hi my name is Lies Zandberg
and i'm a postdoctoral researcher at
Royal Holloway University of London
and i study vocal learning and cultural
evolution of songs
now if we talk about culture we usually
talk about
culture in humans so we humans as a
species
are extremely successful not just in the
sheer numbers of us
on this planet but also in the fact that
we're able to thrive
in so many different environments and
part of that may be due to the fact that
we have
culture but first what is culture?
Now culture is a very broad term and
it's used in many different contexts
and there's quite a lot of debate about
what the proper definition for culture
is
but here i'll use the definition that
culture or traditions
are behaviors that are shared in a
community
and that these behaviors are learned
socially
and are passed on from generation to
generation
now in our case in the case of humans
knowledge and skills are
often learned socially so we learn them
from other individuals
and we share them in our communities
for instance we go to school to learn
the things that people in the past have
discovered like
physics or maths but also music and
languages
and by building on this knowledge
generation after generation
we have formed these amazing behaviors
innovations and solutions. We've been
able to write music sonatas
plays and novels but we also drive
around
in cars and we have been able to send a
rocket to the moon
so for many years people thought that
humans were the only species capable
of having traditions and culture and
that that was what set us apart from
animals
however this human ability of precise
learning
and cultural transmission must have
evolved at some point
in evolution of our species so this
ability
probably did not appear suddenly out of
the blue
so what are the conditions that could
have led to the evolution of these
abilities
and also which learning processes are
required for cultural transmission
and precise learning? Now the perfect
place to look for answers to these
questions
are other species animals
and we know that many animal species
also have social learning and we also
know
that sometimes we see populations of
animals
performing certain behaviors that we
don't see in other populations of the
same species
so perhaps animals also have behavioral
traditions
and thus also have culture. Now one
behavior
that is very suitable to look for
culture in
is song. Song is one of those behaviors
that
individuals are not born with, they have
to learn this from
conspecifics and they do this through vocal
learning
so when could song be culture? Now when
members in a group of animals
share a particular set of songs and they
learn the songs from others in that
community
over the generations this could be a
very nice example of culture,
song culture, now if we want to find out
where we could find such song culture in
animals we have to look at species that
learn
vocally and apart from us humans there
are not many
groups of animals that can do this. There
are bats
there are cetaceans which are dolphins
and whales
and of course there are the birds now
in these groups of animals there's
fantastic variation in the ways that
they learn their songs
for instance who do they learn their
songs from?
Which songs do they learn and how
accurately do they learn these songs?
Now if we study this variation in song
learning
and compare it with patterns of song
sharing in populations
and song culture, this may tell us
something about the learning processes
that are required
for cultural transmission and this is
exactly what i study
so how animals learn their songs to be
able to understand which conditions
could lead to the evolution of precise
learning
and long-lasting traditions or culture
and which learning processes are
required for this
to happen. Now one of the main groups
that i study are birds
everybody has probably heard birds sing
in your garden
in the park or in the forest and in
birds it's mainly the males that sing
and these males sing to attract
females by advertising their quality
through their songs but they sing also
to defend their territories from conspecifics,
from other males, but all these birds
have had to learn their songs at some
point in their life
so they will have had to hear a song
from an adult conspecific, another adult
of the same species,
and they usually do this when they're
young and then after some practicing
they learn to produce their own song
and in how they learn their songs can
bird species can differ enormously
now i am analyzing song recordings from
bird species from all over the world
to study how they learn these songs and
to do this
i'm using statistical techniques and
simulation models
to find out for instance who do they
prefer to learn from? Do they learn the
songs from their fathers or maybe their
neighbors?
Or perhaps the most successful male in
the population?
And which songs do they prefer to learn?
do they prefer to learn
the song that everybody in their
population sings or the most common song?
