Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a good christmas and I just wanted to wish you all a happy, healthy and productive 2014. I'm looking forward to seeing what the International Year of X-Ray Crystallography brings. What are your plans? If you read my other blog 'Sarah in Training' you'll know that I am now about to get into serious training for the half marathon I will be doing in mid May for my favourite non-profit organisation. Aside from that I shall see what comes. I am waiting for the outcome of a research position I applied for at UCL just before xmas. Not hopeful but nothing to lose. Keep up the good science and take care!

My Manchester Science Festival 2013

For me this year it was short and sweet. So short and sweet that I can fit it all into this singular post. It ran from 24th October until 3rd November this year. I was in Amsterdam for the opening weekend and know I missed some excellent events. I love the book talks, mostly in Blackwells on Oxford road and there were even more of those this year it seems, most during this weekend. I was available for most of the week to reprise my role as a STEM Ambassador but was only allocated 2 days, friday and saturday. Never mind, this means I can attend events as a visitor myself! Such a bummer that some of the ones you want to attend actually clash. So I found my self attending a couple of afternoon book sessions during the week and I loved them as I always do. The first speaker was a lovely witty guy called Caspar Henderson who obviously loved animals and he spoke about animals which are rare and which many people don't know about. His book was called 'The book of barely imagined beings'. I had initially thought, it was going to be about yetis etc! Silly me. As I enjoyed his talk so much I bought his book.  I always do, a good job I love reading. The following day I saw another wonderful talk by Tim Birkhead, a man who has spent 40yrs studying birds, specifically  the guillmot which looked alot like a penguin to me! Once again another entertaining talk by a guy who was teaching us what it is like to be a bird. He made it sound so fascinating and of course I bought his book Bird Sense and had it signed. I learned that birds can't detect symmmetry but can see in ultraviolet. If you ever make it to this festival, I highly recommend the book readings. There were of course many other amazing events this year, the main themes being brains and the icelab. The icelab was in the rafters of the 1830 and I found myself here for 2 sessions. Firstly on friday I spent the afternoon in the powerhall reuniting with Becky. Lovely girl though my memory fails to inform me of which festival/events we have met up at before. We were doing an event called doodlebots which was tons of fun. Before we could help the kids though we had to make one ourselves and both rose to the challenge admirably. They consist of a motor and 2 AA batteries, a piece of card and 4 marker pens and you need tape and a hole puncher. After making the doodlebots the idea was to place them on a sheet of paper, switch them on and let them go and let them draw a work of art. However, we both failed at this but thankfully the kids did a whole lot better and were able to take their masterpieces home. This is such a fabulous idea! The dads and grandads were really engaged and on a mission to make it work! A truckload of fun. Then my evening session took me to the icelab where I saw a fascinating talk about architecture in extreme enviroments. David Garcia talked us through a series of projects showing us new ways and new approaches to architecture.
Saturday afternoon began with a disney movie called Eight Below back in the icelab. It was an adventure involving huskies and I had to fight back tears but thankfully it was a happy ending. The festival was over far too quickly for me and my evening session saw me in Waterstones on Deansgate. I say this dear readers, as if you all know Manchester. Forgive me :) This was my first time in this bookshop myself, and the other volunteer and I, Meghan, had time for a coffee in the huge coffee shop. This talk was by tv astronomer Mark Thompson who gave a great talk about the cosmos. This talk was aimed at anyone who wanted to get into astronomy but can be enjoyed by experts too. Nobody in the room owned a telescope! Yes, I bought his book and was saddened that the festival is over once again. It was wonderful to see the MOSI team again and I hope to do this again next year. Always a resounding success. Love it!        

Coming soon...

Well the countdown is on to the Manchester Science Festival! Three nights ago I had my briefing at MOSI. They expected me to be late as I was going there straight from work, but it was over with quicker than I expected.I missed Marieke's talk but it was nice to see her and everone else again. I enjoyed the eveing and of course have a festival program. Naturally there are lots of awesome events and things to see once again. Fun for kids of all ages :) As a fan one thing I am excited about is the Dr Who event. I hope you can all get to see some of the festival. I am looking forward to it immensely and though interrupted by a trip to Amsterdam for a completely different kind of festival I will be there most afternoon and evenings. If you know me or even if you don't, please come see me and say hi. I also can't wait to see what colour t-shirts we have this year.

Love Sarah

Manchester Science Festival 2013

Not long to go now, this years Science Festival takes place between 24th October and 3rd November. I am proud to say I have signed up to reprise my role as a STEM Ambassador and I shall be there for most of the festival. I say most because during the first weekend I shall be in Amsterdam attending a completely different kind of festival :) If you are in Manchester at the time and planning to go to the science festival please do say hello if you see me.

You can learn all about it and see whats on here:  http://www.manchestersciencefestival.com/

Hope you can make it

how does a quantum computer work?

My YouTube subscription doesm mean I get emailed some amazing videos to watch. I never knew how a quantum computer worked until I was sent this video about it. I found it fascinating and am happy to say that I've learned something today. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did :)

http://youtu.be/g_IaVepNDT4

About my last post, voting has been closed and the lucky deep space travelers have been chosen. I wasn't lucky enough and my highest postion was in the 1100's. I would have felt excited and privileged to have gone.This is an opportunity which doesn't come along very often. To be honest I had this realistic view of not really making it into the top 200 but I can say I tried and it was alot of fun. Congratulations to Rachana who did make it. Well played and well deserved! xxx

Please, please vote for me!

