Melbourne is such a cool place...
Sep. 1st, 2003 01:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eThree great events in three days
On Tuesday 2 September at 7 pm see an Enigma machine in action with Claire Ellis, from the UK Enigma Project. We also hope to have someone who worked at Bletchley Park join us.
The German military used the Enigma cipher machine during WW2 to keep their communications secret.
The German authorities believed in the absolute security of Enigma. They were wrong. British code breakers stationed at Bletchley Park during WW2 managed to exploit weaknesses in the machine and cracked the Enigma code. The effort included pioneers of computing such as Alan Turing.
On Wednesday 3 September join us for an evening in conversation with Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE, Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Fullerian Professor Physiology at the Department of Pharmacology, Oxford University, writer and broadcaster. She hosted the recent TV documentary series about the human brain and the nature of consciousness.
Both sessions will be at the Redback Brewery, 75 Flemington Road, North Melbourne. Both sessions are free to ASC members, $10 for non-members or join on the night. Drinks and meals at bar prices.
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Also on Wednesday 3rd September, but at 8 pm, in the Kaleide Theatre (RMIT), Melbourne 36 Swanston Street, 100 metres up from La Trobe Street, Dr Martin Burd from the Department of Biological Sciences, Monash University will give a free talk on The economy of a non-human city: how leaf-cutting ants acquire, transport and process resources.
Aggregations of social insects, such as ants, bees, and wasps, resemble human cities in many ways. Among the most complex is that of leaf-cutting ants in the American tropics, which construct roads for transporting resources to their nest, where an elaborate underground processing factory converts the raw materials into food for the colony.
There are well-developed theories to explain the foraging behaviour of animals, but these theories have not been very successful at predicting the behaviour of leaf-cutting ants. Our studies of the dynamics of traffic flow on ant highways, and of the underground processing activity, resolve some of the unanswered features of leaf-cutting ant behaviour, and bring us a step closer to understanding the elaborate economy of these invertebrate cities.
For more info on Dr Burd's talk contact Eric Webb, tel: (03) 9885-6407; e-mail: ericwebb@connexus.net.au
On Tuesday 2 September at 7 pm see an Enigma machine in action with Claire Ellis, from the UK Enigma Project. We also hope to have someone who worked at Bletchley Park join us.
The German military used the Enigma cipher machine during WW2 to keep their communications secret.
The German authorities believed in the absolute security of Enigma. They were wrong. British code breakers stationed at Bletchley Park during WW2 managed to exploit weaknesses in the machine and cracked the Enigma code. The effort included pioneers of computing such as Alan Turing.
On Wednesday 3 September join us for an evening in conversation with Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE, Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Fullerian Professor Physiology at the Department of Pharmacology, Oxford University, writer and broadcaster. She hosted the recent TV documentary series about the human brain and the nature of consciousness.
Both sessions will be at the Redback Brewery, 75 Flemington Road, North Melbourne. Both sessions are free to ASC members, $10 for non-members or join on the night. Drinks and meals at bar prices.
--
Also on Wednesday 3rd September, but at 8 pm, in the Kaleide Theatre (RMIT), Melbourne 36 Swanston Street, 100 metres up from La Trobe Street, Dr Martin Burd from the Department of Biological Sciences, Monash University will give a free talk on The economy of a non-human city: how leaf-cutting ants acquire, transport and process resources.
Aggregations of social insects, such as ants, bees, and wasps, resemble human cities in many ways. Among the most complex is that of leaf-cutting ants in the American tropics, which construct roads for transporting resources to their nest, where an elaborate underground processing factory converts the raw materials into food for the colony.
There are well-developed theories to explain the foraging behaviour of animals, but these theories have not been very successful at predicting the behaviour of leaf-cutting ants. Our studies of the dynamics of traffic flow on ant highways, and of the underground processing activity, resolve some of the unanswered features of leaf-cutting ant behaviour, and bring us a step closer to understanding the elaborate economy of these invertebrate cities.
For more info on Dr Burd's talk contact Eric Webb, tel: (03) 9885-6407; e-mail: ericwebb@connexus.net.au