Where: This year we are offering three lectures hosted at three local schools within Merced County.  Delhi, Merced, and Los Banos and are our intended sites.  The three lectures will be held in April and May 2006.  All lectures begin at 9:30 a.m. and end at 11:00 a.m.  Regardless of the location, seating is limited and available on a first come first served basis.

Topic: Outside the Earth, the Universe can be a wild place with exploding stars, killer asteroids, colliding galaxies, deadly black holes and gamma-ray bursts that zap planets, and perhaps some less pleasant wild life ...   I will describe some of the latest discoveries that highlight this and will end with a summary of astrophysics research that is going on at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Topic: How infectious disease poses a more serious threat to humanity than nuclear war.

Topic: Cancer is the leading cause of death in the United States for people under the age of 85. It occurs when a single cell in the body stops performing its normal function and grows out of control.  The instructions for normal cellular function are encoded in the DNA of a cell. Damage to DNA can lead to permanent changes, called mutations, which are the driving force for the loss of proper cell instruction and subsequent cancerous growth.  To prevent mutations, all cells of the human body have a series of specialized proteins that recognize and repair chemical and physical DNA damage.  In this seminar, we will discuss the ways cells repair DNA, the mutagenic consequences of unprepared DNA damage, and the fates of individuals born without DNA repair proteins.

 Contributing Partners

DELHI