Tag Archives: Neil Turok

World Science Festival May 29 – June 3, 2018 in New York City

I haven’t featured the festival since 2014 having forgotten all about it but I received (via email) an April 30, 2018 news release announcing the latest iteration,

ANNOUNCING WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVAL NEW YORK CITY

MAY 29 THROUGH JUNE 3, 2018

OVER 70 INSPIRING SCIENCE-THEMED EVENTS EXPLORE THE VERY EDGE OF
KNOWLEDGE

Over six extraordinary days in New York City, from May 29 through June
3, 2018; the world’s leading scientists will explore the very edge of
knowledge and share their insights with the public.  Festival goers of
all ages can experience vibrant discussions and debates, evocative
performances and films, world-changing research updates,
thought-provoking town hall gatherings and fireside chats, hands-on
experiments and interactive outdoor explorations.  It’s an action
adventure for your mind!

See the full list of programs here:
https://www.worldsciencefestival.com/festival/world-science-festival-2018/

This year will highlight some of the incredible achievements of Women in
Science, celebrating and exploring their impact on the history and
future of scientific discovery. Perennial favorites will also return in
full force, including WSF main stage Big Ideas programs, the Flame
Challenge, Cool Jobs, and FREE outdoor events.

The World Science Festival makes the esoteric understandable and the
familiar fascinating. It has drawn more than 2.5 million participants
since its launch in 2008, with millions more experiencing the programs
online.

THE 2018 WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVAL IS NOT TO BE MISSED, SO MARK YOUR
CALENDAR AND SAVE THE DATES!

Here are a few items from the 2018 Festival’s program page,

Thursday, May 31, 2018

6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

American Museum of Natural History

Host: Faith Salie

How deep is the ocean? Why do whales sing? How far is 20,000 leagues—and what is a league anyway? Raise a glass and take a deep dive into the foamy waters of oceanic arcana under the blue whale in the Museum’s Hall of Ocean Life. Comedian and journalist Faith Salie will regale you with a pub-style night of trivia questions, physical challenges, and hilarity to celebrate the Museum’s newest temporary exhibition, Unseen Oceans. Don’t worry. When the going gets tough, we won’t let you drown. Teams of top scientists—and even a surprise guest or two—will be standing by to assist you. Program includes one free drink and private access to the special exhibition Unseen Oceans. Special exhibition access is available to ticket holders beginning one hour before the program, from 6–7pm.

Learn More

Buy Tickets

Thursday, May 31, 2018

8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College

Participants: Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Nim Tottenham, Carla Shatz, And Others

What if your brain at 77 were as plastic as it was at 7? What if you could learn Mandarin with the ease of a toddler or play Rachmaninoff without breaking a sweat? A growing understanding of neuroplasticity suggests these fantasies could one day become reality. Neuroplasticity may also be the key to solving diseases like Alzheimer’s, depression, and autism. This program will guide you through the intricate neural pathways inside our skulls, as leading neuroscientists discuss their most recent findings and both the tantalizing possibilities and pitfalls for our future cognitive selves.

The Big Ideas Series is supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation. 

Learn More

Buy Tickets

Friday, June 1, 2018

8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts

Participants: Yann LeCun, Susan Schneider, Max Tegmark, And Others

“Success in creating effective A.I.,” said the late Stephen Hawking, “could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don’t know.” Elon Musk called A.I. “a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization.” Are we creating the instruments of our own destruction or exciting tools for our future survival? Once we teach a machine to learn on its own—as the programmers behind AlphaGo have done, to wondrous results—where do we draw moral and computational lines? Leading specialists in A.I, neuroscience, and philosophy will tackle the very questions that may define the future of humanity.

The Big Ideas Series is supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation. 

Learn More

Buy Tickets

Friday, June 1, 2018

8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College

Participants Marcela Carena, Janet Conrad, Michael Doser, Hitoshi Murayama, Neil Turok

“If I had a world of my own,” said the Mad Hatter, “nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be.” Nonsensical as this may sound, it comes close to describing an interesting paradox: You exist. You shouldn’t. Stars and galaxies and planets exist. They shouldn’t. The nascent universe contained equal parts matter and antimatter that should have instantly obliterated each other, turning the Big Bang into the Big Fizzle. And yet, here we are: flesh, blood, stars, moons, sky. Why? Come join us as we dive deep down the rabbit hole of solving the mystery of the missing antimatter.

