|
Date:
|
September 27th 2004 |
| Title: |
'Does Darwinism Have a Politics?'
|
| Speaker: |
Steve
Fuller
|
| Description: |
Philosopher
Peter Singer once urged the Left to replace Marx with Darwin as its
philosophical foundation. Historically, Social Darwinism has been
associated with right wing ideologies. What are the political implications
of Darwinism? Formerly at the University of Durham, Steve is now Professor
of Sociology at the University of Warwick and has published widely in the
sociology and philosophy of science.
|
Date:
|
October 18th
2004 |
| Title: |
'Digging up bones: scientific
justification and ethical considerations'
|
Speaker:
|
Charlotte Roberts |
| Description: |
Archaeologists have excavated thousands of bodies over the years from all
over the world. Why are we so fascinated with corpses? Why should we
continue to recover our dead and what can we learn about our past? Charlotte
started out as a nurse and is now professor of palaeopathology at the
University of Durham. Her many publications include accessible books on the
history of disease.
|
Date:
|
November 15th |
| Title: |
'Alcohol: bad for the young but good for the old?'
|
Speaker:
|
Oliver James |
| Description: |
The
government has seems to have given up on its promise to provide a national
alcohol strategy. Perhaps we should sympathise, given that alcohol health
messages are increasingly complex. Alcohol is arguably responsible for more
deaths, injuries and unhappiness in under thirty year olds than anything
else. But, “moderate” alcohol consumption reduces the risk of
cardiovascular death or stroke and may reduce the risk of dementia and type
II diabetes. Oliver is Head of the School of Clinical Medical Sciences,
University of Newcastle, has been treating patients with alcoholic cirrhosis
for 30 years, and is an enthusiastic wine amateur.
|
Date:
|
January 17th
2005 |
| Title: |
'Designer babies: Born and
Made'
|
Speaker:
|
Sarah Franklin |
| Description: |
What is a designer baby and
how do we know what we think of them? How can the desires of individual
parents be reconciled with the need for limits to reproductive intervention?
Are humans increasingly made as well as born? Has this always been the
case? Sarah has conducted ethnographic research on new reproductive and
genetic technologies in Britain for over 20 years, including two years of
fieldwork with two of Britain's leading centres of preimplantation genetic
diagnosis. She is based at the BIOS Centre at the LSE.
|
Date:
|
February 21st
|
| Title: |
'Pollution and health risk: How much do we have to accept?'
|
Speaker:
|
Tanja Pless-Mulloli |
| Description: |
Chimneys,
shipyards and coal mines are the legacy of the industrial past of the North
East. In recent decades, there have been drastic changes in pollution
levels; in evidence about links between pollution and human health; in the
distribution of pollution amongst the rich and the poor; and people’s
acceptance of pollution. Tanya will explore the past, look at the present
and gaze into the future of these interrelated factors impacting on our
quality of life. Tanja is an environmental epidemiologist at the University
of Newcastle.
|
Date:
|
March 21st |
| Title: |
'Right at
the beginning ... of the Universe'
|
Speaker:
|
Carlos Frenk |
| Description: |
Cosmologists
have learned more about our Universe in recent decades than in the rest of
human history. Using astronomical data in tandem with virtual universes
constructed in supercomputers, we are now beginning to understand how the
universe evolved from the early simplicity of the Big Bang to the
present-day structured complexity. We can confidently trace back cosmic
history to about a micro-second after the Big Bang and possibly beyond.
