Hello again Science fans!
When I last wrote the SciSchmooze a month ago, the war in Ukraine had just started. Little did I expect things would go in the directions they have. From the attacks on civilians, health care facilities, and whole cities, to the resistance, ingenuity, and persistence of the Ukrainian people and army, this has been a month full of surprises. News reports say the Ukrainian armed forces now have more tanks than when the war started, given the number of Russian tanks they have captured. David vs. Goliath indeed!
As I noted last time I have a close friend who lives in Ukraine. She is still there and still OK. It doesn’t appear safe for her to transit from where she lives to the west to get out of the country, so for now it is safer to stay put. But it is taking a mental toll on her.
Back on February 24, a few hours before the invasion began, Ukraine’s electric grid operator began a planned 72 hour test connecting to the European power grid while disconnecting from the Russian one. This isn’t a simple task.
Electricity is something we take for granted. It is everywhere. You just plug into the wall socket, and there it is. But behind that is a huge infrastructure that allows various electric utilities to share generation capacity and transmit electricity across parts of the grid. For that to work, every generation facility has to be aligned with every other one on the grid.
Since the end of the Cold War, Russian scientists have worked with their counterparts around the world in a number of areas. We hear mostly about collaboration in space through the International Space Station and Russian commercial rocket launches of both people and satellites.
Russian physicists have been integral to the work at CERN too. (CERN is now the European Organization for Nuclear Research, but EONR just doesn’t have the same cachet!) The officials there are trying to figure out how to keep their science work going while punishing Russia’s government.
Most of the news I have for this week’s newsletter deals with space.
The picture leading today’s Schmooze is a test image from the James Webb Space Telescope after the mirrors were aligned. Not only is it crystal clear, but take a look at the background. There are many visible galaxies in that image. So far, JWST’s deployment has been flawless.
NASA has now confirmed the existence of 5,000 exoplanets. While NASA has been looking for 30 years now, it is only in the past few that the number of exoplanets detected has soared. And there are quite a variety of planet types in this list. We can’t possibly be alone in the Universe!
NASA also has teased an exciting announcement for this coming Wednesday. Stay tuned!
But wait, there’s more (NASA news). Two rockets are about to launch into the Northern Lights! The next attempt is currently scheduled for tonight. You can check this Twitter feed from the Poker Flat Research Range to see if it is happening.
Asteroid impacts with Earth are a concern. While there is quite an active attempt at identifying potential future impact threats, only five times in history have we discovered an asteroid before it hits the planet. The fifth incident was just this month! The same astronomer who discovered that one, also discovered a much larger one a few days later that just missed us.
We’re forecast to get the wettest storm so far in 2022 over the next few days. That isn’t saying much, considering how dry it has been this year. This is a problem for the entire Western US, not just California. Last week, Lake Powell fell to its lowest level since it was created by the damming of the Colorado river in 1963, and this has implications for the power grid.
In continued signs that the planet is in stress from climate change, both of Earth’s poles experienced extreme heat recently, with temperatures between 50 and 70 degrees (F) warmer than normal, depending on which pole you are looking at. The Conger ice shelf collapsed in Antarctica on March 15, an area almost as large as Los Angeles! Holes are forming on the Arctic seafloor too as undersea permafrost is melting.
If you were on Mars listening to a concert, it would sound different. It turns out that the speed of sound is slower on Mars than elsewhere, and lower frequencies travel slower than higher ones. The bass would sound out of synch with the rest of the music.
I live in a Planned Unit Development which has a Homeowner’s Association. I’m on the Board of Directors and we’ve been getting our ByLaws and Covenants updated, so I’ve been wading through lots of legalese. So I got a chuckle from this report on a study from MIT on why legal documents are so difficult to understand. Get ready to learn about “center-embedding”.
Lastly, Women’s History Month is almost over. Here are ten female inventors who changed the world. We should be celebrating ten every day, not just one month a year!
A reminder that tickets for the Lick Observatory’s summer lecture and concert series will go on sale to the general public at noon, April 13. They will sell out quickly.
