by Eric Kessler
October 2, 2011 in Events
The Controversy Surrounding DNA Patenting
Thursday, October 13
6:00 pm
UMKC Law School
Thompson Courtroom
Patent Attorney Dan Ravicher faces off against Hans Sauer, representative for the biotech industry, in what promises to be a lively debate about the future of gene patenting.
For more details on the controversy and debate participants, click here.
by Eric Kessler
September 4, 2011 in Events
Steven Pinker to Speak at Linda Hall Library
Linda Hall Libary
5109 Cherry Street, Kansas City, Missouri
October 12, 2011
7:00 pm
Lectures are free and open to the public; however, seating is limited and tickets are required. Complete the online form, email or call (816) 926-8772 with your name, address, phone number, and the number of individuals in your party. Please specify the lectures you plan to attend. Please contact Eric Ward at 816-926-8753 for more information on this event.
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’s existence. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations, pogroms, gruesome punishments, deadly quarrels, and genocide were ordinary features of life. But today, Pinker shows (with the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps) all these forms of violence have dwindled and are widely condemned. How has this happened?
This groundbreaking book continues Pinker’s exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly nonviolent world. The key, he explains, is to understand our intrinsic motives- the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away-and how changing circumstances have allowed our better angels to prevail. Exploding fatalist myths about humankind’s inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious and provocative book is sure to be hotly debated in living rooms and the Pentagon alike, and will challenge and change the way we think about our society.
Here is a link to the Dr. Pinker’s book that goes on sale October 4:
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0670022950
Hope to see you at the lecture!
by Eric Kessler
September 3, 2011 in Events
Higuchi Memorial Lecture
KU School of Pharmacy, room 2020
Thursday, October 6th
5:30 pm
In 1993, Cynthia Kenyon and colleagues’ discovery that a single-gene mutation could double the lifespan of the tiny roundworm C. elegans sparked an intensive study of the molecular biology of aging. Aging had long been assumed to be a passive consequence of molecular wear and tear. Kenyon was skeptical of this idea, thinking that something as universal and fundamental as aging might well be subject to control by the genes. Kenyon’s discoveries have led to the realization that there exist genetic control circuits for aging, involving hormones as well as proteins that regulate the activities of entire groups of cell-protective genes. The long-lived mutants Kenyon and others have identified are resistant to many age-related diseases, raising the possibility of a new strategy for combating many diseases all at once: targeting aging itself. By manipulating genes and cells, Kenyon and her colleagues extended the lifespan of healthy, active C. elegans by six fold, demonstrating the extraordinary plasticity of aging.
Cynthia Kenyon graduated valedictorian in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Georgia in 1976. She received her PhD from MIT in 1981 and then did postdoctoral studies with Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, studying the development of C. elegans. Since 1986 she has been at the University of California, San Francisco, Department of Biochemistry, where she was the Herbert Boyer Distinguished Professor and is now an American Cancer Society Professor. Dr. Kenyon has received many honors and awards for her findings. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine and she is a past president of the Genetics Society of America. She is now the director of the Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging at UCSF.
Links of Potential Interest
and if you or your students can’t make the lecture, here are some YouTube videos they may enjoy (I am not sure why I can no longer embed them in the post)…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJujGfGYpNQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT4PWu43e9U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxfLm30FHwA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_cDv9j7MVg
Hope to see you there!
by Eric Kessler
February 12, 2009 in KABT News, Teaching Resources
Charles Darwin once wrote, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” With that quote in mind, I decided to compile a few of the Darwin related resources that I have recently and happily become inundated with. So, click, read, download, listen, and watch, all the while gaining knowlege and gradually losing any confidence that you may have had…
by Eric Kessler
August 31, 2008 in KABT News
The following information on the Steven Pinker Lecture was cut and pasted from the KCPL Website.
What: Lecture on his newest book – The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Where: KC Public Library – Central Branch, 14 W. 10th Street
When: September 9, at 7pm
by Eric Kessler
March 2, 2008 in KABT News
Speaker for the 10th Higuchi Memorial Lecture Series at KU
Craig Venter, Founder, Chairman and President, J. Craig Venter Institute will be in town Thursday, May 1, 2008.
9:30 am – “Genomics: From Humans to the Environment”
Scientific Presentation – 130 Budig Hall
5:30 pm – “A Genomic View of Life”
Public Presentation – Woodruff Auditorium (Kansas Union)
During this past year Craig Venter has publish his autobiography A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life. It is a good read, and a different perspective on the sequencing of the human genome than you may have seen in the Nova’s Cracking the Code of Life or read in Nobel laureate John Sulston’s The Common Thread (a good read too).
I hope to see you there, but if you can’t make it because you’re too busy celebrating with the workers of the world, you can view a recent lecture of Craig’s at Oxford, Genomics: From Humans to the Environment, or view/listen to interviews at bloggingheads.tv or the Guardian (a number to choose from).
by Eric Kessler
March 2, 2008 in KABT News
For the past couple of years Abby Freeman, Vice President for Administration at the Stowers Institute, has been running a couple-times-a-year Saturday morning program in which teachers hear about the research being conducted at Stowers from the PI’s and postdocs themselves. The next program is offered on Saturday, April 12, from 8:30 to 12:30.
8:30 – 8:45 Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:45 – 9:15 Teacher Introductions and a Look inside Stowers
9:15 – 10:00 “Lessons Learned from Yeast about Human Leukemia”
Ali Shilatifard – PI
10:00 – 10:45 “All You Can Eat Buffet – Perspectives from Worms and Humans”
Ho Yi Mak, Assistant Investigator
10:45 – 11:30 “Location, Location, Location: Regulation of Gene Expression
through Chromosome Positioning”
Sue Jaspersen, Assistant Investigator
11:30 – 11:45 Tour of the Stowers Institute
11:30 – 12:30 Lunch Stowers Cafe
(a box lunch is provided for those that register)
Register as a new STARS participant and/or RSVP for the Symposium at www.stowers-institute.org/doc/stars. It is open to all educators. The Stowers institute for Medical Research is located at 1000 E 5th Street in Kansas City, Missouri. Hope to see you all there!
NABT BioBlog