It's not all just about work at Siri Scientific Press

Although the main activity at Siri Scientific Press is the publication of specialist natural history books focused on palaeontology and entomology, there is more to us than that! We are also involved in academic research activities and are always happy to take a little time out for the fun things as well, in addition to trying to encourage youngsters with an interest in science and nature. On Tuesday and Wednesday we were happy to host Dean Lomax, the author of two of our titles: Dinosaurs of the British Isles and Fossils of the Whitby Coast. In addition to the discussions you might expect between an author and publisher, Dean made the day of a dinosaur-mad child (who was able to meet Dean and get her dinosaur book signed).

According to her mum, Gabs is still taking about her meeting with Dean. It is always a pleasure to encourage young minds.

The following morning we had a great workout in the local gym (Full Contact Performance Centre, Rochdale), almost certainly the most friendly gym in the entire world.

Early morning (7 am) in the gym ... A great way to start the day!

If that was not enough, we also got the opportunity to 'play around' with a brand new multi-million pound CT (computed tomography) scanner at the University of Manchester's Henry Moseley X-ray Imaging Facility. The scanner in question is currently being adopted for use in airports to screen baggage. It runs much more quickly than conventional machines whilst also providing much better images. The team at Manchester want to further test the capabilities of the technology (including developing new software) to see how it can be adapted for research purposes. Hence, we are probably the first to screen fossils using this technology. We are grateful to Dr Valeriy Titarenko for his invitation to visit with our specimens. We scanned a large Moroccan trilobite and a Brazilian fish ... but we will need to wait for some time to we see how the reconstructions turn out!

The fossils we took for scanning (this is why we need to go to the gym!)

Fossil scanning in progress!