Have a great week in Science!
Bob Siederer
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 03/28/2022
Captive Rearing of an Endangered Seastar: Fortuitous Findings and Future Prospects - Livestream - 03/28/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State Biology Colloquium
Speakers: Jason Hodin, University of Washington
See link for Zoom information
A New Mechanism for the Joule Heating of Moons and Planets - Livestream - 03/28/2022 12:15 PM
Stanford University
Two forms of joule heating of celestial bodies (and, in particular, planetary satellites) have received particular attention: unipolar-generator heating with currents running between the primary and secondary, and magnetic induction heating due to the primary’s time-varying field. Neither appears to cause significant dissipation in the contemporary solar system. But these discussions have overlooked heating derived from the spatial variation of the primary’s field across the interior of the secondary. This leads to Lorentz-force-driven currents around paths entirely internal to the secondary, with resulting ohmic heating. I will describe three ways to drive such currents, and show that the first of these operates even for a spin-locked secondary whose orbit has zero eccentricity, in strong contrast to tidal dissipation. Jupiter’s moon Io today could dissipate about 600 GW (more than its likely radiogenic heating) by this mechanism. Had Io ever been at 3 Jovian radii instead of its current 5.9, it could have been dissipating 15,000 GW. This mechanism could drive inward orbital migration of secondaries, in thissolar system or others. I will close my talk with a brief description of theoretical and experimental work regarding some surprising implications of Earth’s apparent rotation through the axially symmetric components (with respect to its rotation axis) of its own magnetic field.
Speaker: Christopher Chyba, Princeton University
See weblink for Zoom information
Spectroscopic evidence for unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene - 03/28/2022 02:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
A question regarding the superconducting state in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) remains whether the pairing mechanism is that of a conventional superconductor or the unconventional cases such like high-Tc superconductors, although various features of the superconducting phase have been reported in transport measurements. Tunneling measurement, otherwise, provides key information for understanding superconducting nature by studying Bogoliubov quasiparticle excitation spectra. In this talk, we report the unconventional spectroscopic features of the superconducting gap of the MATBG by using density-tuned scanning tunneling spectroscopy combined with Andreev reflection spectroscopy. We show that the tunneling spectra below the transition temperature Tc are inconsistent with those of a conventional s-wave superconductor, but rather resemble those of a nodal superconductor with an anisotropic pairing mechanism.
Speaker: Myungchul Oh
Attend in person or online here
What Physicists Do - Livestream - 03/28/2022 04:00 PM
What Physicists Do - Sonoma State University
Speaker: Aman Gill and Demitri Call, University of Nevada
See weblink for Zoom link
CITRIS People and Robots Seminar - Livestream - 03/28/2022 04:00 PM
CITRIS People and Robots
Speaker: Satrajit Chatterjee, Google AI
See weblink for Zoom information
The inertial fusion community have been working towards ignition for decades, since the idea of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) was first proposed by Nuckolls, et al., in 1972. On August 8, 2021, the Lawson criterion for ignition was finally demonstrated in the laboratory on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Northern California. The experiment, N210808, produced a fusion yield of 1.35 MJ from 1.9 MJ of laser energy and appears to have crossed the tipping-point of thermodynamic instability according to several ignition metrics. The “indirect” ICF approach at NIF described in this talk uses a hohlraum radiation cavity to heat and ablate the outside of a capsule that contains Deuterium-Tritium (DT) fusion fuel. This ablation causes the fuel to accelerate inward (implode) at high velocities doing work on a central lower density “hot spot” of DT fuel, increasing the temperature and density of the hot spot to the extreme conditions required for fusion. This presentation discusses the development of a platform that increased the hot-spot energy and hot-spot pressure, to achieve record ICF performance.
