Hello Science Fans and Acceptors,
I hope everyone had a chance to see the last week’s eclipse in one form or another. I was fortunate enough to see it with a few thousand people in Torreon, Mexico. They were in the park that surrounds the Planetarium in Torreon. It was great to experience it with a bunch of astronomy loving high schoolers who had been working for months with staff to collaborate with the explOratorium and NASA to webcast the whole event. Needless to say few people there had had a chance to see an eclipse before and I enjoyed them as much as the eclipse itself. Here’s a timelapse from the roof of the planetarium that Ron Hipschman shot, Eclipse Time-lapse Torreon 4.8.24. {Note: Ron’s website Full Spectrum Science is really worth watching. As they say… “SMASH THAT BUTTON” and subscribe!) If you have a bunch of eclipse viewing glasses left over.
The next time you go to watch an eclipse… 9 (6 actually) spectacular night sky events to see in 2024 Try These Alternative Ways to Experience the Event Maybe you should join the Ecliptomaniacs too! Here’s a Brief History of Eclipse Chasers and are you Wondering what’s the difference?
I’m a bit worn from the travel there and back plus all of the excitement. Please forgive me for not writing more as it is getting late already. I have been collecting lots of material I wanted to comment on and include this week but I’m going to let you make the connections yourself. So without much ado here’s some items that I found to be worth my time and hopefully yours!
People Don’t Know What They Don’t Know ‘David Dunning explains how people can avoid overestimating their own knowledge’ Remember, you can’t always spot them! Consider Crank Magnetism Flatearth.ws Root Cause (film) Think Seeing is Believing? "Ready, Set, Go! Use and Abuse of Science in the World of Sport"
There are a lot of presentations coming in the next few weeks. Here’s a few that I think look interesting…
April LASER Event - Stanford - Monday 7:00
Astronomy on Tap Tucson #97: Giant Rockets, Giant Telescopes, and Giant Exoplanets, oh my! - Livestream - Tue 7:30
Earth Day Celebration at CuriOdyssey - San Mateo - Saturday - 10:00-5:00
I was led to The Science of Smoke Rings by BLOWING SQUARE SMOKE RINGS because of Mt Etna… Mount Etna blows rare volcanic vortex smoke rings Into Sicilian sky The most powerful volcanic Lady, Etna. In Iceland where there are more than 30 volcanic systems they don’t put on a show like Italy does! Though the recent Sundhnúkur eruptions certainly are worthy of attention!
Worst Science Experiments Gone Wrong
Cooking with Science and just who was bain-Marie? An Egyptian Jewish female alchemist?
It’s getting late. Please remember to share this with friends and family you care about! Maybe people you know who should, or want to, know better as well. Remember, it’s because of science that we are all here and can learn more about how this amazing universe works. Yes, there is a subscribe button to smash here too!
herb masters
“The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value.”
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 04/15/2024
Generative AI and Digital Transformation in Japan - 04/15/2024 11:00 AM
Encina Hall Stanford
With the rapid advances in the last couple of years, generative AI has attracted a great deal of attention in advanced economies. The U.S. seems to be betting on its positive potentials while Europe is generally more apprehensive about its harmful aspects. Japan has arguably been one of the most forward-leaning countries when it comes to harnessing the potential of AI, in the hopes of reclaiming its leadership in high-tech industries lost during the last few decades as it fell behind on digital transformation. How is Japan catching up on information technologies in general, and what are Japan’s plans for leveraging generative AI for economic resurgence while ensuring its peaceful and equitable development? This panel session addresses these questions with leading experts of AI and digital transformation in Japan and the U.S.
Speakers: Kenji Hiramoto, Director General of Digital Infrastructure Center, IT Promotion Agency of Japan, Executive Office, Digital Agency of Japan Akiko Murakami, Executive Director of the Japan AI Safety Insitute, Executive Officer and Chief Data Officer, Sompo Japan Insurance Inc.
Moderator: Dr. Tricia Wang, Sociologist, Tech Advisor
Philippines Conference Room
Counting X Chromosomes - 04/15/2024 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Dr. Panning is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF. Dr. Panning's Lab studies mammalian stem cell epigenetics, focusing on X-inactivation and chromatin modifiers.
Symbolic Systems Forum - 04/15/2024 12:30 PM
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg 460) Stanford
Speaker: Dan Jurafsky, Stanford University
See weblink for instructions to gain entry to the building.
Heterogeneity in Collective Behavior - 04/15/2024 12:30 PM
Shriram Center Stanford
Aggregations of social animals, such as flocks, schools, herds, and swarms, are beautiful examples of self-organized behavior far from equilibrium. Such collectives have been the focus of a significant research effort in recent years, from many different perspectives. Biologists aim to understand the evolutionary benefits of acting together; physicists treat aggregations as examples of active matter; and engineers see them as potential templates for designing robust autonomous distributed systems. All of these goals require modeling, which typically assumes that every individual in the group is an identical agent playing by the same immutable rules. In reality, however, interactions are likely to be influenced by many factors, both internal to the group (such as social relationships) and external (such as ecological context).
Speaker: Nick Ouellette, Stanford University
The Policy Challenge of AI Safety - 04/15/2024 01:00 PM
Traitel Building Stanford
Rapidly advancing AI has prompted a wide spectrum of views about AI safety, ranging from existential fears to skeptical dismissals of “doomers.” Meanwhile, few are tracking the actual policy work that is starting to address these concerns. As the first day of a set of discussions about AI and society, the Hoover Institution is hosting a symposium on AI safety and catastrophic risk. Our speakers are those who are actually working on policy initiatives, conducting initial risk assessments, and developing methods to evaluate frontier models. We will discuss and illustrate the state of global work and the way leading companies are comprehending the policy challenge. This half-day forum will help inform participants as they navigate the risks and analyze how to sustain fruitful innovation and openness.
Societal Engagement with Science: the UK Citizen Jury on Human Embryo Genome Editing - 04/15/2024 02:00 PM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
Are there any circumstances under which the United Kingdom’s government should consider changing the law to allow intentional genome editing of human embryos for serious genetic conditions? British parliamentarians will debate this question when the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act is renewed shortly.
On the plane home from Hong Kong, immediately after scientist He Jiankui announced he had delivered the first germline editing, Professor Middleton started to design the UK Citizens’ Jury on embryo editing. The aim was to provide an insight into the perspectives of patients with inherited genetic conditions on what they think about the benefits, risks and wider harms emerging from the application of embryo genome editing. After four days of in-depth deliberation, exploring the meaning of ‘serious’ inherited disease, eugenics and the practicalities of clinical application, the ‘juror’s wrote a 50 page policy report and we made a documentary film which captured their voices so that these would be available when the UK government begins discussions.
Speaker: Anna Middleton, University of Cambridge, UK
RSVP at weblink
COVID-19: Do We Still Need To Be Concerned? - Livestream - 04/15/2024 03:00 PM
UC Berkeley
Ken Polse, Professor Emeritus, Optometry, and John Swartzberg, Clinical Professor Emeritus, Infectious Diseases & Vaccinology, will discuss the current state of Covid in the U.S. and our community, the new isolation and quarantine guidelines in California, the value of the updated Covid vaccine, the role of medications like Paxlovid in treating Covid, our current understanding about long Covid and strategies for prevention. Considerable time will be reserved for questions from the listeners.
