Hello again Science fans!
We trust you all had a good Thanksgiving.
The picture above is a composite of two taken by NASA’s Curiosity Rover from the same spot, but at different times of the day. Both are black and white pictures, colorized by NASA, and were taken on the 3,999th day of Curiosity’s mission. Here’s some more detail on how this image was created. The picture is really something!
It has been quite the weekend for COVID-19, what with the discovery of a new variant, now dubbed omichron, that has around 50 mutations from the original COVID-19 virus. We don’t know much about this one yet, but some of these mutations have been seen in the Delta variant and are thought to make it easier to catch. Here’s the latest from the World Health Organization, which has designated Omichron as a “variant of concern”, their highest (worst) category. The lack of certainty regarding this variant isn’t stopping the general press from speculating, the stock market from reacting to the potential economic impact, nor governments from imposing strict travel restrictions. Those restrictions may be too little, too late though. The variant was first identified in South Africa and has since shown up in isolated cases in England, Hong Kong, Belgium, and Israel, and elsewhere. So far it has not been found in the US.
Here, an interview with a virologist at Emory University from The Atlantic about this new variant.
I’ve apparently been pronouncing the greek letter wrong all this time. The New York Times reports that the correct pronounciation is aa-muh-kraan.
So how did we get here? It might be useful to take a look at the path from a discredited 1998 study on vaccines to the public health crisis we face today.
Have you gotten your booster yet? A study from the UK Health Security Agency shows that the booster provides significant protection against symptomatic disease.
Moving on to space and the latest on the James Webb space telescope. The JWST was scheduled to go into space on December 18. A signficant vibration event that happened during final assembley of the payload caused a delay as NASA personnel examined and tested the scope for damage. None was found, so liftoff is now scheduled for December 22.
While the JWST will be looking at the universe in the infrared band of light, the Hubble Space Telescope uses the visible wavelengths. In almost 31 years, it has produced some spectacular images, 50 of which are showcased here by NASA. Of the 50, I think #36 is my favorite, showing two galaxies merging. Calling this a merge is probably being too polite as the gravitational forces at work must be enormous, and very destructive.
NASA also launched the DART mission this past week. DART is intended to crash into an asteroid to see if it is able to deflect it. This is a test of a process for altering the path of an incoming asteroid that might hit Earth in the future. Both DART and the booster rocket can be seen in a video taken by the Elena telescope in Italy.
All of the elements found in Nature come from the stars. For the first time, Fluorine has been detected in a galaxy over 12 billion light years away. Scientists have wondered what type of stars produced Fluorine and there are several theories. Fluorine is found in our bones and teeth, proving once again that we are all made of star stuff.
The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the stuff of the big bang, including neutrinos. For the first time, neutrinos have been detected in the LHC during a pilot experiment called FASER.
Lastly, here’s one for the kids. The California Coastal Art and Poetry Contest is for all California students, grades K through 12. Entries can be submitted online though January 31, 2022. Submissions must have a coastal or marine theme. See this link for details and submission. This contest is one of those submissions we receive at the SciSchmooze Calendar that doesn’t quite fit our format, but is worth mentioning. When we get those, we talk about them here in our weekly newsletter.
Have a great week in Science and a joyous holiday season!
Bob Siederer
Monday, 11/29/2021
Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival - Livestream - 11/29/2021 10:00 AM
Post Carbon Institute
Join Edward Saltzberg, Executive Director of The Security and Sustainability Forum, and Richard Heinberg in a free discussion about the urgent need to transition to not just a different energy regime but a different basis for human habitation on the planet. The conversation features Richard’s new book, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival and is the second episode in SSF’s webinar series, Implications for the Future.
