What does speed reading, atmospheric chemistry and organ transplant legal controversies have in common? They’re all topics at Nerd Nite #25! We’re hosting a slightly-larger-than-normal Nerd Nite as our regular space at the Citadel isn’t available. So we’re bringing the Nite to the TELUS World of Science.
Be there AND be square!
When: Monday, February 29, 2016 (doors @ 7:30pm, show @ 8pm)
Where: Kinetic Hall (TELUS World of Science, 11211 142 St NW Edmonton)
$20 in advance (includes fees and GST) — on sale Feb 1 at 9:30am SOLD OUT!
[Children 17 & Under Will Not Be Admitted]
Here’s our line-up of speakers:
Nerdy Superpower: Speedreading
Liz Hay
Have you ever wanted a superpower? Have you wanted to be able to finally finish your TBR (to be read) pile and still talk to your family/ kids/ friends? Do you want to read all the books? If you have ever been curious about speedreading and how it works, now is your chance. Using basic principles of speedreading, you will be guided through the first steps of unlearning your old reading habits and relearning a new approach to reading and comprehension. Bring an open mind and your questions!
Liz Hay has a Bachelor of Arts in Cinema Studies from the University of British Columbia and has always loved writing, reading, travelling and volunteering. She has facilitated classes on academic integrity, non-profit board governance, and is strangely more comfortable in front of a large group of people than she is at a party. Currently, you will find her working to support the Art and Design Department at MacEwan University, volunteering at Metro Cinema and completing her Web Design and Development certificate also from MacEwan University.
Payment for organs? Legal and ethical limits on strategies to increase organ donation
Maeghan Toews
Hundreds of Canadians die each year waiting for lifesaving organs. Although our donation rates have increased in recent years, there are still not enough donated organs to meet this need. Various strategies to increase donation are being discussed in policy and academic circles (e.g., changing our consent framework, or financially incentivizing donation), and this talk will explore some of these strategies and their ethical and legal limits in the context of our current donation system.
Maeghan Toews is a Research Associate at the Health Law Institute in the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta. Her research interests include examining the legal and ethical issues associated with genetics and genomics, organ donation and transplantation, rare diseases, and biomedical research. Prior to joining the Health Law Institute, Maeghan received her B.A. from the University of Western Ontario, her JD from the University of Toronto and spent several years as a commercial litigator in private practice. She then pursued her graduate work at Leiden University where she graduated cum laude and received her LL.M in public international law. Maeghan currently sits on the University of Alberta’s Biomedical Research Ethics Board, the University of Alberta Hospital’s Clinical Ethics Committee, and is teaching “Law and Medicine” at the Faculty of Law.
Dust: The Little Particle That Could
Sarah Styler
Over a billion tons of dust are emitted into the atmosphere each year from desert regions in Africa and Central Asia. Once emitted, dust particles can be transported around the world. During their travels, they promote cloud formation, fertilize oceanic and terrestrial ecosystems, and influence air quality in cities. I’ll talk about how and why these small particles have an outsize influence on our climate and health, and about how we can make and study dust in the lab.
Sarah’s undergraduate and graduate studies in environmental and atmospheric chemistry at the University of Toronto were punctuated by two somewhat eclectic breaks, in which she worked in community fundraising and investigated the adverse effects of long-term storage on paintings and sculptures. After graduation, Sarah undertook a postdoc in Leipzig, Germany, where she studied the role that urban surfaces play in mediating urban air quality and collected more than an apartment’s worth of East German furniture. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alberta, where her group’s research focuses on chemistry and photochemistry in polluted and dust-influenced urban environments.
Some people want to get noticed, and others want to avoid any kind of notice at all. And still others are thrust into the spotlight because it’s their destiny. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in hearing more about, then you don’t want to miss the first Nerd Nite Edmonton event of 2016! It combines all of those ideas and more. Think sex and ageing, magic and cloaking devices. NOW we’re getting somewhere!
Be there AND be square.
When: Thursday, January 14, 2016 (doors @ 7:30pm, show @ 8pm)
Where: The Club (Citadel Theatre, 9828-101A Avenue Edmonton)
$20 in advance, includes fees & GST (Tickets available December 14 at 9:30am)
$25 at the door, includes fees & GST
$15 for balcony tickets (Only available on Monday, January 11 at 9:30am phone or in-person only)
[Children 17 & Under Will Not Be Admitted]
Here’s our line-up of speakers:
Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Narrative: On Reading and the Virtues of Constant Vigilance
Hannah McGregor & Marcelle Kosman
Writers are taught to kill their darlings, but literary critics have to do the same thing — take something you really like, and rip it open to see how it ticks. But what happens when a couple of feminist literary scholars turn their gimlet gazes on the beloved Harry Potter series?
Marcelle Kosman and Hannah McGregor are the hosts of Witch, Please, a fortnightly podcast about the Harry Potter world. Both lady-scholars in the U of A’s Department of English and Film Studies (Marcelle is a doctoral candidate and Hannah is a full-time Instructor), they’re big fans of talking about Harry Potter to anyone who will listen.
Going nuts over girls: how chasing tail influences ageing
Jessica Haines
Animals (humans included) do crazy things when they’re trying to get the attention of a prospective partner. They sprout bones from their heads, grow impractical teeth, go into battle with each other, have elaborate penises, and even dance. And all that prancing around and growing odd bits has attracted the attention of lots of scientists. This is great, because it means we can dive into the weird and wonderful world of animal sex and their attempts to get it. Besides becoming the focus of a bunch of nosy scientists (and a Nerd Nite audience), this showing off can have other side effects. Showing off can be risky: at the very least you can end up as someone’s meal, but it can have other long-term effects such as changing how fast you age. I study red squirrels in the Yukon, and I’m going to use them and other species as examples of what happens when you spend a lot of time chasing prospective mates.
