Greetings to all who value science,
So here we are, a year of incredible challenges continues to challenge. Spring '21 has come but Day and Night weren't equal! We may be on the brink of success in taming Covid-19, but we are still at risk, especially by those who can't accept the science and facts of the disease and how to control it. Consider some of the history of science denial.
Above all of that, there are still so many people that can't accept that we are all one people with a lot of variations. How different is hair color, eye color, skin color, and blood? Don't get me wrong on this, there are horrible inequities that are real and crush the spirit of all concerned because of false beliefs held, unfortunately, by many. It’s just that the root of them is based not on science and facts, but on ignorance, lies, and denial. The violence over the past year, right up to now, has often been due to or blamed on things that either don't matter, shouldn't matter or don't exist (religion, skin color, cultural or racial superiority to name a few). Please read or at least consider these two articles. White, Black, and Red All Over: What Blood Segregation Says About Science and Race and Why blood can be racially or ethnically specific Here's a bonus article… Racism is behind anti-Asian American violence, even when it’s not a hate crime
While politics and personal beliefs may be at the root of many issues, viruses don't recognize what you think or believe. You might ask how these ideas spread as the popular sites seem to be trying to stem the spread. I have included this before but I think it is worth repeating… Vaccine truth with Scott Galloway (note: language warning) This isn't Buridan's ass, the decision ahead is pretty easy. (Go ahead… look it up!-)
The success of Perseverance since landing on Feb 18 has been great but they are still working out how to do some of the science it was sent to do. But… The Mars Fleet has been doing amazing science for over 3000 Sols! That's 3146 days!
Many organizations have really polished up their webcasting presentations. I encourage you to try some that you might skip, a good presenter can draw you in to learn new things you didn't know you wanted to know! For instance… COVID-19 Vaccines - Livestream Mon @ 3:30; Hardcore Natural History: Connections between land and sea: What can we learn from our beaches - Livestream Thu @ 6:00; Solar Safe Water For All - Livestream Sat @ 11:00
It has been one of those weeks. Please take time to look at Murmurations over Lough Ennell
Now back to it. I hope that these two items make you at least ask WHAT?!?!? Dr.Oz Guest Hosting ‘Jeopardy!’ and Ear Acupuncture for Procedural Pain in Neonates
I have been fascinated for a long time by the Antikythera Mechanism which was discovered 120 years ago. I encourage you to check out some of the mystery that surrounds it. Even Lego has gotten in on it! Here are some other items that caught my attention in the last week… Beginner’s Guide to DNA Origami, It's springtime but not everyone sees it like you, TheMany Shades of Color Blindness
Have a great week. Speak up when you feel you need to, don't wait until you have to.
herb masters
"Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country, except to make it worth defending." Robert Wilson
"A slave world is not worth preserving. Better be lifeless like the cold moon, or primitively vegetal like desolate Mars, than be a planet populated by social robots."— Harlow Shapley
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Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Sunday, 03/21/2021
Water Management, Climate Change, and Salmon Health: The Story of the Sacramento River - Livestream - 03/21/2021 01:30 PM
Seymour Science Center
Perhaps nowhere else in the world is water resource management and fisheries management so connected as in California. A vast array of dams and reservoirs in the state provide freshwater for public use, but also impact the health of salmon. For example, in the Sacramento River, the spawning grounds for the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon are solely reliant on the cold water released from Shasta Reservoir upstream. How climate change will impact the ability of upstream reservoirs to sustain water resources for fish and public use remains an important question in California, with implications for drought-prone regions around the world.
Join Miles Daniels as he discusses his research exploring the connections between water management, climate change, and salmon health.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Complexity Weekend May 201 Cohort - 03/21/2021 07:00 PM
Online Online
We are excited to announce that we have just opened up the Participant registration for our May 21-23rd 2021 Complexity Weekend! We hope you can join this May 2021 cohort.
The Pre-Weekend phase will begin in March 2021 and continues up until the interactive team-forming Weekend event starts on May 21st 2021. This Pre-Weekend phase will familiarize everyone with the community, tools, and ideas of Complexity Weekend.
We’ve got an awesome lineup of Facilitators and are excited to have Dave Snowden as our Keynote speaker.
We encourage participation from all time zones and levels of familiarity with Complexity.
Please share with your colleagues and anyone else who might be interested and let us know if you have any thoughts or questions by going to our website or emailing. Thank you!
