Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.
Join us in the Edmund Safra Lecture Theatre, Saïd Business School, for a talk by Dr Gavin Yamey MD MPH, a physician and medical journal editor with training in public health who leads the Evidence to Policy initiative E2Pi in the Global Health Group at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Prompted by the 20th anniversary of Investing in Health, the World Bank’s 1993 World Development Report (WDR 1993), in 2013 an independent commission of 25 renowned economists and global health experts from around the world revisited the case for health investment. The commission was chaired by Lawrence Summers, the Chief Economist at the World Bank responsible for choosing global health as the focus of WDR 1993, and co-chaired by Dean Jamison, lead author of WDR 1993. The commissioners aimed to reconsider the recommendations of WDR 1993; to examine how the context for health investment has changed in the past 20 years; and to develop a highly ambitious forward-looking health policy agenda targeting the world’s poor populations. The report, Global Health 2035: A World Converging Within a Generation published in The Lancet, lays out a roadmap for achieving dramatic gains in global health by 2035 through: a grand convergence around infectious, maternal, and child mortality, major reductions in the incidence and consequences of non-communicable diseases, and the promise of pro-poor universal health coverage.
*ALL WELCOME* Join us for a drinks reception immediately afterwards

The surviving polychromy of a second century Roman marble sculpture at the British Museum (BM SC 1597), also known as the Treu Head, was investigated scientifically and rigorously compared to other Greek and Roman works of art. The analysis showed very close similarities between the paint layers of the Treu Head and those of contemporaneous, highly naturalistic mummy portraits from Egypt.
The extremely limited extent of surviving paint on the head and the highly sophisticated painting technique make the reconstruction of the original polychromy a task fraught with difficulties. With the intentional aim of excluding a modern reinterpretation of ancient painting techniques, the colour reconstruction proposed here was created by digitally ‘transplanting’ images of face parts from original Roman mummy portraits onto the Treu Head. The digital transplant involved reshaping the different facial features of the mummy portraits to those of the Treu Head. The novelty of this colour reconstruction lies not only on the thorough scientific reliability of the data, but also on the use of only Roman painted objects.
The final appearance of the head is therefore not intended as a definitive reconstruction of the ‘original’ appearance, but as a ‘possible’ appearance.

An Interdisciplinary Conference sponsored by Las Casas Institute at Blackfriars Hall and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). The conference.
In a time when globalization emphasizes the free flow of ideas, goods, and capital, migration appears at the forefront of political agendas in many countries around the world. Discussions on migration tend to focus on the economy, emphasizing the protection of the working class and the attraction of highly skilled migrants; on national identity, emphasizing nationalism and “us versus them” sentiments; and on national security, emphasizing protection from external threats. In the conference we will explore the ways religious and faith traditions contribute, challenge, and shift the discourse about migration.
For more information go to http://migrationfaithaction.org
or register at http://migrationfaithaction.org/register/

It’s easy to think of pseudoscience existing in a glass case at a museum – something to be examined and critiqued from a safe distance, but not something to touch and to play with. Using examples taken from his own personal experiences in skepticism, Michael Marshall will show what happens when you begin to crack the surface of the pseudosciences that surround us – revealing the surprising, sometimes-shocking and often-comic adventures that lie beneath.
Michael Marshall is the Vice President of the Merseyside Skeptics Society and Project Director of the Good Thinking Society. He regularly speaks with proponents of pseudoscience for the Be Reasonable podcast. His work with the MSS has seen him organising international homeopathy protests and co-founding the popular QED conference. He has written for the Guardian, The Times and New Scientist.
7.30PM start at St. Aldates Tavern, and entry is free, although we do suggest a donation of around £3 to cover speaker expenses. Come along and say hello! All welcome.
Please join the facebook event and invite your friends: https://www.facebook.com/events/767965019903092/
http://oxford.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/2062/Lifting-The-Lid-Ongoing-adventures-in-the-world-of-pseudoscience
Led by David Aldridge, an academic philosopher, educationalist and experienced role-playing enthusiast, this evening is intended for curious or experienced gamers alike to sample Dungeons and Dragons, celebrating collaborative storytelling and raising serious questions about ethics, metaphysics, and our own potential as human beings (ages 16+).
Part of the Oxford Brookes University festival, Outburst, at Pegasus, 6-10 may 2014. #OutBurst2014

In this lecture series, Naomi Richman explores the evolution of the ideas central to major global belief-systems such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Marxism, and their status in the modern world from a social-scientific and secular perspective.
6 Lectures run on Mondays starting the 12th May.
6-7pm, Roy Griffiths Room. ARCO Building, Keble College.
Free, open to all, and followed by discussion.
Weeks 1 and 2: Christianity and Secularisation. Week 3: Buddhism. Week 4: Judaism. Week 5: Islam. Week 6: Marxism, Nationalism and Scientific Humanism
For more information, contact Dr Bea Prentiss,