Developing Academic Software (CCPNmr) for the Analysis of Biomolecular NMR Data - Livestream - 11/29/2021 12:00 PM
California Section American Chemical Society
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a versatile technique for studying proteins and other biological molecules in a wide variety of different conditions. However, the field is predominantly confined to academia with the result that commercial software packages are not geared towards its needs and are usually inadequate for the data analysis required. There is thus a rich tradition of academics writing their own software but this brings its own pitfalls and downsides. Following nearly 20 years of working on a wide variety of different protein NMR projects, Dr. Higman joined the Collaborative Computational Project for NMR (CCPN). Their goal is to develop high-quality, user-friendly software for academics, enable easy movement of data between different software packages and collaborate with other academics developing new data analysis tools. As well as describing the challenges and successes of this work, Dr. Higman will showcase some of CCPN’s latest software. The presentation will be followed by Q & A.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Speaker: Dr. Vicky Higman, University of Leicester
UC Berkley Theoretical Astrophysics Center Seminar - 11/29/2021 12:10 PM
Campbell Hall, Rm 131 Berkeley
Speaker: Rachel Patton
CITRIS People and Robots Seminar - 11/29/2021 04:00 PM
CITRIS People and Robots
Speaker: Marynel Vazquez, Yale University
See weblink for Zoom information
The black hole information paradox - whether information escapes an evaporating black hole or not - remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of theoretical physics. The apparent conflict between validity of semiclassical gravity at low energies and unitarity of quantum mechanics has long been expected to find its resolution in the deep quantum gravity regime. Recent developments in the holographic dictionary and in particular its application to entanglement, however, have shown that a semiclassical analysis of gravitational physics has a hallmark feature of unitary evolution. I will describe this recent progress and discuss some potential new avenues for working towards a resolution of the information paradox.
Speaker: Netta Englehardt, MIT
See weblink for connection information
Wonderfest - Can AI Know What It Doesn't Know? - 11/29/2021 07:00 PM
Hopmonk Tavern Novato
With increasing frequency, AI algorithms are making high-impact decisions: When should a self-driving car slam on the brakes? Can an MRI scan reliably detect a tumor? Will facial recognition software identify your son as a Most Wanted fugitive? AI algorithms need to be aware of their confidence level - to "know what they don't know" - in order to be reliable and safe. Fortunately, time-tested ideas in statistics are providing solutions. How are old and fundamental mathematical concepts blending with recent tech breakthroughs to create safe, uncertainty-aware AI?
Speaker: Stephen Bates, UC Berkeley
Tuesday, 11/30/2021
On the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere: A mineral evolution perspective - Livestream - 11/30/2021 12:15 PM
Stanford University
The story of Earth is a 4.5-billion-year saga of dramatic transformations, driven by physical, chemical, and - based on a fascinating growing body of evidence - biological processes. The co-evolution of life and rocks unfolds in an irreversible sequence of evolutionary stages. Each stage re-sculpted our planet’s surface, while introducing new planetary processes and phenomena. This grand and intertwined tale of Earth’s living and non-living spheres is coming into ever-sharper focus. Sequential changes of terrestrial planets and moons are best preserved in their rich mineral record. “Mineral evolution,” the study of our planet’s diversifying near-surface environment, began with a score of different mineral species that formed in the cooling envelopes of exploding stars. Dust and gas from those stars clumped together to form our stellar nebula, the nebula formed the Sun and countless planetesimals, and alteration of planetesimals by water and heat resulted in the 300 minerals found today in meteorites that fall to Earth. Earth’s evolution progressed by a sequence of chemical and physical processes, which ultimately led to the origin-of-life. Once life emerged, mineralogy and biology co-evolved, as changes in the chemistry of oceans, the atmosphere, and the crust dramatically increased Earth’s mineral diversity to the more than 5700 species known today.
