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Previous Events
Upcoming Events
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Date: |
Tuesday 29th April |
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Title: |
Evolution and creationism: a matter of acceptance and belief |
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Speaker: |
James D Williams |
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Description: |
The Darwin-Wallace theory of evolution is 150 years old on
1st July 2008. As theories in science go, it has been one of the most controversial, being blamed for everything from ‘proving’ that God does not exist to ethnic cleansing and teenage gun rampages in the USA and elsewhere. Those who oppose evolution, the creationists, would like to see it removed from the school curriculum, or at the very least demoted.
Creationism is often seen as peculiarly American problem, plaguing the Southern States – the so-called Bible belt. But with a creationist museum already open on the South Coast of England and plans for a £3.5million creationist theme park in the Northwest of England, creationism is alive and well in the UK.
The latest creationist attempt at infiltrating and overturning science in our schools is Intelligent Design Creationism. It dons the mantle of science to try and persuade us that some things just cannot be explained without invoking a designer.
In this talk James Williams, lecturer in science education at the University of Sussex, looks at the different types of creationism from Old Earth creationism to the Young Earth creationists who subscribe to a literal or plain reading of Genesis and on to the roots and aspirations of Intelligent Design Creationism. Using examples from nature and investigating ‘how science works’, misconceptions about evolution are exposed, flaws in the design argument are highlighted and creationism as a belief system is explored.
Can evolution and creationism coexist and is a belief in God necessarily anti-science and anti-evolution?
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Date: |
Tuesday 27th May |
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Title: |
Astronomy with gravitational waves: looking at what the eye cannot see in the sky. |
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Speaker: |
Markus Schulte |
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Description: |
The LISA gravitational wave detector is a satellite-based instrument jointly developed by ESA and NASA, which will do astronomy using not light but gravity, to look at the universe. This will enable scientists to look farther out into the universe than ever before, seeing black holes and other objects which are not visible to conventional astronomy. Markus Schulte will introduce the exciting but not well-known science of gravitational waves and their use in astronomy and cosmology.
Dr Schulte studied physics at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, receiving his PhD in 2004, before moving to the UK to work at Imperial College, London first as a post-doctoral researcher and then managing the effort to build our part of this exciting project (and still sneaking off to the lab whenever he can). Imperial College is developing one of the key technologies necessary to tackle the measurement of gravitational waves in real life, the charge management device. This technology will be responsible for keeping disturbances to the measurement due to static electrical charging at a minimum. They are also beginning to work on ways to analyze the data which will be produced by the instrument, which will be launched in 2010 (Lisa Pathfinder) and 2018 (LISA). Dr Schulte also teaches maths at Birkbeck
College, University of London. |
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Date: |
Tuesday 24th June |
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Title: |
Genetics: human life and human rights |
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Speaker: |
Richard Ashcroft |
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Description: |
Richard will discuss the ways genetics may be changing the way we think about human life and its meaning and importance and the way human rights law and thinking can help shape or constrain what genetics is used for. In discussion we can examine issues like DNA data-banking, cloning, personalised medicine and genetic choice in reproduction to think about how we can and cannot control genetic research and its applications.
Richard is professor of bioethics at Queen Mary, a college of the University of London. For ten years, he taught medical ethics in the medical schools of Queen Mary, Imperial College and Bristol University and now teaches in Queen Mary’s law school.
Having trained in history and philosophy of science, Professor Ashcroft’s research has been focussed on ethical issues in scientific and medical research. He is particularly interested in ethics in clinical trials, in genetic research and in public health. He is deputy editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics and has written many articles in the academic literature, the most significant recent publication being
Principles of Healthcare Ethics (Wiley, 2007), which he edited with Angus Dawson, John McMillan and Heather Draper. He is married with a young son.
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Date: |
Tuesday 29th July |
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Title: |
Memories are made of this |
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Speaker: |
Eleanor Maguire |
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Description: |
How will you remember
to come to this talk? How will you find your way to the Braithwaite
Hall? How are you able to imagine and plan what you might do
afterwards? These are amazing feats, patients lives can be devastated
when they aren’t able to accomplish them. In my talk I will consider
how your brain allows you to perform these vital cognitive functions.
