Passing Time

17.00-18.00         Introduction – Catherine Annabel, Chair of Inspiration for Life

Is Science Magic? – Professor Richard Jones, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Research & Innovation and Professor Tony Ryan, OBE, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Faculty of Science

New science and technology can seem like magic – but how deeply do the connections go?  New sciences like nano-technology and synthetic biology promise magical possibilities, like invisibility cloaks, shape-shifting objects that make themselves, and miniature robot surgeons to cure all our diseases.  Can science, like the promise of magic, solve all our problems and realise our dreams?  Or are we in danger of waiting around for magical answers to problems like climate change and sustainable energy rather than doing the hard work of solving our problems with the tools we have? This discussion between Tony Ryan and Richard Jones will explore some new science that looks like magic, but is very real, as well as finding some unexpected historical connections between the worlds of science and magic.

How often are we hit by asteroids?  What risks are associated with impacts from space and what can we do about them?

A small insight into miscarriages of justice in the UK and the inspirational work that students do across the country in helping to give hope to innocent people.

Jamie McGourlay is the Rolls-Royce Partnership Manager with the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) of the University of Sheffield, an environment literally at the cutting edge in the development of high-value manufacturing technologies.  His presentation will look at the current to future challenges involved in the design, manufacture and operation of the world’s best gas turbine technology.

Professor Mike Braddick, Professor of History, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Faculty of Arts & Humanities John Lilburne was a radical campaigner for the rights of the ‘freeborn Englishman’ during the English civil war and revolution.  He was on trial for his life three times, and in prison or exile for most of his adult life.  Despite these ordeals, his central political ideas are now taken for granted, and many of his specific suggestions have become central to our constitution.  They have also had a liberating influence around the world.  I will give a brief account of his life and ideas, how he came to have them, and how his political tactics have provided a model for later radicals.  It is a dramatic and inspiring vindication of his famous claim that despite the apparent failure and suffering he experienced, the truths for which he was campaigning would, in the end, win out: ‘though we fail, our truths prosper’.

On 4 July 2012 the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the CERN Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of a new particle believed to be the long sought-after Higgs boson. This talk will describe the background to the discovery and how it was made, and explain its significance for fundamental physics and our understanding of the universe at the smallest and largest scales.

The meanings given to the mouth have changed over time. Our modern dental rituals might be part of a longer ‘de-spiritualisation’ of the body. In the end, though, let’s not forget kissing and love …

This talk will tell stories of personal journeys, journeys which have been deeply informed by the storied lives of others. The journey of the self may be to seek meaning, affirmation, peace, or connection, but is often diverted or abandoned when illness or trouble strike. How can we retrace our steps and take up our route again at such moments of loss?

In this brief talk, I will offer up some of the essential ingredients necessary to inspire lifelong learning, drawing upon my own experiences of working with a wide range of adults returning to learning after a significant break from education.  As a jumping off point for my discussions, I will be offering Sheldon some feedback on the approach he takes to teaching Penny Physics.

The European Union is a trade organisation, concerned with creating markets and economic development. For a long time, it had no formal powers to develop health policies of any sort, and even now, its powers are limited. And yet the EU has contributed to the fight against cancer in numerous ways, including using policies, resources, and laws. This lecture will explain the history of the EU’s fight against cancer, and outline what more could be done in the future.

From Robertsons’s fantasamagoria in the 1790s to the modern day theatrical horror promenade show, the staging of haunted attractions as popular entertainment has been part of our history for many years. This paper seeks to look at three historical entertainment concepts which incorporate or use as their basis the uncanny, the supernatural and sensory deprivation, incorporating technological practices from the magic lantern, photographer and the cinematograph to demonstrate how the haunted illusion works in popular entertainment.

00.30-01.00         The Blues of Physics –  Dr Ed Daw, Senior Lecturer in Particle Physics & Astrophysics

Physics can be a great and wonderful joy. And it can also give you the Blues. Fortunately I was given the Blues independently of being given Physics, so when the latter drives me bananas, the former can step in and keep me slightly insane. Please come to my ‘lecture’ and listen to my attempts to keep myself slightly, and joyfully, off-kilter.

