Dear reader, so glad you’re reading this. Let me start by laying out some work we need to do.
I love maps of all kinds. The map above is based on Pew Research data of the percentage of people who agreed that "certain people can cast curses or spells that cause bad things to happen to someone." The stippled countries are those with insufficient data. No country had less than 9% of its population believing in wicked witchcraft. Worldwide, the figure is over 40%. OUCH! Educators - in some sense that’s all of us - certainly have our work cut out.
And then there is the travesty of the Netflix series, “Ancient Apocalypse.” The host, Graham Hancock, repeatedly criticizes ‘academic’ archeologists, anthropologists, and geologists for disagreeing with him. The show’s premise - a highly advanced (mathematics, architecture, agriculture) civilization was wiped out by comets and floods 12,000 years ago but not before they shared some of their knowledge with humankind. ¿How did such a ridiculous program get on Netflix? Ask Hancock’s son, Netflix’s senior manager of unscripted originals.
And the last abomination - for this missive - is a movie that wants to convince you vaccines are a plot to reduce the number of people on our planet. “Died Suddenly” is an hour of gruesome horror engineered to lead the viewer into its conspiratorial rabbit hole.
SPACE
Monday at 6:15pm, the ISS will be visible - weather permitting - directly over the Bay Area. Well, at 85° anyway. If you have a clear view of the horizon, it will appear in the northwest at 6:12pm. Currently on the ISS are 7 people, thousands of tardigrades, hundreds of Hawaiian Bobtail Squid, and a garden of lettuce, tomatoes, and pepper plants.
¿What if touring our neck of the Milky Way Galaxy were much like touring celebrities' homes in Beverly Hills? “The Sights of Space: A Voyage to Spectacular Alien Worlds” is an entertaining half hour video replete with ‘space music’ and Rod Serlingesque narration. In the rolling credits, it states, “Extensive creative license has been used." It’s still a fun tour.
A closer-to-reality 15-minute video brings us up to date on revelations from the JWST.
One last bit of space news: a portion of Hipparchus’ star catalog from before 100 BCE may have been found. It is believed that Hipparchus created the first catalog of stars along with their precise positions but no fragment had survived to the present - until this discovery.
The random number generator spewed out 696. M. Lee was closest with 598 and won Randall Munroe’s What If? (Only 9 people entered.) This time we’re offering a laser-cut kit of an 8-inch James Webb Space Telescope model. The photo shows the model completed by a previous SciSchmooze winner. Just send an email to david.almandsmith [at] gmail.com (only one) before noon Friday with an integer between zero and 1,000. We will then use a random number generator to select the target number and mail the kit to the person who chose the closest number.
ARCHEOLOGY
¿How do you clean 2,000 year old paintings? Answer: veeerry carefully.
Over 40,000 years ago, cave paintings were used to tell stories - a written language of sorts. The oldest known hieroglyphs were in use 5,000 years ago. Symbols to indicate sounds of the voice - an alphabet - were invented about 4,000 years ago. The oldest sentence found to date was written on a comb made from elephant ivory about 4,000 years ago. Translation: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.”
BIOLOGY
Ant colonies can continue for decades, but if a myrmecologist (ant scientist) separates adult ants from ant pupae, the adults die. Why? Apparently because the fluid secreted by pupae is required for the adults to survive. Myrmecologists decided to call this fluid “ant milk.”
We do not know if life exists on other planets in the Galaxy, or in the universe. Just because abiogenesis occurred on Earth does not inform us whether it has been successful elsewhere - or so goes logical reasoning. However, Bayesian analysis suggests the probability of successful abiogenesis elsewhere in the Milky Way is almost certain.
Save the Kangaroo Island Dunnart! The what? It’s a cute little marsupial that is being gobbled to possible extinction by feral cats. Now you know.
My picks for the week:
- Seal and Sea Lion Superstars of 2022 - Livestream, 4 - 5pm Monday
- Myths & Facts of Healthy Aging - 4:30pm Tuesday, San Francisco, $
- Gods & Robots: Imagining Artificial Life in Antiquity - Livestream, 7:30pm Thursday
- Movie & Discussion: Life's Work' with Jill Tarter - Livestream, 7-10pm Friday
- Glider Discovery Day - 11am Sunday, San Carlos, $
PLANET EARTH
World population has reached 8 billion - now what? If you would like to play with interactive graphs depicting oodles of population data (from Oxford University), click HERE. Note that you can drag the x-axes scale with your mouse.
¿How well are we doing with respect to climate change? Let me suggest you check out these animated graphs and text.
Mauna Loa is erupting after a half-century dormancy. Watch it live HERE, but the Hawaiian economy would prefer you go see it in person.
I was lucky enough to enjoy a drive last year through the Washington State Scablands. Since then, i discovered this excellent 14 minute video describing the science behind the landscape.
