Join us on December 9th, as we host a free screening of Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

Seasons greetings my fellow nerdlings!!! Now that the week of feasting has ended, it's time to return to the cozy Sugar Maple and digest some SCIENCE (FICTION)!!! That's right!! It's time yet again for a kitchy sci-fi screening. MST3K-style haggling of the most excellent special effects is heavily encouraged (and easier to do after an 11% ABV beer or two...). And don't worry, this will be the 1959 flick, not the 2008 Brendan Fraser one.

So!! Tell your family!! Tell your friends!! Come grab a beer and see a cinematic classic for Freeeeeee!!! (#BYOP - bring your own popcorn) Hope to see you there!!

Join us on November 11th as Dr. KathiJo Jankowski presents: Life on Wisconsin's West Coast: Upper Mississippi River Ecology

Greetings once again my fellow nerdlings!! It is with the utmost enthusiasm I bring to you our November USS speaker: personal friend, college classmate, and ultimate frisbee teammate of mine... Dr. KathiJo Jankowski!!! She is coming from the western reaches of our fine state to discuss the importance of the links between water quality and climate change for the Upper Mississippi.

Wisconsin is surrounded by Great Lakes, but America's Great River traces nearly 150 miles of its western border. The Upper Mississippi River forms the economic and ecological heart of the Upper Midwest, providing recreation, navigation and drinking water to millions of people in the basin and homes for diverse species of fish and wildlife. While pressures in the basin continue to threaten water quality, climate change is adding an extra layer of complexity to our ability to protect and manage the river. Come hear about how water quality and climate change are linked and what we are doing about it!

Kathi Jo Jankowski is the Principal Investigator for the Water Quality Component of the Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program's Long-term Resource Monitoring Element.  She coordinates water quality monitoring and research on the Upper Mississippi in coordination with several federal and state agencies. Her research aims to understand how land use and climate change impact ecosystem processes in large rivers. She is specifically interested in nutrient and carbon cycling, ecosystem metabolism and food web ecology and has worked in freshwater systems from the boreal zone to the tropics. 

So!!! Tell your family!! Tell your friends!! Tell your neighbors!! Come all to the cozy back room of the Sugar Maple on 11/11/19 for some beers and water ecology education!! Hope to see you there!!

Join us October 14th as Dennis Miller presents: What Birds See

Greetings once again!!! Come one and all as we return to the cozy back room of the Sugar Maple for our October talk on Bird Vision!!!

While bird vision is accomplished by the same chemistry and general physiological structure as mammals and other animals, there are many adaptations which support survival in their ecological niches. While we can’t see through bird’s eyes, by using a number of photographic techniques we can at least get some idea of what they might see. This presentation will describe some of these techniques and illustrate the results.

So tell your family, friends and neighbors!!! Come by, grab a beer and let's learn about how our feathered friends see!! Hope to see you there!!

Mr. Miller is a "retired" engineer having spent 35 years working on topics of building environmental control at Johnson Controls. Since retiring he has done work on mobile robots, virtual reality, photography and numbers of other technologies which has been applied to teaching young people in Marquette University's Engineering Outreach Program and adults in the UWM Osher Program and in UWM's Continuing Education for Engineers. His interest in applying photography to understanding what birds see comes from many hours doing nature photography and volunteer activities at the Milwaukee County Park's Wehr Nature Center.

Join us September 9th as Dr. Charles Franklin presents: The Past, Present and Future of Public Opinion Polling

Hear ye!! Hear ye!! It's that time once again when we science nerds gather at the Sugar Maple "watering" hole to learn things and stuff about science!! Well, this month we're changing it up a wee bit and looking into the world of political science where we will be hosting Marquette Law School's very own Dr. Charles Franklin to speak on the intricacies of public opinion polling!!

The development of scientific samples of the public and the methodology of survey research grew from the late 1930s when probability samples of households were first developed. These evolved into random samples of telephones in the 1960s and are now evolving to samples and surveys using the internet. Each era has faced challenges while advancing our ability to measure public opinion among a representative sample of the population. We’ll talk about this evolution and pay special attention to the issues facing polling now and for the next few years.

