|
Date: |
Monday 18th September |
|
Title: |
Bending minds - can technology
change who you are? |
|
Speaker: |
Martin Westwell |
|
Description: |
Martin Westwell is Deputy Director of the
Institute for the Future of the Mind at Oxford University and an
award-winning science communicator, named Scientist of the New Century
by
The Times and Novartis in 1999.
Martin started out in organic chemistry at
Cambridge University and then moved to Oxford, where he discovered
neuroscience, the biotech industry and a number of science and society
projects, including helping to found Cafes Scientifiques in Oxford in 2000 and
at the Photographers' Gallery in central London in 2005.
Martin will talk about the mind, the brain and how pills to make you
smarter, pills to make you forget, electrodes inserted into the brain and
devices to let you control computers just by thinking are technologies that
are either with us now or just around the corner. How do these technologies
and the new experiences they bring transform and bend the human mind? How
are we going to harness them to maximise the potential of individuals
without sacrificing their individuality? What roles do scientists play in
deciding how they are to be implemented?
|
|
Date: |
Monday 16th October |
|
Title: |
Mismatch: why our world no
longer fits our bodies |
|
Speaker: |
Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson |
|
Description: |
Peter Gluckman and Mark
Hanson discuss their forthcoming book. More details
here.
|
|
Date: |
Monday 20th November |
|
Title: |
Who do we think we were? Interpreting the first Warwickshire people |
|
Speaker: |
Steven Falk, Warwick Museum, Keeper of Natural History |
|
Description: |
Hand
axes some half a million years old
have been found in what is now
the Princethorpe
area of Warwickshire, in
the bed of an ancient river that (before the Ice Ages
completely re-formed the British landscape)
once flowed to East Anglia.
Who were these
first Warwickshire people? What were their origins and what is their
relationship to us? Illustrated by items from the Warwickshire
Museum, the Senior Keeper of Natural History, Steven Falk, will take
us on a six-million year journey, from Africa to the human race we
are today.
Download a
poster
for this cafe (pdf).
|
|
Date: |
Monday 18th December |
|
Title: |
The alchemy of wine: an
evening of theory and practice |
|
Speaker: |
Steve Smith, Coventry University |
|
Description: |
|
A
Christmas special: wine-tasting with a difference! Steve
will explain what goes into making a good wine, and give a
guided tasting of a variety of tipples, helping us learn to
distinguish what the wine-merchants’ terminology really
means …
Donation
of £3 (payable at the door) to cover costs of the evening.
E-mail
bcrowther@claremont95.freeserve.co.uk to reserve a place
if you don’t want to risk missing out. (But please don’t
reserve unless committed;
after 7.20, reservations will be passed on.)
Once the
room is full, people are still welcome to drink upstairs
until The Business of the evening is over. Bar will stay
open … with appropriately stocked bottles, we hope!
|
|
|
Date: |
Monday 15th January 2007 |
|
Title: |
Nano-technology in
developing countries |
|
Speaker: |
David Grimshaw,
Practical Action |
|
Description: |
Technology has often been seen as a driver
of economic growth and in the long history of mankind, has been used to
create surpluses that enable society to make advances in welfare. High
income countries currently gain much of their competitive advantage from
the development and innovation of new technologies, yet each wave of new
technology tends to increase the divide between rich and poor.
This talk will highlight specific examples
of technologies that are capable of redressing major inequalities in the
world and discuss the conditions that are necessary to make this happen.
Guardian readers will have been following
the work of Practical Action, one of the Guardian's two featured
Christmas Charity choices.
David is one of Practical Action's
international team leaders and is focussing at the moment on developing
technologies for purifying polluted and salt water for drinking.
|
|
Date: |
Monday 19th February 2007 |
|
Title: |
Who's afraid of avian flu? |
|
Speaker: |
Nigel Dimmock, virologist |
|
Description: |
Prophesies of a new
human pandemic – even worse than that of 1918 – followed the most recent
outbreak of Avian Flu. How seriously should we take this? Or is it just
a media panic?
•
144
different flu viruses peacefully coexist with wild birds as harmless
intestinal infections.