Speaker: Annie Kritcher, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
See weblink for Zoom information
Wonderfest: The Science of Happiness - 03/28/2022 07:00 PM
Hopmonk Tavern Novato
What does it mean to be happy, and what can one do to be happier? Scientific research is yielding a heartwarming picture: Happiness is linked to feelings and behaviors that are prosocial - that contribute to a greater good. Happy people routinely report having strong, supportive social connections; they find common humanity with others, and assume trust and good intent. Despite popular assumptions about competitiveness, self-reliance, and self-interest, evidence indicates that dedicated psychological systems (for nurturance, affiliation, and shared joy) incline humans toward cooperation and generosity. Increasing happiness, it seems, hinges largely on prioritizing interpersonal belonging and genuine kindness - both towards ourselves and other people.
Speaker: Emiliana Simon-Thomas, UC Berkeley
Tuesday, 03/29/2022
The webinar will bring together panelists from academia, industry, and non-profits to discuss the external threats facing digital investigators from under-represented communities and ways to counter those challenges. Addressing the issue of digital security within the field of human rights investigations requires both an awareness of the problems and an industry that is willing to strive towards equity and inclusion. Join us as we discuss the work of the Human Rights Investigations Lab at the Human Rights Center (UC Berkeley) and the Research Center for the Americas (UC Santa Cruz) and hear from early career professionals on inspiring industry change. This event is free and open to the public and webinar registration is now available. Closed captioning and an ASL interpreter will be provided.
Program Schedule
Segment 1: Defining Holistic Security Panelists: Steve Trush (Owner/Founder of West County Labs), Rachael Cornejo (Consultant, Cyber & Strategic Risk, Deloitte), and Pearlé Nwaezeigwe (Product Policy Manager SSA at TikTok)
Moderator: Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley
Segment 2: Inspiring Industry Change
Panelists: Karin Goh (Senior Software Engineer at Salesforce) and Leigh Honeywell (CEO and co-founder of Tall Poppy)
Moderator: Sofia-Lissett Kooner, Lab Coordinator of the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley
Segment 3: Managing Security Risks & Well-Being Online
Panelists: Abir Ghattas (Associate Director, Information Security of Human Rights Watch) and Nikita Gupta, resilience coach and expert with UCSC students Monica Mikhail and Sydney Eliot.
Moderator: Sylvanna Falcón, Director of the Research Center for the Americas, UC Santa Cruz Dial-In Information https://ucsc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pZXVxLA9QRKZuAYjk8VSlQ
Wednesday, 03/30/2022
Socioecological Approaches to Marine Resource Management in Small-Scale Fisheries - Livestream - 03/30/2022 03:40 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
Coastal and marine ecosystems produce more services related to human well-being than most other ecosystems making sustainable management of marine resources a global priority. The Convention on Biological Diversity called for a network of marine protected areas (MPA) covering at least 10% of the world’s marine habitat, a goal that while closer is yet to be met. Much of the area currently protected is encompassed within a few very large MPAs within in territorial waters of developed nations and far from human populations. However, the majority of MPAs are considerably smaller and close to shore, where coastal communities of developing nations derive their economic and nutritional sustenance from, and where many individuals are small-scale artisanal fishers.
There are roughly 40 million artisanal fishers in the world, the majority living in developing nations, and an additional 210 million indirect marine fisheries jobs exist worldwide. MPAs created with the sole purpose of conservation and low input of community participation can create disputes and entail high social costs. This presentation brings together results from research in Colombia, the Solomon Islands, and the Cook Islands where social aspects such as trust of governance institutions, livelihood approaches, local ecological knowledge, and social networks emphasize the need for a socio-ecological approach to marine resource management.
Speaker: Jaime Matera, California State University Channel Islands
See weblink to register and receive Zoom information
Preparing Nature for a Changing Climate - Rescheduled - 03/30/2022 04:00 PM
Acterra
This event was rescheduled to March 16, 2022
Science on Tap - That's a moray: Untangling the mysterious lives of California moray eels - 03/30/2022 07:00 PM
Museum of Art and History Santa Cruz
If you've been snorkeling in southern California, there's a good chance you might have spotted the grinning face of a California moray eel peering out at you from the reef. These long-lived fish (yes, eels are fish!) are common in reefs from Santa Barbara down to the tip of Baja, Mexico, and are important top predators with some very cool adaptations. However, we still know very little about their lives when they are very young. In this talk, I'll discuss what things might affect the dispersal of baby eels to their final adult destinations, and then what happens after they get there.