Or do they prefer to learn the most
novel song the most exciting and new
song?
and how accurately do they learn their
songs? Are they able to produce like a
perfect copy of that song that they
heard from another adult?
or do they make a lot of mistakes in
copying or do they make a lot of
innovations where they scramble
everything that they've heard in their
youth and make a new song?
Now all this can tell us something about
the patterns of song sharing in a
species
and there's also whether there are song
traditions in that species and how
stable these traditions are.
For instance these models have
previously
shown that in american swamp sparrows
that these birds make
very few mistakes when they learn songs
and that they prefer to copy the most
popular
songs in the population so the most
common songs
and that these two rather simple
learning rules, so
learn very precisely and
learn the most common song, have led to
extremely long-lasting song traditions.
So some of the songs that you can hear
them singing today
could have already been sung in that
same population
more than 500 years ago. So
similar to us humans birds are able,
these tiny little birds,
are able to have very long lasting
traditions.
Now the statistical models that i use
also make it possible to study song
learning in another species,
in another famous songster the humpback
whale.
Marine biologists studying humpback
whale song
in the south pacific ocean have found
that in a single population
usually all males sing the same song and
they learn these from the other males in
the population
but every year or every other year
suddenly this old song that all of them
have been singing
is replaced completely by a new song
and what is really cool but also very
puzzling
is that particular songs are transmitted
from population to population
over thousands of miles eastward so
almost like a cultural ripple of this
one song being transferred through the
populations
so songs that were sung in one year on
the east coast of australia
spread all the way to French Polynesia
where the same song was recorded
only two years later. So why do they
always learn from the populations west
of them
and not east? Now it's quite difficult to
study this in whales, these animals are
simply
far too big to study them under
controlled experiment,
controlled environment in a laboratory
for instance
and it's also very difficult to follow
them around across half the globe
to see who they meet and who they
interact with and who they could learn
their songs from.
So instead i am currently applying our
techniques and our simulation models
to find out which processes, or
learning rules, can explain
these patterns and how these exciting
patterns of cultural
transmission could have evolved.
hopefully i've been able to convince you
that just like humans
animals have culture. It may not be as
complex and it may not be as advanced
as human culture, i mean i don't expect
that we'll see
a bird or a whale send a rocket to the
moon anytime soon
but studying culture in animals may help
us understand which
learning processes are required for
cultural transmission
and long-lasting traditions and it may
also tell us something
about the conditions that support the
evolution of culture
in animals but eventually also in us
humans
now if you want to know more about
culture and animals
or if you have questions about what i've
told you today
do join us in the online session on the
morning of Tuesday 8th September
at 10 am i hope to see you there
hello my name is Giulia. I'm a PhD
candidate
in the department of sciences at
University College London
and i'm a planetary geomorphologist.
Planetary geomorphology
is the study of landforms on planetary
surfaces
so if this is meant to represent
a surface of a planet, planetary
geomorphology
will study the shapes of the surface
like mountains, valleys, canyons,
but it will also study the elements that
shape
the surface like river channels, sand
dunes,
glaciers or landslides. For instance i
study giant landslides on our planet
the earth but also on mars and on the
moon.
So we can think of a planetary
geomorphologist
like a detective of landscapes who's
trying to understand
why landscapes look the way they do and
trying to understand their history
and evolution, which is often
a combination between geology and
climate.
so today i would like to talk about a
method and a technique
that are of great importance in
planetary geomorphology:
remote sensing and photogrammetry.
Remote sensing is the method of studying
something
at distance so this is a perfect method
if you want to study planets and moons
that are far away
and that we are not able to visit in
person yet
so from a satellite we can detect
and monitor the physical characteristics
of an area of interest
by measuring the radiation that is
emitted
or reflected from the surface
so this is the entire range
of radiation we can use starting from
the
high energy radiation we have gamma rays,
x-rays, ultraviolet, visible light,
infrared and radio waves and it's this
little tiny part of the electromagnetic
radiation, the visible light,
the radiation that our eyes and our
ordinary cameras
are able to detect that is
mainly used by planetary
geomorphologists
and so by having
photo cameras mounted on spacecraft sent
to explore
other planetary bodies we can obtain
images of the surface of other planets.
that is obviously of great importance in
space exploration
and so having a satellite orbiting
around
another planetary body we can then
obtain
a global imagery data set
from which we can create then global
maps
like the one over here of Mars
for instance it's from the first
images of the surface of Mars that we
have
learned that on Mars there are the
biggest
volcanoes and canyons in the solar
system.
