After a month of absence, Café Scientifique is back with a special guest speaker from the University of Southampton. Professor Richard Holt, who led the team that pioneered a new anti-doping test for growth hormone, will be joining us on the 3^rd September to give us an exciting talk on performance enhancing drugs. A professor in Diabetes and Endocrinology, Honorary Consultant Physician and Chair of the Council of Health Care Professionals of Diabetes UK, Professor Richard Holt will surely captivate his audience.

Richard will be discussing the history of performance enhancing drugs, considering the drugs that are currently being used and question why athletes are prepared to risk their careers by taking them. He will also highlight the harm that can be done by these drugs as well as some of the tests used to detect their misuse.

The talk will begin at 7:30pm at the fantastic Café Boscanova and Doors open at 6:30pm, so make sure you come early to get a good seat! Drinks and snacks will also be available for sale.

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This is not one to be missed; we hope to see you there!

For those of you that missed Cafe Scientifique this month, or you want to listen to the talk again, our friends at AECC kindly recorded Jeff’s talk which is now available to view on YouTube here.

For more information about forthcoming Cafe Scientifique events in Bournemouth, you can keep up to date with details on the website, via Facebook, twitter or by e-mail.

Last night witnessed the inaugural Cafe Scientifique in Bournemouth, and we are pleased to report that it was a great success!

With 45 people snugly squeezing into the amazing Cafe Boscanova, Prof Jeff Bagust gave a fascinating, entertaining and accessible talk  on the “Cardiac Foxtrot” which covered the topic of heart rhythms, how they are influenced and why our hearts need to respond to changing conditions. After Jeff’s talk (and re-fill of the superb refreshments on offer), a lively discussed ensued. You can see the conversation on twitter here.

The organising team (Jonny Branney, Sharon Docherty, Becca Edwards  and Naomi Kay) received some great feedback, with comments including “a great night out – keep ’em coming” and “these events will maintain their enjoyability”. For those of you that missed out, next month’s event is on Tuesday 6th November titled “The Fastest Men On No Legs: Oscar Pistorius, Prosthetic Limbs and the Role of Technology in Elite Sport” by BU’s Bryce Dyer.

On a personal note, as a recently appointed Research Development Officer for Public Engagement, I am delighted to see so much enthusiasm for this event. As a relatively new resident in Bournemouth (who for a number of years struggled to find this sort event locally) I am really proud to see such a vibrant community of people come together and have so much fun whilst learning about fascinating research.

Don’t forget that Cafe Scientifique will be taking place on the first Tuesday of every month. You can keep up to date with details on the website, via Facebook, twitter or by e-mail.

If you have an idea of how to engage more of the general public with research, please do not hestitate to contact me on redwards@bournemouth.ac.uk or 01202 961206.

With only 4 weeks to go until the launch of Cafe Scientifique at Cafe Boscanova  (don’t forget to put Tuesday 2 October in your diary!), we are pleased to announce that our first speaker will be Prof Jeff Bagust who will be giving a talk entitled:

“Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow – The Cardiac Foxtrot”. 

This fascinating and entertaining talk will light footedly glide us through the world of heart rate rhythms, how they are influenced and why our hearts need to respond to changing conditions.

The short talk will start at 7pm, followed by plenty of time for discussion. Cafe Boscanova will be selling their usual drinks and a small snack menu.

For those of you who missed our earlier post, Cafe Scientifique at Cafe Boscanova is a new public engagement venture being run jointly by Bournemouth University and the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic. It will run on the first Tuesday of every month (starting in October) and over the next few months we will be bringing you a diverse range of speakers and subjects. All of this for the price of a coffee/glass of wine! Watch this space for more information on upcoming events.

Anyone interested in giving a talk should contact Becca Edwards for more information.

In brief, Café Scientifique is a forum for fostering public engagement with science. It’s about getting academics out of the university and into a pub, café, restaurant (not that academics necessarily require a push in this direction) or similar type of place to give a short talk related to the field in which they are researching, and then for the public to engage in asking questions of the expert and, indeed, of each other. As the Café Scientifique website neatly puts it this is “science for the price of a coffee” or, you may prefer my take on this strap-line, “science for the price of a couple of beers”.

The talk is important, but most important of all is the discussion that it stimulates. Should Oscar Pistorius have been allowed to participate in the Olympic Games? Was it worth spending billions of pounds discovering the Higgs-Boson, and what does its discovery mean? Is climate change definitely largely man-made? Why does toast always land buttered-side down? 

The benefits of the discussion ought to be reciprocal – the public gets to benefit from up-to-date knowledge and to learn about what scientists actually do, and why they do what they do, ‘from the horse’s mouth’, as it were; academics meanwhile get to play their part in the wider dissemination and understanding of their field to the general public. Reporting of science in the media is often sparse and more often inaccurate. Science will never sell newspapers or magazines in quite the same numbers as will news of the signing of Wayne Rooney to Manchester City (wee joke), the Duchess of York’s latest dress or Katie Price’s latest marriage (totally serious). The Bournemouth SciCafé is one option for us to help redress the balance, dispel myths, empower, stimulate and inspire. The Bournemouth SciCafé is being organised by myself (chiropractor and BU PhD student) with Sharon Docherty (biologist and fellow AECC researcher) and two colleagues at BU, Becca Edwards (Research Development Officer – Public Engagement) and Naomi Kay (Events Co-ordinator).

Contact me, Jonny,  if you’d like more information about attending or, even better, if you’d like to give a talk yourself. We’d particularly like to hear from you if you can give a talk related to the Olympics, whether on sports performance, psychology, training, the economic and social impact of the Games etc.  We look forward to seeing you, or, listening and discussing with you, very soon! First speakers to be announced soon! Further updates will be posted here.

If you would like more details about public engagement activities at BU, please contact Becca Edwards on redwards@bournemouth.ac.uk or 01202 961206.