The upcoming lecture in our joint series with Edinburgh University Science Magazine (EUSci) will be given by Dr Tilo Kunath on Parkinson's disease and stem cells on 4th May 2015 at 7:30pm.

Synopsis:

What is so special about stem cells? Why is there so much hype about them? Dr Tilo Kunath from the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine will address these questions and separate fact from fiction. He will describe the different kinds of stem cells he uses in his lab, human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, and explore why there has been controversy around using stem cells for research and as a treatment. Tilo will use Parkinson’s disease as a concrete example of where stem cells have a significant chance of providing novel treatments for this condition.

Note our change of venue in the Old College, South Bridge. To get to the lecture theatre, go up the slope into Old College, when reach grass turn right (north) and you are facing the entrance.

Tickets are free but advance booking is requested so we can plan for numbers. Book your place here.

In the second in our series of joint lectures with the Edinburgh University Science Magazine (EUSci), Professor Andrew Millar will present a talk on how plants respond to springtime. What can we learn from plants about how to respond to our own environments?

Professor Millar is Chair of Systems Biology at Edinburgh University, and is also the associate director of SynthSys, a research centre for synthetic biology. He was previously involved in the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA), in GARNet, the UK's Arabidopsis research network, and was founding Director of SynthSys' predecessor, the Centre for Systems Biology at Edinburgh (CSBE).

In order to achieve a 50/50 chance of limiting global temperature rise to the UNFCCC policy goal of no more than 2°C, there is very strong evidence future emissions of carbon to the atmosphere cannot exceed 300 gigatonnes. Combustion of current identified and valued fossil fuel reserves would result in emission of approximately 1000 gigatones of carbon.

As fossil fuels will remain the dominant source of world energy for decades to come it is clear that unabated emissions from them is not congruent with meeting internationally agreed climate targets. However, not all hydrocarbons are equal in their carbon emissions, with natural gas combustion emitting around half the CO2per unit energy compared with coal.

Additionally, application of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) offers the potential to massively reduce emissions from large point sources of CO2. The recent US boom in shale gas production has displaced coal usage leading to a reduction in emissions from point sources, and potentially an opportunity to legislate CO2emissions controls. How replicable is this in other regions? European governments are pulled between the attraction of a potential new domestic energy resource, and addressing public concerns that exploiting unconventional gas could cause unacceptable environmental, social and climate damage.

I will examine how engineering best practice and integration with CCS might allow the unconventional gas industry to achieve a 'social license to operate'. Can a 'golden age of gas' buy time to address the challenge of climate mitigation?