-flats of the estuaries and the sands of the bays are busy with bird life. Besides troops of gulls and oyster-catchers, and curlews, and redshanks, and dunlins, there are far-coming whimbrels, and sanderlings, and knots, as well as more rarely seen species. There are geese on the flows, and sea-duck, scaup, common scoter, wigeon and others on the tide."
"The churchyard, even more than the church itself, had its secular and popular uses, which came down from ancient time. The fairs, the markets, the sports and the wrestlings ... which took place within its enclosing walls, and of which we obtain faint intimations, were but the survival of the festivals sanctioned by the early church, when the wake, or fair of the was kept. This again, with its bull-baiting, its rude sports and its temporary stalls, may be linked on to the earlier rites of heathen times, when beasts were brought to the Temple for sacrifice, and when the people built booths about it, in which to hold a three days' feast. The annual or biennial fair, and even the Sunday market, were quite usual in the churchyard, before the boroughs obtained a special privilege for them."
"You crawl on your stomach for hours … climbing up yawning abysses (lighted only by an acetylene lamp …) and get knocked on the head by stalactites and on the legs by stalagmites, and in the end arrive at all sorts of wonders; bison modelled in clay, and portraits of sorcerers, and footprints of Magdalenian man."
"Mud, muck, ooze upon the floor, torn tents and thunder – all were forgotten as the sherry bottle was opened"
"j’aime mieux écrire que discuter de vive voix [I much prefer to write than discuss aloud]"
"Europe was only after all a peninsula of Africa and Asia"
"I'm not in the business of writing my story."
"Its thesis, that success for a woman is perhaps more broadly based than for a man, is absolutely true."
"I looked around and I thought, ‘there aren’t many women here’, and then I thought, and this is a very female thing to think, ‘I’m never going to keep up with this lot’, and it was one of my larger surprises when I discovered I was well up with that lot!"
"There is something fairly deeply ingrained in our culture, and there probably is a real difference in early reading ability – girls are way ahead."
"Lots of things go on in lots of marriages that are less than ideal and mostly they stay private and that’s how it really should be."
"The debt crisis, losing the house, losing the security that you need when you are the mother of two small children, making a completely new life, that was the toughest thing I have ever done."
"The second judge treated me as if I was a liar, but I don’t move easily. I stand my ground."
"A partnership is about helping your partner in time of difficulty. That is when it matters. I am just not a quitter."
"I’m tempted to quote Lady Longford on her husband, the Labour peer and prison reformer:when asked, 'Have you ever thought of divorce?’, she replied, 'Divorce never; murder, frequently’."
"Fidelity is a great quality but kindness, loyalty and resilience are also very important in bad times."
"Intimations of old age are much easier to face together. That’s not to say the marriage gets easier, but it would be very much harder growing old without each other."
"To me everything has to work round family, and fortunately it has"
"As someone whose life was saved by my own hospital, I would say if you’re really ill I would go to the NHS – I would not go to a private hospital"
"I found there was a field called photoelectrochemistry, invented by the American military in its attempts to build a solar rechargeable battery"
"The first thing I’d do would be to try to curtail population growth, because that puts a strain on so many resources as well as energy – food, land, housing. And that appears to be a question of economic development"
"Onshore wind power to me is clean and green, although some people dislike it. It’s the cheapest form of energy, so these things will take their place"
"try to avoid the boom and bust that afflicts the development of renewables. I’m not a hair-shirted environmentalist, I’m not anti-nuclear, I’m not even anti-fossil fuels – but I do believe in the reality of global warming"
"“It sounds extraordinary, but it’s a fact that balance sheets can make fascinating reading.”"
"I’ve always loved my work"
"By bringing physical and mental healthcare together for the first time and embedding research at the heart of the hospital, we will treat the whole child, not just their illness"
"It has been such a long time in the gestation… I want to live to see it open"
"The first and most important point is to stay calm. The world is obviously changing around us all the time, but we need to keep a clear head in order to react and communicate effectively."
"This is a time for bottom-up planning. Don’t be afraid to think radically because that is, in fact, what’s needed at a time of crisis."
"Should people remain working at home? How do we manage this when some staff want to come into the office, and some definitely don’t?"
"Developing a central scenario will involve deciding how you’re going to deal with your property, your staff, or your suppliers as the the situation develops. Clarity is key for everyone involved, and a central scenario will help you to achieve it."