Carlos is Ogden Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute for
Computational Cosmology, University of Durham. |
Date:
|
May 16th |
| Title: |
'Atkins: the sugar industry
gets it in the gut'
|
Speaker:
|
Eric Brunner |
| Description: |
The low
carbohydrate Atkins diet forbids soft drinks, crisps, sweets, chocolate and
biscuits, and is an effective way to lose weight. Atkins advocates a high
protein, high fat diet. But high fat is linked with cardiovascular disease,
and there is not enough protein from animals, fish and seafood to feed six
billion. Surely deep-fried tofu is not the only way forward? Come and graze
on some indigestible contradictions. Eric is a Reader in Epidemiology at
UCL, and has previously worked at the London Food Commission.
|
Date:
|
June 20th |
| Title: |
'The appliance of Science'
|
Speaker:
|
Arlene Judith Klotzko |
| Description: |
Arlene is a
bioethicist and lawyer. Author of A Clone of Your Own, she has
contributed to several US and UK broadsheets, and now writes the regular
“Science Matters” column for the Financial Times. She has been
writer in Residence at the Science Museum, London and Visiting Scholar in
Bioethics at the Windeyer Institute, University College, London. She will
be talking about morally fraught areas of biomedicine.
|
Date:
|
July 18th |
| Title: |
'Big Brother versus the Internet'
|
Speaker:
|
Ian Brown |
| Description: |
Computer
voting? Electronic patient records? Copyright… data encryption…
Information security, surveillance and privacy are major issues of our
time. Based at UCL, Ian is the Director of the Foundation for Information
Policy Research, chairman of Privacy International, and has consulted for
the financial services industry.
|
Date:
|
Monday 17th
October 2005, 7.30 pm |
| Title: |
'Aren’t we all neurotic? Why
the antidepressant controversy won’t go away'
|
|
|
Atrium, Central Square, Forth
Street (behind Newcastle Central Station) |
Speaker:
|
Dr Michael Barr
(Bios Centre, LSE) |
| Description: |
.Dr
Michael Barr (Bios Centre, LSE) asks: Are antidepressants good medical care
or just good business? Who should be prescribed such drugs? Can biochemistry
explain and treat an existential crisis? Is there a future for
psychotherapy? Formerly of PEALS, Michael moved to the LSE in 2004 to
explore these and related questions. So come and join the debate on an issue
that has recently attracted international attention.
|
Date:
|
Monday 21st
November 2005, 7.30 pm |
| Title: |
'Fuel Cells & the Hydrogen
Economy - Tees Lights The Way Forward'
|
|
|
Atrium, Central Square, Forth
Street (behind Newcastle Central Station)
|
Speaker:
|
Ben Mayo
|
| Description: |
Ben Mayo introduces us to
fuel cells, the new energy alternative: engines which are twice as efficient
as internal combustion, silent, and emit little more than water. Over the
next few years we will be starting to use them to power everything from
laptops to buses. Our region has most of the attributes required to be right
at the forefront of this exciting new technology. A Tees light house will
be using fuel cells in the near future. Ben is the Director of the Fuel Cell
Applications Facility at the Centre for Process Innovation on Teesside.
|
Date:
|
16th January
2006 |
| Title: |
A New Year: A New
You: 2006
|
Speaker:
|
Amelia Lake
(Newcastle University) |
| Description: |
Amelia Lake (Newcastle
University) gets to grips with those seasonal resolutions about diet and
health. Are you all going to take out gym membership and set optimistic
goals? Will you eat those five fruit and veg? Are you all going to take out
gym membership and set optimistic goals? Is behaviour change at this time
of year really a good idea, and do we need to change our behaviour?
|
Date:
|
Monday 20th
February 2006 |
| Title: |
Uncanny Valley: Living with
Living Machines
|
Speaker:
|
Richard Evans |
| Description: |
For
the last forty years, scientists around the world have been working towards
realising the dream of creating humanoid robots. Now, as walking, thinking
and even feeling robots and androids take their first tentative steps into
reality, writer Richard Evans outlines the latest robotics research and
discusses the far-reaching ethical and social implications of the coming
world of artificial helpers, friends and lovers. Richard researched his
acclaimed futuristic thrillers Machine Nation and Robophobia
at MIT, sponsored by Arts Council England
|
Date:
|
Monday 6th
March, 7pm |
| Title: |
Artificial Life and Virtual Reality
|
Speaker:
|
Steve Grand |
| Description: |
To
celebrate the AV Festival, an evening with acclaimed programmer Steve Grand
(job: Digital God), whose innovative work on the Creatures game and Lucy the
robot is described in his books Creation: life and how to make it and
Growing up with Lucy. Can something that happens inside a computer
ever be really alive, or really real? What does this imply for our
traditional understanding of reality?
