U = University

We were going back to University and this time for my least favourite subject - Science. Why you may ask, well for the week of "U" it also happened to be the World Science Festival at the famous New York University so it seemed too fitting not to give it a whirl.

NYU is sprawled across much of downtown Manhattan with the main artillery in Washington Square Park. This is where our Friday night lecture on "Mind over Matter: the Future of Thinking" was to be held.

After downing a quick bowl of rigatoni al ragu and bottle of chianti at Frankies on 2nd Avenue we were ready to go back to Uni days. However Uni days this was most definitely not. Everyone was a little older and a little more serious (well that's putting it lightly).

We sat up in the back of the gallery (in case we wanted to do a runner) and listened to interesting speakers, including one dude who basically was about 100 brains in one, Professor John Donoghue the founding chairman of the Department of Neuroscience at Brown and currently the director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science. He showed us his new toy - a robot that reads your thoughts and then acts them out - scary but incredible. He believes, in our generation, we'll see these robots become part of our everyday lives.

After about 45 minutes the old droopy lids in a lecture started to come back, now this was more like Uni days. We listened to a little more of the (sort of going over my head a bit now) lecture and then decided maybe we didn't need to stay right until the end, especially as we were the only ones not taking notes, clearly we were just spectators in this crazy science world.

NYU is really a very impressive University, amazing facilities. If you ever get the chance to visit it or attend an event there I'd recommend it.

Next up: V = Venezualan