Cafe Scientifique Hong Kong

A big thank you to Dr. Csaba Hefler from CUHK for his fascinating talk, "A Closer Look Into the Flight of Dragonflies," this past Monday, 4 December at Cafe 8. Dr. Hefler discussed the amazing flight capabilities of dragonflies, the interesting and exacting methodologies required for this research, and the scientific and commercial implications of his work.

Please save the date for Monday, 8 January for the next Cafe Scientifique Hong Kong meeting. We'll announce the details of that event shortly!

Thanks to today’s speaker Dr. Nadia Haidr for an enjoyable talk and to our attendees for the good questions. Lots of cool photos, facts and stories about the wonderful seabirds of Antarctica and Patagonia 🇦🇶 🇦🇷 🐧 🧊 See you next month!

Don’t forget about Monday’s Cafe Museum CAFE8. 7pm. Register for free at the Eventbrite link below

We will hold a meeting next Monday, Nov 6 at 7pm at Museum CAFE8 in Central!

Please join us to hear about "Seabird Biology and Fieldwork in Patagonia and the Icy Continent" from CUHK biologist, Dr. Nadia Haidr, as she takes us on a tour of Antarctica to talk about penguins and their predators, the skuas. Tickets are available on the Eventbrite link below:

https://www.eventbrite.hk/e/seabird-biology-and-fieldwork-in-patagonia-and-the-icy-continent-tickets-748019886617?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

We're back! Many thanks to everyone who attended last night's talk by Dr. Michael Pittman from the School of Life Sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for his fantastic presentation, "Latest Insights into the Maya from New Frontiers in Archaeological Science," which explored exciting new applications for lasers on archaeology. Dr. Pittman discussed how lasers developed for palaeobiology and the study of dinosaur fossils have revealed a huge amount of otherwise hidden information in Mayan archaeological sites.

Tickets for Dr. Michael Pittman's upcoming talk, "Latest Insights into the Maya from New Frontiers in Archaeological Science," are now available on Eventbrite. Please join us on Monday, October 2 for the first in-person Cafe Scientifique event post-Covid.

https://www.eventbrite.hk/e/latest-insights-into-the-maya-from-new-frontiers-in-archaeological-science-tickets-720732118167?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

*Please note that we will not be sending out a separate email for this event.

Latest Insights into the Maya from New Frontiers in Archaeological Science Come hear about the intersection of archaeology and palaeobiology at Cafe Scientifique's first in-person event since December 2019!

Cafe Scientifique is coming back! We are pleased to announce that Dr. Michael Pittman of the School of Life Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong will present a talk, "Latest Insights into the Maya from New Frontiers in Archeological Science" on Monday, October 2 at Cafe 8. More details to follow, and registration for this event will open early next week.

With things back to normal, we’ll be back in August 2023!

Cyber Cafe Scientifique welcomed Dr. Joe Michalski from the Department of Earth Sciences and Laboratory for Space Research at HKU on Monday, June 7, for a fascinating webinar on "A New Space Race" and what lies ahead in science for Mars exploration.

Dr. Michalski's talk has been uploaded to the Cafe Scientifique YouTube channel. Please note that the video can be viewed through this link but is otherwise unlisted on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/ZiCLqiV69b4

Dr. Joe Michalski: A New Space Race On May 14th, China became the second nation to successfully land and operate a rover on Mars. The Zhurong Rover, which will explore the plains of Utopia Plan...

Thank you all for joining Joe's talk on Mars tonight. I hope you all agree that it was very interesting.

Please don't forget to support us! Thanks.
Payme Account: payme.hsbc/cafesci.

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What science is ahead for the Zhurong Rover in Utopia Planitia? China made history becoming the second nation to land a rover on the surface of Mars. The robotic science laboratory will explore the plains of Utopia Planitia over a 90 day primary mission. What sorts of geological observations and testable hypotheses lay ahead for mission scientists?

Cyber Cafe Scientifique welcomed Dr. Sophie Valkenburg from the Pasteur Institute Hong Kong on Monday, April 5 for the second part of our 3-part series on Covid-19.

Dr. Valkenburg's talk, "Immunology in the Era of Covid-19," has been uploaded to the Cafe Scientifique YouTube channel for those who missed the event or would like to watch her talk again. Please note that, like Dr. Fred Leung's talk, the video can be viewed through this link but is otherwise unlisted on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/XmFUtgVkSyY

(A special thanks to everyone who patiently waited for our technical difficulties at the start of the talk to get resolved!)

