Greetings Science Acceptors,
I'm often totally amazed at what science (and technology) has accomplished throughout history and into this day and age. Keep in mind that what is done today often exceeds what science fiction has imagined in the last 296 years. How things that were revolutionary became accepted and were used to make new discoveries is some of the story of science.. I'm not very good with life sciences and am amazed at how scientists figure out everything from Anatomy to Zoophytology, including Acarology, Cnidology, Euthenics, Paedology, and Torpedology. There is still much to learn. Here's an interesting article about nutritional science. Not everything that looks like science is science, especially in science based medicine... “It’s just a big illusion”: homeopathy... from the fringe to the grocery aisles.
Consider this... Compare how long it took to understand why there are phases of the moon. Or... If you are driving a car through a toll gate do you slow down because you're unsure of how well you can "aim" your car? Now think about starting on a journey of about 7 million miles and calculating where you will be meeting something that is about 520 feet across moving pretty fast while you are going over 13000 miles per hour! You just know that π must have something to do with this right. How accurate do you need to be? π has been calculated to trillions of digits. How many digits of π did they need to to crash in to Dimorphos? It is truly amazing what humans can do.
Science doesn't deal with borders very well. This looks like a particularly good opportunity to see how it works in one direction... The VILCEK SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM October 19-20, 2022 Science Crossing Borders: Celebrating the Contributions of Foreign-Born Researchers in the United States This is an opportunity to see some pretty advanced discussions. Even if you aren't a PhD you can still get quite a bit from sitting in on opportunities like this. Give it a try, you can do it from your home or your desk!
Now that the summer is over and schools are back in session there are more opportunities to learn cool new stuff. Here are some that look particularly interesting and relevant to me...
Two Talks: Popping the Science Bubble Tue @ 5:30 Live stream
After Dark: Revealing Landscapes Thu @ 6:00 IRL
Morning Hike at La Honda Open Space Preserve Sat @ 10:00 IRL (Personal note: It's a great area to explore.)
How we see and perceive things is something not many people think about. Until they run into something that doesn't match their expectations! We all have illusions of what makes sense. In this day of $6/gallon gasoline there is a lot of incentive to develop more clean vehicles. There are some interesting discussions about this!
Here's an opportunity to learn a lot about how water gets around and is treated while having a fun time. SVBC and Valley Water invite you to Ride Out the Drought! It started Oct 15. I'm fascinated by the infrastructure that helps us get through the year. I'm often surprised by how little people take if for granted. How does the electric grid work? When the power goes off how often do you hear someone say that they don't understand why the folks across the street or the next bloc over still have power? It's hard to find an explanation. Try this... The neighborhood is like your house. It has a bunch of circuits bringing electricity in to the homes or rooms in your house. A circuit breaker can trip or a car can hit a pole!
A shout out to Joe Palca, one of the great science correspondents.
This week will have another round of stuff crashing in to our atmosphere. Be sure to look for the Orionids!
Have a great week and watch out for cool stuff and falling bits of universe!
herb masters
“There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.” Hippocrates
Upcoming Events:Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 10/17/2022
Nature-Based Strategies to Support Resilient and Biodiverse Estuarine Wetlands in California - 10/17/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Christina Toms, San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar - 10/17/2022 02:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: TBA
See weblink for Zoom information.
Advancing Electromagnetics for Energy Applications - 10/17/2022 03:30 PM
SLAC Colloquium Series Menlo Park
Electromagnetic fields represent a fundamental aspect of nature and serve as the primary carrier of energy. New abilities to control electromagnetic fields, as enabled for example by the developments of metamaterials and nanophotonic structures, can therefore have profound implications for energy technology. In this talk we will discuss some of our efforts in applying the concepts of electromagnetic field control towards developing new energy technologies, with examples including radiative cooling, and energy transfer.
Speaker: Shanhui Fan, Stanford University
Attend in person or online here.
Editor's Note: This series is usually held in Kavli Auditorium in building 51. The searchable Stanford map does not show Redwood Rooms C & D, so we don't know what building they are in, but suspect it is also building 51.
Dark Matter Scattering in Low Threshold Detectors - 10/17/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Only 20% of the matter in our universe is visible to us, while the remaining "dark" matter has so far remained elusive to our best experimental efforts. Upcoming detector technology however makes it possible to search for much lighter dark matter candidates than every before. For these dark matter candidates, DeBroglie wavelength would be comparable or larger than the interparticle spacing in a noble liquid or solid state target. This means that collective effects in the target material, such as phonons, must be included in scattering rate calculations. These calculations take place on the interface between particle physics and theoretical material science.
Speaker: Simon Knapen, Lawrence Berkeley Lab
Neurophysics: revealing the emergence of cognition from the collective dynamics of interacting neurons - 10/17/2022 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Remarkable advances in experimental neuroscience now enable us to simultaneously observe and perturb the activity of many neurons, thereby providing an unprecedented opportunity to understand how the moment by moment collective dynamics of the brain instantiates cognition. We will review some of our recent work in this area focusing on examples in which statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics, and pattern formation theory elucidate fundamental principles governing relations between cognition and neural dynamics, ranging from fundamental limits on perception to neural circuits underlying navigation.
