The British Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting comes to Dublin next week for the first time since 1957, but what can we expect to see and hear? Dick Ahlstrom and Vikki Burns report.
Are we close to a cure for arthritis? Can science measure what it means to be lucky? Are the medicines we take harming or helping us? And most importantly, could the Taoiseach be replaced by a robot?
These and other pressing scientific issues will be thrown open for discussion next week when the British Association for the Advancement of Science's annual Festival of Science gets under way in Dublin. Visiting the capital for the first time since 1957, the week-long event involves 300 leading Irish and international scientists engaged in 150 events, lectures and presentations, at which the public can learn about the latest advances in the sciences.
Trinity College Dublin plays host for the festival, one of the largest public science meetings of its kind in the world. Most of the daytime activity is focused on the Trinity campus, but there are evening events right across the city so there will be plenty of opportunity to take part and enjoy the exceptional scientific line-up taking part in the event.
The BA was established in 1831 and organises major science related initiatives across Britain. The festival is the headline event but it also puts together the UK's national science week, regional and local events and an extensive programme for young people in schools and colleges.
The festival is an infrequent visitor here but the BA has a long history in Ireland. It held its fifth meeting at Trinity College Dublin in 1835, when Ireland's greatest mathematician and scientist, William Rowan Hamilton, presented his famous theory of conical refraction. It is fitting that the festival visits us once again during this the "Hamilton Year", which celebrates the bicentenary of the scientist's birth in Dublin in 1805.
As ever, the festival includes something for all tastes, with an eclectic mix covering everything from efforts to cure disease to the science behind tree climbing. There are separate programmes for primary and secondary students that will bring thousands of pupils to events at Trinity College. Lectures and presentations will take place on campus throughout the week and there is an active programme of evening events under the Science in the City programme.
Five award-winning lectures are among the highlights in this year's wide selection of talks. On each day of the festival at 12.45pm, an outstanding young scientist, recognised for an ability to communicate science to a general audience, will present their research.
On Monday, Ireland's hidden depths will be explored by Jason Hall-Spencer, in a series of new never-before-seen videos of Ireland's deep-water coral reefs. A journey from the centre of the sun, to reveal its many wonders, will be the "star" feature of Tuesday's lecture by Dr Robert Walsh.
The problems of identity theft will be explored on Wednesday by Dr Emily Finch. This will include a worrying demonstration of just how easily someone's legal identity can be stolen.
Thursday will see Prof Seamus Martin discussing the importance of cell suicide, execution and murder in maintaining life. The final award lecture, on Friday, will examine how we can modify the design of aircraft to dramatically reduce noise pollution.
The festival will look to the past, with talks about The Legacy of Hamilton (Monday, 9.30am) and Albert Einstein: a 20th Century Icon (Wednesday, 10am), as well as to the future, including Sonic Art: Sound of the Future (Monday, 12pm) and 21st Century transplantation (Friday 10am).
There will be representatives from most fields of science, such as psychology (eg Coping with Uncertainty. Friday, 2pm), linguistics (What's in a Word? Tuesday, 9am), engineering (eg Is Engineering Ingenuity? Tuesday, 1pm), mathematics (Maths that Changed the World. Thursday, 10am), medicine (Is a Cure for Arthritis in Sight? Thursday, 2pm), and even literature (Literature and Science: Encounters with the Sea Mouse. Monday, 1pm) and politics (Africa's Rainbow Revolution. Thursday, 2pm).
The rest of the festival features a vast array of topics, ranging from Genetics and the Horse (Monday, 2:30pm) and Tree Climbing Techniques (Tuesday 1pm and 4:15pm), to The Science of Irishness (Wednesday, 9:15am) and Celebrity Diets, Obesity and Hormones (Thursday, 9:30am).
Dr Vikki Burns is a scientist from the University of Birmingham on placement at The Irish Times as a British Association for the Advancement of Science Media Fellow.