As women entered the academic workforce in the late 19th and early 20th century, they undertook formal and informal efforts at networking and elevating each other’s work, with mixed levels of success. This talk will consider the digital project Visualizing Women in Science, a multi-year effort at the American Philosophical Society to find evidence of forgotten women scientists in their holdings.

Akilah Chatman (they/them) is an environmental justice & resilience, community-based participatory action researcher working to connect people to their environment in ways that are culturally responsible. Come dive into their work as they talk you through co-developing this novel type of research and learn about the various communities they work with. 

Dr. Bonnan’s research focuses on understanding the role of forelimbs, particularly in sauropods—the largest animals to ever walk the earth, in locomotion, posture, and support. Together with previous studies on lizards and other sprawling tetrapods, evidence shows that complex elbow movements are an ancient mechanism for efficient overground locomotion.

Science On Tap: Untapped returns as we celebrate 15 years of science programming! At this special edition of our science cafe, we explore the myths, legends, and science behind some of our favorite mythical creatures.

Sketching Splendor, an exhibition at the American Philosophical Society Museum, explores the work of William Bartram, Titian Ramsay Peale, and John James Audubon, three American naturalists who sought to illuminate nature’s complexity. But there were many others who also contributed to early American science, including many Native Americans, people of African descent both enslaved and free, and women whose names are less known. In this talk the exhibition’s curator, Dr. Anna Majeski, will focus on some of their stories as highlighted in the new exhibit.

For four months in 2023, community members and students worked alongside professional archaeologists to excavate artifacts and features that highlight the love, community, and humanity of the Black Bottom neighborhood and recognize the violence of its destruction under the guise of urban renewal. Co-project directors Dr. Sarah Linn and Dr. Megan Kassabaum will discuss the early stages of project planning, the 2023 excavation season, collaborative lab work undertaken in 2024, and current efforts to share the recovered stories widely.

Mark Sabaj (sa-BAY), Curator of Ichthyology, Academy of Natural Sciences. With funding from Academy benefactors Daniel and Patricia Fromm, a team of Academy naturalists (Mark Sabaj, Cecile Gama, Anwar Abdul-Qawi, Daouda Njie and David Montgomery) conducted a two-week expedition to collect fishes from the African country of Equatorial Guinea.

This talk will dive into an unexpected discipline of medicine – medical astrology - by examining some of the numerous publications on the topic housed within the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, many from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries during the height of the curious discipline's popularity.

Temple professor Becki Beadling will discuss the role of the ocean in a changing climate and how we can use both climate models and observations to improve our understanding and reduce our uncertainty in projected climate change.

This talk explores the conservation of stone sculptures and architectural materials, many of which have not been closely examined since the 1920s. We will look at the new methods and materials that have been developed for this project and reflect on how art conservation and museum practices are changing over time.

Join the Science History Institute’s curator, Elisabeth Berry Drago, and learn how the BOLD exhibition came together. You’ll learn how fashionable 19th-century buyers caught the “mauve measles,” dig into the strange history of Day-Glo, and be inspired by current trends towards sustainability and “green” dye processes.

TALK BLURB: This talk examines the gendered dynamics of the joint research program that developed between Prague-born, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Dr. Gerty T. Cori and her husband Dr. Carl F. Cori during their first ten years in the United States.

Tanya Dapkey will introduce us to eDNA and its applications, discuss what the future looks like for environmental genetics and share how scientists at the Academy of Natural Sciences are using these tools to discover biodiversity in the Delaware River Watershed. 

This talk will explore how historians and social scientists reconstruct past epidemics, beginning with the stunningly underreported “throat distemper” epidemics of New England—the greatest single mortality event among European settlers in colonial North American history. We then return to Philadelphia to consider the other Yellow Fever Epidemics of the 1790s and finish with original work conducted for the Mütter Museum’s current exhibit on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, “Spit Spreads Death.” Combining traditional research methodologies with computational humanities technology, we can reconstruct these catastrophic events anew and recover some of the actions of those who chose not to remember or be remembered.

Resident phages may hold the secret to success for healthy fecal transplant to treat numerous gastrointestinal diseases where probiotics fail. In this talk, Tabb Sullivan, PhD, a Principal Scientist at Integral Molecular, will explore the history of bacteriophages, what we currently know and what is being done to harness their power for treating challenging diseases. We will then explore what could be possible if we can manipulate the virome within.

Did you know that the ground we walk on every day might be held up by a 300-year-old ship? Join us to learn about how changes to the landscape led to wooden ships being recycled to build 18th and 19th-century ports like New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.

Marine geologist Dr. Laura Guertin (Penn State Brandywine) will take us on the journey of when she first started combining her quilting and science storytelling skills, and how her field experiences in Alaska, Louisiana, and on a two-month ocean expedition in the South Atlantic Ocean are being shared with quilts.

Come along to Patrick Walsh’s talk to learn how cowboy doctors got their hands dirty with animal carcasses and made surprisingly effective remedies in the fin-de-siècle.

Jason Weckstein, associate curator of Ornithology at Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, will take us on an armchair expedition into the Belém Area of Endemism in northeastern Brazil, where he co-led a team conducting research to discover and describe the bird and bird parasite diversity in the region.

In this talk, Dr. Rebecca Gibson of Virginia Commonwealth University will discuss her new research on what drives historical and modern efforts to stamp out the practice of corseting.

In this talk Dr. Kathryn Mickle will discuss her work on lower actinopterygian fishes, how new species are described, and why detailed taxonomic descriptions are important not only for our understanding of the diversity of these fossil fishes but also our understanding of today’s ray-finned fishes.

The last decade has seen an extraordinary change in technology as drones, lidar, and high-resolution satellite imagery have made it easier to access a variety of kinds and qualities of aerial data. This wave of technological innovation allows us to answer increasingly more complicated research questions remotely. In this talk Chad will discuss his work with drones, remote sensing, and a variety of sensor technologies with examples from projects in Jordan, Israel, and the US.

Thank you for your interest in attending the virtual Science on Tap. Sadly, tonight's program will be postponed due to an unforeseen circumstance. For those interested in the topic, we will be bringing back the speaker the next time the American Philosophical Society hosts Science on Tap in 2023. If you have any questions, please email MuseumEducation@AmPhilSoc.Org.

Although death might be inevitable, what factors are affecting tree growth before they die? Could knowing those factors help managers mitigate or plan for the future? In this talk, we'll explore how climate and sea level are affecting American holly (Ilex opaca) in a low elevation forest along the St. Jones River in Delaware.

We've all seen questionable fictionalized science in film- but how do scientists interact with fictional interpretations of their real work? The Corpse Review- aka Evan Bird, MA in human skeletal biology and forensic scientist with an area Medical Examiner's office will talk us through his real work and how it inspired him to begin reviewing fictional corpses on Instagram via his account @thecorpsereview

This talk will address what we understand today about the earliest iron in the region, its influence on local cultures, and how researchers use unique approaches in archaeological science to reveal crucial information about the complex pyro-technologies of the past.

Why has science historically been so dominated by men? And why is this still true for many STEM fields today? Join historian Joanna Behrman for a fast-paced dive into the history of women in science in the United States.

Come learn about the strange combo of best-practices for managing birth in today’s hospitals: tracking cervical dilation in centimeters, assessed manually (yes, measuring by hand!).