Monday, 03/22/2021
The Life Cycle of Galaxies - Livestream - 03/22/2021 12:00 PM
Royal Observatory, Edinburgh
Our most powerful telescopes reveal a universe filled with galaxies that come in a dizzying range of shapes, sizes, colours, and environments. How this diverse population arose over 14 billion years from the primordial Universe is a fascinating and complex story that astronomers are only now beginning to piece together. It's a story worthy of a Hollywood movie, including lurking villains, dangerous neighborhoods, and powerful explosions that put a Michael Bay movie to shame. In this talk, I'll tell the life story of galaxies as we now understand it, by combining multi-wavelength galaxy surveys and state of the art supercomputer simulations.
Speaker: Romeel Davé
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Imaging quantum spin liquid behavior in single-layer 1T-TaSe2 - Livestream - 03/22/2021 02:30 PM
UC Berkeley
Quantum spin liquids (QSLs) are a novel state of matter predicted to arise in quantum antiferromagnets where magnetic frustration or quantum fluctuations are strong enough to prevent magnetically ordered states even down to the lowest temperatures. QSLs are believed to exist in strongly correlated Mott insulators, and are thus related to unconventional superconductivity. Much work on QSLs has focused on triangular lattices where frustration is strong. An example is the bulk Mott insulator 1T-TaS2 which has attracted attention as a QSL candidate due to localized d-orbitals in the Ta atoms that form a triangular lattice in this material. This scenario, however, is complicated by interlayer coupling and possible different stacking orders in the bulk, thus motivating investigation into related single-layer materials.
I will discuss our recent studies on single-layer (SL) 1T-TaSe2 that provide evidence for 2D QSL behavior. We have characterized the electronic structure of SL 1T-TaSe2 (grown via molecular beam epitaxy) by means of scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS), angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), and first-principles calculations. We observe Mott insulating behavior in SL 1T-TaSe2, including novel orbital texture not seen in bulk samples. Vertical heterostructures formed by a single 1T-TaSe2 layer placed on top of metallic 1H-TaSe2 exhibit Kondo behavior, providing direct evidence for a triangular array of local spins in SL 1T-TaSe2, a prerequisite for the QSL behavior. Moreover, in SL 1T-TaSe2 we observe long-wavelength super-modulations that are explained quantitatively by a QSL-based spinon Fermi surface instability.
Speaker: Wei Ruan, UC Berkeley
See weblink for connection information
COVID-19 Vaccines - Livestream - 03/22/2021 03:30 PM
SLAC Colloquium
These are extraordinary times for immunology, vaccinology, and the world. In the few short months since its emergence, the devastating impact of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has radically transformed virtually every dimension of our lives and fueled an urgent global imperative to develop safe and effective vaccines. Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in China in December 2019, some one hundred and eighty-five vaccine candidates, encompassing, a multitude of platform technologies, are being developed. No fewer than 55 of these have already been tested in phase 1 and 2 clinical trials in humans, 22 candidates have been, or currently being tested in large phase 3 efficacy trials, and 3 vaccines have been given emergency use authorization in the United States and in several other countries, and at least 3 other vaccines are being deployed internationally. The stunning pace at which these vaccines are being developed is unprecedented in the history of vaccinology.
Yet, as of March 2021, only some 355 million vaccine doses have been administered worldwide roughly 4.6 doses for every 100 people on the planet. Sadly, there has been a stark gap between the vaccination rates in different counties, with most counties in Africa, and several countries in the developing world, yet to report a single dose. Furthermore, the emergence of several variants of concern, including the B.1.351 lineage first identified in South Africa, has raised concerns that the immune responses induced by the current COVID-19 vaccines may confer only partial or limited immunity against such variants.
In this talk, I will discuss the emerging knowledge of the immunogenicity and efficacy of the numerous COVID-19 vaccine candidates, and also discuss how the lessons learned from the COVID-19 experience is redefining the way we conceive of, make, test, license and distribute vaccines.
Speaker: Bali Pulendran, Stanford University School of Medicine
See weblink for Zoom information
Astronomy on Tap Los Angeles - Livestream - 03/22/2021 06:30 PM
Astronomy on Tap
Join us at 6:30PM PDT, Monday, March 22nd for a virtual Astronomy on Tap, streamed over YouTube Live. We’ll hear from Dr. Max Gronke: “Ice & Fire: How Hot and Cold Plasma Coexist around Galaxies” and from Laura-May Abron: “2021: A Climate Change Odyssey”. In addition, we will host interactive astronomically-themed pub trivia.
See weblink for YouTube link.
