Polar Light This Weekend

Since I have been required to work the past week (boo hiss to actual work!), I haven't been able to provide updates this week. My apologies. But in the spirit of this crazy snow storm that we're having right now, I thought I would quickly point you to an exhibition with a frosty theme. Check out the Polar Light series by photographer Zaria Forman at the North Look gallery. It's sure to make you appreciate the stainless beauty of the cold instead of focusing on the weird gray slush that we're used to around here.

Sick Celebrities and Photographs

Unfortunately, my job has gotten really busy the last couple of days which makes blog-writing move to the wayside. Here's a look at two events tonight:

When The Famous Get Sick and The Sick Get Famous
Ever notice how diseases don't get much publicity until some celebrity gets it? A lot of people tonight will weigh in on the phenomenom.

Art/Sci Collision: Nest and Egg
Rosamond Purcell just published a terrific photography book that captures (surprise!) birds' nests and their eggs. She will be talking about the book tonight at AMNH.

Stay dry tonight!

My favorite blog right now

belongs to Carl Zimmer, who spoke last week to the NY Skeptics Society. He even has an entire section dedicated to science-inspired tattoos. Since my subject of choice is evolution, Old Four Lobes is my favorite so far.

Monday Madness!

It's so frigid outside that it may be tough to motivate New Yorkers to leave their cozy apartments tonight. For those of you who are less wimpy in the harsh winter elements, here are four great options:

The Immortality Pill
Professor Brent Stockwell will be the speaker for Columbia's last Cafe Science of the season in a session intriguingly titled "The Immortality Pill." Stockwell studies cell death pathways and will be talking about how learning about cell death can help cure cancer and Huntington's Disease.

Role of Clouds in Earth's Climate
Remember when you first found out that clouds weren't soft and fluffy but were actually cold and wet? I was highly disappointed. Even if they aren't what we imagined, they are still amazing in the ways that they contribute to climate and weather. CUNY professors will be on hand to explain.

The Moveable Feast
Speaking about a topic dear to my heart, UVA professor Kath Weston will be addressing sex/gender issues and other contributors to income disparity. This event will have a free dinner reception beforehand, so I highly recommend it to people who want to learn and save a few bucks too.

Why Return to the Moon?
Since I was talking about this very topic to my roommate a few weeks ago, I will be attending this event at AMNH. I always thought that we basically figured out the Moon's importance, its geology and its history thirty-five years ago (Let's just forget about the people who think the whole moon-landing was a hoax). MIT professor Maria Zuber will be trying to convince me and other attendees that going back to the Moon is vital to our space program.

Under The Microscope

There's nothing really going on tonight, but I thought I would casually mention my shout out on UnderTheMicroscope.com. Apparently, I'm officially a writer. Under The Microscope is a great resource and forum for women in science and it's funded by IBM and the NSF so it's legit, yo.

Tonight

Tonight there are no less than three awesome science events happening on this tiny island. If only I could clone myself! But then I would inevitably end up on a rooftop somewhere and my mother or husband of 25 years would have to decide between me and the clone. She or he would probably pick the wrong one and that would be the end for me. So I suppose I'll just have to settle with going to one lecture tonight...

Here's a look at tonight's talks:

Giants Of Science: The Social Networks of Insects
I've been fascinated by ants and bees since I was a young girl on my ranch in Texas. I used to take sticks and excavate ant hills, looking at the extensive network of tunnels that the little guys built. Then I learned that the societies of ants and bees are ruled by women. How cool is that? Tonight Pulitzer Prize winners Edward O. Wilson and Bert Hoelldoebler will be discussing the crazy world of insects. They will talk about how these societies communicate and cooperate in order to thrive, and they will touch on how this relates to primate societies.

Communicating Science
When I taught 7th grade science, what I told my students wasn't necessarily what they heard or remembered. One time I taught them the mnemonic "Infants Poop More And Teethe" for the stages of mitosis. Instead of remembering the actual phases, they just talked about babies and their bowels a lot more often. So it's important to know how to communicate knowledge in an efficient and effective way. Tonight at NYAS, Dr. Matthew Nisbet will be giving pointers on how to accurately teach science to the public.

