Past Meetings
Wednesday 9 May 2012 at 7:30 pm
Are We Alone? Looking for Life on Other Planets
Dr Simon Goodwin, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sheffield
Over the last 15 years hundreds of planets have been discovered orbiting around stars beyond our solar system. This has re-ignited interest in the possibility of life on other planets and given rise to a new branch of science - astrobiology. I will explain how we have found these planets and what they are like. I will also talk about how we could find life on another planet within the next ten years and what that life might be like. I will also discuss the possibility of finding other intelligent civilisations.
Wednesday 4 April 2012 at 7:30 pm
Polymaths - Who Needs Them?
Are polymaths merely jacks of all trades and 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 breakthroughs. Alasdair Beal challenges this view and discusses the achievements of some of history's great polymaths, including Leonardo da Vinci and the English scientist Thomas Young (who could speak Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew, German, Chaldean, Syriac, Samaritan, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Amharic before he was fourteen).
Wednesday 7 March at 7:30 pm
Synthetic Biology - A Brave New World
Dr Bruce Turnbull, School of Chemistry, University of Leeds
Imagine a world in which we could make fuels or pharmaceuticals in the same way we ferment malt to make beer. A world in which materials as strong as steel are made without industrial waste, or artificial viruses can be used to administer anti-cancer drugs without the usual side-effects of chemotherapy. Synthetic biology promises new technologies that could change our lives through the design and construction of new biological parts and devices, and the redesign of existing, natural biological organisms for new purposes. So, how can we redesign living organisms to perform useful functions? Can we create artificial life in a laboratory? Bruce Turnbull, a synthetic chemical biologist from the University of Leeds will provide an overview of synthetic biology - the possibilities, practicalities, perils and potential profits.
Wednesday 8 February 2012 at 7:30 pm
The Duality of Cholesterol - Myth, Money and Method
Glyn Wainwright, THINCS, Leeds
Your brain is about 2% of your body mass but it contains 25% of your body's cholesterol. Cholesterol accounts for around 20% of all the molecules in all the membranes of every cell in your body. If this proportion of cholesterol is reduced to 18% your cells will begin to fail, become deformed and start to leak. These insights have implications for the treatment of many diseases including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and dementia. Our modern medical obsession with the lowering of our 'blood lipid cholesterol' may need to be reversed as the long term effects on our health become better understood. This talk will explore the myths that led to the characterisation of cholesterol, a vital chemical component of all our lipids and cell membranes, as being either "good" or "bad". The commercial exploitation of this popular cholesterol myth accounts for the generation of global profits measured in billions of dollars. Is it possible to resolve the conflict of interests that has arisen between control of the funding for medical research, the influences on the regulation of medical practice and the need for the scientific freedom implicit in the exploration and expression of factual evidence?
Wednesday 4 January 2012 at 7:30 pm
Through the Looking Glass: The Molecular Wonderland of Herbs and Spices
Professor John Bradley, Department of Chemistry, University of Hull
Human beings are one of very few species that will eat anything they can digest, and we have the unique technical ability to transform raw food that is unappetising into something that is attractive to look at, good to smell and taste, and even good to feel in the mouth. But when cooking, or just eating, your favourite meal, have you ever stopped to think about why, for instance, your steak has turned brown and developed a meaty flavour after cooking? Or why something as simple as hot fat transforms a bland piece of potato into a tasty chip? Or why freshly baked bread has such an appealing aroma? Or, for that matter, why brown, cooked food tastes so good? We will explore how we detect desirable aromas and tastes, the chemistry involved in their development during cooking, how tastes and aromas interact, and how the molecular structure of flavour components changes the way we identify them.
Wednesday 7 December 2011 at 7:30 pm
Fossils in Amber: Snapshots of Prehistoric Forest Life
Dr David Penney, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester
Amber provides the most diverse and best fossil record of insects, providing us with a glimpse into long extinct tropical forests. These are exciting times for amber paleobiologists due to new advances in digital imaging and photomicroscopy. New discoveries in recent years of fossiliferous Cretaceous deposits (including the first for Africa) have extended the known ranges of many living groups back to the time of the dinosaurs. Newly discovered Tertiary deposits, including from Australia and India will help resolve major historical biogeographical processes. Work on the more familiar deposits continues apace, with new discoveries and ever increasing datasets conducive to quantitative paleoecological investigations. This talk explores the diversity of fossils in amber and how they may help us predict current global change. Sub-fossilised inclusions in copals are often ignored by palaeontologists who consider them not old enough to be of significance. However, they have the potential to be highly informative at many different levels, including as a proxy for understanding bias of preservation in amber, as a record of current extinctions and as a potential reservoir for molecular data to pre-date any current information based on museum collections.