•
Only
three have become established in people (causing pandemics in 1918, 1957
and 1968), and evolved to the well-known respiratory infection. Will
this happen again? If so, when?
•
Previous pandemics caused widespread human illness and mortality,
killing 1-50 million worldwide in about one year. Can we expect the
same level of mortality – or even worse?
•
What, if anything, can we do to protect ourselves?
The virologist,
Nigel Dimmock, will give his opinion, based on forty-five years'
research, on these and related issues.
Nigel Dimmock is a
virologist who has spent over forty-five years researching influenza and
other viruses, including the common cold and HIV. He has worked in
Australia, Canada, Germany and the USA, but most of the time he has been
at Warwick University, where, for over thirty years, he has been taught
generations of wannabe virologists and immunologists.
He is
now an Emeritus Professor.
His has published
nearly 200 articles; very recently the 6th edition of the
text book ‘Modern Virology’ appeared. In 2006, he chaired the
Independent Government Review on Bird Quarantine, and
is
currently seeking
financial backing to market a revolutionary new treatment for
influenza.
|
|
Date: |
Monday 5th March |
|
Title: |
Science Pub Quiz - the Jug and
Jester |
|
Description: |
A slightly ‘off-piste’ Café Scientifique event, to feed into
National Science and Engineering Week – and as an excuse for a
bit of fun on an otherwise run-of-the-mill Monday night.
This is strictly NOT for boffins only! Boffins are extremely
welcome, however, particularly if they offer to join
less-scientifically-competent teams; we hope everyone will be
able to engage on some level, and score a point or two on
science fiction perhaps, on films or music, or food or
history…. and expand their knowledge a bit during the evening,
too.
Come alone, bring a friend or bring a whole team. The more the
merrier. £1 at the door. 7.30 for an 8.00 start.
The Jug and Jester is right beside the bus stop, outside
Leamington Parish Church, and a mere 5 minutes from the
Station. The function room is at the far end of the pub, in
Bath Street.
Download a
flyer for this event
here (pdf).
|
|
Date: |
Monday 19th March |
|
Title: |
Eat up! A little of what you
fancy does you good - was grandma right after all? |
|
Speaker: |
David Shuker |
|
Description: |
We’ve all seen scary headlines about
nutrition: red meat causes cancer! Does it? If so, how? What can
you do about it? Should you do anything about it? Do you give a XXXX
for it? What about alcohol ? How dangerous is a steak and beer? Come
and find out!
David Shuker is a member of the UK
Government Advisory Committee on Carcinogenicity of Consumer
Products. He was appointed chair of Organic Chemistry at the Open
University in 2000, later becoming Head of the Chemistry Department.
Awarded a Royal Society European Exchange fellowship in 1986, he
worked at the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
in Lyon to pursue his research interests in diet and cancer, before
returning to Britain to the MRC Toxicology Unit in Leicester. Here,
his research group gained a major contract with the UK Food
Standards Agency to develop biomarkers of dietary exposures. As well
as publishing over a hundred scientific papers, David has been the
academic consultant for all five series of the BBC's
Ever Wondered about Food?
|
|
Date: |
Monday 16th April |
|
Title: |
Nuclear fusion: powering the
future? |
|
Speaker: |
Chris Warrick, Education and outreach
manager for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority's (UKAEA) department for
public relations |
|
Description: |
Growing
energy requirements around the world are placing increasing
strains on our current energy sources. It is now almost
indisputable that energy generation by burning fossil fuels is
driving global warming. What if there were an energy source
that could provide an abundant supply of energy world-wide,
produce no air pollution and little, if any, nuclear waste?
Could fusion power be that source?
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun, joining light
atomic nuclei to form heavier atoms like helium. Here on Earth,
future fusion plants will imitate the sun, fusing deuterium and
tritium atoms at temperatures over 100 million °C, releasing
energy that can be used to generate electricity. The fuel for
this fusion is found in water, one of the most abundant
substances on the planet and therefore the world can be provided
with fusion energy for billions of years.