Deep Dive into AI and Deep Learning Infrastructure with Lambda Labs - Livestream - 03/22/2021 07:00 PM
SF Bay Association of Computing Machinery
We are currently seeing exponential growth in the compute requirements for state of the art Deep Learning models as well as a rise in production environments for the application of these DL models as can be seen with the year starting out with Microsoft's Turing Natural Language Generation model (17 billion parameters) and ending with Open AI's GPT-3 (175 billion parameters). Designing/choosing optimized AI infrastructure based on the use case (may it be hyperparameter search, large scale distributed training, production inference etc.) is becoming just as important as designing better DL models for the efficiency of an organization. The talk will include a discussion on the infrastructure choices that are available for deep learning and how the infrastructure setups are trying to keep up with the computing requirements.
Speaker: Mitesh, Lambda Labs
Tuesday, 03/23/2021
Humanity in Deep Space: Farming Mars - Livestream - 03/23/2021 10:30 AM
Humanity in Deep Space
Expeditions to Mars will face the hard problem of growing and producing diverse varieties of food. This discussion on Interplanetary Agriculture™ will explore the latest thinking surrounding plants as food, medicine, materials to support humans on off-Earth environments...as well as the role food plays in shaping life and humanity. The conversation will address novel ideas such as cellular agriculture and how such advances could be leveraged to enhance sustainable agriculture and related technologies on Earth.
See weblink for panelists and to register for connection information
Serving a large number of ML models at low latency - 03/23/2021 11:50 AM
Magnimind Academy
Serving machine learning models is a scalability challenge at many companies. Most of the applications require a small number of machine learning models (often <100) to serve predictions. On the other hand, cloud platforms that support model serving, though they support hundreds of thousands of models, provision separate hardware for different customers. Salesforce has a unique challenge that only very few companies deal with, Salesforce needs to run hundreds of thousands of models sharing the underlying infrastructure for multiple tenants for cost-effectiveness.
In this talk we will explain how Salesforce hosts hundreds of thousands of models on a multi-tenant infrastructure, to support low-latency predictions.
Agenda:
11:40 am - 11:50 am Arrival and socializing11:50 am - 12:00 pm Opening12:00 pm - 1:50 pm Manoj Agarwal, "Serving a large number of ML models at low latency"1:50 pm - 2:00 pm Q&A
Speaker: Manoj Agarwal is a Software Architect in the Einstein Platform team at Salesforce.
Webinar ID: 811 6053 3641
Register at weblink.
Climate Change as Seen from Space - Livestream - 03/23/2021 02:30 PM
National Academies Space Studies
Is it possible to connect the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events with climate change? How do space-based observations of Earth support the latest in climate science?
Extreme weather events are constantly in the news, from devastating wildfires to destructive hurricanes. These natural disasters have tremendous impacts on our lives and economy, causing billions of dollars in damages and hundreds of deaths every year. With the growing availability of data from space-based observations of Earth, researchers are now learning to identify when some classes of extreme events (such as heat waves, drought, coastal flooding, and intense precipitation) are caused or worsened by anthropogenic climate change.
Join us to hear from NASA Senior Climate Advisor Gavin Schmidt about Earth observations from space and their unique perspective on climate. During the lecture, he'll explore the emerging science of extreme event attribution and what the next decade might hold.
Register at weblink for connection information
The Northern Resident Orcas and Bringing Corky Home - Livestream - 03/23/2021 07:00 PM
American Cetacean Society
At the tender age of four, Corky, a member of the A5 pod of Northern resident orcas, was captured and taken from her family for use in the theme park industry. Now, at 55 years of age, she is the longest surviving killer whale in captivity. She continues to perform for audiences at SeaWorld San Diego.
For over twenty years, Michael Reppy has worked with Paul Spong of OrcaLab and with the Free Corky Campaign. This evening Mr. Reppy will share some of his in-depth knowledge of the Northern resident orcas. He will also tell us about his work to have Corky released from captivity and brought to a whale sanctuary in Double Bay, Hanson Island, British Columbia so she can retire in her home waters and reconnect with her family.
Register at weblink to receive connection information.
Wednesday, 03/24/2021
Trust Valley Meets Silicon Valley - Livestream - 03/24/2021 08:00 AM
swissnex
We live in complex times where exploring the most pressing questions at the crossroads of technology and humanity is imperative for the future of our society. At the heart of this process, we find trust. Trust emerges as the backbone of a digital transformation that is needed to address the digital challenges society is faced with today. How do we build trust in complex times? How do we approach trust as we design digital technologies? These are some of the pressing questions we will explore on Wednesday 24 March in the first edition of “Trust Valley meets Silicon Valley”.
