Launched 1998

 

Monday April 23d

Date:	October 18th 2004
Title:	'Medicines Out Of Control'
Speaker:	Charles Medawar, Director of Social Audit.
Description:	The question of how scientific research is funded, monitored, published and then used is at the heart of the current debate about the antidepressant Seroxat. As far as the patient is concerned, is the pharmaceutical research objective? Is all of it published? Is it properly monitored? Are the warnings in the packet complete and truthful? Is the regulatory body independent and efficient? Or is the medical profession in the pocket of the big pharmaceutical companies? Social Audit has been monitoring relations between patients, the regulatory bodies, the pharmaceutical companies and the research community now for 20 years, and Charles Medawar appeared in the Panorama TV programme last Sunday. He is one of the few independent authorities on this highly contentious and important area.
Date:	November 8th
Title:	'What We Don't Know About The History of Life'
Speaker:	Yan Wong, Evolutionary geneticist, Leeds University
Description:	We can deduce the history of life from the fossil record and, increasingly, from informed analysis of current organisms and their DNA sequences. Three Richards - Southwood, Fortey, and Dawkins - have written recent popular science books describing the surprising amount of detail that is known and generally agreed upon by scientists. But although recent analyses of DNA, as well as new fossil finds, have revolutionised our understanding of the past, they have also crystalised debate around some key areas of earth history. Yan will introduce some of the "dark ages" in the history of life, along with topics that raise heated discussion  among scientists. Unsurprisingly, controversy surrounds such distant events as the origin of animals, the origin of the eukaryotic cell, and the origin of  life itself. More unexpectedly, even comparatively recent events such  as the origin of our own order, the Primates, are currently being  argued upon in the scientific literature. Given the lack of consensus, these topics are ripe for speculation. It should be a lively evening. Hope to see you there.

Date:	February 15th 2005
Title:	'The Sperm's Tale'
Speaker:	Prof. Tim Birkhead,  Sheffield University.
Description:	Male fertility has become a talking point in recent years and also a subject for increased research. What do the results tell us, and are males underperforming in the evolutionary advance?

 

Date:	Monday September 12th . 8 pm 2005
Title:	'Why Most Things Fail – Evolution, Extinction and Economics'
Speaker:	Paul Ormerod
Description:	Is there any connection between biology and economics? How is it that phenomena as diverse as stock market crashes, biological phenomena and contacts on the World Wide Web are described by a ‘power law’ in which the frequency of an event falls away with the square of its size?  Are there deeper forces at work? Paul Ormerod, the speaker this evening, has written a book exploring these ideas and examining the principles of success and failure in the natural and human environment.

Date:	Monday October 3rd 7.30 pm
Title:	'Complete Laws of the Universe'
Speaker:	Prof. Roger Penrose
Venue:	Ilkley Playhouse
Description:	As part of the Ilkley Literature Festival a Café Scientifique is taking place with Prof. Roger Penrose. He will be talking about his new book ‘Complete Laws of the Universe’. The event is at 7.30 pm at the Ilkley Playhouse. Check with the Literature Festival Office whether you need to get a ticket.

Date:	Tuesday October 11th 8pm
Title:	'Sick and Tired'
Speaker:	Dr. Nick Read
Venue:	The Old Police Station, 106 Harrogate Road
Description:	‘Sick and Tired’, which draws attention to one of the most important public health issues of our time – over half the visits to doctors in the UK are for medically unexplained illnesses like chronic fatigue Syndrome, Post Traumatic Stress disorder, Fibromyalgia Syndrome, etc. Dr. Nick Read suggests that the context of these diseases is increasing social isolation and the complex demands of modern life. Therapeutic focus needs to shift if these ailments are to be addressed.

Date:	Monday October 31st 8pm
Title:	Science and Belief
Venue:	The Old Police Station, 106 Harrogate Road
Speaker:	Prof. David Knight
Description:	Is science founded on experiment and observation? Prof. David Knight says no, it is based on imagination and belief. But if belief is going beyond the bounds of reason how do scientists know what to believe in? David Knight looks at examples from the history of science to find how the conflict between reason and imagination can be explained.