What's the catch? How far off is a world that is powered by
fusion reactors and is large-scale energy production truly
feasible?
|
|
Date: |
Monday 21st May |
|
Title: |
Biotrash: traffic in medical
garbage in a globalised India |
|
Speaker: |
Sarah Hodges, Warwick University |
|
Description: |
Science is now regularly outsourced to South Asia; call
centres, medical tourism or computer software engineering.
India is regularly spotlighted by the British media as one of
Asia's most recent economic 'miracles' and they talk about how
India increasingly affects our daily lives and economy in
contemporary Britain. But
what is the effect on India of these scientific developments?
Dr Sarah Hodges, lecturer in twentieth-century history at
Warwick University, is currently undertaking research in Chennai
(formerly known as Madras), one of India's fastest-growing IT
hotspots, to assess how science and technology are changing
everyday lives in South India. She examines the relationship
between highly-trained scientists and technicians, the ‘New
Wealth’, bio-medical research (and waste disposal) practices,
the economy of garbage re-use, and environmental concerns.
Private umbilical cord blood-banking services are marketed and
aggressively taken up; this is just one of a number of
developments where the promise of improved health becomes linked
with traffic in hospital waste, both legal and illegal. More
generally, garbage provides a source of income for many, as IT
provides increasing opportunities for its exploitation, and
there is a visible proliferation of new forms of techno-science.
|
|
Date: |
Monday 18th June |
|
Title: |
New planets: new thinking
about aliens? |
|
Speaker: |
Jack Cohen |
|
Description: |
With the recent
discovery of Earth-like exo-planets, we may wonder about the
possibility of finding humanoid life ‘out there’ (and what
exactly is ‘there’?) Jack Cohen’s claim is that, even if we
'ran Earth's evolution again', we wouldn’t find humanoid life
anywhere, but there is nevertheless lots of life. Not the same
creatures (no amoebae, reptiles, humans), but herbivores and
carnivores probably. Same play, different actors. He believes
there are intelligent aliens, but perhaps not extelligence
(knowledge outside
brains). Come along to be persuaded or to challenge; come with
your antennae waving!
Jack Cohen’s more recent
books – and he may bring copies along for sale – include the
very popular
Science of Discworld
1, 2 and 3 – co-written with Terry Pratchett and Ian Stewart –
used as 'bite-sized science' for general studies in many
schools; and (also with Ian Stewart)
Evolving the Alien (aka
what does a Martian look like?)
which probably relates more closely with this talk. He has also
written ‘a couple of s-f novels and several popular (New
Scientist) articles’.
|
|
Date: |
Sunday 12 August |
|
Title: |
Summer Picnic and guided tour
of Birmingham Botanical Gardens |
|
Speaker: |
|
|
Description: |
|
|
Date: |
Monday 17th September |
|
Title: |
Climate change and
agriculture: will extreme weather leave us hungry? |
|
Speaker: |
Brian Thomas (Warwick
HRI, University of Warwick Wellesbourne) |
|
Description: |
Models of global
climate change predict that the UK will become warmer, with drier
summers and wetter winters, which could increase agricultural
productivity. However, global warming is likely to bring a more variable
climate with increased probability and magnitude of extreme weather
events that may cause periodic crop failure. So, will extreme weather
leave us hungry?
Brian will discuss how
the risks to agricultural food production due to extreme weather can be
predicted. Some of the potential impacts and how production may adapt
will be discussed, including in the context of international food
production and supply chains.
|
|
Date: |
Monday 15th October |
|
Title: |
Sustainable energy |
|
Speaker: |
Matthew Rhodes (Encraft, Leamington) |
|
Description: |
UK energy
policy is currently in flux. It aims to support increasingly conflicting
objectives (economic growth, environmental well-being, fair access and
security of supply) using an increasingly diverse portfolio of competing
technologies (nuclear, wind, coal, gas, biomass, fuel cells etc). How can
science help overcome the challenges this creates? How should society take
decisions about energy policy today that may shape our communities and
landscape for the next century? Matthew will outline the issues, the
technical state of play, and touch on the way other countries have
approached the same problem. |
|
Date: |
Monday 19th November |
|
Title: |
Science and Un-common
sense! |
|
Speaker: |
Kevin Byron |
|
Description: |
Francis Bacon
was one of the founding fathers of modern science. However, his contribution
to this extraordinary revolution would, in modern parlance, be more closely
aligned with psychology. He identified habits of thinking that
sustained superstition, self-deception and pseudo-science during his time in
the seventeenth century.