Summer is over now and it's time to grab a beer and learn things!! Tell your family, friends and neighbors!! Hope to see you there!!

Charles Franklin is professor of law and public policy at Marquette Law School, and director of the Marquette Law School Poll. Prior to joining Marquette in 2012 he was Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for 20 years. He is past president of the Society for Political Methodology, and an elected fellow of the Society. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan.

Join us on August 12th as Daniel Case presents: Crewed Spaceflight: Engineering Design and Lessons Learned

Hellllooooooooo Space Nerds!!! Please come from the far reaches (of the Milwaukee area) and join us yet again in the back room of the Sugar Maple on August the 12th to hear Daniel Case talk about aerospace engineering!!!

Designing things for humans is complicated, and it is even more so when taking into account some of the quirky things about living and working in space. This will be a low-key presentation on a high altitude subject - part habitat design, part life sciences, and maybe even some radiation protection!!

Daniel Case is a Ph.D. candidate in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado - Boulder. At CU, he researches ways to keep astronauts healthy and safe in the space radiation environment, in an effort to help enable long-term human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit. His focus is on integrating passive shielding into space habitat design, ideally providing as much radiation protection using as little mass as possible.

So, come get your nerd on!!! Grab a tasty beer at the bar and join us in the back room for some Space Science!!! And as always - Tell your family and friends!! Hope to see you there!!

Mini Brains: The Exciting World of Lab Grown Mini Organs

Lovely summer greetings to all my fellow nerdlings!!! I know there are many distractions once the weather turns nice, but why not wind down this coming Monday with a frosty brew and a wee bit o' SCIENCE!?! Come one and all yet again to the Sugar Maple for a mind wrinkling talk on MINI BRAINS!!!

If the idea of having human cells growing in a dish already sounds exciting, you might want to sit down for this talk. For a couple of years now, scientists have been able to grow mini-organs in labs. Mini stomachs, kidneys, livers, and yes, even mini brains. These are called organoids: 3D structures with multiple cell types that resemble (in structure and in function) the real organs in your body. They are currently being used by scientists to study different diseases and possible treatments. Organoids are usually derived from human stem cells, which means they maintain their genetic material, so we can also explore genetic diseases and even genetically engineer specific mutations of interest. We live in a time when genetically engineered lab-grown mini-brains are a cool, and slightly spooky, reality.

So tell your family!! Tell your friends!! We hope to see you there!!

Born and raised in Curitiba, Brazil, Thiago Arzua now pursues his Ph.D. in neuroscience at the Medical College of Wisconsin. His doctoral research focuses on disease modeling during early neurodevelopment, for conditions such as Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and Anesthetic-Induced Developmental Neurotoxicity. One of the main models used in his lab is cerebral organoids or mini-brains.

Join us on June 10th, as we host a free screening of The Andromeda Strain!

Greetings once again fellow science nerds!! It is that time of year where we return to the back room of the Sugar Maple for a viewing of a movie both scientific and fictional - Sci-Fi night!!! Last year things even turned a bit MST3K, and it was AWESOME!!! This even is BYOP (Bring Your Own Popcorn!) and heckling of the film is strongly encouraged!! Hope to see you there!!

Join us on May 13th as Sergio Pierluissi presents: Maintaining Monarchs & Other Powerful Pollinators

Greetings once again!! Please come help us welcome Spring and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's very own Sergio Pierluissi, who comes to speak on the delicate miracle of monarch butterfly migration!!

From the incredible journey monarch butterflies make every year, to the thousands of species of pollinators and the services they provide every day, these phenomena and species are declining on the landscape. We will explore the biology of some of these fascinating species, what is at stake with their decline, and explore the opportunities we all have to make a difference in their conservation.

So, please tell your family and friends!! This talk will not be live streamed on Facebook, so we really hope to see you in person!!

Sergio Pierluissi has worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 14 years in six states, mostly in our private lands program, both as a biologist and as a regional coordinator for the program. In that capacity, he has restored hundreds of acres of native grassland and wetlands in different parts of the country, and now pulls broader partnerships together to continue that work throughout the midwest region.

Join us on April 8th as Casey McGrath presents: An Update from New Horizons: Beyond Pluto

Come one and all yet again to the back room of the Sugar Maple as University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Coffeeshop Astrophysics' very own Casey McGrath brings us updates from the depths of space!!

Back in 2015 the world got its very first image of the surface of Pluto, taken from the New Horizons spacecraft. but since then it has continued its epic journey out further, pushing back the horizon of our solar system even more. Three and a half years later, this New Year's day 2019, New Horizons made its latest fly-by encounter with a rocky world beyond Pluto, names Ultima Thule. This strange new world is not quite like any we have ever seen before, and has been likened to a "snowman" because of its peculiar shape. So come to learn some of the latest updates from New Horizons - what have we learned over the years in the time it made its closest approach to Pluto, and what are we continuing to learn about some of the outer-most reaches of our solar system.

Casey McGrath is currently a physics graduate student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. There he is a member of the Center for Gravitation, Cosmology, and Astrophysics. He is working on his PhD in gravitational wave physics, studying how we can use pulsars (a type of start that "flashes" like a lighthouse) to try and detect gravitational waves coming from objects like supermassive black holes orbiting each other at the centers of merging galaxies.

So tell your family!! Tell your Friends!! Bring Your Neighbors!! Come to the Sugar Maple, drink delicious beer and learn some SPACE SCIENCE!!! Hope to see you there!!

Join us on March 11th as Dr. Vincent Smith presents: Einstein's revolutionary ideas of 1905.

Greetings once again fellow nerdlings!!! And boy do we have a nerdy treat for you!!! For the month of March, our guest speaker is traveling all the way across an ocean to visit Milwaukee and bestow scientific nerdiness upon us.

Please join us to hear Dr. Vincent Smith, particle physicist from the University of Bristol, as he describes the world and our knowledge of Physics, at the time of Einstein's birth, and then looks in some detail at Einstein's three famous contributions in 1905 (the explanation of Brownian Motion, of the Photo-electric effect, and Special Relativity), which laid the foundations for 20th Century Physics.

Dr. Smith's research is in Elementary Particle Physics. He has taken part in experiments at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) and Fermilab (Illinois, USA). His particular interest is in Weak Interactions, especially the properties of short-lived strange particles known as Hyperons. He is currently a member of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.

This is going to be a pretty epic talk, so be sure to mark your calendars, and tell your family and friends!!! Hope to see you there!!!

Join us on February 11th as Tom Kroeger presents: Dirty Milwaukee - Our City's Industrial Past & Present

Come One & All!!! Return and gather once again with your fellow nerds in the cozy back room of the Sugar Maple to hear Milwaukee's very own Tom Kroeger speak on the sources and locations of the environmental impacts to soil and groundwater that we are still addressing today in the Milwaukee Metropolitan area. Tom will also briefly cover the evolution of the remedial approaches following the Clean Water Act and its amendments.

Prior to being the Lakeshore State Park Manager for the last 10 years, Tom worked for a local engineering firm for 25 years. He was a Principal Hydrogeologist and Wetland Biologist as well as co-department manager for the firm's environmental group. His specialties included Brownfield remediation, environmental permitting and urban degraded wetlands. His projects include the Milwaukee Road Yard facility, Allis Chalmers, Potawatomi Casino and Department of WI Transportation work in south eastern Wisconsin.

Tell your family, friends and fellow nerds!!! Hope to see you there!!!

Join us on January 14th, as Paul Nurczyk presents: Learning from our mistakes: Engineering for Safety

Greetings fellow science nerdlings!!! It's that time once again to gather in the cozy back room of the Sugar Maple and absorb some SCIENCE!!! This time come join our January speaker, Paul Nurczyk, as we enter a world of danger... and learn how engineers think up all kinds of ways to keep us safe!! Planes! Trains!! Automobiles!!! Tell your family! Tell your friends!! Tell your neighbors!!! Hope to see you there!!!