|
Date:
|
Monday 15th May |
| Title: |
Why memes?
|
Speaker:
|
Mary Midgley |
| Description: |
One of
Britain’s most renowned and best-loved
thinkers, Mary has written about animals, about Darwinism and about the Gaia
hypothesis. We are delighted to welcome her back to raise more questions
about science and society.
|
Date:
|
Monday 19th June |
| Title: |
How gay are your genes?
|
Speaker:
|
Lisa Matthews |
| Description: |
Twin
studies suggest that sexuality may partly be influenced by genetics. Dean Hamer famously identified a region of the X chromosome which may be
involved. For the last two years, writer Lisa has been working with the
region’s lesbian, gay and bisexual community to explore their attitudes and
responses to genetics, and their views on sexuality.
|
Date:
|
Monday
17th July |
| Title: |
SmartHEALTH diagnostic technology: earlier and more effective
treatments of cancer
|
Speaker:
|
Calum McNeil, Professor of Biological
Sensor Systems, Newcastle University and Coordinator of the SmartHEALTH
programme |
|
Description: |
SmartHEALTH is an innovative European healthcare technology - in the early
stages of development - which aims to make cancer diagnosis, treatment and
monitoring more effective. In miniaturizing a laboratory into a hand-held
device, testing could be moved from remote laboratories to local clinics,
GPs surgeries or even your home. Waiting for test results could be reduced
from days to minutes. To support more accurate and personalised diagnosis,
these miniature systems will also allow GPs to access patients’ electronic
records - held anywhere in the country - using mobile phone or wireless
internet technology. The prototypes systems under development are for
breast, cervical and colorectal cancer. This event aims to raise a diversity
of issues, including questions such as:
• What diseases would we choose to test with our GP or in our own homes?
• Who will have access to this new technology?
• What are the challenges of introducing complex Information technologies
into the healthcare system for patients, GPs and the wider public? |
|
Date: |
Monday, September 18th |
|
Title: |
Freedom to shape the future? |
|
Speaker:
|
Bano Murtuja and Tom Wakeford from the new
Right 2B heard network |
|
Description: |
Do we trust experts to decide about genetics, nanotechnology and
biotechnology? Is it realistic for non-specialist citizens to control
policy on science and technology? |
|
Date: |
Monday, October 16th |
|
Title: |
Free energy or a nuclear
state? |
|
Speaker:
|
Bridget Woodman, energy analyst, Warwick Business School |
|
Description: |
How should UK reduce
carbon emissions while keeping the lights on? Through renewables, or
through another generation of nuclear reactors? |
|
Date: |
Monday, March 5th 2007 |
|
Title: |
Patient choice or patient
responsibility? |
|
Speaker:
|
To be
confirmed |
|
Description: |
Current UK health policy makes the patient
central to choosing where and how to be treated but this implies freedom
without responsibility. Is there now a dangerous imbalance between doctor
and patient? |
|
Date: |
Monday, May 21st |
|
Title: |
Body parts - free, or for sale? |
|
Speaker:
|
Naomi Pfeiffer, London Metropolitan University |
|
Description: |
Since slavery was abolished, it has been illegal to buy and sell human
bodies and body parts. However, scientists, biotech companies and tissue
banks profit from human tissue given freely by patients and members of the
public. Naomi Pfeffer asks whether a market in human body parts should be
allowed to develop. |
|
Date: |
Monday
September 17th |
|
Title: |
Do Animals Feel
Pleasure? |
|
Speaker: |
Jonathan
Balcombe |
|
Description: |
Jonathan Balcombe, animal behaviourist and
author of
Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good
will argue that animals have deeper emotions than
conventional science accepts. For Balcombe, behaviours are not just about
adaptation, they're about feeling good. |
|
Date: |
Monday
October 15th |
|
Title: |
Our Future Human Body? |
|
Description: |
As part of the
Cyborg Future exhibition at the Discovery Museum, we take a look at the
shrinking divide between us and the technology we use, from prosthetic body
parts to smart textiles and wearable body extensions.