The Big Ideas Series is supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation.

Learn More

Buy Tickets

Saturday, June 2, 2018

10:00 am – 11:00 am

Museum of the City of New York

ParticipantsKubi Ackerman

What makes a city a city? How do you build buildings, plan streets, and design parks with humans and their needs in mind? Join architect and Future Lab Project Director, Kubi Ackerman, on an exploration in which you’ll venture outside to examine New York City anew, seeing it through the eyes of a visionary museum architect, and then head to the Future City Lab’s awesome interactive space where you will design your own park. This is a student-only program for kids currently enrolled in the 4th grade – 8th grade. Parents/Guardians should drop off their children for this event.

Supported by the Bezos Family Foundation.

Learn More

Buy Tickets

Saturday, June 2, 2018

11:00 am – 12:30 pm

NYU Global Center, Grand Hall

Kerouac called it “the only truth.” Shakespeare called it “the food of love.” Maya Angelou called it “my refuge.” And now scientists are finally discovering what these thinkers, musicians, or even any of us with a Spotify account and a set of headphones could have told you on instinct: music lights up multiple corners of the brain, strengthening our neural networks, firing up memory and emotion, and showing us what it means to be human. In fact, music is as essential to being human as language and may even predate it. Can music also repair broken networks, restore memory, and strengthen the brain? Join us as we speak with neuroscientists and other experts in the fields of music and the brain as we pluck the notes of these fascinating phenomenon.

The Big Ideas Series is supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation.

Learn More

Buy Tickets

Saturday, June 2, 2018

3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts

Moderator“Science Bob” Pflugfelder

Participants William Clark, Matt Lanier, Michael Meacham, Casie Parish Fisher, Mike Ressler

Most people think of scientists as people who work in funny-smelling labs filled with strange equipment. But there are lots of scientists whose jobs often take them out of the lab, into the world, and beyond. Come join some of the coolest of them in Cool Jobs. You’ll get to meet a forensic scientist, a venomous snake-loving herpetologist, a NASA engineer who lands spacecrafts on Mars, and inventors who are changing the future of sports.

Learn More

Buy Tickets

Saturday, June 2, 2018

4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

NYU Global Center, Grand Hall

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology,” began the opening sequence of the hugely popular 70’s TV show, “The Six Million Dollar Man.” Forty-five years later, how close are we, in reality, to that sci-fi fantasy? More thornily, now that artificial intelligence may soon pass human intelligence, and the merging of human with machine is potentially on the table, what will it then mean to “be human”? Join us for an important discussion with scientists, technologists and ethicists about the path toward superhumanism and the quest for immortality.

The Big Ideas Series is supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation.

Learn More

Buy Tickets

Saturday, June 2, 2018

4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College

Participants Brett Frischmann, Tim Hwang, Aviv Ovadya, Meredith Whittaker

“Move fast and break things,” went the Silicon Valley rallying cry, and for a long time we cheered along. Born in dorm rooms and garages, implemented by iconoclasts in hoodies, Big Tech, in its infancy, spouted noble goals of bringing us closer. But now, in its adolescence, it threatens to tear us apart. Some worry about an “Infocalypse”: a dystopian disruption so deep and dire we will no longer trust anything we see, hear, or read. Is this pessimistic vision of the future real or hyperbole? Is it time for tech to slow down, grow up, and stop breaking things? Big names in Big Tech will offer big thoughts on this massive societal shift, its terrifying pitfalls, and practical solutions both for ourselves and for future generations.

The Big Ideas Series is supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation.

Learn More

Buy Tickets

This looks like an exciting lineup and there’s a lot more for you to see on the 2018 Festival’s program page. You may also want to take a look at the list of participants which features some expected specialty speakers, an architect, a mathematician, a neuroscientist and some unexpected names such Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who I know as a basketball player and currently, a contestant on Dancing with the Stars. Bringing to mind that Walt Whitman quote, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” (from Whitman’s Song of Myself Wikipedia entry).

If you’re going, there are free events and note a few of the event are already sold out.

The Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa (for the fourth year in a row but who’s counting?), November 7 – 9, 2018

Honestly, four years of holding a national conference in Ottawa, Ontario? Perhaps they could call it the Ottawa-Canadian Science Policy Conference. (loud sigh from the other side of the country)

Mild ire aside, this will be the 10th year for the conference and the founders and organizers should be congratulated on their extraordinary efforts. Given how difficult it is to organize national organizations anywhere, let alone in Canada, and the dearth of active national science organizations, the folks behind the Canadian Science Policy Conference should be lauded. The first and most prominent name that jumps to mind is Mehrdad Hariri* although I’m sure there are others. Happy 10th Anniversary!

From a February 14, 2018 CSPC announcement (received via email),

CSPC 2018: Building Bridges Between Science, Policy, and Society

CSPC is excited to announce the 10th Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC 2018) will be held in Ottawa, Ontario, on November 7-9th, 2018, at the Delta Hotel!

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of CSPC, scientists, entrepreneurs, policy-makers, politicians, journalists, students and many others from across the country are invited to the nation’s capital.

Join us to explore, discuss, exchange ideas, and mobilize knowledge regarding the present and future of Canadian science, technology, and innovation policy. For more information visit our website at www.sciencepolicy.ca 

Call for Panel Proposals

The CSPC 2018 call for panel proposals is now open! Proposals can be in a variety of presentation formats that revolve around any of the conference themes. The diversity of presentation formats throughout the conference makes it possible for delegates and organizations to share their thoughts, views, and experiences in an interactive and engaging manner. Proposals by organizations and individuals from across all sectors and disciplines are welcome.

Here are the CSPC 2018 Themes:

  • Science and Policy
  • Science and Society
  • Science, Innovation, and Economic Development
  • Science and International Affairs
  • Science and The Next Generation

The deadline for submitting proposals is April 13, 2018.\

Click here to learn more about the submission criteria!

They’re asking for 2018 conference volunteers,

Call for CSPC 2018 Volunteers

CSPC 2017 was the best conference yet and planning for CSPC 2018 to make it even better is already underway. You can make an impact in Canadian science policy and a significant contribution to positive change and innovation by answering the call for volunteers today!

Make sure you seize this great opportunity to learn more about the interface of science and policy.

Click here to learn more about becoming a volunteer!

There’s also a request for essays on the 2018 Canadian federal budget,

Contribute to CSPC’s featured editorial:
“Science and Innovation in the Federal Budget 2018”

There is great anticipation for the Federal budget 2018 in the science and innovation community. CSPC invites you to write an opinion piece for the upcoming CSPC featured editorial.

The deadline for submission is Friday, March 2, 2018.

Articles must be 600 – 800 words and sent to editorial@sciencepolicy.ca. Articles will be published on the CSPC website and will be widely shared in CSPC social media channels as well as in the upcoming newsletters.

Click here to see the past CSPC featured editorials

Finally, there’s a trailer for Neil Turok’s 2017 conference keynote address (Turok is the director for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and his whole talk will be available soon),


I once went a talk by Dr. Turok and I’m glad to see he’s not relying on his written notes to the point where he seems to be reading in doubletime so he can be finished.

I am getting a little tired of hearing about how great Canada is and this talk seems self-aggrandizing in currently fashionable language. Well, perhaps I’m just feeling the embarrassment of watching the Trudeau family traipse around India on an official trip in a variety of costumes that seem dated and over the top.

*Mehrdad Harirri corrected to Mehrdad Hariri on November 1, 2018.

Africa and a quantum future at TED 2014′s All Stars session 2: Beauty and the Brain

This is my last piece for today, March 18, 2014  As I noted earlier , I wish I could cover everyone. For this session I’m covering Neil Turok, physicist and director of the Perimeter Institute, from his TED biography (Note: Links have been removed),

Neil Turok is working on a model of the universe that explains the big bang — while, closer to home, he’s founded a network of math and science academies across Africa.

Neil Turok works on understanding the universe’s very beginnings. With Stephen Hawking, he developed the Hawking-Turok instanton solutions, describing the birth of an inflationary universe — positing that, big bang or no, the universe came from something, not from utter nothingness.

Recently, with Paul Steinhardt at Princeton, Turok has been working on a cyclic model for the universe in which the big bang is explained as a collision between two “brane-worlds.” The two physicists cowrote the popular-science book Endless Universe.