01.00-01.30         Deep Sky Astronomy and Astrophysics – Professor Paul Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics

I will present astronomical images of star clusters, nebulae, galaxies obtained with large ground-based telescopes (ESOs Very Large Telescope) and space-telescopes (Hubble, Spitzer, Herschel) together with an explanation of the astrophysics behind these inspirational and beautiful images.

Humans and nature both use light for a variety of reasons.  In this talk I will take some specific examples from nature and show how, given several hundred million years, evolution has perfected the control of light to perform some remarkable feats of engineering.

Not all physics research is serious and swamped in mathematics! Tim firmly believed that you should have fun and explore the field away from the expected route, a philosophy I have enjoyed following.  In this talk I will discuss what happens when a) a physicist starts crossing subject boundaries in strange directions, and b) he gets fed up with his brew going cold.

This presentation will cover the origins and applications of nanotechnology.  A working definition for nanotechnology will be presented with examples from various areas of technology where nano might be used.  In particular, I shall discuss how nanotechnology might find an important role in solving the great issues facing us in the 21st century.  You will be encouraged to consider what these might be.  Fears about unleashing this technology on mankind will be discussed, and we shall consider, by comparing the physics of the macroscale with physics of the nanoscale, why impending apocalypse is not going to happen.          

Drums are probably the oldest of musical instruments, and their basic form has changed little over the centuries. In the 1950s a major revolution took place with the introduction of the synthetic drumhead, which very quickly gained universal acceptance, replacing calfskin and other animal skins, as the material of choice. This was driven not by musical benefits but by pragmatism. We will look at the science behind drums and drum-skins, including the way in which drums vibrate, the pitchless nature of many drums, the implications for tuning and the relative merits of synthetic and natural drum-skins.

What are we made of? What is mass? Einstein tells us that mass is energy: E=mc^2. Basic physics tells us that the mass of our body comes from the chemical elements that make us, water for example. Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen and these are made of protons, neutrons and electrons spinning around them. How deep do we have to look for the answer?  The talk presents a travel to the origins of matter and explains how experiments show that mass is not due to the Higgs boson but due to quantum mechanical energy stored in protons and neutrons one millionth of a second after the Big Bang.

I will wander, often aimlessly, through ideas around how your mouth senses changes not in taste but in viscosity (thickness). How this leads to ideas behind the science of astringency, and how the tannin in tea and red wine induces these changes. Astringency is poorly understood with conflicting views from taste experts, physicists, biologists, industrial scientists and “marketeers”.  This will clearly require me to drink red wine during a lecture, something that I often felt the need to do.

What happens when people see past the front cover of your life? Are you still able to have a happy,  successful and rewarding work/life experience? Does one achieve despite or because of our mixture of experiences and attributes? Elena will use her life as a point of conversation with the audience and reflect on various aspects of diversity in the workplace such as religion, sexuality, nationality and gender.

A reflection on the nature of life and politics in the twenty-first century. This will include a discussion of hyper-democracy and the politics of fear in order to carve out a new approach to understanding the limits and possibilities of democratic politics.

Some of the work published by Dr Tim Richardson’s research group ‘Team Tim’ will be presented.  This involved developing gas sensors which change colour upon exposure to volatile organic gases. This talk will gently introduce the porphyrin molecules used in these gas sensors and explain why they are sometimes described as being like biscuits.

The talk and demonstrations will highlight the amazing properties of soap molecules and how very similar structures make up the walls of our cells and ultimately help to construct the complex compartments essential for biological life.

Health Informatics concerns the use of digital information and digital technologies in health and medical care to improve  health and well-being among patients and the public. This lecture will examine some of the exciting opportunities and challenges in this fast-moving field. It will draw on recent research undertaken to examine the use of NHS Direct by older people and will discuss the implications of this for the new 111 service.

