Down to Earth with the SciSchmooze
Dear reader,
I’ve assembled some ideas and information you might enjoy.
SPACE
On Tuesday, go outside at 1938 hrs (that’s nerd-notation for 7:38 PM) to watch the ISS make a 6-minute pass over the Bay Area. (NW horizon to directly overhead (86°) to SE horizon)
Astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin returned to Earth from the ISS after 371 days in zero gravity. Or if you instead count sunrises, there were about 6,000 of those during their stay in orbit. The trio had been scheduled to return over six months ago, but s--- happens.
The ISS is, of course, yet another Low Earth Orbit satellite that frustrates visual astronomers, but LEO satellites only interfere during the 2 hours after sunset and in the 2 hours before sunrise. At other times during the night they remain in the dark. Other factors degrade viewing the night sky, however: air pollution and light pollution. A new word has been introduced for this: Noctalgia.
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BIOLOGY - “If I only had a brain.”
Two recent studies concluded that individual jellyfish sleep and can learn stuff - even without a brain. Somehow these perspicacious cnidarians quickly learn to avoid a striped barrier while having just a few thousand scattered neurons at their disposal. Another jelly relative periodically shows evidence of being asleep and being ‘groggy’ when woken up. We all know that feeling.
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CLIMATE
The World Health Organization - WHO - just created a new position, Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health. They appointed Vanessa Kerry, MD, MSc of Massachusetts to fill that role. WHO anticipates that the annual number of people dying from the effects of climate change will increase each year by another quarter million.
Many cities across the world are implementing policies to get people out of their cars: free public transportation, no-drive zones, bike paths where once was curb parking for cars, fees to drive into city center, and money. Both Washington, DC and Denver are set to giving people vouchers to buy electric bicycles. The amounts range from $400 to $2,000 depending on income level and type of e-bike. Leave a comment to let us know what your city is doing.
NASA’s world climate data go back 143 years to 1880. This last July was, globally, the hottest of any month on record.
About 7% of all new cars being sold in the United States are all-electric, possibly reaching a tipping point. ¿But what about gas stations? Most EVs will “refuel” at home and only occasionally need a charging station. For many if not most gas stations, profits come from the sale of food and drinks, As customer traffic dwindles so will profits -- and CO2 emissions.
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Kathryn H. won the Strandbeest model kit with her guess of 797 - just 4 off the target. This time we are raffling off the book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein. Just send an email before noon Friday to david.almandsmith [at] gmail.com with an integer between 0 and 1,000.
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COVID
COVID-19 has so far killed an estimated 20 million people worldwide. The current dominant strain of SARS-Cov-2 (the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic) is BA.2.86. “So far, there's no sign that infections involving BA.2.86 are more severe.”
Feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) killed our cat Chewbacca two years ago. Like COVID, FIP is caused by a coronavirus that is similar to SARS-Cov-2. So this year when cats on Cyprus began dying of FIP in great numbers, it was decided to vaccinate cats with leftover COVID vaccine. It worked!
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My Picks of the Week (put reminders on your mobile phone)
– Alzheimer's Disease: advances & tips for prevention - Livestream Monday 6PM
– IEEE Panel: Ethical AI; Shaping the Future Responsibly - Livestream Tuesday 11AM
– Screening of ‘Collision’ - ship strikes on whales - Wednesday 7:30PM, San Rafael, $
– After Dark: Users - Thursday 6PM, San Francisco, ExplOratorium, $
– Studying Exoplanets with The JWST - Friday 8PM, San Mateo
– Critter Search at Sanborn - Saturday 8:30AM, Saratoga
– Five Dollar Day at The Lawrence Hall of Science - Sunday 10AM - 5PM, Berkeley, $
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ENVIRONMENT
Bad news: The U.S. is using up its groundwater at an unsustainable rate.
News: Wolves are back in Deutschland.
Almost everyday i receive junk mail. It’s annoying, a waste of paper, a burden for the mail carrier, and generally bad for the environment. Just this week i learned that we can do something about junk mail. I will let you know how successful this is.