In 2003, Turok, who was born in South Africa, founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg, a postgraduate center supporting math and science. His TED Prize wish: Help him grow AIMS and promote the study and math and science in Africa, so that the world’s next Einstein may be African.

Turok is the Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Ontario, Canada. In 2010, the Canadian government funded a $20million expansion of the AIMS schools, working with the Perimeter Institute to start five new AIMS schools in different African nations.

I featured Turok in an Oct.17, 2012 posting about purpose in nature and in the universe.

Thankfully, Turok was not reading aloud as he did in 2012 when he was in Vancouver with his ‘What banged?’ talk and he immediately engaged the audience with his stories about AIMS (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences) in particular about two AIMS students, Marciel (?) and Kitsis (?) who have gone on to postgraduate degrees and work respectively in the fields of tropical medicine and fluid mechanics.

He segued to quantum physics and how important quantum computing will be in the future and will change everything and how we need to help Africa prepare for the quantum future.

I was a little confused by Turok’s plea to help Africa achieve a quantum future as it seemed to me that AIMS and efforts like that would mean that Africa and Africans might lead in the future, quantum or otherwise.

That’s it for me today. This is a very intriguing session although despite its title seems primarily focused on brains over beauty, which has scarcely been mentioned.

Purpose in nature (and the universe): even scientists believe

An intriguing research article titled, Professional Physical Scientists Display Tenacious Teleological Tendencies: Purpose-Based Reasoning as a Cognitive Default, is behind a paywall making it difficult to do much more than comment on the Oct. 17, 2012 news item (on ScienceDaily),

A team of researchers in Boston University’s Psychology Department has found that, despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose.

Although purpose-based “teleological” explanations are often found in religion, such as in creationist accounts of Earth’s origins, they are generally discredited in science. When physical scientists have time to ruminate about the reasons why natural objects and events occur, they explicitly reject teleological accounts, instead favoring causal, more mechanical explanations. However, the study by lead author Deborah Kelemen, associate professor of psychology, and collaborators Joshua Rottman and Rebecca Seston finds that when scientists are required to think under time pressure, an underlying tendency to find purpose in nature is revealed.

“It is quite surprising what these studies show,” says Kelemen. “Even though advanced scientific training can reduce acceptance of scientifically inaccurate teleological explanations, it cannot erase a tenacious early-emerging human tendency to find purpose in nature. It seems that our minds may be naturally more geared to religion than science.”

I did find the abstract for the paper,

… In Study 2, we explored this further and found that the teleological tendencies of professional scientists did not differ from those of humanities scholars. Thus, although extended education appears to produce an overall reduction in inaccurate teleological explanation, specialization as a scientist does not, in itself, additionally ameliorate scientifically inaccurate purpose-based theories about the natural world. A religion-consistent default cognitive bias toward teleological explanation tenaciously persists and may have subtle but profound consequences for scientific progress.

Here’s the full citation for the paper if you want examine it yourself,

Professional Physical Scientists Display Tenacious Teleological Tendencies: Purpose-Based Reasoning as a Cognitive Default. By Kelemen, Deborah; Rottman, Joshua; Seston, Rebecca

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Oct 15, 2012.

What I find particularly intriguing about this work is that it helps to provide an explanation for a phenomenon I’ve observed at science conferences and science talks and in science books. The phenomenon is a tendency to ignore a particular set of questions, how did it start? where did it come from? etc. when discussing nature or, indeed, the universe.

I noticed the tendency again last night (Oct. 16, 2012) at the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Massey Lecture being given by Neil Turok, director of the Canadian Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and held in Vancouver (Canada). The event was mentioned in my  Oct. 12, 2012 posting (scroll down 2/3 of the way).

During this third lecture (What Banged?)  in a series of five Massey lectures. Turok asked the audience (there were roughly 800 people by my count) to imagine a millimetre ball of light as the starting point for the universe. He never did tell us where this ball of light came from. The entire issue as to how it all started (What Banged?) was avoided. Turok’s avoidance is not unusual. Somehow the question is always set aside, while the scientist jumps into the part of the story she or he can or wants to explain.