Speaker: Robert Hazen, George Mason University, Emeritus
Coherent AC spin current transmission through antiferromagnetic CoO probed by X-ray detected ferromagnetic resonance - Livestream - 11/30/2021 02:30 PM
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar
For decades, ferromagnetic materials have dominated the field of information technology. Recently, however, there has been a boost of new research in antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials. While these materials to-date have primarily been used to manipulate the magnetization reversal in adjacent ferromagnets through exchange bias, researchers today strive to harness the potential applications of antiferromagnetic materials for low power spintronics devices. In particular, new studies have proven AFM insulators to be excellent conductors of DC spin currents with intriguing temperature dependent transmission properties [1-4], however it is unclear to what extent coherent AC spin currents can be transmitted through an AFM material.
In order to understand these mechanisms, we use X-ray detected ferromagnetic resonance (XFMR) [5-8] to study spin dynamics in Ni80Fe20/Ag/CoO/Ag/Co75Fe25 multilayers [9]. XFMR is a powerful tool in the investigation of spin current effects in complex heterostructures, as it enables the observation of magnetization and spin dynamics within each layer by combining ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) with the element-, site-, and valence state-specificity of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD).
Using XFMR we were able to excite and observe AC spin current propagation from the Ni80Fe20 source to the Co75Fe25 sink layer at different temperatures around the CoO antiferromagnetic transition. By utilizing the phase information from the precession, we can unambiguously distinguish between different contributions to the magnetic excitation and identify the spin current signal. Our findings show that a coherent AC spin current can be transmitted through antiferromagnetic CoO, and that transmission is strongly enhanced around its Neel temperature.
Additionally, we utilized linearly polarized x-rays for XFMR measurements in terms of a dynamic X-ray magnetic linear dichroism (XMLD), enabling sensitivity not only to directional, but also to axial magnetic order [10]. This new capability introduces the possibility to observe spin excitations even in the absence of a net magnetic moment and enables us to identify the origin of the spin propagation within the antiferromagnet CoO layer.
Speaker: Christoph Klewe, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs
See weblink for Zoom information
Healthy Society Series: The Brain Plasticity Revolution and an Impending Rebirth of Psychiatric and Neurologic Medicine - 11/30/2021 03:00 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Strategies for rapidly and inexpensively identifying neurological/psychiatric weakness and distortion - combined with genomics and increasingly more sophisticated chemical analyses of blood and other body fluids - now provide us with simple, scalable strategies for delineating specific aspects of preclinical stages of neurological and psychiatric disorders. In parallel, we have an increasing understanding of how to engage the plastic brain in ways that reverse those weaknesses and distortions on a path to neurological normalcy. The word for broadly achieving such renormalization is prevention - or in already diagnosed patients, cure - two goals that up to now have rarely been achieved in brain-targeted medicine. This scientific explosion foretells a rapid transformation from a treatment-based to prevention-based brain medicine era.
Speaker: Dr. Michael Merzenich, UC San Francisco, emeritus; Robert Lee Kilpatrick, Commonwealth Club, Moderator
Attend in person or online
Arctic climate change: the role of greenhouse gases, aerosols and ozone depleting substances - 11/30/2021 03:30 PM
Natural Science Annex Santa Cruz
Speaker: Mark England, UC Santa Cruz
Poisoned Water & Corporate Greed - Livestream - 11/30/2021 05:30 PM
UC Santa Cruz
Join one of the USA's most impactful environmental lawyers Robert Bilott for a conversation about his latest work followed by an intergenerational World-Cafe style dialogue aimed at inspiring hope and action. Rob is the protagonist in the recent award-winning film "Dark Waters" featuring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway and participants are highly encouraged to watch the film beforehand (available online @ UCSC library). Topics we'll cover include the legacy of toxic forever chemicals, corporate greed, and strategies for environmental legislation to hold corporations accountable.
Register at weblink
Wednesday, 12/01/2021
Climate + Justice: Young Activists Speak Out - Livestream - 12/01/2021 09:30 AM
Commonwealth Club - Online Event
As the devastating effects of climate change take hold around the world, young people are demanding action from global leaders and, increasingly, taking action themselves. Ask a teenager or young adult which issues they think are most pressing in the world today, and climate will often top the list.
