Author: wbarb

Your gut contains a complex community of bacteria, fungi, and viruses (collectively called the ‘microbiome’), which emerging research has shown can influence a wide array of aspects of your health—ranging from whether you are obese, to whether you have have heart disease, or are depressed.

Dr. Lozupone’s research lab in the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus works with clinicians to study the gut microbiome in the context of a variety of diseases, including with HIV infection, Autism Spectrum Disorders, asthma, and in cancer patients undergoing stem cell transplant. She discussed this research and also more generally, what has been learned over the past several years about the typical composition of the gut microbiome and how it is influenced by factors such as age and diet.

For more information: Lozupone Lab, University of Colorado School of Medicine

Dr. Lockwood will discuss the topic of his 2009 book, Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier. The infamous Rocky Mountain locust was the most abundant terrestrial creature on earth in the 19th century, but the last living specimen was caught in 1903. The extinction of this species was one of the great, ecological mysteries in the decades that followed—and now that we know its fate, there are profound lessons for our own future.

Jeff Lockwood was hired as an insect ecologist at the University of Wyoming in 1986. But over the course of 20 years he metamorphosed into a Professor of Natural Sciences & Humanities. His position is split between the department of philosophy and the MFA program in creative writing—along with an appointment in the Program in Ecology. He teaches courses in environmental ethics and the philosophy of ecology, along with writing workshops in nature and environmental writing. His essays have been honored with a Pushcart Prize, a John Burroughs Award, and inclusion in Best American Science & Nature Writing. His most recent books are Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War and The Infested Mind: Why Humans Fear, Loathe and Love Insects.

Our guests and several partners have spent the last 20 months building a brewery that will not only bring craft beer to Nepal, but will also provide well-paying jobs.

The country of Nepal is beautiful and attracts visitors to the Himalayas to both climb and trek. It also is a study in contrasts, as a Third World country striving to modernize despite low per-capita income.

LhakpaSherpaSMThis special endeavor involved land purchase, landscaping, and construction of buildings, as well as purchasing and installing brewing equipment. Several unanticipated problems have arisen along the way, along with many joyful experiences with the local community.

In today’s climate of soaring gas prices, international conflicts, and concerns about food availability and quality, there are highly profitable opportunities emerging in sustainable land development. Quint Redmond’s firm, Agriburbia®, incorporates sustainable practices such as alternative energy, natural storm water management, and pedestrian focus and adds a new element that is the re-integration of food production directly within the living environment.

This “truly” sustainable initiative improves the quality of life by combining the best qualities of rural living with the advantages of urban conveniences and culture. The result is improved agriculture, enhanced development practices and the enrichment of the residents, tenants, and guests within these Agriburbia® mixed-use developments.

Mr. Redmond is co-owner of AgriNETx LLC and Agriburbia LLC. and has more that 20 years of professional experience in design, planning, natural resources, agriculture and spatial technologies. His combined knowledge in each of these disciplines allows him to effectively manage projects that result in innovative designs, technologically advfarmtableanced data management, and new approaches to sustainabledevelopment. Mr. Redmond has a strong multi-faceted agricultural background which plays heavily in his innovative ideas for incorporating agriculture back into our modern communities. He and his wife are the Co-Creators of Agriburbia®.

It’s hard to love Interstate 70, a highway that mostly makes the news for snow closures, construction delays, and endless debates over how to ease the horrendous traffic jams. But if we follow I-70 back in time, it leads us straight into one of Colorado history’s most dramatic episodes: the explosion of post-World War II recreational development, when faded mining towns and quiet ranching valleys morphed into the motel clusters and ski resorts of a new mass outdoor leisure age.

In this Golden Beer Talk, University of Denver historian Bill Philpott will tell the surprising history of I-70: how the high country ended up with a superhighway it was never supposed to get, why the interstate ended up taking the twists and turns it did, and what those tell us about the changing economic and environmental politics of their time — with implications for our own time. At the very least, this talk will give you something to think about the next time you’re stuck in Eisenhower Tunnel traffic behind some SUV from Texas.

billphilpottSM

Bill Philpott, who grew up in the Denver suburbs, teaches history at the University of Denver. He is the author of Vacationland: Tourism and Environment in the Colorado High Country, which won the 2014 Spur Award for Contemporary Western Nonfiction from the Western Writers of America.