 

Interestingly, Turok has given the What Banged? talk previously in 2008 in Waterloo, Ontario. According to this description of the 2008 What Banged? talk, he did modify the presentation for last night,

The evidence that the universe emerged 14 billion years ago from an event called ‘the big bang’ is overwhelming. Yet the cause of this event remains deeply mysterious. In the conventional picture, the ‘initial singularity’ is unexplained. It is simply assumed that the universe somehow sprang into existence full of ‘inflationary’ energy, blowing up the universe into the large, smooth state we observe today. While this picture is in excellent agreement with current observations, it is both contrived and incomplete, leading us to suspect that it is not the final word. In this lecture, the standard inflationary picture will be contrasted with a new view of the initial singularity suggested by string and M-theory, in which the bang is a far more normal, albeit violent, event which occurred in a pre-existing universe. [emphasis mine] According to the new picture, a cyclical model of the universe becomes feasible in which one bang is followed by another, in a potentially endless series of cosmic cycles. The presentation will also review exciting recent theoretical developments and forthcoming observational tests which could distinguish between the rival inflationary and cyclical hypotheses.

Even this explanation doesn’t really answer the question. If there, is as suggested, a pre-existing universe, where did that come from? At the end of last night’s lecture, Turok seemed to be suggesting some kind of endless loop where past, present, and future are linked, which still begs the question: where did it all come from?

I can certainly understand how scientists who are trained to avoid teleological explanations (with their religious overtones) would want to avoid or rush over any question that might occasion just such an explanation.

Last night, the whole talk was a physics and history of physics lesson for ‘dummies’ that didn’t quite manage to be ‘dumb’ enough for me and didn’t really deliver on the promise in this description, from the Oct. 16, 2012 posting by Brian Lynch on the Georgia Straight website,

Don’t worry if your grasp of relativistic wave equations isn’t what it once was. The Waterloo, Ontario–based physicist is speaking the language of the general public here. Even though his subject dwarfs pretty much everything else, the focus of the series as a whole is human in scale. Turok sees our species as standing on the brink of a scientific revolution, where we can understand “how our ideas regarding our place in the universe may develop, and how our very nature may change.” [emphasis mine]

Perhaps Turok is building up to a discussion about “our place  in the universe” and “how our very nature may change,” sometime in the next two lectures.

Science and Technology Week in Canada starts today (Oct. 12, 2012)

I see the coordinators of Canada’s 2012 National Science and Technology Week (Oct. 12 – 21) have organized what they hope will be a record-breaking “Largest Practical Science Lesson,” from the event page,

This October join the Science.gc.ca team, its partners, and thousands of Canadians in establishing a new Guinness World Record for the Largest Practical Science Lesson at multiple locations.

The record-breaking event will take place on Friday, October 12, 2012 at exactly the same time across Canada,  …

For those of us on the West Coast, the time will be 10 am, today. What a shame this wasn’t on the website when I checked for National Science and Technology Week events for my Sept. 11, 2012 posting. Happily, the event list for BC has grown and it’s not too late to participate,

British Columbia

Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre

ShawTitle of Event: Floating Ideas Lecture Series; Playing with Giants: Enrichment of Giant Pacific Octopus in Captivity

Location: Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre

Date: October 18, 7:00pm (doors open at 6:30)

Description: Learn how the Aquarist Team at the SODC is putting the giant Pacific octopus to the test and researching how to enrich the time they spend within the Centre.

Kootenay Association for Science & Technology

KASTTitle of Event: RoboGames

Location: Nelson, BC

Date: Training Sessions – October 18th, 25th; November 1st, 8th Competition – November 10th

Description: Robotics circuit training (4 sessions) and team-based competition. Open to kids aged 11 – 18, in the West Kootenay region.

Telus World of Science

Telus World of ScienceTitle of Event: Grade 8-10 Practical Science for the Classroom

Location: Telus World of Science – Vancouver

Date: October 19th, 2012, 8:30am – 3:15pm

Description: A full day of Professional Development for Grade 8 – 10 Science Teachers. http://www.bcscta.ca/

Title of Event: SWEET presents On The Edge, an inside look at Parkour

Location: Telus World of Science – Vancouver

Date: October 12, 6:30 to 10pm

Description: Cost is $10 + HST, to purchase your tickets in advance please go to http://www.scienceworld.ca/teen(Tickets will also be available at the door)

Title of Event: Westport Innovations Connection weekend

Location: Telus World of Science – Vancouver

Date: Oct 20 & 21, 10am to 6pm

Description: Included with your general admission to Science World. Please go to http://www.scienceworld.ca/aroundthedomefor updated information.

