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.

R 101 for Social Scientists

  • Monday, February 26 from 4:30 to 6:30 pm and Wednesday, February 28 from 12:30 to 2:30 pm.  
  • In-person at Butler Library, Room 306. Registration here for Monday’s session; and here for Wednesday’s. 
  • “R is the most widely used programming language for statistical computing and graphics. It is free and open source. This introduction to R is designed for participants with no programming experience. The workshop starts with the building blocks of using RStudio to develop and explore the data structures available in R. We will then go over some basic tools for inspecting, extracting, manipulating, summarizing, and visualizing data. Throughout the workshop, we will also discuss how to use R packages as well as strategies for continued learning and experimentation. Please bring your own laptop.” More information. 

Jayne Hildebrand – Novel Environments: Science, Description, and Victorian Fiction

  • Monday, February 26 from 6:15 to 7:45 pm.
  • Online and in-person: Heyman Center (Second Floor Common Room). Registration required. 
  • “Novel Environments: Science, Description, and Victorian Fiction recovers the scientific vocabulary the Victorians used to name the surroundings of living organisms. The word ‘environment’ dominates our own way of speaking about the nonhuman world, but nineteenth-century scientific writers and novelists availed themselves of a richer conceptual lexicon, which included “environment” along with less familiar concepts such as ‘milieu,’ ‘medium,’ and ‘circumstance.’ Jayne Hildebrand traces the development of Victorian environmental thought from the earliest theorization of physical surroundings as a dynamic influence in the life sciences…” More information. 

Felicity Boardman – Disability, Screening, and Identity in a Genomic Age

  • Tuesday, February 27 from 4:00 to 5:30 pm.
  • Online over Zoom. Registration required. 
  • “The concept of condition ‘severity’ is pivotal in determining access to, and future uses of, genomic medicine. Despite this widespread usage, however, it remains an undefined, nebulous and poorly understood concept. This talk will present research data from the Imagining Futures study, a project designed to explore the perspectives and lived experiences of families/individuals living with a wide range of inherited conditions, as well as those living with genetic ‘risk’. By highlighting the role of lived experience and its various interfaces with identity politics, this talk will bring a new lens to some of the key debates around current, and future uses of genomic technologies, in particular the use of whole genome sequencing as a screening tool.” More information.

The Buell Conversations: Land from Water

  • Thursday, February 29 from12:00 to 2:00 pm.
  • In-person at Buell Hall, 300 South and online over Zoom. Please email buellcenter@columbia.edu to RSVP or register for the Zoom link here.
  • “Inca rulers and Italian Renaissance political thinkers shared a peculiar commonality: they thought of land as an infrastructure that could be shaped to direct the flows of water and wealth. Stella Nair and Caroline Murphy, historians of the early-modern period, will present research about land management techniques drawn from the long history of infrastructure in two globally distant 16th-century places: Cuzco, Peru, and Tuscany, Italy.” More information. 

The Fight for Climate Justice and Our Rights to a Safe Future

  • Wednesday, February 28 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.
  • In-person at International Affairs Building, Room 406. Registration required. 
  • “The Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil and Political Rights Student Advisory Board is pleased to invite you to the first installment of “The Politics We Imagine” Conversation Series. We will be joined by Professors Michael Gerrard and Sheila Foster in a panel discussion on recent litigation for climate rights and environmental justice efforts in the US and beyond.” More information.

Lamont Public Lecture Series: Seas of Change

  • Wednesday, February 28 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm (reception from 6 – 7, discussion from 7 – 8).
  • In-person at Lamont Earth Observatory, Monell Auditorium. Registration required.
  • “Marine microbes are quite literally talking to each other. On February 28th, Sonya Dyhrman will share her groundbreaking research that enables us to decipher the intricate language of these microbes and their role in ocean health. Learn how we can listen in on their conversations to better understand how they power ocean ecosystems and influence global climate on our beautiful blue planet.” More information. 

Joseph Rouse – Practices, Normativity, and Biological Niche Construction

  • Thursday, February 29 from 1:00 to 2:30 pm.
  • In-person at Fayerweather Hall (Room 411). Registration required; lunch will be served.
  • “Joseph Rouse’s book, Social Practices as Biological Niche Construction draws on the social theory of practices and recent developments in evolutionary biology to overcome a familiar conceptual split of human ways of life between our biologically explicable bodies and the diverse social worlds we inhabit. His talk develops the book’s implications for understanding the complex normative accountability of human ways of life…” More information. 

The Frog in the Forest: Sound Art & Science to Calm Your Brain

  • Thursday, February 29 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm.
  • In-person at Jerome L. Greene Science Center, 9th Floor. Registration required. 
  • “Feeling anxious? Overwhelmed? As if your brain wasn’t quite built for the modern world? What if a science-based sound bath was exactly the cure you never knew you needed? This groundbreaking hybrid performance work merges cutting-edge neuroscientific research with an immersive algorithmic soundscape, taking you deep within yourself on an extraordinary tour of your own brain and autonomic nervous system.” More information. 

Music on the Brain with the National Jazz Museum: The Mechanisms of Evolution in Music and Nature

  • Thursday, February 29 from 7:00 to 8:00 pm.
  • In-person at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem. Registration required. 
  • “Come enjoy a jazz concert and dialogue with multi-instrumentalist jazz musician, composer, and educator T.K. Blue, pianist Sharp Radway, and our guest speaker from the Zuckerman Institute’s Bendesky Lab, evolutionary biologist Wyatt Toure, where we explore the fascinating parallels between evolution and jazz composition.” More information. 

Astrochemistry: From Atoms and Molecules to Stars and Galaxies with Astronomy Public Outreach

  • Friday, March 1 from 6:00 to 7:00 pm (talk) and 7:10 to 8:10 pm (stargazing).
  • In-person at Pupin 301 (talk) and College Walk (stargazing). Registration required. 
  • “When we think of astronomy, what comes to mind? Stars? Black holes? Galaxies? Well, what about chemistry? In this talk, we’ll discuss how simple atoms come together to form some of our favorite structures in the night sky, and how molecules can speak to us from light years away—all in the universe’s biggest laboratory. We’ll start the evening at 6pm with some astronomy trivia, followed by Dr. Forer’s talk and Q&A. From 7:10 to 8:10 pm, we will be outside stargazing on College Walk (weather permitting).” More information here.

Science Fair via Giovanni De La Rosa