Be there and be square!
Wednesday, June 12.
Doors at 7:00, talks at 8 PM.
$5 cover.
Mercury Bar
1154 Fort Street Mall
Honolulu, HI 96813
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“Charismatic Megaflora: Plants in Pop-Culture” by Matt Lurie
Plants are an important part of the human experience. Unsurprisingly, pop-culture is chock-full of references to our photosynthetic friends, from poetry to Little Shop of Horrors to mind altering substances. Plants truly are charismatic!
Matt Lurie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Botany Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He studies the mechanisms of non-native plant invasions and lives by the motto, “the truth is out there.”
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“Ecology of an Underwater Demolition Range” by Lee Shannon
Dolphins and explosions are really cool, but exploding dolphins are not. We’ll take a look at the ecological effects of underwater demolition training here in Hawai`i, using bioacoustics and other observation techniques, to answer some interesting questions about the hazards and benefits of restricted military training ranges. Is it possible that one of the safest places for a reef fish in Hawai`i is near an active blast zone??
Lee Shannon is a diving and underwater explosives expert. He is also a Ph.D. candidate at UH, and a marine ecologist obsessed with preserving underwater ecosystems. He is attempting to reconcile these two seemingly opposing fields without going insane.
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“Battle in the Bulge: The Silent Saga of Conflict After Conception” by Jon Whitney
We commonly view human pregnancy as being a harmonious process of cooperation between mom and her developing offspring. Problem is: mom and fetus don’t always agree – and that innocent little nugget has evolved some deceptive ways to get what it wants. We’ll take an in-depth look into maternal-fetal conflict in humans and explore the evolutionary arms race that continues to be waged in the womb today.
Jon Whitney is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is generally fascinated about learning how evolution shapes the life histories of animals. Although he spends much of his time studying marine creatures, human reproduction is never far from his mind.
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DJ Globes rocks Mercury with appropriately nerdy jams.