What do bats see with their sonar?

Hosted by Prof Peter Ng, James A. Simmons from Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Rhode Island is giving a talk titled, ‘What do bats see with their sonar?’,

DATE: Wednesday, 19 Dec 2007
TIME: 4 pm
VENUE: DBS Conference Rm

ABSTRACT
Echolocating big brown bats (eptesicus fuscus) determine target distance from echo delay and target shape from the echo spectrum, but they convert then spectrum into estimates of the relative distances to different parts of targets. this gives them a fast method for synthetic aperture reconstruction of shape.

Prof Peter Ng at Climate Change Symposium

Prof Peter Ng gave a talk during the Climate Change Expert Symposium. It was titled ‘Marine Biodiversity Conservation – Lessons from a small red dot’. He spoke of and compared Singapore’s past and present state of biodiversity, linking it to the topic of climate change. At the end, he closed his talk with a message from Albert Camus -
“Probably every generation sees itself as charged with remaking the world. Mine, however, knows it will not remake the world. Its task is even greater: to keep the world from destroying itself.”

Artist Jean-François from MNHN

Jean-François Dejouannet is an artist working in the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in Paris. He is here from 27 Nov to 17 Dec to help Prof Peter Ng and his collaborator, Dr. Bertrand Richer-de-Forges, to finish up some papers. He is under the sponsorship of the French Embassy and NUS under the Merlion France-Singapore project 2007.

Visit by Zoologists from Moscow State University, Russia

Mrs. Alexandra Panyutina (right) and Mr. Evgeny Yakhontov are zoologists working on the study of flight origin in mammals at Vertebrate Zoology Department of Moscow State University, Russia. Their work in Singapore is aimed at observation and filming movements of wild colugos. They visited the museum to look at the specimens, and also to find out the common locations of the mammals.

Visit from Khon Kaen University

Office of Student Affairs welcomed a delegation of 5 staff and 15 students from Khon Kaen University, Thailand on the 30 November 2007. They were from sub-departments of Agriculture Science. After a tour around the campus, they arrived at the Museum and were given a guided tour around the public gallery by our Education & Public Relations Officer, Ivan Tan.

Photo by Tan Heok Hui.

Dr. Hans Huijbregts

Dr. Hans Huijbregts visited the Museum on 22 November 2007. He is from the Museum of Natural History Naturalis, Leiden, Netherlands. He was here to check out on specimens of dung beetles in Singapore.

Dr. Motoko Fujita from RISH

On 21 November 2007, Dr. Motoko Fujita was at the Museum to look up on Accipitidae specimens (kites, hawks and eagles). She is an ecologist from Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto University.

Photo by November Tan

Drs. Dewi and Dwi

From 12th to 15th November 2007, Drs. Dewi Prawiradelaga (left) and Dwi Astuti from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences-LIPI visited the Museum and the laboratory of A/P Rudolf Meier to learn more about molecular lab techniques.  They were hosted by Prof. Navjot Sodhi and Dr. David Lohman with whom they are collaborating on a project relating to phylogeography and cryptic speciation in Southeast Asian birds.