Southampton Science Café

The Café Scientifique in Southampton

April 20, 2010

Dr. Ann-Marie Hughes, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton

Robotics as aids for stroke rehabilitation

Past meetings

February 16, 2010

Professor Paul White, Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton

Marine Mammals and Sound: The Impact of Underwater Noise

Marine mammals are emblematic and enchanting creatures. Most species of marine mammal exploit sound as a key sense. In many case their reliance on sound is absolute: "a deaf whale is a dead whale". They exploit sound for a variety of purposes including: social communication and as a tool to explore their environment. Many of the sounds these animals make are familiar to us, such as the singing of humpback whales (as celebrated in many relaxation tapes). But many of their calls of are inaudible to the human listener, since they are either at too high frequency (ultrasonic) or too lower frequency (infrasonic).

Jacques Cousteau famously referred to the ocean as the "Silent World": it was never thus. The ocean has always been a noisy place and man's increased exploitation of the ocean has only added to that noise. Marine mammals have evolved to exist in the quieter oceans which predated the industrial revolution and it is feared that the introduction of anthropogenic (man-made) noise may hinder their survival. The extent to which oceanic noise threatens these animals is a matter of considerable debate, but in recognition of the potential threat, noise in the ocean is beginning to be regulated.

This talk will discuss marine mammals and how they use sound. It will provide examples of the possible impacts sound has on some animals and consider wider issues surrounding noise in the ocean.

Previous Café meetings

February 16, 2010

Professor Paul White, Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton

Marine Mammals and Sound: The Impact of Underwater Noise

Marine mammals are emblematic and enchanting creatures. Most species of marine mammal exploit sound as a key sense. In many case their reliance on sound is absolute: "a deaf whale is a dead whale". They exploit sound for a variety of purposes including: social communication and as a tool to explore their environment. Many of the sounds these animals make are familiar to us, such as the singing of humpback whales (as celebrated in many relaxation tapes). But many of their calls of are inaudible to the human listener, since they are either at too high frequency (ultrasonic) or too lower frequency (infrasonic).

Jacques Cousteau famously referred to the ocean as the "Silent World": it was never thus. The ocean has always been a noisy place and man's increased exploitation of the ocean has only added to that noise. Marine mammals have evolved to exist in the quieter oceans which predated the industrial revolution and it is feared that the introduction of anthropogenic (man-made) noise may hinder their survival. The extent to which oceanic noise threatens these animals is a matter of considerable debate, but in recognition of the potential threat, noise in the ocean is beginning to be regulated.

This talk will discuss marine mammals and how they use sound. It will provide examples of the possible impacts sound has on some animals and consider wider issues surrounding noise in the ocean.

November 17, 2009

Prof. Nils Andersson, School of Mathematics, University of Southampton

Gravitational Waves
With his theory of General Relativity, Einstein provided us with a new understanding of gravity. The key idea of the theory is that what we experience as gravity is, in fact, due to the geometry of space and time. Moreover, these concepts are no longer fixed as in Newton's physics. One of the most intriguing implications is that changes in gravity should move as waves. These "gravitational waves" would carry the imprint of the most violent phenomena we can think of, like colliding or exploding stars and even the birth of the Universe itself. In this talk I will describe the ongoing effort aimed at detecting these elusive waves and what we expect to learn from such observations in the future.

October 27, 2009

Dr. Peter Curran, Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory, University College London, Gamma-ray bursts

Gamma-Ray Bursts: A history of an enigma For one brief but intense moment, a Gamma-ray burst is the brightest object in the entire Universe, giving off more energy in just a fraction of a second to a few seconds, than our own Sun will over its entire lifetime. These bursts are so bright, energetic and extreme that they can be seen from the other side of the universe, many billions of light years away. They have been proposed as cosmic light houses and as the cause of the dinosaur extinctions. I will explore the history and science of these exotic sources, from the depths of the cold war to the mobile phone age.

July 16, 2009

Professor Pavlos Lagoudakis, University of Southampton, School of Physics and Astronomy, Nanotechnology

May 20, 2009, 7 PM (note the Wednesday date)

Mr Tom Whytnie, Imperial College

Title: Whatever is the matter?
Abstract:
Tom Whyntie shouldn't be giving this talk. He should be in a cold, dark control room in Geneva, taking data, making graphs, colouring them in and solving Physics. However, nine days after the world watched the successful switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva, the magnets broke and the expedition into a whole new world of fundamental physics was put on hold for a year.
So instead, he's coming over all the way from Switzerland to talk about what the LHC is actually all about, how we hope to create and find evidence for ¡Ædark matter' in a tunnel under the Swiss-French border, and why the scientific community is eagerly awaiting switch-on Mk II later this year. Just where is the estimated fifth of the Universe that we just can't see? Why do we think it's there in the first place? How can particle physics and the LHC shed light on the problem? What else are we looking for? What went wrong with the machine, and what exactly have we been doing for a year? And why shouldn't you be worrying about black holes swallowing up the Earth? All this, and possibly more, will be addressed...