Carl Zimmer: The Darwin Beat
Author Carl Zimmer will be talking to the New York Skeptics Society tonight in a lecture titled The Darwin Beat: Reporting from the Frontiers of Evolution. As I've mentioned before, evolution is a topic that continues to draw heated opinions from all kinds of people. Zimmer is an author who has written for Discover, Scientific American, The New York Times, and others, so I am confident that he'll have an interesting take on the controversy.

Tonight

Tonight there are two events of note happening in the city:

CUNY will be hosting The Role of Fashion in Mathematics, featuring a lecture by mathematician Harold Edwards. This made me wonder, If math can be affected by trends, am I going to start thinking, "I was just beginning to like integrals, and now I'm being told that Reimann sums are the hip, new thing?" I'm already slow on the uptake with clothes; I don't think I could handle my taste in math being uncool.

Also, the Secret Science Club will be holding its monthly meeting at Union Hall in Park Slope. The speaker tonight will be Columbia neuroscientist Carl Hart who will speak about methamphetamine, the preferred drug of, well, just about anyone living in a rural setting. The people at Union Hall are so thrilled about this theme that they even invented their own cocktail of sorts: the Synapse Sling. I'll be there tossing a few back and appreciating that I'm not addicted to a drug that makes my teeth fall out.

Don't Blame the Turkeys

Well, it's time to suck in our stomachs as we head back to work. Isn't Thanksgiving a wonderful holiday? A holiday dedicated to food and football. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to fall asleep after the big meal and miss the big game.

People have blamed the poor turkeys for their post-meal sleepiness for as long as I can remember. There was even an entire Seinfeld episode dedicated to tryptophan, an amino acid that turkeys make. Now, I have abstained from turkey eating for the past 10 years - it gives me more room for the stuffing and candied yams - but I noticed that I was just as sleepy as my turkey-eating relatives. So I looked into the myth of tryptophan to see if it really was the culprit.

Turns out, turkey has been getting a bad rap this whole time. There are a lot of reasons why Thanksgiving meals make us tired. First of all, when we eat a ton of food, some blood leaves the brain to help the small intestine absorb nutrients. Less blood flow to the brain makes us more sluggish. Also, our bodies naturally slow down after eating to conserve energy; our heart rates and blood pressures drop, making us sleepy. Finally, when consuming the typical Thanksgiving fare, many of us tend to pair beer and wine with the meal. Past the initial buzz, alcohol tends to put people to sleep.

So next Thanksgiving, don't blame the turkey. As for me, I'm still going to load up on my high-carb favorites and enjoy my post-meal nap.

Review - The Science of Touch

Tonight, the New York Academy of Sciences will be presenting the second event in its Five Senses Series. Scientists Leslie Vosshall and Avery Gilbert will discuss our most stimuli-specific sense of all - the sense of smell.

I had the good fortune of attending the first NYAS event which focused on our sense of touch. NYAS is located across from Ground Zero in a modern space-age building that glows blue. Its elevator reminded me of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey because it was aware that I needed to stop at the fortieth floor even though I didn't press a button. Completely creepy.

Scientist Ranulfo Romo and filmmaker Kun Chang were on hand to talk about the sense of touch. Chang showed clips of his movie, Touch, and Romo (with his sexy Antonio Banderas accent) explained the science behind the clips. Chang's movie focused on a woman who had lost her sense of touch. She went to bed with a mild flu and woke up the next morning unable to feel anything from her nose down. I have never thought about how often I depend on my sense of touch, but seeing this story made me realize that it enables us to do so much. This woman couldn't even walk because she couldn't feel herself in relation to the ground. She even had to relearn how to swallow food.

Every movement we make requires proprioreception, that unconscious information that tells us know where we are in relation to the world. Throwing a baseball, walking down the stairs, holding a pencil - all of that would be almost impossible without a sense of touch. Maybe tonight's talk about smell will impress me, but if I had to choose, I would rather lose my nose than my feelings.