Uc Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures (audio)

Telomeres are the chromosomes end-part, that are needed to protect chromosome ends. Due to the way chromosomes are copied, these telomeres shorten with each round of cell division. This shortening is kept in check by the enzyme telomerase which elongates telomeres. However because of the limited amount of telomerase, telomere shorten with age in humans. People who cannot effectively elongate telomeres may show manifestations of a Telomere Syndrome, which include age-related diseases such as bone marrow failure, immune senescence and pulmonary fibrosis. Carol Greider, 2009 Nobel Laureate and professor at Johns Hopkins University, discusses how the seemingly benign structure on chromosome ends can underlie human disease. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 28052]

Why don't people just say what they mean? In this lecture, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker explains the paradoxical appeal of euphemism, innuendo, politeness, and other forms of shilly-shallying. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 27932]

Believe it or not, violence has been in decline for long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species existence. Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker presents the data supporting this surprising conclusion, and explains the trends by showing how changing historical circumstances have engaged different components of human nature. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 27931]

Drawing on fieldwork in new charismatic evangelicals churches in the Bay Area and in Accra, Ghana, Tanya Luhrmann, Stanford University, explores the way that cultural ideas about mind and person alter prayer practice and the experience of God. Luhrmann's work focuses on the way that objects without material presence come to seem real to people, and the way that ideas about the mind affect mental experience. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 26087]

Geographer Carl Ortwin Sauer demonstrated through his work and writings that landscapes are the long-term contingent product of interactions between natural processes and cultural forces. In this lecture, Patrick Kirch, Professor of Anthropology and Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, applies the concept of landscape to the islands of Polynesia. Drawing upon recent multi-disciplinary research, Kirch shows how certain natural properties of islands shaped the course of cultural and social evolution of island peoples, at the same time that cumulative effect of human actions irreversibly altered island environments. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 26014]

The Fulbright Program, administered by the U.S. Department of State, was founded in 1946 for the purposes of fostering exchange between American and international students. In this lecture Harriet Fulbright provides an intimate look into the origins of the program, describing how the idea for international exchange evolved over the course of her husband’s career in Congress. She traces the program’s history from the passage of Senator Fulbright’s 1945 Bill, and what she sees as the future of his legacy. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Education] [Show ID: 26013]

Robert Brandom, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, argues that genealogies (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) present the revenge of naturalism on rationalism. Hegel teaches us how to replace the genealogical hermeneutics of suspicion with a hermeneutics of magnanimity that allows us to see naturalism and rationalism as complementing rather than competing with one another. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 25074]

Domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, have insinuated themselves into our society and imagination: long present in our art and narratives, they are now ubiquitous in American homes. Alexandra Horowitz, Barnard College, Columbia University, discusses the dog's historical and contemporary role, attributions typically made to dogs, and an alternative empirical approach to considering dogs. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 25113]

Women have achieved parity in obtaining doctoral degrees, but do not experience the same career trajectory as men. Is this discrimination or family formation? Mary Ann Mason, Professor of the Graduate School and Faculty Co-Director of the Earl Warren Institute for Law and Social Policy, University of California, Berkeley explores twelve years of research to address the question of the effect of family formation from the graduate student years though retirement. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Education] [Show ID: 24965]

Top incomes represent a small share of the population but a very significant share of total income and total taxes paid. Emmanuel Saez, Professor of Economics and Director, Center for Equitable Growth, University of California, Berkeley presents evidence on income inequality gathered by a collective group of researchers in the World Top Incomes Database. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 24689]

Leon Wieseltier is an American writer, critic, and longstanding literary editor of The New Republic. In this UC Berkeley Forester lecture, he discusses the Jewish belief in a Messiah. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 24599]

Are intelligent machines possible? If they are, what will they be like? Jeff Hawkins, an inventor, engineer, neuroscientist, author and entrepreneur, frames these questions by reviewing some of the efforts to build intelligent machines. He posits that machine intelligence is only possible by first understanding how the brain works and then building systems that work on the same principles. He describes Numenta’s work using neocortical models to understand the torrent of machine-generated data being created today. He will conclude with predictions on how machine intelligence will unfold in the near and long term future and why creating intelligent machines is important for humanity. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 24412]

How the brain creates intelligence is viewed by many as the greatest scientific quest of all time. We are living at the time when rapid progress is being made and a comprehensive theory of brain function is emerging. Jeff Hawkins, an inventor, engineer, neuroscientist, author and entrepreneur, presents the big picture of what we know so far and describes recent progress in a core issue: why neurons are arranged as they are in the neocortex, how this arrangement builds models of the world, and how these models make predictions and generate actions. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 24411]

There is widespread agreement that happiness is good, but is it the sole ultimate good? Princeton University Professor Peter Singer explores arguments for and against such a conclusion. He considers the implications for public policy that take happiness as one of the most important goods that individuals can achieve. Singer specializes in applied ethics, approaching ethics from a secular preference utilitarian perspective Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 24344]

Theda Skocpol surveys the current political landscape and explores its most consequential questions: What happened to Obama’s “new New Deal”? Why have his achievements enraged opponents more than they have satisfied supporters? How has the Tea Party’s ascendance reshaped American politics? At this moment of economic uncertainty and extreme polarization, as voters prepare to render another verdict on Obama’s historic presidency, Skocpol reviews its triumphs and setbacks to see where we might be headed. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 24397]

All the ancient philosophers, pagans and Christians alike, agreed that death is the separation of a soul and a body. While there was much disagreement on the precise relationship between a being and his soul, as well as what sort of thing they took a soul to be, it is the agreement among the philosophers rather than their differences that calls for critical attention. Jonathan Barnes examines why ancient philosophers believed that beings were composed of two parts, the divorce of which is death. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 23825]

Michael Marmot is an internationally acclaimed public health specialist and a distinguished epidemiologist. Marmot heads an active epidemiology research program on social and cultural determinants of health and ill-health. His work on cardiovascular disease has led to important strategies of prevention and heath policy. His new research includes investigating social gradients in health in Japan, causes of East-West differences in coronary heart disease, and pursuing an initiative on psychological triggers of biological pathways of disease. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 23792]

Norman Myers was born in Clitheroe, Lancashire and attended Keble College in Oxford. He is a British environmentalist and authority on biodiversity and is a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences. He is currently a professor and Visiting Fellow at Green College in Oxford, and holds visiting professorships at UC Berkeley, Harvard, Cornell and Stanford. Myers has studied the mass extinction of species and problems of tropical deforestation and through his research eventually developed the concept of biodiversity hotspots. He has also written on climate refugees and food and hunger in Sub-Saharan African. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 23328]

Eugene A. Hammel is internationally recognized for his work in social anthropology. In addition to studying social structure and kinship, his interests have included the statistical and formal analysis of social anthropological data. He has focused on peasant society and culture, particularly Balkan, and historical and anthropological demography. Hammel's fieldwork has been varied, from an investigation of Serbo-Croatian and Albanian kinship terminology among immigrants in California, to the patterns of consumption of alcoholic beverages among ethnic groups in the Southwestern United States. He has also researched Chiricahua and Navaho archaeology and social networks and mobility in urban locations in Yugoslavia. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 23370]

Eric Foner is an American historian whose interests include political history, the history of freedom and the early history of the Republican Party. Foner is also the leading contemporary historian on the Civil-War Reconstruction period. He is only the second person to serve as president of the three major professional organizations: the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 23361]