Biography:
Tom Whyntie is studying for a PhD at Imperial College London, having completed an undergraduate degree in Experimental and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge (Sidney Sussex College). He is currently based at CERN working on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, a 12,500 tonne, cathedral-sized ¡Ædigital camera' one hundred metres under the ground near the Switzerland-France border, at what he likes to call the "coal face of blue sky science". When the machine starts up (again) in September 2009, he'll be part of a team of around 3000 CMS physicists who will be trying to take pictures of what our universe might have looked like a few billionths of a second after the Big Bang, in an effort to understand exactly how the fundamental Lego bricks of existence fit together. In particular, Tom is involved in the laboratory-based searches for hypothetical ¡Æsupersymmetric' particles, which provide a number of promising candidates for "dark matter" - the estimated missing fifth of the Universe.

Tom has received awards from the Institute of Physics for his lecturing, performing in locations as varied as Cambridge, London, Portsmouth, Dublin, Enfield and Romania. He has also featured at the Cheltenham Science Festival as a NOISEmaker, a EPSRC-funded campaign aimed at promoting careers in science to 14-19 year olds. Recently, Tom won the Oxford Regional Final of the NESTA FameLab 2009 competition, a sort of "Pop Idol" for scientists, and will compete at the National Final at Cheltenham Science Festival at the beginning of June.

February 25, 2009, 7 PM (note the Wednesday date)

Professor John Owen, University of Southampton, School of Chemistry, Modern Batteries

Public interest in batteries is increasing with the variety of new portable electronic devices from phones to electric cars. The lecture will explain in simple terms and video demonstrations how lithium batteries work (or not!) and how different batteries are being developed for different tasks.

Where is the universe?

18^th November 2008, 6:45 PM

Please note the change in date. Also note the earlier-than-usual start time.

Prof. Bob Nichol, Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth

In the last ten years, cosmologists have discovered that 97% of the Universe is dark. It does not shine and only interacts with us through gravity. More bizarrely, three quarters of this dark stuff appears to be an energy associated with empty space and is causing the Universe to expand at an ever increasing rate. Cosmologists have measured the universe to great accuracy, but understand it even less. In this talk I will review the evidence for the dark universe and speculate what it may be.

Nuclear fusion power

16^th October 2008, 7pm

Chris Carpenter / Chris Warrick, UKAEA Fusion Association

With fuel reserves dwindling and climate change becoming a reality, research into new energy sources is essential. One alternative is Fusion - the process that powers the sun - the European JET experiment in the UK has proved fusion works and the international experiment ITER being built in France, will make electricity generation from fusion a reality. Why has it taken so long and why should it be taken seriously?

Bad Science - the method, the media and the message

24^th September 2008, 7pm

Note change of time and date

Dr. Phil Uttley, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton

One of the most important things science has given us is the scientific method itself, which since its first rigorous application in the 16th and 17th centuries has pushed our understanding of the universe and our place in it to previously unimaginable levels. And yet, the majority of the population are completely unaware of these simple principles which underpin human progress. Much of this ignorance is down to the bad reporting and presentation of science by the media, which tends to portray science as arcane information handed down from on high, not a path to knowledge which most people can tread. At worst, the media actively pushes stories as `science' when they are really based on pseudoscience or a basic misinterpretation of scientific data.

In this talk, I'll use examples from science and the media to take a look at some aspects of the scientific method, how we can use them to make sense of the world, and show how without them, we can all be led astray. We'll see how our unscientific ways of thinking may have been useful in the past when we lived as hunter-gatherers, but are really holding us back today. On the way we'll look at cloud-creatures and nun-buns, the connection between superstitious pigeons and stock-market analysts, and I'll also point the finger at some less-than-obvious culprits in the bad-science wars. Most importantly, I want to show how the scientific method is relevant to our daily lives and not just the classroom or laboratory.

What we still don't know about evolution

17^th July 2008, 7pm

Dr. Richard Watson, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton

It has been 150 years since Darwin described the process of evolution by natural selection and we now understand a lot about the details of how it works. The field of 'artificial life' uses this understanding to evolve artificial creatures in worlds simulated on computers with some extraordinary results. However, these simulations show that our current understanding of evolution is incomplete - we don't understand everything yet and there are some important questions that remain open. For example, we don't really see any evidence that evolution by natural selection, as we currently understand it, will produce a continued increase in complexity - which is troubling given how complex biological organisms are. Therefore a complete scientific theory of evolution needs to move beyond the Darwinian model - unfortunately, given persistent attachments to non-scientific explanations, this is tricky territory. I'll show some examples of artificial evolution simulations and artificial life creatures, and also illustrate current shortcomings in our understanding of how evolution works. I'll lead up to talking about the kind of mechanisms that my team at Southampton has been working on to develop a more complete theory of evolution which models a balance of competition and cooperation at different biological scales.

A Scientist's Guide to the Orchestra

19^th June 2008, 7pm

Dr. Matthew Wright, Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton

How is a trumpet like a violin? Can a piano ever really be in tune? What would a concrete trombone sound like? For as long as science has existed it has sought to understand how musical instruments work. And yet, despite all this scientific study, the very best instruments are often still those made hundreds of years ago. Did the master craftsmen who made them understand why their instruments sounded so good? I'll be discussing what we know and what we don't know about musical instrument acoustics, and whether we'll ever be able to make a ten-pound Stradivarius.

