*** THE LINNAEAN SOCIETY OF NEW YORK - MEETING PROGRAM - AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK CITY ***
Next Tuesday evening (Feb 11 2014) the Society will host another evening of back-to-back presentations. The theme of the night is observation, with our speakers Bill Marple and Martin Chalfie sharing their insights on the careful study of the natural world beginning with the macro level of animals and humans and ending on the micro level of cells. There should be much of interest to birders and other naturalists. Please join us. *6:00 pm -- Wilderness Tracking* A Lipan Apache elder named Stalking Wolf passed on his knowledge of wilderness tracking to Tom Brown, founder of the legendary Tom Brown's Tracking, Nature and Wilderness Survival School in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, and Brown has passed on that knowledge to Bill Marple, Director of Operations at the school and founder and head instructor of his own wilderness school, Earth Voices. He will show how much can be learned from the tracks of birds, other animals and humans and from other signs of human and animal presence in the wilderness. *7:30 pm -- GFP: Lighting Up Life, Martin Chalfie* Martin Chalfie received his PhD in neurobiology from Harvard in 1977, joined the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University in 1982, and last spring was named University Professor, Columbia's highest honor, a title held by only thirteen of Columbia's faculty. Because Alfred Nobel in his will left money for prizes in only five categories -- peace, literature, physics, chemistry, and "physiology or medicine" -- biologists who make revolutionary discoveries receive the prize in one of the last two categories, and Prof. Chalfie shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of GFP: Green Fluorescent Protein. In its announcement of the award, his department said, "GFP has become a fundamental tool of cell biology, developmental biology, genetics, neurobiology, and the medical sciences." Prof. Chalfie writes of his talk, "Yogi Berra once said, 'You can observe a lot by just watching.' Unfortunately, before the early 1990's observations in the biological sciences were usually done on dead specimens that were specially prepared and permeabilized to allow entry of reagents to stain cell components. Those methods allowed a glimpse of what cells were doing, but they gave a necessarily static view of life, just snapshots in time. GFP and other fluorescent proteins revolutionized the biological sciences because these proteins allowed scientists to look at the inner working of living cells. GFP can be used to tell where genes are turned on, where proteins are located within tissues, and how cell activities change over time. Once a cell can be seen, it can be studied and manipulated. The story of the discovery and development of GFP also provides a very nice example of how scientific progress is often made: through accidental discoveries, the willingness to ignore previous assumptions and take chances, and the combined efforts of many people. The story of GFP also shows the importance of basic research on non-traditional organisms." *WHERE & WHEN* Both programs are open to the public FREE OF CHARGE and will be held in the Linder Theater of the AMNH. Enter the museum from the 77th Street entrance, where the route to the auditorium will be sign posted. The first program will last approximately one hour with time before the second program to talk to the speakers, and mingle with TLS officers and council members, who can provide information on becoming a part of this thriving natural history society. *MORE INFORMATION ON TLS PROGRAMS* Please check out (and bookmark) our website: http://linnaeannewyork.org/programs.html or visit us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/*Linnaean*-*Society* -of-New-York/335385365977?ref=ts<http://www.facebook.com/pages/Linnaean-Society-of-New-York/335385365977?ref=ts> Look forward to seeing you on Tuesday (no reservations necessary). Angus Wilson Vice President, The Linnaean Society of New York -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