Way back in January I learned about something called The Lynx Space Academy from my friend Rachana. They want to take people into deep space and I feel this is an opportunity too good to miss. To be in with a chance you  need to be amongst the top 200 people. Rach joined and in no time at all she has rocketed (excuse the pun!) into the top 50. I don't know how she did it but I'm very pleased for her.Inspired and encouraged by her I joined myself. I still have a long way to go as you can see and my highest position so far has been 1166.  Please go and vote for me, I will be eternally garteful and be happy to return the favour some day. The link is here

https://www.lynxapollo.com/en_GB/106420/sarah-murray

You can vote more than once using different browsers and email combinations. I don't know how much voting time is left but please give a girl a helping hand. Thank you, so so much!

I wish you all a good week and I'll be back when the voting is over and decisions made. Good luck and well done Rach

xxx

My reflections of 2012

My how time does fly especially when you are having fun and yes its that time of year again. That time when many of us look back over the passed 12 months. For some of us it will have been a good year but unfortunately for some, maybe not so good. For me personally I feel it was a good year, certainly a good time to be british, and so I thought I too would put my thoughts into a blog post. In early January I signed up to do the Amsterdam Marathon which mean't I started the year in training for this already, so no more alcohol or junk food for 10 months. Anyway more about this event later on. I have always loved the TED conferences/talks and am very pleased they are as popular as they are now, thanks to the internet. Just so much innovation and inspirational stuff going on all over the world. This means I had a secret longing to attend a TED Talk but thought that such a thing was still a long way off. Anyway my luck was in this year as I attended 2 local TEDx talks, both at Salford. The first was TEDxSalford 1.0 at the Lowry Centre at the end of January. This was an all day event which didn't disappoint, I really really enjoyed it and all over the speakers were amazing and so inspirational. However, one talk stood out among the rest and I still think about it now and again. It was a talk given by a mystery guest who was a NASA astronaut. His name is Col. Ron Garan and the reason I loved his talk was because he talked of changing the world and in a way which I have always felt. I.E. all countries should get along and work together to effect change.I truly believe that this is the only way to make a real difference in the long term. Listen to his amazing talk for yourselves.



The end of March was a very exciting time and I would say the highlight of my year. There was a convention taking place in Charlotte, North Carolina called 'The Mad Monster Party' and Rutger Hauer was going to be there autographing things with all proceeds going to his non-profit organisation 'Starfish' which helps HIV+ women and kids all over the world and has done so for 12 years. I went along for the whole weekend as a helper and it was the best fun!It was so good to meet more lovely people and a few friends whom I'd so far only known via the net. Meeting friends always adds to the fun for me. Of course it was a real treat helping out Starfish and hanging around with Rutger and the team. This year I personally am celebrating 10 years of supporting and fundraising for them.Here is a photo of us all.

I was sad when it ended but wouldn't have missed it for the world.
Early April saw me back at Salford for TEDxSalfordChange. This event was half a day and free to attend. It included a live link up to Berlin where one of the speakers was Melinda Gates. As usual and as you would expect from TED, all talks were terrific. The Gates Foundation were co-organisers of this event and you can find out about it and listen to the speakers on their Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/events/371422082892332/
Whilst americans celebrated 4th July, physicists were very excited and happy to have discovered the Higgs-Boson particle at the LHC in CERN, Geneva. This completed the standard model and is just a very small blip on a graph but great news for the science world. 
This year our queen, Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee
, 60 years on the throne. Alot of events celebrating this happened nationwide especially in early June. The end of July saw another exciting event the Olympics from London. I am not a great lover of sports especially watching it and have heard many comments about how we can host it given the state of our economy and heard many people including co-workers moaning about taxes etc. Despite not being a sports watcher I disagree with this view. I feel proud that the UK is included and takes its turn to host the games. I loved the enthusiasm for it which seemed to dominate Twitter at the time.
In early July I was in talks with a prof from Tel Aviv University about the possibility of me spending 3 years over there doing AIDS research. What a career change that would've been. However it was not mean't to be and there is no point in dwelling on it.
August was a sad month as the world said goodbye to first man on the moon Neil Armstrong. We drank a whisky at our bedtime to commemorate his life and mark his passing. RIP xxx

 The end of August also saw me revisiting one of my favourite cities, the beautiful belgian city of Ghent. We spent 4 nights here before I return to work and it was my other half Glynn's idea. I worked at the university here back in 2001 and loved it. A medieval city with great history and gorgeous views wherever you look.  See for yourself.

The end of October saw me in Amsterdam running the marathon I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I wanted to mark my 10 years of running and fundraising for Starfish by running in my favourite foreign city so here I am. I also met a couple of dutch friends whom I'd only known online up until now. They are also great Rutger Hauer fans and supporters of Starfish. I can now also say that I have ran around an olympic stadium. I have got used to that idea now but it still thrills me!

 Not long after this was over with I signed up for the Liverpool Half Marathon which is 17th March 2013. Needless to say I am not in training for this yet and am enjoying my window of eating and drinking what I jolly well like thank you.
This year ended on a sad note with the death of a national treasure, everyones favourite presenter of astronomy Sir Partick Moore just missed reaching 90. About 11 years ago I had the pleasure of watching him lecture at my university here in Manchester. He was introduced by Astronomer Roayl Martin Rees and of course he was talking about the universe. He had his famous monocle and xylophone with him. Afterwards I watched others queue up to get his autograph and kicked myself for not having anything with me he could sign. So I tried to talk to him outside the lecture room afterwards. He was only interested in handing out flyers promoting Jodrell Bank though. I have no clue what I would have said to him and he was a huge guy. He will always be missed RIP xxx

 Well I think thats everything, I certainly hope I haven't missed out anything of note from this year. It only remains for me to thank you for reading. Thank you :) and also...........Happy New Year! Celebrate it safely and I hope that 2013 is incredibly good to us all. I am optimistic. Lots of love xxx