Royal Society Te Apārangi Wellington Branch and the Royal Society Te Apārangi
Joint Public Lecture
On Wednesday 5 July at 6.00 pm the Royal Society Te Apārangi Wellington Branch and the Royal Society Te Apārangi will host a free public lecture. We hope that you will attend and contribute to the discussion afterward. Please come along. Full details of the lecture are given below.
Wednesday 5 July 2023
6.00 - 7.00 pm at the Royal Society Te Apārangi premises,
11 Turnbull St. Thorndon, Wellington
Dr. Natalie Robinson, Physical Oceanographer at NIWA
Antarctica’s Role and Response in Global Climate
Dr. Robinson will discuss Antarctica’s role in, and response to, our changing climate, highlighting its multi-scale connections with the global ocean. The main focus will be on sea ice – the frozen surface of the ocean – which effectively doubles the size of Antarctica each winter and forms a pivotal point of connection between ice, ocean, atmosphere and ecosystem. This annual signal in our climate system helps keep the planet cool; provides a habitat that underpins a thriving marine ecosystem; and drives global ocean overturning.
Natalie will describe her own research within this context, and provide some personal stories, accumulated over eight seasons on ice.
David Lillis
Royal Society Te Apārangi Wellington Branch
Royal Society Te Apārangi Wellington Branch and
the Royal Society Te Apārangi
Joint Public Lecture
On Wednesday 7 June at 6.00 pm the Royal Society Te Apārangi Wellington Branch and the Royal Society Te Apārangi will host a free public lecture. We hope that you will attend and contribute to the discussion afterward. Please come along. Full details of the lecture are given below.
Wednesday 7 June 2023
6.00 - 7.00 pm at the Royal Society Te Apārangi premises,
11 Turnbull St. Thorndon, Wellington
Dr. Burton King, General Surgeon and Head of The Breast Centre at Bowen Hospital
A History of the Breast in Art and Disease
Dr. King will discuss evidence of breast disease, seen incidentally in visual art, especially in renaissance paintings. We look forward to seeing you there.
David Lillis
Royal Society of New Zealand Wellington Branch
2022 New Zealand Hamilton Award Lecture
The Survival of our Coral Reefs - Dr. Christopher Cornwall
Wednesday 31 May 2023, 6:00pm – 7:30pm
Royal Society Te Apārangi 11 Turnbull Street Thorndon, Wellington
Royal Society Te Apārangi Wellington Branch Public Lecture
On Wednesday 3 May at 6.00 pm the Royal Society Te Apārangi Wellington Branch will host a public lecture. This is a free public lecture. We hope that you will attend and contribute to the discussion afterward. Please come along. Full details of the lecture are given below.
Wednesday 3 May 2023
6.00 - 7.00 pm at the Royal Society Te Apārangi premises,
11 Turnbull St. Thorndon, Wellington
Dr Tim Payn, Principal Scientist, Forest Ecology and Management, Scion Research
Cyclones, land use and forestry – how do we adapt?
In the last few years New Zealand has been hit by a number of extreme weather events, the latest being ex cyclones Hale and Gabrielle. Massive damage has been caused, especially on the east coast of the North Island, and recovery will require a very long-term effort. The intensity and frequency of these storms are expected to increase under climate change. A Ministerial Inquiry into Land Use is underway for the Gisborne/Wairoa regions which will assess causes and effects and make recommendations to Government based on their findings.
Forestry is one of the land uses affected by the extreme events and one of the land uses affecting the wider environment. There has been widespread media coverage of damage to infrastructure from logs and accumulations of logs on beaches and calls for changes to the way we manage our forests. This talk will focus on the history of production forestry in New Zealand, how forests are managed today, and what changes could be made to reduce impacts from these extreme events in the future.
Tim Payn is a Principal Scientist at Scion in Rotorua. His research focusses on sustainability, climate change and the environment. He is a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Forestry.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Royal Society of New Zealand Wellington Branch
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING AND DOCTORAL PRESENTATIONS
On Wednesday 26 October at 6.00 pm we will hold our Annual General Meeting at Victoria University of Wellington, Law School lecture theatre GBLT3 in the Old Government Building. Two of this year’s Doctoral Scholarship winners will each give a fifteen-minute presentation on their Ph.D topics and our Wellington Branch Science Fair prizewinners will speak about their winning project.