One of the goals of our Creating Citizens initiative is to provide a forum for youth to meet and learn from peers and civic leaders about the complex and often controversial issues that are important to them. So it is with special pride that we present a panel of young climate activists discussing their own work and the power of youth to address the climate crisis and issues of racial and social injustice around the world.
Join us for this special program! Educators and students who register for this program will receive one free copy of Vanessa’s new book, A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis. Special thanks to the Ken & Jaclyn Broad Family Foundation. Additional books may be purchased at the Club’s online bookstore.
Speakers: Samir Chowdhury, Youth Climate Action Team; Vanessa Nakate, author; Darren Zook, UC Berkeley
International collaboration to advance deep-sea knowledge - Livestream - 12/01/2021 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
International scientific collaboration has helped to overcome the knowledge gaps in the largely vast and unexplored Mexican deep sea. Important processes, new habitats, new species, and some unique genes have been described from collaborative research cruises in the ETP and Gulf of California. Telepresence experience, knowledge transmitted through teaching and mentoring to students, work at sea and in the lab, inspires and creates a new generation of ocean professionals. Knowledge generated from collaborative scientific research is used for decision making for conservation and sustainable use of resources. This collaboration has provided a better understanding of regional biodiversity and strengthened natural history collections and institutional databases in the long term. The latter include bathymetric and environmental data, images, and videos whose long-term storage has been secured. These collaborative efforts ensure that specimens and data are accessible for current work and future generations, while long-term archives provide valuable, unique information.
Speaker: Elva Escobar-Briones
Open Source Platforms and Mission Oriented Archaeology - Livestream - 12/01/2021 12:10 PM
UC Berkeley
Archaeological research is only made possible by the collaboration and cooperation of dozens if not hundreds of individuals in the field and in the laboratory world-wide. Like other field sciences, teamwork is at the core of our practice. To that end, archaeologists have been early adopters of many computational and mechanical technologies to assist in the generation, storing, and sharing of data for all stakeholders. Nevertheless, while archaeologists have written extensively about method and theory in this regard, relatively less focus has been given to the social dynamics of our teams themselves (with important and overdue recent exceptions regarding harassment and bullying). In this talk, I will argue that archaeologists ought to give equal consideration to the organizational and decision-making structure of archaeological team-based research. First, I will present a brief summary of common themes from interviews I have conducted with individuals who took part in the NASA mission to the asteroid Bennu, NOAA expedition to the Arctic ice pack, or have long experience in the video game industry (ex-Riot, thatgamecompany). I argue that despite obvious differences, there are core commonalities between what I am calling creative-scientific and high-risk mission oriented enterprises dependent on teamwork for success. Second, I will show how open source platforms, such as the kind I am developing in my consulting work as Sciscope Solutions, can play a role in fostering more of a "mission oriented" approach among team-members by making data accessible and transparent regardless of expertise. Finally, I conclude by highlighting some of the successes and current structural limitations of this approach, and invite feedback and discussion.
Speaker: Alan Farahani, SciScope Solutions
Ask the Scientist - Allie Margulies - Livestream - 12/01/2021 02:30 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
How do scientists go from OMG to PhD? How do they turn their passion for science into their profession? What advice do they have for future scientists?
If you are a 5th-12th grade student, undergraduate, teacher or parent, join us to ask these questions and more in a Q&A session with our weekly Seminar speakers on Wednesdays from 2:30 - 3 PM.
Parents must give permission for children under 18 to participate.
