[NMScience] Feb talks at Natural History

[Connealy, Selena, DCA]

Events at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in
February, details follow.

--Teachers' Workshop:  
RACE Are We So Different?
Saturday, February 9, 2008   9 a.m. - Noon

--Lectures/Presentations:
Darwin's Travel Companion: The Voyage of the Beetle
Anne H. Weaver, Ph.D., author, and George Lawrence, illustrator
Saturday, February 9, 2008  2 p.m. reading/book signing with family
activities

Chaco Astronomy: An Ancient American Cosmology
Anna Sofaer
Tuesday, February 12, 2008   7 p.m.

Deep Earthquakes and the Secrets of Seismology
Cliff Frohlich, Ph.D.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008  7 p.m.

Looking ahead:
Jack Horner, Ph.D.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008  7 p.m.

________________

Special One-Time Teachers' Workshop
RACE Are We So Different
Saturday, February 9, 2008
9:00 a.m. - Noon
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science

Don't pass up this opportunity to receive special teacher training on
race and human variation from experts who developed and produced the new
award-winning, public education program 
RACE Are We So Different?  The workshop, designed for middle and high
school teachers, introduces new teaching tools that meet national and
state standards in science/biology and social studies/social sciences.
RACE Are We So Different? includes an interactive web site
(www.understandingRACE.org), 
a traveling museum exhibit, and educational materials.  The program was
developed by the American Anthropological Association with funding from
the Ford Foundation and National Science Foundation. 

RACE Are We So Different? challenges common ideas about race and reveals
that:
* Race is a recent human invention
* Race is about culture, not biology
* Race and racism are embedded in our institutions and everyday life.

Explore the biology of human variation and see how culture shapes race
in the United States.  
Training will be provided by Dr. Mary Margaret (Peggy) Overbey,
Principal Investigator 
and Director of the RACE Project at the AAA, and Dr. Janis Hutchinson,
Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Houston and a
member of the RACE Project Advisory Board. 

This FREE workshop includes refreshments. Limited number of $60 stipends
available.

Space is limited!

CONTACT August Wainwright 505-841-2861   august.wainwright at state.nm.us

Where: New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
1801 Mountain Rd. NW  Albuquerque, NM 87104
____________________

Teachers:  We would like to invite you and your students to attend the
Museum's public lecture series.  Most are offered free or at a nominal
cost. We encourage you to go over proper behavior at a public lecture
with your students. Feel free to contact us about a particular talk to
find out whether it will be appropriate for your students.  


Voices in Science Lecture Series

Darwin's Travel Companion: The Voyage of the Beetle
Saturday, February 9, 2008  2 p.m.
Anne H. Weaver, Ph.D., author, and George Lawrence, illustrator

The Voyage of the Beetle: A journey around the world with Charles Darwin
and the Search for the Solution to the Mystery of Mysteries, as narrated
by Rosie, an Articulate Beetle   is a new young adult book published by
UNM Press. Rosie, the rose chafer beetle, and Charles Darwin seek the
answers for why there are so many different species living on Earth and
why each is uniquely fitted for its environment. Celebrate Darwin Day
and join us for this special family program. The author and illustrator
will take us on a fun tour exploring rainforests, fossils, geology, and
sea and land animals. 

Author Anne H. Weaver has a Ph.D. in anthropology from UNM and has
taught at Santa Fe Community College for many years.  Illustrator George
Lawrence worked in New York City as an architectural designer, and now
lives in Santa Fe illustrating and designing exhibits for parks and
nature centers throughout the country. 

Free with Museum admission 
Family activities and a book signing will follow the presentation.



Chaco Astronomy: An Ancient American Cosmology
Anna Sofaer
Tuesday, February 12, 2008   7 p.m.

High on a butte in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon at summer solstice in 1977,
Anna Sofaer encountered an astonishing phenomenon--a single shaft of
light bisecting a spiral petroglyph, crafted long ago by the ancestors
of today's Pueblo people. Her recognition of its significance led to
thirty years of research and recovery regarding astronomical expressions
in the complex architecture and art of an ancient people. These efforts
changed forever our perception of the meaning and purpose of Chaco.  Ms.
Sofaer will present information from her new book documenting 30 years
of research regarding the "Sun Dagger" site, lunar and solar alignments
of the major Chaco buildings, and implications of the true function of
the Great North Road.  A remarkable digital reconstruction of the
original three-slab site on Fajada Butte will also be shown.

