The Sun’s energy warms the Earth and causes air to rise. This simple process coupled with the Earth’s Rotation leads to complex global weather systems. Predicting the weather has challenged meteorologists for centuries. Modern forecasts rely on the latest technology, world-wide observations and a network of satellites. The days of damp seaweed are long gone! Forecasters can access computer models, satellite and radar, and real-time observations.
However, our climate appears to be changing and global warming may provide the greatest challenge yet. This presentation explored weather forecasting in the 21st Century, and took a behind the scenes look at the preparation of TV forecasts.
Image © Microsoft

Forensic anthropology is best defined as the identification of human remains for medico-legal purposes. This is a job that can take you from the deserts of Iraq to a stinking rat-infested sewer in Kent via a desolate quarry in Inverness. You learn about snake venom, helicopter crashes and mine fields along the way. It is dirty, it is dangerous and it is tremendously satisfying. This is the science of the tsunami, the forensic tool of Kosovo and not a single episode of CSI in sight.

A Royal Society of Edinburgh / Encounter conference for practitioners to examine whether custodial sentences are the most effective way of combating crime.

‘The Art of the Picts’, co-authored by George and Isabel Henderson (Thames & Hudson, 2004), has won the 2006 Historians of British Art Book-Prize. The Scotsman’s review welcomed the book as “giving clichés a clobbering”. One such cliché is that the Picts were “singularly uninterested in Christian themes” and that when they introduced Christian motifs into their relief-sculpture these were “decorative rather than iconographic”. In his lecture George Henderson argued that the Pictish contribution to Christian art was in fact original, lively, and sophisticated by the widest European standards.
Image © National Monuments Record of Scotland

Flooding is a natural process that is essential to the preservation of many natural eco-systems; however, when the flooded area is land used for human habitation the consequences can be severe. The autumn 2000 floods in England inundated ten thousand properties and eleven thousand people were made homeless, businesses closed and roads and railways stood still. The total cost of this damage and disruption has been estimated at £1B. The speakers explained the causes of flooding, present research on measuring the social impact of flooding and provided first hand experience in responding to the aftermath of the flood that occurred in the east end of Glasgow in 2002. Image courtesy of Professor Gareth Pender

Cells have access to a very extensive Ca2+ signalling toolkit from which each cell type expresses a unique set of components to create Ca2+ signalling systems with widely different spatial and temporal properties. Such Ca2+ signalling systems are not fixed in stone, but are constantly being remodelled. A number of important disease states (hypertension, congestive heart failure, manic depressive illness, Alzheimer’s disease) may result from abnormal remodelling of Ca2+ signalling systems. A good example is congestive heart failure, a major cause of human morbidity and mortality, which is controlled by a number of signalling pathways of which Ca2+ seems to play a prominent role. Image courtesy of Sir Michael J Berridge

Expanding knowledge of the Maya civilisation of Central America has in recent years taken this most brilliant of Pre-Columbian cultures from prehistory into the margins of history, with the reigns of some rulers now documented in surprising detail as the Maya hieroglyphic script has been progressively deciphered. Maya social complexity has been shown also to be earlier in date than hitherto thought, with the beginnings of literacy and royal imagery pushed back towards 500 B.C. A millennium and a half later, the noted collapse of Classic Maya civilisation has been the subject of explanations both more detailed and more controversial than before.
Image Courtesy of Professor Hammond

Traditionally, the conception of social welfare in economics has been based on a utilitarian foundation: it has been typically assumed that social welfare is determined exclusively by the utilities of the individuals constituting the society. Over the last few decades, however, this basically utilitarian framework has been extended to accommodate non-welfaristic considerations such as those of individual rights and freedom. The paper discusses the tensions between different values that have been highlighted in recent contributions in welfare economics. Image © Microsoft

Professor Engelbrecht offered a wide-ranging treatment of European research and development issues, including funding, education, research structures and public awareness of science and technology. He discussed ways of maintaining quality of research and encouraging innovation, while ensuring cohesion amongst member states and balancing national and international interests. ALLEA's President talked about the importance of the launch of the European Research Area in supporting basic research, and gave examples of individual member states’ research and development strategies, including those of Estonia, his home country