Speaker: Surya Ganguli, Stanford University
Energy Seminar: Sarah Kearney, Founder & Executive Director, Prime Coalition - Livestream - 10/17/2022 04:30 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar
Sarah Kearney is Founder & Executive Director of Prime Coalition, a nonprofit organization that works with philanthropists and other mission-driven organizations and individuals to support sustainable, effective, and scalable solutions to climate change. Every Prime program is designed to catalyze, deepen, or acceleratesolutions that aim to massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
See weblink for connection information
Tuesday, 10/18/2022
Weekday Morning Hike at Rancho Cañada del Oro - 10/18/2022 10:00 AM
Rancho Canada Del Oro Open Space Preserve Morgan hill
Join Peninsula Open Space Trust for an excursion where you’ll explore the Mayfair Ranch - Longwall Canyon trails of Rancho Cañada del Oro! You will be guided by POST Ambassadors who will share with you the history of the preserve, the region, and the importance of conservation in the area.
The hike is moderate to strenuous at about 4 miles round trip with about 700 feet of gradual elevation gain.
This wonderful preserve is a hub for wildlife, such as deer, bobcats, mountain lions, and more! In the Spring, you can expect a colorful array of wildflowers adorning the hillsides, and you may get a chance to see a beautiful little creek running through Llagas meadow.
Alternating macroevolutionary regimes: Do mass extinctions alter the rules of evolution? - 10/18/2022 03:30 PM
Natural Science Annex Santa Cruz
Speaker: Pedro Monarrez, Stanford University
In Search for the Next Magic Stone - 10/18/2022 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Materials demarcate periods of human civilization. The current period can be argued as defined by silicon, the magic stone that transformed the way we live. From the vantage point of the McCullough building on campus, I will discuss how the simplest implementation of the quantum theory of solid contributed to the rise of silicon, integrated circuit, Silicon Valley and the information age. I will then discuss the challenges and opportunities in materials where silicon class theory fails. The focus will be on modern spectroscopy tools in aiding the development of quantum many-body theory, by testing ideas, discovering surprises and benchmarking theories, aiming at new classes of quantum matter, in search for the next magic stone.
Speaker: Zhi-Xun Shen, Stanford University
Diverse Voices: Brooke Coley - 10/18/2022 05:00 PM
Engineering 2, Room 180 Santa Cruz
Intrigued by the intersections of engineering education, mental health, and social justice, Brooke Coley's primary research focuses on virtual reality as a tool for developing empathetic and inclusive mindsets. Coley is an assistant professor in engineering at the Polytechnic School of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, where she also pursued postdoctoral training. She co-leads two NSF-funded studies addressing diversity in university-affiliated makerspaces and the impact on the identity formation of underrepresented undergraduate engineering students.
Two Talks: Popping the Science Bubble - Livestream - 10/18/2022 05:30 PM
Berkeley Public Library
Representation in Research: Who we study and why it matters
Science is an important tool we use to answer questions about who we are, the world we live in, and how to improve upon both. Like everything else, science is affected by issues of diversity and equity. These issues affect who conducts scientific research, the questions they ask, and the populations they study. This talk will go over why some populations are under-studied, why it matters, and what we can do to fix that problem.
Speaker: Navya Pothamsetty, UC Berkeley
Chemical Recycling and Upcycling of Plastic Waste
Over 350 million tons of plastics are produced annually for various applications, yet much of these materials are discarded in the environment. It is estimated that less than 5% of plastics are recycled for subsequent use, and these efforts only address a select subset of plastic materials that can be recycled by existing methods. This talk will outline current challenges for the recycling of plastic waste and will address ongoing research that aims to transform plastic waste at the molecular level and enable its reuse.
Speaker: Nicodemo Ciccia, UC Berkeley
Prior events are available here.
“Doors Open” Go Behind-the-Scenes at the Physical Archive - 10/18/2022 06:00 PM
Internet Archive Physical Archive Richmond
In anticipation of launching Democracy’s Library on October 19th we are excited to offer a behind-the-scenes tour of our physical collections of books, music, film, and video in Richmond, California.
With this special insider event we are opening the doors to an often unseen place. See the lifecycle of physical books acquired by the Internet Archive - donation, preservation, digitization, and access. Also, samples from generous donations and acquisitions of books, records, microfiche, and more are presented.
We look forward to offering this glimpse into a very important part of the Internet Archive in its mission to bring Universal Access to All Knowledge.
Light refreshments will be provided
Brown Dwarfs and Directly Imaged Exoplanets in the Era of JWST - Livestream - 10/18/2022 06:00 PM
Astronomical Society of the Pacific
The James Webb Space Telescope is a game changer in Astronomy. However the influence that this momentous telescope has varies on each subfield. One area of science that JWST is particularly impactful for is substellar Astrophysics or the study of objects that do not have stable Hydrogen burning. Often called brown dwarfs, sources that do not have enough mass to ignite a core with fusion cool throughout their lives. Their effective temperatures are a fraction of that of the Sun so they are not visible to the naked eye. Instead they give off the majority of their light in the infrared where JWST is optimized.