Four hundred years later, are we any less prone to this illusory kind of
thinking? Is science really the pursuit of the rational? If so, why does so
much of it make no sense at all? Why do children find science hard?
Answers to
these questions will be explored in this presentation through a discussion
of the nature of intuition and counter-intuition. Throughout the
presentation you'll be invited to make intuitive guesses to some scientific
questions to demonstrate these ideas in action. There will even be a working
demonstration of a counter-intuitive machine - so come along and be
confounded.
Kevin Byron
received his PhD in Physics from the University of Hull and pursued a career
in research for some twenty five years. During this time he was an honorary
visiting lecturer at the University of Glasgow and a visiting Fellow at the
University of Salford and was elected to Fellowship of the Institute of
Physics. Whilst in industry he published over fifty patents, some eighty
papers in peer-reviewed journals and co-authored two specialist books. He
is a NESTA fellow and senior fellow to the Higher Education Academy. He is
currently researching scientific creativity and has written a monograph on
counter-intuition due for publication later this year. |
|
Date: |
Monday 17th December 7 for 7:30pm |
|
Title: |
Christmas Crackers: a
chemical demo evening |
|
Speaker: |
Mick Thompson, Myton’s very own ‘Dr.
Bunsen Honeydew’. |
|
Description: |
There is no
meeting in Café Rouge in December. But there is still a café event:
MYTON SCHOOL, Myton Road, Warwick – in the science labs
7:00pm Refreshments – mulled wine, fruit punch (non-alcoholic), mince pies,
cheese straws (any further contributions also welcome)
7:30pm Demonstration - Mick and his team of ‘Santa’s little helpers’
will take us through some of his favourite reactions, in a festive evening
of flashes and bangs.
9:00pm Adjourn to The Moorings for drinks/ convalescence (pub is on the
roundabout at Ford’s Factory, but still on the Myton Road)
Places are free but must be booked in advance since numbers are limited.
First Come, First Served - So PLEASE REPLY PRONTO if you want a place. We’ll
keep a reserve list too, so don’t despair …
Anyone who doesn’t get to the lab event can still meet up with other
Scientistas at an extended social in The Moorings after 9.00pm – which may
even be more fun! (At least the chairs will be more comfortable.) |
|
Date: |
Monday 21st January 2008 |
|
Title: |
A
mingled yarn: questions, meaning and models in science |
|
Speaker: |
Nigel Sanitt (The Panteneto Press) |
|
Description: |
Nigel’s talk – and ensuing discussion - will be broadly based
on his book Science as a Questioning Process (Institute of Physics
Publishing, 1996). In this, he argues for a view of science based on
questions rather than answers, and he attacks the idea of "objects" or
"truth" in science. |
|
Date: |
Monday 18th February |
|
Title: |
Science on the stage: some
plays and perspectives |
|
Speaker: |
Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (St Catherine's College, Oxford) |
|
Description: |
Kirsten’s
Shepherd-Barr’s recent book Science on Stage
(2006) provided a systematic look at the phenomenon of the science play
- theatrical events that weave scientific content into the plot lines of the
drama. Most people are unaware that the tradition of plays that deal with
science goes back at least to the Renaissance, and is still flourishing
today. Kirsten will give a sense of the ways science and scientists have
figured in the theatre in the past, and then focus on some very recent
examples, including an exciting but as-yet-untranslated Italian play. Her
talk will raise questions about the relationship of science to ‘culture’,
the role of science in our lives, and how ethical considerations in science
may best be explored. |
|
Date: |
Monday 17th March |
|
Title: |
Who’s afraid of the unconscious? Science and
psychotherapy today |
|
Speaker: |
Jean Knox |
|
Description: |
The incomprehension -
sometimes hostility - that exists between academic psychology and
psychoanalysis largely turns on the different models of the mind and the
nature of unconscious processes. Jean Knox believes that partisan attitudes
across these branches of scientific enquiry are preventing new
understandings of the unconscious to develop. A more integrated
understanding of unconscious processes requires both that therapists draw
on scientific research to help reframe analytic theory,
and that academic researchers develop tools to explore the problems analysts
encounter in their clinical practice.
