Wine reception, snacks, and £5 year membership to PsyNAppS available. Alternatively, pay £2 for a single event!

Venue: Lecture Theatre B, Department of Experimental Psychology

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We are at the cusp of some far-reaching technological advances that will be of tremendous benefit to sensory research. Within a few short years we will be able to test thousands of people from any demographic with ‘connected’ technology every bit as good as we use in our labs today — indeed more so. Here, Dr Woods discusses on-web versus in-lab, predicted technological advances and issues with online research.

Dr. Andy Woods received his PhD from Trinity College, Dublin, in Multisensory Psychology and have subsequently postdoc’d in Bangor (Wales) and later in Manchester (England). He also spent 4 years as a research scientist working for industry in the Netherlands (Unilever R&D). His research remains primarily focused in the field of multisensory psychology. For the past 6 years he has been developing the ‘Xperiment’ software package, which lets scientists conduct research interchangeably on the internet, on the phone/pad through Xperiment apps, or in the lab.

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Psychology and Neuroscience Applications Society

The junction where psychology and neuroscience research meets action and innovation.

PsyNAppS aims to disseminate information about what you can do with your psychology or neuroscience degree and research. We are here to tell you everything Freud hasn’t. We want to show you how psychology and neuroscience can be applied practically to a variety of industries.

Professor Nick Bostrom, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, will explore the huge technological, scientific and environmental shifts that have led to humanity’s current state, and consider the choices that will determine our long-term future.

A talk by Seán Donlon, the former Irish ambassador to the United States.

Come listen to a curator with the Smithsonian Institute, Dr. Ellen Feingold, talk about the ongoing fascinating ‘Money in Arica’ project at the British Museum, which aims to piece together African monetary history and its cultural and political impact. Dr. Feingold will also speak on her own focus of counterfeit currencies in colonial East and West Africa. The lecture will be held at the Ioannou (Classics) Centre on St. Giles.

This event should interest you if:

• you wish to know more about various numismatics research projects;
• you wish to know more about a unique and rare field of numismatics (African numismatics);
• you wish to know more about using numismatics as a source for research.

Speaker profile: http://americanhistory.si.edu/profile/1159
Abstract:

During the interwar period, international counterfeiting schemes originating in West Africa presented a new threat to British colonial and national currencies. The institutions responsible for the West African monetary system – the Colonial Office and West African Currency Board – believed these plots had the potential to generate high quality forged currency and thus considered them to present a greater risk than local counterfeiting practices. This paper argues that colonial officials were also alert to this illicit activity because the schemes presented a new challenge to British law enforcement in the colonies, set off disputes between national and imperial institutions in London, and required the British to collaborate with other nations to thwart. The emergence of these international counterfeiting schemes demonstrates that while the creation of a colonial monetary system for West Africa facilitated British imperial economic aims, it also created new and unanticipated challenges to British rule.

Please contact qaleeda.talib@some.ox.ac.uk for more information.

Free for members; a £2 fee applies for non-members. Please contact the Secretary at kim.zhang@wadh.ox.ac.uk if you wish to be a member and sign up to the mailing-list. Membership is free.

“This is a good day for businesses…” says Dan Kelly, President, CEO and Chair, Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Maybe so, but CETA, like other trade-deals, is bad news for equality, democracy and the environment.
In early 2016, CETA, the Canada-EU trade deal is due to be debated and voted on in the European parliament. Like TTIP, CETA allows corporations to sue governments in secret courts over decisions they don’t like.
As part of the growing movement against corporate trade deals and to try to stop final agreement of CETA, we’re planning a speaker tour.
The speakers will be:
• Maude Barlow, chair of citizens’ group the Council of Canadians
• Yash Tandon, Ugandan trade expert and author of Trade is War
• Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now

Join us for this term’s ‘Oxford’s Questions’ – an event for postgraduate students, with guest speaker Jonathan Brant. The title of the talk is ‘The Character of Success: What’s the Make-up of the Ones who Make It? Come for dinner at 7.30pm (£3), and the talk will be followed by an opportunity for Q&A.