Brown dwarfs are rich Astrophysical objects that cross in their properties with low mass stars and giant exoplanets. In this webinar I will take you through how and what JWST will be doing scientifically at the crossroads of stars and planets. I’ll focus on a new program that I have accepted as well as several accepted projects by instrument science teams that will revolutionize what we know about atmospheres of worlds beyond our solar system.
Speaker: Jackie Faherty, American Museum of Natural History
See weblink for connection to YouTube
Intellectual Property Wars: The Battle for Access to Medicines - 10/18/2022 07:00 PM
Kuumbwa Jazz Center Santa Cruz
The globalization of intellectual property in the 1980s has coincided with some of the deadliest pandemics, epidemics and outbreaks, from HIV, hepatitis C, SARS, and recently COVID -19. Tahir Amin will take us through his and his organization’s journey over two decades fighting the ever growing intellectual property systems being pushed by the US, EU and their pharmaceutical companies that are blocking affordable access to medicines for billions of low income populations around the world.
Speaker: Tahir Amin, Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge
John Muir Laws: Let's Draw Mushrooms! - Livestream - 10/18/2022 07:00 PM
Mycological Society of San Francisco
John Muir Laws will lead a Zoom workshop to help you draw and paint mushrooms in the field or studio.
Learn how to:
Abstract the shape of a mushroom to help you visualize it from any angle and translate these to sketches and drawingsWhat views are the most useful for later identification? What parts of a mushroom are crucial to notice and record? Laws will also demonstrate how to capture mushroom textures and colors with watercolor.
See weblink for Zoom information
Wednesday, 10/19/2022
SETI Talks - Exocomets: Icy bodies from Distant Systems - Livestream - 10/19/2022 11:30 AM
SETI Institute
Evidence for exocomets, icy bodies in extrasolar planetary systems, has rapidly increased over the past decade. Researchers have detected pockets of volatile gases around young stars and star-grazing exocomets transiting in front of their star. With the recently launched JWST, the rapid advances of this budding subfield of exoplanetary science will continue in the short term. They will accelerate with the upcoming Roman Space telescope and the PLATO mission.
To discuss the birth of this new field in astronomy and what we can learn about own solar system by observing those exocomets, we invited Paul Kalas, Professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Luca Matrà, assistant professor at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Both pioneered the field of exocometary science by direct imaging techniques using the Hubble Space Telescope and the ALMA millimetric array, emphasizing detecting exocomet belts.
The discovery of exocomets in other planetary systems could explain how young Earths can acquire and retain the basic volatiles needed for prebiotic chemistry, an essential step in the genesis of life as we know it.
Register at weblink to attend
PG&E’s Approach to Balance Resiliency, Reliability, Decarbonization and Climate Change - Livestream - 10/19/2022 12:00 PM
CITRIS Research Exchange
PG&E is committed to California’s vision of a sustainable energy future. This includes the company’s support for the state’s implementation of SB 100 and carbon neutrality by 2045 in a reliable and cost-effective manner for its customers. PG&E is doing its part to transition California to a decarbonized and climate-resilient economy while combating the effects of climate change, which has resulted in a dramatic increase in wildfire risk in PG&E’s service area. This requires an integrated multilayered wildfire mitigation strategy that combines core resiliency programs such as system hardening and weather-driven operational mitigations that are responsive to changing conditions - while also balancing reliability for customers.
Speaker: Sumeet Singh, PG&E
Register at weblink to attend.
Marin Green Home Tour - Livestream - 10/19/2022 06:00 PM
Marin Green Home Tour
Join this free, two-day virtual tour of 10 homes in Marin County and see what Marin residents are doing to combat climate change, improve air quality, generate clean energy, save water, and move toward a safer, healthier, greener, and more resilient future. The tour features new homes, remodels, retrofits, and low-cost, low-tech, DIY solutions for homeowners and renters. The tour includes short presentations by experts, links to relevant businesses, and useful resources and rebates.
Register at weblink
Next Steps on Climate: Putting a Price on Carbon - 10/19/2022 07:00 PM
David Brower Center Berkeley
The Inflation Reduction Act will go a long way toward cutting US greenhouse gas emissions. But it won’t get us to net-zero by 2030. We need to ramp up our ambitions to help keep 1.5°C within reach globally.
So how do we supercharge our efforts to meet the target of net-zero by 2050?
Economists on both the right and the left agree that pricing carbon emissions is the most effective way to avoid staggering costs and human suffering.
In this forum, we’ll discuss two complementary approaches to carbon pricing: the Global Carbon Reward and the Carbon Fee & Dividend system. Our speakers are:
Dr. Delton Chen, Founder of theGlobal Carbon Reward. A carbon currency like that proposed by Dr. Chen was showcased as "carbon coin" in “The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson.Tony Sirna, Vice President of Organizational Strategy,Citizens’ Climate Lobby. CCL supports aCarbon Fee & Dividend policythat would put an economy-wide price on pollution and return revenues to all households, more than covering increased costs.