We have also discovered giant landslides
valley networks, outflow channels
and we now have images with such
resolution
that we are able to distinguish on the
surface of Mars,
objects the size less than a bicycle
and also because we have repeated
passages
from satellites over time over the same
area
that we are able to detect changes in
the surface
and so we are able to see changes that
might be
linked to seasons and
we also see migration of sand dunes
also, the moon has a fantastic camera
that is taking
very high resolution images of the lunar
surface.
the moon may not be an environment as
dynamic as mars
however this camera is showing
breathtaking details of the lunar surface
for instance we are able to see the
lunar modules and the
lunar rovers left by the astronauts
during the Apollo mission.
as i said already surface images are a
fundamental data set
in planetary geomorphology however
they can only provide a two-dimensional
image of our surface features
and so another important instrument is a
laser altimeter
because with a laser altimeter we can
measure
the height of the features of the
surface
so like this pocket laser meter
a laser altimeter on a satellite
will generate a laser beam that reaches
the surface and is bounced back to the
spacecraft
and so by knowing the velocity of the
laser beam
which is the speed of light and by
knowing the time that it takes the
laser beam
to go back to the spacecraft and by
knowing the position of the spacecraft
which we know from its orbit
we can obtain the relative height of our
features below and so from this data
we can generate 
a global topographic map like this one
of the moon and we are using colors to
express
elevations. Global topographic maps
have been made for mars and the moon and
they are a very important data set. By just
looking at them we can distinguish
craters or mountain areas however the
resolution is not good enough
to be able to distinguish objects
less than let's say hundreds of meters
across
but we can generate maps called digital
elevation models
that have much higher resolution and we
do so
by taking our high resolution
satellite images, our altimetry data and by using a
photogrammetry software.
Photogrammetry is the technique used to
create a
3D view or a 3D model of
an area we want to study through the
overlapping of
two-dimensional satellite images
and it's based on the same
principle of human stereoscopic vision.
Each eye is a camera that creates a
picture of an object
and these two pictures would be slightly
different
because they are taken from different
positions
so the angle of view of the object is
different.
Then our brain will translate this
difference in the perception of depth.
So going back to our satellite images
we need to find two images
that overlap over our area
of interest but we also need to make
sure
that the camera angle at which
the images are taken is different.
If the difference in this camera
angle
is too small or too large
then the technique is not working at its
best
so the software will try to identify
common points in both images and in
doing so
it will tie the images
together and by providing the altimetry
data we have
then the software will extract elevation
 information for each
pixel
of the images and this process
will give us a high resolution digital
elevation model. So in addition to
having high resolution images of the
surface of
mars and the moon this high-resolution
digital elevation model will allow us to
measure the geomorphological features
with good precision. These
high-resolution digital elevation models
are used to help find possible
landing sites of future space missions to
the moon and to mars.
the topographic data they provide is
fundamental
in finding a safe area where to land a
spacecraft.
if you wish to explore the surface of
mars and of the moon
i suggest to use the google earth pro
application on your computer
there you can also find links to
more images and if you would like to
continue this
conversation then please share your
favorite image of mars or the moon with
me on twitter
thanks for watching this and i'll see you
soon
hi my name is Dani and i'm a
postdoctoral researcher
at the Zoological Society of London and
i want to talk to you today
about the research that i do
as part of my job
so i study African wild dogs,
specifically
the impact of climate change on African
wild dogs
so African wild dogs are a species
of African carnivore. They aren't
related to domestic dogs they're a
separate species the scientific name is
Lycaon pictus.