Tobie Kerridge
and Ian Thompson (Biojewellery) and Peter and Carla Allen
(KnoWear) will be discussing whether this is the future we want with
Sabine Seymour. |
|
Date: |
Monday 19th
November |
|
Title: |
For Whom the Roads
Toll |
|
Speaker: |
Phil Blyth |
|
Description: |
What challenges face us in delivering a robust
and sustainable road transport system fit for purpose in the twenty-first
century? Phil Blyth, Professor of Intelligent Transport Systems at Newcastle
University argues that we will need to change the way we travel if we are to
manage and optimise our use of roads and alternative forms of public
transport. He will explore the options for paying for road use as well as
looking at the additional impacts and benefits of such as scheme as the
technology involved will lay the foundation for future intelligent
infrastructure for transport. |
|
Date: |
Monday
7th January
2008 |
|
Title: |
Cafe Philosophique -
Theory Slam! |
|
Speaker: |
|
|
Description: |
If you're looking for a festive alternative with intellectual zing, come and
pitch ideas at the first Tyneside Theory Slam. All comers will be
offered three minutes each to sell us their theories - serious, silly,
conspiracy - and the audience vote will select the winner.
Email us in advance at
info@cafeculturenortheast.org.uk if
you have a pet theory you want to share.
Theories
put forward so far include Is the Pope a Catholic? and The
Truth of Existence. These, and others, will be shared.
|
|
Date: |
Monday
21st January |
|
Title: |
King Coal rides again:
restoration of the monarchy? |
|
Speaker: |
Paul Younger |
|
Description: |
In this era of low-carbon ambitions, could it remotely make sense to talk of
a renaissance of energy production from coal? Geologist and environmental
engineer Paul Younger, HSBC Professor of Energy & Environment at Newcastle
University, argues that it's time we disinterred Old King Coal and restored
him to his throne but this time under a new constitution that will limit his
powers to lord it over his subjects. |
|
Date: |
Monday 18th
February |
|
Title: |
Climate change: fact
or fiction? |
|
Speaker: |
Hayley Fowler |
|
Description: |
The science of climate change has become heavily politicised, with 'beliefs'
intertwined with scientific fact. Hayley Fowler, NERC Research Fellow in the
Water Resource Systems Research Laboratory at Newcastle University, will
explore the myths surrounding climate change science, explain what impacts
we may expect in the future and how interventions may help to reduce these. |
|
Date: |
Monday 17th
March |
|
Title: |
Where can we go with
stem cells? |
|
Speaker: |
Lyle Armstrong |
|
Description: |
Will scientists soon be able to re-programme embryonic stem
cells to create tissues for transplantation? Is cloning a way to avoid
problems of immune rejection, or would it be better to use the technique to
understand how to re-programme adult cells to make them like embryonic stem
cells? Cutting edge insights from
Lyle Armstrong , a member of the
world-beating team at Newcastle's Centre for Stem Cell Biology and
Developmental Genetics. |
|
Date: |
Monday 16th June |
|
Title: |
Should we try to save
premature babies? |
|
Speaker: |
David Archard |
|
Description: |
Should you try to give intensive care to the
earliest babies when their chances of survival are so slim? At what point
might an older baby's life become so intolerable that you should consider
letting them die? Should doctors ever actively end a baby's life?