Speaker bio: The Revd Dr Jonathan Brant has been the Chaplain for the Oxford Pastorate, working with postgraduate students, since 2008. He wrote a DPhil in Theology at Trinity College, Oxford which drew upon systematic theology, film theory and qualitative research in considering the potential religious impact of contemporary Latin American cinema. The monograph has been published by Oxford University Press. Prior to coming to Oxford, Jonathan worked for Anglican churches in London and South America. Jonathan is the award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction books which introduce young people to the joys and the mysteries of the Christian faith. He is married to Tricia and has a fourteen year-old son, Isaac.

New emerging infections can pose huge global risks to health, with potentially devastating societal and economic impacts. In this seminar, Professor Angela McLean, Director of the Institute for Emerging Infections, will look at how new pathogens adapt will look at how new pathogens adapt as they spread, and how we can improve the development of new treatments and strategies to target infectious disease.

Talk, Q&As, and discussion. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take part actively in the discussion. There’s no need to book: just come along on the day.

Mr Richard Guy, Mr Roel Hompes and Mr Bobby Bloemendaal from the Colorectal Department at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will be presenting: “Surgery for advanced rectal cancer – crossing the boundaries”.

Wine reception, snacks, and £5 year membership to PsyNAppS available. Alternatively, pay £2 for a single event!

Venue: Lecture Theatre B, Department of Experimental Psychology

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Taha Yasseri is a Research Fellow in Computational Social Science at the OII. He graduated from the Department of Physics at the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2005, where he also obtained his MSc in 2006, working on localization in scale free complex networks. In 2007, He moved to the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he completed his PhD in Complex Systems Physics in 2010. Prior to coming to the OII, he spent two years as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, working on the socio-physical aspects of the community of Wikipedia editors, focusing on conflict and editorial wars, along with Big Data analysis to understand human dynamics, language complexity, and popularity spread.

Yasseri, T., and Bright, J. (2014) Can electoral popularity be predicted using socially generated big data? Information Technology 56 (5) 246–253.

Yasseri, T. (2013) Conflicts and opinion clashes in Wikipedia. Human Behavior and Network Science, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 2013.

Yasseri, T. (2013) Petition growth and success rates on the UK No. 10 Downing Street Website. ACM Web Science conference, Paris, France, May 2013.

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Psychology and Neuroscience Applications Society

The junction where psychology and neuroscience research meets action and innovation.

PsyNAppS aims to disseminate information about what you can do with your psychology or neuroscience degree and research. We are here to tell you everything Freud hasn’t. We want to show you how psychology and neuroscience can be applied practically to a variety of industries.

In this Inaugural Gaza Lecture, Professor Karma Nabulsi, Assiociate Professor in Politics and International Relations from University of Oxford, will explore the politics, history and current predicaments faced by Palestinians in Gaza – particularly in the field of education.

In doing so, the lecture will illustrate the many extraordinary capacities and qualities of the Palestinian people that have come to the fore despite the extreme situation they are living in and how they have become an exemplar of democratic and universal values.

Gaza is commonly seen as a place of humanitarian catastrophe requiring emergency assistance, but Karma will instead show what the Palestinians of Gaza give to us.

Mass Circulation: Writing about Art in a Daily Newspaper

With Richard Dorment, art critic, and Dr Alexander Sturgis, Director, Ashmolean Museum

A special Ashmolean evening In Conversation event

Wednesday 18 November
6‒7pm
Lecture Theatre

As The Daily Telegraph’s chief art critic from 1986‒2015, Richard Dorment CBE covered exhibition subjects ranging from the Ice Age to the Turner Prize. He talks to Ashmolean Director, Dr Alexander Sturgis, about art history, art criticism, and the popular press.

