Jan. 22: Richard Panek - The 4% Universe
http://www.politics-prose.com/
Jan. 26: Brian Greene - The Hidden Reality
http://www.politics-prose.com/
National Capital Area Skeptics
Promoting Critical Thinking and Scientific Understanding
20/20 Since 1987
Jan 22 & 26 Two Cosmology Authors at Politics & Prose
Two cosmology authors will be talking about their books at Politics and Prose this month:
Jan. 22: Richard Panek - The 4% Universe
http://www.politics-prose.com/
Jan. 26: Brian Greene - The Hidden Reality
http://www.politics-prose.com/
Jan. 22: Richard Panek - The 4% Universe
http://www.politics-prose.com/
Jan. 26: Brian Greene - The Hidden Reality
http://www.politics-prose.com/
Jan 15 WASH DC: Fred Edwords Retrospective on the 2010 Museum of Natural History Human Origins Exhibit
Saturday, January 15th, 2:00 p.m.
Chevy Chase Library, 5625 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Washington, DC
Speaker: Fred Edwords
Topic: Human Origins: When Religion Makes Science Museums Nervous
As the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC opened its new David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins in March 2010, the science staff braced itself for a possible onslaught of criticism from religious conservatives. After all, the fossil evidence for human evolution has grown stunningly robust over the past few decades; so any honest presentation is bound to upset certain sensibilities. In a preemptive move anticipating such criticism, the Human Origins Initiative associated with the new exhibit launched the Broader Social Impacts Committee. Its purpose was to address the social implications, including those affecting religion. And on this committee were placed representatives of all the major world religions. Fred Edwords was invited to represent humanism and, in accepting, participated in a public panel discussion at the museum right after the exhibit opened.
In his talk for WASH MDC, Fred will tell of his adventures on the committee and give some of the historic background of creationist interference with American museum exhibits on evolution and the responses that have been necessary. Fred is a long-time defender of evolutionary science against the onslaughts of creationists. In 1980 he founded the Creation/Evolution journal to answer creationist arguments and went on the debate circuit. He served 15 years as executive director of the American Humanist Association, 12 years as editor of the Humanist magazine, and is now national director of the United Coalition of Reason. He continues his work with the Broader Social Impacts Committee at the museum.
Chevy Chase Library, 5625 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Washington, DC
Speaker: Fred Edwords
Topic: Human Origins: When Religion Makes Science Museums Nervous
As the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC opened its new David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins in March 2010, the science staff braced itself for a possible onslaught of criticism from religious conservatives. After all, the fossil evidence for human evolution has grown stunningly robust over the past few decades; so any honest presentation is bound to upset certain sensibilities. In a preemptive move anticipating such criticism, the Human Origins Initiative associated with the new exhibit launched the Broader Social Impacts Committee. Its purpose was to address the social implications, including those affecting religion. And on this committee were placed representatives of all the major world religions. Fred Edwords was invited to represent humanism and, in accepting, participated in a public panel discussion at the museum right after the exhibit opened.
In his talk for WASH MDC, Fred will tell of his adventures on the committee and give some of the historic background of creationist interference with American museum exhibits on evolution and the responses that have been necessary. Fred is a long-time defender of evolutionary science against the onslaughts of creationists. In 1980 he founded the Creation/Evolution journal to answer creationist arguments and went on the debate circuit. He served 15 years as executive director of the American Humanist Association, 12 years as editor of the Humanist magazine, and is now national director of the United Coalition of Reason. He continues his work with the Broader Social Impacts Committee at the museum.
Jan 8 Reporters: Fair, Balanced and Gullible?
Saturday, Jan 8, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Bob Hirshon , Senior Project Director in
the Directorate for Education and Human
Resources Programs at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) and Principal Investigator for
the NSF-supported Kinetic City project
A public talk. Free.