The loss of life from earthquakes over the past 100 years, is over 1.5 million, with many millions more suffering injuries, homelessness and economic ruin. In Developing countries, which suffer 90% of the impacts, vulnerability is rising owing to world population increases (4 times higher), urbanisation (3 times), and expansion onto unsuitable land. In the Developed World, the economic losses are staggering; estimates for the 1995 Kobe earthquake, in Japan, are between 100 and 200 billion Euros. Although we can’t stop earthquakes happening, disasters can be avoided using techniques we already have to make our villages, towns and cities almost immune to their impacts. Image courtesy of Cassandra Nelson / Mercy Corps

The longships arrived off the coasts of Britain and Ireland from the North c.800AD carrying Viking warriors whose main purpose appears to have been raiding and plundering. But these Scandinavian pirates had a lasting impact on Scotland. Ambitious for power, looking for land to settle and trade routes to dominate, they took over the Northern and Western Isles, using them as bases for syphoning off the wealth of the Christian monastic communities. The Scandinavian inheritance is still in evidence today in Orkney and Shetland, where St. Magnus Cathedral is a memorial to the culture which grew out of the Norse settlement and the conversion of the Vikings to Christianity. Image courtesy of © Historic Scotland

The Vikings - saints or sinners? Heroes or villains? Settlers or invaders? Raiders or traders? Pillagers or poets? Perhaps they were all of these things. Certainly their impact was significant wherever they sailed. For centuries they controlled huge areas of Scotland, from Shetland and Orkney down to Galloway and the south-west. By their mere presence they helped to shape the kingdom of Scotland, leaving an enduring cultural legacy which modern scholarship is only now beginning to reveal. Image courtesy of Magnus Magnusson

Forensic Anthropology is the science that applies reliable and tested methodologies to establish the identity of the deceased. Where the role of the pathologist is primarily to tell you HOW somebody died, the forensic anthropologist will tell you WHO they were.
Within the last ten years the global profile of forensic anthropology has altered dramatically, following the demand for practitioners to assist in overseas work including mass disasters, mass graves, human rights abuses and war crimes. Such expertise was invaluable in identifying victims of the Boxing Day 2004 Tsunami & Hurricane Katrina. However the science has also become increasingly important in assisting UK police forces and investigative authorities with ongoing cases and cold case reviews.

What links avalanches, traffic, nanotechnology and the flight of space shuttles? Each of these involves a “flow” (of snow, cars, etc.), but not the same kind of flow as that of, say, water. Traditional fluid dynamics is excellent for designing ships, aeroplanes and heart valves, but fails for the “granular” or “molecular” fluids that will be important in 21st century technologies. This talk described the search for a new engineering science of fluid flows, and gave examples from nanotechnologies and the aerodynamics of space vehicles. Image courtesy of Professor Jason Reese

Assistive technology aims to improve the quality of life of people with disabilities, to enable them to live more independently, and to support their increased integration within society. Cognitive disabilities impact upon up to 100 million people around the world. Assistive technology for people with cognitive disabilities has lagged significantly behind technologies for people with other disabilities. The convergence of information, and communication technologies, ICT, and how they are being applied to create a new generation of cognitive assistive technologies, was described.

Whether challenging vice and corruption in the high places of Reformation society, provoking nationalist outbursts in Enlightenment Edinburgh, critiquing the role of women, attacking capitalist exploitation of Highland society or questioning our nation’s responsibilities in a globalised world, Scotland’s playwrights and theatre makers have a long history of political engagement. With extracts from a range of plays, both familiar and unexpected, this presentation explored and illustrated the history of Scottish political theatre, and investigated the contemporary post-Devolution challenge to theatre-makers.
image courtesy of Mr Douglas Robertson

Solidarity constitutes one of the principal values of European integration. It has two equally important dimensions - internal, concerned with solidarity within the EU itself; assisting the poorer member states; helping in times of national emergency - and external, which is less clear-cut, but which should encompass demonstrating solidarity in relations with its neighbours, through an external policy aimed at supporting transitional efforts, assisting in state building measures and giving concrete aid to civil society. Only then can the Union realise its ambitions and transform itself into a normative soft power.

There is enough ice on Antarctica to raise sea levels by as much as 60m. In recent years, scientists have gained a better understanding of which parts of the Antarctic ice sheet are most sensitive to change. This talk outlined these recent advances in our understanding of the ice sheet. Drawing on the latest results from satellites, aircraft surveys and field expeditions, Dr Bentley discussed the likely current and future contributions of the Antarctic ice sheet to sea level.
image courtesy of Dr Mike Bentley