This is a joint event with the Oxford Martin School and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology
Dr Joanna Bryson, Reader, Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, will ask is artificial intelligence an existential threat to humanity? If so when?
In this talk she will argue that what Dewey, Goertzel and others have described as an intelligence explosion is an accurate description of the impact the socio-technical system of humanity and its culture has had on this planet since the dawn of writing, arguably the first form of AI. This pattern is accelerating with new communication and computation technology creating an ever-more powerful and dynamic system.
Nevertheless, understanding this system is not necessarily beyond the capacity or remit of theoretical biology. Further, she will suggest that controlling the system may be possible by altering the moral agents that compose it, that is, by providing useful abstractions to the general population and/or policy makers. The EPSRC Principles of Robotics (possibly the only national-level general-purpose AI ethics policy statement, although presently completely non-binding) calls this process “transparency” and mandates it.
Speaker: Edward Fitzgerald, QC
Renowned human rights lawyer and leading advocate in death row cases worldwide. Part of the Mansfield Lecture Series, convener Baroness Helena Kennedy QC.
When is a volcano going to erupt and how do you measure that?
What is Magma and how can we start studying it?
These questions and more will be explained by top academics from Oxford University.
More details on our website.

You are warmly welcome to attend a film showing and after-talk about a spiritual community in Germany, living life with a focus on meditation, and the true nature of our reality as human beings. You are invited with any questions or sharings to put to residents of this community who are making a UK tour this month.
We would love to see you there.

The discovery of the Higgs boson made headlines around the world. Two scientists, Peter Higgs and François Englert, whose theories predicted its existence, shared a Nobel Prize. The discovery was the culmination of the largest experiment ever run, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. But what really is a Higgs boson and what does it do? How was it found? And what will the LHC do next? Jon Butterworth, a leading member of the ATLAS experiment, will talk about all this and more.
Jon Butterworth is also Head of the Department of Physics & Astronomy at UCL, and writes for the Guardian at http://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics
7.30PM start at St. Aldates Tavern, and entry is free, although we do suggest a donation of around £3 to cover speaker expenses. Come along and say hello! All welcome.
Please join the facebook event and invite your friends: https://www.facebook.com/events/460780254055236/
http://oxford.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/2107/Smashing-Physics-News-from-the-energy-frontier
A short talk followed by questions and discussion. All welcome, whether you want to take part in the discussion or just listen.
Book your tickets here: http://www.scienceoxford.com/live/whats-on-so/the-future-of-the-universe
What is the future of our universe?
Are we alone or could other universes exist?
When and how might it end, or will it go on forever?
These and other questions have been in our thoughts since humanity first began to think beyond the next meal. New insights into the nature or our universe and how it was formed are forcing us to rethink our answers to these fundamental questions.
Science Oxford invites you to join a stellar panel of speakers including Professor Jim Gates, science advisor to the US Presidency from the University of Maryland, Oxford University’s Professor Frank Close and cosmologist Jo Dunkley. All under the chairmanship of Quentin Cooper, science broadcaster extraordinaire, in a mind-expanding and not to be missed evening of discussion and exploration at the Mathematical Institute, one of Oxford’s newest and exciting public venues.

You are cordially invited to the Magdalen College Trinity Term Libraries & Archives Talk:
Liam Dolan, Sherardian Professor of Botany, will speak on early botany.
A talk in Magdalen Summer Common Room (Cloisters III) followed by a chance to see our Early Botanical Books exhibition in the Old Library.
OxTET is happy to welcome Riva-Melissa Tez – lecturer at the DAB university in Berlin, founder of the Berlin Singularity, Associate Director of Longevity Intelligence Communications, and co-runner of Kardashev Communications. Riva will be speaking on obstacles that emerging technology businesses face, analysing factors causing shortfalls in funding, social mistrust, and political dysfunction, and offering recommendations for dealing with these obstacles.
Personalised medicine utilises advances in DNA sequencing technology to classify a tumours according to genetic make-up instead of where they are in the body – allowing cancer treatment to be tailored to the individual patient.
People may have the ‘same’ cancer, such as lung or breast cancer, but can have different genetic forms of the disease so responses to treatment can vary. Likewise, cancers growing in different parts of the body may share the same genetic blueprint and so respond to similar treatments.
Leading clinician researchers Professor Mark Middleton and Dr Anna Schuh discuss advances in personalised medicine being pioneered at Oxford University Hospitals.
Wednesday 11 June 2014
Time: 18.30 -19.30
Location: Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre – Lecture Theatre Level 1
Free, open to all