The forum will be moderated by Kirstin Miller, the Executive Director of Ecocity Builders. Our program includes abundant time for audience Q&A.
We will raffle off a copy of Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future", signed by Dr. Chen.
Register at weblink
We are Born Within a Bubble of Stars - Livestream - 10/19/2022 07:00 PM
San Francisco Amateur Astronomers
The Universe is big - bigger than we can often comprehend - but it has fascinating details on every scale. From the extremely large, galaxies, stars and planets, to the incredibly small, with intricate structure inside every atom. But where did it all come from? Find out how astronomy can start to answer some of the biggest questions, how the Universe evolved from the Big Bang to the galaxies, stars and planets we see today, and how this picture fits with the recent discoveries about the history of our stellar neighborhood: a 1,000 light year wide “bubble of stars” in which we live.
Speaker: Dan Wilkins, Stanford University
See weblink for Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook links
The Fast Radio Sky: A New Window on the Violent Universe - Livestream - 10/19/2022 07:00 PM
Silicon Valley Astronomy Series
When we look at the night sky, we see a backdrop that appears timeless and unchanging. However, in reality, the Universe is teeming with activity -- often explosive and cataclysmic. One recently recognized celestial phenomenon is that of "Fast Radio Bursts": very short bursts of radio light coming from far outside our Milky Way galaxy, and representing explosions of enormous proportion. Their origin is presently unknown. Dr. Kaspi will describe the Fast Radio Burst phenomenon, and explain how an innovative new Canadian radio telescope, CHIME, is making huge progress in unravelling these mysterious cosmic events.
Speaker: Victoria Kaspi holds the Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics and Cosmology at McGill University
Nerd Nite SF #128: Consciousness, Managing Your Manager, & a Spelling Bee! - 10/19/2022 07:00 PM
Rickshaw Stop San Francisco
Phenomenological Relationship Counseling
Every good lecture, at the end of the day, is a self-help lecture. Dr. House will take us on a tour through the variety of conscious experiences we know about, speculate about some we don’t yet know about, and elaborate the kinds of conscious experiences we might look forward to in the sci-fi future. All while making the argument that many, if not most, of the inter- and intra-personal global arguments, at all scales - relationships, war - come down to basic perceptual differences underlying preference and imagination. Your brain is much more different than your neighbor’s or partner’s brain than modern science could possibly describe.
Speaker: Patrick House is a neuroscientist and writer.
How to realistically manage your manager (or at least complain about them a little bit less)
People run around in fear of the “micro-managing manager”… but have we conflated micro-managing with just “managing?” Is it totally unfair that our managers want to have a line of sight into what we work on? Studies often show that people leave jobs because of poor managers, so why then do so many managers stink? Jennifer will shed some light on how your relationship with your manager goes two ways and you can take back some of the power to influence the relationship.
Speaker: Jennifer Tschetter is a culture strategist and coach.
Also, back by popular vote at last month’s show: drunken spelling bee! Test your tolerance and spelling abilities to be crowned our second annual Spelling Champian (sic)! Drink tickets, your copy of This Is Ear Hustle, and a very special edition pin provided by our friends at the SF Public Library are all on the line! As usual, our esteemed local librarians will be on hand to fulfill your nerdy need for library swag & programming info as consolation in case you can’t spell. And of course, a great lineup of speakers putting their nerdy spin on their specialties:
This is the last meeting at this location.
Science on Tap: Exploring Combinatorial Puzzles, Games, and Counting - 10/19/2022 07:30 PM
Museum of Art and History Santa Cruz
Mathematicians use logic to understand the behavior and connections of abstract objects and collections. We use the power of mathematical proof to form statements that we know with certainty to be true. We also, on occasion, enjoy applying mathematics towards slightly more playful things! While mathematics is often viewed as daunting, complex, and terrifying, my hope is to present a side of rigorous mathematics that's inviting, entertaining, and perhaps even fun! In this talk, we'll apply combinatorial game theory to examine some combinatorial games, i.e. sequential games or puzzles with perfect information given. On this tour, we'll thoroughly examine a number of simple games, and will encounter surprising results and satisfying proofs. We'll also provide a taste of enumerative combinatorics, seeing examples of things common sequences count.
Speaker: Sam Miller, UC Santa Cruz
Thursday, 10/20/2022
Humans have a lot to learn from the other animals who share the Earth - some have innate abilities and senses that surpass our own, allowing us to build technologies and solutions for a better world. At this month’s Midday Science Cafe, we’ll first hear from Dr. Mark Kline from Berkeley Lab and X-Therma, whose work, inspired by Arctic fish, stands to save millions of human lives. Dr. Kline is developing new molecules that can cool transplant organs below zero without freezing, greatly extending the time to move an organ from the donor to the recipient. Next, we’ll meet UC Berkeley scientist Dr. Phoebe Parker-Shames who is studying the impacts of cannabis production on a wide variety of wildlife, from moths to mountain lions. She studies how animals respond to the light and noise disturbance involved in farming cannabis, opening the long-shut window of research on what has become a major economic industry in California. These two case studies from the animal kingdom each offer a lesson we can learn about our own species.
