Reading Club
| Meetings 2003 | |||
| Date | Topic for discussion | Presented by | Reading material |
| March 27 at 18:00 in room 215 |
'The green revolution: Can GM food save the world
from hunger?' |
Daniel Forler, Mikko Taipale |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/genes/gm_genie/index.shtml http://www.foodfirst.org/media/opeds/2000/4-greenrev.html http://www.fao.org/ http://www.fao.org/es/esn/food/risk_biotech_toxi_en.stm |
| February 27 at 18:00 in room 215 | 'The biology/sociology of time'' | Halldor Stefansson | 'Forever young ' (Nature, 20 February 2003) http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v421/n6925/full/421789a_fs.html 'The whens and wherefores of life' (Nature, 16 December 1999) http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v402/n6763/full/402723a0_fs.html |
| January 23 at 18:00 in room 215 | "Science between security and freedom. - The impact of terror on science" | Martin Ploss | - Donald Kennedy: Balancing terror and freedom. Science, vol. 298, p.
2091, 2002. - Bruce Alberts and Robert M. May: Scientist support for biological weapons controls. Science, vol. 298, p. 1135, 2002. - Abigail Salyers: Science, censorship, and public health. Science, vol. 296, p. 617, 2002. - Ronald M. Atlas: National security and the biological research community. Science, vol. 298, p. 753-754, 2002. - Mitchel B. Wallerstein: Science in an age of terrorism. Science, vol. 297, p. 2169, 2002. |
| Past meetings 2002 | |||
| Date | Topic for discussion | Presented by | Reading material |
| December 19 at 18:00 room 215 | 'A trip to the science museum' | Sarah Sherwood | To prepare for this reading club, visit the website of your local science
center or museum, find out what activities they are up to, and come tell us about it. We'll hear what different approaches different museums in different countries are using to bring science and technology to the public - and start our discussion from there. - Further reading: Owens, S.R., Lecrubier, A. & H. Breithaupt. (2001) A day at the museum. EMBO Reports 3: 506-510 |
| November 28 at 18:00 room 215 | "Selling Science to the Public" | Leonie Unterhoelzner | http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/289/5476/59 |
| October 17 at 18:00 room 215 |
What motivates misconduct in science? | Mikko Taipale | DFG Proposals for Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v419/n6906/full/419417a_fs.html 'Sitting in judgement'. An article about scientific misconduct from a recent issue of Nature http://www.dfg.de/aktuell/download/self_regulation.htm http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v419/n6905/full/419332a_fs.html Final report of the JH Schön case http://www.lucent.com/news_events/researchreview.html |
| September 26 at 18:00 room 215 |
"Debunking the paranormal" | Rob Russell | Recommended references: http://www.csicop.org/ http://www.randi.org/ http://www.skeptic.com/ |
| June 26 at 18:00 room 215 |
"Nature and Nurture : an unresolved debate" | Jacques Dubochet University of Lausanne |
Bouchard, at al. (1990). Source of human psychological differences: The Minnesota study of twins reared apart. Science 250, 223 - 228. (in the library; no e-copy available) |
| June 05 at 18:00 h room 215 |
"Hollywood's Promotion of Science" |
Daniel Forler | The film "The 6th day" will be disected and discussed. Check: http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/the6thday/
http://www.missyplicity.com/ http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/SU/SU102001/copycat.html http://www.lazaron.com/savinglife.html |
| March 27 at 18:00 room 215 |
Women and Science in Islam | Giovanni Frazzetto | Farkhonda Hassan: "Islamic Women in Science", Essays in Science and Society,Science October 6, 2000; 290 (5849): 55, available at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5489/55 |
| February 14 at 18:00 in room 215 |
"in the wake of PISA: what we can learn about education systems and how to improve them" | Andrew Moore, EMBO | The PISA study, OECD, 2001, see http://www.pisa.oecd.org/ and the links
on that page for summaries of the main findings. For reactions to the PISA study in different countries, see under the above URL, PISA in the news: http://www.pisa.oecd.org/News/cntry.htm |
| January 10 at 18:00 h in room 215 |
"The Heidelberg Life Science Lab: Science and Education" | Stefanie Denger, EMBL | http://life-science-lab.xmachina.de/konzept.html http://life-science-lab.xmachina.de/vortrag.html |
| Past meetings 2001 | |||
| November 21 | "Perspectives on Post-genomics" | Connie Lee (FEBS Letters) Federico De Masi |
"After the Genome, What Then?" by Richard Lewontin, New York Review
of Books, July 19, 2001 "Me and my genome" by Gottfried Schatz, FEBS Letters 25274(2001)1-2 |
| July 19 | Science in the Third Reich: Acknowledging a historical responsibility and learning from the past. | Katrin Weigmann | http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/kwg/publications.htm#Ergebnisse |
| April 24 | Can science journalists endanger public health? | Holger Breithaupt (EMBO Reports) |
Kolata, G., Hope in the Lab: A special report.
A cautious awe greets drugs that eradicate tumors in mice. The New York Times,
May 3, 1998
Fragin, S., Flawed Science at the Times, Brill's Content, Oct. 1998 Gorman, C., The Hope and the Hype. Time Magazine, May 18, 1998 |
| March 29 | Selling Science: On the art of image advertising in Science Journals | Halldór Stefánsson | Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D. & Solomon, S. (1999) Creative sparks, Science 285, 1495-1496 |
| Feb 22 | World Conference on Science | Will Stanley (EMBL Hamburg) | http://www.unesco.org/science/wcs/index.htm |
| Jan 25 | Humans in Science and Religion: from monkeys or from mud? | Federico De Masi | Evolution and the Science and Religion Dialogue |
| 2000 | |||
| Nov 30 | Intellectual Property Rights and Patenting -what role do they play in science? | Birgit Kerber | The DNA Patent Database
BAD PATENTS World Intellectual Property Organization Intellectual Property Rights and Research Tools in Molecular Biology: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office European Patent Office |
| Oct 26 | Therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning: can we draw a line between good and bad? | Katrin Weigmann | Stem Cell Research: Medical Progress with Responsibility
- a report from he U.K. Chief Medical Officer's expert group reviewing the
potential of developments in stem cell research and cell nuclear replacement
for the benefit human health.
Lee M. Silver: Reprogenetics: Third millennium speculation. The consequences for humanity when reproductive biology and genetics are combined. EMBO Reports (in press) |
| Sept 21 | Bioterrorism: Facts and Fiction | Freddy Frischknecht | D.A. Henderson (1999) The Looming Threat of Bioterrorism, Science, 283,
1279-82
Web links with relevant information: |
| Aug 3 | Free will in the light of neurobiology | Berthold Rutz | M. James and W.T. Newsome (1999) The neurobiology of cognition, Nature,
402, Suppl. 2 Dec. M.L. Platt and P.W. Glimcher (2000) Neural correlates of decision variables in parietal cortex, Nature, 400 M.J. Nichols and W.T. Newsome (2000) Monkeys play the odds, Nature, 400 |
| July 6 | Thou shalt not clone thyself. Do we need an eleventh commandment? | Giuseppe Testa | Anne McLaren, (2000) Cloning: pathway to a pluripotent future (Science's Pathways of Discovery Series), Science, 288, 175-178 |
| May 25 | Who wants to live forever? | George Reid | J. Harris (2000) Intimations of immortality (from Science's Essays on Science and Society) |
| April 27 | Cancer: Evolution to revolution | Sarah Sherwood | Excerpts from an HBO video document |
| 1999 | |||
| Nov 23 | An intelligent rodent? A moral rodent? | Ilona Grunwald and Halldór Stefánsson | L.J. Young, R. Nilsen, K.G. Waymire, G.R. MacGregor and T. Insel. (1999)
Increased affiliative response to vasopressin in mice expressing the V1a
receptor from a monogamous vole, Nature, 400, 766-768 Y.P. Tang, E. Shmizu, G.R. Dube, Rampon, C. G.A. Kerchner, M. Zhou, Liu, G. and JZ Tsien (1999) Genetic enhancement of learning and memory in mice, Nature, 401, 63-69. |
| Sept 30 | Behavioural genetics: are genes all we are? | Giovanni Frazzetto | "Inherited Tendencies: Behaviors", from "Exploding the Gene Myth" by Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald, Beacon Press, Boston, 1999, pp. 92-107 |
Send your suggestions for future reading club meetings to Halldór Stefánsson.
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