BBC Focus Magazine

[M Paul Lloyd]

The Focus Forum is a place for science & technology based questions and discussion.
It is free and we sincerely hope that everyone will enjoy the experience as we seek to make science and technology more accessible to all in as light-hearted and friendly atmosphere as possible. Please note that all new accounts require manual moderator / admin approval in order to prevent misuse by people and spam bots. This means that new accounts will not be able to post or create topics until they have been cleared. Approving will happen as soon as is possible so please be patient, especially if you live in areas significantly behind or ahead of GMT, your account will be approved if legitimate but it is not an instantaneous process. When creating an account do not use an email address as the user-name, these will be removed. Please also note that the first post of any user is automatically entered into a moderating queue to be approved before appearing live on the forum as a further prevention against spamming.

You will need
1. Good manners.
2. A sense of humour.
3. English as the preferred language.

We respectfully request that the following points are taken into consideration when posting on this Forum:-

Defining the limits of what constitutes ‘Science & Technology’ can be difficult, as they cover such a diverse range of subjects, (science especially), with the term ‘social science’ being seen as something of a miscellaneous category which applies to a broad range of human activities past and present. However we have found from experience that the inclusion of such subjects as politics, religion, psychology, philosophy and other social interactions, which can all be grouped under the umbrella term of social science, frequently leads to discussions which have little or no productive outcome, are purely for the purpose of proselytizing and can even cause offense.

Please try to be as concise as possible when posting, if you are conversant with avatars, facilities exist that will allow you to illustrate your point, but if your material is not your original work a source of reference and permission for its use is required.

Copyright issues are of concern in that Photographs, video feed or written work posted on the forum must be the exclusive copyright of the person making that post or be properly credited and used under licence. We take no liability for anything posted in contravention of these rules and will delete any content that does not meet these requirements.

Threads on this forum often deviate from the original topic posted and provided such deviation does not cause undue concern or distress it will be tolerated, but please bear in mind the feelings and sensibilities of the person who made the original post and should such digression become pointless or protracted it is liable to be closed or removed.

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Please bear in mind that these are not rules but merely guidelines and as such the Moderators will judge each post on its individual merits in relation to prevailing circumstances and act accordingly, their decision is final and not open to debate.

Should you feel unhappy with any aspect of this forum please do not hesitate to bring this to the attention of the Moderators or any member of the BBC Focus Editorial Team.

With thanks,

Forum Admin'

Ger Leblique, M Paul Lloyd, Jamie Hetherington.