One of the major fields
where this kind of collaboration has been particularly fruitful is that of
trauma. Knox’s view is that the most productive and exciting fields of
study are attachment theory and the early emotional relationships that are
the essential foundations for the development of mind. She will explain the
background and elaborate on her position, reached through many years of
therapeutic practice, as well as academic research.
Dr Jean Knox is a
psychiatrist and Jungian analyst. She is a Training Analyst of the Society
of Analytical Psychology, a Senior Member of the British Association of
Psychotherapists and Consultant Editor of the Journal of Analytical
Psychology. She has written extensively on the relevance of attachment
theory and developmental neuroscience. Her book
Archetype, Attachment, Analysis: Jungian
Psychology and the Emergent Mind was published in 2003.
|
|
Date: |
Monday 21st April |
|
Title: |
A brief history of
infinity |
|
Speaker: |
Brian Clegg |
|
Description: |
Infinity is so remarkable
and strange a concept that contemplating it has driven at least two great
mathematicians over the edge into insanity. Where did the idea of infinity
come from? Who defined and refined this paradoxical quantity? Why is
infinity, a concept we can never experience or truly grasp, at the heart of
science? How can some infinities be bigger than others? An exploration of
the most mind-boggling feature of maths and physics, this talk examines
amazing paradoxes and the people who devised and refined the concept.
Brian has a degree in
Natural Sciences from Cambridge, an MA in Operational Research from
Lancaster and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He spent 18 years at
British Airways but since 1994 has run his own company, Creativity
Unleashed. He began writing books at the same time and has come to
specialise in popular science with titles including
Light Years (an exploration of
humanity’s fascination with light),
First Scientist (a life of Roger Bacon),
A Brief History of Infinity,
The God Effect (on quantum
entanglement), The Man Who Stopped Time
(a biography of the moving picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge) and
The Global Warming Survival Kit.
Brian has spoken at the Royal Institution in London, at science
festivals including the Cheltenham Festival of Science and at Cafés
Scientifiques and schools across the country. |
|
Date: |
Monday 19th May |
|
Title: |
If computer science is
a science, why is IT so difficult to deploy? |
|
Speaker: |
Alec Cassells |
|
Description: |
There are
more war stories than we would like to hear about failed IT projects that
cost hundreds of millions, especially in Government projects, while
companies like Amazon, ebaY, Argos and many others run massive and
successful businesses for a fraction of the IT cost. What is the answer?
Is it incredibly simple, or mind-blowingly complex? Why can Argos tell me
if a hair-dryer is in stock in Coventry but not in Leamington – today – but
the NHS in Coventry does not have the results of my blood test in Warwick
after three months, and has no expectations of ever receiving them?
Alec Cassells has
worked in the Information Technology industry for 40 years. Most of his
work has been with engineering and manufacturing companies such as
Volvo, ABB, Ericsson and Airbus. Most recently, he has been a guest
lecturer at UK universities in departments of engineering,
telecommunications and computer science and has worked for several years
with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in support of their
Manufacturing Excellence awards.
|
|
Date: |
Monday 16th
June
|
|
Title: |
Embryos, eggs & ethics
- the history of infertility treatment |
|
Speaker: |
Jack
Cohen |
|
Description: |
|
|
Date: |
Sunday 20th July |
|
Title: |
Special Summer Event |
|
Speaker: |
|
|
Description: |
Guided walk through the
ancient Tocil Wood on the campus of Warwick University, part of the old
Forest of Arden, followed by a barbecue picnic (barbecue provided, bring
your own food and drink). Suitable for all members, young and old, and your
children, grandchildren, parents and grandparents – as well, of course, as
friends and more distant relations, or come alone. We’ll meet in Car park 6
(conveniently between the Wood and the barbecue site) at 4pm – and aim to
start the BBQ around 5.30. Email for more details.
|
|
Date: |
Monday 15th September |
|
Title: |
Brain surgery - a
beginner's guide |
|
Speaker: |
M.C.