Register at weblink
Investigating cosmic origin and evolution with CMB-S4 - 04/15/2024 03:30 PM
Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) Colloquium Series Menlo Park
The red-hot glow of the primordial universe, after 13.8 billion years of redshift, is observed today by our telescopes as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Spatial variations of CMB intensity and polarization across the sky provide a record of conditions in the early universe, possibly encoding signatures from cosmic inflation and traces of undiscovered relic particles. Additionally, the CMB ‘backlights’ the universe’s large-scale structure and picks up the influence of all matter, including neutrinos, on its way to us. Ground-based CMB imaging instrumentation has made generational leaps in sensitivity over the past few decades, while our understanding and mitigation of systematic errors in CMB measurements has advanced. CMB-S4 is the largest conceived ground-based CMB experiment that will map over 40% of the Southern sky from Chile and Antarctica in the 2030s.
Speaker: Zeeshan Ahmed, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Attend in person or online
Superconductivity, the Hype, the Reality, and the Experiments - 04/15/2024 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Professor Inna Vishik will discuss superconductors -- wonder materials that conduct lossless electricity -- in the popular imagination and in the lab.
Speaker: Inna Vishik, UC Davis
The brain-body balancing act: The function and development of motor and sensory circuits for internal organ feedback control - 04/15/2024 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Luis Hernandez-Nunez is a Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar, a Branco Weiss fellow, and a Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF) postdoctoral fellow at the laboratory of Florian Engert at Harvard University. Luis' research is focused on the circuit mechanisms for heart-brain interactions in zebrafish.
Room: Auditorium
Commercializing low-carbon cement - 04/15/2024 04:30 PM
Stanford University Energy Seminar Stanford
Canary Media reports that nearly all US energy grid capacity installed in 2024 will be carbon-free. What are the next levers in decarbonizing our global economy? Presented from the viewpoint of Sublime Systems, a venture-backed MIT spin-out, we examine a groundbreaking manufacturing technology poised to revolutionize the industry. This technology, which sidesteps the need for fossil fuel kilns and employs non-carbonate feedstock, offers a path to eliminating virtually all carbon dioxide emissions in cement and concrete production.
Speaker: Joe Hicken, Sublime Systems
Physical systems that can learn by themselves - 04/15/2024 05:30 PM
International House Berkeley
In 1972 Phil Andersen articulated the motto of condensed matter physics as “More is different.” However, for most condensed matter systems many more is quite similar to more - this is why computer simulations of relatively small systems give insight into far larger systems. There are, however, systems in which many more is different. For example, the capabilities of artificial neural networks grow with their size. Unfortunately, so does the time and energy required to train them. By contrast, brains learn and perform an enormous variety of tasks on their own, using relatively little energy. Brains are able to accomplish this without an external computer because their analog constituent parts (neurons) update their connections without knowing what all the other neurons are doing using local rules.
Speaker: Andrea Liu, University of Pennsylvania
An Evening with 'Science Friday''s Ira Flatow - 04/15/2024 06:00 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Radio and TV journalist Ira Flatow produced his first science stories back in 1970 during the inaugural Earth Day. Since then, he has worked for Emmy Award-winning science programs and covered science for a number of high-profile news organizations, and has hosted the popular public radio program “Science Friday” for more than three decades. In the process he has become a well-known and influential popularizer of science for millions of people - a status crowned by repeated appearances as himself on the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”
In his career, Flatow has interviewed countless scientists and other experts about the most exciting developments in science. Now the Club welcomes Flatow to our headquarters for a special evening of conversation in which we interview him.
Attend in person or online
Speaker: Ira Flatow, Science Friday; Annalee Newitz, Journalist, Moderator
Use the promo code WONDERFEST20 for a $20 discount on all ticket formats.
April LASER Event - Stanford - 04/15/2024 07:00 PM
Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge Stanford
Sara Morawetz(Media Artist) on "Measuring by Measuring Against: Experimental Methods in Artistic Practice", Leah Rosengaus(Director of Digital Health at Stanford Health Care) on "Towards Digital Health: Realizing the Promise of Care Transformation at Stanford Medicine and Beyond", Marisa Olson(Media Artist) on "The Meaning of Postinternet"
Room: LK120
Tuesday, 04/16/2024
Dear Human at Future’s Edge: Science, Creativity and Climate Futures Conference - 04/16/2024 01:00 PM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
“Dear Human at Future’s Edge: Science, Creativity and Climate Futures” is a conference focused on the intersection of climate science, ecopoetry, and the arts. The program will celebrate two recent companion publications: the Fifth National Climate Assessment report, the U.S. Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses, and Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (Paloma Press 2023).
Editor's Note: Registration is required. As we list this, the URL for registration is not public. We have provided the URL here. If you wish to attend and the link doesn't work for you, use the contact info in this listing to reach out to the coordinator.
Should We Use Language Models In High-Stakes Decision-Making Scenarios? - 04/16/2024 01:00 PM
Encina Hall Stanford
The emergence of generative language models, such as the one powering ChatGPT, has sparked widespread interest due to its potential implications for the future of work and society at large. The drive to automate decision-making is reaching high-stakes applications like military applications and mental health care, where non-zero error rates lead to individual failures with dire consequences and the potential to cause wide-scale harm. Thus, it is time to scrutinize and ask whether we should use language models in high-stakes decision-making scenarios. In this talk, I will dissect the question by studying how human decision-making differs from language models, if language models add their own dynamics to conflict situations, and whether they can recognize emergency/high-stakes user queries.
Speaker: Max Lamparth, Stanford University
William J Perry Conference Room
Measuring the Effect of Gravity on Antimatter - 04/16/2024 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Recent experiments have measured the effect of gravity on antimatter with the first “direct”, i.e., freefall-style or Galilean Leaning Tower of Pisa-style measurements. In agreement with theory and indirect experiments, these experiments, performed by CERN’s ALPHA collaboration, show that antimatter, specifically antihydrogen atoms, fall downward with an acceleration within about 25% of g=9.8ms2. Strongly ruled out is the possibility of antimatter falling upwards. Thus, the results are compatible with the weak equivalence principle. This talk will review why this topic remained a perhaps open question, document some of the current other experiments attempting to make a direct measurement, discuss some of the history of early, failed, attempts to do a direct measurement, and conclude with a description of how the measurement was actually made using a magnetic balance.
Speaker: Joel Fajans
Exploring the interactions of turbulent flows and grain size in bedload sediment transport - 04/16/2024 03:30 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Christian Escauriza, UC Santa Cruz
Wonderfest Ask a Science Envoy: Verifying AI; Ultracold Atoms - 04/16/2024 07:00 PM
Hopmonk Tavern Novato
Wonderfest Science Envoys are early-career researchers with special communication skills and aspirations. Following short talks on provocative modern science topics, these two Science Envoys will answer questions with insight and enthusiasm:
• Stanford computer scientist Teddi Worledge on Verifying AI with Attributed Sources - So-called large language models (LLMs) provide information and make judgments nearly everywhere - from online search engines to classrooms and medical clinics. But LLMs do make errors. Language model systems that attribute their sources can address this accuracy problem, as long as the attributions theselves are reliable!
