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NNA2 #54 – Biology, Brains, & Behavior
For April, Nerd Nite A2 has teamed up with MSU’s Science Festival to bring you three amazing scientists talking about biology, brains, and behavior! Patsy Delacey will introduce us to the gelada monkey, and the study of the function of its’ “bleeding-heart” chest patch. Rosie Bettle uses chimpanzee behavior to explain why humans cooperate to create complex societies. Caitlin Posillico will explain how getting sick disrupts our capacity to learn, and how discovering why could lead to breakthroughs in diseases like Alzheimer’s. Lots of brilliance on display, so round up some pals and come advance your understanding of brains and behavior!
Patsy Delacey – The primate that wears its heart on its sleeve
Have you ever been curious about animal behavior? Have you wondered how animals communicate with one another? Do you love primates? Come learn about gelada monkeys – Ethiopia’s unique and wonderful highland monkey. Gelada monkeys are nicknamed “bleeding-heart monkeys” because of a patch of exposed red skin on their chests. Adult male gelada chest patches get brighter red when they’re excited, but this doesn’t happen for adult females, young males, or non-breeding males. Could the chest patch be an ornament to attract females, like a peacock’s plumage? Or does it signal to other males to back off? How does the environment influence signaling? I’ll discuss all of this and more about my field research in the Simien Mountains.
About Patsy:
Patsy is a biopsychology PhD student at the University of Michigan, studying how its high-altitude environment has shaped gelada monkey physiology and behavior.
Rosie Bettle – Thinking Like a Primate
Humans are a really weird species. In particular, we cooperate a lot, and this helps us build up complex societies. What kinds of mental abilities help us to cooperate, and do other species also use similar mental abilities to help them cooperate? To start answering this question, I will be talking about cooperation in our closest living relatives: chimpanzees.
About Rosie:
Rosie is a PhD student at the University of Michigan, who studies how primates think about the world. When she isn’t thinking about the mental lives of monkeys, she is usually exploring Kerrytown, trying to find new nature-y spots, or sampling a different craft beer.
Caitlin Posillico – Brain fog from brain sickness
People get sick all the time, and sometimes it happens with the WORST timing. Maybe you’re supposed to take a big exam, attend an important meeting, leave for a business trip, or even take a vacation, but now all you can think about is how sick you are. What happens to our memory capability when this happens? Is this going to prevent us from being able to learn the new information being presented at the meeting? Is it going to prevent us from recalling the definition of that big term you learned about last week? Importantly, does this affect males and females differently? Caitlin’s research tries to figure out some possible answers to these questions using a viral mimic in male and female mice during different types of learning and memory tasks. If we can figure out how getting sick disrupts our capacity to learn and remember, maybe we can gain some insight as to how neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s Disease or psychological disorders like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder cause debilitating memory impairments, and ideally, how we might be able to fix them.
About Caitlin:
Caitlin is a PhD student at the University of Michigan studying sex differences in the impact of neuroimmune activation on learning and memory. Essentially, she’s interested in what happens to memory when the brain gets sick and whether or not it affects males and females in the same way. She got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Neuroscience at the University of Delaware (Delawhere? east coast!) where she fell in love with the brain, neuroimmunology, and academia. Originally hailing from Long Island, NY, she has (proudly) lost her accent and is loving the friendliness of Midwestern life. When she’s not locked in the lab or office, you can find her watching Netflix and looking for new ways to incorporate pesto into every meal.
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Thurday, March 15 – NNA2 #53 – The Fine Arts of Printmaking, Virus Evolution, and Teaching Physics to Toddlers
Kayla Peck – Virus evolution: just how many mistakes should you make?
Brandon Patterson – “Brooke Bubble Breaks Things”: The making of a sciencey children’s book
About Brandon:
Thurs, Feb 15, 2018 – NNA2 #52: Fighting Phragmites, Buying BitCoin, & Celebrating Sitcoms
Welcome back to another round of Nerd Nite Ann Arbor!! This month, Karen Alexander dissects the dangers of the phragmites invasion of the Great Lakes basin, Ryan Brase demystifies BitCoin, and Kat Johnson breaks down sitcom structure in this very special episode of NNA2! Be there and be square, friends!
When: Thursday, February 15 – doors 6:30 pm/talks 7:00 pm
Where: LIVE (102 S 1st St)
Cover charge? No way! AADL’s got this!