David Archard is Professor of Philosophy
and Public Policy at Lancaster University and served on the recent Nuffield
Council on Bioethics working party on premature babies. He will be joined by
a neonatologist. The event will be chaired by Professor Erica Haimes, also
on the Nuffield working party. |
|
Date: |
Monday 15th
September |
|
Title: |
Giving Away Our Lives:
Internet 2.0 |
|
Speaker: |
Paul Bernal |
|
Description: |
Drawing on his LSE research at the interface
of law, computing and sociology, Paul Bernal will discuss how the new
internet economy uses the personal information we unknowingly provide to
allow businesses to shape and control both our online and offline lives. |
|
Date: |
Monday
6th October |
|
Title: |
What Works With
Families? |
|
Speaker: |
Joel Yoeli,
NHS clinical psychologist, & Liz Todd,
Newcastle University educational psychologist |
|
Description: |
From government
to the media, everyone blames the family, seen as responsible for children’s
health, behaviour, educational achievement and emotional adjustment. So, is
parenting in crisis? Could parenting education be the answer? Or can we
blame other factors for social problems? Joel Yoeli, NHS
clinical psychologist, and Liz Todd, Newcastle University
educational psychologist, will debate current attitudes to the family, and
discuss the role of professionals. |
|
Date: |
Monday
20th October |
|
Title: |
How Studying
Children’s Minds Leads to Big Ideas |
|
Speaker: |
Charles Fernyhough,
Durham University |
|
Description: |
For
Charles Fernyhough, author and psychologist at Durham University,
the birth of his daughter Athena was an opportunity to re-evaluate much of
what he had learned as a lecturer and researcher in developmental
psychology. The Baby in the Mirror, his account of how children
develop in their first three years of life, is written with a father’s
tenderness and a novelist’s empathy and style. |
|
Date: |
Monday 17th
November |
|
Title: |
The Physics of Star
Trek: Can Anti-Matter Power the Enterprise? |
|
Speaker: |
Ruth Gregory,
Durham University |
|
Description: |
There is something about anti-matter that
always seems to be the stuff of science fiction, but anti-matter is very
much scientific fact. Professor Ruth
Gregory will discuss what it is, how it was dreamed up, and what
use we can put it to today. There may also be time for a good natured
critique of the Enterprise’s warp drive. |
|
Date: |
Monday 19th January |
|
Title: |
Standing up for fatigue:
the biological basis of CFS/ME |
|
Speaker: |
Julia
Newton,
Newcastle University |
|
Description: |
Chronic
fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME) affects approximately two per cent of the UK
population, impacts on quality of life and affects a sufferer’s ability to
work and live their life. Despite this, there is no diagnostic test for CFS/ME
and no effective biological treatment., researches the autonomic nervous
system, which controls subconscious activities that occur in the human body,
such as respiration, bladder and bowel function, and also maintains heart
rate and blood pressure. Autonomic dysfunction and particularly low blood
pressure, hypotension, are a frequent finding in people with the symptom of
fatigue |
|
Date: |
Monday 16th February |
|
Title: |
Heavens
above! From Northumberland to the Red Planet |
|
Speaker: |
Gary
Fildess,
Chief Astronomer, Keilder Observatory &
Pete Edwards,
Durham
University |
|
Description: |
Gary Fildess,
Chief Astronomer at the new Kielder Observatory, will introduce the
project and explain the importance of amateur astronomy, while Pete Edwards
from the Ogden Centre, Durham University, will describe the latest results
from the Phoenix mission, explaining why there is so much interest in Mars
and how this might help answer the question ‘Are we alone in the universe?’. |
|
Date: |
Monday 16th March |
|
Title: |
Is There a Right to
IVF? The Ethics and Politics of Infertility |
|
Speaker: |
Alison Murdoch |
|
Description: |
One in seven couples have difficulty
conceiving, and approximately one per cent of all births involve assisted
conception. With the rationing of NHS treatment, going private is the only
option for many. Professor Alison Murdoch is Head of the