Dr. Sophie Valkenburg (Pasteur Institute Hong Kong): Immunology in the Era of Covid-19

Technical difficulties tonight. Sorry for that.
Here is the link to the webinar for Dr Valkenburg.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83609857231?pwd=U0xHRk9seVJJVWtnTUljMXpGK2lvdz09

Meeting ID: 836 0985 7231
Passcode: 632058

Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, confer...

A free online course from our own Dr. Michael Pittman!

Can't believe I am giving a talk with my favourite artist tomorrow! Please join us if you have time.

Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) is an international programme of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversation with an audience. It is a part of the Leonardo organisation (https://www.leonardo.info). LASER is being held in more than 30 cities around the world, and Hong Kong is the home of the first LASER in East Asia (https://www.leonardo.info/laser-talks).

As Covid19 prevents face-to-face rendezvous, we have decided to move LASER online. The first LASER-HK talk in 2021 will be an international gathering, featuring Dr Nina Sellars from Melbourne and Dr Yun Wah Lam from Hong Kong. In this LASER, we will ponder on the art and science of the body. Sellars’ talk will question the cultural and scientific implications of the relative absence of fat in the history of anatomy and the significance this has for contemporary discourses about the human, non-human, and posthuman. She will explore these ideas through a discussion of her biological artwork, Sentinels, an installation that features living human preadipocyte cells embedded in a drip-fed hydrogel kouros—its inaugural showing was for the exhibition, ‘HyperPrometheus: The Legacy of Frankenstein’, 2018, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Australia. Lam will discuss his fascination with the meaning of the “body” from the perspective of cells. Cells inside our organs are embedded in the extracellular matrix, a fabric of proteins and sugars that give each organ its unique shape and texture. This inanimate and messy material, mostly absent from lab cell culture, defines the identity of the cells. Lam has been working to unlock the information stored in this matrix and reconstitute these signals in the lab. “Absence, Presence, Belonging and Becoming” refers to our relationship with our own anatomy, an indispensable yet alienating element of our existence.

Dr Nina Sellars is curator of exhibitions and programs at the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Melbourne, and visiting research fellow at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney, Australia. Previously, she was artist in residence at SymbioticA, the Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, 2016-2018, University of Western Australia, and research fellow at the Alternate Anatomies Lab (robotics and art research group), Curtin University, Perth, W.A., 2013-2015. Recent exhibitions of her artwork include: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia—New Romance: Art and the Posthuman, 2016; Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts—HyperPrometheus: The Legacy of Frankenstein, 2018; Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, Canada—IOTA Bio Art Series, 2019; RSU Anatomy Museum, Riga University, Latvia—Anatomy & Beyond, 2021. Her recent authored publications include—'Fat Matters: Fluid Interventions in Anatomy’, in Fluid Matter(s): Flow and Transformation in the History of the Body, ANU Press, 2020, and 'Robert Hooke’s Micrographia: a historical guide to navigating contemporary images’, in the Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies, 2021. An online 2020 interview with Sellars can be accessed through IOTA.

Dr Yun Wah Lam is a biochemist and cell biologist. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Wellcome Trust Biocentre in Dundee, Scotland. He is now an associate professor at City University of Hong Kong, where he built a multi-disciplinary research network to tackle a myriad of biological problems, from environmental sciences to regenerative medicine. He has published over 100 scientific papers and patents, and is the current leader of the “Global Research Enrichment And Technopreneurship (GREAT)” programme at City University of Hong Kong. He was a scientist-in-resident at SymbioticA (Perth, Australia) in 2019 and the recipient of the CityU innovative e-learning award in 2020. He is a co-organiser of Leonardo Art and Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) and Café Scientifique in Hong Kong. He collaborated with Maro Pebo on the artwork “Microbial Emancipation” (2020), and is the scientific advisor to a number of artworks, including “Magic Wands, Batons and DNA Splicers” by Wong Kit Yi (2018) and “CRISPR Seed Resurrection” by Ken Rindaldo (2021).

Absence, Presence, Belonging, Becoming: Cells and Bodies in Art and Anatomy LASER-talk: Absence, Presence, Belonging and Becoming: Cells and Bodies in Art and Anatomy

Cyber Cafe Scientifique welcomed Dr. Fred Leung on Monday, February 1 for our first Zoom Webinar. Fred's talk, "From SARS CoV I to SARS CoV II," was a great success.

We've published Fred's talk to the Cafe Scientifique YouTube Channel for those who missed the event or would like to watch his talk again. Please note that the video can be viewed through this link but is otherwise unlisted on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/bWude8KyGmI

Dr. Fred Leung: From SARS CoV I to SARS CoV II Cyber Cafe Scientifique's first Zoom webinar on Monday, 1 Feb 2021, from internationally renowned Molecular Biotechnologist, Dr. Fred Leung, speaking about t...

