Here’s Looking at Ourselves with the SciSchmooze
Hello again, friends of science,
Let’s take a brief look at ourselves, our forebears, and our cousins this week.
First, is a story of our chimpanzee and gorilla cousins. They have been observed for decades hanging out with each other, eating food side by side, and letting their youngsters play with each other. However, given an unexpected encounter and noisy excitability, mob violence resulted, a phenomenon known among humans.
When you have twelve minutes, here’s a video deep dive into our evolutionary family tree.
The August 1st Google Doodle was the Turkana Boy.
¿What if you or your village is subject to capture, or worse? When you live on top of compressed volcanic ash known as tuff, you carve out an underground city. Cappadocian Greeks were living almost like ants in the largest known underground city, Derinkuyu, to avoid persecution until 1923. We are an adaptable species, to be sure.
¿Have we five senses? or thousands?
I’ve known for decades that my body helps itself fight infections by ‘running a fever.’ But i had never before heard of Heat Shock Proteins.
¿Could it be that many of us are nutritionally dependent on breakfast cereals? (The crux of this issue is found in the final sentence of the article.)
It has been a while, but here are my picks for attending LIVE EVENTS, but please wear a mask:
Phenomenal Physics (at the explOratorium): Thursday 6 - 10pm, San Francisco
Nightlife (at the California Academy of Sciences): Thursday 6 -10pm, San Francisco
Nature Day on Codornices Creek: Saturday 10am - 12:30pm, Berkeley
Saving time and transportation, here are my picks for LIVESTREAM EVENTS:
How to Prepare for Climate Change: Tuesday Noon - 1pm
NightSchool: Surviving the Deadly Bucket: Thursday 7pm
Virtual Telescope Viewing: Saturday 9 - 10pm
Of the 15 entrants last month, Barbara Tversky won the Ingenuity Helicopter coffee mug. This time i’m giving away a Perseverance Rover coffee mug with the same rules: Send me an email (only one) before noon Friday with an integer between zero and 1,000. We will then use a random number generator to select the target number. The person who came closest wins the mug.
Here are bits of science news for the week:
Complex animal life may have been present hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought. Dr. Elizabeth Turner, a professor at Laurentian University in Canada, believes a rock from 890 million years ago contains fossilized sponges.
The amount of ice that melted on Greenland last Tuesday was enough to cover all of Florida with two inches of water. That was 8.5 billion tons.
My son in Anchorage correctly diagnosed the prolonged shaking he felt Wednesday as the result of a VERY BIG earthquake hundreds of miles away. It was the most powerful temblor in the U.S. in over 50 years.
Russia’s Nauka laboratory used its onboard thrusters to gently dock with the International Space Station on Thursday. Some time later, one or more of Nauka’s thrusters began firing again, temporarily tilting the entire ISS about 45° from normal. No harm, no foul.
By the way, the ISS will be visible in the Bay Area for 6 minutes Tuesday evening starting at 9:13pm. Traveling from WNW to SSE, it will only reach an elevation of 43°, however, so you will need a mostly clear view of the horizon.
A Hayward company, Edge Innovations, came out with a plan to remove marine mammals from theme parks - without cancelling marine mammal shows. I wish them success.
This last week, the world was introduced to a ‘new’ word related to neuropsychology - the twisties. I myself have experienced the twisties, especially when doing a fast dismount - not from a balance beam but from a bar stool.
The numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths are rising rapidly in the U.S. and elsewhere largely due to the heightened transmissibility of the Delta variants. A New York Times article on Saturday stooped to sensationalism when it reported that 50 staff at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital tested positive and roughly 40 of those had been fully vaccinated. What they failed to mention is that the hospital has a staff of 5,000 and that (apparently) none of those fully vaccinated required ‘hospitalization.’ Indeed, most were asymptomatic. For a good overview of the current situation, let me recommend this 16-minute interview with Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH, of Johns Hopkins University.
Stay well, mask up in public, and experience something novel this week,
Dave Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics
“Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.”
- Lewis Thomas, American physician, educator, author (1913 - 1993)
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 08/02/2021
SETI Live: The Search for Technosignatures with TESS - Livestream - 08/02/2021 09:30 AM
SETI Institute
Dr. Ann Marie Cody uses space telescope data to study variability associated with stars and the material surrounding them. This summer, she and her student Marlee Rapp are working with data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TESS has observed tens of millions of stars over the past few years, many of which have variable light output. This variability comes from a variety of sources, including eclipsing binary star systems and dark spots on the spinning stellar surface. Cody is particularly interested in stars that display pronounced fading events, as these usually indicate occulting material surrounding a star. It has even been proposed that if intelligent civilizations exist in our galaxy, they might place artificial energy harvesting structures into orbit around their host star. We could then detect them by watching the stellar brightness dim each time a structure passed in front of the star. Cody and Rapp are now developing algorithms to search for such "technosignatures" among the stars monitored by TESS. The most intriguing and anomalous targets identified through this analysis will then be followed up with ground-based telescopes, including radio observatories dedicated to SETI searches.
