Your weekly sampling of upcoming events around KU:

• The KU Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Institute will show off its newly completed $3.5 million renovations during a reception from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday. Tours will show visitors all the high-tech stuff there that will help scientists and students expand their research, including the cryogenic tanks I saw last week, which I thought were pretty cool. The space at the event will be limited, though, so organizers ask that you RSVP if you want to go: biodiversity@ku.edu, or 864-4540.

• Historian Richard Norton Smith’s second lecture on America’s first presidents, on John Adams, will be 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Dole Institute of Politics. I checked out his talk on George Washington on Sunday, and he promised his Adams discussion would include the rise of the first U.S. political parties, which he said were far nastier than the parties we sometimes consider so polarized today.

• From 9 a.m. to noon Wednesday will be my first-ever Heard on the Hill Office Hours at the Media Crossroads in the Kansas Union. Please come say hello and tell me what’s on your mind.

• A Nobel Prize winner will pitch “A Next-Generation Solution for Funding Retirement” in a talk at the Dole Institute at 1 p.m. Friday.

• And an “It Gets Better” program featuring the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles will address youth bullying, 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Lied Center. Check out that link for some other related events during the week, as well.

There are far more events than this, of course, and if there are any you’d like to add, chime in via the comments below. And get those KU news tips to merickson@ljworld.com.