This video provides a useful visual representation of the R0 factor. (It was referenced by Fred in his talk to us tonight.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=9lxKUulMxH8

The R number, crocheted. Kathrine Frey Frøslie works as associate professor in Biostatistics, and runs the popular science knitting blog Statistrikk.no. The crochet work is made for ...

Donate
Please don’t forget to donate!

A Zoom Webinar account costs ~ HKD 4,300 per year to maintain (USD 560), and we will not be able to operate without the generosity of our members. You can donate at the Payme Account: payme.hsbc/cafesci.

Hopefully, once the pandemic situation is properly controlled in HK, we will be able to return back to Café 8. In the meantime, Zoom is where you will find us!

Thank you!
Cafe Scientifique team

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Dear members,
We are pleased to announce that Café Scientifique HK is restarting (!) with a new format: CYBER Café Scientifique.

Indeed, given the circumstances, we have decided to opt for virtual meetings for now until the situation allows us to go back to our much-missed Café 8.

From February, we will be doing Zoom Webinars each first Monday of the month and are currently aligning prominent scientists in the next few months that will help us to decode the ever-changing nature of the pandemic.

Our first talk will take place on the 1st of February when Dr. Fred Leung will present to our members. Dr. Leung is an internationally renowned Molecular Biotechnologist, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and an expert in DNA sequencing technology who led the HKU team that successfully mapped the SARS genome in 2003. We will be discussing phylogenetic analysis of the COVID-19 virus and how this work differs from that done with SARS.

We will send an invitation to join the webinar for the 1st of February shortly, so watch this space!

In the meantime, please spread the news and stay safe.

Cyber Café-Sci organisers,
Jayne, Mike, Yun, and Bernard.

PS: Btw, Bernard hasn’t left Ca-Sci as he’s decided to postpone his move back to Europe.

Happy new year to us all from the Cafe Scientifique team. 🎇🎉🎊

We are determined to make 2021 better than 2020 no matter what the world is going to through at us this time 😅 so watch this space as we'll be making some announcements soon.

All the best from us.
Stay safe
Bernard - Café Scientifique

[Event: Origins of the Galápagos Archipelago’s Land Animals] （中文版本見文末） A visit to the Galápagos Islands by Charles Darwin provided him with fundamental insights into Natural Selection, the mechanism that is largely responsible for driving biological evolution.
Dr Jason Richard ALI, the Associate Professor of Department of Earth Sciences, who is also an expert of redrawing the global map of land life, will be giving a science public lecture on Nov 4th(Wed) that looks at the origins of the land animals on the Galápagos Archipelago. He will also share a detective story involving ocean currents, DNA, molecular clocks, volcanoes and tectonic plates. Register now if you are curious about where you come from!

Date and Time: Nov 4, 2020 17:30 HKT
Learn more: https://bit.ly/31NNri7
Registration/direct link to the lecture: https://bit.ly/33AcLJE

達爾文在180多年前踏足位於南美洲的加拉巴哥群島，並被島上奇異的物種所吸引，及後寫下《物種起源》——一本關於進化論的重要著作。地球科學系副教授Jason Richard ALI博士將會在科學公開講堂裏帶領大家認識群島上的物種，並追本溯源，重構物種地圖，從海流、火山、板塊、基因和分子鐘裏找尋有關生命起源的蛛絲馬跡。

[Thematic Week of Science: Studying Geology and Earth System Science at HKU]（中文版本見文末）
Geology is the study of rock, and every rock tells a story of Earth. By looking at them, we get to understand what happened in the past in order to help predict what's going to happen in the future, and to figure out how we can change the behavior to get the result we want.
Today(Oct 23) at 16:45, Dr Jess KING and Dr Yiliang LI from the Department of Earth Science will introduce our Majors in Geology, Geology(Intensive) and Earth System Science via Zoom, and tell you what it is like to study these fascinating subjects.

Come join us via Zoom: https://hku.zoom.us/j/98948232233

地質學說的是關於地球的歷史，是一門以史為鏡，鑑古推今的學問。今天(10月23日)下午4時45分，地球科學系的Jess King博士以及李一良博士會為你介紹關於地質學的課程，讓你了解學習地球科學的趣味。

Hi all,
Sarah, the previous co-organiser extraordinaire of Cafe-Sci, will be moderating a science event at the HK International Literary Festival!

Evolution: Facing the Future, Looking to the Past.
November 7, 2020
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Biologist and broadcaster Professor Adam Hart explores the mismatch between our fundamental biology and the modern world we have created. He will talk with Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art about evolution, adaptability and what we might learn from how Neanderthals survived hundreds of thousands of years of climate change.