HEALTH
We all want to live healthy lives, but how about living forever? A gathering of 150 super-rich folk looking for a modern-day fountain of youth recently took place in Switzerland. From one report, the 2-day meeting combined supplements insanity, new-age nonsense, and even a little science. Sarcasm aside, i am amazed at the pace we are learning about the biochemistry and physiology of aging. I would not be surprised if in the next 20 years we gained the ability to keep a lab rat alive and healthy indefinitely.
I just learned that - in spite of Norse mythology - Thor will not live forever. The Australian actor who plays Thor in Marvel movies has two copies of the APOE4 gene which means he is destined to suffer Alzheimer’s by his 85th birthday.
(Question: “¿Who’d want to live to be 85?” Answer: “Anyone who is 84.”)
The APOE4 gene is also a predictor of hearing loss. It is possible, however, that some future version of CRISPR gene editing could intercede in his fate and in the fates of millions of others.
You’re likely familiar with the word “Schadenfreude”, the feeling of pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. Last week i learned a new term, “Freudenfreude”, the feeling of pleasure from someone else’s good fortune. Apparently, practicing Freudenfreude is psychologically healthful for both parties and helps people expand their empathy sphere. Paywall article / Non-paywall article
Entertaining Nerd Videos:
- Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book “Starry Messenger” interview with Ari Melber, MSNBC
- What happens if a star explodes near the Earth? - Veritaseum
- Commercial production of Nickel - The Right Chemistry
- The Sudden Rise of the First Colossal Animal - PBS Eons
- Why the number 0 was banned for 1500 years - Up and Atom
As per usual, i had fun writing this with the intent of your enjoying it.
Stay well, be bold, practice Freudenfreude, & expand your empathy sphere,
Dave Almandsmith
Bay Area Skeptics
“To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.”
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) German philosopher
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 12/05/2022
Low mass galaxies beyond the Milky Way with LSST - 12/05/2022 11:00 AM
Varian Physics Building Stanford
The number densities, structures, internal dynamics, and stellar populations of low mass galaxies can be extremely insightful for studying dark matter and galaxy formation on small scales. Access to these low mass galaxies beyond the Local Group has been limited due to their low surface brightness. I will present recent observational efforts to systematically map the properties of low mass galaxies beyond our local neighborhood, uncovering their significant diverseness and new astrophysical puzzles. The discussion will focus on how we can best utilize the Rubin LSST photometric data to compile a catalog of nearby low surface brightness, including their identification, photometric characterization, and distances. We will also discuss potential synergies with other imagining and spectroscopic surveys optimized for low mass galaxies science, as well as ideas for follow-up programs that will enable a range of science cases related to low mass galaxies.
Speaker: Shany Danieli, Princeton University
Attend in person or via Zoom link.
Snake Fungal Disease: Distribution and Monitoring Techniques - 12/05/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Raquel Elander, California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Talking College - Livestream - 12/05/2022 12:30 PM
Stanford University
The Talking College Project is a Black student and Black studies-centered way to learn more about the particular linguistic choices of Black students while empowering them to be proud of their cultural and linguistic heritage. Students examine the role of language in the Black college experience and collect information from college students through interviews and ethnography. We value the perspectives of undergraduates from a range of disciplinary backgrounds as researchers, and we have a particular focus on how our findings can immediately improve their own educational and linguistic experiences.
One key question of The Talking College Project is: how does the acquisition of different varieties of Black language and culture overlap with identity development, particularly intersectional racial identity development? To answer this question, we use a community-based participatory research methodology and conducted over 100 interviews with Black students at numerous Minority-Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges, and Predominantly White Universities across the U.S. We also conducted ethnographic research on over 10 college campuses.
In this talk, Charity Hudley presents themes and examples from the interviews that illustrate students' linguistic pathways, largely without direct sociolinguistic support that could help guide their decisions. She highlights findings from interviews with Black students to show how they make sense of their racial and linguistic development.
Muwwakil extends the Talking College model and demonstrates how the model manifests through the institutional, and linguistic socialization of Black undergraduates at Predominately White Institutions (PWIs). He contextualizes the PWI as a site of Black identity construction for Black college students and highlights institutional discourses that contribute to the Black imaginary in the higher education context. He shows how Black students who are subjected to racialized and racializing institutional discourses consequently adhere to an imagined and dissonant form of Blackness. This adherence to has implications for how students do Blackness in the formative context of undergraduate education.
Speakers: Anne Charity Hudley, Stanford, and Jamaal Muwwakkil, UC Santa Barbara
Educator Workshop: Mindful Modeling (K - 1) - 12/05/2022 03:30 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Are you a K - 1 educator? Register for this free online workshop exploring mindful modeling.
