Members and their guests will meet for our yearly Christmas Social on 5th December at the King’s Head and Bell at 19:30. There will be a buffets and tickets (which are sponsored by the society) are £5 per person and are on sale at October and November meetings or by emailing the secretary. Drinks will have to be bought from the bar.
King Charles Room, King’s Head and Bell, (10 E St Helen St, Abingdon OX14 5EA)
The evening will start with a short AGM followed by a talk.
Never has the debate surrounding the causes and effects of Climate Change been more intense, with powerful interests and lobby’s controlling the narrative. The world’s Farmers and their Cows are a soft target often blamed for a significant contributions to man-made climate change. The speaker would like to present an alternative model of livestock production: ” Speaking on behalf of the Cow”. Maybe the problem are the choices forced on farmers and cows by external powers? Maybe we as a consumer could be the answer?
Neil has 40 years’ experience managing high performance beef and dairy farms, working with both conventional and organic systems. In 2004 was awarded a Nuffield scholarship to study ‘Voluntary milking systems and automated milk harvesting’. He has a reputation for innovation, sustainable farming and knowledge transfer, being a regular speaker at conferences and farmer meetings. For the last ten years alongside farm management Neil has been providing Agricultural consultancy to farmers and industry. In the last 5 years he has been a finalist or winner in 3 national awards and for 25 years he has been an Ambassador for the charity “Send a Cow”.
This event will be in the King Charles Room, King’s Head and Bell, (10 E St Helen St, Abingdon OX14 5EA) again.
Where did I put my keys? Who hasn’t felt the frustration of losing their keys soon after putting them down? This is a common
experience due to everyday lapses in attention and working memory – our ability to temporarily ‘hold things in mind’. We rely on working memory every day to hold things in mind, solve problems and to make sense of the continuous stream of perception. We will talk about what working memory is, and give some examples of the important functions it serves in our everyday lives. As we age, people often experience their memory getting worse. In clinical settings, we see many people who have no neurological issues, but report having much worse memory problems. We will discuss potential factors that might contribute to these lapses in attention and short-term memory and review some of the available assessments.
Elitsa Sla
vkova is a Clinical Research Coordinator and Cognitive Behaviour Therapist. She has contributed to the research design and clinical implementation of a stroke-specific cognitive screen in the NHS, as well as conducting research with people with subjective and mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Rob Udale is a Cognitive Psychologist with a PhD in Experimental Psychology. I use behavioural experiments and computational modelling to understand human attention, memory, and visual cognition. I am currently working in Professor Masud Husain’s Cognitive Neurology lab at The University of Oxford.
Due to renovation work at the KH & B our events will temporarily be happening at Old Magistrates Courtroom (OMC) in the Guildhall.
Lunar swirls are optically distinct features that are found in several locations on the Moon’s surface. Lunar swirls are not related to impact craters and show no difference in surface texture (numbers or type of rocks or boulders), but do show differences in the amount of Space Weathering relative to their surroundings. The solar wind bombardment on the lunar “soil” makes it darker over time. The white lunar swirls are regions where the surface has been protected from this Space Weathering due to magnetic fields. The Moon has no overall magnetic field, but there are small regions of low level magnetic field that create protective pockets. Studying these natural shelters may help us to create artificial storm shelters for astronauts in the new Lunar space station, the first module of which is being built by European Space Agency and due to be launched in 2023.
Ruth is a research physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory space science Department at the Harwell Campus. As Space Plasma Physics Theme Leader she works on the origin of cosmic rays and means to protect against them for astronauts and instruments. She works closely with laboratory-astro and fundamental plasma physics teams from Universities, STFC’s Central Laser Facility (CLF) and Culham Center for Fusion Energy. Prior to working on “outdoor plasmas” like the aurora, ionosphere and space plasmas, she was working for 12 years on “indoor plasmas” at Culham in the pursuit of fusion energy. Ruth is a visiting scientist at Uni of Oxford and is a member of the ESA Plasma Topical Science Team for the planned Lunar Orbiting Platform-Gateway international space station.
Due to renovation work at the KH & B our events will temporarily be happening at Old Magistrates Courtroom (OMC) in the Guildhall.
Microbiota (the microbes present all across our body) can have
unexpected effects on our body. These effects range from disturbing the immune system in our gut to influencing our brain! Given their wide influence, alterations to the microbiota are linked to a variety of diseases. Equilibrium between tolerance for certain microbes and protection against pathogens is key to our health. Claire will talk about how we might be able to beneficially alter the microbiota or mimic their symbiotic effects. These techniques will include antibiotics, fermented food and drinks, altered diet and the joy of faecal transplant.
Claire is a Laboratory Manager in NDORMS, University of Oxford, and is also an Experimental Lead in the Oxford Centre for Microbiome Studies (OCMS). She came to Oxford several years ago to study the intestinal immune system but has since been converted to understanding the role of the microbiome that the immune system interacts with. Through the OCMS she has become involved with many microbiome projects that cover diverse fields, illustrating the importance of the microbiome in practically everything.