Speaker: Phoebe Parker-Shames, UC Berkeley; Mark Kline, X-Therma Inc
Register at weblink
Photovoltaic Microinverters and Energy Storage Systems - Livestream - 10/20/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State Engineering Colloquium
The presentation will cover how solar photovoltaic cells convert solar energy into usable power. The effects on energy production due to insolation (sunlight) and temperature. Simple solar systems cover traditional string inverters versus modern microinverters and discusses the safety benefits. Energy storage is discussed starting with why storage is needed for several applications. A simple single line diagram is presented showing how PV and energy storage can be incorporated into a home. A quiz is presented to test the audience on the major topics presented.
Speaker: Mark Baldassari, Enphase Energy
Marin Green Home Tour - Livestream - 10/20/2022 06:00 PM
Marin Green Home Tour
Join this free, two-day virtual tour of 10 homes in Marin County and see what Marin residents are doing to combat climate change, improve air quality, generate clean energy, save water, and move toward a safer, healthier, greener, and more resilient future. The tour features new homes, remodels, retrofits, and low-cost, low-tech, DIY solutions for homeowners and renters. The tour includes short presentations by experts, links to relevant businesses, and useful resources and rebates.
Register at weblink
NightLife - 10/20/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Calling all creatures of the night: explore the nocturnal side of the Academy at NightLife and see what's revealed. With live DJs, outdoor bars, ambiance lighting, and nearly 40,000 live animals (including familiar faces like Claude 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+.
After Dark: Revealing Landscapes - 10/20/2022 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Layers of history lie beneath our feet, and complex systems are at work across the planet - all without most people taking notice. Tonight, look and listen to the landscape to discover its stories. Join artist Susie Ibarra and scientist Michele Koppes as they share their sonic journey through watersheds from the Greenland Ice Sheet to glacier-fed rivers in the Himalayas and the Pacific Northwest. And delve beneath San Francisco’s streets to reveal Gold Rush history, natural history, and the past and continuing presence of Indigenous peoples with the Exploratorium’s Buried History project.
Listening to Oceanic Giants with Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute - 10/20/2022 06:00 PM
Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History Santa Cruz
Sound travels powerfully in the sea, carrying a wealth of information about the oceanic environment and its sound-producing inhabitants. Some of this wealth has been captured in 7 years of continuous sound recordings in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. This talk from John Ryan, biological oceanographer with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, will explore how this sonic window of discovery is revealing beautiful and complex dimensions of the lives of Earth’s largest animals, the great whales, as well as some of the challenges these species face.
Speaker: John Ryan, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Exploring the Night Sky - Livestream - 10/20/2022 07:00 PM
Peninsula Open Space Trust
Look up at the night sky and what do you see? If you’re in the Bay Area, probably a few stars, maybe a planet, and the Moon. But what if you were high up in the mountains and away from the city lights, what would you see then? Can you name that particular constellation? Or any? I know we can’t and that’s why we’ve reached out to Samuel Singer to help us.
The stars and night sky provide mystical stories and symbols of hopes and dreams, ancient techniques of navigation, and even life on Earth. The Universe might be infinitely vast and astronomers are still uncovering new information about it; they undoubtedly will be for a very long time!
Join us with astronomy educator Samuel Singer for a webinar that will explore the night sky and reveal how we are connected to the Cosmos. This webinar will be interactive and provide the audience with many opportunities to ask Sam your celestial questions. We can’t wait for you to come along with us on this journey to explore the night sky! We look forward to hosting you for this exciting and exploratory conversation.
Speaker: Samuel Singer, Wyoming Stargazing
Register at weblink to receive connection information
NightSchool: Rocktoberfest - Livestream - 10/20/2022 07:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
We’re throwing a mini-festival celebrating the ground beneath your feet. Dig into the mineral world with a diverse slate of guests who approach their work via scientific collections, illustration, & geophysics.
See how geologic features have created California’s diverse landscapes and learn about California’s curious lack of dinosaur fossils and the vibrating red rock towers in Utah making literal “rock music.” It’s a night you won’t want to miss.
See weblink to connect via YouTube or Facebook
Ages 21+
Friday, 10/21/2022
Laboratory Studies of Organic Cryominerals: Implications for Titan’s Geology and Chemistry - 10/21/2022 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Ellen Czaplinski, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Cocktails and Conservation: Wild Wolves - 10/21/2022 06:00 PM
Oakland Zoo Oakland
Packs of Gray Wolves have returned to California with a little help from their human friends. Find out what it takes to ensure their legacy in our state with our special guests: California Wolf Center and Working Circle.