See weblink for Youtube and Facebook links.
Tuesday, 08/03/2021
How to Prepare for Climate Change - Livestream - 08/03/2021 12:00 PM
Commonwealth Club - Online Event
You might not realize it, but we’re already living through the beginnings of climate chaos. In Arizona, laborers now start their day at 3 a.m., because it’s too hot to work past noon. Chinese investors are snapping up real estate in Canada. Millennials have evacuation plans. Moguls are building bunkers. Retirees in Miami are moving inland.
In How to Prepare for Climate Change, bestselling self-help author David Pogue offers deeply researched advice for how the rest of us should start to ready ourselves for the years ahead. Pogue will walk you through what to grow, what to eat, how to build, how to insure, where to invest, how to prepare your children and pets, and even where to consider relocating when the time comes. (He says two areas of the country, in particular, have the requisite cool temperatures, good hospitals, reliable access to water, and resilient infrastructure to serve as climate havens in the years ahead.) He also provides wise tips for managing your anxiety, as well as action plans for riding out every climate catastrophe, from superstorms and wildfires to ticks and epidemics.
Join Pogue and renewable energy expert Wei-Tai Kwok for a look at their practical ways to make smart choices for the upheaval ahead.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
SETI Live: Tracking Lightning from Space to Predict Weather on Earth - Livestream - 08/03/2021 02:00 PM
SETI Institute
Lightning flashes can be excellent predictors of incoming storms, tornadoes, and other severe weather events and are used by meteorologists to warn local communities of oncoming severe weather many minutes in advance, protecting infrastructure and human lives. NASA’s two Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) spacecraft have cameras dedicated to capturing emitted light on Earth. This camera, known as the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), captures and records the intensity of light on any camera pixel with a brightness above a certain threshold. These records are considered a single “event” and are downlinked to receivers back on Earth. The Frontier Development Lab's Lightning Upgrade team seeks to achieve a greater classification accuracy of true lightning events by applying machine learning algorithms to GLM data.
See weblink for YouTube and Facebook links.
Wednesday, 08/04/2021
Introduction To Data Analysis with Python Workshop - 08/04/2021 11:50 AM
Magnimind Academy
This workshop will be a hands-on tutorial for the python pandas library. pandas is one of the popular tools used for manipulating, cleaning, integration and wrangling of tabular data. Data scientists spend significant amount of their time on such operations. This workshop aims to introduce how pandas can be used in data analysis by working on real datasets.The workshop will be held using Jupyter-notebook program. One easy way of installing this program is through anaconda platform. https://www.anaconda.com/products/individualAgenda:11:45 am - 11:50 am Arrival and socializing11:50 am - 11:55 am Opening11:55 am - 1:50 pm Sefer Baday, "Introduction Data Analysis with Python Workshop"1:50 pm - 2:00 pm Q&ASpeaker: Dr. Baday, Informatics Institute of Istanbul Technical University, Turkey.
Please register using the zoom link to get a reminder:Webinar ID: 828 4879 4822
Got Hormones? The Do's and Don'ts of Stem/Leaf Propagation - Livestream - 08/04/2021 05:30 PM
Speakeasy Science
Taking stem or leaf cuttings can be an easy and cheap way of obtaining more plants and we all want more plants. But knowing the basic science and why's behind this practice will help you become even more successful. This session will focus on the hormones, myths, tips and tricks that are key to propagating easy to those more-difficult-to-root plants.
Suitable for any level of gardener/plant parent, this event covers all aspects of propagating plants by stem or leaf cuttings for both leafy and succulent plants. We will first start off learning about the two primary hormones responsible for root and stem formation. We will learn why these are important in everyday pruning and transplanting practices. We will then focus on how to find the best cutting material, how to care for your cuttings once off the plant and what media is best to place them in.
All the in's and out's of stem/leaf propagation will be included from hormones, to planting media, moisture, preventing rot and how to transplant once successful. Fun myths and trips/tricks will be covered as well as a showcase of plant examples to help make you a more successful grower.