• UC Berkeley physicist Matt Tao on What Ultracold Atoms Reveal - Atoms cooled to billionths of a degree can teach us much about the world. The wave nature of ultracold atoms allows interference experiments (interferometry) with astounding precision. Such tabletop interferometers even allow the study of gravity, nature's weakest - but most pervasive - force, at minute scales.
Ice, Whales, Glaciers, and Penguins: Insights from 43 years of working in Antarctica - 04/16/2024 07:00 PM
Hopkins Marine Station Pacific Grove
For 45 years, Rob has been developing high-resolution records to understand past climatic and oceanic variability, aiming to discern human impacts on our climate. The Dunbar Lab is studying carbon dioxide uptake in the Ross Sea and ice sheet changes in East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, while innovating methods to estimate Antarctica's ice sheet melting rates.
Rob also works in tropic locations such as Palau, and American Samoa, as well as locally in Monterey Bay. He has taught several amazing field-oriented classes, most notably Stanford@SEA along with Barb Block. Stanford@SEA currently has its 2024 students at Hopkins preparing to sail toward the coral reefs of the tropical Pacific. And check out Rob’s amazing collection of photographs from places he’s been at https://robertbdunbar.zenfolio.com/f348119125
Registration required if attending virtually.
Mushroom Foraging with Children and Families - 04/16/2024 07:30 PM
Randall Museum San Francisco
Curious about the best ways to introduce children to the benefits of mushroom hunting?
Melany Kahn quells common fears and puts the “us” in mushrooms, by weaving simple education through playful, fungi-finding adventures. It’s never too early to learn, and never too late to start a family interest in mycology.
Melany will discuss simple ‘beginner’ mushrooms, showing which ones to tackle and how, and discuss the many fungal treasures that are not necessarily edible but are fascinating to children. These range from the beauty of turkey tails to the magic of blue-staining boletes, to stinkhorns (eeew!), to making spore art with gilled mushrooms. The possibilities that the mushroom kingdom offer our kids are endless.
The program will be interactive with plenty of room for Q and A through the chat.
Attend in person or online (see weblink). Melany Kahn will be via Zoom from New Hampshire.
Astronomy on Tap Tucson #97: Giant Rockets, Giant Telescopes, and Giant Exoplanets, oh my! - Livestream - 04/16/2024 07:30 PM
Astronomy on Tap
The dawn of giant rockets delivering giant telescopes
Speaker: Daewook Kim
Searching for Snapshots of Giant Exoplanet Migration
Speaker: Arvind Gupta
On tap this month, we have NSF NOIRLab postdoc Dr. Arvind Gupta talking about giant exoplanet migration and University of Arizona optical sciences professor Dr. Daewook Kim telling us about the future of giant space telescopes. And Steward postdocs Jackie Champagne and Danny Krolikowski will be telling us all about the latest and greatest astronomical news!
Wednesday, 04/17/2024
The James Webb Space Telescope: A Window into the Universe’s Past - Livestream - 04/17/2024 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the largest and most complex telescope ever put into service in space. The Webb telescope is an infrared telescope designed to look back in time to when the first stars and galaxies formed. It was developed by a collaboration between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). It cost ~$10 B to build and test and took over two decades to go from concept to working hardware.
I will describe what Webb does and why it is groundbreaking for modern astronomy. In particular, I will explain why it is an infrared telescope. Finally, I will show some beautiful “false color” images captured by JWST. These range from images of objects within our own solar system, to star forming regions and nebulae within our own Milky Way Galaxy, to far distant galaxies that existed within a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. The latter have never been observed until now.
Speaker: Dr. Peter Love
See weblink to register and receive connection information
Transforming Climate Anxiety into Climate Action at Work - 04/17/2024 11:00 AM
Acterra: Actions for a Healthy Planet Palo Alto
Are you worried about the climate crisis and don’t know where to begin to take action? A good place to start is your workplace. Companies wield enormous influence and they have an important role to play in reducing emissions and advocating for climate policy. When employees speak, companies act!
According to Kite Insights, 8 out of 10 employees say they are ready and willing to take action on climate change in their jobs, but fewer than half feel “very” or “quite able” to do so. Join ClimateVoice for a dynamic conversation about how employees can speak up to raise the bar on corporate climate advocacy.
Speakers: Deborah McNamara, Climate voice; Jennifer Allyn, Climate Voice
Engineering Extracellular Matrix Viscoelasticity to Probe Cellular Responses - 04/17/2024 12:00 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
In the body, cells are surrounded by a scaffolding of biopolymers that provide physical support and biochemical cues, known as the extracellular matrix (ECM). Hydrogel cell culture models have been used to reveal that properties of the ECM, notably matrix stiffness, can regulate a host of cellular behaviors, such as migration, division, differentiation, and even cancer progression. ECM is often viscoelastic, displaying stress relaxation in response to strain, and recapitulating complex aspects of native ECM, such as dynamic remodeling and viscoelasticity, remains challenging. Further, key aspects of mechanotransduction, such as the effect of mechanics on the epigenome, are not well understood. In this talk, I will discuss how matrix stiffness can induce epigenomic remodeling leading to a tumorigenic phenotype in a breast cancer model. I will also describe our work to develop 3D hydrogel platforms that allow for dynamic tuning of matrix viscoelasticity to better understand the biological impact and pathways involved in mechanotransduction.
Speaker: Ryan Stowers, UC Santa Barbara
Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature’s Toxins - from Spices to Vices - 04/17/2024 12:00 PM
Barker Hall, Rm 101 Berkeley
I will discuss what motivated me to write a new book on the origin story of toxins made by plants and other organisms that humans use (and sometimes abuse) and I will give an overview of this general audience book.
A deadly secret lurks within our spice racks, medicine cabinets, backyard gardens, and private stashes.
Scratch beneath the surface of a coffee bean, a red pepper flake, a poppy seed, a mold spore, a foxglove leaf, a magic-mushroom cap, a marijuana bud, or an apple seed, and we find a bevy of strange chemicals. We use these to greet our days (caffeine), titillate our tongues (capsaicin), recover from surgery (opioids), cure infections (penicillin), mend our hearts (digoxin), bend our minds (psilocybin), calm our nerves (CBD), and even kill our enemies (cyanide). But why do plants and fungi produce such chemicals? And how did we come to use and abuse some of them?
Based on cutting-edge science in the fields of evolution, chemistry, and neuroscience, Most Delicious Poison reveals:
The origins of toxins produced by plants, mushrooms, microbes, and even some animals The mechanisms that animals evolved to overcome them How a co-evolutionary arms race made its way into the human experience And much more
This perpetual chemical war not only drove the diversification of life on Earth, but also is intimately tied to our own successes and failures. You will never look at a houseplant, mushroom, fruit, vegetable, or even the past five hundred years of human history the same way again.
Speaker: Noah Whiteman, UC Berkeley
Building Fair and Trustworthy AI for Healthcare - 04/17/2024 12:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
AI for healthcare has the potential to revolutionize how we practice medicine. However, to do this in a fair and trustworthy manner requires special attention to how AI models work and their potential biases. In this talk, I will cover the considerations for building AI systems that improve healthcare.
