Place and Time: Abingdon, January 28, 2015, 19:00 for 19:30

Barn Room, Crown and Thistle (18 Bridge St, Abingdon OX14 3HS)

TITLE: What makes us Human?

The talk will show that man’s unique behaviour is best explained by an apparent paradox. Man’s actions depend on the one hand on a fundamental quality of all living organisms – the tendency to search – and on the other hand on a combination of human attributes that enable him to search more intensely than any other creature: to search for answers as well as for objects, to search out of curiosity as well as need.
Human attributes do not depend on typically human genes: they result from genes that are common to man and his closest relative, the chimpanzee. It is merely a few mutations within such genes that have enabled the one to dominate the globe, the other to be in danger of extinction.
Where will human quest lead man over the next 100 years, over the next million? Will it lead to his own destruction?

Speaker: Dr Charles Pasternak

Charles Pasternak is a biochemist by training. He taught at Oxford University and London University (St George’s Medical School: foundation Professor of Biochemistry) and his specialised area of research is the field of biological membranes. In 1992 Charles founded the Oxford International Biomedical Centre (OIBC), a charity that depends entirely on public support. It moved to Culham Innovation Centre in 2003. In his spare time Charles writes popular science books such as Quest: The Essence of Humanity and Blinkers: Scientific Ignorance and Evasion.

Place and Time: Abingdon, Crown and Thistle, Barn Room, November 26, 2015 at 19:30

Agenda

1. Annual General Meeting
   1. Welcome
   2. Apologies received
   3. Approval of the minutes of the Inaugural Meeting 2014 (Kings Head and Bell, Abingdon, 27 Nov 2014)
   4. Matters arising from the minutes
   5. Chairs Report (Carl Lloyd)
   6. Presentation of the accounts (Richard Gardner, Treasurer)
   7. Approval of the accounts
   8. Election of the Officers of the ATOM Society Committee
   9. Election of the Ordinary Members of the Standing Committee
   10. Any other business
2. Member Talks
   1. Steve Vaughan, “How mobile phones work”
   2. George Kalmus, “Interesting people I met and their scientific legacy.”
3. Feedback (time permitting)
   1. an opportunity for members of the ATOM Society to express their thoughts about the Society’s events and talks, past and future

Place and Time: Abingdon, October 22, 2015 at 19:30

new venue: Barn Room, Crown and Thistle (18 Bridge St, Abingdon OX14 3HS)

TITLE: Diffusion of the Dead

Knowing how long we have before we interact with a zombie could mean the difference between life, death and zombification. Here, we apply the same mathematical models to zombies that you would use to describe flu, or measles. We use this model to derive exact and approximate interaction times and use these to develop strategies which allow the human race to survive impending doom

Speaker: Thomas Woolley

T. Woolley has been doing mathematics at University of Oxford since 2004 and now specialises in mathematical biology. His doctorate understanding the pattern formation behind fish spots and zebra stripes, but now he researches mathematical models of stem cells movement. The hope is that by understanding how stem cells move we can influence them and, thus, speed up the healing process.

When not doing mathematics he is a keen participant in mathematical outreach workshops and has given a variety of popular maths lectures nationally and internationally. He has previously worked for the BBC, illustrated Marcus du Sautoy’s book and he recently worked on the popular maths show “Dara O’Briains school of hard sums”. He is currently the Fellow of Modern Mathematics at the London Science Museum and is helping redesign their mathematics gallery.

Place and Time: Abingdon, September 24, 2015 at 19:30

Kings Charles Room of the “Kings Head and Bell” (10 East St Helen St, Abingdon, OX14 5EA)

TITLE: How to have a social life

The evolution of social behaviour has been fundamental to the natural world and is found at varying degrees throughout the animal kingdom.

The most extreme forms of social behaviour however are found in the social insects (bees, wasps and ants). These insects are characterised by a division of labour whereby individuals give up their own reproduction to help the reproduction of another in apparent acts of altruism. But how do such extreme form of social behaviour evolve and how are they maintained? In this presentation I will address what lessons we can learn about social evolution, and indeed how to have a social life all from the perspective of a wasp.

Speaker: Emily Bell, University of Bristol

Emily Bell is a final year PhD candidate at the University of Bristol and Institute of Zoology. After leaving Our Lady’s Convent School (now Our Lady’s Abingdon) she went on the study for a degree in Zoology at University College London followed by a Masters in Biology at the University of Oxford. Her current area of biological research is behavioural ecology in which she is interested in understanding the evolution of social behaviour, focusing in particular on social behaviour in tropical paper wasps. Her work has taken her both to Spain and Central America where she worked as a Pre-doctoral Fellow with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

Place and Time: Abingdon, August 27, 2015 at 19:30

Kings Charles Room of the “Kings Head and Bell” (10 East St Helen St, Abingdon, OX14 5EA)

TITLE: Driving Autonomy

The Oxford RobotCar Project aims to provide robust, long-term autonomous driving at a price point suitable for mass-market adoption. Likewise, the LUTZ pathfinder project aims to provide a low-speed, last-mile public transport solution operating in the public domain in Milton Keynes. At the core of this technology provided by the Oxford Mobile Robotics Group, however, lies a philosophy fundamentally different to that fuelling more conventional autonomous driving research: autonomy when offered, as opposed to on demand. In this talk we will motivate this philosophy and provide an overview of the technology underlying our approach to autonomous driving.

Speaker: Ingmar Posner, University of Oxford, Mobile Robotics Group

Ingmar is a Lecturer at the University of Oxford and leads the perception and planning work within the Mobile Robotics Group. His expertise lies in the design and implementation of machine learning methods that enable an autonomous agent to interpret complex, dynamic environments in a way which permits robust decision-making, planning and exploration on-line and in real-time.