The Astronomy Open House is closed for the winter, and the Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center's Conservation Forum has come and gone, but there are still science events on campus.
Before we move on to upcoming science events, we should note that the World Ecology Center awarded its Conservation Action Prize during its recent Conservation Forum.
The honoree was conservationist Felipe Cruz. Cruz is the head of the Charles Darwin Foundation on the Galapagos Islands.
The Galapagos Islands were the focus of this year's Conservation Forum on Nov. 5.
The World Ecology Center is a public outreach and education collaboration of the UM-St. Louis Biology Department, the Missouri Botanical Garden and the St. Louis Zoo.
Cruz directed a program, aided by local hunters, that eliminated non-native species such as pigs, goats and others that threatened the rare native species on the islands, a conservation goal many thought was not possible.
Cruz was also one of the keynote speakers at the Conservation Forum, which took place at the St. Louis Zoo's Living World exhibit space.
An upcoming science event with broad appeal is the Center For Nanoscience's Monthly Colloquium titled, "Commercializing University Innovations," to be held Friday, Nov. 21.
Universities see plenty of ground-breaking science, but turning scientific breakthroughs into commercial applications can be a trickier matter for scientist focused on lab work.
Marcia B. Mellitz, president and CEO of the UM-St. Louis Center for Emerging Technologies, will discuss how to tackle the transition. The talk takes place at 4 p.m. in room 451 of Benton Hall.
A pre-talk reception takes place at 3:45 p.m. The seminar is co-sponsored by the departments of Chemistry & Biochemistry and of Physics & Astronomy.
For those more serious about chemistry (or biochemistry), there are a couple of other upcoming talks, part of the Chemistry Department's Visiting Speaker Seminar series.
Monday, Nov. 17, Lai-Xi Wang, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, speaks on "Chemoenzymatic synthesis of homogeneous glycoproteins."
The talk takes place at 4 p.m. in room 451 of Benton Hall, and refreshments are served fifteen minutes before the talk.
Monday, Dec. 1, the guest speaker will be Tammy Kielian, of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Her talk is titled "Toll-like receptors (TLRs): roles in bacterial recognition and immunity in the brain."
The talk takes place at 4 p.m. in room 451 of Benton Hall, with refreshments served at 3:45.
Friday, Dec. 5 at 3:30 p.m., the department offers its 12th Annual Robert W. Murray Lecture. The distinguished speaker this year is Philip P. Power, of the Department of Chemistry at the University of California - Davis.
His talk is titled "Direct Hydrogenation of Main Group Compounds."
The lecture takes place in room 451 of Benton Hall. There will be a pre-lecture reception at 3 p.m. at Lecture Theater next to room 451, and a post-lecture reception at the Alumni Center.
For biology buffs, there are a couple of upcoming science talks as well.
On Tuesday, Nov. 18, Dr. Johannes Schul, of University of Missouri - Columbia, speaks on "Co-evolution of sender and receiver in an acoustic communication system" at 2:30 p.m. in room 121 of the Research Building.
On Tuesday, Dec. 9, Dr. Tom Valone, of St. Louis University, gives a talk titled "Desertification, alternate stable states and restoration of arid grasslands: a missing link."
This seminar also takes place at 2:30 p.m. in room 121 of the Research Building.
Get out there and get some science talking.
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