Speaker: Katherine Dale, UC Santa Cruz
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:
UC Berkeley botanist Chandler Sutherland on It's Not Easy Staying Green: Understanding Plant Immune Systems -Every day, plants resist an onslaught of viruses, bacteria, fungi, and herbivores. However, plants can't make antibodies or move immune cells around with a circulatory system, as we can. Understanding plant immune systems teaches us about how human immunity evolved, and is helping us learn how to protect our agricultural crops against disease.
Stanford astrophysicist Alex Madurowicz on Imaging Extrasolar PlanetsTechnical advancements in the next decade will enable telescopic observation of smaller and fainter worlds that orbit other stars, including Earth-like planets. Going further, bold concepts for the next century completely reimagine the concept of a telescope - allowing resolution of details like continents, forests, and even extraterrestrial cities on other worlds.
See weblink for Zoom information
Thursday, 03/31/2022
Hardcore Natural History: Planning for Climate Resilience in Monterey County - 03/31/2022 06:00 PM
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Pacific Grove
Join us for a panel discussion on how the County is currently being affected by climate change, what we anticipate for the future, and their vision for effective climate planning.
Panel: Norm Groot, Monterey County Farm Bureau; Hillary Angelo, UC Santa Cruz; Ashley Paulsworth, Monterey County
NightLife: Black Ecosystem - 03/31/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Join us for a night of Black storytelling through food, wine, music, and nature. Hear from local Black leaders and long-standing champions of these spaces as we celebrate the rich histories of the diaspora.
FEATURED EVENTS
Regeneration and Liberation: How Black Freedom and Ecology Intersect African Hall, 7:30pm
It’s no secret that California's wild spaces have long been under threat, but so have Black bodies in this state and beyond. Are Black and people of color's relationships with nature and the protection of thriving ecosystems linked? Marco Lindsey, associate director of Diversity Equity and Inclusion at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, explores how Black freedom and ecology intersect, looking back at Black histories and forward to thriving Black and ecological futures.
Black Food, Wine, and Beer: The Anthology African Hall, 8pm
Awaken a deeper appreciation for Black leadership in the Bay Area food and wine scene with a panel discussion featuring local entrepreneurs whose businesses are tapping into their historical and cultural backgrounds. You’ll hear from:
“Food Socialite” Chef Mimi, founder of Oakland’s annual Black Food and Wine ExperienceTop Chef alumni Chef Nelson German, executive chef/owner of alaMar Kitchen and Sobre MesaDr. Christine Wachira, winemaker and owner of Wachira Wines, the first Kenyan-American winery in the US;Jon Burgess of The Burgess Brothers, a restaurant and food product supplier with a family legacy of over 170 years
Moderated by Chadwick Spell of SOKO Distributors, the discussion will touch on the way panelists’ unique origin stories have influenced their creativity and approach within the industry.
Watching the Grass Grow - For Over a Decade - Livestream - 03/31/2022 06:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
The San Francisco Bay provides important habitat for both migrating birds and resident species that live in these ecosystems year-round. Unfortunately, ~90% of tidal marshes along the edge of the San Francisco Bay have been severely fragmented or destroyed by human activities since the 1800s. Along the margins of these tidal marshes existed upland transition zones - habitat situated between the marsh plains and the higher elevation uplands - which provided refuge for sensitive and endangered species during high tides. SFBBO has developed and tested strategies to restore transition zone habitat to help the marshes (and birds!) cope with sea level rise. This work includes finding seeds, propagating plants in our nursery, re-vegetating marsh transitions zones, and creating map models to predict the impacts of sea level rise. In celebration of SFBBO's 40th anniversary, former SFBBO Habitats Program Director David Thomson will review the Habitats Program's history up to 2019 when he migrated north. This talk is suitable for all ages. David tries to make the science accessible to all.
