Despite five decades of research into the harms of smoking and numerous successful public health campaigns, many people take up and continue with the habit. Cigarette sales remain high as tobacco companies excel at marketing. In the United States, more than $8 billion was spent by the tobacco companies on marketing and advertising in 2011-12, compared to $457 million spent by the government in preventing or reducing tobacco use. This lecture will explore what has been learnt from 50 years of research, including the benefits of quitting at any age, and plans for future policies.

Lunch Hour Lectures - Spring 2013 - Audio

Cigarettes: the most successful product ever - Audio

Whatever people think about the rapid pace of change of technology, our most fundamental categorization of stuff on the planet has not altered: there are living things and there is non-living stuff. As a result of our greater understanding of matter, this distinction is now becoming blurred and is likely to usher in a new materials age. Bionic people with synthetic organs, bones and even brains will be the norm. Just as we are becoming more synthetic, so our man-made environment is changing to become more lifelike: living buildings, and objects that heal-themselves are on the horizon. This lecture reviews the changes to the material world that are coming our way.

Stuff Matters - Audio

Scandinavian crime fiction has in recent years enjoyed surprising success world-wide. The region, with its universal welfare states, is most commonly considered a very peaceful place, with low rates of corruption and crime and the highest levels of reported wellbeing in the world. Scandinavian crime fiction offers a bleaker and more complex image of life in these countries. This lecture will explore to what extent 'Nordic Noir' tells the story about the end of the Nordic Model in a global age.

Scandinavian crime fiction and the end of the welfare state - Audio

Is a culture of infallibility holding back our engineers by celebrating the avoidance of failure rather than the achievement of success? Do we really want our engineers to live their lives by the mantra ‘Avoid failure and you too can be a success’? This lecture will offer a wholly upbeat alternative: re-wiring the engineering mind to be optimistic, life-enriching and mind-blowing, arming itself to do amazing stuff.

Civil Engineers against the double negative - Audio

Greater understanding of how genetic differences influence disease susceptibility and drug response has potentially important healthcare applications. This lecture, marking Heart Awareness Month, will focus on some of the opportunities and challenges of using genomic information to improve personal and public health, using cardiovascular disease as an example.

Genomics and Healthcare - Audio

Almost every song lyric can be misunderstood: famously, Jimi Hendrix’s 'Kiss the Sky' is often heard as 'Kiss This Guy'. Why does this happen? While slips of the tongue are well-known, slips of the ear have received far less attention. Professor Nevins has developed a database of 4000 naturally collected examples where the hearer is the source of miscommunication. Looking into recurrent slips reveals that our expectations can bias what we mishear, but within limits: the actual utterance and the misheard message must be phonetically close enough to allow our ears to deceive us.

By the Donzerly Light: when our ears play tricks on us - Audio

It has been known for some time that moderate dietary restriction can extend healthy lifespan in a variety of organisms. By experimenting on fruitflies, we are uncovering that only very small changes in specific nutrients are required for this effect. Importantly, these effects appear to be evolutionarily conserved, meaning these new discoveries could be applied to benefit human ageing.

A diet to treat ageing - Audio

There was plenty of scepticism among economists about the likely success of a common currency in Europe. The immediate problem is that peripheral countries have seen their public sectors incur large deficits and incautious private sectors incur large debts. In addition, wages in the Southern economies have grown more rapidly, and productivity more slowly, than in the North. This lecture will set out the risks this poses to full political union and explore whether there is a solution.

Can the Eurozone crisis be solved? - Audio

In recent years, there has been much discussion of the influence of classical Arabic science on the Western scientific tradition. Yet these achievements have been variously ignored, overlooked or occasionally overstressed. This lecture discusses the impact that scholars from the Islamic world have made in the fields of medicine, astronomy, optics, geography, mechanics and many other disciplines. What role did the Arabic world have in the history of science? And how did Baghdad, Cairo and Islamic Spain preserve and expand the scientific tradition?

The influence of Islam on science - Audio

Within theoretical physics the gravitational force is the odd one out. It is much weaker than the other forces, its mathematical formulation is different and we are struggling to understand it. In this talk Dr Boehmer will outline a new approach to understanding the gravitational force which is motivated by ideas from material sciences and in particular the study of crystals.

Gravity and continuum - Audio

How are artists translating or materialising digital works for gallery and physical situations? Professor Collins shows a snapshot of works coming out of the Slade and the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art (SCEMFA) over the past decade that explore the material of the digital. This lecture explores a range of groundbreaking perspectives and manifestations.

Framing the digital: materialising new media - Audio

The last ten years have seen increasing emphasis on the importance of offering healthy women choice in where they give birth. However, to date, the evidence on the quality, safety and costs of different settings has been limited to small scale and inadequate studies. The ‘Birthplace in England’ research project was undertaken to inform those who plan, commission and deliver maternity services. This lecture will discuss the results of the research and the implications they have for shaping maternity policy, as well as some of the challenges in undertaking such large-scale research in an environment where strong personal views are held.

Where to give birth, at home or in a hospital? Does it matter? - Audio

Following their successful ascent of Mount Everest in 2007, UCL’s Centre for Altitude, Space and Extreme Environment (CASE) Medicine will be returning to Everest in March 2013 to continue with their novel approach to medical research. Their work aims to investigate the effects of low oxygen on the human body, with the ultimate goal of identifying mechanisms that may lead to the successful treatment of critically ill patients. Dr Ned Gilbert, marks 60 years since Hillary attained the summit by setting out what they hope to achieve at Everest this Spring.

Xtreme Everest 2 Research Expedition - Audio

Public participation in scientific research is not new. Many people are involved in scientific activities in their free time, from bird watching to weather or astronomical observations. Moreover, trends in education and technology are ushering in a new era of citizen science. The lecture will cover the history of citizen science, explore the current trends and demonstrate a model for extreme citizen science, in which any community, regardless of their literacy, can utilise scientific methods and tools to understand and control their environment.

Science for everyone by everyone – the re-emergence of citizen science - Audio

Barack Obama won a second term as US president with the support of women, the young, blue collars, African Americans and Latinos. The Republicans, in contrast, retained the support of their habitual white base that is mainly middle aged and older and largely Protestant, in essence representing America's demographic past. The United States remains a politically polarized nation. The Republican party's control of the House of Representatives still enables it to block many of the president's initiatives and as a consequence, Prof Iwan will argue that it is difficult to see the United States making great progress in the next four years towards solving its fiscal and debt problems, tackling climate change, and renewing a schools system on which the nation depends for its future human capital.

Obama's America: The significance of the 2012 elections - Audio

Spring 2013 - UCL's Lunch Hour Lecture Series is an opportunity for anyone to sample the exceptional research work taking place at the university, in bite-size chunks. Speakers are drawn from across UCL and lectures frequently showcase new research and recent academic publications. Lunch Hour Lectures require no pre-booking, are free to attend and are open to anyone on a first-come, first-served basis.

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Lunch Hour Lectures - Spring 2013 - Audio

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