New Approaches to Biometric Systems: Gait, Ear and Fusion

15^th May 2008, 7pm

Prof. Mark Nixon, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton

Biometrics are exciting increasing interest, by their ability to recognise by personal characteristic; using cameras to obtain biometrics is attractive since they can operate without subject contact. This talk will describe progress in multimodal biometric fusion and in the newer vision-based biometrics, ear and gait. Gait is attractive as a biometric since it concerns motion, is available at a distance and can help us find other biometrics. Ears are attractive as a biometric since they don't change much as you get older. The current interest in multimodal biometric fusion arises not only from ability to improve locating a human or the characteristic of interest, but also from the potential advantages of fusing complementary technologies. Currently there are two portal systems in development aiming to provide fusion based access control, one using face and iris and the other using face, gait and ear. So we'll look at new biometrics and new ways they are being used - I've been working in this area for 25 years now so I'll certainly show you why we enjoy it so much.

Finding our way through some of Biology's moral mazes

17^th April 2008, 7pm

Prof. John Bryant, School of Biosciences, University of Exeter

Rapid advances in modern biology are leading to significant increases in our power over human life in all its stages. Some find this exciting, others disturbing and still others frightening. Can we decide what is right and wrong as we consider the range of possible interventions in human life? Does traditional ethical thinking help us to decide? We will base our discussions around use of knowledge of human genes and around embryonic stem cell research.

Biofuels: Sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels?

13^th March 2008, 7pm

Prof. Matthew Davidson, Department of Chemistry, University of Bath

The use of fossil fuels is unsustainable and finding viable alternatives is one of the major technological challenges of the 21st century. I will address some of the scientific and technological issues associated with biodiesel and explore how improvements might be made for future generations of biofuels.

Is a little bit of Polonium good for you? - Current Issues in Radiation Protection

21^st February 2008, 7pm

Jim Thurston, Medical Engineering and Physics, King's College Hospital, London

Every one of us will almost certainly be deliberately exposed to ionising radiation several times during our lifetime, especially for medical or dental diagnosis or treatment. We are also exposed to natural background radiation all the time. The deliberate use of ionising radiation for medical and other purposes has been going on for over 100 years now, and the public perception of the risks resultant from such exposure has changed quite dramatically during that time. However recent events have brought the attention of the public back to considering the potential harm of ionising radiation, such events including the Litvinenko Affair, Terrorism and Dirty Bombs, a return to Nuclear Power, etc.

This talk will give a historical background to the uses of ionising radiation, discuss some of the recent issues in the public domain, and also introduce some of the latest thinking on the actual hazards and risks of exposure to ionising radiation.

The Frontier of Particle Physics and the Large Hadron Collider

24^th January 2008, 7pm

Prof. Nick Evans, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton

In just a few months particle physicists will be switching on a multi-billion pound atom smasher in Geneva called the Large Hadron Collider. This machine will probe the most basic building blocks of nature and shed light on our understanding of the masses of particles. Excitingly, the machine must uncover the explanation to a missing piece in our understanding of the weak nuclear force. Speculation is rife as to what will be found from the mysterious Higgs particle to "supersymmetry" or extra dimensions of Space-Time.

The Search for Life in the Universe

22^nd November 2007, 7pm

Prof. Malcolm Coe, Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton

One of the biggest questions facing Humankind is "are we are alone in the universe?" The implications for society if we find that the answer is "no" are far-reaching. But what are the odds? What are astronomers doing to find the answers? How will you react if contact is made with another intelligent species? What, if anything, should the government do?

Global Warming: Causes, Predictions and Ways to Reduce the Impact

25^th October 2007

Prof. Mike Lockwood FRS, Space Science and Technology Department Appleton Rutherford Lab and School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton

Scientists are now 90% certain that we are experiencing climate change associated with global warming - and have been for several decades. There is now no serious scientific doubt that man-made climate change is a reality. Over ten years ago predictions were made that we in the UK were likely to experience warmer, drier winters and wetter summers along with more "extreme events" such as heatwaves and torrential rain.

Professor Lockwood's research recently quoted in Nature, the Economist and in the BBC News has eliminated the last remaining alternative explanation to man-made climate change - which was solar change. The consequences for every inhabitant of this planet are profound, but there are ways governments can limit the effects if we act quickly.

Launch of first Café

The Southampton Science Café was launched yesterday (25^th Oct.) at the Borders Book Store in the West Quay retail park. Over 50 people - ages ranging from early teens to those in their 70s - packed into the aisles between the bookshelves to listen to Professor Mike Lockwood's excellent talk on Global Warming. Mike gave a fascinating report on his research into the action of the sun on global warming and affirmed that the causes of the rise in the earth's temperature are manmade - rather than natural. Mike's talk was suprisingly optimistic - he outlined ways in which governments could halt the increase in greenhouse gases that we produce - without damaging economies, or having significant negative affects on our standards of living.

The local radio station Original 106FM did a live interview with Mike Lockwood and Christian Kaiser earlier in the day. You can listen to the interview here.