Speaker: Marlene Simon
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Thursday, 08/05/2021
Robots Made Better With AI In Cloud - 08/05/2021 11:50 AM
Magnimind Academy
AI is becoming a reality in the form of robot helpers, e.g., robot vacuum cleaners, robot mowers and robot pets. SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) enabled them to navigate around, computer vision powers the object and obstacle recognition. However, the robots are not perfect and there are limitations.In this talk, we will cover the following topics:1. How do robots work? How do they navigate (SLAM) and plan where to go (route planning)?2. Limitations robots have today3. Using cloud to make robots smarter, cheaper, more eco-friendly and collaborative4. Challenges and solutionsAgenda:11:45 am - 11:50 am Arrival and socializing11:50 am - 11:55 am Opening12:00 pm - 1:50 pm Yanan Wen, "Robots Made Better With AI In Cloud"1:50 pm - 2:00 pm Q&ASpeaker: Yanan Wen, Amazon Web ServicesPlease register using the zoom link to get a reminder:Webinar ID: 815 0210 7494
Jeffrey Kluger: Holdout - Livestream - 08/05/2021 03:00 PM
Commonwealth Club - Online Event
Join us for a conversation between Jeffrey Kluger and astronaut Nicole Stott about Kluger's new novel Holdout, which tells the story of a principled astronaut who has to make a spilt-second decision to try to seek justice in the only place she knows how - the International Space Station. Watch life meet art, as Stott brings her experience to bear on Kluger's imagination.
Kluger's plot centers around Walli Beckwith, a model astronaut who graduated at the top of her class from the Naval Academy, had a successful career flying fighter jets, and has spent more than 300 days in space. So when she refuses to leave her post aboard the International Space Station following an accident that forces her fellow astronauts to evacuate, her American and Russian colleagues are mystified. For Walli, her decision is all too clear and terrifying to worry about ruining her career. She is stuck in a race against time to save a part of the world that has been forgotten, plus the life of the person she loves most. She will go to any length necessary, using the only tool she has, to accomplish what she knows is right.
NightLife - 08/05/2021 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
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 7:45 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: Phenomenal Physics - 08/05/2021 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Forget equations, calculators, and whiteboards. Come experience physics as energetic expressions of motion, color, and sound! Tonight we highlight the astounding interactions of materials large and small that define the basic laws of our universe - and don’t forget to investigate real phenomena with scientific tools and your own body.
Pixar Co-Founder Alvy Ray Smith: The History of the Pixel - Livestream - 08/05/2021 06:00 PM
Commonwealth Club - Online Event
The pixel, the smallest element of a picture, has, with little fanfare, helped push forward the digital revolution to new heights over the past 2 decades. Today, nearly every picture in the world is composed of pixels - cell phone pictures, app interfaces, Mars Rover transmissions, book illustrations, video games - and these digital images drive our understanding of the world around us. But where did pixels come from, and why are they so important? Alvy Ray Smith, the co-founder of Pixar, has a some answers to these increasingly important questions.
In his his timely book A Biography of the Pixel, Ray Smith notes that the pixel is the organizing principle of most modern media. Smith's story of the pixel's development - which touches upon technology, entertainment, business and history - begins with Fourier waves, proceeds through Turing machines and ends with the first digital movies from Pixar.
For anyone who has watched a video on a cell phone, played a video game, or streamed a television show or movie at home, this important discussion with one of digital media's pioneers who made it all possible is not to be missed.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Evening Tours of Lick Observatory - SOLD OUT - 08/05/2021 06:30 PM
Lick Observatory Mt. Hamilton
NightSchool: Surviving the Deadly Bucket - Livestream - 08/05/2021 07:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
Five vans, one plane, two states, one thousand miles, four organizations, two hundred people and one... banana box. On average in a season this is what it takes to save one little life. Learn from the experts and volunteers saving - and flying - hundreds of baby sea turtles from the "Deadly Bucket" in Cape Cod back to safety on the Gulf Coast each year.
See weblink for YouTube and Facebook Live links.
Saturday, 08/07/2021
Nature Day on Codornices Creek - 08/07/2021 10:00 AM
Codornices Creek Berkeley
Discover and celebrate nature with your choice of strolling, hunting bugs, using free and easy cell-phone apps to identify plants and animals, and observing, magnifying, and photographing "tiny things" in nature. We'll end with snacks and sharing adventures! Attendance limited -- Details and registration here. Questions? Please email f5creeks@gmail.com.
Little Sap - Virtual Book Reading - 08/07/2021 01:30 PM
Environmental Volunteers
Join children’s book author Jan Hughes and the Environmental Volunteers in a special, virtual reading of Little Sap.
Little Sap can’t wait to grow tall and strong and touch the sky. But growing takes time. With protection and wisdom from Mother Tree, the tallest and wisest in the grove, and a helping hand from her fungi friends, Little Sap inches slowly toward the light.
