Friday, February 24, 2012, 7:30 – 9:00pm
Great Hall; enter on 8th Avenue. $5.
From his bestselling books (Physics of the Impossible; Hyperspace; and Physics of the Future, now in paperback) to his frequent morning-show appearances and his own series on the Science Channel, Kaku analyzes the revolutionary developments in medicine, computers, and quantum physics that will change our way of life, our view of “impossible”— and civilization itself.
Thursday, March 1, 2012, 7:30 – 9:00pm
Downstairs at Town Hall; enter on Seneca Street. $5.
First, Andrea Watts, of the UW School of Forest Resources, presents new research that helps predict conditions for English Holly—a species regional forest managers consider invasive, but which has a more complicated pedigree. Next, Katrina Claw gives an overview of sperm-egg interaction and evolution focused on a sperm’s arduous journey around barriers put up by the egg.
Monday, March 5, 2012, 7:30 – 9:00pm
Great Hall; enter on 8th Avenue. $5.
George Dyson, author of Turing’s Cathedral and a gifted and popular lecturer, shows how the crucial advancements that dominated 20th-century technology emerged from one computer in one laboratory, where the digital universe as we know it was born.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012, 6:00 – 7:30pm
Downstairs at Town Hall; enter on Seneca Street. $5.
Through his participation in the 2009 Turing Test, Brian Christian examines how computers are reshaping our idea of what it means to be human.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012, 8:00 – 9:00pm
Downstairs at Town Hall; enter on Seneca Street. $5.
Language translation has challenged computers for years; Katie Kuksenok explores how computers can ask people for help to do it better, in a companion talk to Brian Christian’s talk immediately preceding.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012, 7:30 – 9:00pm
Downstairs at Town Hall; enter on Seneca Street.
Daniel Halperin reveals how human hands unleashed the AIDS pandemic and can, therefore, contain it—if only we learn the lessons of the past. The co-author of Tinderbox, overturns conventional wisdom as he recounts how Western colonial powers unwittingly sparked the AIDS epidemic and then fanned its rise …
Wednesday, March 21, 2012, 6:00 – 7:00pm
Downstairs at Town Hall; enter on Seneca Street. $5.
Karl Lang—from the UW’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences—takes a look at the complicated life of a mountain range and the processes building them up and wearing them down. Next, Kelly Huang—from the UW’s School of Forest Resources—examines the issue of eroding riverbeds and how local volunteer stewards might be the best way to preserve them in King County and other regions.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 7:30 – 9:00pm
Downstairs at Town Hall; enter on Seneca Street. $5.
John Long, author of Darwin’s Devices, has found an ingenious way to study extinct species: he creates robots that look and behave similarly, applies evolutionary pressures, lets them compete for mates and resources, and mutates their ‘genes.’
Monday, April 9, 2012, 7:30 – 9:00pm
Great Hall; enter on 8th Avenue. $5.
Jonah Lehrer, author of the bestsellers Proust Was A Neuroscientist and How We Decide and the new Imagine, explores the science of creativity—brainstorming meetings are a terrible idea, for example, and the color blue can double your creative output—to reveal the deep inventiveness of the human mind and its essential role in our increasingly complex world.
UW Science Now: Camila Tejo-Haristoy: Soils in the Air: The Savings Account of the Forest AND Laura E. Martinez: The Life and Times of H. Pylori
Thursday, February 23, 2012, 7:30 – 9:00pm
Downstairs at Town Hall; enter on Seneca Street. $5.
Camila Tejo-Haristoy, a graduate student in the UW’s School of Forest Resources, examines how plants, animals, and other organisms interact in trees, particularly in the coastal forests and tree canopies of the Pacific Northwest. Then Laura E. Martinez, graduate student in the Pathobiology Graduate Program at the UW, discusses Helicobacter pylori, a cancer-causing bacterium that infects the stomachs of about 50% of all humans.