 

Date:	Monday September 26th . 8 pm 2005
Title:	'Beam Me Up Scotty! – Quantum Entanglement and Supercomputers '
Speaker:	Vlatko Vedral
Description:	Einstein didn’t believe in Quantum theory and was sceptical of quantum entanglement, which he called ‘Spooky action at a distance’. Two ‘entangled’ particles are connected because the fate of one depends on the other – even if it is at the far side of the universe. It sounds crazy, but was recently proved to be true and could be the basis of teleportation, as in StarTrek. This is a chance to get to grips with quantum theory, as explained by Vlatko Vedral, professor of Quantum Information Science at Leeds University.

Date:	Monday March 6th
Title:	Déjà vu
Speaker:	Chris Moulin, Leeds University
Description:	Many of us will have experienced déjà vu – the uncanny feeling of already having seen something that is happening for the first time. What is going on? Is it evidence of a previous existence, a paranormal connection, crossed wires in the brain or a breakdown of memory? And what is the role of memory in déjà vu, since there is often no evidence of a previous similar experience? When déjà vu was first described, over a hundred years ago, it was associated with the paranormal. So are we in the field of psychology or parapsychology? Chris Moulin is from the Psychology Department of Leeds University.

Date:	Monday May 8th
Title:	Visions of the deep
Speaker:	Ron Douglas, City University London
Description:	Over seventy per cent of the Earth is covered with water, so by surface area alone the aquatic environment is the largest habitat on the planet. However, life on land is more-or-less two-dimensional -  most organisms live within a few metres of the ground - but the ocean is a truly three-dimensional world, with an average depth around 4000m. Over ninety-nine per cent of the world’s habitable space is deep-sea (usually defined as depths greater than 200m) arguably making it a diverse and important habitat. However, because it is also a very hostile environment, much of its biology remains a mystery. Ron Douglas’s work is in researching deep-sea creatures, often in remote parts of the world. In particular, he is studying bioluminescence, produced by eighty per cent of deep sea creatures. This is a means of communication, preying, confusing predators and camouflage. Unusually, this presentation will have visuals, to enable us to see what these creatures see. It will also be the story of how difficult this research is.
Date:	Monday May 22nd
Title:	Lost for words
Speaker:	Dan Everett, Manchester University
Description:	The Piraha people of the Amazon basin are unusual because their language has a very small vocabulary and they appear to have no myths and no words for numbers or colours. They also have no words for abstract concepts, so that speakers cannot talk about things beyond their direct experience. They are a puzzle for both anthropologists and linguists. How does their language affect their thinking? How do they explain the world they live in? Dan Everett is a linguist who has lived with and studied this tribe. He believes that their language is not just a curiosity but a nail in the coffin of Chomsky’s theory of innate language, which has become so powerful in the last twenty years. Thus the Piraha’s simple concrete vocabulary may be the death of a famous abstract concept.

Date:	Monday 10th July
Title:	The evolution of co-operation
Speaker:	Andrew Colman, Leicester University
Description:	Robert May, ex-President of the Royal Society, began his presidential address in 2005 by saying ‘The most important unanswered question in evolutionary biology and more generally in the social sciences, is how co-operative behaviour evolved and can be maintained in human and other animal groups and societies’. The problem of the balance between self interest and co-operative behaviour stretches from the evolution of alarm calls in birds and animals, to public health crises like MMR, to the over-fishing of herring in the North Sea. Why should selfish genes co-operate with unrelated genes?