Register at weblink to attend
Stewart Brand and Silicon Valley’s Soul - 03/31/2022 07:00 PM
Computer History Museum Mountain View
For decades Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter John Markoff has chronicled how technology has shaped our society. In his latest book, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand, Markoff delivers a biography of one the most influential visionaries to inspire technological and cultural revolutions of the last six decades in counterculture, early computing, and the environmental movement.
How did Brand become one of the first to realize the significance of the emergence of Silicon Valley and simultaneously influence an entire generation who grew up with the Whole Earth Catalog? For example, Steve Jobs adopted Brand’s famous mantra “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” as his code to live by.
Don Hoeffler coined the term “Silicon Valley” in 1971. Four years before that Stewart Brand arrived on the San Francisco Midpeninsula with the goal “let my technology happen here.” He would become a disciple of both Buckminster Fuller and Douglas Engelbart, and in creating the Whole Earth Catalog Brand would be the first to capture and spread the very Silicon Valley philosophy of “Access to Tools,” as the Catalog was subtitled.
Also in 1971 Brand, who would a year later be the first to use the phrase “personal computer,” wrote a seminal article in Rolling Stone Magazine which was the first inkling for the outside world of the coming power of computers and networks to transform the world. To this day, Brand epitomizes what Markoff calls “the California state of mind.”
Join John Markoff in conversation with award-winning New York Times’ Nicole Perlroth to explore how Brand was the messenger who heralded the Valley’s arrival and influenced its soul as well as why Brand’s creation of the symbol of a whole earth and the importance of planetary consciousness makes him just as relevant today.
Friday, 04/01/2022
First Friday: Mind Tricks - 04/01/2022 06:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Celebrate April Fool’s Day with captivating, colorful and sometimes confusing mind tricks. We’re altering reality with (insert activities). Learn about how your senses work together to understand the world around us while enjoying whimsical perception-bending fun!
Extraterrestrial Life and Where to Find it - Livestream - 04/01/2022 08:00 PM
San Mateo County Astronomical Society
What are we, and are we alone in the universe? For hundreds of years, philosophers and scientists have been trying to answer this question. Today, we explore this question in astrobiology, a multidisciplinary field that involves astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology, and engineering. In this presentation, Xinnan will be discussing our current understanding of life, habitable conditions for life, the possible places to search for extraterrestrial life, and also introduce the effort humankind has made to search for and get in contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, the “aliens.”
Speaker: Xinnan Du, Stanford University
Saturday, 04/02/2022
Trans Day of Visibility - 04/02/2022 10:00 AM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Celebrated on March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility is an international day of awareness that highlights transgender achievements and greatness in response to intentional exclusion of transgender people, voices, and actions in the current societal culture and discourse. Transgender people exist in all corners of the world so it is important to emphasize their value. In this program, we feature transgender individuals in STEAM fields, offer cultural and scientific context for transgender experiences, and celebrate the diversity of human expression.
Under the Moon With Tory and the Teasers 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. Bechtel Gallery 3
Come and listen to Tory Teasley and her band, Tory and the Teasers! From classic hits to unreleased songs, this musical performance will have you dancing, swaying, and swooning to jazz, soul, funk, and pop.
Tory Teasley describes her sound as “eclectic with jazz roots.” Her songs represent a broad range of genres from neo-soul, funk, and R&B to blues, classical, and gospel. An Oakland native, Tory regularly sang at her church during adolescence, which eventually led her to the Berkeley Jazz School where she studied classical music. Alongside a list of accolades, Tory often performs at UC Berkeley with Oakadelic and carries an artist residency with the Queer Arts Center and has opened for both San Francisco Mayor London Breed at City Hall and Grammy-winning artist Fantastic Negrito.
Custom Pronoun Button Making With the Visitor Experience Facilitators 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. Crossroads
Create your own button showcasing your amazing pronouns! Use a template or blank slate to design, color, and embellish a free button. Then wear it proudly to let everyone know about you and to help normalize introducing your full self to everyone you meet. Our fabulous Visitor Experience Facilitator team will be there to help you get your beautiful buttons made.