Speaker: Roxana Daneshjou, Stanford University
Attend in person or online
Room S360
Will Cleaning Up the Local Environment Narrow or Widen Inequality? - 04/17/2024 12:10 PM
Giannini Hall Berkeley
Speaker: Paige Weber, UC Berkeley
Recovery in the Anthropocene: When and how do populations survive disturbance? - Livestream - 04/17/2024 03:40 PM
Estuary and Ocean Science Center
Global change is making acute disturbances such as novel infectious disease and extreme environmental changes increasingly common. These events can lead to mass mortality, shifting species distributions, and altered ecosystem function. They can also select for adaptive traits, sometimes leading to evolutionary rescue. Survival and recovery depend on several factors including standing genetic variation, mobility, and microbiome plasticity. I will explore these ideas in three different systems: coral reefs, North American bats, and zooplankton communities.
Speaker: Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Lowell
See weblink for Zoom information
Energy and Resources Group Colloquium - 04/17/2024 04:00 PM
Giannini Hall Berkeley
Clean fuel and stove interventions, like other health or development programs, require users to continually purchase the product, and affordability remains a major barrier. To ease financial constraints, microcredit has been the most commonly pursued tool, yet many low-income individuals need a safe place in which to save, not necessarily borrow. Microsavings may be a better option than credit to increase clean fuel consumption. I will present the experimental and ethnographic results of a yearlong stepped-wedge randomized control trial (RCT) that assessed an informal (unbanked) saving intervention (a locked deposit box) targeted at individual households, with the original motivation of increasing clean fuel consumption. This work from my Dissertation supports the need for the energy, health, and development sectors to account for the full costs of interventions, and for the individual who is expected to pay these costs. Ignoring the gendered nature of savings and purchases, the variable nature of the household, and the full portfolio of a users’ (competing) needs and expectations, will limit both improvements in well-being as well as the global community’s ability to finance and achieve the SDGs.
Speaker: Annelise Gill-Wiehl, UC Berkeley
The Allure of the Multiverse: Beyond the Limits of Direct Observation - Livestream - 04/17/2024 07:00 PM
Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series
Given that the extent of the observable universe has yet to be mapped out, some might wonder why some physicists have introduced the concept of a multiverse into their models. This talk will examine why some eminent physicists, such as the late Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, have been attracted to the idea of the multiverse, and others, such as Princeton cosmologist Paul Steinhardt, have raised significant concerns. We’ll also show that the cultural (think Marvel movies) and scientific ideas of multiverses differ significantly.
Speaker: Paul Halpern is Professor of Physics at Saint Joseph’s University and the author of eighteen popular science books.
NERD NITE SF #141: Changing Clothes, Climates, and… Birds? - 04/17/2024 07:00 PM
Rickshaw Stop San Francisco
Spring is in the air and with the changing of the seasons come deeper questions about what it means to “change.” Change can be as mundane as putting on new clothes - or as complex as getting into an elaborate cosplay. Change can be as world-spanning as human-made climate shifts or as subtle as evolutionary adjustments to the shape of a finch’s beak. Join us for a night of fascinating fun; to learn about how people, laws, and animals change and how you can be a change-maker too!
A Glimpse Into The World of Cosplay!
A peek into the world of cosplay and all that goes into bringing your favorite characters to life! The word “cosplay” comes from a blend of two words: “costume” and “play.” Cosplayers buy or make their own costumes to pay tribute to their favorite characters (from anime, movies, video games, comics, etc) and wear them to conventions, movie premieres, and so much more! Some cosplayers use their craft as a profession, while most do it out of passion as a hobby. Come catch a glimpse of what it’s like to be a cosplayer!
Speaker: Foxy McQueen (@foxyscreamqueen) is a local California cosplayer and published model.
Can Grazin’ Goats Solve California’s Climate Crisis?
We’ve all heard that goat grazing helps fight California wildfires, but how feasible is the idea really? Behind those cute goats monching on the side of the road lies a complex economic and legal scheme that spans from the backcountry of the Sierra Nevadas to the mountains of Peru. We will explore the ways in which the structure of California’s goat grazing industry obstructs the state’s efforts to address climate change by restricting the growth of a sustainable vegetation management industry. You will never look at grazin’ goats the same way!
Speaker: Sonja Chen is a law student at UC Law San Francisco concentrating in social justice and dispute resolution.
If You Give a Bird a French Fry: Urbanization’s Effects on Beaks of Darwin’s Finches
We see birds eating things they shouldn’t eat almost daily. This quirky behavior of theirs is commonplace (and kind of cute). But what really happens when birds eat french fries, eggs, or tortillas instead of bugs and seeds? In this talk, we will try to understand one way that urban civilization affects how animals interact with their environment, and how that drives evolutionary change.
Speaker Bio:Speaker: Adan Deeb is a biologist passionate about environmental justice and equitable scientific education
From Code Blue to Code Chronic: Insights into Emergency Medicine - 04/17/2024 07:30 PM
Marin Science Seminar San Rafael
An Emergency Medicine doctor thrives in the chaotic, bustling environment of the ER. Join Dr. Steve Garcia as he offers a glimpse into his non-traditional path to becoming a physician. He will describe the training of Emergency Physicians and how they diagnose and treat all patients in the Emergency Room, as there are differences as compared to other specialties. There will also be discussion of a day in the life in the ER and shortcomings of today’s emergency care system.
Speaker: Dr. Steve Garcia, Kaiser Permanente
Thursday, 04/18/2024
Green Metropolis: A Talk with the Author of a Seminal Work in the Field of Sustainability, David Owen - Livestream - 04/18/2024 11:30 AM
San Francisco Environment Department
This presentation by The New Yorker staff writer, David Owen, will focus on the topic of his 2010 book, The Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability and the inherently sustainable aspects of urban living. David will talk about the efficiencies associated with cities in this introductory level webinar for anyone interested in conservation and sustainability. Most Americans think of densely populated cities as ecological nightmares: wastelands of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams. But in comparison with suburbs, small towns, and rural areas, they are models of responsibility. Individually, city dwellers drive, pollute, consume, and throw away less than do average residents of the surrounding suburbs and exurbs, and they use less energy per capita and make far greater use of public transportation. The reason is that the tightly circumscribed spaces in which they live create efficiencies and reduce the possibilities for reckless consumption. Living in cities has obvious downsides, including the fact that urban density makes pandemics, wars, and natural disasters more efficient, too. Nevertheless, the environmental challenge we face, at the current stage of our assault on the world's non-renewable resources, is not how to make the world's teeming urban areas more like the pristine countryside. The true challenge is to make other settled places more like cities.
RSVP at weblink to receive connection information
First-of-a-Kind Climate Projects: Examples From the Field - 04/18/2024 12:00 PM
Environment and Energy Building (Y2E2) Stanford
The early-stage climate technology ecosystem is flourishing, and an increasing number of entrepreneurs and scientists are bringing forward startup companies with promising solutions for some of our hardest challenges. Many of the climate problems that once seemed nearly impossible to address - decarbonizing cement, storing low-carbon power for days, replacing high-temperature heat in heavy industry - now have alternatives demonstrating viability in pilot projects around the globe.