Choksey |
|
Description: |
Everything you wanted to
know about brain surgery but were too afraid to ask. Mr Choksey, a
neurosurgeon at UHCW*, will take you on a journey through his 25 years of
travels through other people’s brains. No volunteers required (probably).
*University Hospitals,
Coventry and Warwickshire |
|
Date: |
Monday October 20th |
|
Title: |
Letting others into your
genes |
|
Speaker: |
Richard
Trembath |
|
Description: |
Biology and medical
research has been transformed through increasing knowledge of DNA sequence
and genetic mechanisms. Sections of the media suggest we are in grave danger
from an intrusive interrogation of individual genetic profiles. The talk
will focus on the challenges and opportunities of placing health care in a
proactive rather than reactive state.
Professor Trembath is a medical consultant in Clinical Genetics and a Senior
Investigator of the National Institute for Health Research. He is the
Director of the NIHR Comprehensive Bio-Medical Research Centre at Guy's and
St Thomas' Trust and King's College, London. |
|
Date: |
Monday November 17th
|
|
Title: |
Into the heart of matter -
the Large Hadron Collider |
|
Speaker: |
Helen
Heath |
|
Description: |
Helen Heath is a member of
the Particle Physics Group in Physics Department at the University of
Bristol and rejoices in the unwieldy job title of Reader in Teaching and
Learning - Physics. She writes:
“To investigate the smallest
building blocks of matter we need to build very big machines. The 27-kilometre long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), near Geneva, is the biggest of
these big machines and is due to start exploring matter at the smallest
scale in October 2008. This is the biggest scientific project since men were
sent to the moon and involves thousands of physicists and engineers. I hope
to be able to explain why one of those physicists has worked on the project
for over 10 years. Given the timing of this talk I should be able to share
the excitement of observing the first events at the LHC but may find myself
with some explaining to do instead.” |
|
Date: |
Monday
December 15th
Note: This meeting
will take
place at St Patrick's Irish Club, off Adelaide Road, Leamington. The club is
just north of Adelaide Bridge, opposite Dormer Place |
|
|
Recognising the
challenge posed by this time of year, we aim to marry scientific
enlightenment with scientific creativity ...
7.30 – 8.15
PART ONE: Once upon a
calculator... or It didn't happen that time …
Graham Reynolds
After a career working
as an engineer for Rolls Royce, Graham can reveal some of the Projects
that Failed – and that’s just the ones he knows about! Projects
relating to Defence and all aspects of Energy, which could have changed the
course of history (or not); projects that were stopped for political
reasons; projects you can’t believe were given serious consideration;
projects weird and wonderful; facts you wouldn’t believe. Among other
things you can hear about Graham’s part in delaying the Channel Tunnel, and
the secret German coffee pot proposal.
8.30 – whenever …
PART TWO: I’m sorry, I
haven’t a clue – about science
We finish off the year
with the antidote to science quizzes.
Borrowing from the
late, lamented Radio 4 comedy panel quiz I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue,
our not-so-resident Café-Sci quizmaster Paul will set you quirky questions,
terrible tasks and 'orrible ordeals to sort out collectively - all in the
name of comedy. Or science. Or, ideally, both. |
|
Date: |
Monday
January 19th
|
|
Title: |
How to catch a fly ball:
how perception and action let us interact with the world |
|
Speaker: |
Andrew
Wilson,
Research Fellow
at the Department of Psychology, University of Warwick |
|
Description: |
Perception is our way of staying in touch with
what's going on in the world. The most important thing that perception
allows us to do is to guide our actions, so that we can move around and
interact with things with minimal crashing into things.