On Friday 13th June, the Oxford Left Review will be launching OLR Issue 13. Come along to get your copy and chat with the writers and editors. This issue was partially themed on ‘Science, Technology and the Left’, and contains articles, interviews, reviews and fiction on topics including fracking, devolution, Wikileaks, the pharmaceuticals industry and Pakistan, as well as many more. Drinks will be provided.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a complex autoimmune disease affecting up to 1% of the population, causing a disabling inflammatory arthritis. The disease has two clinical similar subsets: autoantibody positive or seropositive disease, and autoantibody or seronegative disease. Recent advances in high-throughout SNP genotyping has resulted in the identification of >100 risk loci, in addition to well-known associations at the MHC. However, understanding the link between genetic loci and disease mechanism, is contingent on investigators identifying causal alleles and elucidating how they function to modify disease susceptibility. Furthermore, the mechanistic relationship between the seropositive and seronegative rheumatoid arthritis clinical subsets is still unclear. We are now just starting to make progress in this direction. Here we present recent work on (1) efforts to localize MHC effects to functional amino acid sites within HLA genes, (2) methodological advances to connect non-MHC loci to functional alleles that influence gene regulation in a cell-specific manner, and (3) how genetics is giving us a clear picture on the heterogeneity of the genetic bases of the two clinically similar conditions of seronegative and seropositive rheumatoid arthritis.

Al Jazeera host Mehdi Hasan will challenge Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Medecins sans Frontieres and former French Foreign Minister, on France’s military interventionism. Are the country’s motives altruistic or do they respond to a neo-colonialist agenda? And is there a tipping point when intervening becomes essential? Syria, Mali, Libya, Kosovo and more.
This debate will be filmed and aired on Al Jazeera English at a later date. Audience members will be invited to participate in a Q&A section during the second half of the conversation.
Order free tickets here: http://bernardkouchner.eventbrite.co.uk
RANDY RETTBERG, President of iGEM
Randy Rettberg is the man behind iGEM, the global competition for undergraduates and high school students in designing brand new biological parts, or “genetically engineered machines”. An engineer by trade he is the President of the iGEM Foundation, which operates the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, a continuously growing library of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to enable easier construction of synthetic biology devices.
Dr. RICHARD KELWICK, Researcher at CSynBI, Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (Imperial College)
Richard has been scientific advisor and project manager of three successful iGEM teams, 2011-2013. Most recently, he was the lead advisor for the iGEM team Plasticity, at Imperial College London, which came third out of over 200 teams at the world final, held at MIT.
Dr. JAREK BRYK, National Centre for Biotechnology Education University of Reading
Jarek works at the National Centre for Biotechnology Education on a project to facilitate teaching of synthetic biology on an undergraduate level. He develops experimental kits that will be incorporated in synthetic biology curricula.He currently mentors the iGEM Reading team.

The use of GM technologies is growing beyond agricultural crops. GM vaccines and GM animals are available and their use may need different regulatory considerations. In this talk, Dr Michael Bonsall from the Dept of Zoology, University of Oxford, will cover some of the scientific, policy and regulatory issues that challenge the use and implementation of GM organisms.

‘Can you Count the Clouds?’ asks the voice of God from the whirlwind in the stunningly beautiful catalogue of nature questions from the Old Testament Book of Job. Tom McLeish takes a scientist’s reading of this ancient text as a centrepiece to make the case for science as a deeply human and ancient activity, embedded in some of the oldest stories told about human desire to understand the natural world. Drawing on stories from the modern science of chaos and uncertainty alongside medieval, patristic, classical and Biblical sources, Faith and Wisdom in Science challenges much of the current ‘science and religion’ debate as operating with the wrong assumptions and in the wrong space. Its narrative approach develops a natural critique of the cultural separation of sciences and humanities, suggesting an approach to science, or in its more ancient form, natural philosophy— the ‘love of wisdom of natural things’—that can draw on theological and cultural roots. Surprisingly, science becomes a deeply religious activity. There are urgent lessons for education, the political process of decision making on science and technology, our relationship with the global environment, and the way that both religious and secular communities alike celebrate and govern science.
Tom McLeish is Professor of Physics and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at Durham University. His research interests include: complex fluids and biological physics, academic-industrial collaboration, science and society, and the history (especially medieval) and theology of science. He studied for his first degree and PhD in polymer physics at the University of Cambridge and in 1987 became a lecturer in physics at the University of Sheffield. In 1993 he took the chair in polymer physics at the University of Leeds. He took up his current position in Durham in 2008. He has won several awards for his work on molecular rheology of polymers, including the Weissenberg Award of the European Society of Rheology (2007), the Gold Medal of the British Society of Rheology (2009) and the Bingham Award of the Society of Rheology (2010). He is also involved in science-communication with the public via regular radio, TV and schools lectures, discussing issues from the Physics of Slime to the interaction of Faith and Science. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Physical Society and the Royal Society.
THIS SEMINAR WILL BE HELD AT THE SUTRO ROOM, TRINITY COLLEGE AT 8:30PM, PRECEDED BY DRINKS AT 8:15PM.