See weblink to register
The Pursuit of Free Energies and Free Energy Relationships - Livestream - 12/01/2021 04:00 PM
UC Berkeley
Speaker: Shaama Sharada, University of South California
Potential Synergies Between LSST and HSC - Livestream - 12/01/2021 04:00 PM
Kavli Institute for Particle Physics & Cosmology
Speaker: Masamune Oguri, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, Kashiwa Japan
See weblink for Zoom information
Lost Landscapes 02021 Earth, Fire, Air, Water: California Infrastructures - 12/01/2021 07:00 PM
Herbst Theater San Francisco
This year LOST LANDSCAPES radiates out from San Francisco, extending its archival gaze to the infrastructures, people and landscapes of California north, south, east and west. Made from newly rediscovered images of San Francisco, cities and towns, and places throughout California where nature and culture meet, 02021's all-new show fixes on the history of our state's resources and the backbones that have made it work: transportation, extraction, communication, travel and labor.
California's many peoples, communities and histories all intersect in a panoramic poem documenting the past and suggesting possible futures in an age of climate and seismic uncertainty. As with all LOST LANDSCAPES events, the audience makes the soundtrack, and you are cordially invited to identify people, places and events, pose questions to one another and to the host, and engage in spirited conversation as the film plays.
We will also do a public livestream on December 14. Details to follow.
Thursday, 12/02/2021
Digging Deeper to Understand the How Soils Respond to Climate - Livestream - 12/02/2021 11:30 AM
Stanford University
Soils store over three times as much carbon as our atmosphere, and as soils warm, they have the potential to become a large positive feedback to climate change. Over half of this organic carbon is stored in deeper soils, but most climate change experiments have only focused on surface soils. Here I explore the vulnerability of deep (>20 cm) soil carbon to climate change through a series of experiments in locations ranging from hardwood temperate forests to tropical Hawaii to old agricultural fields. I have found that the response of deep soils to climate change varies greatly across these ecosystems and is likely dependent on its availability to the soil microbes that consume it. This conclusion is supported by a global meta-analysis of radiocarbon values among different soil carbon pools, which vary in their availability to microbes.
Speaker: Caitlin Hicks Pries, Dartmouth College
See weblink for Zoom information
UC Berkeley Astronomy Colloquium - 12/02/2021 12:40 PM
Campbell Hall, Rm 131 Berkeley
Speaker: Erik Petigura, UC Los Angeles
SFBBO Birdy Hour Talk: Ravens, Wolves, and People - Livestream - 12/02/2021 05:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
Ravens are known to scavenge from wolves and people, but the degree to which they exploit these and other sources of food has not been studied in detail. In 2019, Matthias Loretto and John Marzluff began tagging ravens in Yellowstone National Park with long-lasting GSM transmitters. After tagging >60 ravens and relating their movements to those of people and wolves, we are gaining an appreciation of their reliance on both providers. Dr. Marzluff will describe the movements of territorial and non-breeding ravens and relate these to wolf- and human-provisioned foods. He will focus on the exploits of individual birds to emphasize variability. They observed ravens using wolf kills, but their discovery appears more incidental than a result of following or purposeful search. As we begin to quantify the relationship between wolves and ravens, we may learn more about their synchrony, but at present it appears to be weak, with discovery of kills occurring during the day rather than after communal roosting. Ravens made extensive use of anthropogenic resources, including direct handouts, waste water treatment ponds, dumps, agriculture, roadkills, and hunter offal. Territorial ravens have extensive knowledge of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and exploit areas in excess of 6500 square miles to obtain their yearly needs.
John Marzluff is James W. Ridgeway Professor of Wildlife Science at the University of Washington.Register here.
Hardcore Natural History: The value of ‘good fire’ - 12/02/2021 06:00 PM
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Pacific Grove
The museum will host Jared Childress, coordinator of the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association, who will speak on the past, present, and future of prescribed burns in the Central Coast area.
Childress will address the current situation and exciting future of “good fire,” and its relationship to ecology and people in the Central Coast region.
After Dark: GLOWing Science - 12/02/2021 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Watch science come to light at After Dark. Light is all around us, bringing energy and color to our world in a whole spectrum of ways. At this After Dark, encounter bioluminescent creatures, musical LASERs, and glowing bacteria. Learn about the science of what makes things GLOW - and experience demos from artists and makers who harness light to transformative effect. And don't miss the collection of luminous sculptures spread throughout our museum galleries as part of GLOW: The Art of Light.
Nightlife - 12/02/2021 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 the albino alligator), the night is sure to be wild.
Step inside the iconic Shake House and our four-story 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 Photography competition.
Bask in the glow of one of the largest living coral reef displays in the world: our 212,000-gallon Philippine Coral Reef tank.
Take in the interstellar views from the Living Roof, then grab a bite from the Academy Cafe and head to the West Garden outdoor bar to drink and dine under the stars. For adults 21+.
Micromitigation: Fighting Air Pollution with Activated Carbon - Livestream - 12/02/2021 07:00 PM
Counter Culture Labs
We would like to invite new members to join Counter Culture Labs' Micromitigation Meetup alternate Thursdays. We will be discussing ways to deploy existing adsorption technology using commodity granulated activated carbon for the mitigation of air pollution.
We welcome those interested in both the environmental justice and technical engineering aspects of air quality.Please sign up by joining the Counter Culture Labs' Meetup group, then RSVPing for the event. Weblink provided after signup.
NightSchool: Living Worlds - Livestream - 12/02/2021 07:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
Who among us hasn’t gazed up at the stars and wondered what other life might exist in the vast expanse of the universe? The Academy’s new, award-winning planetarium film Living Worlds transports viewers across space and time in the search for life in our Solar System and beyond, and unearths a deeper understanding of life on our one-of-a-kind home planet.
Get a behind-the-scenes look at how the Academy’s Morrison Planetarium and Visualization Studio team brought the film concept to life, from animating prehistoric dragonflies and distant exoplanets, to bringing a dynamic soundscape and cutting edge future spacecraft technologies to life. Producer Cheryl Vanderbilt is joined by design, visual effects and production supervisor Jeroen Lapré, plus sound designer Christopher Hedge for an out-of-this-world conversation about the making of Living Worlds.
See weblink for links to YouTube and Facebook Live.
Glow Science - 12/02/2021 08:30 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Why do things give off light? There are many ways to make light, and all of them involve exciting atoms and molecules in some way. Join Exploratorium physicist Ron Hipschman to investigate some of the more colorful ways to make things glow. Using electricity, heat, and light, he’ll conduct a variety of demonstrations to illuminate the electromagnetic spectrum. Participants will receive a pair of diffraction grating glasses to take home.
Speaker: Ron Hipschman
Attend in person (part of After Dark) or online at the YouTube and Facebook links at the weblink.
Friday, 12/03/2021
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics Seminar - 12/03/2021 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Anicia Arredondo, SOFIA Science Center
Embracing Change, Everett in Transition: 3rd Annual Everett Student Showcase - 12/03/2021 04:00 PM
UC Santa Cruz Santa Cruz
Join us in person, on zoom, or watch on youtube livestream for the Everett Program (EP) 3rd Annual Student Project Showcase to celebrate our students’ 2021 projects despite the challenges and obstacles highlighted by the pandemic. The EP Student Showcase is an annual celebration of the personal and technical accomplishments of our Everett students. Students from across all academic departments, from freshmen to seniors, participate and present their team projects.
Students in the Everett Program partner with organizations locally and globally to design and implement technical projects rooted in community needs. Visit our project page to learn more.
Attend in person or online at weblink
Saturday, 12/04/2021
Help the King Tides Project photograph the highest tides of the year! - 12/04/2021 07:00 PM
The California Coast
King Tides are winter's highest tides, and they will arrive on December 4 and 5 and January 2 and 3. The California King Tides Project needs your help to photograph these high tides to visualize the impacts of future sea level rise. Visit California.kingtides.net to find your local high tide time, instructions on how to upload your photos, and to explore a map of photos submitted by other members of the public.