Eleanor Maguire is
Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Wellcome Trust Centre for
Neuroimaging, UCL, where she heads the Memory and Space research
laboratory at the Centre. In her work, Eleanor is trying to understand
how memories are formed, represented and recollected by the human brain.
The Centre explores this complex issue by studying healthy volunteers as
well as patients with memory impairments, using structural and
functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and neuropsychological
testing.
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Date: |
Tuesday 26th August |
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Title: |
Universities, the military and
the UK's science needs |
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Speaker: |
Chris Langley |
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Description |
Universities are a pivotal part of an educated
and democratic society. For centuries, they have been the source of
independent expertise in science, engineering and technology, as well as
centres of learning. However, their role has been changed over the
past twenty years by UK governments in light of the perceived needs of
business, and they now have a predominantly economic role. This compromises
their independence, openness and expertise. Those in universities are
increasingly seen as the means of reducing the costs of industrial research
and development, a role of especial concern for society when university
researchers participate in the development of weapons and the
high-technology infrastructure demanded by the modern military. Dr
Langley will describe the many UK military-university partnerships and
explain why this should be of grave concern to us all and to how we frame
our national security strategy in light of the many threats which the world
faces.
Dr Chris Langley is a freelance consultant and
writer operating as ScienceSources,
an independent consultancy, which facilitates and widens access
to science, technology and medicine, fostering a more publicly accountable
and open science. He has more than twenty-five years experience as a
science communicator and facilitator. Chris has a degree from
University College London in physiology and neurobiology and a PhD from the
University of Cambridge, where he also held a post-doctoral research post in
neurobiology. He has worked with NGOs and the non-commercial sector,
producing a wide variety of publications and advising on science
communication. Currently he is the principal researcher for Scientists
for Global Responsibility and has been involved in looking at the military
sector – both government and corporate – involvement in science, engineering
and technology. Scientists for Global Responsibility is an independent
UK-based organisation comprising natural and social scientists, engineers,
IT professionals and architects. It seeks to stimulate and support a
more ethically-based science and technology. More can be found at
www.sgr.org.uk. |
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Date: |
Tuesday 30th September |
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Title: |
Designer babies: fact or
fiction? |
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Speaker: |
Louise Naylor (Biosciences Dept,
University of Kent) |
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Description: |
Planning parenthood? Don’t leave it to chance.
Let our experts help you create that special baby to order ... More than a
million babies have been born through IVF and other assisted conception
techniques. Explore the facts and the fiction behind the headlines. As
reproductive medicine continues to push back the boundaries of parenthood,
debate the extent to which we can or should manipulate human life in this
way. Come and hear about the recent scientific advances in this area (from
conception to cloning) and discuss the ethical implications for mankind.
Dr Louise Naylor joined the University of Kent
in 1989 as a Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer, in Biochemistry – a post she
held for fifteen years. In 2000, she was seconded to the Office for Quality
Assurance and Validation to support departments preparing for Subject Review
and became Head of the Unit in 2006, following the merger of quality
assurance and enhancement activities at the University. Louise leads a team
responsible for the initial and continuing professional development of
academic staff, curriculum and educational development including e-learning,
the quality management of learning and teaching and providing student advice
and guidance for effective learning. |
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Date: |
Tuesday 25th November |
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Title: |
Utopia theory - the physics of society |
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Speaker: |
Philip Ball |
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Description: |
Are there 'laws of society' in the same way as there are laws of physics – inevitable rules that govern the way people behave and organise themselves collectively? And if so, can we use them to find better ways to live? Philip Ball will show how the social, economic and political sciences stand to benefit from tools and concepts borrowed from a seemingly unlikely source: statistical physics, the science of large numbers of interacting, inanimate particles. He will argue that, to understand and perhaps to predict human behaviour, sometimes the social sciences need to worry less about the psychology and idiosyncrasy of individuals and should focus instead on the ways that collective decisions arise spontaneously from their interactions. These ideas can be applied to phenomena as diverse as traffic flow, economics, voting and international relations.
Philip Ball is a freelance science writer and a consultant editor for Nature, where he worked as an editor in physical sciences for over ten years. Now Philip writes about anything that takes his fancy - generally with a scientific slant, but his current books (a study of Gothic cathedrals and the "twelfth-century renaissance and a novel) show that this can end up pretty much any place.
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