2008-09

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Tough Trash

Presented by Norm Crampton

Norm will be talking about household trash, especially "tough trash"--the stuff that's hard to get rid of, including electronic gear. We'll discuss and solve problems, or at least generate some ideas. Our objective is to style household disposal to reduce our carbon footprint. Very participative--we'll share intelligence.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Sustainable Agriculture and Genetically Modified Crops: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Presented by Dr. Roger Innes
IU Department of Biology

Modern agricultural practices have led to dramatic increases in crop yields, meaning that more food can be produced on less land and at a lower cost. However, current practices are not sustainable as they require high inputs of petrochemical-derived fertilizers and pesticides, which have significant environmental and economic costs, especially with rising fuel prices. Furthermore, we are seeing a plateau in crop yields, thus feeding an ever growing world population will require expanding agricultural production onto more marginal lands and clearing of more forests. How can we make our agricultural production more sustainable, without reducing yields? Genetically modified crops are often presented as part of the solution to this challenge, but consumers are concerned about the known and unknown risks that might be associated with growing and consuming genetically modified food. In this Science Cafe, we will discuss the science behind genetically modified crops, the types of genetically modified crops currently being grown in Indiana, and the types of crops currently being developed. In particular, we will discuss the risks and benefits associated with this technology, and what concerns people have regarding the ever-increasing numbers of genetically modified foods now in the market place.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

A History of Deforestation and Reforestation in South-Central Indiana

Presented by Tom Evans
IU Department of Geography

This talk will describe a history of how forests have changed in Indiana over the last 200 years. Historical data from aerial photography and satellite imagery will be used to identify where and why forests are changing in Indiana and compare this to global trajectories of forest change.

Thursday, January 15, 2008

Students Driving Sustainability:
Projects of the IU Sustainability Internship Program

Presented by Michael Steinhoff, Internship Coordinator, IU Task Force on Sustainability, and Current and Past Sustainability Task Force Interns

The IU Sustainability Internship Program provides students with a chance to do applied research aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of Indiana University as well as reducing costs. Join us for an overview of the activities of the IU Sustainability Task Force and to see how students have improved campus operations ranging from alternative transportation, energy conservation, watershed protection, and more!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The Science of Urban Transportation:
Can we get around more Sustainably?

Presented by Buff Brown

Buff Brown is a professional transportation planner. He is the founder of B-TOP (Bloomington Transportation Options for People). He will be discussing the science, economics and politics of transportation today, what has created our current unsustainable transportation practices, and what governmental actions and policies can move us toward more sustainable practices, a better economy, a higher quality of life, and better public health.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

That's Oil Folks!: Oil creation, depletion, and impending energy limits

Presented by Gregory Travis and David Rollo

Oil is a finite, yet indispensable resource for modern industrialized society. Because it is finite in quantity, we will run out someday. But, long before we do, we will reach a peak in production capacity, that will be followed by a long production decline. This will have very severe implications, as nearly everything we make, or do, is dependent on oil in some way. The speakers will discuss oil discovery, and depletion, and the implications for our society.

 

2007-08

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.

2006-07

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Air pollution and global climate change

Presented by Dr. Phil Stevens
IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Superstorms and supercomputing: hurricane prediction software

Presented by Dr. Dennis Gannon
IU Department of Computer Science

Thursday, November 9, 2006

Global warming policy and congress

Presented by Dr. Matt Auer
IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs

Thursday, December 7, 2006

Ice Sheets and the global oceanic environment

Presented by Dr. Simon Brassell
IU Department of Geological Sciences

Thursday, January 11, 2007

The genetic basis for human evolution

Presented by Dr. Kay Connelly
IU Department of Computer Science

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Losing the Message of Rachael Carson's Silent Spring: America Dependence on Pesticides

Presented by Dr. Marc Lame
IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs

Thursday, March 9, 2007

Robots R Us

Presented by Dr. Randall Beer
IU Cognitive Science program

Thursday, April 13, 2007

What it means to be human

Presented by Dr. Kevin Hunt
from IU Anthropology

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Mapping Science

Presented by Dr. Katy Boerner
IU Library and Information Sciences

Thursday, June 14, 2007

From Penguins to Polar Bears: The Implications of Animal Welfare

Eduardo Fernandez
IU Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior