Saturday, December 28, 2013

HHMI’s Holiday Lecture Series: 2013

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In 2010 I highlighted an online (and free) holiday lecture series  offered by HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) that focused on Infectious Diseases. These four (roughly 1 hour lectures) were geared for and delivered to an audience of high school science students.

 

Last year, in HHMI’s Holiday Lecture Series: 2012, I highlighted this series again, this time featuring four lectures on our changing planet.

 

These lecture series are a yearly event, and for nearly two decades  they have focused on a variety of topics, including: Cancer, Genomics, Biodiversity, Immunology, Neuroscience, and Infectious Diseases. This year, the focus is on Medicine in the Genomic Era, again with 4 hour-long lectures available. 

 

A link, with a brief description, follows:

 

 

The 2013 Holiday Lectures are now available
via on-demand streaming! Click the thumbnail above
or
follow this link to view!

Sixty years after James Watson and Francis Crick revealed the structure of the DNA double helix and only a decade after scientists published the first complete read-through of all three billion DNA bases in the human genome, the ability to routinely sequence and analyze individual genomes is revolutionizing the practice of medicine—from how diseases are first diagnosed to how they are treated and managed.

In the 2013 Holiday Lectures on Science, Charles L. Sawyers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Christopher A. Walsh of Boston Children’s Hospital will reveal the breathtaking pace of discoveries into the genetic causes of various types of cancers and diseases of the nervous system, and discuss the impact of those discoveries on our understanding of normal human development and disease.

 

 

For those who would like to sample the earlier lectures, their are 80 of them available as free podcasts through iTunes.

The rest of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute  website is well worth exploring as well, for it contains numerous short science films, virtual laboratories, and interactive mini-lessons, all designed to feed your `inner science geek’.

 

This is a veritable treasure trove for science geeks everywhere, and I’m looking forward to sampling many of these lectures over the holidays.