"OMG!! Is that GMO in my dinner?" at tonight's Valley Café Scientifique

We resume the Central Valley Café Scientifique tonight after a prolonged summer hiatus - and at a new venue too! My colleague Dr. Alejandro Calderón-Urrea will start the new season with a talk about GMOs and suicidal worms! You know where to find the details, don't you? The Café's website, of course! And you've always had our Google Group to get email updates. But now there are a couple of new ways for you to keep up with the Café: join us on our new Facebook page, and follow us on twitter too! And soon, if we manage to master the technology, we may start podcasting the talks afterwards! So watch this space (and all the above spaces too) for that development.

Most importantly, of course, I hope to see you in person tonight!

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The forensics of investigating meth labs at tonight's Café Scientifique!

Tonight we — i.e., the Central Valley Café Scientifique — present what appears to be (barring some last minute surprise) the final talk of the academic year - on methamphetamine labs. Before we go on our summer hiatus, Dr. Eric Person, my colleague in the Chemistry Department here who had law enforcement experience up in the Washington area prior to joining academia, will tell us about the forensics of pursuing meth labs in answering the question "Why is it so hard to buy Sudafed?". The Café will be at the usual time (6:30-8:30 PM) and place (Lucy's Lair), and you can get all the details, including map and directions, at our website.

And no, we did not deliberately time this talk about meth labs just days before finals week!!

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Islands in the Sky - at tonights Valley Cafe Sci!

Its time for another Café Scientifique tonight here in Fresno. And this time we have Robin Vijayan, a Fulbright scholar visiting my lab for his graduate research (he actually roped me in as a coadviser for his Ph.D. for some odd reason!) telling us about "Islands in the Sky: Science and conservation in the montane forests of India" - well, southern India, to be exact.

We meet, as usual, at the wonderful Lucy's Lair Ethiopian restaurant in north Fresno, from 6:30 - 8:30 PM. Perhaps I'll see you there!

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Evolutionary ecology of city life at the Central Valley Café Scientifique tonight

Tonight, the Central Valley Café Scientifique presents a talk by yours truly! Here's the announcement:

Of junk food, city jive, & homelessness: the evolutionary ecology of city life

Dr. Madhusudan Katti, Dept. of Biology, California State University, Fresno

Monday, Sep 8, 2008, 6:30-8:30 PM

North India Grill

80 W Shaw Ave.,Clovis, CA 93612 ☎ (559) 325-7788 In the Village Square Shopping Center, S/W of Shaw at Minnewawa.

Go fishing in the bay for dinner, or fish KFC out of the dump - what’s an urban gull to eat? Scarf up the human handouts and you can start breeding early - but can a suburban scrub jay parent raise a family on that kind of food? What’s with the high-pitch songs of the Dutch urban tits? Why are there, often, more birds of fewer kinds in cities than outside them? And why might rich neighborhoods have more bird species than poorer neighborhoods?

As it turns out, recent research on these questions suggests that birds flock to cities (as do monkeys, raccoons and other of our urban commensals) for reasons not all that different from our own. I will draw upon research from my laboratory and elsewhere to explore the evolutionary ecology of how some species may become habitual urban dwellers, and what we might do to allow others to coexist with us amid sprawling cities.

And remember that the Central Valley Café Scientifique meets on the first Monday of every month (except this one because we had labor day last week!).

For more information, visit the website, and/or sign up to the Google Group.

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