Main

June 15, 2009

World Science Festival: Ending how it all began

Posted on behalf of Neda Afsarmanesh frogman.JPG

And so it ends. The second World Science Festival successfully closed in much the same vein as it began, with a celebration of the work and creativity inspired by E.O.Wilson. At the start of the BioBlitzing session — which was attended by an equal number of excited kids as giddy adults — Mark Moffett (right) declared that “adventure was the process of finding a story.”

Apt words proving that Moffett has indeed learned well from Wilson, his old doctorate advisor. While an animated Moffett narrated his adventures, with the help of amazing photographs, it was Wilson’s calm but engaging persona that inspired. With a lifetime of adventures and an always inquisitive mind, Wilson epitomizes a never-ending love for science.

He spoke to the adults, he spoke to the children, and inarguably, he spoke for the 1.8 million known species of animals on our wondrous planet Earth.

Posted by Alex Witze on June 15, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

World Science Festival: the street fair

Posted on behalf of Neda Afsarmanesh streetfair.JPG

After a few days of gloom and rain, Sunday was an appropriately gorgeous day in New York City, welcoming families in a street fair to enjoy the last day of the World Science Festival. Washington Square Park and the adjacent streets were packed with all sorts of magic shows, interactive games, educational demonstrations, and of course, Discovery Labs where kids could participate in hands-on science experiments. From what I saw, the kids loved it!

Image: A bottle of water, a few tablespoons of oil, red food coloring, and Alka-seltzer and Voila!: nifty little lava lamp (well, minus the lamp).

Posted by Alex Witze on June 15, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

World Science Festival: %#&$ traffic!

Posted on behalf of Neda Afsarmanesh

In a symposium on traffic, I was mesmerized by what the speakers said about present-day innovations, and about what possibilities are still in store when traffic design and engineering look towards the interactive collaborations of insects and the mathematical basis of our social behavior. It was an entertaining panel with many lessons, including...

Insects follow simple rules of science:
Iain Couzin talked about how blind army ants quickly travel about without crashing into each other or getting lost (it’s because each one lays a pheromone that others can detect and follow).

We are all selfish:
Anna Nagurney added immediate relevance by describing how she utilized mathematical modeling to social behavior when working with New York City officials to partially alleviate traffic jams in Manhattan by blocking off part of Broadway to cars.

Continue reading "World Science Festival: %#&$ traffic!" »

Posted by Alex Witze on June 15, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

World Science Festival: Time, the familiar stranger

Posted on behalf of Neda Afsarmanesh

“This moment, this now, is a construction. How does the brain bring the past and the future together to create the now?” It was a daunting introduction that moderator Harold Evans put forth at the start of his talk here. I don’t think the question was answered, or that it could even be answered with what we presently (no pun intended) know.

I liked the flow of the lecture—it was more relaxed and (for better and worse) followed a non-linear format. Oliver Sacks, true to the great storyteller that he is, related what he had learned from years of work with patients who have “time” problems. I was familiar with his Parkinson’s and epilepsy stories (I have been a fan for a while …), but what stood out was his “two-timed” patient: one side of the patient’s body moved at a abnormally slow tempo while the other moved at an atypically fast tempo; the only time the two sides of the body followed the same speed was when the patient played the organ.


Continue reading "World Science Festival: Time, the familiar stranger" »

Posted by Alex Witze on June 15, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 14, 2009

World Science Festival: The meaning of free will

Posted on behalf of Richard Van Noorden

Two years ago, psychologist Daniel Wegner received surgery to remove a brain tumour. Surgeons drilled into the left side of his skull. Six weeks after the successful operation, he says, he found his right hand moving without him seeming to will it. It did what he wanted - as he would have decided in ordinary circumstances. “But I did not feel I was the author of the movement. I didn’t need to be there for my hand to move; I had lost the feeling that I was doing it.”

At an entrancing World Science Festival discussion on fate and free will, Wegner, together with Nobel laureate Paul Nurse, philosopher Al Mele and neuroscientist Patrick Haggard discussed what science is adding to the debate on whether we have control over our actions - whether simply moving our limbs, or making a choice about wider moral actions.

Continue reading "World Science Festival: The meaning of free will" »

Posted by Alex Witze on June 14, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

World Science Festival: Had we but time enough

Posted on behalf of Richard Van Noorden

What happens when seven people, in 90 minutes of unscripted conversation, try to explore the nature of time?

At Saturday’s World Science Festival ‘Time Since Einstein’ event a confusing but inspirational mess emerged: a verbal Jackson Pollock. Which - when explaining the nature of spacetime, the general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, reconciling the two, time’s arrow, entropy, non-locality, the big bang, and our personal conceptions of past, present and future - was probably as much as the organisers could hope for.

Continue reading "World Science Festival: Had we but time enough" »

Posted by Alex Witze on June 14, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 13, 2009

World Science Festival: Cabaret science

Happy hour starts early in New York, at least it does when you're hanging out with scientists. At 5 pm on Friday an eager audience took their seats at the 92Y-Tribeca for a cabaret-style presentation of science, comedy and, the biggest surprise, a singing Nobel Prize physicist.

Continue reading "World Science Festival: Cabaret science" »

Posted by Sarah Tomlin on June 13, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 12, 2009

World Science Festival: See through brain

The title for the session Transparent Brain: Visible Thoughts was inevitably misleading: each speaker fully acknowledged that their research has made only a small step towards the ambitious goal of understanding the thoughts brewing in the crevices of the brain.

Continue reading "World Science Festival: See through brain" »

Posted by Helen Pearson on June 12, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

World Science Festival: Being Wilson and Watson

So I spent the evening with E.O. Wilson and Jim Watson.

Well, OK, it was me and a few hundred others at a New York theatre. And it wasn’t actually them, it was the actress Anna Deavere Smith ‘being’ Wilson and Watson. But because she was so incredible at summing up their mannerisms and speech (an art she has perfected by interviewing her subjects and then using their own words) it felt like we were sitting in their living rooms having a chat about their scientifically rich, fascinating and interconnected lives.

Continue reading "World Science Festival: Being Wilson and Watson" »

Posted by Helen Pearson on June 12, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 11, 2009

World Science Festival: Razzamatazz

"Bringing science to the cultural center" was how Tracy Day, co-founder of the World Science Festival put it. And given the contributions by Broadway musical stars (Jonathan Hadary and Danny Burstein), two outstanding classical musicians (Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell), celebrity actors (Alan Alda and Glenn Close), a full orchestra on stage playing music specially composed by Philip Glass, a Baptist choir, and a children's ballet group all appearing at the Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, her claim was amply justified for the packed audience at least. This was a true razzamatazz science-festival launch that only New York could have delivered with such style!

Oh, and there were some scientists too. WSF logo.bmp Continue reading "World Science Festival: Razzamatazz" »

Posted by Helen Pearson on June 11, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 10, 2009

World Science Festival: New York fills up with science

Nature staff will be attending the World Science Festival in New York City from June 10-14, 2009. Check back here for postings from the wide-ranging celebration of science, culture and society.

Posted by Alex Witze on June 10, 2009
Categories: World Science Festival 2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Search