The Visitor Experience Facilitators are a cohort of informal educators who help guests understand, question, and experience the museum on a deeper level.
Gender Euphoria Wall With the Visitor Experience Facilitators 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Bechtel Gallery 3
Show us what makes you feel comfortable in your skin! Take a picture of your fresh haircut, new shoes, fancy earrings, stunning arms, or whatever else makes you, you. Show the world what you love about yourself! Let’s take this moment to embrace what we love about ourselves, instead of picking at what we don’t. The Visitor Experience Facilitators will help showcase what your mama gave you!
The Visitor Experience Facilitators are a cohort of informal educators who help guests understand, question, and experience the museum on a deeper level.
Putting the T in STEAM With Gwen Payne, Posters by the High School Explainers 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Osher Gallery 1, Black Box
Trans people, past and present, have had major impacts on STEAM. Step inside Putting the T in STEAM to learn more about the lives and careers of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people. A collaboration between the Exploratorium’s High School Explainer program and Gwen Payne, this program is the culmination of six weeks of workshops, which resulted in a series of biographical posters highlighting the lives and achievements of transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people in STEAM.
Gwen Payne (she/her or they/them) is an agitator, science communicator, and a non-binary transgender woman. She works as part of the Striving for Trans Inclusion and Anti-Racism in Science Learning (STARS) team, and is the Project Lead for the STARS/High School Explainer Workshop series.
Lenses on Transgender, Non-Binary, and Two Spirit Short Films and Panel With QWOCMAP 12:45 p.m. Osher Gallery 1, Kanbar Forum
Enjoy a curated set of short films that share the wide range of transgender, non-binary, and Two Spirit experiences. Drawn from the collection and work of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP), the films celebrate and illuminate the intersectionality of trans individuals and how they navigate the world. The screening will be followed by a conversation featuring select filmmakers whose work will be shown at the screening.
QWOCMAP creates, exhibits, and distributes high-impact new films that authentically reflect the lives of queer women of color both cisgender and transgender, and non-binary, gender-nonconforming, and transgender people of color of any orientation, and addresses the vital, intersecting social justice issues that concern our multiple communities.
Trans Visibility in STEM With Orion Lam, Kenya Bordeaux, Terra Field, Moderated by Honey Mahogany, Organized by the San Francisco Transgender District 2:00 p.m. Osher Gallery 1, Kanbar Forum
Equitable opportunities for transgender individuals in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) create pathways to bridge the gap between marginalization and fundamental inclusion in social and technological advancement. Join us for a panel conversation curated by the Transgender District focusing on the importance of trans representation in STEM while promoting frameworks of accountability for organizations.
Kenya Boudreaux (she/her) is an Embedded Test Engineer at Apple working on software automation and test frameworks within GPU Software. Outside of work, Kenya is a fierce and distinguished advocate for transgender rights, passing civil rights bills for trans youth in California. Kenya received the Certificate of Honor from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2019 and served as an education policy consultant to the White House with the Biden-Harris administration in 2021. Today, she operates as the Executive Director of The Frances Thompson Education Foundation, a nonprofit supporting Black trans and non-binary students pursuing post-secondary education in the United States, Jamaica, and Brazil.
Orion Lam (he/him) is a professor of chemistry at Solano Community College in Fairfield, CA. He is Vietnamese American and identifies as a transgender man. He studied chemistry as an undergraduate at the University of Washington and got his PhD in chemistry from the University of California, San Diego. His research focused on small molecule activation with low valent uranium coordination compounds which led to 20+ publications in high impact journals such as JACS, Angewandte Chemie, Chemical Communications, and Inorganic Chemistry
Terra Field (she/her) is a Systems Engineer who specializes in the automated deployment, configuration, management, and orchestration of scalable data pipelines and warehouses on bare-metal, private, and public clouds. Ms. Field was formerly at Netflix, where she gained notoriety following her vocal opposition to Dave Chapelle's Netflix special, The Closer, and her leadership of the Netflix Walkout.
