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Health & Fitness

Darwin Day: The Future of Plants

The 6th annual Darwin Day Dinner will be held on Saturday evening, February 8, 2014, at the Continental Manor, 112 Main Street in Norwalk. Cocktail hour begins at 6pm and a full course dinner will be served at 7pm. In addition to a science quiz with prizes, Dr. Peter Crane, the Dean of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, will give a talk entitled “The Future of Plants.”  Tickets are $60 per person, including a full course dinner.

We are all reliant on plants and their crucial ability to capture the energy of the sun and turn it into the chemical energy on which we and most other organisms depend. Plants are also the sources of raw materials of all kinds and are important regulators of many of the processes that make our planet habitable. Yet we are surprisingly ignorant about the changes that are underway in the world of plants.  

In this lecture Dr. Crane will lead a discussion of the species of plants, and how they are adapting – or not – to changing land use patterns or climate change. He’ll also explore how humans are changing plants through breeding and genetic engineering.

Peter Crane’s work focuses on the diversity of plant life – its origin, fossil history, current status, conservation and use. This event is a celebration of science, evolution, and Charles Darwin. It has developed a reputation as a destination for stimulating people and conversation, and also one heck of a fun party. 

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Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held around the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, February 12th, 1809. The public is invited to join the party and revel in the discoveries and life ofthe man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity. This will be a memorable event. Those attend are guaranteed to go home smarter, or at least knowing more than when they arrived!

Darwin Day is sponsored by: the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Fairfield County, The Wilton Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), the Unitarian Church in Westport, Humanists and Freethinkers of Fairfield County (HFFC), the Norwalk Public Schools Science, Department, the Norwalk Aquarium, Earthplace, and the Bartlett Arboretum. For more information or to RSVP visit www.DarwinDayCT.org or contact the Southern Connecticut Darwin Day Committee: Craig Tomarkin at ctomarkin@aol.com or John Levin at 646.371.9280 or jlevin@tfm-llc.com.

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