A Royal Walk with the King Tide - 12/04/2021 10:15 AM
Bay Side between Pier 3 and Pier 5 San Francisco
Join Exploratorium educator Lori Lambertson and Port of San Francisco staff for a stroll along the San Francisco waterfront to observe, photograph, and discuss the king tide. Find out what causes the tides and why we have king tides at this time of year, and learn about the Port's Waterfront Resilience Program and related sea level rise and resilience projects. We'll meet rain or shine. Come see the future!
This event is free, and museum entrance is not included. The king tide walk is presented in conjunction with Glow Fest - join us at the Exploratorium to learn more about king tides, the pull of the moon, and the science of light. We request that participants wear masks during this event.
GLOW Fest - 12/04/2021 11:00 AM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
See science come to light at GLOW Fest! At this all-ages celebration, dig into the art and science of light. Enjoy hands-on activities that help illuminate the how of light. Catch a glimpse of bioluminescent creatures and learn why they glow. Experience demos from artists and makers who harness light to transformative effect. And don’t miss the collection of luminous sculptures spread throughout our museum galleries as part of GLOW: Discover the Art of Light.
Sunday, 12/05/2021
Help the King Tides Project photograph the highest tides of the year! - 12/05/2021 07:00 PM
The California Coast
King Tides are winter's highest tides, and they will arrive on December 4 and 5 and January 2 and 3. The California King Tides Project needs your help to photograph these high tides to visualize the impacts of future sea level rise. Visit California.kingtides.net to find your local high tide time, instructions on how to upload your photos, and to explore a map of photos submitted by other members of the public.
Virtual Butterfly Walk - 12/05/2021 11:00 AM
UC Botanical Garden
Join our resident caterpillar lady Sal Levinson and butterfly guy Sarab Seth for our final virtual butterfly program of the year! Sarab will present a slideshow of butterflies he has photographed in the wild, in the US but outside the Bay Area.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Afternoon Hike at Mindego Hill - 12/05/2021 01:00 PM
Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve Los Altos
Join Peninsula Open Space Trust for a beautiful 5-mile hike from the Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve to the top of the POST-protected Mindego Hill. You will be guided by POST ambassadors who will share details about how we protected this beautiful property featuring panoramic views of redwood ridges and undulating hillsides.
The hike is strenuous at about 5 miles round trip with about 1,000 feet of elevation gain, so be prepared for a workout! Athletic wear and sturdy shoes are recommended! If you’d like to bring your own hiking poles, you’re more than welcome.
Protected by POST and recently opened to the public by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, Mindego Hill is an excellent example of how POST works with various partners to protect some of the most threatened lands in our area.
Please note that dogs are not allowed at this Community Hike and that all minors must be accompanied by a parent and guardian for the entirety of the hike.
Register at weblink
Monday, 12/06/2021
Black holes in the Universe: where, what, and why? - Livestream - 12/06/2021 11:00 AM
Royal Observatory, Edinburgh
In 2015, a merging pair of black holes was directly detected for the first time. Since then, the number of detections has grown substantially. This talk will describe the new catalogue of black holes and highlight some surprising features that pose new challenges for our understanding of these elusive objects.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
UC Berkley Theoretical Astrophysics Center Seminar - 12/06/2021 12:10 PM
Campbell Hall, Rm 131 Berkeley
Speaker: Shirley Li
CITRIS People and Robots Seminar - 12/06/2021 04:00 PM
CITRIS People and Robots
Speaker: Sambeeta Das, University of Delaware
See weblink for Zoom information
Deciphering the prion code - 12/06/2021 04:00 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
Prions are proteinaceous infectious particles that allow the propagation and inheritance of structural information by proteins. Prions populate the tree of life, propagating as fibrils both in laboratory strains and in the wild. Disease-causing prions are responsible for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, a wide range of neurodegenerative disorders affecting a variety of species. In humans, prion diseases include fatal familial insomnia, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, and Kuru. The shape of infectious prions has long been thought to define their infectivity, but remained elusive for decades. My group recently determined the first atomic model of the structured core of a human prion fibril, and with it, unlocked clues to the molecular basis of prion infectivity, transmission and neurotoxicity. Using electron cryo-microscopy (cryoEM) methods, my group pursues structures of a variety of prions including disease-causing human prion variants, infectious prions in related mammals (elk, mouse, bank vole), and functional prions. Our studies aim to establish a rosetta stone for linking prion structure to function and present a starting point to the design of inhibitors or diagnostics that curb the effects of prion disease and offer insights into other amyloid diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.