Honey Mahogany (she/they) is a performer, emcee, social worker, and activist who grew up in San Francisco and received her MA in social welfare from UC Berkeley. Honey is also a co-founder of the Transgender Cultural District and co-owner of the legendary Stud Bar. Honey's work has earned her recognition from the City of San Francisco and the State of California; Sainthood from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence; and awards from the Milk Club, SF Young Democrats, SF Women's Political Committee, and the Women's Foundation of California.
The mission of the Transgender District is to create an urban environment that fosters the rich history, culture, legacy, and empowerment of transgender people and its deep roots in the southeastern Tenderloin neighborhood. The transgender district aims to stabilize and economically empower the transgender community through ownership of homes, businesses, historic and cultural sites, and safe community spaces.
Bathroom Boundaries 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Crossroads Restrooms
Our restroom has been turned into a facilitated exhibit to experience an everyday practice in a new way.
Monday, 04/04/2022
The Physiological Impacts of Changing Snow Cover on a Montane Leaf Beetle - Livestream - 04/04/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State Biology Colloquium
Speakers: Kevin Roberts, Stockholm University
See link for Zoom information
Symbolic Systems Forum - Livestream - 04/04/2022 12:15 PM
Stanford Symbolic Systems Forum
Speaker: Andrew Grotto, Stanford University
See weblink to register
A tale of two intercalated TMDs - Livestream - 04/04/2022 02:30 PM
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar
Antiferromagnetic spintronics holds the potential to enable faster computing with lower energy requirements, although two major hurdles are the difficulty of manipulating and reading out details of antiferromagnetic order. FexNbS2 is an ising-like antiferromagnet for which these hurdles have been overcome. Its sister compound, CoxNbS2, is similar to FexNbS2 in many ways, including its spintronic capabilities - but it is an easy-plane rather than easy-axis antiferromagnet, and, due to the dominance of RKKY in this class of materials, has different sets of exchange constants as well. As we continue to explore the landscape of intercalated transition metal dichalcogenides for their next-generation technological capabilities, these two materials stand out for their similarities and their differences. What can we learn from the properties and behaviors that remain the same when some of the microscopic interactions driving them have changed? This talk will discuss recent discoveries regarding these two materials, coming from both an applications-oriented and a materials science-oriented perspective.
Speaker: Shannon Haley, UC Berkeley
Attend in person or online. See weblink for Zoom information.
Making a $10B Investment Deliver - Livestream - 04/04/2022 03:30 PM
SLAC Colloquium
The launch and deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope went flawlessly. The telescope and instruments began cooling as soon as the sun shield was deployed, and once the temperature of the short wavelength detectors in NIRCam dropped below 120 K, the telescope alignment process began. This process will result in the instruments receiving diffraction-limited imagery from the telescope. In addition to commissioning the telescope, all four instruments will also be checked and performance measured to ensure that science observations can proceed smoothly later this year.
Speaker: Marcia Rieke, University of Arizona
What Physicists Do - Livestream - 04/04/2022 04:00 PM
What Physicists Do - Sonoma State University
Speaker: Valton Smith
See weblink for Zoom link
Stanford Energy Seminar: Jacques de Chalendar - Livestream - 04/04/2022 04:00 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar
Jacques de Chalendar is a Visiting Scholar in the Energy Resources Engineering department at Stanford University. He was previously a doctoral candidate in the same department, advised by Profs. Sally Benson and Peter Glynn. He is also an Ingénieur Polytechnicien from the French Ecole Polytechnique (X2011).His research focuses on building state-of-the-art computational tools for energy and carbon management problems. See http://web.stanford.edu/~jdechale/
See weblink for Zoom information
In this talk I will discuss ongoing work in my group exploring matter made of light. I will begin with a broad introduction to the challenges associated with making matter from photons focusing specifically on (1) how to trap photons and imbue them with synthetic mass and charge (2) how to induce photons to collide with one another and (3) how to drive photons to order by cooling or otherwise. I will then provide as examples two state-of-the-art photonic quantum matter platforms: microwave photons coupled to superconducting resonators and transmon qubits and optical photons trapped in multimode optical cavities and made to interact through Rydberg-dressing. In each case I will describe a synthetic material created in that platform: a crystals and fluids of microwave photons created by reservoir engineering and adiabatic tuning, and a Laughlin molecule of optical photons prepared by scattering photons through a topological cavity.
