Event of the week
Outstanding questions for the standard cosmological model
Imperial College, March 26-29
Leading cosmologists come together for four days this week at Imperial College to examine shortcomings in the standard cosmological model. Lawrence Krauss (author of Quintessence and The Physics of Star Trek) and Roger Blandford of Stanford University will be among speakers at ‘Outstanding questions for the standard cosmological model’.Carlo Contaldi of Imperial’s Theoretical Physics Group will open the meeting. “We’re really trying to question the paradigm here,” he explains. “Some of the topics might be described as a little on the controversial side.”
Other events
Imperial also welcomes the Second UK Stem Cell meeting , on 27 March. Stem cell development is controlled by chemical tags on cells’ DNA called epigenetic marks. The meeting focuses on ways of manipulating this mechanism for medical use. Scientists interested in business opportunities in this arena could look in on the London Technology Network’s regenerative medicine networking event the following day.
For World TB Day on 24 March, attention will turn to infectious diseases. Perhaps inspiration can be gained from the eradication of smallpox in the 1970s. Larry Brilliant, now at Google.org, played a leading role in that program, and shares his experiences on 28 March. Gordon Conway, President of the Royal Geographical Society, will describe another pressing issue for the developing world on 26 March – chronic hunger. Nearly a billion people worldwide are malnourished. Does science hold solutions, and will climate change threaten efforts? Images purporting to show the effects of global warming on the UK can be viewed at the same venue, followed by a debate on Wednesday. Both preempt the National Trust’s Exposed! exhibition.
Meanwhile, the ever inventive Dana Centre has found a scientific way to mark 200 years since the abolition of slavery. On 29 March, a group of geneticists and historians will demonstrate ways to trace ancestry through DNA.