“Trust Valley meets Silicon Valley” is an initiative bringing together the brightest minds and subject-matter experts from two leading global hubs in technology leadership and cybersecurity: Switzerland and the Bay Area in the United States. What can Switzerland and the Bay Area learn from each other when trust is the key link between technology and society?
As the world’s humanitarian and internet governance capital, Switzerland hosts a rich digital trust and cybersecurity ecosystem such as the Trust Valley - an alliance supported by multiple public, private and academic players based in Switzerland.
This event will offer a chance to introduce several startups going through Trust Valley’s Tech4Trust acceleration program and showcase concrete applications that are the link between trust and technology.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Overcoming Political Polarization - Livestream - 03/24/2021 10:00 AM
Post Carbon Institute
In this webinar, we’ll examine political polarization and how to overcome it. We recognize that the “us vs. them” posture in American political life is making it hard to achieve the cooperation needed to address our most pressing social and environmental problems. We are hoping to explore two drivers of polarization: (1) the neurological and psychological characteristics of individuals that promote tribalism, and (2) the cultural constructs and social institutions that reinforce personal tendencies toward “us vs. them” thinking. Given our brains and the world we inhabit, how do we go about dismantling (or at least chipping away at) polarization so that people can act more collaboratively?
Join us for this conversation with Kim Doell, John Wood, Jr., and Lee Drutman about how to bridge seemingly impossible divides to work collaboratively on social and environmental issues.
Animal, Vegetable, Junk - Livestream - 03/24/2021 10:00 AM
Commonwealth Club - Online Event
A century ago, food was industrialized. Since then, new styles of agriculture and food production have written a new chapter of human history, one that’s driving both climate change and global health crises. Best-selling food authority Mark Bittman will offer a panoramic view of the story and explain how we can rescue ourselves from the modern wrong turn.
Speaker: Mark Bittman, Yale University and Columbia University; Patty James, Nutritionist, Moderator
The world’s first solo wing-foil ocean crossing - Livestream - 03/24/2021 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Chris will be presenting his plans to solo wing-foil 2,750 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean, from Half Moon Bay, California, to Oahu, Hawaii, in June and July of 2021. It will require him to complete two marathons per day, non-stop for fifty days, unsupported and completely unassisted, with only his trusty GPS and a global social media audience for company. An established ambassador for ocean sport and high adventure, Chris Bertish has already built a faithful audience hundreds of thousands strong. In 2017 he soloed across the Atlantic Ocean - 7,500 kilometers of unassisted paddling - and in the process, forged his unique adventure-media model with fans clamoring for his Captain’s Log updates posted on every stroke of his heroic journey, garnering 721 million impressions in the United States alone. Chris and his team are also building an eight-part, 23-minute, short-series documentary built for a National Geographic/ Discovery Channel global audience. The series will showcase the world’s first Trans-Pacific Wing Project, highlighting research and science and the link back to education, conservation, and sustainability. It will also include interactive videos and educational initiatives for the Two Oceans Aquarium and Monterey Bay Aquarium. Chris is interested in research and outreach partners that might want to add sensors to the craft as it travels across the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker: Chris Bertish, I'mPossible
Register at weblink to receive connection information
One Year Later: COVID Tracking Project and the Power of Data - Livestream - 03/24/2021 12:00 PM
Commonwealth Club - Online Event
In February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we know it in the United States, journalists Alexis Madrigal and Erin Kissane of The Atlantic started the COVID Tracking Project. The project was an effort to provide comprehensive data and to pressure public health agencies to publish better metrics regarding the spread of COVID-19. While the founders only anticipated that the project would last a few weeks until the government began to keep more accurate numbers, the project will officially cease collecting data on March 7, exactly one year after it started.
Join Alexis Madrigal at INFORUM to learn more about how the project has functioned in the past year, the staff’s experiences working with government officials, and what lessons Madrigal has to impart as our society begins to envision a post-pandemic world.
Register at weblink to receive connection information.
Speaker: Alexis Madrigal, The COVID Tracking Project; DJ Patilk, Commonwealth Club
Mining Opal in Koroit, Australia - Livestream - 03/24/2021 07:00 PM
Peninsula Gem & Geology Society
Gene McDevitt, has been mining boulder opal in Koroit, Queensland, Australia for twenty years. His presentation covers topics including the nature of Koroit opal, underground mining, open cut mining, and the challenges of living and mining in the outback. Many photos show his mining process in Koriot, local wildlife, types of material found, and how boulder opal is cut.
See weblink for Zoom request.
SETI Talks: The search for Life on Mars with Perseverance - Livestream - 03/24/2021 07:00 PM
SETI Institute
NASA, together with its partners, has landed a new robotic rover on Mars. Perseverance’s safe landing is just the beginning of an ambitious effort to find past or even existing life on the Red Planet.