Zimmer Auditorium
Register at weblink
Saturday, 10/22/2022
Morning Hike at La Honda Open Space Preserve - 10/22/2022 10:00 AM
La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve La Honda
Join Peninsula Open Space Trust for a beautiful hike at Lower La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve where you’ll experience the area’s sweeping views and gorgeous rolling grasslands! The preserve is over 6,100 acres, of which POST has contributed 5,200 acres. You will be guided by a POST Ambassador on the meandering trails of Lower La Honda Creek, featuring a still-active cattle operation and views of the surrounding ridgelines! You will hear all about the human and natural history of this beautiful preserve!
The hike is moderate to strenuous at about 6 miles round trip with about 1100 feet of gradual elevation gain. There are some steep portions of this hike so hiking poles, closed-toed shoes with tread, and plenty of water/snacks for yourself is recommended.
Register at weblink
Bat Fest - 10/22/2022 04:00 PM
Rancho Canada Del Oro Open Space Preserve Morgan hill
It's our biggest and most exciting event of the year - Bat Fest! Join Saved By Nature for an evening festival celebrating local animals of the night, with live bats, owls, and other creatures. It's a fun time under the stars! With a special guest speaker, food trucks, live music, festival games, arts and crafts, mini-pumpkin patch, REI lounge and community partner organization booths. Be sure to bring your own blankets and lawn chairs to enjoy popcorn, cotton candy and your favorite drink while watching the movie Adam’s Family (1991) under the night sky.
Enter the silent auction for a guided fly fishing trip, a 3-night stay in a cabin, and artwork by local artists. Purchase raffle tickets for camping gear, equipment and gift cards from REI, Los Gatos Bird Watchers, Bass Pro Shop, Cabela's and more!!
Monday, 10/24/2022
Mariage(s) Made in Heaven - 10/24/2022 11:00 AM
Varian Physics Building Stanford
The coming decade will see a plethora of large area astronomical surveys, from both the ground and space and across the electromagnetic spectrum. Combining these data is a wonderful example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. We will discuss two examples: gains from combining the Euclid space mission with the Vera C. Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), and cross-correlations of galaxy surveys with cosmic microwave background and X-ray imaging to take a comprehensive census of the components of the cosmic web - galaxies, diffuse gas, and dark matter - and their co-evolution, thereby directly tackling the Cosmic Ecosystem priority area called out in the Astro2020 decadal report.
Speaker: James Bartlett, Universite Paris Cite
Using Bioenergetic Analysis to Understand Cellular ATP Supply and Demand During Cell Growth, Cancer, and More - 10/24/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Dr. Shona Mookerjee, Tuoro University, California. College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Fall Birds of the East Bay Hills - Livestream - 10/24/2022 12:00 PM
UC Botanical Garden
The Bay Area is rich in varying habitats that are home to many bird species. Some birds are here throughout the year, but fall marks the return of a number of species that had gone elsewhere to breed. We’ll talk about many bird species that can be found in our gardens at this time of year, with some discussion of things one can do to enrich these bird habitats and attract birds, as well as the impacts of drought and climate change. The Zoom talk includes many illustrations of our local birds.
Speaker: Bob Lewis, birding educator
Register at weblink to attend
End-User Auditing and Model Sketching: Tools for Centering Human Values in Machine Learning Model Authoring and Evaluation - 10/24/2022 12:30 PM
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg 460) Stanford
As AI-based technology has rapidly expanded into high-impact, user-facing domains, we have observed myriad ways in which it can perpetuate harmful biases, embed problematic values, or entirely fail. In the face of these errors, we are starting to see that algorithmic fairness and explainability methods may not be sufficient fixes for technological tools that were designed incorrectly or incompletely from the start. To improve these systems, we need a shift in voice and power in technology design. In this talk, I'll share two lines of work in this vein. In the first project, End-User Auditing, we built a tool to empower individual, non-technical users to leverage their distinctive expertise and lead their own system-scale audits of machine learning models. In the second project, Model Sketching, we sought to address the problem of technical design fixation in ML by taking inspiration from sketching practices in design, which purposefully distill ideas into rough, minimal representations to explore high-level design directions. We developed a tool that enables users to interactively author functional, sketch-like versions of ML models, focusing their attention on higher-level, human-understandable concepts rather than lower-level, technical implementation details in the early stages of model development. Every individual has unique expertise built up from their interests and skills in combination with the communities and environments they inhabit - my research aims to allow users to share this expertise to raise unanticipated issues and suggest novel solutions as co-designers of algorithmic systems.
Speaker: Michelle Lam, Stanford
Room 126
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar - 10/24/2022 02:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: Linda Ye, Stanford University
See weblink for Zoom information.
Mythbusting Knowledge Transfer - New Paradigms in Research, Education, and Publishing Through Shared Science Gateways - 10/24/2022 03:30 PM
SLAC Colloquium Series Menlo Park
Around 2008 our peer reviewers held these beliefs to be true: "No one will use computational research-based app to analyze or guide experiments. No one will use such apps in education. Such apps are not publications!" Today we measure how experimentalists, researchers in adjacent fields, and education researchers cite nanoHUB in the literature in over 2,600 papers. User behavior analytics points to over 90,000 students in over 3,600 structured classes who have used nanoHUB apps in education and these apps are now listed in the Web-of-Science and Google Scholar. This presentation will highlight these paradigm shifts.