In this tale of the wonders of interconnectedness, we discover a loving community where humble fungi and majestic trees support one another to form a forest family.
Intended for Ages 5 - 8
Speaker: Jan Hughes, Author
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Virtual Telescope Viewing - Livestream - 08/07/2021 09:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center
Join our resident astronomers on Facebook Live every Saturday evening live from Chabot’s Observation deck!
Each week, our astronomers will guide us through spectacular night sky viewing through Nellie, Chabot‘s most powerful telescope. Weather permitting we will be able to view objects live through the telescopes and our astronomers will be available for an open forum for all of your most pressing astronomy questions.
Sunday, 08/08/2021
Evening Tours of Lick Observatory - SOLD OUT - 08/08/2021 06:30 PM
Lick Observatory Mt. Hamilton
Monday, 08/09/2021
Measuring and Improving Engagement in Online Learning - Livestream - 08/09/2021 07:00 PM
SF Bay Association of Computing Machinery
With a lot of learning shifting online, many students turn their cameras off, making it impossible for teachers to understand whether their students are engaged. Teachers feel that they are teaching a vacant wall of icons while students are unable to show that they are engaged without inviting discomfort. This application allows teachers to enable a mode of encouraging and communicating engagement without making students turning their video on. Students who are uncomfortable turning on their cameras can convey relevant emotions and engage with the lesson, helping all participants in a video conference increase mutual engagement and trust.The application builds on facial landmark learning to detect and communicate engagement. It consists of four components: calibration, detection, communication, and reporting. The application first calibrates detection and display to the specific user, changing parameters for detection and the avatar that will be displayed to communicate engagement. It detects specific actions such as smiling or raising a hand, then conveys them through an avatar, e.g., if the user smiles, the avatar smiles. It also provides each student an aggregated engagement score and graph for the duration of the lesson. Optionally, they can even contribute to the teacher’s report which would average all students’ engagement, keeping individual scores anonymous, so teachers know if large sections of their classes found some parts of the class to be harder.
The application is a step towards communicating real-time engagement and measuring overall engagement, even without having the connection of communicatingin person. It could be useful for ad testing, initial screenings, and flipped learning. Meanwhile, the changing avatar can bring interest and fun not only to classes, but in regular video calls among friends.
Speaker: Manasi Ganti, Monta Vista High School
Tuesday, 08/10/2021
The New Breed: What Our Animal History Reveals For Our Robotic Future - Livestream - 08/10/2021 12:30 PM
Long Now Foundation
The Web of Meaning - Livestream - 08/10/2021 07:00 PM
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM
Wednesday, 08/11/2021
Perseid Meteor Shower Watch Party - 08/11/2021 11:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Thursday, 08/12/2021
Life Finds a Way and The Impacts of Food Trade - Livestream - 08/12/2021 05:00 PM
Grounds for Science
The Unique Evolutionary History of Salt Marsh Sparrows in the SF Bay Area - Livestream - 08/12/2021 05:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
Can We Change the Way We Monitor Our Health Using Skin-like Microfluidic Wearables? - 08/12/2021 05:00 PM
Cafe Scientifique Silicon Valley
NightLife x Pop-Up Magazine - 08/12/2021 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
After Dark: Seeing the Unseen - 08/12/2021 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Micromitigation: Fighting Air Pollution with Activated Carbon - Livestream - 08/12/2021 07:00 PM
Counter Culture Labs
What To Do About Misinformation (in Four Dimensions) - Livestream - 08/12/2021 07:30 PM
Bay Area Skeptics
Friday, 08/13/2021
Evening Tours of Lick Observatory - SOLD OUT - 08/13/2021 06:30 PM
Lick Observatory Mt. Hamilton
Saturday, 08/14/2021
Nature and History Walk - 08/14/2021 10:00 AM
Cerrito Creek Albany
Unveiling the Dark Universe with the Dark Energy Survey - Livestream - 08/14/2021 07:30 PM
Mount Tamalpias Astronomy Lectures
Virtual Telescope Viewing - Livestream - 08/14/2021 09:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center
Sunday, 08/15/2021
Science Sundays: Fascinating Fish Bones: Archaeology for the Future of Fishers and Fisheries - Livestream - 08/15/2021 01:30 PM
Seymour Science Center
Afternoon Hike at Pillar Point Bluff - 08/15/2021 05:30 PM
Pillar Point Bluff Moss Beach
Evening Tours of Lick Observatory - SOLD OUT - 08/15/2021 06:00 PM
Lick Observatory Mt. Hamilton
Monday, 08/16/2021
Measuring and Improving Engagement in Online Learning - Livestream - 08/16/2021 07:00 PM
SF Bay Association of Computing Machinery