Wednesday 9 November 2011 at 7:30 pm
Primate Communication: Links to Human Language?
Dr Katie Slocombe, Department of Psychology, York University
This talk will explore why trying to trace the evolutionary path of human language is such a challenging task. It will outline comparative research as one fruitful avenue in this endevour. Dr Slocombe will discuss some of the commonalities and differences we see when comparing communication in human and non-human primates. She will then present some studies on chimpanzee vocal communication, that she has conducted, to give the audience a feel for how such primate work is carried out and to show some exciting recent findings. Dr Slocombe will discuss with the audience: how these data relate to our understanding of human language evolution; the key questions for the future; and the challenges in achieving these goals. During the discussion the audience can explore the vocal versus gestural origins of language and the evolutionary pressures that may favour the evolution of a complex communication system.
Wednesday 5 October 2011 at 7:30 pm
Alice's Secrets in Wonderland
Dr Melanie Bayley, Oxford University
Since its publication in 1865, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has been read as a piece of pure nonsense fiction. Some, like the author, see it as a fairy story without any fairies, some as a drug-fuelled descent into the mayhem of the subconscious, but very few see it as mathematical satire. It turns out that the Wonderland is much more than a madcap flight of fancy. Lewis Carroll was in reality Charles Dodgson, a tutor in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and at the time that Alice was written, theoretical mathematics was in the grips of a quiet revolution. Alice's Adventures is an attempt to subvert the new mathematical theories by letting their flawed logic run amok; in mathematical terms, it's an exercise in reductio ad absurdum. Alice's exchanges with the Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat can be read as mathematical lampoons. Dodgson, the traditionalist, is letting the abstract maths of the lecture room run its hare-brained course at the bottom of the rabbit hole.
Wednesday 20 July 2011 at 7:30 pm
The Planet in a Pebble
Dr Jan Zalasiewicz, Palaeobiology Group, Department of Geology, The University of Leicester
This is the story of a single pebble. It is just a normal pebble, as you might pick up on holiday - on a beach in Wales, say. Its history, though, carries us into abyssal depths of time, and across the farthest reaches of space. Its matter has been shaped by the cosmic violence of supernova explosions and the construction of the Solar System. Particles within it have washed across the shores of vanished continents, and been carried into seas that were quite unlike ours today. There are traces within it of different kinds of strange and extinct life-forms, and its fabric bears witness to a long journey into the depth and darkness of the Earth's crust, amid the migrations of rare elements and the creation of petroleum. The rise and fall of mountains have, too, left their mark on it, and the creation of ores of copper and lead and perhaps of gold too. The waves sculpt the pebble in the geological instant that is now - but its history is not yet finished. It contains within it matter that will take long journeys across space and through the far future.
Wednesday 8 June 2011 at 7:30 pm
Problem Solved Then? Reflections on 35 Years as a Nutritionist
Dr Alan Hackett, Centre for Tourism, Events and Food Studies, Liverpool John Moores University
Malnutrition is alive and well and living in the UK. It contributes to the huge inequalities in health to the extent that life expectancy can vary 10 years or more across the social divide with a further 17 years of morbidity as an additional burden on the least well off. It is possible that life expectancy may begin to fall and the NHS collapse unless this malnutrition is brought under control. Incredibly malnutrition is still all too often unrecognised and untreated even in NHS hospitals. In Liverpool we have children who have never tasted a strawberry and the notion that 'healthy' foods are unavailable, expensive and inconvenient is rife. The Government's response includes inviting the food industry to help write (and deliver) their policy on healthier eating and expecting 'informed consumers' to make the 'right' decisions. What is the appropriate balance between collective and personal responsibility?
Wednesday 28 April 2010
The Future: A User's Guide
Adrian Nixon, Nixor Limited
Personal computers, the web, digital cameras, mobile phones... for most of us the future has arrived. But was it what we expected? And who decided it?
Wednesday 24 February 2010
How I Wonder What You Are: The Birth, Life and Death of Stars
Dr Paul Ruffle, Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester
How stars form in the interstellar medium of our Milky Way galaxy, how they then evolve and synthesise the elements that make life possible, and how at the end of their lives, they return this material to the interstellar medium for the next generation of stars.
Tuesday 8 December 2009
Why Does e = mc2 ?
Professor Jeff Forshaw, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester
Wednesday 25 November 2009
Exactly What is Sleep?
Professor Jim Horne, Sleep Research Centre, Loughborough University