Perseverance carries scientific instruments such as cameras and lasers. Some instruments can analyze the chemical makeup of Martian rocks and identify potential signatures of fossilized microbial life that may have existed in the Jezero crater, an area once flooded with water and home to an ancient river delta.
Several rovers have landed on Mars since the 1990s. What do we expect for this new $2.7 billion robotic explorer? How will Perseverance search for complex carbon-based molecules, remnants of past microbes? What can we expect from the experimental helicopter called Ingenuity? Will Perseverance find irrefutable proof of the existence of past or present life on Mars?
To answer these questions, we invited two scientists whose research and work are directly related to the study of Mars using robotic missions and who are involved with the rover or one of its instruments. Elena Amador-French is a science systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and a Science Operation Coordinator for the Curiosity rover. Pablo Sobron is a planetary astronomer at SETI Institute and an expert on Raman spectroscopy, a technique used to detect organics on Mars.
Janice Bishop, a chemist and planetary scientist at the SETI Institute who has explored the planet Mars for more than 20 years, will moderate this SETI Talk.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Wonderfest: Laser Micro-imaging and Mental Time Travel - Livestream - 03/24/2021 08:00 PM
Wonderfest
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 physicist Jeske Dioquino on "Laser Micro-imaging" - With the help of the electron microscope, researchers are taking pictures of some of nature's smallest biological structures. To improve the contrast in these images, allowing us to study even smaller structures, a high-intensity laser joins the fray.Stanford neurobiologist Marc Harrison on "Mental Time Travel" - As we grow older, our ability to mentally time travel via episodic memory begins to change. Recent advances that utilize biomarkers of disease states, in combination with neuroimaging, have opened exciting new doors in the early detection of Alzheimer's disease.
See weblink for Zoom link
Thursday, 03/25/2021
10,000 a Day Turn 65 in America. The Rise of Family Caregivers of the Elderly - Livestream - 03/25/2021 09:00 AM
Commonwealth Club - Online Event
The U.S. population is aging. The number of Americans aged 65 and older will more than double over the next 40 years, reaching 80 million in 2040. The group most often needing help with basic personal care, adults ages 85 and older, will nearly quadruple between 2000 and 2040. Aging in place will be an option for many people, which means staying in the comfort of your own home, rather than moving into a retirement or long-term care facility. Most of the care provided to older adults in this country comes from families, friends and neighbors. In fact, by 2030, it is projected that half of the families in the United States will be involved in caring for an older adult. While home-based care is less expensive than institutional care, few of the 45 million family caregivers in the United States are trained or paid to provide this complex care. In California, the economic value of family care was put at $63 trillion in 2017. This vast labor force could be tapped for future success, including better health outcomes, less demand on the health-care system, and reduced costs. But optimizing the home-based caregiver system requires a systematic approach, which will be discussed by our panel of experts.
Speakers: Theresa Harvath, UC Davis; Susan Reinhard, AARP; Jonathan Davis, Trualta
Labside Chats: A Conversation with a Scientist : Suzanne Alonzo - Livestream - 03/25/2021 11:00 AM
Seymour Science Center
Tune in for the next Labside Chat with Suzanne Alonzo, professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz. Explore the evolution and expression of mating and reproductive behaviors of fishes.
Join the conversation! Submit your questions in advance for Suzanne, then watch the conversation to hear the answers during the live chat. Help us put together questions such as:
* What type of research is needed to understand the evolution of fishes’ reproductive traits? * Do social interactions influence fish sexual selection and behavior? * How does understanding reproductive traits and behaviors of fish relate to conservation and management
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Derek Herrerawill discuss his experience as an entrepreneur in the Medical Device Industry. Specifically, he will discuss methods used to identify unmet needs in the industry and techniques to develop solutions to address these issues. Derek will discuss strategy development and the foundation for UroDev Medical and the IntelliFlow Bladder Management system. IntelliFlow is the first fully internal, extended use bladder management system that enables adult males with Urinary Retention to empty their bladder using a wireless remote controller. Derek will also discuss the Habit Camera, the first digital skin inspection tool for people with limited mobility, diabetes, and other skin conditions.
