| Date | Subject | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
2009 8:15 pm at ACRC |
(British Museum) | |
8:15 pm |
(Department of Earth Sciences, University College London) | |
8:15 pm |
From Diet to Genes - the Causes of Kidney Stones Although kidney stones are common, very little is known about their causes. Most contain oxalate, a chemical found in high abundance in foods such as rhubarb and spinach. Molecular and cellular research has identified the causes of some of the most severe and rare hereditary forms of kidney stones, leading to great improvements in their treatment, including the counterintuitive approach of treating a kidney disease by liver transplantation. |
(Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, UCL) |
8:15 pm |
The Cassini spacecraft has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004 sending back data about the planet, its moons and rings. Carl Murray is a member of the Cassini Imaging Team and in his talk he will show and discuss some of the stunning images that have been returned. |
(Queen Mary University of London ) |
8:15 pm |
(College of Staten Island, The City University of New York) | |
8:15 pm |
The history of SI units will be described, from its inception in 1790 when Louis XVI established a commission to choose units for the world, to the many changes of the last 50 years. The successive definitions of the seven base units, the metre, the second, the kilogram, the ampere, the kelvin, the mole and the candela, will be described. The metre has been revised four times, from its definition as one ten millionth of a quadrant of the earth (1793), to the distance between the defining scratches on the prototype metre bar (1895), to a multiple of the wavelength of the red krypton atomic line (1960), to the distance light travels in a vacuum in a specified time interval (1983 and still the current definition). The second was originally defined astronomically in terms of the period of rotation of the earth, but is now defined as a multiple of the period of the microwave hyperfine transition in the caesium atom. In this talk special emphasis will be placed on the history of the definition of the second and the measurement of time. Why do we need to keep changing the definitions of our base units? - and who takes the decision to change the definitions? The answers to these questions will be discussed, along with the establishment and operation of the BIPM and its various international committees. |
(University of Reading) |
8:15 pm |
(Veolia Water Industrial Outsourcing Ltd.) | |
8:15 pm |
(Department of Earth Sciences, UCL) | |
8:15 pm |
A light-hearted look at the origins of some scientific names |
(Ravensbourne Geological Society) |
8:00 pm |
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Last updated 30-Jan-2010