China is facing severe water challenges. Many parts of the country suffer from chronic water scarcity. Pollution is affecting the health of hundreds of waterways and public concern is increasing. Floods and droughts are a constant threat, especially as climate change increases uncertainty over rainfall patterns. Freshwater biodiversity is declining, with aquatic species such as the Yangtze river dolphin facing extinction.

The Chinese authorities have recognised that tackling these challenges is a matter of national priority and have significantly increased the resources available to water managers, emphasising ‘three red lines’ of improved water quality, increased water efficiency and more sustainable water allocations.

So how can China meet its aspirations for a water secure future which aids its continued economic development while enhancing environmental quality? This seminar will explore the current and potential future water situation in China, the response of China to these challenges drawing on global experiences, and risks to critical water infrastructure.

Current and future water challenges in China
Prof Li Yuanyuan, Vice President, General Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Planning and Design, Ministry of Water resources, PR China

Strategic principles and frameworks for water management in China and beyond – lessons from a global review
Dr David Tickner, Chief Freshwater Advisor, WWF-UK

Infrastructure vulnerability to water-related risks in China
Prof Jim Hall, Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University

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.

Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths University, Joan Anim-Addo brings us her voice on Black Women’s Writing and the place of the Black figure in the Humanities. This event will be hosted in connection with Oxford ACS.

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.

Why is laughter such an important human social tool? Neuroscientist and stand-up comedian Prof Sophie Scott will discuss her research on laughter (and apparently rats laugh too!).

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.

How does the brain work?
And how can we switch on and off specific neurons?
Join us for a Pint of Science with top academics from Oxford University.

You ever wanted to understand more about climate change? Is it real? what are the consequences?
Come join us for an expert panel from Oxford University who will shed some light on this highly debated subject

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.

How can we rewild animals to today’s environment?
How does the future of lethal viruses is going to be? Are they going to stick around with us as long as humanity exists

event is free

Speaker: Judy Webb

The Lye Valley, formally known as Hogley Bog, is a surprising and little known hot spot of wildlife biodiversity, a habitat for stunning wildflowers and spectacular insects in the centre of the City of Oxford. Beautiful marsh helleborine orchids are thriving here, within just a few metres of housing, and an important, historic, population of Grass-of-Parnassus is recovering to good numbers. Oxford botanists since the 1650s have loved this site and it was a favorite of photographer Henry Taunt, whose description of the Grass of Parnassus is quoted in the title. This is the story of a rare, ancient, wetland fen community, which has been fed by lime-rich spring water for thousands of years. It is one of the most important heritage sites within the city.

All Summer Lectures start at 6.30pm in the Daubeny Lecture Theatre (at
 the front of the Botanic Garden) and are followed by a drinks reception in the Botanic Garden. Ticket cost £8 per talk or £36 for the series of 5.
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

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

Speaker: Tom Price

The archipelago of Japan is defined as one of the World’s 34 biodiversity hotspots. Learn how staff from the Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum are conducting expeditions to Japan to collect and document the native flora to improve the plant collections held by the University, promote biodiversity conservation and communicate research conducted by the Department of Plant Sciences, Oxford to a wider audience.

All Summer Lectures start at 6.30pm in the Daubeny Lecture Theatre (at
 the front of the Botanic Garden) and are followed by a drinks reception in the Botanic Garden. Ticket cost £8 per talk or £36 for the series of 5.
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

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