Highlights of this week’s science events in London
Matt Brown
Event of the Week
Ri and U3A out and about
Friend’s Meeting House, Euston Road, 3 April, 2–5 pm
Three renowned speakers are lined up for this annual collaboration between the Royal Institution and the University of the Third Age.
Bill McGuire, Director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at UCL, talks about supervolcanoes, asteroid impacts and other global threats. He describes ideas to combat such perils – from well-considered strategies to far-out speculation.
Salvador Moncada is Director of UCL’s Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research. His talk focuses on reactive oxygen species, and the mechanisms by which they can trigger cardiovascular disease.
Writer and broadcaster Vivienne Parry concludes with an overview of hormones. According to the RI, she will ‘explain the myriad ways these powerful and mysterious slaves of the body’s communication system affect us, and the controversy and outrage that so often accompany them’.
Other events
The Society of Chemical Industry hosts a meeting on Tuesday to discuss advances in polymer science and supramolecular chemistry. Two of the seven speakers will receive awards from the Macro Group for service to the development of polymer science – Sébastien Perrier (University of Leeds) and Dave Haddleton (University of Warwick).
With the onset of spring, the lecture hall might seem unappealing. Take science into the garden, as two venues reopen their gates on April 1st.
Chelsea Physic Garden was founded in 1673 to train apothecaries, and this medical connection persists. The Pharmaceutical Garden contains plants of therapeutic value, while the Garden of World Medicine harbours species used in traditional remedies from around the globe.
The Wildlife Garden at the Natural History Museum bills itself as ‘the only living exhibition at the Museum’. The garden is a haven for British wildlife in the inner city.
The more technically minded can cool off over a beer on Tuesday. The Flag and Bell Tech Pub Crawl is ‘a free, networking event for anyone interested in search engines, web technology and the Internet’. The evening begins at 6pm in Smiths of Smithfield.