Title of Event: TEDx Kids BC

Location: Telus World of Science – Vancouver

Date: Oct 20, 9am to 5pm

Description: An awesome mix of British Columbia’s finest youth speakers. Please go to http://www.tedxkidsbc.com/ for more information. Attendance for this event is fully booked.

Title of Event: Café Scientifique: Changing Landscapes, Science in Canada’s North

Location: Telus World of Science – Vancouver

Date: Oct 20, 6:30 to 9pm

Description: This is a free event with limited space. Please go to http://www.scienceworld.ca/specialprograms#cafeto RSVP

Title of Event: Opening the Door

Location: Telus World of Science – Vancouver

Date: Oct 12 2012, 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Description: A science career networking event for student’s grade 10 – 12. This is a free event but you must preregister.

Title of Event: Community Science Celebration – NSTW Western Canadian Launch

Location: Telus World of Science – Vancouver

Date: Oct 13 & 14, 10 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Description: This is the first event of its kind at TELUS World of Science, and we want you to be there. Let’s celebrate the science all around us at the Vancouver Community Science Celebration! Included with your general admission to Science World. http://www.scienceworld.ca/aroundthedome

BIG Little Science Centre

BLSCTitle of Event: Fun Hands on Science at the BIG Little Science Centre

Location: The BIG Little Science Centre. 985 Holt Street, Kamloops BC.

Date: We are open year round Tuesday to Saturday. Closed Sundays, Mondays and Holidays.10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Description: Everyone is invited to visit the BIG Little Science Centre for interactive FUN science! Vistit our website www.blscs.org for more information.

Title of Event: Fantastic Kite Day

Location: BIG Little Science Centre

Date: Saturday October 13, 2012, 10am to 4pm

Description: BIG Little Science Centre’s FANTASTIC KITE DAY! Fly your old kite, build a new one, experiment with Bernoulli’s principles of lift and learn about the physics of kite flying. Hands on colour and excitement on the ground and in the air.

Perimeter Institute [emphasis mine]

Perimeter InstituteTitle of Event: 2012 CBC Massey Lectures – What Banged?

Location: Vancouver, British Columbia

Date: October 16, 2012, 8:00 p.m.

Description: Neil Turok, Director of Canada’s Perimeter Institute, delivers the 2012 CBC Massey Lectures in five locations across Canada. Turok explores how the human mind can unlock the universe and transform the future. Please order Massey Lecture tickets directly from each lecture venue. Find a list of venues here.

Gairdner Foundation

Title of Event: Gairdner Foundation High School Outreach Program Lecture at the University of British Columbia

Location: University of British Columbia

Date: 22-Oct-12

Description: Science can be intimidating for teenage students. This is why the Gairdner Foundation’s laureates travel throughout Canada, sharing their personal stories about pursuing a career in research with students from over 120 schools. Today, the University of British Columbia will host a group of high school students for a lecture by Dr. William Kaelin Jr. and Dr. Jeffrey V. Ravetch.

Simon Fraser University

Title of Event: Saturday Morning Lecture Series

Location: SFU Surrey

Date: Saturday October 13, 2012, 10:00 a.m.

Description: TRIUMF, UBC, and SFU are proud to present the 2012-2013 Saturday Morning Lecture series. The lectures will be at a level appropriate for high school students and the general public. Event is free, however please register for tickets so that we can make sure we accomodate everyone. Everyone welcome.

The Exploration Place

Title of Event: National Science and Technology Demonstrations at The Exploration Place!

Location: The Exploration Place, Prince George, BC

Date: October 17th, 18th, 19th

Description: Have some fun with us as we celebrate National Science and Technology Week. Enjoy exciting hands-on activities, interactive daily demos, visit with our critters and tour the galleries.

Let’s Talk Science

Title of Event: Brighouse Science Bash

Location: Richmond, British Columbia

Date: October 19, 11 am to 3 pm

Description: In partnership with Genome BC and Richmond Public Library the 6th annual Science Bash takes place from 11am to 3 pm and will include interactive displays, fun experiments and other hands-on activities.

