Highlights of this week’s science events in London

Matt Brown

Event of the week
Monitoring the Earth", Burlington House, 11 April, 5.30pm
The Geological Society of London presents the fourth in their bicentennial lecture series on Wednesday. Tim Wright from Oxford University will discuss the use of satellite data for monitoring the planet. According to Wright: “Although we may never be able to predict precisely when earthquakes or eruptions will occur, in the future we will be able to identify areas most at risk, and provide medium-term hazard forecasts”.

Other events
A couple of lunchtime seminars catch the eye. On 11 April, Frank Edenhofer from the University of Bonn will talk about the engineering of stem cells at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre. The following day, Cancer Research UK host Stephen Cohen of EMBL for a lecture on microRNA functions.

If you want to try something more unusual over the long weekend, The Kew Bridge Steam Museum has the answer. Their ‘90-inch Boulton & Watt and Maudslay beam engines’ will be in full steam Saturday through Monday – a rare chance to see Victorian engineering in operation. Behind the scenes tours are also available.

From 10 April, the Old Operating Theatre becomes a performing theatre. Two corpse-laden plays with medical themes – ‘The Bodysnatcher’ and ‘The Gift’ – can be seen every night until the 28th April.

Finally, a quirky Easter event. On 9 April, The Natural History Museum will put on an informal talk about the egg. ‘Exquisitely adapted for their function, eggs [are] masterpieces of beauty, utility and strength. Explore their nature, form and diversity, from the minute egg of the humming bird to the grand architecture of the ostrich egg’.