Jonathon Stalls started walking West from the Atlantic Ocean in Delaware on 1 March 2010. After walking 3,030 miles across the USA, he has much to say about trusting strangers, embracing the unknown, living with less, and what can be gained by doing more life by foot. This popular TEDx Youth@Mile High presenter will share stories and tales from his journey while also inviting you into the birth of and goals for his 2-year-old, Colorado-based social business, Walk2Connect.

To learn more, watch Jonathon’s TEDx video

A mere five days after its test launch, a systems engineer working on NASA’s Orion Multipurpose Crew Exploration Vehicle will share his experiences working on the project, and participating in the launch. Working with Stellar Solutions at Lockheed Martin, Jim Clawson is part of the Orion mission’s Integrated Vehicle Performance Team, focused on sequencing automated functions and assessing anticipated thermal, power and communications functionality.

The December flight test from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station will send the unscrewed Orion spacecraft 3,600 miles from Earth on a two-orbit flight to test critical systems for a series of future deep space missions. During the 4.5-hour flight, Orion will travel farther than any crewed spacecraft has gone in more than 40 years, before reentering Earth’s atmosphere at speeds near 20,000 mph and generating temperatures up to 4,000 Fahrenheit. This initial test flight will evaluate launch and high-speed reentry systems, such as avionics, altitude control, parachutes and heat shield.

Every generation of Americans has faced grand challenges and responded with a new world vision and a transformed society. Many, if not all, of these past struggles were sustained and facilitated by the persuasive power of strategic narrative—stories grounded in the past, containing a faithful vision of the future along with actions in the present to link the past and the future. For example, our Cold War strategy was sustained by a narrative stating that Soviet aggression, derived from historic Russian xenophobia, was to be contained until such time as the Soviet Union failed due to its internal defects.

The great challenge facing today’s world is changing the way we use our energy resources—and in the case of energy transformation, a cohesive narrative has yet to fully emerge. But when it does, we can be sure that science and technology will figure more prominently than in past narratives. Precisely because well-structured narratives can be so persuasive by appealing to the visceral, scientists have distanced themselves from communicating in narrative form—a strength in the pursuit of truth, but a weakness when it comes to motivating change.

This talk will review the changing character of science and technology in the emerging energy narratives and argue that aided by scientists, the public image of technology has been distorted. Countering these distortions with positive images will require scientists to embrace their own history, present and future from a new perspective.

Dr. Eberhart is Professor of Chemistry and Geochemistry at Colorado School of Mines. He holds degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Colorado.

Our speakers are Dr. Dendy Sloan and Dr. Cynthia Norrgran, coauthors of Neuroscience, Memory, and Learning, and their much-anticipated joint presentation is entitled Three Minds and Memory.

Drs. Sloan and Norrgran will briefly discuss functions of the three brain portions each of us have: reptilian, Paleomammilian (animal), and neocortical (human). Connecting those three parts to simple memory types (short-term, working, and long-term) will be done next. The talk will conclude with a working example and a list for those who wish to read further.

SloanPhotoDr. Norrgran is Teaching Associate Professor and Dr. Sloan is University Professor Emeritus in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Norrgran is a retired neurosurgeon with 15 years of practice, and Dr. Sloan has a half-century of engineering teaching and practice. Their monograph Neuroscience, Memory, and Learning was published in 2013.

Ultrashort laser pulses, only a few 100 millionths of a billionth of a second can now be routinely created, and are finding their way into real world applications. For example, these ultrashort bursts of light are enabling new forms of microscopy that allow scientists to visualize biological structure and function in three dimensions. A particularly exciting application is using these bursts of light to perform delicate surgeries. State-of-the-art eye correction now employs such lasers for example.

At the Colorado School of Mines we have developed a novel lensing system that allows us to focus these bursts of light inspace and time! The ability to create such lensing systems has resulted in a profoundly different manner in which we can optically manipulate materials. Short movie clips demonstrating the perplexing behavior of ultrashort laser pulses that are simultaneously focused in space and time will be presented.

Dr. Squier is the Department Head of Physics at Colorado School of Mines. He also is a CSM alum, with a Bachelors degree in Engineering Physics and a Masters in Applied Physics. Squier has a PhD in Optics, awarded by University of Rochester. His research interests include Do-It-Yourself (DIY) electronics—he has his own UAV fleet—as well as 3D multiphoton microscopy for biological and material science applications, and micromachining with intense femtosecond laser pulses.