Moderated by CNN Senior Writer, Sarah Lazarus

Get tickets here: https://www.festival.org.hk/programme/evolution-facing-the-future-looking-to-the-past-%e9%80%b2%e5%8c%96%ef%bc%9a%e5%b1%95%e6%9c%9b%e6%9c%aa%e4%be%86%ef%bc%8c%e6%ba%af%e5%8f%a4%e5%b0%8b%e6%ba%9020201107/

Dear all, following our call for help last month, we are pleased to announce 2 new organisers who have the passion and skills to support Cafe Scientifique going forward; Jayne and Yun! They will be helping Mike in setting up new events.

With this in mind, we are currently working out ideas on how to carry on the events during this prolonged pandemic era and are hopeful we can get something up and running in the near future. We will keep you posted as soon as we can regarding this so watch this space!

Stay safe everyone.
Bernard

Picture from left to right: Bernard, Mike, Jayne, and Yun.

Member of HKU's Laboratory for Space Research co-discovers first planet found around white dwarf star Co-discovers the first planet found around white dwarf star ...

Dear Café Scientifique friends,
As you know, in January of this year, Mike and myself stepped in to continue animating Café Scientifique Hong Kong. Alas, the pandemic hit and we found ourselves grounded until further notice. If that wasn’t bad enough, I have now decided to leave Hong Kong and will do so before the end of the year. This leaves Café Scientifique with only one volunteer – poor Mike -which is clearly not enough to sustain monthly events as ideally we’d need 3 volunteers to share the workload.

Therefore, here’s a BIG SHOUT OUT to everyone here to see if a few of you would like to support Mike to run the Café once it is able to do events again. Ideally, the volunteers need to come with a passion for science, and be willing to take some time every month (not too much) to organize the events.

If you are interested, please send a Whatsapp message to myself 6360 8764 and we’ll take it from there. If we don’t have at least one additional volunteer, the Café won’t be able to run anymore which I’m sure you’ll all agree, would be a loss to this amazing city.

Thank you in advance for your support.
Bernard

[Research Story]How hard is it to learn to fly?
Dromaeosaurid (‘raptors’) and troodontid theropods are both identified to be the closest relatives of birds. An international study led by Dr. Michael Pittman from Department of Earth Sciences and his former Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Rui Pei found that, the potential for powered flight evolved at least three times in theropods: once in birds and twice in dromaeosaurids. It also supports the status of the controversial anchiornithine theropods as the earliest birds

The team produced an updated evolutionary tree of early birds and their closest relatives to reconstruct powered flight potential, suggests that theropod dinosaurs broadly experimented with the use of their feathered wings before flight evolved.

The team published their findings in Current Biology, can be accessed here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982220309994
Video summary: https://youtu.be/PVzF71t6JSI
No audio video summary: https://youtu.be/YgUe8HdCOFw


馳龍科（盜龍）和傷齒龍科獸腳類恐龍都是鳥類的最近親。一個由港大地球科學系助理教授（研究）文嘉棋博士帶領、並和其前博士後研究員裴睿博士共同發表的研究，更新了鳥類和近親的演化樹，發現飛行潛能曾在獸腳類獨立進化至少三次：一次在鳥類，兩次在馳龍類。它也⽀持了具爭議性的近⿃龍類獸腳類恐龍是最早的⿃類。
團隊發現很多鳥類近親的祖先其實已經十分接近進化出驅動飛行潛能的門檻，這顯示獸腳類恐龍在進化出飛行能力前，曾廣泛地試驗羽翼的用途，推翻了認為只有某個群組曾進行此實驗的觀念。

We are so sad to bring you the absolutely tragic news that John McKinven, the manager of Cafe 8, has died. He was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago.

We have known John since 2013, when he opened Cafe 8 and we set up Cafe Sci. He gave tremendous support to us and to all the people from the Nesbitt Centre who work in the cafe, and he will be mourned by many people.

The Nesbitt Centre has established a fund for donations for John's wife, Jojo, and their young daughter Elisha, and we will make a donation from the Cafe Sci kitty on everyone's behalf.
Cafe Sci team.

Learn more about the latest pioneering research on COVID-19 from -- recognised as one of the "powerful research clusters that have developed globally in the field [of coronavirus research] in recent years" -- at https://fightcovid19.hku.hk/category/in-the-news/

#香港大學 眾多科研人員積極開展新型冠狀病毒研究，從追查疫源、社區防疫到身心治療，耗盡心力。查看 #港大 最新及極具前瞻性的相關研究，請瀏覽︰https://fightcovid19.hku.hk/zh/category/in-the-news-zh/