There are two upcoming science events in Vancouver.

Café Scientifique

*

*

*

*

 

*Cancellation notice received via email March 29, 2016 at 1430 hours PDT:

Our sincerest apologies, but we have just received word that The Railway Club is shutting it’s doors for good, effective immediately.  Unfortunately, because of this tonight’s event is cancelled.  We will do our best to re-schedule the talk in the near future once we have found a new venue.

The Tues., March 29, 2016 (tonight) Café Scientifique talk at 7:30 pm,  Café Scientifique, in the back room of The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.]), has one of the more peculiar descriptions for a talk that I’ve seen for this group. From a March 1, 2016 announcement (received via e-mail),

Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Jerilynn Prior.  Prior is Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of British Columbia, founder and scientific director of the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research (CeMCOR), director of the BC Center of the Canadian Multicenter Osteoporosis Study (CaMOS), and a past president of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.  The title of her talk is:

 

Is Perimenopause Estrogen Deficiency?

Sorting engrained misinformation about women’s midlife reproductive transition

43 years old with teenagers a full-time executive director of a not for profit is not sleeping, she wakes soaked a couple of times a night, not every night but especially around the time her period comes. As it does frequently—it is heavy, even flooding. Her sexual interest is virtually gone and she feels dry when she tries.

Her family doctor offered her The Pill. When she took it she got very sore breasts, ankle swelling and high blood pressure. Her brain feels fuzzy, she’s getting migraines, gaining weight and just can’t cope. . . .

What’s going on? Does she need estrogen “replacement”?  If yes, why when she’s still getting flow? Does The Pill work for other women? What do we know about the what, why, how long and how to help symptomatic perimenopausal women?

This description seems more appropriate for a workshop on women’s health for doctors and/or women going through ‘the change’.

Unveiling the Universe Lecture Series

This is a fully booked event but I suppose there’s always the possibility of a ticket at the last minute. From the 100 Years of General Relativity: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Gravitational Waves and Interstellar on the University of British Columbia (UBC) website,

We invite you to join us for an evening with renowned theoretical physicist Kip Thorne.

100 years ago, Albert Einstein formulated his wildly successful general theory of relativity—a set of physical laws that attribute gravity to the warping of time and space. It has been tested with high precision in the solar system and in binary pulsars and explains the expansion of the universe. It even predicts black holes and gravitational waves. When combined with quantum theory, relativity provides a tentative framework for understanding the universe’s big-bang birth. And the equations that made Einstein famous have become embedded in our popular culture via, for example, the science fiction movie Interstellar.

In a captivating talk accessible to science enthusiasts of all ages, Professor Kip Thorne will use Interstellar to illustrate some of relativity’s deepest ideas, including black holes and the recent discovery of gravitational waves.

Professor Thorne of the California Institute of Technology is one of the world’s foremost experts on the astrophysics implications of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, including black holes—an expertise he used to great effect as scientific advisor to the movieInterstellar. Thorne was also one of the three principal scientists (with Rainer Weiss and Ron Drever) behind the LIGO experiment that recently detected gravitational waves, an achievement most expect will earn them a Nobel Prize.

Here are the details from the event page,

Speaker:

Dr. Kip Thorne

URL for Speaker:

Free Registration (required)

Event Date and Time:

Thu, 2016-04-14 19:00 – 20:30

Location:

Science World (1455 Quebec St )

Local Contact:

Theresa Liao

Intended Audience:

Public

Sadly, I did not receive details and a link for registration in a more timely fashion although I was able to give readers a heads-up in a Jan. 22, 2016 posting. (scroll down about 25% of the way down).