Piedmont Primer

UPDATE - Science Café will continue it’s successful series through the Summer.  For more information check out the press release below !

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SciWorks and Sigma Xi Fraternity Continue Local Science Cafés

Winston-Salem has joined the “Science Café” movement that has swept the nation.  SciWorks and Sigma Xi (the International honor society for scientific and engineering research) have scheduled another talk for the evening of June 9th.  The Science Cafés are supported in part by the PBS program NOVA scienceNOW.

Science Cafés are informal talks given by a local expert at a local gathering place.  At a café participants can… learn about the latest issues in science, chat with a scientist in plain language, meet new friends, speak your mind, and, talk with your mouth full!

All talks will take place at Foothills Brewing Co., 638 West Fourth Street in Downtown Winston-Salem.  Science Cafés begin at 7pm.  Participants are encouraged to enjoy dinner on their own from 6-7pm.  There is no fee to participate in the Science Café.

Tuesday, June 9 at 7pm

Using animals in research: what are the issues?

Biomedical research creates many ethical quandaries.  Among the most contentious is the use of animals.  This presentation will explore the ethical arguments surrounding the use of animals in biomedical research.  David Friedman, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research, Wake Forest University School of Medicine

Tuesday, August 18 at 7pm

The Curiosities of Nanotechnology

A presentation on the current state of Nanotechnology; including a live demonstration of an atomic-force microscope.  Join this interesting discussion on the health and environmental impacts, education and employment opportunities, as well as current research in this emerging technology.  Kevin Conley, Ph.D., Program Coordinator, Nanotechnology Education at Forsyth Technical Community College.

For More Information Contact Debbie Cesta at 336-714-7109

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Science Café, Winston-Salem Events

“Identification of Drug Targets for Synergy-Based Therapeutics: Microarray to Drug Design”  Harel Weinstein (Weill Medical College of Cornell University)

The 2nd Annual Medicinal Biochemistry Symposium was preceeded by a special visitor to the  Triad Drug Discovery Group,  both events w’hich are held at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG).  That visitor was the evenings keynote speaker,  Dr. Harel Weistein of Cornell Univeristy, Sloan-Kettering and Rockerfeller University. Dr. Weinstein orated a unique perspective regarding the use of novel, objective bioinformatic approaches to traditional drug design processes.

The Triad Drug Discovery Group (TDDG), was orated by Dr. Lakshmi Kotra,  an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UNCG.  The goal of TDDG is to “engage the scientific community…” and “foster translational research and the development of novel medicines”.  Meetings are held on the  campus of UNCG, in the Sullivan Science Building. As a Regional Exchange Group, TDDG is co-sponsored by the North Carolina Center for Biotechnology.

Dr. Weinstein’s presentation, entitled “Identification of drug targets for synergy-based therapeutics: microarray to drug-design”, ruminated among the audience of mostly academic and industry drug-design scientists.  Dr. Weinstein’s message focused on the collaborative power among expression data sets, bioinformatic approaches and quantitative systems-level biological research that can lead to viable drug design in a fraction of the time needed for conventional development.  By objectively performing comparisons and investigations on the independent basis of significance, and not that of annotated complex signaling pathways, the data has the opportunity to speak for itself, even if, at first it appears to be an alien language.  This process has led to the discovery of novel uses for already known compounds, which if they had been sought out with traditional “annotated” signaling-networks, would have been lost in the unconscious bias of the scientific community.

Greensboro Event, Triad Drug Discovery Group

Bees, Beer & the Brain… at Science Café

April 14th, 2009

The room at Foothills Brewery was buzzing as a crowd of over 50 gardeners, graduate students and gray matter enthusiasts gathered to listen to Wake Forest University’s Susan E. Fahrbach, Ph.D. speak on a topic that is dear to our hearts…learning.

Dr. Fahrbach’s presentation, titled  “How the Bee Brain Grows”, was given as part of an ongoing community experiment known as Science Café, a model that is locally sponsored and organized in Winston-Salem  by Reynolda Gardens, Sciworks and Sigma Χi.  According to their website, Science Café is a “grassroots movement” that provides a “casual, open format that readily engages the public in conversations about science”.  This was evident at Tuesday’s meeting as several individuals gathered at Foothills Brewery in downtown Winston-Salem to hear Dr.Fahrbach speak.

As illustrated by her presentation, Dr. Fahrbach’s research addresses the question: How does learning change the brain ? To find answers to this question, Dr. Fahrbach uses the Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) as her experimental model.  Comparing the human brain (~100 billion neurons) with that of a bee brain (~1 million neurons) can be  daunting to a layperson at first, but as Dr. Fahrbach revealed, there are some similarities that make the common honey bee an ideal model to study.

For example, recent research out of South Korea has shown that when MRI scans are compared among Basketball Players and Healthy Controls, some of the regions of the brain that are responsible for motor skills,  (vermian lobules VI-VII in the cerebellum) are actually significantly enlarged among the basketball players.  The thought is, that the repetitive exercises that some basketball players experience may influence growth in certain regions of their brain.

Honey bees also undergo repetitive exercises during certain stages of their life, most notably when they are older and foraging for pollen and nectar. Dr. Fahrbach presented data that showed certain regions of bee brains known as “mushroom bodies” actually increase in size as some bees learn their daily commute back and forth from flowers and the hive.  Additionally, Dr. Fahrbach showed data that suggests that bees with more foraging experience, irregardless of age, have larger “mushroom bodies.”

At the end of the presentation individuals had many questions  as they had the chance to speak with Dr. Fahrbach on topics ranging from alternative experimental models to thoughts regarding animal behavior.  The event was well-received, and offered the community a chance to increase their own scientific-literacy, while also learning some great fundamentals about how the brain works.  Hopefully, with repeated successful events like “How the Bee Brain Grows” - we’ll all benefit.

The Next Science Café Topic (Tuesday May 12th, 2009 @  7pm Foothills):

“Diet and the Heart, The Role of Heart Disease” - Presented by Dr. Lawrence Rudel of Wake Forest University.

Science Café, Winston-Salem Events