A few days last week in cold Pennsylvania visiting a number of life science institutes back to a cold London, where it has snowed in the last couple of days. Liu Yu gave his first departmental talk yesterday, which was slightly short but went well particularly if you think he was delivered it in English. Nana has her presentation at the beginning of March and so has time to learn from others before she has to stand up in front of the school. Greg is also facing a deadline - he has to produce his second year poster next month and is getting some odd behaviour out of SORTIE now it has parameters for UK trees in it. Aris is well on the way to running simulations for the badgers, cows and TB work we started in the autumn.