You can see behind me on the laptop
screen i've got a picture of one
there and i've also got my very friendly
assistant here
who's going to help me explain to you
some of my work.
So the thing about African wild dogs is
they're pretty big, they're quite
a large carnivore species
and that and the fact that
they're endangered means
that we can't really take one from the
wild and heat it up.
it's not like a small fish or
something, you know.
that's not a way that's open to us
to look at climate change impacts
so what i have to do instead is i have
to take data that we
collect from the field and
i have to put it into a computer model
essentially what i do is i
run a wild dog population in the
computer
and i heat them up that way so that
that's a lot more ethical
and doable than taking wild dogs and
heating them up artificially.
So how do we get this data in the
field? Well i
am part of a project that's been running
for 17 years- the Kenya Rangelands Wild
Dog and Cheetah Project
and in order to monitor wild dogs'
daily lives, what we do
is we fit them with the gps collar
like this one here, so if you smell
this, obviously you can't through a
computer, but this has actually been on a
wild dog, it's pretty stinky, and this bit here is where all the
gps stuff goes and
this collar goes around the dog's neck.
A bit like that, although obviously an
actual wild dog is much bigger
and that will
allow us to see where the dogs have
been. It takes, like on your phone, it takes a gps
location every so often and they also have an accelerometer
on them
so that's a bit like a fitbit. It
tells us kind of how much the dog's
jiggling around,
this way and this way and from that we
can see how active they've been.
so the project has fitted over
a hundred dogs with these collars
and that gives us a lot of data. We
know when they're born
when they die and thanks to a weather
station on site we know how hot it's
been
so we were able to look into
how reproduction and recruitment,
recruitment is kind of how many of their
babies live until adulthood,
is affected by temperature and also
how adult survival is affected by
temperature
and when it's hot they move around
less. They're kind of
really hot. They're generally active
at dawn and dusk when it's cooler but
on hotter days that period in the middle
of the day when it's hottest
becomes longer and that kind of
constrains the period in which they can
hunt
and likely as a result of this what we
see is in higher temperatures
fewer offspring survive to adulthood
and there are also some impacts on adult
survival too
so i'm able to take that and i put it
into this computer model
and you've got your pack of wild dogs,
so a wild dog pack is made up of an
alpha female and an alpha male and a
number of helpers
and i can kind of simulate the
mortality rate, how many are dying, and
how many
of the offspring are surviving under
different temperatures and i can run
that under different climate change
scenarios.
So generally in climate science there
are four different
emission scenarios. There's best case
which is,
sadly kind of the chance to hit that is
mostly past now,
and then there's two middle scenarios
and there's your worst case climate
scenario which is if we do nothing. So i
can put the predictive temperatures from
those into this model
and see what happens to the wild dogs,
whether the populations increase or
decrease and you can also run that
in space, so we have these climate
predictions for all over Africa
and i can run this at the
predicted future temperatures for that
area
and see where the wild dogs are more
likely to survive and where they're more
likely to die
and this is really helpful for us
working in conservation because
that means that we can kind of identify
areas that might be
most in need of intervention, areas where
they're more likely to persist in the
future where it
would be a better payoff to invest
in conservation for these animals, but
also
because a lot of the reason these
animals are quite limited in where they
live
is because of habitat loss so it might
be that there are certain areas that we
can actually restore the habitat and
reintroduce these animals
that will be more suitable in the future.
so that's kind of a summary of my work
it's kind of moving into new areas now
where we're
looking at very fine scales behaviors
and we can fit them with these very very
tiny
accelerometers and they measure every 40
seconds
and we can see every footstep of these
animals. So at the moment
now what we're working on is how
these fine scale behaviors
of the wild dogs are impacted by
temperature because hopefully this will
unveil the mechanism
behind these population impacts and what
that does is it gives us a bit more of
an idea of what sort of
conservation actions might actually help
with
protecting these species from climate
change and ensuring that they survive
under the future climate change scenarios.