Tickets £12/£10 concessions. Booking is essential.
https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford/#event=20239

Do we have the means necessary to create the perfect human? Do we have a moral responsibility to do so? Professor Julian Savulescu, Director of the Institute for Science and Ethics, will consider current and potential human enhancement technologies, and look at the ethical arguments surrounding their use.

o mark Inter Faith Week 2015 (15 – 21 November) and the 150th anniversary of Oxford Brookes University, the University Chaplaincy will host a panel discussion on the role of faith, belief, and non-belief in 21st century higher education.
This discussion between some of the university Chaplains will explore the importance of building good relationships and working partnerships between people of different faiths and beliefs and the cultural, social and educational implications.

Mansfield Lecture Series, Convener Baroness Helena Kennedy QC.Laurie Taylor is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of York and
Visiting Professor in Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck. He is the author of 14
books on crime, deviance, personal identity and the nature of contemporary
celebrity. He presents the weekly social science programme Thinking Allowed
on BBC Radio Four.

Much of our research focuses on understanding the behaviour of individual molecules when they become energised following absorption of light or collision with an electron, both very common processes. Advancing our knowledge of such molecular behaviour has widespread applications in areas including atmospheric chemistry, astrochemistry, industrial processes, analytical instrumentation, molecular structure determination, and molecular synthesis. Usually, the energised molecules undergo a variety of fragmentation processes. The basic physics of a fragmentation process determines the speed of each fragment and the direction in which it flies away from the other fragments, and if we can measure these speeds and directions then we can ‘reverse engineer’ the process to learn about the underlying physics. We have recently developed a new tool for recording this information, in the form of the Pixel Imaging Mass Spectrometry (PImMS) camera. By some measures the fastest camera in the world, the PImMS camera allows us to detect individual molecular fragments with a time resolution of nanoseconds, and is now being used around the world in a variety of experiments in the areas described above. I will present some of the science underlying the development of the camera, and will also highlight some of the new science made possible by the PImMS technology.
Claire Vallance is a Professor of Physical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Tutorial Fellow in Physical Chemistry at Hertford College, University of Oxford. She has a variety of research interests, including chemical reaction dynamics, applications of velocity-map and spatial-map imaging to mass spectrometry, and the development of laser spectroscopy techniques for microfluidics and chemical sensing applications, and is a co-inventor of the PImMS ultrafast imaging camera. In addition to her research activities, Claire is active in a wide range of teaching and outreach activities within the Department of Chemistry and Hertford College.

An interesting talk by Carolin Krenzer, a Senior Member (Studio General Manager) at King about Producing Mobile Games! Everyone is welcome and there will be free drinks and snacks! Please email yuxi.yao@univ.ox.ac.uk if you are interested or just show up for the event!

Sir David Tang will reflect on recent developments in Chinese society and on the UK’s changing relationship with the Asian super-power. As a pre-eminent figure in fashion, hospitality, media and the arts, in both the UK and across Asia, Sir David will share his unique insights on this complex and fascinating topic.
The evening will be hosted by Ken Hom OBE, chef, author and broadcaster and honorary graduate of Oxford Brookes University.

How do vaccines stimulate the immune system, and how can we use this knowledge to develop more effective vaccines for future pandemics? Professor Adrian Hill, Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Vaccines, will discuss the diverse challenges of vaccine design and development, with particular reference to his group’s recent pioneering clinical trials of Ebola virus vaccines.

**OxPolicy and #periodpositive are ready to launch their report on the state of menstruation education in the United Kingdom!**

Join us on the evening of November 30th for a bloody good time (haw haw). We’ll be discussing our findings and making suggestions on how to improve the provision of menstruation education in UK schools, ways of teaching period positivity, and how to lessen menstrual stigma both for young people and generally. Featuring the wonderful Chella Quint – comedian and founder of #periodpositive!

Drinks to follow at the Lamb and Flag (St Giles) after the event.

Wine reception, snacks, and £5 year membership to PsyNAppS available. Alternatively, pay £2 for a single event!

