• 18:00 - 19:00
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

One of the many outstanding achievements of G I Taylor was the discovery of relatively simple statistical laws that apply to highly complex turbulent flows.  The emergence of simple laws from complexity is well known in other branches of physics, for example the emergence of the laws of heat conduction from molecular dynamics.  Complexity can also arise at large scales, and the structural vibration of an aircraft or a car can be a surprisingly difficult phenomenon to analyse, partly because millions of degrees of freedom may be involved, and partly because the vibration can be extremely sensitive to small changes or imperfections in the system. In this talk it is shown that the prediction of vibration levels can be much simplified by the derivation and exploitation of emergent laws, analogous to some extent to the heat conduction equations, but with an added statistical aspect, as in turbulent flow. The emergent laws are discussed and their application to the design of aerospace, marine, and automotive structures is described.  As an aside it will be shown that the same emergent theory can be applied to a range of problems involving electromagnetic fields. 

• 18:00 - 19:00
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

Behavioural Ecology, the study of the adaptive significance of animal behaviour, has empowered zoologists to tackle some of the fundamental issues of evolutionary biology.  Insects, although not always easy to study as individuals in the field, have provided excellent model systems for this area of research. 

In this talk, I will outline some of the research done by myself and colleagues on the behavioural ecology of insects. I will discuss what marine water-striders can tell us about selfish group behaviour; what the mating behaviour of tiny aphids on poplar bark tells us about the evolution of the sex ratio; what the behaviour of gall-living aphids reveals about the altruism of housework, house-maintenance, and the slaughter of intruders; and how extended parental care by solitary digger wasps shows us the  first faltering steps along the route to highly complex social behaviour. Along the way we will visit a saltmarsh in North Norfolk, a mangrove swamp in the Galapagos, the playing fields of Cambridge, a Hill Station in Malaya, and a heathland near Godalming. And we will learn about The Trafalgar Effect, The Constant Male Hypothesis, and the menopausal aphid glue-bomb.