Leeds Cafe
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Launched 1998
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Monday April 23d |
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Date:
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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.
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Date:
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November 8th |
| Title: |
'What We Don't Know About The History of Life' |
Speaker:
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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.
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Date:
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February 15th 2005 |
| Title: |
'The
Sperm's Tale'
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Speaker:
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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?
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Date:
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Monday
September 12th . 8 pm
2005 |
| Title: |
'Why
Most Things Fail – Evolution, Extinction and Economics'
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| Speaker: |
Paul Ormerod
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| 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.
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Date:
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Monday
October 3rd 7.30 pm |
| Title: |
'Complete Laws of the Universe' |
Speaker:
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Prof. Roger Penrose |
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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:
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Tuesday
October 11th 8pm |
| Title: |
'Sick and Tired'
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Speaker:
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Dr. Nick Read |
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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:
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Monday October 31st 8pm |
Title:
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Science and Belief |
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The Old Police
Station, 106 Harrogate Road |
Speaker:
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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:
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Monday September 26th
. 8 pm
2005 |
| Title: |
'Beam
Me Up Scotty! – Quantum Entanglement and Supercomputers
'
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| Speaker: |
Vlatko Vedral
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| 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:
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Monday March 6th |
| Title: |
Déjà
vu
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Speaker:
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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:
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Monday May 8th |
| Title: |
Visions of the deep |
Speaker:
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Ron
Douglas, City University London |
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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:
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Monday May 22nd |
| Title: |
Lost for words |
Speaker:
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Dan Everett, Manchester University |
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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:
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Monday 10th July |
| Title: |
The
evolution of co-operation |
Speaker:
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Andrew Colman, Leicester University |
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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?
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Date:
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Monday 25th September
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Title: |
What is a
gene? |
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Speaker:
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Yan Wong, Leeds University. |
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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.
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Date: |
Monday 30th October |
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Title: |
Chemical
and biological warfare - do scientists need a code of
conduct? |
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Speaker: |
Alastair Hay |
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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.
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Date: |
Monday 13th November
NB 7pm start!!! |
|
Title: |
Ernest
Jones - "Freud's Wizard" |
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Speaker: |
Brenda Maddox |
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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.
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Date: |
Monday 11th December |
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Title: |
The
forensic use of bioinformation |
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Speaker: |
Carole McCartney |
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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.
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Date: |
Monday 22nd January |
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Title: |
Should we
bury nuclear waste in Yorkshire? |
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Speaker: |
Bruce Yardley |
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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.
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Date: |
Monday 12th February |
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Title: |
Decoding DNA |
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Speaker: |
Simon Shepherd,
Bradford University |
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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.
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Date: |
Monday 12th March |
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Title: |
Free will
and the workings of the brain |
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Speaker: |
Max
Velmans, Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths,
University of London. |
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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.
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Date: |
Monday 26th March - Host Media Centre, Chapeltown |
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Title: |
Art,
science and intuition: from Leonardo to the Hubble
telescope |
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Speaker: |
Martin
Kemp, Professor of Art History, University of
Oxford. |
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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.
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Date: |
Tuesday 18th September |
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Title: |
Is RNA the new DNA? |
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Speaker: |
Peter Meyer |
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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.
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Date: |
Tuesday October 16th |
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Title: |
The Mathematical Symbol e |
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Speaker: |
Richard Elwes, mathematician and science writer. |
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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.
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Date: |
Tuesday
November 20th |
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Title: |
Science and Religion - Dissent over Descent |
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Speaker: |
Steve Fuller |
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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.
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Date: |
Tuesday January 22nd |
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Title: |
Academics, science and the drug industry - leaving
patients blowing in the wind |
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Speaker: |
Aubrey Blumsohn |
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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?
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Date: |
Tuesday February 5th |
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Title: |
The
Science of Sleep |
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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.
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Date: |
Tuesday March 4th |
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Title: |
Dissent over descent: evolution's war on Intelligent
Design |
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Speaker: |
Steve Fuller |
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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 seventeenth-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.
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Date: |
Tuesday 6th May |
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Title: |
Ants, Bees and Altruism |
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Speaker: |
Francis Ratnieks, Sussex University |
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Description: |
Altruism is
defined as an action that, on average, decreases the
lifetime direct fitness of an actor and benefits one
or more recipients. The altruism of insect workers
has puzzled researchers for decades.
Altruism in nature is nowhere seen as plainly as in
insect societies, in which the workers sacrifice
most or all of their direct reproduction to help
rear the queen’s offspring. How did natural
selection, which normally favours increased
reproduction, cause individuals to help others at a
cost to their own reproduction?
This is a
controversial topic which has recently caused a
public argument between Richard Dawkins and E.O.
Wilson.
Inclusive
fitness theory suggests that high relatedness has
been key in promoting such altruism. Recent theory,
however, indicates that the intermediate levels of
relatedness found within insect societies are too
low to directly cause the extreme altruism observed
in many species. Instead, recent results show that
workers are frequently coerced into acting
altruistically. Hence, the altruism seen in many
modern-day insect societies is not voluntary but
enforced. Prof. Ratnieks will also discuss the role
of coercion in promoting altruism and cooperation in
other social systems, such as vertebrate and human
societies.
Francis is Professor
of Biology and Environmental Science at Sussex
University.
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Date: |
Tuesday 17th June |
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Title: |
Will we ever discover the origin of language? |
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Speaker: |
Gregory Radick, Leeds University |
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Description: |
In the early 1890s, the
theory of evolution gained an unexpected ally: the
Edison phonograph. An amateur scientist used the new
machine—one of the technological wonders of the age—to
record monkey calls that he then played back to the
monkeys while watching their reactions. From these
soon-famous experiments he judged that he had discovered
'the simian tongue', made up of words he could
translate, and containing the rudiments from which human
language evolved.
In
the early 1980s, a team of ethologists announced that
experimental playback showed certain African monkeys to
have rudimentarily meaningful calls.
Greg's recent book, The Simian Tongue,
charts the scientific controversies over the evolution
of language from Darwin’s day to our own. |
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