As one UK university after an other goes into “restructuring”, a euphemism for hollowing out by administrators, you never hear the phrase “fiduciary duty”. It is clear that these people see the university primarily as a business that they can leave behind. Lost is the idea that they are entrusted with a physical, intellectual, and societal endowment and community built over decades, sometimes centuries, that needs to be nurtured cautiously for the next generation much like a pension fund?

Just seen NAZA. No words.

Gave my third OTZ lecture today to our Life Science students. We estimated the mass of the atmosphere, worked the stock (the mass) of CO2 present, and from there the mass of annual emissions and thought about it in relation to earth's population.

Managed to sneak my way in (late) to Michael Mann's "Science under Siege" talk at the Crick today. Very good and with constant reminders that there is everything to fight for - doom is a strategy by those who want you to give up, not a future.

Look up! A circumzenithal arc. #StrangeIce

My son came home with COVID. I was vaxxed last Saturday. The next few days will be interesting.

Rather depressing to hear the Israeli spokesperson leap straight to a demonstration of the truth of Godwin’s law in their opening reaction to #NaviPillay ’s Nobel.

It's been a pretty bonkers week which including touching the third rail with some very senior people, trying to keep teaching on the rails, and spending quality time with three of the finest gentlemen from UCL Estates I have the privilege of working with - knowledgeable, data-driven and with a deep desire to get things right. Here they are diagnosing the failure of one of four air handling units today.

Why have a pot if you don't stir it?

On BBC world service in 12 minutes to talk about chirality. Now 11 minutes… 😜

RE: https://mastodon.social/@sellathechemist/117382573733554133

Ping @emilymbender @timnitGebru (no doubt you’ve seen it)

RE: https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/117382389534465476

This wins the internet today.

Beware. If you are looking for Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's film "Naza" based on interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers, that is currently in film festivals and cinemas, you won't find it online.
Instead you will find the IDF's "Naza - The True Story" that presents a very different picture of events in Gaza. Beware algorithms driving your feeds on other platforms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAZA_(film)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Caligans/117242559230039631

Given my two jabs today, this feels a propos.

Have just had both 'flu and COVID jabs this morning, one per arm. The COVID jab was half a ml… 

Let the immune system kick in and do its funky stuff.

#vaccination #JustDoIt

And we're off! #UCLChemAirPoll is off to the races with 250 students, 33 schools and 67 primary school classes scattered right across the London. First class to explain the ideas and to get our students to think about how to deliver a lesson in a primary school class.

Lesson plans are being constructed over the next ten days, and we'll be loading 700 diffusion tubes in the lab very very soon. #learning #publicengagement #CitizenScience #laughter #measurement #airpollution

Today is the 172±3 birthday (allowing for my faulty arithmetic) of William Ramsay, the Scottish-born chemist who discovered the final column of the periodic table starting with Ar, then isolating He on earth, and uncovering Ne Kr and S, and finally, with one of his last students, he determined the atomic mass of Rn. Noble gases, nailed to the mast!

UCL LHL Oct 21. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/events/events/2026/oct/person-lunch-hour-lecture-william-ramsay-man-gas-and-bicycle

If anyone has a "Rover" safety bike I could borrow for the talk, I'd be very grateful for the loan.

Esther Rantzen. Remarkable woman. A life well-lived.

UCL East Lunch Houre Lecture Oct 21 with the art historian Nick Robbins about William Ramsay: The Man, The Gas, and the Bicycle. We'll try to frame the discovery of neon it both in terms of science, art/culture generally, and geopolitics as neon moved from curiosity to metaphor and to industrial gas, used for a time at checkout counters everywhere.

If anyone has a Rover "safety" #bicycle they could lend me, I'd be enormously in your debt! #chemistry #history #paint

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/events/events/2026/oct/person-lunch-hour-lecture-william-ramsay-man-gas-and-bicycle

Why the hell did I not know that "Uncle" Jim Al-Khalili is this year's Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer! These are going to be great and very <ahem> timely!

https://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures