Cafe Scientifique

Where :
The Keystone

3 Portsmouth Road, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 4BL

t: + 44 (0)1483 575089

When :
3rd Monday of the month, 7 for 7:30pm

Contact:
Kath Eleveld

(previous events)

Upcoming Events

Date:
Monday 20^th September 2010

Title:
Synesthesia and the mixing of the senses

Speaker:

Jamie Ward

Synesthesia - a fascinating condition in which music can have colour, words can have taste, and time and numbers float through space. Everyone will be closely acquainted with at least six or seven people who have synesthesia but you may not yet know who they are because, until very recently, synesthesia was largely hidden and unknown. Now, science is uncovering its secrets and the findings are leading to a radical rethink about how our senses are organised. Jamie Ward argues that sensory mixing is the norm even though only a few of us cross the barrier into the realms of synesthesia.

How is it possible to experience colour when no colour is there? Why do some people experience touch when they see someone else being touched? Can blind people be made to see again by using their other senses? Why do scientists no longer believe that there are only five senses? How does the food industry exploit the links that exist between our senses? Does synesthesia have a function?

Date:

Monday 18^th October

Title:

Alcohol and the brain: why a drink is more risky than we think

Speaker:

David Nutt

Date:
Monday 15^th November - National Pathology Week

Title:
Making Sense of Screening

Speaker:
Stephen Halloran MBE FRCPath Consultant Clinical Biochemist at the Royal Surrey County Hospital Director of the hub for the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme
Weighing up the benefits and harms of health screening programmes

Screening has become an emotive and politicised subject with increased demands for screening programmes and frustration at the lack of funding available. Though there are high expectations of the benefits of screening, there is debate about the merits among scientists and policy makers centred on:

• What is a screening programme and how can it save lives?

• Can everyone benefit from screening?

• Is screening always the best option?

• Could screening cause more harm than good?

• Why don’t we screen more people for more diseases?

http://www.nationalpathologyweek.org/

www.cancerscreening.nhs.uk

Date:
Monday 13^th December

Title:
End in Fire: the ultimate fate of the Earth?

Speaker:
Robert C Smith
In 7,590 million years, the Sun will have evolved to become a red giant star, whose radius will be comparable to the current radius of the Earth's orbit around the Sun: Robert will discuss what that will do to our Earth. The Earth will actually be too hot for habitation much sooner than that - but still some 1,000 million years into the future from purely astronomical considerations. We shall also look at some of the problems that humanity needs to overcome to survive for even 1,000 centuries.

http://astronomy.sussex.ac.uk/~rcs/rcs.html

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/press_office/media/media672.shtml

Previous events

Date:
Monday 19th July 2010

Title:

Consciousness

Speaker:
Anil Seth
How do conscious experience, subjectivity and free will arise from the brain and the body? Even in the late twentieth century, consciousness was considered by many to be beyond the reach of science. Now, understanding the neural mechanisms underlying consciousness is recognised as a key objective for twenty-first century science. Powerful new combinations of functional brain imaging, computational modelling and basic neurobiology bring real hope that human ingenuity can resolve this central mystery of life. I will discuss recent progress in the science of consciousness, focusing on the challenging question of how we can characterise consciousness - or its absence - in non-human animals, infants, and clinical cases such as coma and the vegetative state.

Date:

Monday June 21st 2010

Title:

Human cloning: should we be scared? Is it immoral or necessary; science fact or science fiction?

Speaker:

Johnjoe McFadden

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