Science on Tap is a science lecture series where you can sit back, enjoy a pint, and laugh while you learn. Listen to experts talk about the science in your neighborhood and around the world. You don’t have to be a science geek to have fun—all you need is a thirst for knowledge!
September 11th at 7pm
THE MICROBIOME: FECAL TRANSPLANT AND MICROBIAL ECOLOGY
Over the past several decades, we have gained immense insight into the world of the human microbiome. The observations made using techniques like Fecal Microbiota Transplant and microbial sequencing are contributing to a new paradigm of what it means to be human. We now know we are not alone in our own bodies. We have a compilation of trillions of microbes living in and on us. They are working together with our cells as a complex ecosystem, one that defines us as a holobiont. Through the lens of the human microbiome we are challenged to approach health like we do ecology. We can begin to think about how every choice we make is interfacing with this ecosystems.
Andrea McBeth is a Naturopathic Doctor with a passion for shifting perspectives toward microbiome-centered health. Her scientific background includes a degree in biochemistry and research pursuits in various areas of molecular and cellular biology. After years working in cancer research, she left academia and the hospital to be a full-time patient advocate for a family member with cancer. That experience and her own journey of chronic pain and autoimmune disease led her to the pursue healthcare and advocacy using the tools of naturopathic medicine. As a licensed N.D. in Oregon and Washington, she focuses her clinical care on functional gastrointestinal and autoimmune issues. In conjunction with her functional medicine practice, she founded and runs a stool bank that provides Fecal Microbiota Transplant for the treatment of resistant Clostridium difficile infection as well as investigational applications for other microbiome therapies.
Through her work with Fecal Transplant and as a functional medicine physician, she believes strongly that we will need to be creative in our ways to save the microbial diversity of the human microbiome for the sake of our health. Just as climate change is ravishing the Earth’s biodiversity, so too, our microbiomes are being decimated by Western lifestyles. Standard American diets, overuse of pharmaceutical medications, beauty products, and the loss of everyday interactions with natural soil and plant microbes are all contributing to this loss. She posits that our approach to saving our health and planet will need to be as multifaceted as the ways in which we are destroying it.
This is a repeat of the talk held at the Alberta Rose Theatre in February 2019. Get your tickets here or at the Theatre box office the night of show!
October 9th at 7pm
STRANGER THAN FICTION: IT’S A CRUEL NATURAL WORLD
People across cultures have revered nature for giving life to all things and Mother Nature is often personified as nurturing, benevolent, and seeking to promote the abundance of life. But Mother Nature is not always so nice. Nature also can wreak havoc in the animal kingdom, and has evolved things such as parasites capable of mind control, cannibalistic mates, and fetuses that eat their siblings in utero. In the second installment of our Science is Stranger than Fiction series and just in time for Halloween, Leslie New, PhD, assistant professor of statistics at WSU Vancouver, will take us on a tour of some of the fascinating, horrifying, and totally natural ways that Mother Nature can be ruthless.
At this Science on Tap, Leslie New, PhD, assistant professor of statistics at WSU Vancouver, will take us on a tour of some of the weirdest specimens from museum collections in the western world and describe how scientists through the centuries have tried to understand death and the afterlife.
November 13th at 7pm
MAKING MEMORIES: USING NEUROSCIENCE TO ENHANCE TEACHING AND LEARNING
How does your brain learn best? As the field of Neuroscience uncovers the neural mechanisms of perception and learning, can we begin to bring these findings into the classroom to help improve how students learn? Right before the school year begins, this Science on Tap will discuss the brain’s learning networks, their emotional connections and how the visual and motor pathways influence what we process. Join us as Dr. Mark Pitzer demonstrates of how each brain circuit can be recruited by instructors to improve teaching and learning in and out of the classroom and how neuroscience can make learning truly memorable.
Mark Pitzer, Ph.D. is a Neuroscientist at the University of Portland. For the last 25 years he has worked to better understand diseases of the brain. He has worked on techniques to improve the survival of newly transplanted brain cells as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease and, more recently, conducted experiments using a genetic technique to halt the production of toxic proteins in the brain as a potential treatment for Huntington’s disease. Currently, his lab is conducting experiments designed to identify the neural circuits and neurotransmitters that play a role in the personality changes that affect those who suffer from Huntington’s disease. Mark is also an award-winning teacher that uses the findings from the fields of Learning and Neuroscience to invoke enduring enthusiasm, curiosity and deep learning in his college students.
This is a repeat of the talk held at the Alberta Rose Theatre in August 2019.
7:00 PM