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.

Zoe Nyssa – What a Model Might Do: Data and Value in Environmental Governance

  • Monday, March 4 from 5:00 to 6:30 pm
  • In-person at Fayerweather Hall (Room 513). Zoom option available; contact scienceandsociety@columbia.edu. 
  • “Based on archival and ethnographic research at conservation programs and projects in the U.S., this talk traces how scientists’ efforts to model the natural world in terms of species endangerment unleashed complex and sometimes surprising dynamics. […] Recent collaborative, interdisciplinary work with the international biodiversity science community suggests potential ways to advance more effective and just forms of environmental data governance.” More information. 

Dialogue Across Difference Initiative (DxD): The Quagmire of Animal Foods for Human and Planetary Health

  • Tuesday, March 5 from 3:00 to 4:00 pm
  • Online over Zoom. Registration required. 
  • “The subject of animal-source foods (ASF) has become a scientific and political quagmire, with divergent interpretations of the scientific literature and intractable value judgments concerning their consumption for human and planetary health. […] Join us as we disentangle this “wicked” issue of how the world could ensure there is more equitable consumption of ASF, how ASF could be raised more environmentally sustainable, and the future technologies that may disrupt the ASF sector, like cultivated meats.” More information. 

An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence: Thinking with Machine

  • Wednesday, March 6 from 6:00 to 7:30 pm
  • In-person at Buell Hall, East Gallery. Registration required.
  • “We imagine that we are both in control of and controlled by our bodies—autonomous and yet automatic. This entanglement, according to David W. Bates, emerged in the seventeenth century when humans first built and compared themselves with machines. Reading varied thinkers from Descartes to Kant to Turing, Bates reveals how time and time again technological developments offered new ways to imagine how the body’s automaticity worked alongside the mind’s autonomy…” More information. 

Where Change Comes From: My Time in Politics, the Paris Agreement, and the Future of Climate Action

  • Thursday, March 7 from 2:30 to 3:30 pm
  • In-person at The Forum, Auditorium. Registration required. 
  • “Days after being named Canada’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, landed in Paris and quickly found herself at the heart of the effort to secure the landmark agreement. Soon after the real battle would begin at home as she fought to deliver Canada’s first serious climate plan including carbon pricing against fierce opposition. After six years in Cabinet, she left politics and was appointed chair of the UN’s High Level Expert Group on Net Zero tasked with setting out the criteria for real net zero and calling out greenwashing. She remains what she calls a “stubborn climate optimist” but she is also a realist. In this lecture, McKenna will reflect on her time in politics, and what she has learned about making change happen—change she believes the world needs now more than ever.” More information. 

The Impact of Dobbs on Emerging Reproductive Technologies

  • Friday, March 8 from 12:00 to 1:00 pm
  • Online via Zoom. Registration required. 
  • “Join us for an ELSI Friday Forum with reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist Sigal Klipstein and legal scholar and expert on assisted reproductive technologies Judith Daar on the changing regulatory landscape and the use of genomics in reproductive health. They will discuss the implications of the  Dobbs decision on testing of embryos, including for aneuploidy and single gene disorders, and polygenic disorders and traits, and the jurisprudence surrounding reproductive decision-making.” More information.  

LDEO Earth Science Colloquium with Dr. Justin Dunnavant: A History Ecology of the Danish West Indies from Slavery to Freedom

  • Friday, March 8 from 3:30 to 4:30 pm
  • In-person at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Monell Auditorium. 
  • “The transatlantic slave trade era—marked by chattel slavery, racial capitalism, and exploitative plantation economies—radically transformed societies and environments in the Americas. In the former Danish West Indies, the construction of these plantation regimes drastically reconfigured ecological relationships. In this talk, I synthesize recent work in historical ecology, archaeology, archival records, colonial maps, LiDAR, and marine science to explore how various colonial actors engaged with Caribbean ecological relations. Finally, I propose a praxis of redress to inform how we may move forward as archaeologists in a world of environmental decline.” More information.