Upcoming events:
LCA Outreach has held a number of science sessions that were open to the public. You can find information on upcoming events here. As of the writing of this page, the next event is Fire, at 2:00 to 3:30 PM on Saturday, April 14th at the Las Cruces Museum of Natural History in the Mesilla Valley Mall. A video of the first hour of an earlier session, What do you know about fire?, can be viewed on YouTube.
Essays
Besides events, there is a series of light essays on science written by Vince Gutschick. These essays will likely be used in the science program, but are also good for the curious or as teaching materials.
Science and technology for adults
The outreach sessions and essays above appeal to both adults and children. Board chair Vince Gutschick also does scientific presentations for adults who have more background. Here are links to some presentations, which may be of inherent interest and which also show the kind of scientific background from which we provide education to our students.
- Biological effects of global change: 4 longish presentations (1.5 hours each when he narrates them) on the effects of climate change,land-use change, and more on humans, other life, and ecosystems. Presented to the Academy for Learning in Retirement in September, 2010. These are all PowerPoint shows. You can view them in Microsoft Office PowerPoint, but if you don't have PowerPoint, you can download the free PowerPoint Viewer here. They are of significant file sizes (7 to 17 MB). They're best viewed with live narration. If you want Vince to make a presentation,please contact him at
. Meanwhile, here are links to presentations one, two, three, and four.
- Challenges in getting to a sustainable energy economy, that is, one with minimal resource depletion and climate impact: renewables and new nuclear energy sources are part of the solution, but there are major constraints that we cannot ignore except at the peril of losing our way or doing it wrong. This is a simple html document that can be viewed in our browser if you click here.
- The nuclear power reactors that should have been and may still be: liquid fluoride thorium reactors. This, too, is a PowerPoint show, downloadable here.
- Stuxnet: the computer trojan/worm/rootkit aimed at Iran's nuclear enrichment program: who made it, why, how did it work, and what does it bode for computer security worldwide. It's a PowerPoint show, downloadable here.
- Biological extreme events: first is a short article written for the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability, which we recommend buying as one (or one's local library) can afford it. This is a copyrighted document put up here for fair use; please read it as a resource, point others to it, but don't copy it. Thanks. It's a PDF document that you can view by clicking here if you have Adobe Reader. You can get Adobe Reader free if you need it by clicking here. A longer presentation, as a PowerPoint show, was given at a symposium of the Journal of Experimental Biology in Cambridge, England, in March, 2011. You can download that here (note: it's about 10 MB in size).
- A bit more detailed biology: all sorts of things get transported inside living organisms -- water, nutrients, heat, radiation... Vince was asked to write a guide to the transport phenomena for ecologists, for the Encyclopedia of Theoretical Ecology. You can view his contribution here as a PDF document. Again, this is a copyrighted document put up here for fair use; ; please read it as a resource, point others to it, but don't copy it. Thanks.
- Vince also ran a week-long workshop on mathematical modeling of plants at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute of the Ohio State University. He loves mathematical models, and if you do, too, you may find some interest in this PowerPoint show available here.