I’d like to note that the Perimeter Institute/CBC Massey Lectures is running a contest for  tickets to the various talks, books, and a grand prize of a trip to the Perimeter Institute and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (European Particle Physics Laboratory). Here’s more about the contest and about the book by Neil Turok which forms the basis for this Massey Lectures series, the CBC Massey Lectures page,

ENTER TO WIN tickets to the Massey Lectures, books and a grand prize trip to the Perimeter Institute in Ontario, Canada and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland!

Every technology we rely on today was created by the human mind, seeking to understand the universe around us. Scientific knowledge is our most precious possession, and our future will be shaped by the breakthroughs to come.

In this personal, visionary, and fascinating work, Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, explores the transformative scientific discoveries of the past three centuries – from classical mechanics, to the nature of light, to the bizarre world of the quantum and the evolution of the cosmos. Each new discovery has, over time, yielded new technologies causing paradigm shifts in the organization of society. Now, he argues, we are on the cusp of another major transformation: the coming quantum revolution that will supplant our current digital age. Facing this brave new world, Turok calls for creatively re-inventing the way advanced knowledge is developed and shared, and opening access to the vast, untapped pools of intellectual talent in the developing world.

Elegantly written, deeply provocative and highly inspirational, The Universe Within is, above all, about the future –  of science, society and ourselves.

The Universe Within: From Quantum  to Cosmos will air on Ideas November 12 – 16.

Good luck with the contest and enjoy this wealth of  science events.

Scientific spat and libel case in UK has Canadian connection

Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics located in Waterloo, Canada, has been described as being insufficiently qualified to assess a fellow scientist’s work. Alok Jha, science correspondent for the UK’s Guardian newspaper, writes about the situation which includes a libel suit against Nature magazine in his Nov. 18, 2011 article,

A scientist who is suing one of the world’s most prominent scientific journals for libel compared himself to Albert Einstein in the high court on Friday [Nov. 18, 2011] as part of his evidence against the journal. Professor Mohamed El Naschie, also claimed that an eminent physicist brought in by the journal as an expert witness to analyse the value of his work was not sufficiently qualified to do so.

El Naschie is suing Nature as a result of a news article published in 2008, after the scientist’s retirement as editor-in-chief of the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals. The article alleged that El Naschie had self-published several research papers, some of which did not seem to have been peer reviewed to an expected standard and also said that El Naschie claimed affiliations and honorary professorships with international institutions that could not be confirmed by Nature. El Naschie claims the allegations in the article were false and had damaged his reputation.

On Friday, Nature called Professor Neil Turok, a cosmologist and director of the Perimeter Institute in Canada, as an expert witness to assess some of the work published by El Naschie.

In his evidence, Turok said he found it difficult to understand the logic in some of El Naschie’s papers. The clear presentation of scientific ideas was an important step in getting an idea accepted, he said. “There are two questions – one is whether the work is clearly presented and readers would be able to understand it. It would be difficult for a trained theoretical physicist to understand [some of El Naschie’s papers]. …  The second question is about the correctness of the theory and that will be decided by whether it agrees with experiments. Most theories in theoretical physics are speculative – we form a logical set of rules and deductions and we try, ultimately, to test the deductions in experiments.

There’s more at stake here than whether or not Turok is qualified or El Naschie’s work is up to the standards in his field, this is also about libel and libel laws in England. There have been some intended consequences from the current set of laws. Here’s an excerpt from the Wikipedia essay,

Libel tourism is a term first coined by Geoffrey Robertson to describe forum shopping for libel suits. It particularly refers to the practice of pursuing a case in England and Wales, in preference to other jurisdictions, such as the United States, which provide more extensive defences for those accused of making derogatory statements. According to the English publishing house Sweet & Maxwell, the number of libel cases brought by people alleged to be involved with terrorism almost tripled in England between 2006 and 2007.

Jha goes on to finish his first article on El Naschie’s libel case with this,

Sile Lane, a spokesperson for the Libel Reform campaign said: “Scientists expect publications like Nature to investigate and write about controversies within the scientific community. The threat of libel action is preventing scientific journals from discussing what is good and bad science. This case is another example of why we need libel law that has a clear strong public interest defence and a high threshold for bringing a case. The government has promised to reform the libel laws and this can’t come soon enough.”

I last wrote about the libel situation in the UK in my Nov. 12, 2010 posting, International call to action on libel laws in the UK.