Latitude Talks

There is a health revolution coming from our understanding of immunity. New cures for auto-immune diseases and cancer are on their way. Author of The Compatibility Gene, Prof. Daniel M. Davis, and expert in immunology and ageing, Dr. Natalie Riddell, discuss the issues with Robin Ince.

Read the New Scientist’s article about Science at Latitude here https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142105-hot-science-makes-an-unexpected-appearance-at-a-cool-festival/

It feels inevitable that we’re approaching a revolution in our relationship with technology. Machines already show signs of creativity and intelligence - in game playing, art and music, not to mention driverless cars; the ability to recognise complex patterns in data; to make startling medical diagnoses. Dr Daniel Glaser leads our panelists, Prof Steve Fuller, Dr Katrin Solveig Lohan and Prof Arthur I Miller, in a debate about the potential and pitfalls of this future.

with DR TAMAR MAKIN, DR ALDO FAISAl & DR ISABEL VAN DE KEERE on body representation, brain organisation and virtual reality, chaired by CATHERINE ALLEN.

For the festival, I wanted to put on an event that walked the audience through the ways that VR could be used in physical rehabilitation; right from the neuroscience that informs the way we understand the relationship between the brain and body parts, to the cutting-edge therapies that integrate Virtual Reality and prosthetics.

Dr Tamar Makin is a neuroscientist at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, researching how adaptive behaviour, such as prosthetic limb usage, drives brain plasticity. Her research suggests that brain plasticity in amputees is not inherently harmful, and could be exploited for improving rehabilitation. Dr Aldo Faisal is Associate Professor for Neurotechnology at Imperial College London and Director of the Behaviour Analytics Lab at the Data Science Institute. Dr Faisal's work combines cross-disciplinary computational and experimental approaches to investigate how the brain and its neural circuits are designed to learn and control goal-directed movements. Dr Isabel Van De Keere is the CEO and Founder of Immersive Rehab, a Virtual Reality healthtech startup that focuses on the creation and development of interactive environments & games in Virtual Reality that improve the effectiveness of physical & neuro-rehabilitation. Following a long physical rehab period Isabel went through herself due to a work accident, she decided to start Immersive Rehab in September 2016. Our chair, Catherine Allen, is a virtual reality producer and curator who headed up the creation of two of the BBC's first non-fiction VR experiences.

Level Up Human is an optimistic science comedy podcast panel show about the future of our species, with Simon Watt, Stuart Goldsmith, Anna Ploszajski & Giles Yeo

Let's redesign the human! We'll soon be able to edit our genome, travel in driverless cars, hug companion robots... let's write a to-do list for humanity. Wouldn't it be great to zoom in with your eyes, change colour at will or type with your feet? Our guest judges consider pitches from experts, the studio audience and Mother Nature herself in pursuit of good ideas for the next stage of humanity.

Level Up Human was created by Simon Watt and Rachel Wheeley and is supported by the Wellcome Trust and Society of Endocrinology.

In this provocative talk sociologist Dr Ben Fincham and architect Dinah Bornat examine urban environments, and expose the disconnection between fun, joyful, self-directed, unaccompanied play and provisions for structured activity.

They suggest contemporary play involves degrees of conformity that mimic levels of control desired by others – and this conformity is not in the interests of those playing.

Concentrating on qualities of experiences of fun and examining the built environments in which fun and play take place Ben and Dinah suggest a radical approach to urban play – where the quality of the experience doesn’t respond to the presumed structures of play.

Buy Ben Fincham’s book here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-sociology-of-fun/ben-fincham/9780230358577

Read more from Dinah Bornat on The Architect’s Journal here: https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/buildings/designing-green-spaces-that-people-want-to-use/10005102.article

with Dr Sandy Grant icw. Will Storr

At Latitude Sandy played language games with Will, talking individualism and the self. Sandy and Will riffed on selfies, showing off, drag and self-fashioning in today’s culture. They talked about changing practices of self-display and self-expression. Performance and pretence are part of our ways of life. These promise new horizons of possibility, new ways of living that become available as we play with meaning. But they also pose risks. And there are perils when people become self-obsessed or strive to be the perfect self, or conform to norms by which they buy into new forms of constraint.

