Prescription drug costs in the United States have risen to an unsustainable level, accounting for 1 in 6 dollars spent on health care and compromising many patients’ ability to afford the medications they need. Although there is broad, bipartisan agreement that policy action is required, several aspects of the problem make it unusually hard to solve. Drawing on a recent report by a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Dr. Mello will discuss those problems and paths forward recommended by the committee.

We generate genetic information for research, clinical care and personal curiosity at exponential rates. Sharing these genetic datasets is vital for accelerating the pace of biomedical discoveries and for fully realizing the promises of the genetic revolution. However, one of the key issues of broad dissemination of genetic data is finding an adequate balance that ensures data privacy. Yaniv Erlich will present several strategies to breach genetic privacy using open internet tools, including a systematic analysis of the strategy that implicated the Golden State Killer. Our analyses show that these strategies can identify major parts of the U.S. population from their allegedly anonymous genetic information by anyone in the world. The talk will conclude with practical suggestions to reconcile genetic privacy with the need to share genetic information.

Over the past decades our diets have become sweeter because of the use of sugar as a food additive: today over 75% of foods sold at grocery stores contain added sugar (1). During the same time, the number of calories consumed per day has increased by 20%. What is the connection between food environment and obesity? Does excess dietary sugar reshape our eating patterns to promote overconsumption? Monica Dus will present recent neuroscience research in humans and animal models on the effects of dietary sugar on taste perception, food intake, and obesity.

There is a building boom for tall buildings for West Coast Cities; daring architectural designs trumpet that they are designed to withstand the 2,500-yr earthquake shaking. In this talk, Dr. Heaton will explore whether or not these claims are scientifically based; or are scientists being used as “useful idiots” to facilitate the ambitions of developers? Cutting through the claims of current high-rise development is surprisingly difficult. Technical reports describing the attributes of real buildings are mostly proprietary and the deliberations of peer-review committees are secret. To help better understand the collapse resistance of typical tall buildings Dr. Heaton has worked with his colleagues and students to simulate the response of steel buildings designed to meet building codes that have evolved considerably since the 1950’s.

Are we alone in the Universe? This is a question that has puzzled countless generations. While we are still unable to say whether there is life out there we are beginning to think about whether there are planets that remind us of home. The Kepler spacecraft has been used to identify several planets in the habitable zone of other star - a region around a star where a planet could host liquid water at its surface given an appropriate atmosphere. Of particular note is Kepler-186f which is an Earth-sized planet that orbits within the habitable zone of a star that is smaller and cooler than the Sun. This talk will focus on the search for Earth-like worlds, discuss what we know about the planets we have found and look at what we don't know right now but hope to learn from future NASA missions.

Earth’s ecosystems are changing faster now than any time since the last ice age. Ironically we know little about most ecosystems, especially those in remote areas unexplored by scientists. To address this challenge, Greg Asner’s team combines laser and spectral instrumentation aboard a fixed-wing aircraft, the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, to produce detailed, 3-D imagery revealing the composition and health of ecosystems. Dr. Asner will discuss the Observatory’s revolutionary capabilities, and how it is yielding new scientific discoveries while accelerating conservation and management of our planet’s resources.

Concussion is a hot topic in the media and on many people's minds, particularly in terms of sports-related brain injuries. This presentation will review what we know and do not know about concussion: Its acute effects, recovery, risks, and association with cognitive disorders later in life. This will include a review of recent studies of retired professional athletes with a history of concussion utilizing brain imaging, diagnostic, and neurobehavioral assessment techniques. Additional topics will include traumatic brain injury as a risk factor for the later development of cognitive impairment and dementia.

Urban infrastructure systems, such as highways, potable water systems, and the electric power grid, form the foundation for life in the US. Yet many critical components were designed more than fifty years ago and are reaching the end of their intended service life. Issues related to managing and improving these complex systems will be discussed. - Sharon Wood, University of Texas, Austin

From Alaska to the Amazon, wildfires are rapidly changing. Climate change is expected to influence drought and wildfires by the middle of the 21st century, and possible consequences for forests and human health. This lecture will focus on three research examples: Changing patterns of lightening that may enable forest expansion into the Artic; the unique differences of Santa Ana conditions and summer wildfires in Southern California; and how the 2015/2016 El Nino has influenced drought and wildfire activity in the important tropical forest ecosystem of the Amazon.

Our written and spoken language provides a wealth of data that can be used to inform legal disputes. In matters ranging from criminal prosecutions (some of which can be elucidated by speaker or author identification) to trademark litigation (for which consumer confusion can be dispositive) to wrongful-termination suits (which may call for assessment of a co-worker’s accusations), linguists have been called upon to direct their analytical skills to issues that may be of importance to the finder of fact. For example, a combination of vocal overtones and dialect shadings served to cast doubt on suspicions that a disgruntled employee had phoned in anonymous bomb threats to his company. Linguistic quantification techniques helped to end a dispute between two competing mortgage lenders with similar-sounding trademarks. And a survey of the psycholinguistic factors which may impede the aural recognition of a familiar voice was instrumental in challenging the attribution of a threat by 15 confident and outspoken earwitnesses. These and other examples will illustrate some of the possibilities afforded by forensic linguistics.