Branch AGM and lecture: Do animals experience happiness and why does it matter?

Thursday 14 June

Lecture Theatre 2, EIT, Taradale

5.30pm: AGM Hawke’s Bay Branch, Royal Society Te Apārangi

6.00pm: Do animals experience happiness and why does it matter?

Professor Nat Waran, Executive Dean – Faculty of Education, Humanities and Health Science, EIT

Until recently, animal welfare assessment relied on measures of physical health, and changes in behaviour and physiology related to negative emotional states such as pain and stress. However, it is now widely accepted that good welfare is not simply the absence of disease or negative experiences, but also the presence of positive experiences such as pleasure. Understanding what good welfare is, how welfare can be assessed across a range of environments and uses, and what needs to be done to achieve higher welfare, is considered to be a key priority for ensuring the welfare of animals in their interactions with humans.

Before joining EIT, Nat led a number of strategic projects in her most recent role as a professor and inaugural director of the new International Centre for Animal Welfare Education at the University of Edinburgh, one of the UK’s leading universities. From 2006 to 2011, she was Associate Dean (Research) at Unitec’s Faculty of Social and Health Sciences in tandem with her role as Head of the School of Natural Sciences.

Nat has a first class zoology degree from Glasgow University and a PhD from Cambridge University, and has worked in many different countries including China, India and Malaysia.

Digital breaths: The benefits of bioengineering

6pm Wednesday 20 June


EIT, 501 Gloucester St, Taradale,  Lecture Theatre LTH1
Free admission
Register to guarantee your seat at: royalsociety.org.nz/events


Professor Merryn Tawhai

Director MedTech CoRE & Dep. Director Auckland Bioengineering Institute

An aging population and increase in people living with chronic disease calls for new approaches to reduce healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes. Recent advances in imaging, sensor, and communications technologies, combined with innovative bioengineering approaches, has the potential to revolutionise healthcare.

Does New Zealand have the capability to become a world leader in this industry?

Merryn’s own research advances computer modelling of the human lung in search of better methods to diagnose and treat lung disease.

Proudly presented in partnership with the Auckland Bioengineering Institute of the University of Auckland and the Medical Technologies Centre of Research Excellence.

2018 Leonard Cockayne Lecture: Ornamental to detrimental; the invasion of New Zealand by non-native plants

6pm Thursday 10 May 2018

Hawke’s Bay EIT, 501 Gloucester St, Taradale Lecture Theatre LTH1

Entry: free, guarantee your seat by registering now HERE

Professor Philip Hulme FRSNZ

Bio-Protection Research Centre Chair in Plant Biosecurity, Lincoln University

Aotearoa has more types of non-native plants than almost anywhere else in the world. It was believed that such non-natives would never pose a risk to our native flora, but many of these introduced species are now causing significant economic and environmental costs. Philip explores New Zealand’s history of plant invasions and examines the underlying causes and potential future trends. Some of these invasive plants have been introduced as commercial crops such as pine and pasture grasses, while others arrived as ornamentals from around the world for both home and botanic gardens. Could invasive plants and non-native weeds choke our country? What are the tools to control these current and future flora threats?

Presented by Royal Society Te Aparangi in partnership with the Bio-Protection Research Centre.

Visit to Mr Apple Packhouse, Whakatu

Date: Wednesday 2 May, 5.30pm

Venue: Mr Apple packhouse, Station Road, Whakatu (entrance is adjacent to the Horti Centre)

Admission: 40 people maximum, members take priority

To secure your place, please email: hawkesbay.rsnz@gmail.com

Mr Apple is the biggest apple marketer in Hawke’s Bay, producing and exporting 25% of the New Zealand apple crop. They manage 53 Global-Gap accredited orchards, on over 1,000 hectares of Hawke’s Bay land. They apply cutting edge science and technology to growing, harvesting, grading, packing and storing apples, to maximise product quality and shelf life.

We will be hosted by Packhouse Logistics & Production Planning Manager Rob Sykes and packhouse staff, for a presentation on the business and a packhouse tour. We’ll learn about the application of science, technology and engineering in the business.

Please note the dress code:

  • flat (i.e. no heels), close fitting (i.e. not loose fitting ballet-type), fully closed-in shoes
  • tie back long hair
  • remove all jewellery and watches; only a plain wedding band and medic-alert bracelet are permitted
  • Mr Apple will provide hair nets, hi vis and hearing protection.

Gravitational waves: listening in to the sounds of the universe

Tuesday 10 April 2018 at 7.00pm

Professor Joachim Brand

Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonics and Quantum Technologies, New Zealand and Institute of Advanced Study, Massey University Auckland

Venue: Holt’s Planetarium, NBHS, Chambers Street, Napier

Admission: Gold coin donation

This lecture examines how the detection of gravitational waves resembles listening more than seeing and how the merging of two black holes was ‘heard’, a discovery that most likely could never have been made with conventional telescopes. Joachim also looks at the amazing technology of laser interferometry that made this detection possible, and the development of quantum technologies that will make future detectors even more sensitive.

Joachim Brand is a theoretical physicist and a true explorer. He is drawn to the wildest most untamed realms of physics where the rules we learn at school no longer apply. Joachim refers to these realms as “unsafe” zones. His passion is to establish little islands of order and safety amidst the chaos. His main motivation is curiosity but his intrepid adventures are also laying the foundations for the technological revolutions of the future like quantum computing.