Speaker: Derek Herrera, UroDev Medical
Register to receive weblink
Reconsider the Coot - The Reproductive Antics of a Common Marsh Denizen - Livestream - 03/25/2021 04:30 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
Coots are often overlooked by birders because they are so common. Dr. Bruce Lyon has been studying the reproductive antics of American coots for the past two decades and has discovered that there is far more to this bird than meets the eye. He will highlight some of his discoveries about the parental and reproductive strategies of coots and answer questions such as: Why do some coot females lay their eggs in the nests of other coot females? What do the birds that receive these unwanted foster eggs do? Coots are just as bizarre when it comes to raising their own kids, and there are many puzzling features of coot parental care behavior. For example, why do coots lay far more eggs than they can normally raise and why do they beat up their kids so much? And, finally, why are baby coots born with such a ridiculously fluorescent orange plumage?
Bruce Lyon is a professor of Evolutionary Ecology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Please register here: https://www.flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/MTA2MTI5. The Zoom meeting link will be sent in the confirmation.
A Camera for the Invisible: Bringing the Higgs Boson into Focus - Livestream - 03/25/2021 05:00 PM
SLAC Public Lecture
The Higgs boson was discovered in 2012 at the world’s most powerful particle collider, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. This particle plays a unique role in fundamental physics. It gives all of the known elementary particles, including itself, their masses. To do this, it must transmit a new force to other particles, and it must also interact with itself. This last aspect is particularly strange, and has not been explored in experiments yet. Higgs bosons are extremely rare even at the LHC �€" only one of them is produced per billion particle collisions �€" and their extremely short lifetime means they are not directly visible. They can only be studied indirectly by analyzing the particle collisions in which they participate. At SLAC we are constructing the core of the biggest and fastest camera ever built to capture the Higgs boson in action. With more than 100 times more pixels than a typical digital camera, each one of which is much faster and more sensitive than typical camera pixels, it will be 10 times more powerful than the current cameras used to capture the results of particle collisions at the LHC. In this lecture, I will explain how we will use this camera to probe the mysteries of the Higgs boson.
Speaker: Caterina Vernieri, SLCA
See weblink for Zoom information
March LASER Event - Livestream - 03/25/2021 06:00 PM
LASER Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous
Monica Smith (UC Los Angeles) on "Urban Art: The First 6,000 Years"
Brian Knutson (Stanford) on "Toward a deep science of affect, motivation, and choice"
Sophia Moskalenko (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism) on "Radicalization and Martyrdom"
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Hardcore Natural History: Connections between land and sea: What can we learn from our beaches - Livestream - 03/25/2021 06:00 PM
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History
Join us as we speak to Dr. Mara Orescanin is an Assistant Professor of Oceanography at the Naval Postgraduate School since 2016 where she researches and teaches coastal morphodynamics (where water and sand go at the beach).
Carmel River State Beach is constantly changing. In summer, sand builds up isolating the lagoon. In winter, high flow in the Carmel River can breach the lagoon. Where and when the water will breach changes year to year and is variable within the same season. Dr. Orescanin studies the movement of sand in the balance and interaction between the river and the ocean. When, where, and how frequently the river breaches affect the water quality and temperature of the lagoon, which impacts species like steelhead trout. It can also affect rising water and the potential for flooding in the Carmel Mission District. Dr. Orescanin works with graduate students from the naval postgraduate school, as well as high school students to monitor the movement of sand in this system. Using drones, satellite imagery, and ROVs Dr. Orescanin can characterize season change where the land meets the sea and understand the dynamics of similar systems found throughout the west coast and in other coastlines in the world. Understanding these systems is important for resource managers and planners when considering interventions like mechanical breaching and response and adaptation to changes on the coast as climate changes.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Second Nature: After Dark Online - 03/25/2021 07:00 PM
ExplOratorium
Join a live conversation with acclaimed author and essayist Nathaniel Rich on the subject of his latest book, Second Nature, a collection of Rich’s artfully crafted science reporting on the upsetting effects of environmental exploitation and the stories of individuals who seek to correct them. In the context of the anthropocene, Rich asks: as a species with the power to destroy nature, can we use the same tools to remake it?
About Second Nature: We live at a time in which scientists race to reanimate extinct beasts, our most essential ecosystems require monumental engineering projects to survive, chicken breasts grow in test tubes, and multinational corporations conspire to poison the blood of every living creature. No rock, leaf, or cubic foot of air on Earth has escaped humanity's clumsy signature. In Second Nature, ordinary people make desperate efforts to preserve their humanity in a world that seems increasingly alien. Their stories obsessive, intimate, and deeply reported point the way to a new kind of environmental literature, in which dramatic narrative helps us to understand our place in a reality that resembles nothing human beings have known.
Ages 18+
See weblink for YouTube and Facebook Live links.