Date:	Monday 25th September
Title:	What is a gene?
Speaker:	Yan Wong, Leeds University.
Description:	The received wisdom is that genes are like beads on a string, and that the beads determine specific characteristics of a plant or animal. That view is now hotly contested and is seen as grossly old-fashioned by many geneticists. Research around the Human Genome Project has shown that genes can move within the DNA molecule, be split, turned on and off by molecular switches and regulated by RNA. Some researchers are suggesting that the word ‘gene’ is redundant. We seem to be entering a ‘post-genomic’ age where the gene will no longer be so dominant in our understanding of biological inheritance. Where does this leave subjects like genetic engineering and medical genetics? Yan Wong wrote The Ancestor’s Tale with Richard Dawkins and now researches evolutionary genetics.

Date:	Monday 30th October
Title:	Chemical and biological warfare - do scientists need a code of conduct?
Speaker:	Alastair Hay
Description:	Since 9/11, the threat from chemical and biological warfare has been high on the news agenda. However, in science the agenda has been different: what should scientists be allowed to research, what should they be allowed to publish and how should research be conducted and to what purpose? Establishing a code of conduct has become a major international concern and whether the code should be voluntary or mandatory is a key question. Should emerging areas of chemical and biological research be licensed – and if so, by whom?  The relationship between rapidly developing technologies, the speed of information flow and the possible abuse of results makes these questions difficult to resolve but they need to be addressed. And if this applies to chemical and biology now, what other areas of science are also likely to be censored? Professor Hay is a leading international figure in this area and has been active in promoting an international Code of Conduct.

Date:	Monday 13th November NB 7pm start!!!
Title:	Ernest Jones - "Freud's Wizard"
Speaker:	Brenda Maddox
Description:	No scientist becomes famous until their ideas are popularised, and this was certainly true of Freud. Jones was not only Freud’s biographer but also friend, supporter, publicist and the person who persuaded the British government to accept him, as a refugee from the Nazis, in 1938. He also dissuaded Freud from talking publicly about his belief in telepathy and his respect for Lamarkism. Jones was himself a psychoanalyst and the book raises questions about how popular Freud’s methods would have been in the English-speaking world without this champion. It also raises the problem of how scientific, or indeed useful, Freud’s ideas have been in medicine and psychiatry in the last hundred years. Please note that this meeting starts at 7pm and will finish shortly after 8.

Date:	Monday  11th December
Title:	The forensic use of bioinformation
Speaker:	Carole McCartney
Description:	Using bioinformation for forensic purposes, such as DNA sampling and fingerprinting, is now considered a routine part of the crime-solving process. The UK’s National DNA Database is the largest forensic DNA database in the world, containing profiles from over three million individuals. Samples can be collected from crime scenes and compared with those samples taken from people (with or without their consent) who have previously been arrested for a recordable offence. The database can be used not only to match samples to crime scenes but also to reveal other information about individuals that may lead to their detection, such as their sex, ethnic background, or the identity of family members. Those samples taken from those who are arrested (or victims and witnesses who so consent) remain on the database even if the person is not subsequently charged with an offence. This is the case regardless of the age or criminal background of the person arrested. These forensic uses of bioinformation have the potential to raise a number of ethical, social and legal issues concerning: - the interpretation of the bioinformation; - the collection, storage and retention of profiles and samples; - informed consent, privacy and confidentiality in the light of data protection and human rights legislation; - access to and use of forensic databases for purposes of research; - sharing of bioinformation for forensic purposes across international boundaries; and - governance of research conducted by or for forensic laboratories. The Nuffield council on Bioethics is holding a consultation on this subject and Carole McCartney, who lectures on law at Leeds University, is the project manager.

