Uwe Bergmann SLAC Secrets in the Ancient Goatskin: Archimedes Manuscript under X-ray Vision on: Fermilab Colloquium Lectures A breakthrough in uncovering the missing Archimedes writings has recently been achieved at SLAC. Using x-ray fluorescence imaging, writings from faint traces of the partly erased iron gall ink were brought to light. The x-ray images revealed Archimedes writings from some of his most important works covered by 12th century biblical texts and 20th century gold forgeries. Please join me in a fascinating journey of a 1000 year old parchment from its origin in the Mediterranean city of Constantinople to a synchrotron beam line in Menlo Park, California.
Richard Dawkins Oxford University An atheist's call to arms on: TedTalks The session was titled 'The Design of Life,' and the TED audience was probably expecting remarks about evolution's role in our history from biologist Richard Dawkins. Instead, he launched into a full-on appeal for atheists to make public their beliefs and to aggressively fight the incursion of religion into politics and education. Scientists and intellectuals hold very different beliefs about God from the American public, he says, yet they are cowed by the overall political environment. Dawkins' scornful tone drew strongly mixed reactions from the audience; some stood and applauded his courage. Others wondered whether his strident approach could do more harm than good. Dawkins went on to publish The God Delusion and become perhaps the world's best-known atheist.
David Baltimore California Institute of Technology David Baltimore: Viruses, Viruses, Viruses on: Caltech Dr. David Baltimore, president and professor of biology, Caltech, discussed the following big questions about the most basic, unadorned form of life we know. Why are we seemingly plagued by viruses we never heard much about before? Is it modern travel or better methods of diagnosis? How can we counter these new and awful critters? What are viruses anyway and where do they come from?
David Grinspoon Southwest Research Institute Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life on: WGBH Forum What do modern explorations reveal about alien life and the role that humans play in the story of the cosmos?
Science in a Suitcase on: sciencelive Dr Ken Farquhar and his able assistant Ian Walker take over ScienceLive to demonstrate 'Science in a Suitcase'. After throwing out Matt they demonstrate 'sideways gravity' - how moving objects to the side will cause some objects to fall straight down. They also show us the British Space mission, involving an electric drill, beach balls and a variety of exciting planetary objects!! They then show us to spin water around their head without making a mess on the floor. A must for all of those still young at heart!!
Sossina M. Haile California Institute of Technology Fuel Cells: Powering Progress in the 21st Century on: Caltech Sossina M. Haile speaks about fuel cell technologies, promising directions for future development, and likely impact
James D. Watson Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 'DNA and the Brain' - Dr. James Watson speaks at Google on: Google Video James D. Watson, Nobel Laureate and Chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, describes the years leading up to his 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA, for which he won the Nobel Prize with Drs. Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins (1962). Dr. Watson explains that the key to uncovering the causes of brain disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, fragile X syndrome, Alzheimers, etc. is in our genes. He depicts the strides being made by scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research institution in the biological sciences, as they search to find the genetic basis of neurological disorders. CSHL scientists' seach to root out disease genes related to mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and autism and devise strategies for treating a variety of neurological disorders will be discussed.
Kevin Kelly Whole Earth Review The next 50 years of science on: Google TechTalks In the next 50 years, as the technologies of information and knowledge accelerate, the nature of the scientific process will change even more than it has in the last 400 years.
Alien Sunsets on: Jet Propulsion Laboratory Luke Skywalker gazed upon a double sunset in 'Star Wars.' NASA scientists now believe the universe could be full of planets with sunsets like these.
Van Jacobson PARC A New Way to look at Networking on: Google Video Today's research community congratulates itself for the success of the internet and passionately argues whether circuits or datagrams are the One True Way. Meanwhile the list of unsolved problems grows. Security, mobility, ubiquitous computing, wireless, autonomous sensors, content distribution, digital divide, third world infrastructure, etc., are all poorly served by what's available from either the research community or the marketplace. I'll use various strained analogies and contrived examples to argue that network research is moribund because the only thing it knows how to do is fill in the details of a conversation between two applications. Today as in the 60s problems go unsolved due to our tunnel vision and not because of their intrinsic difficulty. And now, like then, simply changing our point of view may make many hard things easy.
Making Earthquakes...Indoors'- Science in Motion on: National Science Foundation A lively, informal look at earthquake research conducted by NSF's NEESWood project, featuring a full-size, three-bedroom house built on an indoor 'shake table' at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Barton Zweibach MIT String Theory for Pedestrians Part II on: CERN In this 3-lecture series I will discuss the basics of string theory, some physical applications, and the outlook for the future. I will begin with the main concepts of the classical theory and the application to the study of cosmic superstrings. Then I will turn to the quantum theory and discuss applications to the investigation of hadronic spectra and the recently discovered quark-gluon plasma. I will conclude with a sketch of string models of particle physics and showing some avenues that may lead to a complete formulation of string theory.
Mike Davis: Planet of Slums (interview) 1of3 on: YouTube Davis provides the first global overview of the diverse religious, ethnic, and political movements competing for the souls of the new urban poor. He surveys Hindu fundamentalism in Bombay, the Islamist resistance in Casablanca and Cairo, street gangs in Cape Town and San Salvador, Pentecostalism in Kinshasa and Rio de Janeiro, and revolutionary populism in Caracas and La Paz. Planet of Slums ends with a provocative meditation on the 'war on terrorism' as an incipient world war between the American empire and the slum poor. 'In this trenchantly argued book, Mike Davis quantifies the nightmarish mass production of slums that marks the contemporary city. With cool indignation, Davis argues that the exponential growth of slums is no accident but the result of a perfect storm of corrupt leadership, institutional failure, and IMF-imposed Structural Adjustment Programs leading to a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich.
Diane Cho Thermo Electron Corporation Finnigan(tm) LXQ(tm) Linear Ion Trap on: Biocompare Thermo Electron introduces the Finnigan LXQ linear ion trap mass spectrometer.