Jess was born in New Brunswick and spent her childhood swimming after fish, kayaking with seals and porpoises, skating by starlight, and hiking coastal forests with her Dad. This sparked a lifelong passion for wildlife and wild places, which came in handy when she started her PhD at the University of Alberta and she lived in the Yukon for months at a time to study red squirrels. She fell in love with their northern world and their spunky personalities. Her time in the north might have made her a bit crazy: when she’s back in Edmonton she gets excited when the temperatures drop, the snow falls, and she can head out cross-country skiing in the cold.
Smoke and Mirrors: Unveiling Invisibility
Brad Hauer
As demonstrated by numerous references in mythology and modern literature, humans have long sought after the power of invisibility. But at what point do we crossover from fantasy to reality? How close are we really to being able to develop a Harry Potteresque invisibility cloak? Closer than some may think. In my presentation, I will discuss present technologies, ranging from simple lenses to advanced metamaterials, that are being used to cloak objects, as well as look at what the future holds as far as real life invisibility goes.
Brad developed a passion for physics while attending high school in his hometown of Leduc, Alberta (it’s by the airport). He received his Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Alberta, spending his summers searching for dark matter with PICASSO, a particle physics experiment located 2 km underground in Sudbury’s nickel mine. Brad is currently pursuing his PhD at the U of A in Prof. John Davis’s lab where he makes his living playing with nanotechnology and lasers in liquid helium. He also enjoys playing basketball and eating pizza.
Nerd Nite is like a good cocktail. A few simple ingredients make it spectacular. So for this next Nerd Nite, our 23rd, we’re mixing together rhetorical analysis with some anti-coagulants and a healthy splash of particle physics in Antarctica. And there’s only one way for you to know for sure if this new concoction is a success: come to Nerd Nite 23. Because if you don’t, there’s no amount of rhetoric you can dream up that will keep your blood flowing, and your, um… particle physics icy cold. And that, my friends, is what it looks like when a metaphor totally gets away from you.
Be there AND be square.
When: Thursday, November 26, 2015 (doors @ 7:30pm, show @ 8pm)
Where: The Club (Citadel Theatre, 9828-101A Avenue Edmonton)
$20 in advance, includes fees & GST (Tickets available November 3 at 9:30am)
$25 at the door, includes fees & GST
$15 for balcony tickets (Only available on Monday, November 23th at 9:30am phone or in-person only)
[Children 17 & Under Will Not Be Admitted]
Here’s our line-up of speakers:
How to Dupe Friends and Manipulate People: The Fine Art of Bamboozlement
Lauren Sergy
Words can be slippery things, especially when used on the political campaign trail. How is it that time and again we listen to both promises and mud-slinging in speeches and debates, swearing that we will remain objective and rational, only to become frothing partisans ourselves? Why, when we know that speeches are spun to push out buttons and manipulate facts, do we still unwillingly and unwittingly buy into them? Get ready to dive into the fascinating, frustrating, sometimes frivolous, and often infuriating world of rhetoric through the lens of political campaigning. We’ll look at tactics that befuddle and bewitch us into taking sides even against our own better judgement.
Lauren is a public speaking coach and trainer, which makes her obsession with rhetoric and nuanced language slightly more forgivable. She has taught a wide variety of people, from professors to accountants to marketers, how to become more skilled and persuasive speakers. When not deconstructing politicians’ speeches, she enjoys other nerdly pursuits such as teaching her kids lightsabre fighting and frantically live-Tweeting facts during Nerd Nite talks.
Ice-cold neutrinos and you!
Tania Wood
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is the first detector of its kind, observing the cosmos from deep within the South Pole ice. It uses a particle called a ‘neutrino’ instead of photons (light), like other observatories. The Neutrino’s unique properties allow them to carry information out from the most violent astrophysical sources such as exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts and active galactic nuclei (which is a fancy way of saying supermassive black holes, nbd). Interacting essentially only via the weak force, neutrinos allow this particle detector to see space with a whole set of new eyes. IceCube collaborators address several big questions in physics, like the nature of dark matter, the properties of the neutrino itself, why the detectors need to be in such extreme places and what to do if a penguin breaks into your lab.
Tania Wood is a PhD Candidate in Experimental Particle Physics at the University of Alberta. She is interested in excitement, adventure and really wild things; in particular extreme environments, discovery projects, the ‘big questions’ and directions to a good party. In the past she worked the Mars Phoenix Polar lander and on small scale helicopters all following the general theme of whimsy and exploration.
Heart Attacks, Chinese Hamster Ovaries, and Obduracy
Darren Knapp
What? How does the reproductive system of the Chinese Hamster help hundreds of heart attack patients annually in Wildrose Country? And what does the automaticity of the cardiac cycle have to do with a nightclub? Can I actually die of stubbornness? And why is there a bunny with a pancake on it’s head? You’ll see, stay tuned.
Darren began life as an embryo; fast forward to the 90’s where as a paramedic he patrolled the fast paced streets of Edmonton treating heart attack patients with little more than diesel and hope. Then in 2006 came the Vital Heart Response program which radically transformed the Northern Alberta landscape of coronary care. A Clinical Educator, Instructor and Quality and patient safety strategist writing the 1st draft of the provincial EMS protocols for Cardiovascular care, he is now the manager of this most successful dual reperfusion program for STEMI. Based out of the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute, he’s the lead singer of Grave New World, rides his Harley whenever the sun allows it, and if you see him wandering around appearing lost, just point him in the direction of the nearest pub.