Thursday, September 13, 2007

The Science of Marijuana

Presented by Dr. Alex Straiker
IU Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Marijuana and hashish have been in use for thousands of years but only now are we really learning how they work in the body. Even now, few people realize that THC, the active ingredient of marijuana and hashish, acts by plugging into an endogenous signaling system. The body essentially makes its own marijuana - though structurally different - for its own purposes, with a dedicated receptor. This endogenous cannabinoid signaling system is present throughout the brain and much of the body, and promises to play a role in many human functions including memory, movement, pain, and appetite.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Exploring the Big Bang with Accelerators

Presented by Dr. James Sowinski
IU Department of Physics

14.5 Billion years ago our universe was born in a giant explosion. This was first discovered by astronomers who found that distant galaxies appeared to be all moving away from us. This hypothesis of a big bang of energy makes predictions that have been and are still being tested against observation and experiment. One is that particle and nuclear physics were very important in the first second of the universe. As the universe expanded it cooled. Playing the explosion backwards the universe heats up as we shrink back. At some point the temperature is so hot electrons are torn from atoms, then continuing back, nuclei are broken up into neutrons and protons and finally, 1 microsecond before the bang, protons and neutrons melt into quarks and gluons. Today on earth we are using some of the largest machines built by man to study little bits of this quark-gluon matter. Come discuss how scientists use these machines to perform their experiments and what they are learning.

References:



Thursday, November 8, 2007

Artificial Life as an Approach to Artificial Intelligence

Presented by Dr. Larry Yaeger
School of Informatics

All examples of natural intelligence have come about through the evolution of nervous systems in an ecology. Evolution provides a powerful engine for exploring an enormous space of possibilities. Nervous systems are the ubiquitous natural solution to processing information in an intelligent fashion. And intelligence only makes sense within a context, within the ecology in which it confers an evolutionary advantage. We'll discuss how the field of Artificial Life offers a way to use the same approach to the production of Artificial Intelligence.



Thursday, December 6, 2007

Are We Ready for a Return Sample from Mars?

Presented by Dr. Lisa Pratt
IU Department of Geological Sciences

Geologists, biologists, and astronomers are looking for signs of extra-terrestrial life within and beyond our solar system using telescopes, orbiting satellites, and rovers. Evidence of life-sustaining processes is also investigated by molecular and isotopic studies of carbon compounds in meteorites, comets, and interplanetary dust particles. The upcoming Phoenix and Mars Science Lander missions by NASA will carry sophisticated instrument payloads to the surface of Mars for the purpose of analyzing trace-level constituents in sedimentary strata and ice. These two missions provide a scientific and engineering framework for a flagship mission around 2020 with the goal of collecting and returning samples from Mars to Earth for study. We have found life thriving on Earth at unexpected extremes of temperature, acidity, and salinity resulting in a new understanding of life's tenacity and re-invigoration of space exploration. As we begin the search for Earth-like life in our solar system, it is encouraging that instruments on rovers and in orbit find many lines of geological evidence for intermittent release of water to the surface of Mars. Remarkably, it may be too late to fully protect Mars from contamination by Earth organisms but improved decontamination and sterilization of spacecraft will help preserve natural conditions at Martian sites with the highest potential for habitability.


Dr. Lisa Pratt (left) and Dr. Alan Munhall (right) from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) collecting samples of a microbial mat on a dry lake bed in Warner Valley, Oregon.

 



Thursday, January 10, 2008

Check Your Privacy at the Door: What Information Are We Giving Up When We Use Technology?

Presented by Dr. Kay Connelly
IU Department of Computer Science

As technology becomes embedded in our environment, there is an immense amount of data being collected and stored about us. Information about your location, communications, and purchases are already available to governments and corporations alike. More sophisticatedtechnologies that can infer your everyday activities are on the horizon. In this talk, we'll discuss some of the capabilities of technologies, how they're being used, and whether or not the privacy tradeoff is necessary to obtain the benefits.



Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Searching for love: Adventures in speed-dating (and beyond)

Presented by Dr. Peter M. Todd
Professor, Cognitive Science, Informatics, and Psychological and Brain Sciences, IUB

The choice of a partner for marriage or cohabitation is one of the key events in the course of our lives. But how do we make this choice? More specifically, how do we decide when our search is over? To find out, we could follow a set of individuals through multiple relationships, and try to determine what makes the lasting ones stick; but this would be a long and expensive process. Instead, we can speed things up: We can build simulated mate-seekers who embody plausible decision rules for searching for partners, and see how they fare in an artificial mating market, comparing their behavior to that of aggregated humans. We can also speed up human mate-seekers themselves, by inviting them to participate in speed-dating events, and observe their searches there as they meet and interact with a succession of potential partners. Both methods can help us assess whether people searching for love learn from their mistakes, adjusting their aspiration levels lower after failed relationships and higher after successful ones. We will discuss the development and implications of these ideas and further opportunities for field-testing them on Valentine's Day in this session.

Biography

Peter M. Todd grew up in Silicon Valley, studied mathematics and electronic music at Oberlin College, received an MPhil in computer speech and language processing from Cambridge University, and developed neural network models of the evolution of learning for his PhD in psychology at Stanford University. In 1995 he moved to Germany to help found the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC), based at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. The Center's work was captured in the book *Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart* (Gigerenzer, Todd, and the ABC Research Group; Oxford, 1999); the sequel, *Ecological Rationality: Intelligence in the World*, covering information-environment structures and their impact on decision making, is being finalized. Todd moved to IUB in 2005 and set up the ABC-West lab here. His ongoing research interests span the interactions between and co-evolution of decision making and decision environments, including the ways that people and other animals search for resources, including mates, information, and food in space and time.



Thursday, March 6, 2008

Size matters:
Sex differences in brains and behavior

Presented by Dale Sengelaub
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

In this presentation we will discuss the relationship between specific behaviors and the neural structures that underlie them, using examples from humans and other animals. These examples of differences in behaviors between sexes, what they are, how they are mediated neurally, and how the differences get there, will be used to illustrate that size really does matter.



Thursday, April 10, 2008

Particle Accelerators:
How they impact your life in Bloomington.

Presented by Vladimir (Laddie) Derenchuk,
Division Head of Accelerator Technologies
Indiana University Cyclotron Facility

If you think that particle accelerators are large scientific instruments found in Geneva, Chicago or on Long Island you would be only partly correct. Bloomington residents are surrounded by particle accelerators that are used for research, medicine and industry. Find out the difference between a cyclotron, synchrotron and Linac. We will learn the basic concepts of how accelerators work and how they are used. Join us to discover exactly how these complex instruments improve and enrich your life in Bloomington.



Saturday, May 10, 2008

Tour of the IU Cyclotron Facility

Presented by Vladimir Derenchuk and IUCF staff
IU Cyclotron Facility

Tour the cyclotron with last month's expert!



Thursday, June 12, 2008

Green Energy

Presented by Dr. Nelson Shaffer
Nannovations

Concern about C02 has generated much research into how best to remove the anthropogenic portion of that greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. Previous research into the use of algae and related organisms to remove CO2 from stack gases while generating biofuel has been revivified and has undergird numerous pilot or commercial efforts that are now operating. Basics of algae for biodiesel generation will be explained and some approaches compared.

Nelson Shaffer is a geologist with BSc and MSc in geology and geochemistry from the Ohio State University and a PhD in applied geology from Indiana University. He has more than 30 years of experience in applied geology.