Venue: Lecture Theatre B, Department of Experimental Psychology

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Dr. Anil Anthony Bharath is Reader in Image Analysis, and on the Research Board of Imperial’s Data Sciences Institute. He holds a degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from UCL, and obtained a PhD from Imperial College, also from the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering.

He was appointed as Lecturer in the Department of Biological & Medical Systems at Imperial College in 1991. Between 1993 and 2003, Dr.Bharath held the posts of Hayward Lecturer, then Hayward Senior Lecturer in Medical Imaging. He was appointed to a Readership position in 2005.

Dr. Bharath has published in the field of imaging, image analysis, and signal processing, and has 20 years’ experience in signal processing. In 1998, he demonstrated the first application of steerable filters to shape detection, an area of image analysis. Later contributions included the use of Bayesian marginalisation in very early-stage computer vision, focus-of-attention methods, and the use of customised wavelet transforms to analyse images in a scalable manner. The analysis of visual data, including new algorithms and system architectures, continues to be his main research interest.

In 2002, Dr. Bharath initiated the Basic Technology Project “Reverse Engineering Human Visual Processes”, which created a blueprint for a subset of processes in the human visual system, particularly of visual area V1.

In 2008, Dr. Bharath spun out the company Cortexica Vision Systems, which applies spatial neuronal models, expressed through the use of two-dimensional, complex wavelet decompositions, to visual search, both at video rates and on mobile devices.

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Psychology and Neuroscience Applications Society

The junction where psychology and neuroscience research meets action and innovation.

PsyNAppS aims to disseminate information about what you can do with your psychology or neuroscience degree and research. We are here to tell you everything Freud hasn’t. We want to show you how psychology and neuroscience can be applied practically to a variety of industries.

Join your colleagues, friends and mentors at this event to see teams present their projects and find out who will be awarded funding!

The Carbon Innovation Programme is an opportunity for students and staff at the University of Oxford to generate unique ideas for carbon reduction across the University’s Functional Estate. Teams or individuals have the opportunity to receive full funding to deliver their innovative carbon saving projects over the coming academic year (2015/16) whilst also receiving mentoring from industry experts. Successful candidates may have the option to discuss internships and career opportunities.

Blasphemy and Apostasy exist in many countries in the world, commonly within the Middle East and North Africa. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were first codified by India’s British rulers in 1860 and were inherited by Pakistan in 1947. The law (section 295-C of Pakistan Penal Code) states that blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad is to be awarded a fixed death penalty, with no leeway. Mass support of the law through promotion by legal and socio-political institutions of religious authority has led to its use as a tool for oppression and persecution. In 2014 alone, over 90 people were accused of blasphemy.

Join OUPakSoc and South Asia Research Cluster, Wolfson College, for a discussion on Blasphemy Laws where we explore their history, religious basis and impact in Pakistan and beyond.

Date: 2nd December, 2015
Time: 5.30 pm
Venue: Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College, OX2 6UD
Moderator: Matthew McCartney

Debate from the floor: There will be an opportunity for the audience to contribute in the form of short speeches. Please send us an email at secretary@oupaksoc.net if you would like to participate in the event.

Panellists:
Dr Jan-Peter Hartung – the Department of Religions and Philosophies at SOAS
Tehmina Kazi – Director of Media, Outreach and Lobbying, British Muslims for Secular Democracy
Arafat Mazhar – Engage Pakistan, a non-profit research and advocacy organization working to reform Pakistan’s blasphemy law from within the framework of law.
Bob Churchill – Director of Communications, International Humanist and Ethical Union, Head of End Blasphemy Laws campaign
Khalid Zaheer – Vice -President AlMawrid institute Lahore (Foundation for Islamic Research and Education)
Reema Omer- international legal advisor for Pakistan for the International Commission of Jurists, member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Ali Usma Qasmi – Assistant Professor (History) at LUMS, author of ‘Questioning the Authority of the Past: The Ahl al-Qur’an Movements in the Punjab’ and ‘The Ahmadis and the Politics of Religious Exclusion in Pakistan’ (Karachi Literary Festival Peace Prize).

For much of the last nearly 200 years, a huge amount of work has been undertaken to record, analyse and characterise gait – the patterns of movement when we walk. The common objectives were to enlighten clinical understanding and to improve the quality of life of many thousands of children, veterans and people challenged by disability.

An unintended consequence of this work has been its us in the entertainment sectors. Tom will take you on a visual journey into the world of blockbuster movies, music videos and advertisements populated by amazing creatures animated characters and imaginary environments.
He will describe the techniques used to capture human motion and how to place animated characters and objects into real backgrounds.

Climate predictions provide key scientific input into climate policy – and will continue to do so in future years. Professor Tim Palmer, Co-Director of the Programme on Modelling and Predicting Climate, will discuss how scientific and technical advances can be expected to improve our climate predictive capability in the coming years – for example through the application of inexact supercomputers, about which James Martin himself was especially enthusiastic. With projects like the Large Hadron Collider in mind, Tim will also discuss possible changes in the way climate prediction science organises itself internationally. Finally, Tim will address the important question of how to attract more mathematicians and theoretical physicists into the field of climate science.

Ten years after the creation of the world’s first statutory-based national ombudsman service for higher education, Rob Behrens will mark his forthcoming departure from the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) with a frank appraisal of what has been achieved, how universities, student unions and complainants have reacted and what issues remain to be addressed.

He will explore the journey from ‘adjudicator’ to outward-facing ombudsman service and evaluate the OIA’s contribution to the current regulatory scene, assessing the impact of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 which brings private suppliers into the scheme on an equal footing with universities.

Members of AUA are very welcome to attend this event.

Rob Behrens is Independent Adjudicator and Chief Executive of the OIA, the ombudsman service for students in higher education in England and Wales. He is a member of the Regulatory Partnership Group for higher education.

He is also a non-executive member of the Bar Standards Board (BSB) in England and Wales, and Chair of the BSB Qualifications Committee.

The use of data capture and visualisation technologies has grown dramatically, embracing the needs of researchers, stakeholder communities, cultural resource managers, tourists and the general public. This paper previews the types of techniques being used by Australian archaeologists and collaborators in a range of study areas. The digital acquisition and visualisation of archaeological sites using photographic techniques (hardware and software), 3D reconstruction, laser scanning and other methods, along with novel methods for presentation provide us with opportunities not available even 5 years ago. The challenge for researchers is to maintain the theoretical impetus in the face of a plethora of new technologies and opportunities. Methods to enhance recording and to facilitate research methodologies are explored and the potentials for cultural resource managers and stakeholder communities to manage their heritage (e.g. with tourists in interpretive displays, websites and other virtual media) are highlighted.

Professor Alistair Paterson is an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia where he has been Head of the School of Social Sciences (2013-15) and Archaeology Discipline Chair (2010-2012). He is currently a visiting researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. His research and teaching covers culture contact, historical archaeology in maritime and terrestrial settings, European colonization, historical rock art, digital scholarship, and archaeological and historical methodology. Much of his work is located in Western Australia and the Indian Ocean exploring the uses of coast and offshore islands in colonial and pre-colonial settings, and early colonial settlements across the state (in collaboration with the Western Australian Museum, iVec@UWA).

Henry Moseley’s work brought X-ray physics to bear on the chemists’ periodic table. Join us at the Museum to hear Professor Russ Egdell (Chemistry) and Professor Justin Wark (Physics) reveal both the history and rich contemporary legacy of Moseley’s scientific work.

Doors open at 18.30.

Part of the programme of events for ‘Dear Harry…, Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War’, the special exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science.

A wealth of new and advancing technologies are changing the way we approach research in healthcare. The use of big data sets, precision medicine and machine learning mean that research studies can be bigger, cheaper and wider reaching than ever before. In this lecture, Professor Martin Landray, Deputy Director of the Big Data Institute, and Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, will consider how recent advancements in healthcare technologies have radically changed how we go about medical research, and look at how future innovations could further shape the field.