Ry4an Brase – Bitcoin: A Bad Idea Annoying People Won’t Shut-Up About
Karen Alexander – Fighting Back Against a Monster Grass in the Great Lakes Basin
Kat Johnson – 22 Minutes in 22 Minutes: Deconstructing the Sitcom from Cold Open to End TagNNA2 #51: Exciting Stories of Asteroids, Oscillation, and, Um, Excrement 💩
Kelsey Cornelius — All (Poop-Eating) Creatures Great and Small
Stephanie Hamilton — Ping Pong Balls, Bowling Balls, and What They Have To Do with the Solar System
Everybody poops. But did you know that some creatures eat that poop? And it can be a normal behavior?! Coprophagy, the eating of excrement, is commonly seen with many rodents, lagomorphs, pigs, primates, and even our beloved canines. Dr. Kelsey Cornelius, a laboratory animal veterinarian at the University of Michigan, knows all about rodents and rabbits ravenously dining on the dung. But, she was surprised to learn through her general practitioner classmates how commonly owners report their dogs for this repellent behavior. Come hear about these crap-loving creatures and what you can do if your dog digs the doo-doo.About Kelsey: Kelsey originally became fascinated with poop-eating when she was a young girl in Centerville, Ohio, at a cat-themed birthday party. Her patients now consist of animals that love to eat the guano (I bet you didn’t know all these poop synonyms). Kelsey is a veterinarian in her second year of a laboratory animal residency. Other than studying scat-snacking, Kelsey is passionate about animal welfare, public outreach, and porgs.
What if I told you that the smallest bodies in our solar system (that is, anything that isn’t one of the eight major planets) are actually the most important? Would you believe me? The discovery of the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune in the past 30 years has changed our view of the outer Solar System. Composed of small objects similar to asteroids, this region preserves the effects of past encounters with the gas giant planets, acting as a gravitational fingerprint of the history of the Solar System. Tonight, I’ll talk about the discoveries of Uranus and Neptune. Yes, I’ll even touch on everyone’s favorite Kuiper Belt Object, Pluto, and the revelations leading to its demotion to a dwarf planet. I’ll talk about how astronomers can use properties of the orbits of Kuiper Belt Objects, such as how big or oval-like they are, to learn about the history of our Solar System. Finally, I’ll tell you a little bit about my research using these objects to search for a new super-Earth planet in the very distant Solar System, Planet Nine! I hope that you’ll leave with a newfound appreciation for small asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects and how they hold the key to unlocking the history of our Solar System while also pointing the way to new discoveries.
“What do the Mexican Wave, oscillating chemical reactions, and the male orgasm all have in common? Each exhibits the characteristics of an excitable medium! Come learn about this concept, how ubiquitous these systems are in nature, and how insight into how they work can be applied to other, seemingly unrelated problems in biology and medicine.About John: A Ph.D student in immunology at the U-M School of Medicine, John’s research focuses on the ways in which lymphocytes and other cells remodel their cellular membranes to ingest large quantities of extracellular fluid and materials, and the function of this uptake in cancerous and healthy cells. In addition to this work, John is a passionate advocate for scientific literacy and education and contributes to the U-M graduate student blog MiSciWriters.”
November 16 — NNA2 Faceoff Edition: NASA vs. Saturn, Henry Ford vs. Everyone, Healthcare vs. Hackers!
Eric Fitzpatrick – Cassini’s Final Destination
Thursday, 10/19: Sugar, Cyberpunk, & Stimulation
Gather round, Nerds! Your friends at Nerd Nite Ann Arbor have more amazing speakers ready to shine a light on some spectacular topics!
Dr. Monica Dus force-feeds cake to fruit flies and while it turns out not to be great for the fruit flies, it IS really good for figuring out why humans get so hooked on sugar. Come face the horrors of your very own human biology!
Did you see Blade Runner 2049? Alex Kourvo did, and she has THOUGHTS about it. She’s actually got a lot to say about cyberpunk as a whole – so join us for the story of the birth of this science fiction genre.
Kulky Nakai is back with a talk about the psychology of human sexuality, delivered in her signature stimulating style. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry (from laughing), you’ll relate, you’ll make meaningful eye contact with a friend.
This Nerd Nite A2 is not to be missed – it’s going to be sugary, science fiction-y, and above all, stimulating.
When: Thurs. 10/19/2017, doors at 6:30/talks at 7pm
Where: Live, 102 S. First St.
Cost: Nada! No cover thanks to the sponsorship of the Ann Arbor District Library!
Dr. Monica Dus – Let Them (fruit flies) Eat Cake
Fruit flies’ eyes are bigger than their stomachs (no, really, they are), but this is not why they love sugar. In our lab we feed cake to fruit flies to see what happens to their brains (#badlyexplainyourjob), and boy, a lot happens, and most of it is NOT good. Maybe this is why we all love sugar and can’t stop eating it. And if you are one of those weird people who doesn’t maybe stop by the lab so we can study you?
About Monica: I received my first microscope at age 7, a gift from my dad, and had an idyllic childhood in Italy pulling hair off Barbie’s and legs off bugs and looking at them under the microscope. What really kept me in science, however, was the pervasive beauty of the natural world. I still remember the first time, as a high school student, I heard about molecular biology: I was amazed by its beautiful complexity. Nearly twenty years later, I still haven’t found something that is man-made and more beautiful than the natural world, not even a Dolce and Gabbana dress. At 18 I left Italy for the USA, majored in Biology and Philosophy, got a Ph. D in biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and in 2015 started a lab at the University of Michigan where I also teach genetics and neuroepigenetics. My favorite things in life are dogs, desserts, philosophy and post-modern literature, pastel colors, fuzzy things, and unicorns.