Refreshments & Socializing until 3:45
National Science Foundation, Room 110
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA (Map) (Flyer)
The job of a journalist is to investigate news stories to report the facts, as well as they can be discerned, to the public. As such, reporters should be our nation’s leading skeptics. Yet newspapers are rife with stories of clearly fraudulent claims, reported as matter of fact, no different than sports scores and weather reports. Bob Hirshon rips the lid off this sensational story, emerging from his years as a mole within the labyrinth of journalistic secret societies, revealing the dark secrets no one has ever dared tell — until now!
Bob Hirshon is Senior Project Director in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is Principal Investigator for the NSF-supported Kinetic City project for children, featuring the Codie Award winning, web-based Kinetic City After School program, Peabody Award-winning Kinetic City Super Crew radio show, and McGraw-Hill book series. Hirshon hosts Science Update, a daily radio feature now in its 23rd year on the air. He also created and oversees the Science NetLinks project for K-12 science teachers, with nearly 400,000 user sessions per month.
Dec 11 Arboreal Mind: Finding Self in Nerve Cell Branching
Giorgio Ascoli, Ph.D.,
Computational Neuroanatomy Group,
Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study,
George Mason University, VA
A public talk at the lay level. Free.
Refreshments & Socializing until 3:45
National Science Foundation, Room 110
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA (Map) (Flyer)
The importance of neuronal morphology, i.e. the tree-like shape of nerve cells, in modern neuroscience is rooted in two foundational aspects. On the one hand, dendrites and axons mediate respectively the functional input and output of neurons. On the other, they constitute the essential substrates for network connectivity. To connect this level of scientific analysis to the philosophical problem of the mind-brain relation requires a radical shift in the current research paradigm to include first-person (subjective) experience as a legitimate topic of empirical investigation. To date, the exact neural correlates are not yet known for any conscious function. However, two general principles are commonly (if implicitly) believed. First, mental states (thoughts, feelings, memories, intentions, etc.) consist of spatio-temporal activity patterns in networks of neurons. Second, learning, meant as the acquisition of the potential to instantiate a previously unknown mental state, corresponds to the formation of new connections among neurons, enabling the activation of the new spatio-temporal pattern underlying said mental state. In this talk, Dr. Ascoli will introduce the notion that the branching structure of neurons provides a fundamental physical underpinning for a key cognitive function, namely the capability to learn. In particular, he will explain that this capability is far from trivial and that any individual can typically only acquire a fraction of the relations that can in principle be known. Moreover, he will illustrate how the spatial architecture of axons and dendrites provides a crucial constraint (and insight) on the capability to acquire knowledge.
This talk will be presented at a lay level because subjective experience and tree shapes are accessible to all humankind.
Dr. Ascoli is head of the Computational Neuroanatomy Group at the Krasnow Institute. The group's main effort is to model neuronal morphology (the "shape" of brain cells) and its influence on network connectivity and electrophysiological activity. One of the products of that group is L-Neuron, a modeling tool that generates and describes realistic neurons. Among the current research projects of the Computational Neuroanatomy Group are anatomically plausible neural networks and autobiographic memory. He edited the scientific book, Computational Neuroanatomy: Principles and Methods, which defines Computational Neuroanatomy in broad terms. His main long-term scientific and philosophical goal consists in establishing a working model for the highest cognitive functions such as human consciosuness. His current consciousness model is fundamentally based on associative learning.
On the experimental side, Dr. Ascoli's research involvement is primarily in neuroanatomy, but his scientific background is biochemistry. As a researcher at the former Laboratory of Adaptive Systems of the N.I.H., he worked on the structural characterization of a learning-associated neuronal protein, Calexcitin, and on the Prion protein, the infective agent of Mad Cow disease. He received his M.Sc. (Laurea) from the University of Pisa, and his Ph.D. from the Scuola Normale Superiore, in Italy, where he investigated drug-protein binding.
Sep 18 Radiation From Your Cell Phone a Health Hazard?
Risk vs. Reality
Prof. Christopher Davis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland
Bethesda Library, 7400 Arlington Rd, Bethesda, MD
Near Bethesda metro (map) (directions) Flyer (Video)
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