NightSchool: The Great Gray Whale Migration - Livestream - 03/25/2021 07:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
The California coast is renowned for its whale-watching, and spring's the perfect time to spot gray whales migrating north. To mark the occasion, join us for an evening exploring the science of gray whales and their annual 10,000-mile journey.
Ages 21+
See weblink for Youtube and Facebook links.
A Jaguar's Field of Dreams - If you build it, they will come (& other lessons from the U.S. - Mexico border) - Livestream - 03/25/2021 07:00 PM
US Geological Survey Public Lecture SeriesCase Study: The Very Lonely JaguarMadrean Archipelago Ecoregion, a biodiversity hotspot of the planetRestoration ecohydrology and rewildingLearn about the ecosystem services of rock detention structures
Speaker: Laura Norman, USGS Western Geographic Science Center
See weblink for Microsoft Teams viewing instructions
Saturday, 03/27/2021
Science Saturday: Bees, Wasps, Honey, and Hives - Livestream - 03/27/2021 10:00 AM
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Pacific Grove
Explore the sweet-side of science as Science Saturday turns its attention to Bees, Wasps, Honey, and Hives. Do all bees make honey? How do you tell a wasp from a bee? Do all bees sting? Find the answers to all of your buzzing questions as you complete a craft, and learn about some of our most important local pollinators.
See weblink for connection information
Solar Safe Water For All - Livestream - 03/27/2021 11:00 AM
Chabot Space and Science Center
In honor of Women’s History Month and World Water Day, join us for an exciting talk from the founder of Solvatten, Petra Wadstrom. She will talk about her company’s solar safe water system, that provides people living in developing countries with safe and hot water in a portable, environmentally friendly way.
Solvatten (Swedish for “Sun Water”) Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Sweden, Solvatten AB is a social enterprise that develops the Solvatten Solar Safe Water System, a cost-effective solution for use at the household level for millions of people living off-grid in the developing world. Two charitable organizations support these efforts: Solvatten Charitable Foundation Sweden and Solvatten Charitable Foundation USA. Solvatten’s mission is to provide people living in developing countries with safe and hot water in a portable, environmentally friendly way.
The Problem: Lack of safe water, poor hygiene and poor health are daily challenges for millions of people living in poverty. Worldwide, one out of eight people live without access to safe water at home. Those same people are dependent on firewood and charcoal for boiling and treating their water. Our Approach: Solvatten reaches people in need through partnerships and support from individuals, businesses and organizations that value the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Since our start, we have provided safe and hot water to over 400,000 people in more than 20 countries.
Solvatten was designed specifically for portable use in hard-to-reach parts of the world where access to clean water is scarce. While there are larger-scale solutions which require complicated infrastructure and maintenance, Solvatten’s solution is a simple, easy-to-use jerrycan designed for families in remote villages with limited resources. Benefits of Solvatten:
reduces the risk of waterborne diseasesreduces the risk of lung-related diseases, greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation by decreasing the need to rely on charcoal and firewood for boiling waterstrengthens the household economy by providing more time for men and women to workimproves school attendance by keeping children healthy and reducing their need to walk for miles to gather firewoodimproves the safety of women and children who often travel to isolated areas to collect firewood and waterhelps empower women by giving girls more time to go to school and women more time to work outside the home.
Speaker: Petra Wadström, Solvatten
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Truth is Stranger than Fiction - Livestream - 03/27/2021 08:00 PM
San Jose Astronomical Society
"Truth is Stranger Than Science Fiction”. Humankind speculated about the existence of planets orbiting other Suns for hundreds if not thousands of years before their existence was finally confirmed. During that time we invented and depicted many new and now iconic sci-fi worlds - mysterious planets with exotic landscapes, orbiting alien star systems. When our technology finally caught up with our imaginations, what we found was even more extraordinary than we had imagined. As science curator at the NASA Exoplanet Archive, I’ll take you on a tour of some of the more fantastic exoplanet discoveries we have made, including some famous, fan-favourite fictional planets brought to life.
Speaker: Jessie Christiansen, Caltech
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Virtual Telescope Viewing - Livestream - 03/27/2021 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.
