Nerd Nite Brighton

Well it seems like just yesterday we were all excited about our February Science Festival Special. If you missed it there are some pics on our Facebook site

And now March has come round! Time is a bloody fast arrow.

This month:

1. How to anaesthetise an anteater (and other life-changing skills) – Jonathan Cracknell

Wildlife anaesthesia is an essential part of any conservation or health management programme when working with wild animals. This offers a range of challenges from how to sex a beaver, to undertaking an epidural in an elephant, but none so more than knowing how to intubate an anteater. This talk will like at the diverse challenges facing the modern zoo and wildlife veterinarian and most importantly answer that elusive question – how do you intubate an anteater?

Jonathan has had a varied career having worked in general practice, as an emergency and critical care clinician, a resident in anaesthesia at the Animal Health Trust, and as a wildlife and zoological medicine clinician internationally. His primary interests are conservation led initiatives, anaesthesia and welfare, and capacity and capability development for NGOs in Asia. He currently holds the post of Director of Animal Operations at Longleat Safari and Adventure Park.

2. Gravitational waves: echoes from the beginning of time – Mafalda Dias

The recent suggestion that gravitational waves as old as the Universe have been observed in the south pole shook up the physics community. But what are these strange waves? How can they be seen from the South pole? Why would their discovery be a turning point for fundamental physics?
Mafalda is a theoretical cosmologist at the University of Sussex. Her research examines the physics that might underpin very early Universe by studying the mechanisms that has given rise to the structures we can observe today. She is enthused by the prospect of using observations of the sky as a laboratory to probe fundamental physics. She completed her undergraduate studies in Porto, her hometown, before moving to Brighton for her PhD. As a good lover of fundamental science, she takes enormous pleasure in solving all sorts of riddles and mathematical puzzles, and folding origami.

3. Pigments and the Science in Art; An Introduction to Chemistry in Painting (with reference to a popular card game from the 1970s) – Laura Hinde

This talk will introduce nerds to material science by presenting various pigments used in historic paints, focussing on some unusual and possibly surprising ingredients. The wonders, the dangers, the chemistry of paints and all their glorious hues will have you looking at paintings in different way.

Laura Hinde is Paintings Conservator at the National Portrait Gallery. This means she likes fixing things and cleaning. Her research has her spending most of her time looking at things close up; paint, canvas, wood, pigments. She loves a microscope. She also likes Top Trumps. She graduated from Leeds University in 2004 BA in Italian and Art History. After a few years of this and that she went on from sweeping floors at a conservation studio to a Postgraduate Diploma in the Conservation of Easel Paintings at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She has been working as a paintings conservator at the National Portrait Gallery since 2010, where the lunchtime Craft Club is thriving. She also does painting conservation on a freelance basis.
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We are back at our regular home (Caroline of Brunswick).

As always there will be free cake, tunes and big prize quizzes.

Tickets are £4 for a regular nerd and £3 for a student/over 65 nerd

Buy them from here

Remember we sell out EVERY MONTH now so strongly advise that you buy tickets online to avoid disappointment!

Looking forward to seeing you there!

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