What is mindful modeling? And how does classroom discussion support K - 1 students’ engagement in modeling? See how K - 1 students use scientific modeling to communicate and revise their ideas as they make sense of phenomena. Explore how to support sensemaking by analyzing and responding to student work. Learn about a discussion tool that supports children’s individual and collective modeling practice.
Register at weblink
Marine Mammal Monday: Seal and Sea Lion Superstars of 2022 - Livestream - 12/05/2022 04:00 PM
Marine Mammal Center
This month we reminisce about our patient superstars! Dozens of marine mammals, ranging from California Sea Lions to endangered Hawaiian Monk Seals, were rescued in 2022. Learn about how our team of dedicated volunteers and veterinarians are able to heal these sick, injured and orphaned patients so that they can be released to their ocean home for the holidays!
Marine Mammal Monday presentations will be broadcast live on The Marine Mammal Center’s YouTube channel. You do not need an account to watch the live broadcast. Just visit the Center’s YouTube page at 4pm PT on the day of the event.
A Tale of Three Cities - 12/05/2022 04:30 PM
Huang Engineering Center Stanford
Over the last three decades, under the stewardship of Mayor Jim Brainard, the City of Carmel, Indiana and its citizens engaged in an experiment to reverse the trends of urban sprawl that have contributed greatly to a reduction in quality of life in the US.
In this talk, Mayor Jim Brainard will give an overview of the journey the city has taken these last 30 years to arrive at the Carmel of today, the recent innovations in becoming more data driven, and discuss the next steps to be taken if the city is to transition to becoming carbon free 24/7.
Speaker: Mayor Jim Brainard, Carmel
Attend in person or online here.
Asteroid Mining: Stepping Stones to Solar System Exploration - 12/05/2022 07:30 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Since its inception, NASA has promoted a vision of space exploration that involves missions and outposts within the inner solar system with supplies delivered from Earth's surface, the Moon, or Mars. Recent research suggests an additional scenario in which humans live in space supported by resources extracted from asteroids, beginning with the most accessible Near Earth Objects (NEOs). NEOs are a cost-effective approach because they contain available, exploitable extraterrestrial resources that are delivered to the inner solar system by gravitational perturbations from the planets, they have been naturally preprocessed into objects the ideal size for industrial operations, and they contain critical materials for cost-effective self-sustaining activities in space.
Speaker: Robert Jedicke, University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy
Tuesday, 12/06/2022
Learning-Augmented Algorithms for Safety-Critical Systems - 12/06/2022 04:00 PM
Calvin Laboratory Berkeley
Making use of modern black-box AI tools such as deep reinforcement learning is potentially transformational for safety-critical systems such as data centers, the electricity grid, transportation, and beyond. However, such machine-learned algorithms typically do not have formal guarantees on their worst-case performance, stability, or safety. So while their performance may improve upon traditional approaches in “typical” cases, they may perform arbitrarily worse in scenarios where the training examples are not representative due to, for example, distribution shift. Thus, a challenging open question emerges: Is it possible to provide guarantees that allow black-box AI tools to be used in safety-critical applications? This talk will provide an overview of an emerging area in studying learning-augmented algorithms that seeks to answer this question in the affirmative. This talk will survey recent results in this area and describe applications of these results to the design of sustainable data centers and control of the smart grid.
Speaker: Adam Wierman, Caltech
Register at weblink to attend in person or online
Hot and cold hummingbirds: The ecology, physiology, and genes of cold endotherms - 12/06/2022 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Anusha Shankar studies hummingbirds as a Rose Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She is fascinated by the idea that many endotherms are in fact heterotherms that can allow their body temperature to drop and save energy. For the past decade, she has studied hummingbirds’ various daily energy management strategies. She is now focusing on their ability to use a hibernation-like state called torpor to save energy at night. She has investigated the ecology and physiology of this ability and is currently delving into the genetic pathways involved and exploring how mitochondrial densities might change with hummingbird torpor. How can they get cold (10°C /50°F) and rewarm safely every night, without damaging organs like their hearts and brains? Moving forward, she would like to study comparative avian heterothermy on a global scale, starting by collecting data from the tropics while training biologists from the tropics. She plans to continue to integrate ecology, physiology, evolutionary perspectives, and molecular and imaging techniques to understand how heterothermic animals exist. Anusha is a National Geographic Explorer and Young Leader and a 2022 Leading Edge Fellow.
Myths and Facts of Healthy Aging - 12/06/2022 05:30 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Dr. Mehrdad Ayati has identified eight critical challenges that currently face the aging population. Join Us at the Club for a discussion on healthy aging and Dr. Ayati’s proposed solutions to these critical challenges.
Topics will include global aging trends and demographics, overmedications, inappropriate use of vitamins and supplements to stay young, promoting healthy aging rather than just a diagnostic system, and lack of training in health care. Plus, what are the lessons that we have learned from the pandemic? How will it affect the future of our aging population?
Dr Ayati is well-known nationally and internationally in the field of geriatric medicine, as a physician, speaker, author, and an educator. As the medical advisor to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, he raises awareness and provides advice on aging and challenges faced by the aging population in the United States. Dr. Ayati is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of General Medicine, Open Access, and co-author of Paths to Healthy Aging. He is currently a member of the Ethnogeriatric and Quality & Policy Performance Committees of the American Geriatrics Society. He also serves as a community health advisor for Alzheimer's Association, Northern California, and Nevada Chapter.
Attend in person or online
This event was originally scheduled for September 8, 2022
Pathways to medicine - 12/06/2022 05:30 PM
Alway Building, Rm M114 Stanford
Dr. Mónica Osbelia Ruiz is in her first year as an attending at Brown University as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Critical Care Medicine. She was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley along the South Texas-Mexico border, as a first generation Mexican-American. It is in her hometown, among her community, that she discovered her love for medicine and passion for addressing health disparities.
She earned a degree in Neurobiology from The University of Texas at Austin and then pursued a dual MD/MPH degree at The University of Texas at San Antonio School of Medicine (UTHSCSA-SOM). While in medical school she was accepted as a Kleberg Research Scholar, in which she led community-based interventions aimed at addressing health disparities among communities in the South Texas-Mexico border. She stayed at UTHSCSA-SOM for her pediatric residency and earned a Kleberg Research grant, which resulted in the successful establishment of novel community health clubs for immigrant families in the same community. While in pediatric residency, she discovered her interest in health disparities, passion for medically complex patients, and immersion in the extreme presentation of preventable disease, all merged in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Dr. Ruiz went on to complete pediatric critical care medicine fellowship at Stanford University in California.
As a critical care medicine fellow, she was introduced to studying health disparities via translation science research. Ultimately, Dr. Ruiz decided to study the association of stress biomarkers (hair cortisol concentrations) and adverse childhood experience (ACEs) in young children from marginalized communities. Furthermore, she led a health equity initiative in the PICU that addressed language barriers for families/patient with limited English proficiency and the development of an inpatient health equity dashboard, centered on language access (interpreter use). She was recently awarded an NIH Diversity Supplement to continue her work in ACEs and stress biomarkers. Now in her early career as faculty, she intends to continue her translational science research in childhood trauma/adversity and biomarkers and her health equity work in language access.
The James Webb Space Telescope: Shedding light on Dark Matter and Dark Energy - 12/06/2022 07:00 PM
Lathrop Library Stanford
With the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), cosmologists now have a power tool in their hands to look deeper into the mysteries of our Universe than ever before. In this lecture, Dr. Birrer will lay out outstanding questions in cosmology and describe how JWST is uniquely positioned to advance our current understanding of dark matter and dark energy. Specifically, he will discuss how JWST will probe dark matter based on its impact on galaxy formation and from the observed gravitational lensing effect caused by this mysterious matter component. Dr. Birrer will also highlight key programs that utilize JWST to measure the Hubble constant, a parameter to characterize the expansion of the Universe. He will close the talk by previewing some early results from JWST, which the scientific community and the general public are eagerly awaiting.
Speaker: Simon Birrer, Stanford University
Attend in person or online by registering at weblink.
Astronomy Beginner's Forum - Livestream - 12/06/2022 07:00 PM
San Jose Astronomical Society
If you're new to astronomy and are perhaps considering getting your own telescope but are not sure where to start, maybe we can help!
This event is an on-line meeting where you can chat with representatives of SJAA as well as other new astronomy enthusiasts. We'll share general tips and answer specific questions. Our goal is to give you information, so that you can make good choices for yourself and get started in a way that leads to success and joy.
You can ask any astronomy or astronomy equipment-related question, but please understand that some questions may be beyond the scope of this session. For example, we will not be able to walk through complex telescope setup procedures. If you're having specific trouble with a telescope, we'll do our best to give you tips, but we may have to refer you to further resources.
Also, if you're looking to buy binoculars or a telescope, we will not be able to give you a specific recommendation for what to get, as there is no single right answer. We will, however, give you criteria and guidelines to consider, so you can focus your own research and make an informed choice.
We will start the session by collecting the questions you want to ask. Other than that, just bring your enthusiasm for astronomy!
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Wednesday, 12/07/2022
Building Organizational Engagement and Advocacy - Livestream - 12/07/2022 04:00 PM
Acterra
The fourth and final lecture in this series will focus on empowering organizations to take action for their employees, stakeholders and communities around environmental engagement. Featuring a panel discussion format, our experts will discuss how companies can advocate for climate policy with employee engagement and corporate campaigns and provide resources for building climate goals and policies.
Our panelists have years of experience in areas ranging from corporate sustainability and partnerships to policy and diversity strategy. Plan on joining us to gain a wealth of ideas, strategies and tools to support your organization’s efforts to increase peer engagement and learn about building advocacy within your organization.
Speakers: Maura McKnight, Business Council on Climage Change (BC3); Bill Weihl, ClimateVoice; Jennifer Allyn, Climate Voice; Leslie Alden, Project Drawdown Bay Area, Moderator
See weblink to register
Data-driven protein design and molecular latent space simulators - 12/07/2022 04:00 PM
Tan Hall Berkeley
Data-driven modeling and deep learning present powerful tools that are opening up new paradigms and opportunities in the understanding, discovery, and design of soft and biological materials.
Speaker: Andrew Ferguson, University of Chicago
New Variant Discovery in the Era of Complete Genomes - 12/07/2022 05:45 PM
UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Campus Santa Clara
Genomic scientist Karen Miga, assistant professor of biomolecular engineering at UC Santa Cruz, was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2022 by TIME Magazine for her work co-leading an international team of scientists known as the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium to complete the first gapless sequence of a human genome.
Please join us for this fascinating and important lecture about the need to create a more sophisticated and complete human reference genome that better represents global genomic diversity.
Register at weblink to attend in person or watch the lecture online.
The Sun is Not Always Happy: Space Weather and the Question of Human Survivability - Livestream - 12/07/2022 07:00 PM
Silicon Valley Astronomy Series
On October 27th 2022 NASA captured a now-famous image of the Sun “smiling” on its solar system [see image above]. But the Sun is not always happy! It can unleash violent “space weather” -- storms that can radiate X-rays and even gamma rays into space, send giant clouds of magnetic plasma slamming into the Earth and other planets, and spray firehoses of charged particles throughout interplanetary space. On Earth, we are mostly protected from the Sun’s wrath by our magnetic field and atmosphere, but astronauts venturing to the Moon and Mars will be vulnerable to these potentially deadly solar storms. Dr. Berger will discuss our current understanding of the interplanetary space environment, describe some extreme space weather events in history, and examine how well we can currently predict space weather and its impacts as we venture beyond our planet.
Tom Berger is the Executive Director of the University of Colorado’s Space Weather Technology, Research, and Education Center, which combines traditional space physics research with technology and education to bridge the wide gap between research on the Sun and operational space weather forecasting. He was formerly the director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, helped develop the world’s largest solar telescope on the island of Maui (the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope), and has been a co-investigator on international missions to study changes in the Sun’s magnetic field.
Bay Area Bird Photographers (BABP) - Livestream - 12/07/2022 07:30 PM
Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society
These last 2 years have been really difficult regarding photography. Travel has been severely curtailed and being at home has not been very conducive to finding interesting subjects for photography. With shelter in place starting in March, 2020, I was getting pretty stir-crazy by the fall. In an attempt to alleviate this, I set up a bird feeder on our balcony with a changeable perch on the balcony railing. I was able to get some pretty good images of some very common birds, and I plan to share some of these with you. In addition, I began to drive to places nearby to get photographs, going as far south as San Jose and as far north as Bodega Bay. Thus, I have included images from places that took me less than 2 hours driving time. As usual, I tried my best to find some interesting behaviors, some in flight shots, etc. All the while, trying to get images as sharp as I could. I hope that this presentation serves to illustrate the great number of interesting species we can find close to home in the Bay Area.
See weblink for Zoom information
Speaker: Corey Raffel
Thursday, 12/08/2022
Dr. Mary Bowerman Science & Research Colloquium - 12/08/2022 09:00 AM
David Brower Center Berkeley
Dr. Mary Leolin Bowerman co-founded Save Mount Diablo in 1971. Mary was a botanist and a student of the flora of Mount Diablo for over 70 years. In her honor, Save Mount Diablo established the Mary Bowerman Science and Research Program in 2013.
In addition to facilitating research on and around the mountain by offering micro-grant awards, one of the goals of the program is to share valuable findings and management implications for Mount Diablo’s natural resources with the public.
Save Mount Diablo will be hosting the 9th annual Dr. Mary Bowerman Science and Research Colloquium on December 8th, 2022 at the David Brower Center in downtown Berkeley. The Colloquium will inform other scientists, researchers, and the general public about ongoing projects and discoveries in the Diablo Range.
Register at weblink
Tamalpias Room
Coastal Walk at Cowell-Purisima Trail - 12/08/2022 10:00 AM
Cowell Purisima Coastal Trailhead Half Moon Bay
Join Peninsula Open Space Trust for a beautiful walk along the Cowell-Purisima trail that POST helped create by protecting adjacent farmland. While it may be foggy, we hope to catch gorgeous views of the ocean, nearby farmland, and glimpses of harbor seals, pelicans, hawks, rabbits, and whales during the winter season.
You will be guided by POST ambassadors who will share details about POST’s work with farmers on the coast, and to create recreational opportunities along one of the most scenic stretches of our state’s coastline!
The walk is moderate at about 5 miles round trip with about 400 feet of gradual elevation gain. It is mostly flat throughout, however, it is quite a long walk.
Register at weblink
Multilocus associations with partial self-fertilization - 12/08/2022 12:30 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Speaker: Marcy Uyenoyama, Duke University
Room S360
Looking Ahead Together: Cyversity and CLTC End-of-Year Reception - 12/08/2022 05:00 PM
David Brower Center Berkeley
Join Cyversity and the UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity for this special end-of-year event! We’ll celebrate the cybersecurity research and professional communities of both organizations and highlight what’s to come in 2023. Guests will hear from experts in transformative leadership and cybersecurity on issues related to under-representation in cyber and STEM, and what we can all do to create a truly inclusive field.
Welcome remarks: MK Palmore, Cyversity Board Member and Director, Office of the CISO, Google Cloud; and Ann Cleaveland, Executive Director, Center for Long-Term CybersecurityKeynote: “Inclusive Leadership in Cybersecurity” - Kripa Krishnan, VP, Google Cloud Platform / Technical Infrastructure at GoogleLightning talk: “Growing a More Diverse Cybersecurity Workforce from an Entrepreneurs Perspective” - Sekhar Sarukkai, Technologist, Entrepreneur, and Investor
A networking reception with light refreshments will follow.
Register at weblink
NightLife - 12/08/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Calling all creatures of the night: explore the nocturnal side of the Academy at NightLife and see what's revealed. With live DJs, outdoor bars, ambiance lighting, and nearly 40,000 live animals (including familiar faces like Claude, our alligator with albinism), the night is sure to be wild.
Step inside the iconic Shake House and our four-story Osher Rainforest, where you can explore the Amazon’s treetops surrounded by free-flying birds and butterflies. Reservations for these exhibits are no longer required. However, please note that the last entry into the rainforest is 7:30 pm - our animals need their sleep.
Venture into our latest aquarium exhibit Venom to encounter live venomous animals and learn the power of venom to both harm and heal.
Visit the BigPicture exhibit in the Piazza to marvel at the most recent winners of the BigPicture Natural World Photography competition.
Bask in the glow of one of the largest living indoor coral reef displays in the world: our 212,000-gallon Philippine Coral Reef habitat.
Take in the interstellar views from the Living Roof, then grab a bite from the Academy Café and head to the West Garden outdoor bar to drink and dine under the stars. For adults 21+.
The Seaside Heermann's Gulls - Livestream - 12/08/2022 06:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
Heermann’s Gulls are beautiful seabirds that were thought to breed exclusively on small islands in the Gulf of California and off the Mexican coast, where their numbers are declining due to warming seas and overfishing. In 1999, a few Heermann’s gulls nested on a man-made island on Roberts Lake in Seaside, California. These birds founded the only known nesting colony of Heermann’s Gulls in the United States. Since then, the colony has survived and grown to about 100 individuals despite many challenges and loss of nesting habitat. Today the colony nests on rooftops around Roberts Lake, and in the last three years, they have even harmoniously shared their nesting territory with a colony of California Gulls. Join us as Byron and Joanna Chin cover the natural history of the Heermann’s Gull, the history of the Seaside colony, the environmental challenges they have endured, and their efforts in conjunction with Monterey Audubon to protect and help these gulls through monitoring, community outreach, and the deployment of a floating nesting island.
Speakers: Byron and Joanna Chin
How to Modulate your Microbiome with Food to Improve Health and Treat Disease - Livestream - 12/08/2022 06:00 PM
San Mateo Public Library
Learn about your microbiome and how it can be modulated with foods, including fermented foods, to improve your health and treat disease. Presented by Dr. Sean Spencer, a gastroenterologist and physician scientist at Stanford University. This virtual program is coordinated by the San Mateo Public Library's Biotechnology Learning Center.
Registation is required. See event weblink to register
After Dark: Fire of Love, Presented by National Geographic Documentary Films - 12/08/2022 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Join us for a night fueled by fire and marked by molten rock. Enjoy a special screening of the National Geographic Documentary Film Fire of Love, which follows two bold explorers as they venture into the volcanic unknown - and hear directly from some of the film’s creators. Learn about California’s active volcanoes and ask a volcanist all your burning questions. Test your skills at building a wheel that can successfully traverse a model lava field. And check out a live flame as local neon artists demonstrate their intricate trade.
Gods and Robots: Imagining Artificial Life in Antiquity - Livestream - 12/08/2022 07:30 PM
Bay Area Skeptics
Who first imagined robots and Artificial Intelligence? Long before medieval automatons, even before self-moving machines were invented in antiquity, the concepts of replicating life were explored in Greek myths about Talos, Jason, Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, Hephaestus, and Pandora. Drawing on her book, “Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology,” Mayor discusses the timeless quest for artificial life, to show how automatons, self-moving devices, and Artificial Intelligence were imagined in antiquity, and how the ancients grappled with still-unresolved ethical concerns about biotechne, “life through craft”
Speaker: Adrienne Mayor, Stanford University
Wonderfest: Understanding Human Populations - Livestream - 12/08/2022 08:00 PM
Wonderfest
How long will the people in a particular population live? How do we know if a cancer treatment works, or whether parents pass their socioeconomic status to their children? How often do formerly incarcerated people return to prison, and how long (on average) will current marriages last? All these questions seem straightforward. However, answering each of them can go awry in a similar way. A single mathematical relationship, length-biased sampling, allows analysis of a diverse set of phenomena, and it presents new, easy-to-understand insights into human populations.
Speaker: Dr. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, University of Minnesota
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Friday, 12/09/2022
Stefan Rahmstorf: The 2022 Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication - Livestream - 12/09/2022 10:00 AM
Commonwealth Club - Online Event
Climate One is delighted to present the 2022 Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication to climate scientist and ocean expert Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf.
In a year of unprecedented oceanic changes, Dr. Rahmstorf exemplifies the rare combination of superb scientist and powerful communicator in his work to communicate the impact of climate on oceans, sea level rise, and increasing extreme weather events.
Last year marked the highest ocean temperatures on record, threatening massive marine life extinction, undercutting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, and rapidly accelerating global sea level rise. But the ocean also offers climate solutions: it is the planet’s largest carbon storage unit and weather regulator, and a potential - yet controversial - source of minerals critical for building batteries to power the clean energy economy.
As oceans get warmer, higher and more acidic, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is imperative to avoiding catastrophic ocean tipping points. What’s in store for our oceans - and for us - in a rapidly warming world?
Join us for this special online event with Stefan Rahmstorf, co-head of research at the Department on Earth System Analysis of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Professor of Physics of the Oceans at the University of Potsdam.
Register at weblink to attend.
'A Life's Work' with Jill Tarter - Livestream - 12/09/2022 07:00 PM
SETI Institute
Join your TeamSETI friends for a very special virtual movie night! We're showing the documentary A Life's Work, which features our very own Jill Tarter. Seth Shostak will host with special guests Jill Tarter and David Licata, who directed the film.
Movie summary: What's it like to dedicate your life to work that won't be completed in your lifetime? Fifteen years ago, filmmaker David Licata focused on four projects and the people behind them in an effort to answer this universal question.
Register at weblink to attend
Saturday, 12/10/2022
2022 TeenTechSF Global Youth Summit - Innovation: Forging Our Youth-Empowered Future - 12/10/2022 09:00 AM
TBA San Francisco
All are welcome! Action-packed morning connecting teens with tech leaders here in the Bay Area and around the world for 150 students, mentors, and families from diverse communities to listen to live speakers and panels on global trends, practical advice, and hands-on STEM workshops on machine learning, website design, app development, and coding activities as part of the Hour of Code global initiative. For many this is a gateway tech experience!
Livestreaming to TeenTechSF US & global partners in Seattle, New York, Paris, Tunis, Nairobi, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hong Kong, and Seoul with video messages from international tech leaders including live keynote on "Entrepreneurs: The World Needs You" by Adam Cheyer, Siri Creator, Change.org Founder, Samsung Mobile Research & Development VP, more recently Otter.ai Advisor and in live discussion with Shan Ren, Creative Technology trailblazer & Women’s Empowerment Leader at Google!
We will also be hearing messages from people all around the world including: Donna Hilliard from Code Tenderloin, Eden Yates from Cling Systems, Skyler Chan from Sonder, Grimaldy Gunawan from Shopping.io, Claire Wang from Angel Hacks, and Albert Hu from SuperTech and MIT.
Partnering with Hour of Code, we are offering free hands-on STEM workshops including machine learning, public speaking, linkedin profile, and Arduino. No prior coding experience is necessary!
Register to attend in person (limited to 150) or online
Open to 13 - 18 years old
Science of Light - 12/10/2022 12:00 PM
California Nursery Historical Park Fremont
Visit the wonders of little houses all lite up in the Vallejo Adobe on the grounds of the California Nursery Historical Park. Then take a closer look at light on how it reflects, refracts and diffracts providing wonderful images to humans. There will be 10 light challenges from the Vallejo Adobe to the California Office Museum. Children learn about light and earn prizes at the same time. The park grounds will be open so you can explore the California Nursery Historical Park.
Register at weblink.
Fort Point Candlelight Tour - 12/10/2022 06:30 PM
Fort Point San Francisco
The Candlelight Tour of Fort Point is a popular guided program that allows visitors to experience the fort in a new light. This evening tour will maze through the shadows of the historic structure by candlelight and visitors will see the glimmering lights of the Golden Gate Bridge towering up above them. Upon arrival, a park ranger will check-in guests and provide visitors with a lantern. A ranger will lead this 90-minute excursion and interpret the history and the life that once existed within the old brick walls of Fort Point.
The Candlelight Tour explores all four level of the fort including the roof (approximately 76 steps). Visitors will be invited to engage in dialogue as they learn about the fascinating and sometimes complex history of the fort, its role in San Francisco history, and its cultural relevance today. Recommended age for this tour is 12 years and up.
Visitors with reservations will begin their tour when the fort is otherwise inaccessible to the public.
Sunday, 12/11/2022
Glider Discovery Day - 12/11/2022 11:00 AM
Hiller Aviation Museum San Carlos
Discover the world of flight in a special outdoor family event!
Learn the names of the different parts of the airplane, then join in the fun the help build a full-size Penguin airplane! Then, assemble a balsa wood glider and join a fun festival of flight outdoors in the museum’s Courtyard. Each child receives a glider to take home!
Solar Observing - 12/11/2022 01:30 PM
San Jose Astronomical Association San Jose
It’s there for us year round, lighting our days and providing energy for our lives, so maybe it’s time to give it a closer look. Join SJAA for amazing and detailed views of the Sun, and be assured that we’ll be using special telescopes that will keep your eyeballs perfectly safe.
We’ll have white-light telescopes with dense solar filters that reveal sunspots. Further, we’ll show you hydrogen-alpha telescopes that isolate a very specific color of red that reveals prominences (often thought of as solar flares) and intricate texture within the Sun’s chromosphere (its atmosphere).
We can also share with you a little about how the Sun works and how complex magnetic fields drive the number of sunspots and prominences that we’ll see on a given day.
Around 1:45, we'll have a short, informal introductory talk, and at other times, you can enjoy the views and ask questions about the Sun, telescopes, or astronomy in general.
Monday, 12/12/2022
Democratizing NLP: considerations from resources to algorithms - Livestream - 12/12/2022 06:30 PM
IEEE Computer Society of Silicon Valley
In recent times, there is an enormous increase in the use of digital media as a channel for communication. This, combined with the fact that natural language is a ubiquitous mode of communication, has increased the volume of natural language data available for processing. Also, this has resulted in opportunities for extending NLP based services/solutions in multiple languages. Although existing algorithms for NLP tasks have been shown to achieve reasonable performances for the high-resource languages such as English, French etc. across tasks, the same is not true for many other languages widely spoken in the world. To ensure that the benefit of NLP research reaches a wider audience across different regions, it is important to pay special focus to the low-resource languages, or consider support for low-resource languages in an intelligent manner in the algorithm design phase. The talk will touch upon a few such considerations in this talk.
Speaker: Dr. Maunendra Desarkar, IIT Hyderabad, India
Register at weblink to attend
Tuesday, 12/13/2022
December Bird Walk - FULL - 12/13/2022 09:30 AM
UC Botanical Garden Berkeley
Lost Landscapes 02022 Bay and Gateway: Past Glimpses and Possible Futures - 12/13/2022 07:00 PM
Herbst Theater San Francisco
Geminids Meteor Shower - 12/13/2022 11:45 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Wednesday, 12/14/2022
Geminids Meteor Shower - 12/14/2022 12:00 AM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
December LASER Event - Livestream - 12/14/2022 12:00 PM
LASER Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous
SETI Talks - JWST: Impressive First Science One Year After Launch - Livestream - 12/14/2022 01:00 PM
SETI Institute
Fungi as Biocontrol Agents - 12/14/2022 06:00 PM
Mill Valley Public Library Mill Valley
Sustainable Food Gardening In Our Own Backyards - Livestream - 12/14/2022 07:00 PM
City of Sunnyvale
Thursday, 12/15/2022
RVfpga: Teaching Computer Architecture Workshop - 12/15/2022 09:00 AM
UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Campus Santa Clara
Addressing HIV/AIDS, PrEP and STI After the Pandemic - 12/15/2022 06:00 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
NightSchool: Words for a Changing World - Livestream - 12/15/2022 07:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
Saturday, 12/17/2022
Family Nature Walks - Baylands Nature Preserve - 12/17/2022 10:30 AM
Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve Palo Alto
Family Nature Walks - Foothills Nature Preserve - 12/17/2022 11:00 AM
Foothills Nature Preserve Los Altos
Science of Light - 12/17/2022 12:00 PM
California Nursery Historical Park Fremont
Investigating Space: Water on the Moon - 12/17/2022 01:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Fort Point Candlelight Tour - 12/17/2022 06:30 PM
Fort Point San Francisco
Sunday, 12/18/2022
Afternoon Hike at Mindego Hill - 12/18/2022 02:00 PM
Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve Los Altos