Date:	Monday 22nd January
Title:	Should we bury nuclear waste in Yorkshire?
Speaker:	Bruce Yardley
Description:	The disposal of nuclear waste has been one of the main bones of contention in arguments about nuclear power. As global warming moves higher up the agenda and energy reserves diminish, is it time to re-examine the options for nuclear waste? Is resistance to waste disposal based on practical problems or prejudice? Last summer the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) reported that deep underground disposal was the preferred choice for the long term management of the UK's existing radioactive waste, having weighed up a wide range of the risks involved from construction of the site(s), transport and long term effects. This brings the UK into line with, although a long way behind, plans in most other countries that have nuclear waste. There are a range of geological settings which are considered potentially appropriate for deep waste disposal, and some of them are present in the Yorkshire region, but what are the factors that are considered important? Given that Yorkshire is down-wind from Sellafield where the waste currently sits in much less secure surface storage, how good is the case for storing waste in Yorkshire, and what incentives would be needed for it to be considered acceptable? Bruce Yardley is Professor in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds and last year convened a meeting of the Geological Society of London that looked at the case for deep geological storage and reviewed the progress being made elsewhere in Europe.

Date:	Monday 12th February
Title:	Decoding DNA
Speaker:	Simon Shepherd, Bradford University
Description:	If DNA is the Book of Life, its meaning is far from clear. If a book is reduced to a continuous, uninterrupted sequence of letters, it becomes impenetrable gobbledegook, even if it is written by Jane Austen. However in 2001, Simon Shepherd created an algorithm which reconstructed ‘Emma’, word for word, from just such an uninterrupted string, despite being unacquainted with English vocabulary or syntax. He has now turned his attention to the string of A’s, G’s, C’s and T’s of DNA that make up the world's genomes. Prof. Shepherd picked up much of his experience during ten years cracking Russian codes in British Naval Intelligence. As soon as the DNA molecule’s structure was discovered, researchers realised that it contained at least one code was realized. That code, cracked in the 1950s and 60s, parses passages of DNA into three letter combinations that correspond to particular amino acids. But researchers now know there are other layers of biological information interspersed between, or superimposed on, the passages written in triplet code. This ‘junk’ DNA is now under close scrutiny, to find the codes that control or regulate all sorts of cellular processes. This is an area of worldwide research and Prof. Shepherd is at its cutting edge.

Date:	Monday 12th March
Title:	Free will and the workings of the brain
Speaker:	Max Velmans, Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Description:	The relation of free will to the workings of the brain is a matter not just of ethical concern but also legal responsibility. The discovery that that the brain prepares to perform an act around 350 milliseconds before the conscious wish to perform that act appears makes this concern acute.  Am I responsible for my acts or are these determined by my brain? Max Velmans has written extensively on the problems of consciousness. He suggests that we do retain ethical and legal responsibility but need to extend our concept of who we are to include not just our consciously experienced selves but also the preconscious and unconscious processing in our mind/brains.

