Tag Archives: Bonnie Bassler

Three Vancouver (Canada) science events: Vancouver Public Library on April 27, 2015, Café Scientifique on April 28, 2015, and the Wall Exchange on May 26, 2015

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Monday, April 27, 2015, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm is a combined bee/poetry event at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. From the Vancouver Public Library “Honey, Hives, and Poetry in the City” event page,

Celebrate National Poetry Month by investigating food and poetry as a means of cultural and social activism and community building. Featured will be:

  • Rachel Rose, Poet Laureate of Vancouver
  • A collaborative reading by scientist and author Mark L. Winston (Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive) and award winning poet Renee Sarojini Saklikar (Children of Air India)
  • Readings from author and poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner and the Thursdays Writing Collective.
  • Presentation and honey tasting with Hives for Humanity.

Location:

Address: 350 West Georgia St.
VancouverV6B 6B1

  • Phone:

Location Details: Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level

[ETA April 21, 2015 at 1000 PST: I’ve just embedded a video which launches a new year of Science Rap Academy (Tom McFadden) in my April 21, 2015 post titled: Please, don’t kill my hive! (a Science Rap Academy production).]

*Change of Speaker for April 28, 2015  Café Scientifique, see Café Scientifique (Vancouver, Canada) makes a ‘happy’ change: new speaker for April 28, 2015 posting.”*

The day after the bee/poetry event, Tuesday, April 28, 2015  Café Scientifique, held in the back room of The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.], will be hosting a talk on pain (from the April 13, 2015 announcement,

Our speakers for the evening will be Dr. Matthew Ramer and Dr. John Kramer.  The title of their talk is:

Knowing Pains: How can we study pain to better treat it?

Pain is arguably the most useful of sensations.  It is nature’s way of telling us to stop doing whatever it is we are doing in order to prevent damage, and to protect injured body parts during the healing process.  In the absence of pain (in certain congenital conditions and in advanced diabetes, for example), the consequence can be loss of limbs and even of life.

There are circumstances, however, when pain serves no useful purpose:  it persists when the injury has healed or occurs in the absence of any frank tissue damage, and is inappropriate in context (previously innocuous stimuli become painful) and magnitude (mildly painful stimuli become excruciating).  This is called neuropathic pain and is incredibly difficult to treat because it is unresponsive to all of the drugs we use to treat normal, useful (“acute”) pain.

Ultimately, our research is aimed at finding new ways to minimise suffering from neuropathic pain.  Prerequisites to this goal include understanding how normal and neuropathic pain are encoded and perceived by the nervous system, and accurately measuring and quantifying pain so that we can draw reasonable conclusions about whether or not a particular treatment is effective.  We will discuss some historical and current ideas of how pain is transmitted from body to brain, and emphasize that the pain “channel” is not hard-wired, but like the process of learning, it is plastic, labile, and subject to “top-down” control.  We will also tackle the contentious issue of pain measurement in the clinic and laboratory.*

Both speakers are from iCORD (International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries), an interdisciplinary research centre focused on spinal cord injury located at Vancouver General Hospital. There’s more about Dr. Matt Ramer here and Dr. John Kramer here.

*Change of Speaker for April 28, 2015  Café Scientifique, see Café Scientifique (Vancouver, Canada) makes a ‘happy’ change: new speaker for April 28, 2015 posting.”*

The Wall Institute for Advanced Studies is bringing Dr. Bonnie Bassler, the bacteria whisperer, to speak in Vancouver. From the Wall Exchange series event page,

Dr. Bonnie Bassler, Molecular Biology, Princeton University

The Secret Social Lives of Bacteria

May 26, 2015
7:30 pm. Doors open at 6:30 pm.
Vogue Theatre, 918 Granville Street, Vancouver

Tickets available online, 2015 or by calling the Vogue Theatre Box Office: 604-569-1144

Learn more:

Bacterial behaviour may hold key to combatting antibiotic resistance
The Wall Papers

Here are some more details about the tickets, the event, and the speaker from the Northern Tickets event page,

Bonnie Bassler
The Secret, Social Lives of Bacteria
Vogue Theatre
Tuesday May 26th, 2015
Doors 6:30PM, Begins 7:30PM
Free Entry
**Tickets must be redeemed by 7:15PM to be valid**

Dr. Bonnie Bassler is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Squibb Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. The research in Dr. Bassler’s laboratory focuses on the chemical signaling mechanisms that bacteria use to communicate with each other known as “quorum sensing.” Therapies that block quorum sensing activity may represent an important new strategy for combating bacterial infections. Her research reveals new insights into the basic biology and ecology of bacteria; findings that may have direct application in the future treatment of disease.
…
Vogue Theatre
918 Granville Street – Vancouver

Go forth and enjoy!

* Removed ‘,t’ at very end of Café Scientifique excerpt on April 24, 2015.

Kayaks, communication by bacteria, wind power, and biomimcry at TED 2014′s All Stars session 1: Planet Dearth

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These are short talks (shorter than the 18 min. TED talk).  Wish I could cover everyone but I’m beginning to tire so I’ve started with George Dyson, historian of science, from his TED biography,

In telling stories of technologies and the individuals who created them, George Dyson takes a clear-eyed view of our scientific past — while illuminating what lies ahead.

Dyson described Vancouver of 16,000 years ago under an ice sheet and then 10,000 years ago people showed up. 5000 years ago the rainforest emerged and became the setting for a culture and society unique in the world. Most traces of that culture are gone.  Dyson then segued into a description of his love for kayaks and how he arrived in Vancouver at age 17 (19?). He now lives in Washington state. He wants to suggest that commercial sail will return or as they are saying in this session, become ‘de-extinct’.

Then there was Bonnie Bassler, molecular biologist, from her TED biography,

Bonnie Bassler studies how bacteria can communicate with one another, through chemical signals, to act as a unit. Her work could pave the way for new, more potent medicine.

She talked about quorum sensing (chemical communication), the means by which bacteria communicate with each other. They in Bassler’s lab can change the molecule which signals quorum sensing the means by which bacteria communicate to create biofilm, a precursor to toxin secretion and infection. (I forget which disease she mentioned) By changing the molecule they can stop the process in the laboratory. You can find out more about bacteria and quorum sensing here.

Next, there was Amory Lovins, physicist and energy guru, from his TED biography (Note: A link has been removed),

Amory Lovins was worried (and writing) about energy long before global warming was making the front — or even back — page of newspapers. Since studying at Harvard and Oxford in the 1960s, he’s written dozens of books, and initiated ambitious projects — cofounding the influential, environment-focused Rocky Mountain Institute; prototyping the ultra-efficient Hypercar — to focus the world’s attention on alternative approaches to energy and transportation.

He talked about wind and solar power and mass production of equipment to produce this energy. He debunked the notion that alternatives such as wind and solar power are not dependable sources by citing statistics from France showing that they can predict how energy is needed and can be produced in situations of uncertainty.

Finally, Robert Full, biologist, from his TED biography,

Robert Full studies cockroach legs and gecko feet. His research is helping build the perfect “distributed foot” for tomorrow’s robots, based on evolution’s ancient engineering.

Difference between human and nature’s design is robustness, i.e., able to adapt to changing terrain and use same structures for different tasks. He also mentions fault tolerance, i.e., change in a structure does not have to unduly affect the animal/insect, e.g., a  cockroach has an alternative means of achieving the same ends, e.g. walking without feet. Full’s conclusion is that you never know where curiosity-driven research will take you as he mentions the possibility of cockroach-inspired robots while showing scenes of disaster (building rubble) where a suit based on an insect exoskeleton which survives compression could be very handy.