See the link below for details:
https://www.royalsocietyofnewzealandwellingtonbranch.org/phd-scholarships
Missing pieces: Epistemic and argumentative perspectives in science education
Dr Michael Johnston, Senior Fellow, New Zealand Initiative
Wednesday 14 September 2022, 6.00 - 7.00 pm at the Royal Society of New Zealand premises, 11 Turnbull St. Thorndon, Wellington
In this lecture, Dr Johnston will consider science education from theoretical, epistemic and argumentative perspectives. The theoretical perspective focusses on teaching specific contributions of science to human knowledge; for example, genetics, atomic structure and Newtonian mechanics. The epistemic perspective is concerned with developing students’ understanding of the processes by which scientific theories are tested. The argumentative perspective involves learning to argue in a reasoned fashion, guided by evidence and to contest ideas in good faith.
Historically, science education in New Zealand has focused most strongly on the theoretical perspective – on what teachers might refer to as ‘content’ knowledge. There has also been some attention to epistemic aspects of science, usually in the context of ‘practical’ investigations. The extent to which these activities convey understanding of science epistemology is, however, questionable. Scientific argumentation, in particular its dispositional aspect, is not usually addressed directly in science education at all.
Dr Johnston will argue for a greater focus on both epistemology and argumentation in science education. A more explicit focus on epistemology would provide a powerful set of cognitive tools to enable young people to steer a path between positivist objectivism and radical relativism. It would also help to clarify what science is and how it is different than other ways of understanding natural phenomena. Scientific argumentation, especially the disposition to argue in good faith, is best learned through modelling by teachers and practice by students.
We look forward to seeing you there.
David Lillis
Royal Society of New Zealand Wellington Branch
Down the Rabbit Hole: The wonderland of New Zealand’s folic acid saga
Professor Barry Borman (Massey University)
Wednesday 20 July, 6.00 - 7.00 pm at the Royal Society of New Zealand premises, 11 Turnbull St Thorndon, Wellington
On Wednesday 20 July at 6.00 pm the Royal Society of New Zealand Wellington Branch will host its deferred 2021 Hudson Lecture and Annual General Meeting. This is a free public lecture on the recent controversy about folic acid. We hope that you will attend and contribute to the discussion afterward. Please come along.
8 July 2021 was momentous in the history of public health in New Zealand. On this day, the Government announced the long overdue introduction of mandatory fortification of non-organic bread-making wheat flour with folic acid. Thirty years previously (11 September 1992), and based on the results of a multicenter randomized control trial, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all women of childbearing age should consume 0.4mg of folic acid per day to reduce the risk of having a child with a neural tube defect (e.g. spina bifida). The presentation will trace the interweaving strands of science and politics in NZ’s belated implementation of a scientifically proven method of primary prevention.
We hope that you will attend and participate in our Annual General Meeting.
The Foxton Moa Hunter Site, the ca-500-Year Old Earthquake, and Implications for Modern Settlement
The Royal Society of New Zealand Wellington Branch and Te Kawa a Māui School of Maori Studies Public Lecture
On Wednesday 29 June at 6.00 pm, the Royal Society of New Zealand Wellington Branch and Te Kawa a Māui School of Maori Studies VUW, will jointly host a free public lecture on the Foxton Moa Hunter site, to be given by Dr. Bruce McFadgen.
6.00 - 7.00 pm at Victoria University Lecture Theatre HU119 (Hunter Building), Kelburn Campus, Victoria University.
We hope that you will attend and contribute to the discussion afterward. Please come along. Full details of the lecture are given below.
Dr. Bruce McFadgen
Earthquakes can be a benefit or a disaster. Much of our infrastructure and population occupy low-lying land near the sea; e.g. the Southwest Coast of the North Island, and people are concerned about the hazards of living near the water. The prehistoric environment is an essential part of archaeological information, and archaeological remains can provide an historical perspective for the landscape as it is today. Hazards include earthquakes, tsunamis, coastal erosion, and the burial of settlements, gardens, and resources by sand dunes. One way to better understand such hazards is to know what happened in the past, and learning from Maori experience is very relevant to modern society to prepare for future events. This evening's talk will discuss an archaeological site in the southern Manawatu, which was badly affected by a significant earthquake several hundred years ago; the effects of the earthquake on the Southwest coast of the North Island, and implications for modern settlement.
Dr. Bruce McFadgen is an Honorary Research Associate with Te Kawa a Maui, The School of Maori Studies, at Victoria University of Wellington. He has been retired for 18 years and spends his spare time carrying out research. He began his career as a Land Surveyor with Lands and Survey in 1963, and was later employed by NZ Historic Places Trust, and then the Department of Conservation. He has been a member of the Royal Society of New Zealand Wellington Branch since 1966, and a life member since 1987.