October 5, 2018
Aaron Moehlig
What is Chirality and How Did It Get In My Molecules?
Chirality is all around us (and inside of us!), but most of us do not know what it is. Chirality effects everything from how we perceive beauty to how drugs affect us. Come to Friday’s seminar and learn what chirality is, how we see and create it, how it manifests itself in living things, and how it got there in the first place.
October 12, 2018
Eric Baer
The 2018 Palu, Indonesia Earthquake: What can this catastrophe teach us about being ready and resilient when our own quake strikes?
A bit over a week ago a M7.5 earthquake in Indonesia triggered strong shaking, an unexpected tsunami, liquefaction and catastrophic landslides. While the official death toll is about 2000, there are many thousands of people missing and many will never be found. In the meantime, survivors are struggling with a lack of food and clean water. This catastrophe is has many lessons for us – there are a lot of geologic similarities between what happened in Palu and what will happen in the Puget Sound – a large earthquake in an urban area, a locally generated tsunami and large landslides. Will we be ready and resilient? That depends on you!
October 26, 2018
Stoyan Angelov
Pathologic Basis of Aortic Aneurysms
In this presentation I will cover the basic structure and function of the vascular system and summarize our laboratory’s work in the field of aortic aneurysms. Aortic aneurysms are a significant medical problem for which there are no good therapeutic options. Under current standards of care patients are monitored until the risk of aortic rupture exceeds the risk of surgical repair, at which point endoscopic or open surgery to repair the dilated segment is recommended . These procedures are complicated, expensive, temporary and sometimes unfeasible. Pharmacological treatments that slow, halt, reverse aortic dilation, or reduce the risk of rupture are highly desirable, but their development is hindered by incomplete understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms. I will explore the progress we have made in elucidating those mechanisms and some of the problems we have encountered along the way.
November 2, 2018
Woody Moses
Our Toxic Orcas
Our endangered Puget Sound Orcas are threatened by their toxic diet. Come learn why eating salmon isn’t as healthy as you might think.
November 9, 2018
Syeda Nizami
Security and Privacy in Social Networks
The popularity of social networking sites has increased at astonishing levels. Social Networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn have been growing rapidly within the past few years with now over two billion users. Almost every computer literate person has at least one social network account, and they spend a large amount of their time on social networks each day.
Because of social networks large population and information base, and its simple accessibility, social networking websites have become new targets that attract cyber criminals.
Privacy and security issues in social networks has become a critical issue in the cyber world. Therefore, I will present a survey on privacy and security issues that occur in online social networks and different privacy and security issues in online social networks. The issues include privacy issues, identity theft issues, spam issues, malware issues, and physical threats issues. Most importantly how to stay safe!
November 16, 2018
Stephany Puchalski
Tyrannosaurus rex Coming Soon to a Park Near You?
In early 1980s, a little-known author heard about a study of a 40 million year old fly preserved in amber. The report published suggested that the amber had preserved intracellular structures and the possibility of extracting DNA. The interaction of art and science eventually led to the 1993 release of a small movie titled Jurassic Park. The movie used the most advanced technology available at the time to bring dinosaurs back to life, at least on the silver screen. Since then, scientists have made incredible fossil discoveries including dinosaur embryos and a 99 million year old tick preserved in amber with a dinosaur feather. There also have been several recent publications regarding dinosaur DNA. Do the new fossil finds mean that Jurassic Park will be a reality one day?
November 30, 2018
Lauren Wugalter
Sparking Curiosity and Fanning the Flames: Fired Up About Chemistry
Chemistry is awesome! I’ll be doing cool chemistry demonstrations to show how applicable chemistry is to everyone’s world and discussing the issues of diverse representation in science and how I've partnered with local communities to fight for a future of diverse representation in STEM.