The plan is to talk about what infinity means mathematically.  This will include a precise definition, which leads to the surprising idea that there is more than one type of infinity.

What is this Higgs Boson? What does it tell us about the nature of the Universe? Using familiar examples, I will tell you what Bosons are, how they condense and explain the origin of mass in the Universe.

Communication is a two way process. There’s endless scope for accidental misunderstandings, miscommunication and just getting things plain wrong. What can you do to help make sure your message gets across loud and clear?

I will review our current understanding of the history of the universe. But more importantly I will let you know what we don’t know. Many puzzles need to be solved before we have a full understanding of how we got here.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)  states that “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” I will talk about what the  drafters meant then and what the right means now.

The talk will look at some of the properties of light. It will cover how we see things in the world around us and the uses of light. Colours will also be investigated. There are a number of demonstrations which the children help with.

This talk provides an introduction to contemporary nature writing, with a focus on poetry written about birds. It touches on the long history of poets’ fascination with birds, explores some of the links of this tradition with music about birds, and presents a detailed look at three short poems by contemporary British poets.

Art, science, medicine, literature and ethics.  All of these subjects and many others have their own perspectives on Anatomy.  These have changed dramatically over the years; I aim to give a personal view of what it means to be an Anatomist in the 21st century.

Are there other intelligent technological species out there, or are humans rare (or even unique)?  I will examine a number of arguments that technological civilisations are rare.

Psychologists have shown that the overwhelming majority of people harbour unconscious race, sex and other biases. In this talk I explore how this threatens our knowledge both of ourselves and of many other things.

In this lecture I want to discuss the tension between traditional and modern sources of law. This is a big point of debate in international law in the context of devising new regimes for the protection of our intellectual resource and heritage. In the 21st century where intellectual property is central to economic and social growth and prosperity, this arena of contestation has an impact on our everyday experience of music, books, dance, medicine, sculpture, health, etc. Culture and identity are being shaped through these battles for supremacy.   In an effort to look inwardly at the notion of sources, and why it is important to us, I venture into sources and truth, probing the subjective and objective how this is viewed in Indian philosophy.  Chamu is an international lawyer with special interests in intellectual property, a keen student of Vedantic Hinduism and enthusiast for all forms of enquiry including the scientific.

The large and important and very much discussed question is: How can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?’.  This sentence, which was written by Erwin Schroedinger on the 1st page of chapter 1 of his visionary 1944 book, What is Life?, describes a notion that is still as illusive today as it was back then. I will highlight some of the marvellous and complex physical properties of living systems, and try to put them in context using ideas from physics and chemistry.

The male Argentine Lake Duck has the most extraordinary genitalia of any bird. The Harlequin Duck by comparison is extremely modestly endowed. Why should such differences exist? After all a phallus is a phallus, and on on the face of it, all serve the same purpose, so why such extraordinary variation? This type of question has intrigued and perplexed biologists and non-biologists alike for centuries. The answer was a long time coming. Not until the revolution in evolutionary ideas, and a century after Darwin, was the truth revealed.

Have you ever wondered where great ideas come from? In this lecture, we’ll look at different psychological perspectives on answering this question, from experiments on romantic impulses to creating machines that make up stories!

The speakers will be wearing the world’s first air-purifying jeans, embedded with the technology that we hope will be applied in the laundry process so you too can purify our air.  Catalytic Clothing explores the potential for clothing and textiles to purify the air we breathe. Artist and designer Helen Storey (London College of Fashion) and chemist Tony Ryan (University of Sheffield) have been working together to explore how nanotechnology can eliminate harmful pollutants that cause health problems and contribute to climate change.  We will explore how nanotechnology can be used to solve an everyday problem.  It has been seen by millions of people, and there is a great demand.  Of course there are still technical problems to solve, but the the biggest problem in getting it to market is getting past the marketeers.  This is a truly altruistic product – but to make it happen might need a new business model.