Speaker: Gerhard Klimeck, Purdue University
Attend in person or watch online here.
Editor's Note: This series is usually held in Kavli Auditorium in building 51. The searchable Stanford map does not show Redwood Rooms C & D, so we don't know what building they are in, but suspect it is also building 51.
Imaging Atomically Thin Quantum Material Devices at the Nanoscale - 10/24/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
The harnessing and manipulation of electronic states in quantum materials has the potential to revolutionize computation, sensing, storage, and communications, thus impacting multiple facets of our everyday lives. In this talk I will discuss my group’s recent experiments with monolayer graphene (MLG), Bernal stacked bilayer graphene (BLG), and trilayer graphene (TLG), highly versatile carbon-based quantum materials with electronic properties that are promising for future quantum technologies.
Specifically, I will focus on a set of experiments that utilize confinement, nanoscale visualization, and spectroscopy to reveal new properties of the surface states hosted by graphene based electronic devices. In one experiment, we use the scanning tunneling microscope to corral charges in MLG and then subject these charges to a perpendicular magnetic field. This enables the observation of a giant orbital Zeeman splitting for trapped ultra-relativistic electrons in our MLG devices, which can be leveraged for magnetic field sensing. In a second experiment, BLG charges are trapped and scanning tunneling microscopy is used to visualize the wavefunctions and quantum interference of these trapped charges. Thus, in this work we “look under the hood” of a potential quantum information processing material platform. Finally, in a third experiment, we use atomically resolved point spectroscopy to measure a giant and tunable magnetic moment for the charges in TLG devices. The results from these three experiments advance fundamental understanding of carbon-based quantum material devices towards their use for future quantum technologies.
Speaker: Jairo Valasco, UC Santa Cruz
Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) as scientific supercomputers - 10/24/2022 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Google's TPUs were exclusively designed to accelerate and scale up machine learning workloads, amid the ongoing planet-wide race to build faster specialized hardware for artificial intelligence. But one must surely be able to use this hardware for other challenging computational tasks, right? We explored how to turn a TPU pod (2048 TPU v3 cores) into a dense linear algebra supercomputer to e.g. multiply two matrices of size 1,000,000 x 1,000,000 in just 2 minutes. We then used this power to perform a number of quantum physics and quantum chemistry computations at scale. For instance, we recently completed two largest-ever computations: a Density Functional Theory DFT computation of electronic structure (with N = 248,000 orbitals), and a Density Matrix Renormalization Group DMRG computation (with bond dimension D = 65,000). Cloud-based TPU pods and GPU pods are accessible to anyone and are poised to revolutionize the scientific supercomputing landscape.
Speaker: Guifre Vidal, Google Quantum AI
The Bioenergy Opportunity in California | Valorizing Nitrate-Polluted Wastewaters -Livestream - 10/24/2022 04:30 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar
Pathways to carbon neutrality in California: the bioenergy opportunity
California has an abundance of biomass-based resources derived from the state’s diverse agricultural, urban waste and forest streams. These biomass resource types can be converted to bioenergy products that have many potential applications across California's energy system. However, today, most of the carbon from this biomass returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide or methane as the biomass naturally decays or gets burned, representing an opportunity lost for bioenergy production. We analyze the types, quantities, and the emission reduction potential of biomass resources available for bioenergy production currently, in 2025 and in 2045 as a result of existing practices and policies in California. We find that landfill gas holds the greatest energy potential currently while MSW and agricultural residues hold the most significant potential in 2045. We also find that if the total gross waste biomass potential were utilized for energy production, California’s total emissions could be reduced by 1-8%, depending on the conversion process and the end-product. This study is one of the eight studies published as a part of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage effort to inform the discussion on pathways to carbon neutrality in California. Its results will be used in an integrated assessment model in the upcoming year to create decarbonization scenarios for the state.
Speaker: Anela Arifi, Stanford University
Engineering the electrochemical reaction microenvironment to valorize nitrate-polluted wastewaters
The nitrogen cycle is in urgent need of reinvention: Haber-Bosch fertilizer production has outpaced removal of N from wastewater, leading to continuous losses from the nitrogen economy and exerting great burden on the environment. As the most prevalent waterborne N pollutant, nitrate jeopardizes the health of ecosystems and human beings. By selectively producing ammonia, electrochemical nitrate reduction reaction (NO3RR) can directly transform nitrate pollutants into widely used commodity chemicals and fertilizers, thus balancing the nitrogen cycle while reducing energy consumption from the traditional Haber-Bosch process. The reaction microenvironment that is located at the interfacial region between the electrode and the electrolyte has been found to significantly impact the activity and selectivity of electrocatalytic reactions. Using a combination of electrochemical testing, advanced characterization and computation, we investigated both the electrocatalyst evolution and electrolyte properties in the NO3RR reaction microenvironment and provided engineering strategies to optimize ammonia production.