Monday, 03/29/2021
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Lecture - Livestream - 03/29/2021 02:30 PM
UC Berkeley
Speaker: Darrell Schlom, Cornell, MBE of Correlated Oxides
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Symbolic Systems Forum : Learning to See the Physical World - Livestream - 03/29/2021 02:30 PM
Stanford Symbolic Systems Forum
Human intelligence is beyond pattern recognition. From a single image, we're able to explain what we see, reconstruct the scene in 3D, predict what's going to happen, and plan our actions accordingly. In this talk, I will present our recent work on physical scene understanding---building versatile, data-efficient, and generalizable machines that learn to see, reason about, and interact with the physical world. The core idea is to exploit the generic, causal structure behind the world, including knowledge from computer graphics, physics, and language, in the form of approximate simulation engines, and to integrate them with deep learning. Here, deep learning plays two major roles: first, it learns to invert simulation engines for efficient inference; second, it learns to augment simulation engines for constructing powerful forward models. I'll focus on a few topics to demonstrate this idea: building scene representation for both object geometry and physics; learning expressive dynamics models for planning and control; perception and reasoning beyond vision.
Speaker: Jiajun Wu, Stanford University
Dark Matter: A Cosmological Perspective - Livestream - 03/29/2021 03:30 PM
SLAC Colloquium
While it is considered to be one of the most promising hints of new physics beyond the Standard Model, dark matter is as-yet known only through its gravitational influence on astronomical and cosmological observables. I will discuss our current best evidence for dark matter's existence as well as the constraints that astrophysical probes can place on its properties, while highlighting some tantalizing anomalies that could indicate non-gravitational dark matter interactions. Future observations, along with synergies between astrophysical and experimental searches, have the potential to illuminate dark matter's fundamental nature and its influence on the evolution of matter in the cosmos from the first stars and galaxies to today.
Speaker: Katie Mack, North Carolina State University
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What black holes can teach us about superconductors - Livestream - 03/29/2021 04:00 PM
What Physicists Do @ Sonoma State University
Speaker: Dr. David Ramirez, Brown University
Brad Page, CEO of the Global CCS Institute - Livestream - 03/29/2021 04:00 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar
Brad joined the Global CCS Institute as CEO in August 2011, bringing extensive knowledge and experience on Australian and international energy and climate policy issues.
Prior to the Institute, Brad spent almost eight years as CEO of the Energy Supply Association of Australia, steering the organisation through a period of significant transformation while representing members on a wide range of energy market and climate change policy issues. During much of this time he chaired the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO) Energy and Transport Sector Advisory Council.
Brad’s earlier career was in the Australian Public Service, working across a range of portfolios culminating in direct involvement at the senior executive level with the development, implementation and subsequent review and improvement of Australia's national electricity and domestic natural gas markets.
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Biological tissues as mechanical metamaterials - Livestream - 03/29/2021 04:15 PM
Stanford University
In multicellular organisms, properly programmed collective motion is required to form tissues and organs, and this programming breaks down in diseases like cancer. Recent experimental work highlights that some organisms tune the global mechanical properties of a tissue across a fluid-solid transition to allow or prohibit cell motion and control processes such as body axis elongation. In this talk, I will highlight a newly developed framework that suggests the origin of rigidity in tissues is similar to that in mechanical metamaterials, like origami, and different from those in standard materials like glasses or granular matter.
Speaker: Lisa Manning, Syracuse Univ.
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Tuesday, 03/30/2021
Genius Makers: Idealists, Big Tech, and AI - Livestream - 03/30/2021 11:00 AM
Computer History Museum
The Root of It: Decolonizing Curriculum and Organizational Practices in STEM - Livestream - 03/30/2021 11:00 AM
Gladstone Institutes
An introduction to the Natural Dyes of Hawaii - Livestream - 03/30/2021 01:00 PM
UC Botanical Garden
A Hybrid xAI recommendations system using a Personal Health Knowledge Graph - Livestream - 03/30/2021 05:30 PM
Magnimind Academy
Wednesday, 03/31/2021
Decarbonizing the Grid - Storage Integration including but also Beyond Batteries - Livestream - 03/31/2021 08:30 AM
Stanford Energy
Root and Branch: Climate Migration, Racial Crises, and the History and Future of Climate Justice - Livestream - 03/31/2021 04:00 PM
Energy and Resources Group
On the Origin of Life - Livestream - 03/31/2021 06:00 PM
Science @ Cal
Wonderfest: 'Picture a Scientist: - Film Screening and Discussion - 03/31/2021 08:00 PM
Wonderfest
Thursday, 04/01/2021
'Whale Wisdom' and 'Dick Ogg: Fisherman' - 04/01/2021 06:30 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
NightSchool: Adventures in Botany - Livestream - 04/01/2021 07:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
After Dark Online: Transgender Day of Visibility - 04/01/2021 07:00 PM
ExplOratorium
Saturday, 04/03/2021
Egg Dissection - Livestream - 04/03/2021 01:30 PM
Environmental Volunteers
Virtual Telescope Viewing - Livestream - 04/03/2021 09:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center