"Your people are your key assets, so it’s important to focus on well-being, morale, and listening."
"Well, I guess the digital transformation that has happened, the way the world is, the consumer world is seeing it, in the use of digital technology for communication because of the COVID crisis."
"Most startups fail. So that's the first thing you need to know. Even when you're a VC, it's almost 50%. So you got to write more than one check."
"have always been drawn to growth. I love the opportunities that growth creates, as well as the chance to have a positive impact on so many people, not just your customers, but your employees."
"Growth within business is exhilarating and rewarding, but it isn’t without its challenges."
"I’ve faced up to a lot. But I’ve never let anyone hold me back and I’ve met tough challenges head on. And I know working in government will be challenging."
"I’m proud to be joining a government which puts a modern approach at its core. Take the new Office for Investment – a scaled-up, more coherent, joint No 10-HMT-DBT investment agency."
"It really does feel like we’re in this new era of cybersecurity,"
"The arms race will absolutely continue, I really don’t think it’s very long until this [AI] innovation gets into the hands of attackers, and we will see these very highly targeted and specific attacks that humans won’t necessarily be able to spot and defend themselves from."
"It’s not going to be these futuristic Terminator-style robots out shooting each other, it’s going to be all these little pieces of code fighting in the background of our businesses. In my time here at Darktrace"
"It’s only something I’m aware of when I’m doing interviews or when I’m at an industry event and suddenly you see a sea of men staring back at you,"
"UtterBerry is currently classed as an SME and we are headquartered in London. Last year we announced that Utterberry is opening its new manufacturing and innovation hub in Leeds, England and we are looking to expand into other countries in the coming years."
"Our technology is developed with a long-term vision, not just adding technology but making sure it’s useful technology, working with partners to approach problems that our technology can solve both now and in the future."
"During a state visit a few years ago, when I had the honour of meeting the His Majesty the King and Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands, I became involved with NBCC."
"I was invited to Mansion House in London to demonstrate our technology and speak about UtterBerry’s work on Crossrail. After this, I became involved in various NBCC meetings, working on ways to increase trade between our countries."
"I believe that the trade links between the Netherlands and UK are very important, and that because of these long-term ties we are trusted partners."
"We are going to see massive changes related to AI. In the next 5-10 years, engineering is going to embedded into every aspect of life and will play a bigger role"
"People regret far more what they don’t do rather than what they do."
"I have a right to be at the top table in business."
"“I try to define myself personally by my job to deliver on those two things first first rather than by my gender. But I recognize the responsibility I have as a leader, in brackets a little bit, as a role model, because you’re just more visible whether you like it or not.""
"The part of our trust agenda is being a modern employer where whoever you are … you can bring the very best version of yourself to work without fear of any kind of inappropriate behavior."
"“I don’t think anyone can fully explain how to prepare you for what it’s like to be a CEO until you’re actually on the job.”"
"It doesn’t need to be a long list [of medicines], it needs to be a list of things that are going to make a difference."
""There is no better return on investment in healthcare than vaccination, apart from clean water.”"
"“We are seeing new solutions being brought to previously unpreventable infectious diseases.”"
"“The question more and more for all of us in the industry is, ‘can we harness the promise of our understanding of biology, the promise of the capability of technology and with both new kinds of innovation and new policy, try and get ahead of disease at an earlier stage?’ Prevent it before it starts or intervene to keep people out of the hospital and keep people well for longer. Keep the cost of healthcare down but keep the outcomes improving in a way that's fair for more people.”"
""Everyone thinks the answer to every question these days is AI. It isn't. The answer to every question these days is all about the people. If you have a technically brilliant, aligned, energetic, committed, diverse, team, you can achieve absolutely anything,”"
"The situation is very fluid. We’ve been anticipating it for some time and we are confident that we will navigate through it. Our priority is always to make sure that we are securing supply of our medicines and vaccines to the people and patients who need it."
"One of the things that perhaps is underestimated for GSK is that when we went through the separation and the creation of Haleon, we used that to reset our global supply chain for meaningfully more resilience. That includes dual sourcing in all circumstances."
"We don’t manufacture there, so there’s no direct impact in terms of China-US relations. Perhaps you could even argue there may be opportunity as a British-based but global company for us."