Will Storr is an award-winning journalist and author whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Esquire and The New Yorker. His new book Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing To Us tells the story of the western self, from Aristotle to Trump. The book tracks the economic, political and cultural forces that have lead to our narcissistic age of perfectionism and reveals some of the damaging effects it’s having on us. Dr Sandy Grant is a philosopher at the University of Cambridge. After studying for her degrees at Queens' College Cambridge, she started teaching at the University as Munro Fellow at Queens'. In a distinguished academic career, she has worked principally in Cambridge and London and achieved a Professorial Chair. Sandy recently delivered the Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture 'Dark Times'. She speaks about philosophy on the radio and writes for the newspapers.

Every day the news carries stories of unrest, uprising and resistance in all corners of the world. In this timely talk Professor Stephen Reicher talks to Dr Jon Sutton, editor of The Psychologist magazine, about his work as an activist and scientist. He explores the psychology of crowd action and asks if The Rules of Unrulines can help us create a more disorderly world.

Recorded live at Latitude Festival 2017. Supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Read the transcript of this talk on The Psychologist’s website https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-30/november-2017/rules-unruliness

Check out the magazine’s Latitude feature in their forthcoming November edition, out on October 18th.

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A talk at Latitude Festival with DR TONY GOLDSTONE, DR SAMANTHA SCHOLTZ and MARCUS BRIGSTOCKE

Food, alcohol, cigarettes, stress: could gut hormones help you reduce your addictive cravings?

We need better treatments to help people manage their weight, stop overeating, cut down and stop drinking alcohol or smoking. Dr Tony Goldstone, Consultant Endocrinologist, Imperial College London, studies how gut hormones act on the brain to change our eating and addictive behaviours. He will talk about his research looking at how hormones could reduce our cravings for high-calorie foods, alcohol and cigarettes. He will be joined by Dr Samantha Scholtz, Consultant Psychiatrist, Imperial Weight Centre, London, to answer your questions about food, addiction and stress, and comic Marcus Brigstocke.

Check your eligibility for Dr Tony Goldstone’s Clinical Trial here https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2369681/bb39f98b59db

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This week we’re talking about the immune system, health and happiness, with Dr Pippa Kennedy and Alex Kogan.

The immune system is one of your body’s most powerful tools. It can be your best friend, fighting off disease; or your worst enemy, doing more harm than good. It feels intuitive that how healthy you think you are can affect your happiness, but what about the other way round? Are your cells affected by your mood swings and nagging doubts.

Watch the videos mentioned and find out more about Dr Kennedy’s work at the links below

Who are we?

Pippa Kennedy is part of Dan Davis’ lab http://www.davislab.ls.manchester.ac.uk/ at the MCCIR http://www.mccir.ls.manchester.ac.uk/

Alex Kogan is a Lecturer at the University of Cambridge http://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/[email protected]

Amazing cell videos for free! (or ‘why open access science policies are so great’)

1950s chase – you don’t need fancy microscopes to make amazing videos:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/white-blood-cell-goes-aft_n_463887.html

Touch and smell – how a cell communicates with the world around it

http://bme.ucdavis.edu/heinrichlab/

T cells killing cancer – a video by Misty Jenkins

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-05/waeh-ht052016.php

Macrophages battling yeast (supporting information at the end)

http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1002578

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Professor Ian Robertson’s new book, The Stress Test, is a study of how and why we react to pressure the way we do.

How do you react when you’re under pressure? Do you struggle, or do you shine? Are your instincts sharpened by stress, or do you find yourself overwhelmed and struggling to make decisions? We’ve all looked at those holding it together under extreme pressure and wondered, how do they manage it?

Supported by the Wellcome Trust

Buy THE STRESS TEST here https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-stress-test/ian-robertson/9781408860366

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