 
hello everybody, i'm Stephanie and i'm a
researcher
specialized in infectious diseases and
vaccines
and i'm currently working on ebola virus
and coronavirus
at Public Health England in Salisbury.
Today i'm going to speak about ebola
virus,
so ebola virus is like this with this
shape it's like a filament
but of course in the real life it's much
much smaller
so more or less between eight hundred and
fourteen hundred
nanometers of length and eighty
nanometers
of diameter. This virus was discovered in
1976
in Africa and at that time there were
some
outbreaks near a river
named ebola so it's the reason why this
virus was named
ebola virus. This virus is transmitted
via direct contact of body fluids
like blood, diarrhea, vomit or surfaces
contaminated with body fluids.
the main symptoms after infection
are i would say flu-like symptoms so it
might be fever,
muscle pains, headache, sore throat but
following this there is also diarrhea,
vomiting
and this induces liver and kidney
dysfunctions
and following this there is some
external and internal bleeding
so the reason why it's a hemorrhagic
fever
and this can lead to death unfortunately.
In the field the mortality rate is quite
high it's from 40 percent up to
90 percent so it's a very virulent
virus so
in our lab, or in the lab where i am,
we have a main question.
Why are there people who survive
while other people die?
Is it related to the virus? Is it related
to the immune system? Or is it related to
other factors, environmental factors?
so today i'm going to focus on the virus
and the host
immune system. Okay let's start with the
virus
so as you know all viruses constantly
evolve, they evolve over time and
sometimes
the there are new variants so these
variants can have some mutations
on their own surface so let's say there
is a mutation
here, where there is this red dot, its a
mutation.
So this variant is a little bit
different from other variants,
it's a little bit more virulent so it
can infect
better human cells and consequently the
transmission
of this variant is increased so that
might be a reason
why some people
die or survive. It's because they were
infected
with a different variant. Okay
second point, it might be related to the
immune system, so the immune system
is composed of a lot of immune cells
named white cells, so you have an example
here
so when you are infected
with a virus you have a first signal
it's a signal of inflammation. At this
stage
you have some immune cells that produce
and secrete some chemical factors
it's a signal it's like a flag to tell
your body and your immune system
it has to be activated now because
something happened. So
you can develop a weak or
high inflammation but if it's
too weak or too high you have more
chance
to die because if it's too weak your
immune system
won't be activated enough. If it's too
high
you will destroy yourself, so it's not
good
okay so that might be one reason
related to immune system.
a second reason - it might be related to
antibody responses.
so after an infection you develop an
antibody
response so your immune cells, some
of your immune cells, named B cells, secrete
some antibodies. Antibodies are proteins
like this.
we represent this like a y
and this protein can bind the virus and
can
neutralize the virus. Consequently the
virus cannot
infect your cells so the antibody
protect you from an infection.
But again some people develop
high antibody responses and other people
develop
low antibody responses and according to
the level
of antibody response you are more or
less protected
so that is the second reason. The third
reason
might be related to another type of
immune response
named t-cell response. So t-cells
are another type of immune cells
these cells are important to help
the development of antibody response but
these cells
are also important to destroy your own
cells
which are infected with the virus.
so again, if you develop a too-high t-cell response or a
too weak t-cell response
it's not good. You will have more chance
to die.
So finally to summarize this
point related to the immune system:
to have more chance to survive
you have to develop the right type of
response
at the right level at the right
time and finally to conclude we can make
a parallel with the current coronavirus.
So as you know this virus might
induce mild to moderate symptoms
or more severe symptoms
which can lead to death but again it's
the same principle.
Why are the people who develop mild
symptoms
and other people who develop serious
symptoms?
it's the same principle, it might be due
to the virus
if there are different variants, but it
might be due
to the host immune system. So
thank you for your attention