Date:	Monday 26th March - Host Media Centre, Chapeltown
Title:	Art, science and intuition: from Leonardo to the Hubble telescope
Speaker:	Martin Kemp, Professor of Art History, University of Oxford.
Description:	Martin Kemp has written and broadcast extensively on imagery in art and science from the Renaissance to the present day. Leonardo da Vinci has been the subject of a number of his books and exhibitions. Increasingly, he has focused on issues of visualisation, modelling and representation.  The broad thrust of more recent work is devoted to a 'New History of the Visual', which embraces the wide range of artefacts from science, technology, and the fine, applied and popular arts that have been devised to create models of nature and to articulate human relationships with the physical world. A scientific diagram or computer graphic model of a molecule is as relevant to this new history as a painting by Michelangelo. He writes a regular column on 'Science in Culture' in the science journal Nature, an early selection of which has been published as Visualisations (OUP, 2000).  Many of the themes of the Nature essays are developed in Seen and Unseen (OUP 2006), in which his concept of 'structural intuitions' is explored. I have been trying to get Professor Kemp to talk to us for a number of years, so I am looking forward to this meeting.
Date:	Tuesday 18th September
Title:	Is RNA the new DNA?
Speaker:	Peter Meyer
Description:	In June this year The Economist ran an editorial entitled ‘Biology’s Big Bang’. It concerned recent research into RNA – the so-called ‘messenger molecule’ between DNA and the cells. The editorial compared the new results on RNA to the discovery of the neutron in atomic theory – a discovery which was critical to the understanding of the nucleus and the subsequent development of the atomic bomb. However the description of DNA by Crick and Watson in 1953 was hailed by many as the idea underpinning all of biology, and it led ultimately to the quest for the human genome and the sequencing of other plant and animal genomes. But is DNA the key to biology or is RNA the new key – because it seems to be able to switch genes off and on in developing plants and animals and is at the centre of the evo/devo controversy (which used to be nature/nurture)? Or is there no real key? Has a combination of the media, commercial and political interests and lazy thinking led to the received wisdom that our lives depend on the sequence of genes we are born with, and the CGAT sequences within the genes? Peter Meyer, Professor of Plant Genetics at Leeds University, will address these questions and the importance of the new findings on RNA.
Date:	Tuesday October 16th
Title:	The Mathematical Symbol e
Speaker:	Richard Elwes, mathematician and science writer.
Description:	The number known as e has been cropping up in a bewildering variety of contexts since its discovery over three hundred years ago. It's vital in fields from computer science to epidemiology, the law of compound interest to the inner structure of a nautilus shell and Bach’s well-tempered scale to the art of M.C. Escher. To mathematics, its importance cannot be overestimated. In particular, e is key to unravelling a fundamental question about the nature of numbers.  Transcendental numbers are confusing objects that lie at the far end of the spectrum from the more familiar whole numbers. After 150 years of study, much about them remains mysterious and most efforts to make sense of them centre on e, itself transcendental. In the 1960s, Stephen Schanuel made a huge conjecture about e, which, if proved, would settle hundreds of outstanding questions in transcendental number theory and beyond. We'll (gently!) discuss recent evidence from the world of mathematical logic that Schanuel's conjecture may indeed be true. In a surprising twist, this turns out to have intriguing consequences for our efforts to understand the quantum universe.

Date:	Tuesday November 20th
Title:	Science and Religion - Dissent over Descent
Speaker:	Steve Fuller
Description:	Steve Fuller adopts a revisionist theory of Intelligent Design. Instead of seeing at as the modern and respectable face of Christian fundamentalism he argues, from a historical perspective, that Intelligent Design was responsible for the 17th Century Scientific Revolution and has helped to build modern histories of physics, mathematics, genetics and social science. This confident, even arrogant, view of humanity has enabled the West to triumph in the modern era. Steve Fuller is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick.
Date:	Tuesday January 22nd
Title:	Academics, science and the drug industry - leaving patients blowing in the wind
Speaker:	Aubrey Blumsohn
Description:	Aubrey Blumsohn will discuss important ethical issues arising from the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and universities. Who has ownership of, and rights of access to, data? How accountable for the final results are all the authors of scientific papers? Is it possible to ‘spin’ the results of scientific experiments and data so that they look more acceptable? How ethical are the drugs regulators? How independent are medical journals? And where does this leave the patient?
Date:	Tuesday February 5th
Title:	The Science of Sleep
Speaker:	Jim Horne (Sleep Research Centre)
Description:	ZZZZZZZZ ZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Wake up! It’s not another geneticist hypnotizing you with repeated references to RNA, DNA, ACG and T, etc. This is The Science of Sleep – not the dream sequence film, but a look at how and why we sleep.  Have you ever fallen asleep unexpectedly (theatre, cinema, bath, etc)?  How does it change you if you don’t get a 'good night’s sleep'?  Have you ever seen a car swerve on the road and wondered if the driver’s eyelids may have closed for longer than a blink? Sleep  'knits up the ravelled sleeve of care', said Macbeth as he reached his low point and we all know that things can look better in the morning.  Surely there must be more to sleep than the idea that being tired makes you feel bad and being well rested makes you feel good. The Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University is the place where sleep is studied in detail. Prof. Jim Horne heads up the SRC and is the author of Sleepfaring, a book about naps, snoozes and insomnia.  He has also appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme. NB – the organisers can confirm that the event will finish in good time for everyone to get home for a full eight hours.