Dr Peter Forster, known for his work on phylogenetic network analysis discusses the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. In the 1990s phylogenetic network analysis allowed the reconstruction of mankind's prehistoric colonisation of the planet from an African origin. In early 2020 Dr Foster and his team applied the technique to tracing the origins of the current coronavirus pandemic.
在 1990 年代，家譜網絡分析讓我們重建人类从非洲起源的史前殖民。 2020 年初，我們應用該技術來追踪當前冠狀病毒大流行的起源。
This lecture is an update of Phylogenetic network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes. Peter Forster, Lucy Forster, Colin Renfrew, and Michael Forster. PNAS April 28, 2020 117 (17) 9241-9243. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/17/9241/tab-article-info
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The fundamental laws of physics look different when reflected in a mirror. This is the statement that the laws of physics have a handedness, what physicists call chirality. This is one of the most important facts that we know about the universe, a fact that, remarkably, goes a long way to fixing the mathematical structure of the laws of nature. I will explain how we know about this handedness, why it’s so important, and why there are still several chiral mysteries that remain unsolved.
Dementia is a topic of considerable public interest. How empirical evidence has contributed to this societal awareness and indeed fear will be covered in this talk. It will span research from the 1980s when not much was understood about dementia up to contemporary perspectives. The focus will be on the epidemiological and public health evidence base, and how this relates to the results published from clinical and lab based research. The findings from UK and other high income countries of reduced age specific prevalence (%) will be explored, and the implications of results from brain based studies that dementia is not inevitable in the presence of ‘alzheimer’ type changes. The role of inequalities, risk varying across countries and time and our knowledge about protective factors have strengthened during recent years, and the balance of high risk with whole population approaches to reducing risk for society will be considered.
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