The universe is a dynamic environment where collisions and close encounters play a significant role. For instance, we will take a closer look at collisions responsible for the birth of our planet Earth and life itself, but also those that nearly destroyed it. Is our Solar system safe? Are there any hidden dangers we can expect in the future? Let’s find out.
Dr. Vaclav Pavlik is our speaker this month
Science Cafe Bloomington is on hiatus until it is safe to gather indoors again. We will try to hold some virtual science cafe sessions in the Summer months.
Professor Fritz Breithaupt, director of the Experimental Humanities Lab will discuss his work on empathy.
What can trigger empathy and what can block empathy? Empathy is often considered the basis of moral action, but plays a central part in a variety of highly problematic behaviors. The ability to empathize with other people proves to be a prerequisite for deliberate acts of humiliation and cruelty. Even well-meaning compassion has many unintended consequences.
This talk will discuss a range of phenomena, including vampirism (helicopter parents wishing to relive a better youth), empathic sadism, humanitarianism (in which people identify with helper-heroes to feel good about themselves at the costs of holding others in the victim role, but mistake this for empathy), and dynamics of polarization (empathetic side-taking that leads to aggression), all concepts and ideas from the recent book, The Dark Sides of Empathy.
Several things to note:
1) We’re starting at 7pm
2) We’re on the 3rd Wednesday
3) We’re at Hopscotch on Morton & Dodds
4) Hopscotch doesn’t have much food, which is why we’re beginning at 7pm (They do have great coffee, tea, beer, and pastries all the time.)
We rely on drugs to solve many of our problems: to treat diseases, to ease our pain, to entertain us. But drugs come with risks, and even a widely used ‘household’ drug such as acetaminophen results in hundreds of fatalities each year in the US.
Join us as Natalia Murataeva, Ph.D. talks about some of the challenges in developing drugs that are both effective and safe.
The ability to verify and replicate scientific discovery relies on meaningful access to research output, historically communicated via academic journals, trade publications, and books. The rising costs to access scientific research coupled with advances in data-driven methods have made traditional publishing models so unsustainable that 90% of scientists interviewed by Nature Publishing Group believe we are facing a reproducibility crisis. In a world of computational methods, artificial intelligence, 3D modeling, and a linked open web, pay-to-access scholarly journals are no longer adequately communicating or enabling access to scientific discovery. Alternative models aim to drive publishing towards more open, accessible, and impactful practices.
Join us as Jamie WIttenberg, head of IU LIbraries Scholarly Communication Department asks: What does it mean to publish openly? What is the relationship between reproducibility and openness? How does open access change the way we do science?
Join us as Dr. Steven Ouelette (CTO, Kinasense) explains the challenges facing STEM graduates, and discusses strategies to prepare for and navigate a wide variety of emerging careers in industry.
6:30pm, Wedneday, May 31, 2017 at Bears Place, the back room
The STEM PhD Job Market: Landing a Career Requires Thinking Beyond Academia Early and Often The academic postdoctoral market has been described as a “crisis”, “bubble”, and “glut.” There are far more postdocs than the number of available careers that require academic postdoctoral training. This talk will give an overview of current data that shows why STEM PhD graduates should reconsider a postdoctoral appointment as the default career path. Strategies and resources for enhancing graduate training to promote career readiness will be discussed. Finally, a case study will be presented that demonstrates these strategies in action.
Join us as Professors Liese van Zee and Caty Pilachowski take us through the basics of imaging science as applied in astronomy, and explain how knowledge of the electromagnetic spectrum inform us about different environments in the universe. Taken together, these principles provide an ability to interpret astronomical images in order to learn about the universe and understand our physical world.
Roger Hangarter
Natalia Murataeva
Katy Borner and Todd Therialt