Speaker: Jon Simon, Stanford University
See weblink for Zoom information
The Search for Living Worlds Beyond the Solar System - 04/04/2022 07:30 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
One of the grandest and most enduring questions in human history has been whether we are alone in the Universe. While previous generations could only speculate about the possibility of life around other stars, in the coming decades NASA will develop and deploy the telescopes required to begin exploring the environments of distant worlds. But getting these challenging observations alone is not enough - we also need an improved understanding of what we should be looking for, and how we might interpret what we observe. In this talk Dr. Meadows will highlight work being done by her NASA Virtual Planetary Laboratory team to guide this search - including understanding the factors that lead to a planet being able to support life, and how we might recognize and assess signs of alien life on a distant world. She will also provide an overview of current and upcoming NASA space telescopes, and discuss their potential for exploring living worlds beyond our Solar System.
Speaker: Victoria Meadows, University of Washington
Tuesday, 04/05/2022
The Joy of Science - Livestream - 04/05/2022 11:00 AM
The Royal Institution
Switching on the Stars at the Dawn of Time - Livestream - 04/05/2022 07:00 PM
KIPAC Public Lectures
Wednesday, 04/06/2022
Developing New Tools to Unlock Mysteries of the Twilight Zone - Livestream - 04/06/2022 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
From Bioluminescence to Invasions: The Fascinating World of Phytoplankton - Livestream - 04/06/2022 03:40 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
Grounds for Science - 04/06/2022 05:30 PM
MudLab Oakland
Thursday, 04/07/2022
'Becoming Universal: A New History of Modern Computing' - 04/07/2022 12:15 PM
Humanities 1 Santa Cruz
Computational Tools for Sustainable (Urban) Energy Systems - Livestream - 04/07/2022 01:30 PM
Stanford Energy
Wireless Broadband Growth Requires New Frequency Control Technologies - Livestream - 04/07/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State Engineering Colloquium
Not All Killers Are Bad: How Natural Killer Cells Protect You from Cancer - 04/07/2022 04:00 PM
International House Berkeley
Revolutionary 3-D Views of Viral RNA Using Cryogenic Electron Microscopy - Livestream - 04/07/2022 05:00 PM
SLAC Public Lecture
Nightlife - 04/07/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
PubScience: The Bee's Disease: How and Why Bees Get Sick - 04/07/2022 06:30 PM
Ocean View Brew Works Albany
Nightschool - Galapagos Islands - Livestream - 04/07/2022 07:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
Saturday, 04/09/2022
TEDxBerkeley 2022: Kaleidoscope - 04/09/2022 10:00 AM
Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley Berkeley
A Life in Chemistry Shaped by Diseases and Medicine In Sub-Saharan Africa - 04/09/2022 11:00 AM
Valley Life Sciences Building Berkeley
Urban Hikes: San Bruno Mountain - 04/09/2022 12:00 PM
Shaping San Francisco
Monday, 04/11/2022
Being with Bears - Livestream - 04/11/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State Biology Colloquium
Finding Solace in the Soil: The Archaeology of the Amache Gardens and Gardeners - Livestream - 04/11/2022 12:00 PM
UC Botanical Garden
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar - Livestream - 04/11/2022 02:30 PM
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar
What Physicists Do - Livestream - 04/11/2022 04:00 PM
What Physicists Do - Sonoma State University
UC Berkeley Physics Colloquia - 04/11/2022 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Glimmers of Hope: Paths Forward on Climate Change - Livestream - 04/11/2022 07:30 PM
Stanford University