Speaker: Jose Rodriguez, UC Los Angeles
An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now - 12/06/2021 06:00 PM
Commonwealth Club - Online Event
Beyond his position as chairman of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, John Doerr rose to global prominence in the business world with his development of OKRs (objectives and key results), which he popularized in his best-selling book Measure What Matters. Could the same set of management tools be applied to preventing the growing climate crisis? In Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now, John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins advisor Ryan Panchadsaram argue that it can.
Join The Commonwealth Club and Climate One as John Doerr and Ryan Panchadsaram discuss the most pressing issue in our lifetime - and how lessons learned at the highest levels of business might address it.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
The Future of Filmmaking: AI for Volumetric Capture and Reconstruction - Livestream - 12/06/2021 07:00 PM
SF Bay Association of Computing Machinery
One picture is worth a thousand words, so what have been told with videos? What about 100 simultaneous videos to reconstruct every frame of life in a[masked] sq. ft dome? Is it enough to reconstruct and digitize us realistically? Similar to other industries, the entertainment industry is also being reshaped by AI, especially towards AR/VR consumption. Before the democratization of AI and data, such immersive experiences were lacking an essential element: photorealism. As the amount of data increased, our models got deeper, and the reality became decipherable.This talk will introduce recent deep learning advancements in 3D vision, reconstruction, and shape understanding techniques with a focus on generative models to digitize performances and scenes. Then we will shift gears with an overview of such models in 3D, and their progression on voxels, point clouds, meshes, graphs, and other 3D representations. Back to our studio, in addition to a discussion about how to process such large visual data, the challenges of scaling 10x over current capture platforms, and over 200x over state-of-the-art datasets will be presented. The talk will conclude with a sneak peek of upcoming VR/AR productions from the worlds largest volumetric capture stage at Intel Studios, as an example of real-world use cases of such AI approaches.
Speaker: Dr. Ilke Demir, Intel
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Tuesday, 12/07/2021
A Security Audit Framework for Security Management in the Enterprise - Livestream - 12/07/2021 08:00 AM
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Designing polyelectrolyte nanocarriers to target cells and penetrate tissues - 12/07/2021 11:00 AM
Latimer Hall Berkeley
Lawrence Berkeley Lab Virtual Tour - 12/07/2021 03:00 PM
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
Winter Conifers Virtual Tour - 12/07/2021 03:00 PM
UC Botanical Garden
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The Age of Invasions Meets the Age of Plastics: How Tsunamis, Megarafting, Coastal Development, and Climate Change May All be Related - Livestream - 12/08/2021 03:30 PM
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December LASER Event - 12/08/2021 06:00 PM
LASER Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous
Thursday, 12/09/2021
After Dark: Light Play - 12/09/2021 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
UC Berkeley CLEAR Pub Science: The Wood-Wide Web - 12/09/2021 06:30 PM
Ocean View Brew Works Albany
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Virtual Telescope Viewing - 12/09/2021 09:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center
Friday, 12/10/2021
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San Mateo County Astronomical Society
Sunday, 12/12/2021
Afternoon Hike at Mindego Hill - 12/12/2021 01:00 PM
Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve Los Altos
Monday, 12/13/2021
Geminid Meteor Shower Watch Party - 12/13/2021 11:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland