Chinese Press Coverage

For the last two weeks I have been in China, attending the 28th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union. I was invited to give one of four "Invited Discourses" at that meeting, on the topic of "A Zoo of Galaxies". The powerpoint slides of my talk are available online. The talk was recorded and I'm told will be made available online, but I don't think that's happened yet.

 An abstract of my talk (and a picture of me and one of my favourite galaxies) appeared on the front page of the first edition of "Inquiries of Heaven" (the IAU Daily Newspaper for the meeting).

(PS. The image caption should say "Former winner of IAU Fellowship" since I won it in 2008, and there have been 4 more winners since me!). 

The talk also attracted some coverage in the Chinese press.

Xinhua (sort of the Chinese version of Reuters) covered it here: Astronomy Project Hunts for Chinese Helpers, (or the Chinese version); since this a news feed it got picked up by a variety of Chinese newspapers.

I was interviewed for "Amateur Astronomer" (a Chinese astronomy magazine). Here's the first page of the article they sent me.

And a photo they took of me right after giving my talk when they gave me the previous edition of the magazine.

I also talked with someone from Southern Weekly (a Chinese newspaper with a readership of 8 million), who published this article (in Chinese). 

And I talked with people from China Radio International, who said they planned to run the story, but I'm not sure what came of that yet. They recorded me saying "Xin Xi Zong Dong Yuan" (our Chinese translation of "Galaxy Zoo"), and explaining (in English) what Galaxy Zoo is. 

Take 2 on Science Magazine Placement

Following my innocent tweet last month about the placement of New Scientist in a local Tesco Express I made a Storify of all the retweets and responses: Science Magazines are a Men's Interest. 

The original picture. Tesco Express, Gunwharf Quays, Sunday 22nd May 2012

Tesco promised to look into it. As of 10 days ago I hadn't heard anything and I happened to be in another local Tesco and saw this:

Take 2: Tesco Express, Elm Grove, Portsmouth, Monday 14th May 2012

So I thought I'd go again (but this time left it too late to make up a Storify it seems, so just a series of pictures of tweets below).

However I am still disappointed that Tesco have kept the "Men's Interest" category at all - it seems unnecessary. Any comments on that choice?

Science Magazines are a "Men's Interest"

Last weekend I was out shopping with my daughter, who loves looking at the children's magazines. So we paused for a while in the magazine section of our local Tesco Express, and I noticed this:

This annoyed me.... so I tweeted it, and to my surprise this is what happened (as a Storify story):

I never expected to get so much response from an off the cuff tweet.

 I'm still waiting to hear back further from Tesco. I was in the same shop on Tuesday afternoon and nothing had changed.

Wondering how widespread this is (in Tesco or other stores). Can we collect evidence of it happening elsewhere?

I'll continue to update.