"The last thing I’d say in terms of capital allocation is: no one should be in any doubt about our commitment to and recognition of the primacy of delivering returns to shareholders."
"I mean we have been through quite a radical transformation as a company over the last five years."
"We’re now a pure play biopharma and as you said absolutely after the major demerger of Haleon and absolutely resolutely focused on getting ahead of disease literally by preventing it and treating it and that is really taking advantage of this explosion in technologies, new vaccines technologies that we’ve seen, of course, mRNA"
"There are many people who don’t believe that people like me exist."
"STEM is about changing lives and making a difference, and that’s what we want young women to see."
"We don’t just want women in tech – we want women leading tech."
"This really came about because the man who hired me for my first post-doc position was a chemical engineering professor at Cornell. Reflecting on this with the hindsight of decades, this transition from chemist to chemical engineer suited me. I like the focus on solving practical problems that engineers tend to focus on."
"First and foremost, you have to be in it for the long haul. There are no quick fixes. There are plenty of setbacks. There aren’t always too many incentives to promote diversity over other aspects of your job, like research output, promotions and career development, etc. Expect progress to be slow; change moves slowly but you have to keep ‘fighting the good fight.’ You have to be involved because you consider promoting diversity to be part of your ‘moral compass.’ And not because of the rewards; there aren’t many of those. You do it because it’s the right thing to do."
"During my undergraduate course in physics at the University of Edinburgh, we were getting a bit bogged down in it, and our lecturer said: "Let’s just take a break, because a really exciting scientific paper has come out today."
"My research has been funded by taxpayers throughout my whole life, so I have always been a keen science communicator. I’m not going to stop the day job with the research because I haven’t solved it."
"I have worked in the development of vaccines against infectious pathogens for many years and in the last 2 years have been able to draw on all that I have learned in order to respond to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. I have been so fortunate to work with a very talented and dedicated team who made it possible to develop a vaccine in less time than anyone thought possible."
"From my perspective as an and as a presenter on television I would love people to know and understand the amazing story of the s under our feet. The fact that without these rocks, the beds of , , clay or even s we would not have the or that we have today. We wouldn’t have the s, trees and wildlife without these rocks. Everything about the countryside is dependent on the rocks that sit underneath the soil, and I would love for people to know and make the connection that the nature they see all exists because of the rocks beneath. The rocks also have an ancient story of earth hidden within them that require us to use our imagination, we have to go back hundreds of millions of years to work out why they are there and can even tell us about the future of climate change."
".. even at the age of eight I had a great love for science, and I knew that I wanted to be a scientist."
"This whole journey started with '. Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote such an amazing book to connect botany and ecology with traditional knowledge. I also very much looked at other nature writers. ’s book was really interesting. He didn’t necessarily talk about the science of geology, but he did talk about what it felt like to be underground. There are moments in that book which terrify me because it makes me feel so claustrophobic. He makes you feel quite powerful emotions about being with him while he goes on that journey. Another book that really taught me how to structure the stories is by and it’s called Mudlarking. She’s this brilliant, interesting person who walks along the foreshore of the at and each chapter is about the different categories of the things that she finds. And finally the last book which I thought was so powerful as a woman writer was ’s The Living Mountain. She really lives in the moment of observing nature and natural processes. And not just the living processes of nature—what I love about that book is how she observes the rocks, the mountain and the landscape. She feels it in her heart, in every fiber of her being. And through reading that I knew what I wanted to achieve."
"... The Whispers of Rock: Stories from the Earth ... is a love letter written with such passion that you can’t help but be moved. Khatwa has devoted much of her life to spreading the gospel of geology, and here she offers clinical, scientific substance to back up her extraordinary depth of feeling. Throughout the book, she is methodical in her explanations of subjects such as how mountains, s and are formed, while also weaving in fascinating details. We learn that the Taj Mahal in India, an iconic symbol of love, was constructed with ivory-white , the origins of which date back to when several primitive land masses collided nearly 2 billion years ago. A recipe incorporating those , , and led to the rock used in this extraordinary monument, a much more complex process than might be realised at first glance. ... Khatwa’s love of rocks emerged as a child, when she walked over . In her book, she takes us with her around the world and across aeons, all the way to her home of 20 years in , UK, where the and its 185 million years of geological history are her neighbours."