Good old fashioned 'sensation-perception' stories suffer from one major
problem - if we tried to solve the problems of perceiving the world the way
they say we should, we would get run over by a lot of buses. These
problematic accounts attempt to explain how a perceiver might tie simple
sensations into meaningful perceptions via mental transformations, or
'representations'. The last 30 years have seen psychologists come at the
question from the other end, and so the 'perception-action' approach asks
three basic questions, in this order:
1. What, exactly, is it you are trying to do in a given task?
2. What resources do you have available? (e.g. perceptual information about
the world)
3. How might you use those resources to control your actions?
Andrew will sketch out how perception-action researchers use this basic
scheme to drive their research programme about skilled movements (like
walking, driving & intercepting things) by talking about an everyday example
- how do baseball outfielders catch a fly ball (or indeed, how that
cricketer catches the deep shot to square leg)? |
|
Date: |
Monday
February 16th
|
|
Title: |
100% organic food and farming - the future for a post-oil-based farming
industry? |
|
Speaker: |
Ulrich Schmutz |
|
Description: |
Ulrich’s career as a researcher in organic farming and horticulture shapes
his take on the possibilities – and possibility - of total organic
farming. He will draw on several projects he is involved with and other
current and published research. He will outline the strength and weaknesses
of the organic approach, and look at the fossil-fuel (aka carbon footprint)
issue and other environmental economic issues of current conventional food
production.
As everybody has to eat, and many grow their own food and even have some
farming links, Ulrich is hoping for a lively discussion - as some of his
organic-scenario thinking will demand personal lifestyle changes!
Ulrich Schmutz worked at Berlin University in Germany and as farm business
consultant in East Germany before joining the HDRA research charity (new
name - Garden Organic) at Ryton as an environmental economist seven years
ago. He has been working on research projects with various UK Universities
(including Warwick University’s organic research facility at Warwick HRI
Wellesbourne). He is also visiting Professor for Organic Farming at Bolzano
University, Italy. |
|
Date: |
Monday March 16th
|
|
Title: |
Robots with Biological Brains and Humans with
Part-Machine Brains |
|
Speaker: |
Kevin Warwick |
|
Description: |
This session looks at how implant and
electrode technology can be employed to create biological brains for robots,
to enable human enhancement and to diminish the effects of certain neural
illnesses. In all cases the end result is to increase the range of abilities
of the recipients. Kevin Warwick will indicate a number of areas in which
such technology has already had a profound effect, a key element being the
need for a clear interface linking a biological brain directly with computer
technology.
His emphasis is on practical scientific
studies, past and on-going, and he will chiefly focus on the use of
electrode technology, where a connection is made directly with the cerebral
cortex and/or nervous system. He will consider the future in which robots
have biological, or part-biological, brains and in which neural implants
link the human nervous system bi-directionally with technology and the
internet. |
|
Date: |
Monday April
20th
|
|
Title: |
Polymaths –
who needs them? |
|
Speaker: |
Alasdair Beal |
|
Description: |
Polymaths -
those brilliant people who range across all kinds of subjects - can be very
entertaining but what have they done for science? Are they just dilettanti,
'jacks of all trades but masters of none'? The orthodox view is that real
progress comes from the sustained efforts of specialists who concentrate
their efforts on a limited area of research in order to make the real
breakthroughs.
Alasdair Beal challenges this view and discusses the achievements of some of
history's great polymaths, including the Italian Leonardo da Vinci and the
Englishman Thomas Young. |
|
Date: |
Monday
May 18th
|
|
Title: |
Paradoxical Nature of the
Human Genome |
|
Speaker: |
Frank Ryan |
|
Description: |
From the perspective of
biology, the February 2001 revelation of the makeup of the human genome
could be seen as the Leviathan of the twenty-first century; successor to and
dependent on the twin Leviathans of (in the twentieth century) the structure
of DNA and (in the nineteenth century) Darwin's theory of evolution.
The bi-centenary of
Darwin's birth is an appropriate time to question the way his evolutionary
theory has itself 'evolved'. The traditional view, that evolution is
brought about through natural selection operating on random mutations, can
no longer be seen as the exclusive explanation of life.
Frank Ryan believes
there is now overwhelming evidence for a much more comprehensive explanation
of evolution which still respects Darwinian natural selection, yet has major
implications for medicine and society.
Frank promises his talk
will be challenging, unfamiliar - even startling - but also rewarding.
Frank Ryan is a consultant physician with Sheffield
PCT
and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Evolutionary Biology,
University of Sheffield. |
|
Oil - what would we
do without it? |