Anna Sofaer is Director of the non-profit Solstice Project, the
organization she founded in 1978 that conducts research, preservation
and education efforts on the astronomical expressions of the Chacoan
Culture of the Southwest. She has worked with anthropologists,
astronomers, geographers, and modern Pueblo people.  She produced,
directed, and co-wrote "The Mystery of Chaco Canyon" shown on PBS and
National Geographic channels.  

Co-sponsored by the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center and Bookworks.

Cost: $2 public/$1 members, seniors, students


IRIS/SSA Distinguished Lecture
Deep Earthquakes and the Secrets of Seismology
Cliff Frohlich, Ph.D.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008  7 p.m.

About a quarter of all earthquakes originate at depths more than 60 km
(40 miles) beneath the Earth's surface, and some at depths as great as
700 km (440 miles). These "deep" earthquakes have been an enigma because
pressures and temperatures are too great at these depths for ordinary
brittle fracture to occur. Dr. Frohlich's talk will address what is
known and unknown about the mechanical origin of deep earthquakes and
explain why they have been used in studies of the Earth's interior
structure. His talk will involve raw and cooked eggs, baseballs, coffee
pots, champagne bottles, diamonds, air hockey, and ultrasound! All who
attend Frohlich's lecture, young and old, will learn a great deal about
basic earthquake seismology, including much that all seismologists know
but seldom tell.

Cliff Frohlich, Ph.D. is currently Associate Director and Senior
Research Scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics
where he has been for 30 years. His two most persistent research
interests concern deep earthquakes and the statistical analysis of
earthquake catalogs. However, his focus regularly wanders: earlier in
his career he participated in field projects in Alaska and Vanuatu
involving the deployment of ocean bottom seismographs; currently he is
investigating moonquakes and tsunamis. He has published two books and
about 100 research papers, most concerning earthquake seismology, but
several on the physics of sports.

Cost: $2 public/$1 members, seniors, students

This talk is sponsored by the Incorporated Research Institutions for
Seismology (IRIS) and the Seismological Society of America (SSA)



Looking ahead:
Jack Horner, Ph.D.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008  7 p.m.

Noted paleontologist Dr. Jack Horner will be speaking at the Museum in
May. He is Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, Regents
Professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, and is
Adjunct Curator at the National Museum of Natural History. Dr. Horner
discovered the first dinosaur eggs in the Western Hemisphere, the first
evidence of dinosaur colonial nesting, the first evidence of parental
care among dinosaurs, and the first dinosaur embryos. Dr. Horner's
research covers a wide range of topics about dinosaurs, including their
behavior, physiology, ecology, evolution, and growth rate. His recent
work has been on soft tissue analysis from a very rare Tyrannosaurus
find with actual dinosaur proteins preserved in the core of a leg bone.
In 2007, he headed an expedition to the Gobi Desert collecting more than
80 skeletons of Psittacosaurus. He has named several dinosaurs and had
two dinosaurs named for him. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship
"genius grant," Dr. Horner has dyslexia and hopes to inspire young
people with learning differences about what can be achieved with
persistence and support. He was a technical advisor on all the Jurassic
Park movies as well as being the real scientist on which the character
Dr. Alan Grant was loosely based.

Tickets: $12 adult/ $10 members & seniors/ $5 students plus on-line
service charge.

Tickets are available on line at:
www.NaturalHistoryFoundation.org/horner.html

Advance tickets are available online only.  Online ticket sales will end
4 hours prior to the talk. Any unsold tickets can be purchased the night
of the talk at the Museum beginning at 4:30 p.m.
Tickets will not be sold over the phone or at the Museum prior to that
evening. 
All tickets are non-refundable.




All talks are at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science
1801 Mountain Rd NW, Albuquerque, NM 87104
505-841-2800
Check our website at: www.NMnaturalhistory.org
Questions? Call Tish Morris at 505-841-2882.
You may reserve tickets (for all but Jack Horner) by contacting Chris
Sanchez at 841-2872, chris.sanchez at state.nm.us 




Tish Morris
Senior Education Specialist
New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science
1801 Mountain Rd NW
Albuquerque, NM 87104
505-841-2882
tish.morris at state.nm.us
www.NMnaturalhistory.org



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