However, scaling these innovations to commercial scale presents technology, operational, customer, and construction risks that make them difficult to finance through any traditional sources of lower-cost capital like project or infrastructure finance. Increasing attention has been given to this first-of-a-kind "valley of death," but startups have limited visibility on the levers they can pull in advance of their first commercial-scale project to smooth their trajectory.
During this seminar, Madison Freeman will present the findings of a new white paper from the Steyer-Taylor Center's Financing Climate Innovation Initiative. The white paper is designed as a guidebook for early-stage climate startups to prepare for project scale, including case studies from four recent deployments, risk mitigation levers from the perspective of project investors, and strategies for developing greater sources of capital, knowledge, and operational capacity.
We will be joined by leaders from two of the projects profiled in the white paper, Shreya Dave, CEO of Via Separations and Gabe Malek, Chief of Staff of Fervo Energy, as well as by David McColl, Director of Stanford Climate Ventures.
Attend in person or online. See weblink for stream information
UC Berkeley Astronomy Colloquium - 04/18/2024 03:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: David Radice, Penn State
RF & Microwave Engineering: Perspectives of a Hardware Engineer - 04/18/2024 04:00 PM
Sonoma State Dept. of Engineering Science Rohnert Park
Hardware engineering is a critical to designing and manufacturing successful high frequency systems and presents unique and complex challenges. This presentation will discuss what delineates RF, microwave, and high frequency engineering as a specialization and describe some design and testing methodologies useful in application. Additionally, some basic simulations and troubleshooting stories will be shared and the role of a hardware engineering lead discussed.
Speaker: Chelsi Wieland, Keysight Technologies
This lecture may also be available online. See the weblink for Zoom information.
Is the Planet Full? What We Need to Know about Overpopulation - Livestream - 04/18/2024 04:00 PM
Skeptical Inquirer
The human population reached eight billion people in 2022 and may reach ten billion later this century. A relatively small (and rich) fraction of those billions are able to cause climate change at a global scale. However, with so much focus on the challenges of climate change, another catastrophe is unfolding without most people noticing: the loss of nature as we know it.
Speaker: Peter Uetz
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Electric Fireside Chat with Dahlia Myers - Livestream - 04/18/2024 05:00 PM
San Francisco Environment Department
Join us for an inspiring conversation between Tyrone Jue, Director of the San Francisco Environment Department, and Dahlia Myers, youth activist with the Sunrise Movement. Don’t miss this chance to learn from their insights and experiences!
After Dark: See for Yourself - 04/18/2024 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
What do you think about when you think about the Exploratorium? Cow eye dissections? Colorful Shadows? The Tactile Dome?
Like you, the Exploratorium has glowed up since your last visit. Whether you were here pre-COVID or just last week, our galleries are constantly evolving with brand-new exhibits and experiences. Some have even compared us to Costco (true story). Come find out what’s new at the Tactile Dome. Play with 650+ interactive exhibits. And don’t forget to join the dance party hosted by DJ Darling Cool!
Ages 18+
Wild Stories from the History of Bird Migration Research - Livestream - 04/18/2024 07:00 PM
Golden Gate Bird Alliance
We’ve all heard amazing facts about bird migration - the long distances that birds travel, the ways that they navigate, etc. But did you ever wonder how we figured all of this out? While working for the American Ornithological Society, Rebecca Heisman became fascinated with the varied and creative techniques that scientists have used to study bird migration, and this eventually became the basis for her book Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration. In her talk, she’ll share some surprising stories from the history of bird migration research and discuss why understanding migration is so crucial for bird conservation.
COVID-19: The Mistakes We Made and How to Control the Next Pandemic - 04/18/2024 07:00 PM
Dominican University San Rafael
Policies meant to control the spread of COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic devastated some portions of the economy and student learning, and critics say they resulted in mental health and substance abuse problems, domestic violence and the discontinuation of treatment for other health conditions. Many say these policies hurt disadvantaged populations the most.
UCSF’s Dr. Monica Gandhi will review the history of COVID-19 and different responses to the pandemic around the world. She will explain how to better manage pandemics in the future.
AI for Learning Photorealistic 3D Digital Humans from In-the-Wild Data - Livestream - 04/18/2024 07:00 PM
SF Bay Association for Computing Machinery Chapter
Traditionally, creating 3D digital humans requires lengthy efforts by digital artists, and often costly 3D scanning by special multi-view scanners. Learn how recent generative AI technologies allow the learning of photorealistic 3D representations from a collection of in-the-wild 2D images, such as internet photos. We'll dive deep into our recent work called “EG3D” and “WYSIWYG”, which can synthesize wide varieties of photorealistic 3D humans in real time. We'll also show how 3D synthetic data from a pre-trained 3D generative model can be used to train another AI model for challenging image synthesis tasks. To this end, we present our recent work called “LP3D,” which can synthesize photorealistic neural radiance field (NeRF) models from a single RGB image in real time. We'll demonstrate how these AI-driven human synthesis methods can make the advanced capabilities, such as 3D video conferencing, accessible to anyone and enable new applications in the future.
Speaker: Matthew Chan, NIVIDIA
Register at weblink to attend
FUNDIS Year One Recap and Year 2 Goals - 04/18/2024 07:30 PM
Sebastopol Grange Sebastopol
Join SOMA’s own Taye Bright and Harte Singer to hear exciting stories about discoveries made from year one of the California Fungal Diversity Survey, insights from the rare fungi challenges, DNA sequencing initiatives for the Sonoma Mycological Association and much more. Come learn about the power of community mycology and how you can get involved! The Fungal Diversity Survey (FUNDIS) is a non-profit focused on North America’s fungal biodiversity and conservation. Bringing together people all over the continent ranging from community scientists to professional mycologists, FUNDIS is building the framework for unprecedented community engagement, mycological advocacy, scientific discovery and fungal protection in North America.
Friday, 04/19/2024
Illuminating Circadian Circuits - 04/19/2024 12:00 PM
ChEM-H/Neuroscience Building, James Lin and Nisa Leung Seminar Room (E153) Stanford
Speaker: Tiffany Schmidt, Northwestern University
Attend in person, or click here to attend online.
Using isotopes to assess processes and provenance from the early Solar System to the atomic age - 04/19/2024 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Emily Worsham, UC Santa Cruz
Quantum Science With Rare-Earth Ions In Crystals - 04/19/2024 02:00 PM
Etcheverry Hall Berkeley
Rare-earth ions in crystals, when strongly coupled with optical and superconducting resonators, form a novel platform that facilitates the exploration of quantum many-body physics and the development of light-matter interfaces for the future quantum internet. Through the utilization of a large ensemble of Ytterbium-171 ions doped into a high-cooperativity nanophotonic cavity made of yttrium orthovanadate, we have recently investigated fundamental phenomena in many-body cavity electrodynamics, unveiling a rich interplay between driven inhomogeneous emitters and cavity photons.
Moreover, we have also demonstrated the utility of local nuclear spins within the lattice as deterministic quantum resources, serving as long-lived quantum memory. These advancements not only expand the capabilities of rare-earth ion-based platforms but also open avenues for novel applications in quantum technologies.
Speaker: Joohnee Choi, Stanford University
Room 3108
Bioenergy Recovery Facility at EBMUD - 04/19/2024 03:15 PM
Bioenergy Recovery Facility Oakland
Young Professionals in Energy is pleased to partner with EBMUD to host this site visit tour of renewable energy infrastructure right here in the Bay Area! This will be the first of a series of site visits YPE will offer in 2024, look for similar events in the near future!The East Bay Municipal Utility District is a California public utility that supplies high-quality drinking water, generates renewable energy, and provides pollution prevention and wastewater treatment services that protect San Francisco Bay. EBMUD has been producing renewable energy since the 1980s; in 2011 it became the first wastewater treatment plant in North America to produce more energy onsite than is needed to run the facility. EBMUD collects 20-40 tons of food scraps daily from restaurants, supermarkets and other municipal entities and utilizes anaerobic digestion to create biogas that powers its on-site low emission gas turbine to power its facility, selling any excess energy back to the grid.
The EBMUD in-person tour will be led by an EBMUD employee and typically lasts 1.5 hours. Please note - all attendees will be required to fill out a waiver in order to participate in the tour. Please fill out the waiver and fill out this survey so we can collect copies in advance. Alternatively, you can also print and bring your waiver with you to your tour. Additionally, EBMUD cautions - "This tour involves walking up and down narrow stairways, walking over uneven ground, and potentially being exposed to strong odors and birds." Parking is limited, so please carpool if at all possible
SUB-ATOMIC MOTIONS: From capturing electrons to probing human health - 04/19/2024 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Born at the dawn of the new millennium, attosecond “photography” has opened the door for capturing sub-atomic motions as they evolve in time. Control of the oscillating electric field of light has permitted the attosecond control of electrons with unprecedented precision in space and time.
Fundamental quantum phenomena, such as electron tunnelling and dipole oscillations in atoms or light-electron energy exchange in solids as well as fundamental classical phenomena, such as the field oscillations of visible light, became accessible to human observation in slow-motion replay.
These capabilities open new avenues for 21st-century science, technology and medicine. Some of them emerge from the ability to sample light fields with attosecond precision. Possible implications of these advances include hundred thousand times faster electronics and cost-effective monitoring of human health.
Speaker: Ferenc Krausz, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Editor's Note: This lecture will also be given at SLAC on Monday, 4/22/24. See our listing for specifics
Public Astronomy Viewing Nights - 04/19/2024 08:30 PM
Sonoma State University Public Astronomy Rohnert Park
Sonoma State University hosts astronomical viewing nights open to the public. Events are weather dependent. Check the weblink for cancelations prior to attending.
Saturday, 04/20/2024
Morning Hike from Skyline Ridge to Russian Ridge - 04/20/2024 09:00 AM
Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve Los Altos
A POST Representative will share a few words about POST’s decades of conservation success before hiking groups leave to explore a strenuous 6.25 mile hike with 1100 feet of elevation gain.
POST has made many contributions towards protecting Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve and Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve over the past several decades, which are now managed by Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. This area contains diverse plant ecosystems and water features that make it an important habitat for a variety of wildlife. This hike will feature views of a lake, pond, and stunning redwood groves. The area also contains bedrock mortars, highlighting the presence of Native peoples in this area since time immemorial. We will stop at Borel hill for sweeping views of the bay, the Diablo Range, Butano Ridge, and the Pacific Ocean.
All attendees must RSVP via Eventbrite (see weblink). More detailed information regarding parking and meet-up locations will be sent out to all attendees prior to the event.
Spring flowers at Bouverie Preserve - 04/20/2024 10:00 AM
Bouverie Preserve Glen Ellen
Join us for a 3-hour docent-led nature walk at the 535-acre Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen. You will be in small groups while strolling through and appreciating the unique beauty of our oak and riparian woodland habitats.
The trails are wide, unpaved, uneven, and some have steps or inclines. Wear sturdy shoes and long pants. Bring drinking water in a resealable container.
Possible hazards include poison oak and ticks. Rain or high wind cancels. No dogs allowed.
Register at weblink
Earth Day Festival 2024 - 04/20/2024 10:00 AM
Yerba Buena Gardens Great Lawn San Francisco
SPUR and the Yerba Buena Gardens Conservancy invite you to celebrate Earth Day with us at the Yerba Buena Gardens for a fun-filled, family-friendly day of live music, food, and interactive activities in partnership with YBCA, the Children’s Creativity Museum, Yerba Buena Ice Skating and Bowling Center, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and SOMACC.
Enjoy free rides on the carousel all day, make some art on the ice at the Yerba Buena Ice Skating & Bowling Center, plant trees with us across the neighborhood, enjoy some giveaways, a live performance from Grammy-nominated artist SaulPaul, incredible speakers, and learn more about climate, sustainability, and resilience efforts across the Bay.
Climate Change at Chrissy Field - 04/20/2024 10:00 AM
Meet by restrooms @ Crissy Field East Beach SF
Join the Climate Change at Crissy Field tour to explore the breathtaking, 180-degree views of San Francisco Bay from Crissy Field and to discuss the threat of climate change and sea level rise to Crissy Field’s beauty. You will see the recent restoration that converted the US Army airfield to a bird-friendly marsh that can reduce the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. Learn about local heroes who fought for protection of SF Bay and the history of how rapid population increase changed the local habitats of birds, trees, and fish. See what SF is doing to become a sustainable city. Join a spirited discussion of how you can lower your own carbon footprint and participate in climate decisions impacting your home community.
Green Classroom Celebration - 04/20/2024 10:00 AM
Seymour Marine Discovery Center Santa Cruz
The COE has led a Teacher Leadership Institute program for the past five years that culminates in teachers sharing and celebrating the projects they completed as part of the program. This year, for the first time we are turning the portion of the program where teachers share their classroom projects with each other into a public showcase and celebration of green schools progress. We have expanded our programs and partnerships so the celebration will recognize leaders not only from the Teacher Leadership Institute for Sustainability but also from our new Green Classroom Challenge and the County of Santa Cruz’s Green Schools Program.
WhaleFest 2024 - 04/20/2024 10:30 AM
Linda Mar State Beach North Lot Pacifica
Come Shake your Tail - Save a Whale and celebrate Earth Day at this WhaleFest at the beach. Dive deep into the realm of whales, learn about the critical importance of ocean conservation, and be inspired by our lineup of special guests and speakers who are leaders in marine biology and environmental protection. WhaleFest is more than just an event; it’s a movement towards safeguarding our planet’s future, offering a unique opportunity to connect with nature and like-minded individuals.
Anyone interested in helping whales beforehand can take action at any of our many sites from 9:00am - 11:00am.
Speakers will include Congresswoman Anna Eschoo, additional dignitaries, Marc Webber, a Cetacean Field Research Associate, and Pilar Rodriguez a Cetacean Conservation Biology Apprentice from The Marine Mammal Center, youth champions, and more!
Various organizations will have booths, including The Marine Mammal Center, Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, CA State and San Mateo County Parks, and San Pedro Valley County Park, among others!
