Welcome back to Science Fair, Bwog’s weekly roundup of science events happening around campus. As always, email science@bwog.com if you want your event featured. Also, get your flu shot!

The Ethics of Bone Marrow Transplant & Aiding in an Effort to Find a Match (Hosted by the CU Bioethics Society)

  • Monday, November 8, 2021, 7:30 pm
  • More information here
  • “Come join us for a partnered event with Gift of Life! Gift of Life is a national organization dedicated to battling blood cancers such as leukemia through bone marrow transplants. We will be cheek swabbing for potential bone marrow matches and discussing the importance and ethics of bone marrow transplantation.”

Genetics and Development Seminar Series, “Transcription in four dimensions: how enhancers and promoters find each other”

  • Tuesday, November 9, 2021, 4 to 5 pm
  • Online event, link here
  • Talk by Thomas Gregor, PhD, Professor of Physics & Genomics at Princeton University, Director of Research at Institut Pasteur (Paris)

Columbia Climate Conversations: Food Systems

  • Tuesday, November 9, 2021, 6 to 7 pm
  • Online event, link here
  • “Join us on November 9 from 6 to 7 pm EST for our Columbia Climate Conversation on food systems, a 60-minute virtual conversational panel. The event will be hosted via Zoom.”

Mixing Medicines on Shifting Terrains

  • Wednesday, November 10, 2021, 12 to 1:30 pm
  • Online event, link here
  • “After the collapse of state socialism, Russia’s healthcare system, much like the rest of the country’s economic and social sphere, underwent massive restructuring, while the public saw the rise to prominence of a variety of nonbiomedical therapies. Formulated as a possible aid to a beleaguered healthcare infrastructure, or as questionable care of last resort, “traditional medicine” in post-socialist Russia was tasked with redressing—and often blamed for—the fraught state of the body politic, while biomedicine itself became increasingly perceived as therapeutically insufficient. The popularization of ethnically and culturally marked forms of care in Russia presents a peculiar paradox in a political context often characterized by a return to robustly homogenizing state policies. In a context where displays of cultural, religious, and ethnic difference are tightly woven with anxieties about Russia’s status as a modern state, the rise of a therapeutic sphere that tended towards multiplicity, fragmentation, bricolage, and a certain ontological agnosticism in the treatment of bodies and subjects appears, at the very least, counterintuitive. Focusing on the therapeutic life at the peripheries of the state, in the Siberian region of Buryatia that unexpectedly finds itself at the forefront of projects of medical integration via a local tradition of “Tibetan Medicine,” this talk explores how categories of official and unofficial medicine are co-constituted, and with what effects on conceptualizations of medical legitimacy, as well as on concrete ways of caring and curing.”

COVID College Blues: The Impact of COVID on College Student’s Mental Health

  • Thursday, November 11, 2021, 7:30 pm
  • Havemeyer Hall 209, more info here
  • “Feeling a bit blue? Maybe Columbia’s COVID policies made you feel super isolated, anxious and stressed? Maybe your professors are running with the whole “let’s revert class structure back to pre-COVID-19” a tad too fast? If any or all of these things apply, we invite you to join us for a productive discussion on how COVID-19 and a return to in person classes has truly affected the student body, our mental health, and how we perceive college. Joining us will be Dr. Anne Marie Albano (Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CUCARD) Professor of Medical Psychology in Psychiatry), Dr. Dana March Palmer (a social and psychiatric epidemiologist) and Joseph Greenwall (vice president for student affairs in University Life). We hope to have a productive conversation, and we hope you can contribute your own thoughts, opinions, and comments on how the system has affected you.”

As Climate Talks Close, an International Concert for Climate Action

  • Friday, November 12, 2021, 2 to 4 pm
  • Online event, link here
  • “As two weeks of climate treaty negotiations draw to a close, Andy Revkin of the Columbia Climate School hosts a special webcast of a live international concert for climate action, featuring Telegraph Quartet, Khafre Jay and Martin Luther McCoy, and 009 (San Francisco), Yury Revich, James Cottriall, and MY Sounds (Vienna)”

Pop-up Coding Talk and Workshop: Consentful Software Design with Xin Xin

  • Friday, November 12, 2021, 2 to 4 pm
  • Hybrid event, link here
  • “Consentful Software Design is a hybrid lecture and an in-person workshop that breaks down the design process of Togethernet, an open-source software that invites groups of 10 or fewer participants to build community archives through practices of consent. Designed around the ethos of data transparency and consent, Togethernet’s goal is to transform digital rights policies such as the right to be forgotten into an embodied practice through reimagining software architecture and user experience. This tool and initiative stands on the shoulders of Consentful Tech Zine by Una Lee and Dann Toliver and Design Justice Network Principles⁠—by considering transparency and consent every step of the way, the source code serves as both a technical and a moral document that seeks to uncover systems of power and uncertainties embedded in network technologies.”

Science Fair via Shane Maughn