Calendar Science

Grantham is gearing up for the start of a week-long festival of science and the arts inspired by the town's most famous son, Sir Isaac Newton. More than 100 events will take place over eight days from Friday 21 September including shows, exhibitions, presentations and outdoor performances.

Organisers of the Gravity Fields festival say it will explore, celebrate and interpret some of the big thinking in today's world as well as look back at where the modern understanding of science began. They've planned a programme of ticketed and free events centred around a statue of the scientist.

A national trust estate in North Derbyshire, which is home to more than 50 million protected ants, has been chosen for a new tagging project. University researchers are going to catch 1,000 northern hairy wood ants on the Longshaw Estate and fit them with radio transmitters to track them.

The University of Lincoln has announced plans for a new science park. A disused 10-acre site close to the centre of the city will be transformed in a partnership with the Lincolnshire Co-operative.

It will house a new School of Pharmacy to address a shortage of pharmacists in the area and it's hoped other businesses will move to the development which could be built within 18 months.

The Lincolnshire Co-operative says a shortage of pharmacists in the area makes it more difficult to provide an effective service. Its head of pharmacy Alastair Farquhar says he hopes this new school of pharmacy will attract more students to stay in the area with skills that are currently missing.

The development at the University of Lincoln will see a new School of Pharmacy opened which will allow it to help tackle a shortage of pharmacists in the area. Professor Andrew Hunter says he is hoping to be welcoming the first students to the department as early as 2014.

The disused land close to the main University of Lincoln campus which will be redeveloped is now owned by the Lincolnshire Co-operative which is partnering with the university on the new project. Its Chief Executive Ursula Lidbetter says putting a science park there has long been a vision.

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lincoln says the plan for a new science and innovation park is a hugely important project for the institution. Professor Mary Stuart says some of the work that will be done there, especially around cancer treatments, will make her personally very proud.

Lincoln is to get a new science and innovation park thanks to joint plans by the city's university and the Lincolnshire Co-operative. The two organisations are working together on an ambitious development to convert a ten-acre site in the centre of the city which is currently disused.

It is hoped the multi-million pound project on Green Lane near Tritton Road will become a world-class centre for science and technology expertise and will also house the university's proposed new School of Pharmacy which aims to address a shortfall in the number of pharmacists in the area.