Road Closures and Parking Constraints... all for a good nerdy cause!
We were given a heads-up that there may be some road closures around Wurst for Nerd Nite due to… Beakerhead! Four to Six will be happening on 4 St from 23 Ave down to 26 Ave (Wurst is right in the middle of that zone). There will be a bunch of nerdy, sciencey, goodness happening around Wurst so feel free to come early to check it out. Also keep in mind parking issues, etc. in the area. Four to Six will be happening Wed, Thur, and Friday (Sept 19-21) from, you guessed it, 4pm to 6pm.

The first Nerd Nite of the season is coming up quick! What better way to start the new school year than with a bit of learning and drinking?

When: Thursday, September 20, 2018 (Doors open at 6:00pm, talks start at 7:00pm)
Where: WURST (2437 4 St SW)
Tickets: Sold out, waitlist here

This is an 18+ event.

SPEAKERS

Octopuses are the real chameleons
Jennifer Mather, Ph.D., University of Lethbridge

Octopuses are the real chameleons.  They can look like anything they want to, and they have a whole skin chromatophore system to do this.  Mostly they want not to be seen, blending into the background with colours, textures and postures to match.  Sometimes they want to be seen, they can startle you away by changing how they look really fast.  Some of them can put blue warning circles on their skin; good thing, as they are deadly poisonous.  Once in a while they can use the skin patterns to signal their sex to each other, mostly it’s probably chemical cues.  Best of all, they are colour blind, so they can’t see what they produce.  How do they do that, and why?  I’ll speculate.

Exploration of Canada’s Deepest Cave
Katie Graham, Cave Explorer and Expedition Leader

An overview of the discovery of Bisaro Anima cave and the exploration that has proven it to be Canada’s deepest cave.

Transport Planning / ELA
Andrew Sedor, Business Development Coordinator in Transportation at the City of Calgary
Dan Fox, Leader of The City’s Electric Vehicle Strategy

Andrew Sedor

New transportation technology helps shape cities. For over 100 years, Calgary and cities across the globe have been shaped by the automobile. Planning transportation around the automobile has allowed people to live further away from their work and gave rise to most of the urban form in the modern world. New transportation technologies are expected to continue to change cities.

Over the past decade, increased computing power, smart phones and technological discoveries have enabled the development of technologies that were once in the realm of science fiction. While cities cannot predict the future, there are major technological and social trends occurring in transportation. Autonomy, electrification, connectivity and shared mobility are predicted to impact transportation over the upcoming decades.

Andrew Sedor, from The City of Calgary Transportation Department, will be talking about how these future technologies may impact cities, and what the City of Calgary is doing to prepare. Andrew is currently leading one of Canada’s first autonomous vehicle pilots, and is leading the City’s living labs initiative.

Come join us at WURST for our last Nerd Nite of the season! This Season Finale is sure to be a cliff hanger…

When: Thursday, June 14th , 2018
Where: WURST (2437 4 St SW)
Tickets: Sold out! Wait list here
This is an 18+ event.

SPEAKERS

Everything you never knew you wanted to know about radon, gas, radiation and you
Dr. Aaron Goodarzi, University of Calgary, Canada Research Chair for Radiation Exposure Disease

Most of us have learned a degree of ‘fear’ surrounding (ionizing) radiation and the diseases connected to exposure, typically from popular culture, more spectacular historical events or word of mouth. However, exactly *why* we should be concerned, and also the surprising nature of the radiation sources that we should and also should not be worried about, is often missed from this conversation. In this evenings talk, you will learn the answers to all of these questions, as well as how scientists are figuring out who are the hidden superheroes amongst us, how studying the air of basements can help us colonize space and why working in a nuclear power plant can sometimes save your life.

Colours of the Brain
Dave Siever, CEO of Mind Alive Inc.

Once upon a time EEGs could only show squiggly lines that a researcher or clinician “oohed and aahed” at, not knowing quite what to make of these elusive & exciting brain wave events. However, with the advent of the quantification of brain wave activity over time, computer algorithms allowed researchers and clinicians to view beautiful and colorful images of brain activity that goes far beyond what can be gleaned from squiggly lines. This technique is termed quantified EEG or qEEG. QEEG enables us the ability to identify and treat a wide variety of brain/behavioral conditions including depression, several types of anxiety, OCD, ADD, ADHD, dementia, brain injuries from hits to the head, viral infections, strokes and more.

The Chemistry of the World’s Smallest Sponges
George Shimizu,  University of Calgary. Co-Founder, ZoraMat Solutions Inc.

Many global challenges, from desalinating water to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, come down to bringing about some form of separation in an energy efficient manner. Our research concerns making new solid materials with regular pores and channels on the nanometer scale. On this scale, the cavities are on the order of individual molecules and the ability to separate targets becomes very selective. In this talk I will present some of the techniques we use to prove the structure of materials and how they work followed by some of the global challenges where a better means of separating molecules is needed. Finally, I will mention some of our very successful work on using these little molecular sponges to selectively and efficiently remove carbon dioxide from gas streams.