Speaker: Jinyu Guo, Stanford University
Introduction to the Ray AIR for Scaling AI/ML and Python Workloads - Livestream - 10/24/2022 07:00 PM
SF Bay Association of Computing Machinery
Existing production machine learning systems often suffer from various problems that make them hard to use. For example, data scientists and ML practitioners often spend most of their time-fighting YAMLs and refactoring code to push models to production.
To address this, the Ray community has built Ray AI Runtime (AIR), an open-source toolkit for building large-scale end-to-end ML applications. By leveraging Ray’s distributed compute strata and library ecosystem, the AIR Runtime brings scalability and programmability to ML platforms.
The main focus of the Ray AI Runtime is on providing the compute layer for Python-based ML workloads and is designed to interoperate with other systems for storage and metadata needs.
In this session, we’ll be exploring and discussing the following:
How AIR is different from existing ML platform tools like TFX, Sagemaker, and KubeflowHow AIR allows you to program and scale your machine learning workloads easilyinteroperability and easy integration points with other systems for storage and metadata needsAIR’s cutting-edge features for accelerating the machine learning lifecycle such as data preprocessing, last-mile data ingestion, tuning and training, and serving at scale
Key takeaways for attendees are:
Understand how Ray AI Runtime can be used to implement scalable, programmable machine learning workflows.Learn how to pass and share data across distributed trainers and Ray native libraries: Tune, Serve, Train, RLlib, etc.How to scale python-based workloads across supported public clouds
Register at weblink to attend
Tuesday, 10/25/2022
Gladstone Institutes Industry Partnership Forum - 10/25/2022 10:00 AM
Gladstone Institutes San Francisco
October Butterfly Walk - First Session - 10/25/2022 01:30 PM
UC Botanical Garden Berkeley
October Butterfly Walk - Second Session - 10/25/2022 03:00 PM
UC Botanical Garden Berkeley
Southern Mexico and Central America Regional Precipitation Variability: Community-informed Science - 10/25/2022 03:30 PM
Natural Science Annex Santa Cruz
From free electrons to bound electrons: attosecond science with X-ray free-electron lasers - 10/25/2022 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
The Secrets of Chimpanzee Society - Livestream - 10/25/2022 05:00 PM
Leaky Foundation
Listening Live for Orcas from Washington to California - Livestream - 10/25/2022 07:00 PM
American Cetacean Society
The James Webb Space Telescope: A New Era of Distant Galaxies - 10/25/2022 07:00 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Wonderfest: Neuroplasticity, Sensitive Periods, & the Adolescent Brain - RESCHEDULED - 10/25/2022 07:00 PM
Hopmonk Tavern Novato
Wonderfest: WHY did I eat THAT?! - Alterations in brain & behavior that contribute to obesity - 10/25/2022 07:00 PM
Hopmonk Tavern Novato
Wednesday, 10/26/2022
AI Wildfire Detection: Customer Stories - Livestream - 10/26/2022 12:00 PM
CITRIS Research Exchange
Symbiosis in flux: Algal endosymbiont contributions are shaped by sea anemone diet and size - 10/26/2022 03:30 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
Toxic Fungi of North America, with an emphasis on California species - 10/26/2022 07:30 PM
Bay Area Mycological Society Berkeley
Thursday, 10/27/2022
A DAO-First World - 10/27/2022 04:00 PM
Faculty Club Berkeley
Bay Area Bats - 10/27/2022 05:00 PM
UC Botanical Garden Berkeley
Effects of the CZU Lightning Complex Fire on Hermit Thrushes of Big Basin Redwoods State Park - Livestream - 10/27/2022 05:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
NightLife of the Living Dead - 10/27/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
After Dark: Death and Life - 10/27/2022 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Blowing in the Wind - Livestream - 10/27/2022 06:00 PM
US Geological Survey Public Lecture Series
Goodbye Gas, Hello EVs! - Livestream - 10/27/2022 07:00 PM
Acterra
Friday, 10/28/2022
How and when granular materials fail (in the lab, and maybe in the field?) - 10/28/2022 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Saturday, 10/29/2022
Spooky Science Saturday - 10/29/2022 10:00 AM
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Pacific Grove
Halloween: Spooky Science - 10/29/2022 10:00 AM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
All About Bats - EcoCenter Family Event - 10/29/2022 02:30 PM
Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter Palo Alto
Halloween Hike & Sip - 10/29/2022 06:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Jazz Under the Stars - 10/29/2022 07:00 PM
College of San Mateo Bldg 36 San Mateo
Sunday, 10/30/2022
Dia de los Muertos Festival - 10/30/2022 10:00 AM
Fruitvale Oakland
Monday, 10/31/2022
Sonoma State University Biology Colloquium - 10/31/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar - 10/31/2022 02:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
What Physicists Do - 10/31/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
UC Berkeley Physics Colloquia - 10/31/2022 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley