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    Adversity, Belonging, and Survival Among Baboons

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

    Join the Harvard Museum of Natural History for a public lecture with Susan Alberts, Robert F. Durden Professor of Biology and Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University. 

    The social environment—both in early life and adulthood—has major effects on human health and survival. But how and why does the social environment get “under the skin” to also affect our physical health? Susan Alberts pursues this question by studying wild baboons in Kenya. Baboons, like humans, evolved as savannah dwellers. They rely on social relationships to solve problems and—like humans...

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    The Diffusion and Adoption of Welfare-Enhancing Innovations

    Location: 

    Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge

    Todd Rogers is a behavioral scientist and professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Using his two decades of work in behavioral policy as a base, he will discuss his current research into what leads to welfare-enhancing innovations and practices. In particular, he aims to help scholars and practitioners design, identify, and invest in innovations that are likely to successfully scale.

    This event is free and open to the public. 

    ...

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    The Once and Future Heart

    Location: 

    Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge

    For centuries, in both the arts and the sciences, the human heart has been a source of reverence and marvel. In this conversation, the artist Dario Robleto, whose exhibition at the Radcliffe Institute rethinks the deep history of cardiological recording, and Doris A. Taylor, a leading scientist in regenerative medicine, will discuss the surprising opportunities for both the arts and sciences to converge around new insights and questions of the human heart.

    This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. 

    ...

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    The Peril and Promise of Solar Geoengineering

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

    Solar geoengineering research aims to reduce the impacts of global climate change. One possibility is to put aerosols into the stratosphere to alter Earth’s energy budget. This emerging technology entails risks and uncertainties, along with serious challenges to global governance. The greatest threat, perhaps, is that it will be used as a technical fix and encourage people to avoid the emissions cuts that are fundamental to curbing long-term climate risks.

    Lecturer David Keith will describe the simple physics underlying the climate’s response to stratospheric aerosols, the...

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    An Evolutionary Journey through Domestication

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

    As the earliest farmers began to select wild plants and animals that had desirable traits, they initiated a series of genetic changes in these species that gradually made them more suitable for agriculture. Plants became easier to grow, had greater yields, and were of higher quality. Animal species exhibited favorable changes in behavior, coat color, and reproductive traits. Barbara Schaal will discuss how the artificial selection of these species—a pivotal technological achievement—has influenced their genetics, evolution, and capacity to flourish in the care of humans.

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    Research in the Collections: A Scientific Exploration of the Arnold Arboretum

    Location: 

    Hunnewell Building, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

    The Arnold Arboretum provides both extensively documented collections for research and the facilities for the researchers—labs, greenhouses, and growing chambers. From around the world, scientists come to use the trees and shrubs in the Arboretum landscape, studying climate change, plant evolution, natural selection, and species adaptation. Join docent Esther Miller to hear about the science of the Arboretum.

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    Wildhood: Coming of Age on Planet Earth

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

    Adolescence is dangerous, difficult, and destiny-shaping for humans and other animals. In Wildhood (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers look across species and evolutionary time to find answers to a single, consequential question: Why do some adolescents safely, successfully, and independently enter the adult world, while so many others do not? The authors apply the results of their five-year study of wild animal adolescence to our species, presenting a new understanding of the dangers, stresses, and challenges we face on our journeys to...

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    Tree Spotters Citizen Science Program: Basic Training

    Location: 

    Hunnewell Building, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

    With nearly 4,000 different kinds of plants represented in the Arboretum's living collections, every day presents rich opportunities to see something new. If you enjoy learning about plants and their unique characteristics, you can contribute to science as a participant in the Arnold Arboretum's Tree Spotters program. This citizen science project opens a window into the Arboretum's phenology: the timing of natural events, such as the leafing out and flowering of trees in the spring and changing foliage colors in the fall. Your observations will assist Arboretum scientists in their...

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    Exhibit: Visual Science: The Art of Research

    Location: 

    The Special Exhibitions Gallery, Science Center 251, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge

    This exhibit features images and objects drawn from a variety of disciplines and time periods that show the importance of visual experiences in science. Images have played many roles in scientific research. Images can record fleeting observations, whether a painting of an animal glimpsed in the field or an interaction between sub-atomic particles that lasts a millisecond. They can also make unseen things visible.

    Physical models can make abstract mathematical concepts into something that researchers can touch; properly arranged, sand, metal plates, and a violin bow can make...

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    All That Glitters Is Gold: Gravitational Waves, Light, and the Origin of the Heavy Elements

    Location: 

    Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge

    Edo Berger, professor of astronomy at Harvard University, will discuss his efforts to explore the long-standing question of how gold and other heavy elements are created in the universe. In particular, his work aims to demonstrate the creation of these elements in neutron star collisions detected through their gravitational wave emission and the implications of the answer.

    Learn more about and...

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    The Ancient Maya Response to Climate Change: A Cautionary Tale

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

    Ancient Maya civilization—known for its cities, monumental architecture, ceramics, hieroglyphic writing, and advanced understanding of mathematics and astronomy—suffered a major demise between the tenth and eleventh centuries. The causes continue to be investigated and debated. Paleoenvironmental research over the past twenty years has revealed that the demise coincided with a prolonged intensive drought that extended across the region, providing compelling evidence that climate change played a key role in the collapse of the Maya.

    In this lecture, Billie Turner will examine...

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    Lecture and Book Signing: Assembling the Dinosaur

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

    Join the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments for a free lecture and book signing by Lukas Rieppell, David and Michelle Ebersman Assistant Professor of History at Brown University.

    Dinosaur fossils were first found in England, but a series of late-nineteenth-century discoveries in the American West turned the United States into a world center for vertebrate paleontology. Around the same time, the United States also emerged as an economic powerhouse of global proportions, and large, fierce, and spectacular creatures...

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    Family Hike: Seeds, Seeds, Seeds!

    Location: 

    Hunnewell Building, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

    Families need nature at all times of the year! Join the Arboretum for a family hike where you will look for seeds that fly, seeds that float, seeds that get buried away, and seeds that travel through an animal’s stomach.

    This event is free and open to all and most suitable for children ages four through ten.

    Learn more about Family Hike: Seeds, Seeds, Seeds!...

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    Angiosperms and Gymnosperms: The Basics

    Location: 

    Centre Street Gate, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

    What better place to look for the differences between angiosperms (plants that flower and have enclosed seeds), and gymnosperms (plants with "naked seeds," including conifers, ginkgos and others), than in the Arnold Arboretum landscape, where over 15,000 plants reside in a living museum. Join the Arboretum's guide, Florrie Wescoat, as she points out trees in both groups and describes the characteristics of each.

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    Tree Spotters Citizen Science Program: Basic Training

    Location: 

    Hunnewell Building, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

    With nearly 4,000 different kinds of plants represented in the Arboretum's living collections, every day presents rich opportunities to see something new. If you enjoy learning about plants and their unique characteristics, you can contribute to science as a participant in the Arnold Arboretum's Tree Spotters program. This citizen science project opens a window into the Arboretum's phenology: the timing of natural events, such as the leafing out and flowering of trees in the spring and changing foliage colors in the fall. Your observations will assist Arboretum scientists in their...

    Read more about Tree Spotters Citizen Science Program: Basic Training

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