Category Archives: Presentation

Dr Sarah Duddigan talk about Soils

Dr. Sarah Duddigan, a Research Fellow in the Geography and Environmental Department at Reading University gave a talk on about ‘ Soils’.

She covered the subject of soils pointing int out that “It’s not just dirt”, but in fact vital to the success of humanity, reminding the audience that it is a “non-renewable source”.

The current problems of soil degradation that tend to be masked by the emphasis on climate change – in a connected point, highlighted that soil stores three times more carbon that trees. Sarah told the audience that Soil Health is another looming problem for the planet.

The talk cover much more ground than that, going from the basics of what soil is made up from (a balance between Clay, Sand and Silt), the Tea Bag Index that she was involved with, the impact of urbanisation on soil and emerging threats to soil.

(We are awaiting slides from Sarah, but as some people weren’t able to make it to Cafe Sci this week, we’re releasing the audio while we await them.)

Dr. Sarah Duddigan’s spoken presentation

Dr. Sarah Duddigan’s audience Q&A

Robin Wilson

Dr Robin Wilson – Monitoring the environment from space

Dr Robin Wilson, a freelance academic and data scientist with a PhD in satellite imaging and complex systems simulation presented his extremely interesting talk, “Monitoring the environment from space.

Hundreds of satellites orbit the Earth every day, collecting data that is used for monitoring almost all aspects of the environment. This talk introduced the world of satellite imaging, beyond the ‘pretty pictures’ to the scientific data behind them, and showed how the data can be applied to monitor plant growth, air pollution and more, giving local, Isle of Wight examples.

Dr Robin’s spoken presentation

Dr Robin’s slides

Q&A with the audience

Dr Michelle Hale – The importance of marine phytoplankton in controlling climate change

Dr Michelle Hale, Head of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Portsmouth Dr Michelle HaleUniversity, gave a talk about the importance of marine phytoplankton in controlling climate change.

She illustrated this with a lot of pictures from research she has conducted whilst at sea in the Arctic and elsewhere.

Dr Michelle Hale: Presentation

Presentation

Q&A with the audience

Dr Catherine Mercer and Dr Frank Ratcliff – The 100,000 Genome Project

Dr Catherine Mercer gave a background into how she came to genetics over ten years ago – and how much testing has changed over that time. It used to take three months to get the sequence of a single gene back, now the whole Human genome can be sequenced in 48 hours.

Dr Frank Ratcliff and Dr Catherine Mercer - The 100,000 Genome ProjectCatherine explained how the 100,000 Genome Project came about and how the structure of the UK’s NHS is uniquely placed to do a project like this.

There are two types of patients involved, those with Rare diseases (defined as less than 1 in 2,000 of the population having it – totalling 6-8,000 Rare diseases in total) and separately, those with cancer.

The process
Using the skills of an observant doctor combined with the analysis of the patient’s genomes, patterns are detected with the aim of identifying the genes that are responsible for the Rare diseases – or cancer.

Further detail was gone into, then Dr Frank Ratcliff ran through a number of case studies of people in the programme, including interviews with their family members.

Genome 21 printed in a bookDuring his presentation, two not inconsiderable bound books were passed around the audience. Each contained the sequencing of the single Genome 21 – the most simple we were told. As you can see from the photo, the pages were filled with a stream of the four characters that make up DNA, tightly printed four point font.

All round a very interesting insight into this important project.

Unsurprisingly, after the break, many questions were raised by the audience.

Dr Catherine Mercer & Dr Frank Ratcliff: Presentation

Dr Frank Ratcliff and Dr Catherine Mercer: Presentation slides

Q&A with the audience

Dr. Jon Whitehurst: Bats, Maths and Maps presentation and Q&A

Dr. Jon Whitehurst is quite a whiz during the day building technology to keep the country safe.