Newcastle Fertility Centre @ Life, a member of the Nuffield Council on
Bioethics, and a former president of the British Fertility Society. She will
explore the social and clinical complexities of assisted conception. |
|
Date: |
Monday 16th June |
|
Title: |
Non Proliferation and
Nuclear Renaissance |
|
Speaker: |
Wyn Bowen |
|
Description: |
Nuclear energy is often offered as a partial
solution to energy and climate security concerns. But the global spread of
nuclear capabilities may undermine non-proliferation challenges if
technologies and materials are diverted to military use. Professor
Wyn Bowen is Professor of Non-Proliferation and International
Security in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He has
worked as a consultant to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna
and served as a weapons inspector on several missile teams in Iraq with the
UN Special Commission during the late 1990s. Wyn also served as a Specialist
Advisor to the House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee inquiries into
the Iraq war and weapons of mass destruction. |
|
Date: |
Monday 6th July |
|
Title: |
Waves |
|
Speaker: |
Gavin Pretor-Pinney |
|
Description: |
Waves seem to be everywhere, from ocean
breakers pounding the shore, to the tiny, musical pressure fluctuations
produced by a string ensemble, from reverberations of an earthquake
circumnavigating the globe, to the electromagnetic rays emanating from a
lamp, from brainwaves to Mexican waves, gravitational waves to royal waves.
In fact, at a subatomic scale, anything and everything seems to behave as a
wave.
Gavin
Pretor-Pinney, Cloud Spotter and Idler and absinthe importer, asks
what exactly are waves and why are they so universal? |
|
Date: |
Monday
19th October, 7-9pm |
|
Title: |
Genesis
Machines: Computing with the Code of Life |
|
Speaker: |
Martyn Amos |
|
Description: |
From his book, Genesis Machines,
Martyn Amos, computer scientist
from Manchester Metropolitan University, will explain how scientists are
turning away from silicon chips and instead are using real, wet, squishy,
perhaps even living biology to build machines that could change the world
forever. He will explain how cells, gels and DNA strands are the ‘wetware’
of the 21st century. He says revolutionary applications may be widespread
within 10 years and asks what breed of computer does the future hold? |
|
Date: |
Monday
16th November 2009 |
|
Title: |
Disability and bioethics: stand-off or dialogue? |
|
Speaker: |
Jackie Leach Scully |
|
Description: |
Disability is a central topic in biomedicine, especially the new
genetic and reproductive medical technologies, and so it is of major
interest in bioethics as well. But relations between bioethics and disabled
people, especially the disability movement, have been fraught. Bioethics is
sometimes accused by disability activists of having a eugenic goal; in turn,
disability activists are accused of being unrealistic and unrepresentative.
In her book Disability Bioethics: Moral Bodies, Moral Difference,
Jackie Leach Scully argues for a
better dialogue between disability and bioethics, with greater recognition
of the diversity of experience of disabled people. |
|
Date: |
Monday
15th February 2009 |
|
Title: |
From Stem
Cells to Sperm Cells |
|
Speaker: |
Karim Nayernia |
|
Description: |
Karim Nayernia trained
in Germany as a molecular biologist, working on germ cells and cancer cells,
moving to Newcastle University in 2006 as Professor of Stem Cell Biology.
Karim will talk about how it is possible to use stem cells to create sperm
in the laboratory, with the aim of understanding the biology of male
infertility |
|
Date: |
Monday
15th March 2010 |
|
Title: |
Putting your
head through the screen |
|
Speaker: |
Bill Thompson |
|
Description: |
Pervasive networks, easy access to the internet and social network tools
like Twitter, Facebook and Seesmic are blurring the boundary between being
online and being offline, while geolocation tools mean your friends – and
stalkers – can track you in the real and the virtual worlds.
Technology guru Bill Thompson will ask what implications
this has for our sense of identity, and how can we know who we are when many
of the people we spend our time with are only electronically available? |
|