Originally from a small town in Germany, Joachim first came to New Zealand as an undergraduate backpacker with a bike. He spent eight weeks riding around and fell in love with the country. He did his PhD in Quantum Chemistry at Heidelberg University but then discovered the emerging field of cold atoms and switched direction. He was already captivated by quantum theory and this new field would allow him to create and observe almost any quantum phenomena he could think up. Joachim spent his Postdoc at the University of Washington learning everything he could about cold atoms. After that, a four-year advanced Postdoc at the Max Planck Institute enabled him to meet and work with many of the world’s leading theorists. Then, looking for some space and quiet to get on with his own work, Joachim applied for a job in New Zealand. Now both he and his wife, who is also a Professor of Physics, are happily settled at Massey University in Auckland.

 

The London Bombings – Experience from the Shop Floor – Trauma Orthopaedics

Tuesday 27 March 2018 at 6.00pm

Dr Anjan Banerjee , Orthopaedic Surgeon

Venue: EIT Lecture Theatre 2

Admission: Gold coin donation

7 July 2005 started just like any other day: the trip to work and then the Trauma Meeting at St Mary’s Hospital followed by the Ward Round. Unfortunately the day changed after that. The Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times,” seemed most apt to describe that day. Soon after the meeting ended the MAJAX Alert was sent to all Pagers in the Hospital.

This is an account of how the hospital and in particular the Orthopaedic & Trauma Team at St Mary’s Hospital responded to the Major Incident and an overview of the principles of Mass Casualty Management and Damage Control Orthopaedic Surgery.

Dr Anjan Banerjee is a General Practitioner at the Taradale Medical Centre who has 15 years’ experience in Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgery. He also works as a GP with Special interest in Musculoskeletal Medicine and is a Police Medical Officer for Hawkes Bay. He was Trained in the UK and holds a MBChB from Dundee University and the MRCS from The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. At the time of the London Bombings, he was the Spinal Registrar at St Mary’s Hospital in London, which received all the casualties from the Edgeware Road bomb in the London underground.

New Zealand’s Rivers: can we learn from history?

Thursday  22 March  7.30 pm

Lecture Theatre 1, EIT, Taradale
Catherine Knight, MA,  PhD
Environmental Historian

Free Entry

A new year and a new government, but little sign yet of any tangible progress towards making our rivers more ‘swimmable’ – an issue that attracted such controversy last year. That controversy reflected the sense of urgency that many New Zealanders feel about the perilous state of many of our waterways, concern that shows no sign of diminishing. In this talk, Dr Catherine Knight, author of New Zealand’s Rivers: An environmental history, will provide important context to this debate by exploring some of our complex – and often conflicted – history with rivers since humans first settled in Aotearoa New Zealand. She will argue that knowing our history is an important foundation to forging a better future, both in terms of our environment and our socioeconomic wellbeing.

Catherine Knight is an environmental historian. New Zealand’s Rivers: An environmental history (Canterbury University Press, 2016) was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2017 and was selected as one of the Listener’s Best Books for 2016. Her previous book, Ravaged Beauty: An environmental history of the Manawatu (Dunmore Press, 2014), won the J.M. Sherrard major award for excellence in regional and local history, and Palmerston North Heritage Trust’s inaugural award for the best work of history relating to the Manawatu. Her next book is entitled Beyond Manapouri: 50 years of environmental politics in New Zealand, and will be published in May 2018. Catherine is a policy and communications consultant and lives with her family on a small farmlet in the Manawatu, where they are working towards restoring the totara forest that once thrived on the river terraces.

New Zealand’s Rivers: An environmental history will be available for sale (cash only) on the night. RRP $49.99

 

Seaweek lecture: Stingrays

Wednesday 7 March 2018 at 7.30pm

Helen Cadwallader MSc, PhD student, Waikato University

Venue: National Aquarium, Marine Parade, Napier

Admission: Gold coin donation

Stingrays in New Zealand are largely understudied, but as large coastal elasmobranch species, they are potentially exposed to some of the greatest anthropogenic risks. This talk will describe what we know about them, why they are important, and how we as humans are affecting them, from removal of habitat to their portrayal in the media. It will also highlight why we in New Zealand are in an excellent position to study them, and describe Helen’s current study on New Zealand’s rays, including how the rays here in the Aquarium have joined in the research.

Helen Cadwallader is a PhD candidate with the University of Waikato based at the Coastal Marine Field Station in Tauranga. She completed her MSc at Bangor University in her home country of Wales, where she specialised in cleaner-client interactions between tropical wrasse and pelagic thresher sharks, and her BSc at the University of Bristol, where her honours research concentrated on the behavioural reactions of freshwater fish to anthropogenic underwater noise. Helen specialises in elasmobranch behaviour and ecology and her PhD focuses on the stingray species in New Zealand, their spatial and feeding ecology in the Tauranga Harbour, and the potential impacts that the urbanisation of this area may be having on them.

Plastic Pollution and Solutions in the South Pacific

6.30pm on Tuesday 13 February 2018

National Aquarium, Marine Parade, Napier

Marcus Eriksen & Anna Cummins from 5 Gyres Institute

World Plastic Pollution Experts speak on Plastic Pollution and Solutions in the South Pacific

Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins from 5 Gyres Institute and guest speakers will explore the issue of plastic pollution with you. Through the science and real life experiences within the sub-tropical gyres they will bring you up to date on the current state of the issue, as well as sharing the latest global and local approaches towards solutions.

For more detail see PURE Speaking Tour and this website