In his spare time he’s built up an amazing knowledge about bats (his passion since his youth) and utilises his data analysis skills to accurate prediction of bat habitat suitability using non-invasive survey methods. He’s carried this out extensively at the Isle of Wight’s Parkhurst Forest.

The talk he gave on 14th November 2016 was well attended and detailed. The way he described it was:

“The intent of this lecture is to show the extent to which cross discipline working is exploited within modern day ecology and to demonstrate that the ecology research in the 21st century is not just about fieldwork, recording and subjective assessment.

The specific example presented is bat habitat suitability modelling and the lecture will cover the end-to-end process of mapping predictive bat habitat use and describe the contributions to this process from across a wide range of scientific disciplines that enable field observations and digitised habitat features into fully quantifiable predictions of bat habitat use.”

Dr. Jon Whitehurst: Presentation

Dr. Jon Whitehurst: Presentation slides

Q&A with the audience

Dr Jeremy Lockwood: Dinosaurs and Sex

Dr Jeremy Lockwood, Chairman of the Friends of Dinosaur Isle and research associate with Southampton University, presented his talk on ‘Dinosaurs and Sex’ to the Isle of Wight branch of Cafe Scientifique on 11 Jan 2016.

Subtitled ‘A romp through the fossil beds of the Cretaceous’, the talk covered all areas of the subject.

The history of discovery of dinosaurs; the difficulty of how these huge animals could actually carry out the physical act and a lot on the challenges of actually sexing the animals, given there’s no flesh left on the animals.

Dr Jeremy Lockwood: Presentation

Dr Jeremy Lockwood: Presentation slides
To display full screen, click arrowed-icon on bottom right of panel.

Q&A with the audience

Prof John Coleman: Voices from the Past

Professor John Coleman from the Phonetics Department at Oxford University presenting his talk “Voices from the Past” to the Isle of Wight Cafe Scientifique.

John ColemanHe discusses, how do present day languages sound compared to those spoken by our ancestors? An audio journey into the spoken words of the past.

Discover the deep cultural connections we share with our linguistic cousins across Europe and Asia and hear reconstructions of ancient words, last spoken over 6,000 years ago.

Professor John Coleman: Presentation

Professor John Coleman: Presentation slides
To display full screen, click arrowed-icon on bottom right of panel.

Q&A with the audience

Dr Elisabeth Falk: Intriguing Neutrinos: The Deep Secrets of Nature’s Ghosts

Lisa Falk photoDr Elisabeth Falk, Senior Lecturer in Experimental Particle physics (Physics and Astronomy), presented her talk about Neutrinos, one of the fundamental particles which make up the universe – Also, currently, one of the least understood.

Subatomic particles produced by the decay of radioactive elements, Neutrinos are special for many reasons – They have no charge, are incredibly light, travel at near light speed and travel through most other matter.

Following the introduction to what they are, Lisa detailed the challenges of detecting them (she’s been directly involved in these experiments), and the vast equipment that’s used.

Finally she talked about the DUNE project, the next stage in Neutrino detection.

Kind words for Q&A
As ever, Lisa’s talk was followed by a lively Questions and Answers session with the Isle of Wight Cafe Scientifique audience, that she described as “one of the best” she’d had.

Dr Lisa Falk: Presentation

Dr Lisa Falk: Presentation slides
To display full screen, click arrowed-icon on bottom right of panel.

Q&A with the audience

Professor Steve F King – The Standard Models In Particle Physics – 13 April 2015

Prof Steve KingSteve F King, Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy at University of Southampton, presented his ‘The Standard Models In Particle Physics’ talk, taking us all on a voyage back in time across the Universe to start of the Big Bang and the innermost workings of the atom.

After the background on the subject, he went on to discuss the Large Hadron Collider, ‘show us around’ and discuss the Higgs Boson.

Professor Steve F King: Presentation

Professor Steve F King: Presentation slides
To display full screen, click arrowed-icon on bottom right of panel.

Q&A with the audience