Alex Kourvo – Living in a Cyberpunk World
Cyberpunk was everywhere in the 1980s. It started in science fiction, but it influenced fashion, movies, comics, games, advertising, and architecture. After a decade of high-tech, neon-colored, future-looking pop culture, cyberpunk just…went away. Or did it? Could cyberpunk stories still be with us, hiding in plain sight?
About Alex: Alex Kourvo loves books. She writes them, reviews them, edits them, and teaches other people how to write them. She is the author of numerous short stories and the forthcoming “Detroit Next” series of near-future thrillers. She edits books for Fifth Avenue Press and helped start the Emerging Writers Workshop at the Ann Arbor District Library, where she teaches monthly classes for new writers. You can find Alex online at AlexKourvo.com or follow her @AlexKourvo.
Kulky Nakai: Psychology and Stimulation
About Kulky: Psychologist Kulky Nakai is more than a scholar, researcher, and clinician, she’s also a philosopher, creative writer, and entertainer who enjoys pushing socio-cultural boundaries and provoking common thought to the cutting edge. She recently launched her very own b/vlog and podcast titled “More To Be Revealed,” a space dedicated for exploring the unknown with a curious heart and a funny bone.
Sept. 21 – Let’s Get CRITICAL!
Hello, Nerd Nite A2 Friends! Join us Thursday, Sept. 21 at 7 pm at LIVE on First St. for NNA2 #48!!
LET’S GET CRITICAL: The extreme effects of commentary from the worlds of architecture, online harassers, and Gilded Age shut-ins
Join us as architecture expert Jessica Letaw takes us on a tour of the landscape famed critic Ada Louise Huxtable built, or, well, influenced. U-M School of Information Ph.D. student Lindsay Blackwell returns to NNA2 to reveal new research on what happens when online critique goes bad – like, harassment-and-doxxing-bad. Finally, NNA2 co-boss (and pinch hitter) Sara Wedell will tell the surprisingly sweet story of our much-overlooked 21st president and his relationship with his greatest critic. It’s going to be a great night! Bring a friend, a sense of curiosity, and plenty of constructive feedback and join us as we GET CRITICAL!
Sara Wedell is a Production Librarian at the Ann Arbor District Library and a Nerd Nite Ann Arbor co-boss. She is happy to fill in when speakers cancel last minute as it allows her an opportunity to tell strange stories from history that she finds compelling. If you don’t like it, please consider applying to speak at Nerd Nite A2! Don’t worry about following her on Twitter, she never posts anymore.August 17: Cycling, Schizophrenia, Soaring: The Science of Mind and Body
Join us Thursday, August 17 at LIVE for another great NNA2, where we’ll feature:
Andrew McAllister – The Science of Cycling*- Molly Simmonite – Schizophrenia, Explained
- Jennifer German* – Solar Ecplise 2017
- Anne Ryan – Aerial Acrobatics @ The Aviary
Doors at 6:30, talks at 7, and no cover, thanks to our sponsor, the Ann Arbor District Library! See you there!
Note 8/16: Unfortunately, our cycling speaker had to cancel, but we are SUPER EXCITED to swap in Jennifer German, a NASA JPL Solar System Ambassador, who will be giving us all the lowdown on Monday’s Solar Ecplise!
Donate! Vibrate! Refrigerate! The Scoop on Bone Marrow, Hysteria, and Ice Cream
July’s Nerd Nite A2 truly has it all, friends! Something serious, something sweet, and something sexy (but like… weird sexy.) Join us as Dawn Davis sets us straight on marrow – specifically, the experience of being a bone marrow donor. Kulky Nakai unveils the unexpectedly intimate history of hysteria and how doctors sought to treat this condition in females. Set your phones to vibrate, people, you don’t want to miss it. And for something sweet, ice cream innovator and entrepreneur Rob Hess of Go! Ice Cream breaks down the molecular magic for us all, and there might even be ice cream samples if everyone is very good and eats all their vegetables at dinner.
So! Be there, be square, and prepare for another great Nerd Nite Ann Arbor!
When: Thursday, July 20 – doors 6:30 pm/talks 7:00 pm
Where: LIVE (102 S 1st St)
How much: $0, Aw, thanks, AADL, you shouldn’t have!
Thursday, June 22: A Special Lightning-Round Nerd Nite at Top of the Park!
Join us at Ann Arbor Summer Fest’s Annex (on Washington) as some recent Nerd Nite audience faves return to the stage!
The lineup of talks includes: how being a scientist is different from studying science in high school, the insane world of romance subgenres, an examination of the concept of time (and how time is dumb), an international case of mistaken identity on Twitter, and a live performance of an episode of the excellent local history podcast Ann Arbor Stories.
Get there a little early, talks will start right at 7pm!