Space is limited; $10 cover (cash only) includes one drink
First Come, First Served
No Reservations, No Saving Seats

To join our Café Science event distribution list or for more information about Café Science or Columbia Science Connection programs, contact us at cafescience@columbia.edu.

Summer 2009 Series on the Upper West Side:

Urban Sustainability: Can We Engineer It?
Civil Engineer Patricia Culligan
May 11, 6–7 p.m.

At the beginning of the last century, 15% of the World’s population lived in urban areas. Today that number is over 50%. As a result, some of the most pressing needs for sustainable design and management of the natural and built environments are located within urban contexts. As the world’s population dramatically increases so will urbanization, concentrating more people on less land. Within a decade, over 35 “mega-cities” across the world will be catering to populations in excess of 10 million. New York will be among these cities. Indeed, New York might be the only city left among a “top-ten” list of mega-cities that is located in Northern America or Europe. So what are the urbanization challenges that New York City faces? Are they serious? Can we overcome them? Might we even lead in the development of strategies for sustainable urbanization? Come hear the perspective of an engineer.

Black Holes Sing*
Astrophysicist  Janna Levin
June 8, 6–7 p.m.

Black Holes are the ultimate death state of very massive stars. Collapsing under their own weight, the dead cores will curve spacetime so strongly that not even light can escape. Black holes emit no light and reflect no light. They are dark against a dark sky and effectively invisible. When two black holes move in orbit around each other, they churn up the spacetime around them, emanating waves in the fabric of space itself. These waves are like the waves on a drum and are closest in analogy to sound waves: the black holes are singing. Gravitational waves move through the universe, and us, all the time squeezing and stretching space but so weakly that we don’t notice. Monumental experiments built on Earth and planned for space aim to record the extraordinary sounds of black hole orbits.

*Title inspired by Dennis Overbye of the New York Times.

Greening an Urban University: Oxymorons, Windmills and Carbon Footprints
Environmental Steward Nilda Mesa
July 13, 6–7 p.m.

Riddle: What university gives out 24 different environmental degrees while being located in a concrete metropolis? Would putting up windmills on Columbia's campus reduce its carbon footprint, or would it be a quixotic effort? Columbia University, with its three campuses and 44,000 faculty, staff and students, has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2017. The University's proposed Manhattanville campus is in the LEED-ND pilot program, and other ambitious sustainability initiatives have been launched in the last few years. Join us for a discussion of Columbia's approach to reducing its environmental footprint, and how students, faculty and staff are deeply engaged in this vital work-in-progress in the largest urban center in the U.S.

It's in your hands…reduce the risk of infection
Nurse  Elaine Larson
August 10, 6–7 p.m.

Dr. Larson has been involved in the prevention and control of infectious diseases in hospitals and in the community for several decades. In this session we will explore some of the common and continuing infectious disease problems encountered in the community, as well as simple things that can and should be done to keep healthy and reduce one's risk of infection. Some of the questions that we will discuss include: How are respiratory infections such as colds and flu spread, why are they so common, and how can we reduce our risk? What are the most effective ways to keep one's hands clean, are some soaps better than others, and what about antibacterial products? When and how should antibiotics be used? How do we deal with the expanding problem of antibiotic resistance and prevent the spread of 'superbugs' such as methicillin-resistant staphylococci that are causing outbreaks in sports teams and schools?
Click here to read about Elaine Larson in the Wall Street Journal.

SPECIAL EVENT The Physics of Angels & Demons and Beyond... Antimatter Bombs, Mini Black Holes, and Extra Dimensions Presented by Experimental Particle Physicist Michael Tuts Tuesday, May 26, 7-8 p.m. PicNic Market & Café 2665 Broadway (between 101st and 102nd Street) New York Special Prix Fixe Dinner offered for Café Science attendees. Call for dinner reservations: PicNic Café 212-222-8222 The recent movie Angels & Demons, based on the novel by Dan Brown, features an antimatter-matter bomb made from antimatter produced and stolen from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. Is that science fact or fiction? We will use that as a jumping off point to talk about what really goes on at CERN. Parts of the movie were actually filmed at CERN and later this year the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will start colliding protons at the highest energies ever produced in the laboratory. Antimatter will certainly be created in those collisions, as well as many other possible exciting phenomena such as mini black holes, or evidence for the existence of extra space dimensions (beyond the three we are all familiar with), or the discovery of new particles that may form the dark matter of the universe. We will talk about it in the context of one of the large experiments called ATLAS, which incidentally can be seen in the movie, of which I am a member (together with 2500 physicists from over 35 countries). The ATLAS and other detectors, together with LHC accelerator, is one of the largest scientific experiments ever undertaken, and the results may change our view of the universe we live in.