Fun educational activities for kids of all ages, including a whale walk, poetry, puzzles, games, whale anatomy/physiology, whale dancing and singing, creative projects, and more!
Sunnyvale's Earth Day Festival - 04/20/2024 11:00 AM
Sunnyvale Civic Center Sunnyvale
Show your love for the planet by attending Sunnyvale's Earth Day Festival. It features the Grand Opening of our new Civic Center campus. The event will feature family-friendly, sustainability-focused activities and information from local organizations.
Attend the festival to enjoy:
Civic Center ribbon cutting Sustainable arts and crafts for kids Cooking demonstration by the Zero-Waste Chef, Anne-Marie Bonneau Guided urban canopy tours led by tree experts Master Composters teach how to start a home compost Live entertainment in the Redwood Grove Zero-emissions cars at the electric vehicle display And more
Together we have the power to create a sustainable Sunnyvale. We hope to see you there.
HOME ELECTRIFICATION FAIR - 04/20/2024 02:00 PM
David Brower Center Berkeley
The benefits of switching from gas to electric can be enormous - long-term savings, healthier indoor air, cutting your climate footprint. And with new government rebates and tax credits 2024 promises to be a great year to go electric!
The 2024 Home Electrification Fair is your one-stop shop for answers to questions like:
Where do I start? Heat pump? Water heater? Induction cooktop?What tax credits and rebates can I receive? Is my 100 amp electric panel sufficient? Who can I trust? Are there recommended contractors? My house is unusual. Can it be electrified?
You’ll be able to talk with electrification professionals, ordinary residents who have gone all-electric, and representatives of nonprofits and government agencies that support incentives for home electrification.
See weblink for presentation schedule, and to register
Wild and Scenic Film Festival 2024 - 04/20/2024 07:00 PM
David Brower Center Berkeley
The 2024 Wild and Scenic Film Festival combines stellar filmmaking, beautiful cinematography, and first-rate storytelling. These films explore nature, community activism, adventure, conservation, water, energy and climate change, wildlife, environmental justice, agriculture and more.
This year’s program features the audience favorites from the nation’s premier environmental and adventure film festival, the 2024 Wild and Scenic Film Festival.
Check out the great program line-up.
Sunday, 04/21/2024
Earth Day in the Bay - 04/21/2024 10:00 AM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
For over 50 years we have set aside time in April to bring attention to the climate issues facing our home planet. Earth Day is also a time to highlight the different ways we are combating climate issues around the world. Discover more about local organizations helping to fight climate change here in the Bay Area through hands-on activities, guest speakers and more. This is an exciting way to be part of the solution and have fun while you’re doing it!
Spend the day learning about the different ways local organizations are helping conserve our home planet, Earth.
Event Schedule
Compost Worm Giveaway
Adopt-A-Spot Sign-Ups with CCAC
Climate Coloring Sheets with CCAC
Pollinator-Friendly Crafting! Create-Your-Own Bee Houses
Climate Storytelling Workshop (Classroom 2)
“How Green Is Your School?” with OUSD Students (Theater)
Field Diary Hike with Chabot Educators
Live Performance by Planet MC
Nature Scavenger Hunt
Eco Trivia Gameshow (Theater)
Earth Day Celebration at CuriOdyssey - 04/21/2024 10:00 AM
CuriOdyssey San Mateo
Come join us for an Earth Day celebration on Sunday, April 21, 2024! Enjoy music and tasty food from Satay on the Bay and Mozzeria, try out eco-activities for kids of all ages, browse our Earth Day Vendor Market, and learn more about conservation at CuriOdyssey as we celebrate our amazing planet and learn more about how to come together to take better care of the world around us.
Robots on Ice 4.0 - 04/21/2024 03:00 PM
Yerba Buena Ice Skating & Bowling Center San Francisco
That's right! Robots on Ice is back for its fourth year!
Bring out your bots, bring out your bot skating attire, come to cheer on our bots & skaters, and see you there.
Additional details at weblink
Discounts, early bird, and family tickets available.
Monday, 04/22/2024
Earth Day at the Refuge - 04/22/2024 10:00 AM
Don Edwards Refuge Headquarters & Visitors Center Fremont
This year, the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge and partners are celebrating Earth Day and 50 years of Endangered Species Act in a big way - and it will be fun for the whole family! The event will be an open house, with time to explore, learn more about our endangered species, join a guided walk or ranger program, participate in some arts & crafts, and much more as we celebrate our Earth!
Register at weblink
California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Suing Big Oil - 04/22/2024 11:00 AM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
On behalf of the people of the State of California, Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a lawsuit against five of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, along with the lobbying organization American Petroleum Institute, for willfully misleading the public about climate change. How big a deal could this be?
Join Climate One Host Greg Dalton in a live conversation with Bonta about holding polluters accountable in the courts.
Attend in person or online.
Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary: The Research program in General and Specifics Related to Deep-Sea Science - 04/22/2024 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Dr. Andrew DeVogelaere, Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Symbolic Systems Forum - 04/22/2024 12:30 PM
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg 460) Stanford
Speaker: Marisa Casillas, Wasow Vsiting Scholar
See weblink for instructions to gain entry to the building.
Room 126
Development Engineering: My Journey and Lessons - 04/22/2024 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Ashok Gadgil will present the trajectory he chose as a physicist, including his work in technology design and climate change.
Speaker: Ashok Gadgil, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
SUB-ATOMIC MOTIONS: From capturing electrons to probing human health - 04/22/2024 04:00 PM
Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) Colloquium Series Menlo Park
Born at the dawn of the new millennium, attosecond “photography” has opened the door for capturing sub-atomic motions as they evolve in time. Control of the oscillating electric field of light has permitted the attosecond control of electrons with unprecedented precision in space and time. Fundamental quantum phenomena, such as electron tunnelling and dipole oscillations in atoms or light-electron energy exchange in solids as well as fundamental classical phenomena, such as the field oscillations of visible light, became accessible to human observation in slow-motion replay. These capabilities open new avenues for 21st-century science, technology and medicine. Some of them emerge from the ability to sample light fields with attosecond precision. Possible implications of these advances include hundred thousand times faster electronics and cost-effective monitoring of human health.
Speaker: Ferenc Krausz, Ludwig-Masimilians-Universität, Garching, Germany
Attend in person or via Zoom. Register at weblink to attend in person. This lecture will also be given at UC Berkeley on Friday, 4/19. See our listing for details.
UC Berkeley Physics Colloquium - 04/22/2024 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: Cristina Marchetti, UC Santa Barbara
The Move To Zero - How To Get To True Carbon Neutrality - Rescheduled - 04/22/2024 04:30 PM
Stanford University Energy Seminar Stanford
Today, climate change is a well-known, and reasonably understood, problem with mitigation efforts and technologies (carbon sequestration, electric mobility, renewables, policy updates, and others) starting to gel together at a system level. However, at the end-use demand end, less progress has been made, and as wealth and populations rise, and health-socio-economic indicators improve, consumption, and end emissions per capita, are also increasing, somewhat or entirely negating the progress made on decarbonizing society. This is paradoxical, and at a higher-level of systems thinking, poses a strong threat. In this world-energy-outlook talk, we re-familiarize ourselves with the core problem, how we got here, what are current approaches to tackle our energy and climate crisis, and how all of us can play a central part in reducing (often) unnecessary consumption of goods and services. To truly achieve a declivity in carbon and green house gas concentrations in our atmosphere, we must address both ends of the equation - how energy’s produced and sourced (supply), and how and why is energy used (demand). The latter part, starts with you.
