8th May 2024

Imaging Life

Since inventing photography, we human beings have constantly pushed our ability to take images and movies. How has this changed modern science? In this talk, Dr Philippe Laissue, Senior Lecturer in Bioimaging from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Essex will look broadly at how we use imaging in science, how he continues to develop it in his research group – and how imaging can have a positive influence in your everyday life.

10th April 2024

A Grain of Hope: Rice, Water & Climate Change

Food security for our growing population is a pressing concern. Crop productivity needs to double by mid-century to meet this challenge. However, the heavy reliance of agriculture on water, consuming about 70% of global water usage, poses another significant challenge. The depletion of freshwater reserves, worsened by increasing droughts due to climate change, further emphasises the crucial role of water in sustainable agriculture. Rice is a global crop staple, feeding half of the world’s population and providing 50-80% of the daily global caloric intake. Rice is particularly inefficient in water use, with irrigated rice alone accounting for 45% of global irrigated water

In this talk, Dr. Pallavi Singh, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Essex will discuss their research on enhancing water use in rice, that stands at the core of ensuring the future of agriculture and global food security.

13th March 2024

What a Waste, or is it?

Along with life there is death and from death we can forward our understanding of life. A big part of life is poo and, except for a few species, all animals poo. With 150 species, there is a lot of it at Colchester Zoo!

But does poo need to be a waste?

When an animal dies can they still have a role in conservation work? In this talk we will discuss how animal remains are used to further zoology, veterinary, welfare, and conservation science, and how poo can help the environment as well as tell us more about the health of our animals. Senior Conservation Educator, Lee McAlpin from Colchester Zoo answers these questions about how nature can help us humans.

14th February 2024

Emotional Changes

via electrical stimulation of facial muscles

We smile 🙂  when we are happy, and frown 🙁 when we are down.

The reverse is also true, however: posing a facial expression can modulate ongoing or generate new feelings, and even change the way we perceive others. Despite the appeal of the ‘facial feedback hypothesis’, the underlying scientific evidence is mixed, partly due to methodological limitations. Dr. Sebastian Korb from the Department of Psychology at the University of Essex tries to overcome these constraints, and study the role of ‘facial feedback’ by stimulating facial muscles with computer-controlled electrical impulses. By hijacking the body’s mechanism of neuronal muscle activation, we obtain superior control over which muscles are active when, for how long, and to what degree, and are able to investigate their role in felt and perceived emotion.

10th January 2024

The Importance of Sleep

and how we can shape it with auditory stimulation

The feeling of being well rested after a good night of sleep is something we all (hopefully) know and cherish. Although we lose consciousness and our body shifts into an idle state, our sleeping brain, however, is by no means inactive. Instead, it is hallmarked by a repertoire of brain oscillations, which have been linked to essential aspects such as memory consolidation or immune function. Against this backdrop, it has always been of special interest to manipulate sleep using brain stimulation techniques to understand and shape sleep-associated processes. Dr. Hong-Viet Ngo-Dehning from the Department of Psychology at the University of Essex will give an overview on the importance of sleep and show how his research utilizes auditory stimulation during sleep to probe and improve this crucial function.

13th December 2023

An Osteological perspective of a Roman cemetery

at the Essex County Hospital excavations

Almost 80 individuals were found at the former Essex County Hospital site in Colchester, and it is thought these burials form part of the wider Lexden Cemetery, one of several Roman cemeteries identified in Colchester.

       • Can we actually tell how someone died from their bones?

       • Does a person’s occupation show on their skeleton?

       • Why did they die so young?

Megan Beale, human bone specialist for Colchester Archaeological Trust, will be discussing her most recent work on the burials at the former Hospital.  

She will be diving into osteological methods used to assess the skeletons, as well as introducing how and where the Romans of Colchester buried their dead.

Megan will also be briefly discussing future work planned for the skeletons, including DNA analysis.

8th November 2023

The Secret Lives of Babies

Children are fascinating: they think the sun is alive because it moves, or they imagine that a banana can be a telephone. Children come up with extraordinary thoughts and insights when least expected. They make use of this fantastic, uniquely human tool – language, and it comes as no surprise that the internet is filled with anecdotes of children’s use of language to express their thoughts.

But these childhood milestones come relatively late, considering the extraordinary accomplishments of the preverbal baby. Babies may not yet make use of language to express their views, but they know about their surroundings, and set up expectations about how things should work. Some of these abilities arise so early in infancy that it may become difficult to imagine that they have been learnt.

Dr. Claudia Uller from Kingston University, Department of Psychology, will discuss the infant’s early cognitive capacities, which will enable us to draw a picture of preverbal development, and to consider the impact of the environment in the transition from infancy into childhood.

11th October 2023

Hope for the Good-Carbon Good Life

How storytelling helps us find hope and action to address the climate and nature crises, and to create new ways of low-carbon living. Jules Pretty OBE Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex, and Director of the Centre for Public and Policy Engagement will be talking about some of the content in his two most recent books, Sea Sagas of the North and The Low-Carbon Good Life. Across the world today and throughout history, good lives are characterised by healthy food, connections to nature, being active, togetherness, personal growth, a spiritual framework and sustainable consumption. A low-carbon good life offers opportunities to live in ways that will bring greater happiness and contentment. Slower ways of living await. A global target of no more than one tonne of carbon per person would allow the poorest to consume more and everyone to find our models of low-carbon good lives. But dropping old habits is hard, and large-scale impacts will need fresh forms of public engagement and civil commitment alongside action by local and national governments.