Speaker: Satyan Chandra, Tesla
This event has been rescheduled for May 13, 2024
Two Talks: Music mining and Human-computer interaction - 04/22/2024 06:00 PM
SEMI Global Headquarters Milpitas
Ethnocentric Bias and Refugee Perception - An Eye-Tracking Study using Human-Computer Interaction
The talk investigates the challenges faced by refugee populations globally, emphasizing ethnocentric biases. Focusing on Syrian refugees and contrasting media coverage of the Ukrainian crisis, the talk describes how to leverage empirical research in human-computer interaction (HCI). The key goal of the project that will be discussed is to assess bias among Ukrainian and Syrian refugees using eye-tracking technology to study participants’ decision-making and analyze pupil size data. The talk will investigate whether biases observed in media portrayal of refugees can be detected through HCI research.
Speaker: Nada Attar, San Jose State University
Discovering the Nuances of Music with Machine Learning
The talk presents insights into understanding music using machine learning to analyze and categorize various aspects of music. The talk will explore how music is digitally represented using features analogous to building a fingerprint for each song. The presentation then explores various dimensionality reduction techniques for music feature analysis. The speakers present a novel approach using representation learning in lower dimensions to evaluate the efficacy of mel-spectrogram features in capturing music characteristics across diverse languages. By visualizing the features in transformed spaces, the speakers explain how insights can be gained into fine-grained attributes like vocalist timbre, gender, language, and industry prominence. Spectral and non-spectral algorithms, including PCA, t-SNE, and UMAP, are employed to analyze music datasets. The speakers’ findings demonstrate UMAP’s superior performance in discerning subtle musical nuances. The research paper that the speakers co-authored on a similar topic won the best paper award at the 10th ICMC, a Springer conference in 2024. The audience will discover how machines are learning the language of music, opening doors for new music exploration and analysis tools.
Speakers: Samhita Konduri, Palo Alto High School; Kriti Pendyala, University Preparatory Academy
Attend in person or watch online on Zoom or Youtube (see weblink).
Twilight Marsh Walk - 04/22/2024 06:45 PM
Don Edwards Refuge Headquarters & Visitors Center Fremont
Experience the salt marsh at twilight on an easy stroll along refuge trails (about .6 miles). At the setting of the sun we will observe the beginning of nature’s night shift. Come discover the sights, sounds, and smells of the refuge as night descends. Not suitable for young children. Tickets are very limited.
Tuesday, 04/23/2024
SF Climate Week at Climate One: Wade Crowfoot, Lt. Gov Liane Randolph, and Mari Rose Taruc, the Action Lounge, and More - 04/23/2024 01:30 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Whole Earth Seminar - 04/23/2024 03:30 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
The surprising effectiveness of topology in the science of quantum materials - 04/23/2024 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Biodiversity in Our Urban Spaces - 04/23/2024 05:00 PM
Manny's San Francisco
All About That Space: Science Updates with Dr. Nicolle Zellner - Livestream - 04/23/2024 06:00 PM
Night Sky Network
Elephant seal tales: 40+ years of monitoring at Point Reyes - Livestream - 04/23/2024 07:00 PM
American Cetacean Society
Wednesday, 04/24/2024
Strategies, Challenges, and Implications of Mapping Ocean Interior Biogeochemical Observations Over Time - Livestream - 04/24/2024 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Worlding and weirding with beaver: A more-than-human political ecology of ecosystem engineering - 04/24/2024 03:30 PM
McCone Hall Berkeley
Silicon Valley Dejargonizers, a toastmasters club meeting - Livestream - 04/24/2024 06:00 PM
Silicon Valley Dejargonizers
RAG using Milvus, HuggingFace, LangChain, Ragas, with or without OpenAI - 04/24/2024 06:45 PM
Hacker Dojo Mountain View
Peninsula Gem & Geology Society: Painite - Livestream - 04/24/2024 07:00 PM
Peninsula Gem and Geology Society
Thursday, 04/25/2024
Berkeley Institute for Data Science Seminar - 04/25/2024 12:00 PM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
SF Climate Week at Climate One: Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis, Senator Nancy Skinner, Senator Scott Wiener, and More - 04/25/2024 12:30 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Exploring a Hot, Young World - Livestream - 04/25/2024 02:30 PM
SETI Institute
UC Berkeley Astronomy Colloquium - 04/25/2024 03:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Holey Batteries Batman, Can Chemists Really Help Solve Our Energy Problems? - Livestream - 04/25/2024 04:00 PM
California Section American Chemical Society
Earth to NightLife - 04/25/2024 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
After Dark: Under the Microscope - 04/25/2024 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Dialed In: The Prehistory of Social Media - 04/25/2024 07:00 PM
Computer History Museum Mountain View
Friday, 04/26/2024
UC Berkeley AI Policy Research Symposium 2024 - 04/26/2024 10:30 AM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics Seminar - 04/26/2024 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
The Final Flight of the Space Shuttle - 04/26/2024 01:00 PM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
Printing Functional Polymers for Sustainable Earth and Habitable Mars - 04/26/2024 02:00 PM
Etcheverry Hall Berkeley
Saturday, 04/27/2024
Techfest: Back to the '80s - 04/27/2024 10:00 AM
Computer History Museum Mountain View
Climate Change at Chrissy Field - 04/27/2024 10:00 AM
Meet by restrooms @ Crissy Field East Beach SF
Community Science Saturday - 04/27/2024 10:00 AM
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Pacific Grove
Looking for Leaves at Sanborn - 04/27/2024 10:30 AM
Sanborn Science and Nature Center Saratoga
Berkeley Bay Festival - 04/27/2024 11:00 AM
Berkeley Point Berkeley
Makerspace Science Talk with Monique Smith Lee - 04/27/2024 11:30 AM
Seymour Marine Discovery Center Santa Cruz
Fluidic Telescope (FLUTE): Enabling the Next Generation of Large Space Observatories - 04/27/2024 07:30 PM
East Bay Astronomical Society Oakland
Sunday, 04/28/2024
Almaden Quicksilver BioBlitz - 04/28/2024 09:00 AM
Almaden Quicksilver Park San Jose
Monday, 04/29/2024
Molecular Evidence of Anteroposterior Patterning in Adult Echinoderms or, Are Sea Stars All Head With No Body? - 04/29/2024 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Symbolic Systems Forum - 04/29/2024 12:30 PM
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg 460) Stanford
Foxes in Your Neighborhood - 04/29/2024 01:00 PM
Don Edwards Refuge Headquarters & Visitors Center Fremont
What Physicists Do Seminar - CANCELED - 04/29/2024 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Plant-fungal mutualism in a changing world - 04/29/2024 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
The Inflation Reduction Act: Place-based Policy, Tax Incentives, and Geopolitics - 04/29/2024 04:30 PM
Stanford University Energy Seminar Stanford