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MEDICINE
Major Depressive Disorder “causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest … and you can't simply "snap out" of it.” Some patients responded well with a single dose of psilocybin, according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Psychedelics were once banned as harmful and accidental deaths did occur, but now some are being evaluated for medical use.
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PHYSICS
Every form of matter - electrons, neutrons, protons, etc - have an antimatter twin. If you bring a neutron together with an antineutron, they will self-annihilate, releasing lots of energy. One of the puzzles in cosmology is why the Big Bang ended with more matter than antimatter. Good thing. If they were in equal quantities, they would have mutually destroyed each other and the universe would only contain energy. Lots of science fiction stories employ antimatter to power spaceships and to create antigravity fields. ¿Would an antimatter penny fall up? Physicists were certain that an antigravity penny would fall down just like a normal penny, but there was no way to test that hypothesis - until now.
¿Want a good mystery to solve? Discovering the cause(s) of Miyaki events should do. Analyses of tree rings reveal six times when trees absorbed higher concentrations of carbon-14. Since then similar excesses of carbon-14 have been found in ice cores corresponding to the very same years. The first such ring was found by Fusa Miyaki and dated to 774 CE. ¿What causes a Miyaki event? Let me know.
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Nerdy Videos
The MSG story - Cup O’Joe - Joe Schwarcz - 4 mins
Telescope to see the early universe - Quanta Magazine - Cynthia Chiang - 6 mins
Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser debunked - Arvin Ash - 15 mins
Are room temperature superconductors impossible? - PBS SpaceTime - Matt O’Dowd - 17 mins
The week’s science news - Sabine Hossenfelder - 17 mins
Why lightbulbs might be the best invention ever - Veritaseum - Derek Muller - 18 mins
How did GPS get so good - Scott Manley - 27 mins
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Flex those empathy muscles as you enjoy this week,
Dave Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics
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“The path of reality is a narrow one and once you step off, all manners of nonsense become plausible.”
– Phil Plait (1964 - ) American astronomer, skeptic, and popular science blogger
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 10/02/2023
Meiosis is a Primary Cause of Death in Young Plants and Animals - 10/02/2023 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Dr. Dan Levitis, Sonoma Ecology Center
Building an equitable, inclusive, and welcoming culture in science - 10/02/2023 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Charla is the inaugural Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) Officer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York, and the elected President of SACNAS (Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science). At CSHL, she is an academic administrator who guides DEI-motivated institutional change initiatives; on the SACNAS Board of Directors, she works collaboratively with staff and membership to enable programs, services, and spaces for marginalized groups in science. She was an NIH IRACDA postdoctoral fellow in Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a PhD in Genome Sciences from the University of Washington.
Room: Auditorium
Imaging the Brain at High Spatiotemporal Resolution - 10/02/2023 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
The brain enables physicists and astronomers to explore the universe. Dr. Na Ji will describe how concepts in physics and astronomy help us understand the brain by imaging neurons at sub-micron spatial and millisecond temporal resolution.
Speaker: Dr. Na Ji, UC Berkeley
Carbon Dioxide Removal to Solve the Climate Crisis - 10/02/2023 04:30 PM
Stanford University Energy Seminar Stanford
In 1977, the physicist Freeman Dyson1 proposed the burial of biomass, as a scalable, economical solution to the CO2 problem. Today we know2 that the harvested vegetation should be buried in an engineered dry Environmental Chamber. Plant biomass can be preserved for thousands of years by burial in a dry environment with sufficiently low thermodynamic “Water Activity”, which is the relative humidity in equilibrium with the biomass. A “Water Activity” <60% will not support life, suppressing anaerobic organisms, thus preserving the biomass for millenia. Current agriculture costs, and burial costs indicate US$60/tonne of sequestered CO2 which corresponds to $0.53/gallon of gasoline. If scaled to the level of a major crop, existing CO2 can be extracted from the atmosphere and sequester a significant fraction of prior historical CO2 emissions.
Speaker: Eli Yablonovitch, UC Berkeley
Alzheimer's Disease: recent advances and practical tips for prevention - Livestream - 10/02/2023 06:00 PM
San Mateo Public Library
A third of dementia cases worldwide are estimated to be at least partly attributable to seven modifiable factors. At this virtual event, hear Dr. Irina Skylar-Scott discuss practical strategies you can put into place in your daily life to improve and maintain cognitive function. Also hear about current treatments, and opportunities to participate in clinical research trials focused on prevention as well as trials for individuals with diagnoses of Alzheimer's disease. Program will be followed by Q&A.
Speaker: Irina Skylar-Scott is a board-certified, fellowship-trained cognitive and behavioral neurologist and clinical assistant professor at Stanford University. She is a site principal investigator for Alector/AbbVie and Biogen clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease, and a co-investigator with the Stanford Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and the Stanford Aging and Memory Study.
Mapping Cosmic Magnetism in the Space Between the Stars - 10/02/2023 07:30 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
The Universe is magnetic. From stars to galaxies to intergalactic space, magnetic fields thread the cosmos. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, hosts a magnetic field that helps to sculpt the interstellar medium: the “stuff between the stars” out of which new stars are born, and into which some old stars explode. Join us on a tour of magnetism in the Milky Way galaxy and beyond, and learn how we measure magnetic fields in interstellar space.
Speaker: Susan Clark, Stanford University
Tuesday, 10/03/2023
IEEE Day Panel Discussion on Ethical AI: Shaping the Future Responsibly - Livestream - 10/03/2023 11:00 AM
IEEE Computer Society of Silicon Valley
With a focus on “Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for a better tomorrow” to align with the theme of the IEEE day.
Panelists:
Dr. Ruchi Dass, Managing Director, HealthCursor, UK
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drruchidass/
Dr. Katharina Koerner, Tech Diplomacy Network, USA
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katharina-koerner-privacyengineering/
Chinmay Nerurkar, Principal Engineer, Microsoft
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nchinmay/
Dr. Vishnu S. Pendyala, SJSU, San Jose, CA, USA
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pendyala/
Moderator: Meenakshi Jindal, Netflix, Los Gatos, USA
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meenakshijindal/
Register at weblink to attend
Live Taping - The Future of Everything w/Russ Altman with Special Guest, Karl Deisseroth - 10/03/2023 02:00 PM
Memorial Hall & Auditorium Stanford
Join us for an electrifying live taping of "The Future of Everything" podcast with host Dr. Russ Altman, Kenneth Fong Professor of Bioengineering, Genetics, Medicine, Biomedical Data Science, and Computer Science (by courtesy), and special guest Dr. Karl Deisseroth, D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
This special event will feature a thought-provoking conversation with special guest Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a world-renowned expert in psychiatry, neurology, and bioengineering. He is a practicing psychiatrist at Stanford with specialization in affective disorders and autism-spectrum disease, employing medications along with neural stimulation.
Over the last sixteen years, his laboratory created and developed optogenetics, hydrogel-tissue chemistry (beginning with CLARITY), and a broad range of enabling methods. He also has employed his technologies to discover the neural cell types and connections that cause adaptive and maladaptive behaviors and has disseminated the technologies to thousands of laboratories worldwide.
Don't miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear professors Altman and Deisseroth in an intimate setting talking about the future of everything. Reserve your spot now!
Singapore’s Multi-Stakeholder Approach to AI Governance - 10/03/2023 04:30 PM
Paul G Allen Building Stanford
Our flagship autumn Seminar Series on International Technology Management in 2023 will examine ways in which new digital technologies, business models, and data governance frameworks are addressing problems and opportunities at the interface between the digital economy and the external world, with special attention to new patterns of competition and cooperation between Asia and the U.S.
Speaker: Denise Wong, Singapore Infocomm Media Development Authority; Richard Dasher, US-ATMC Director, Moderator
Register at weblink to attend in person or online
Room: Allen 101X Auditorium
Clearview AI, Facial Recognition Technology, and Threats to Our Privacy - 10/03/2023 06:00 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Are you one in a million? One in a billion? What if an app could pick you out of a crowd based on your face alone?
New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 percent accuracy, identify anyone based on just one snapshot of their face. The app could supposedly scan a face and, in just seconds, surface every detail of a person’s online life: their name, social media profiles, friends and family members, home address, and photos that they might not have even known existed. If it was everything it claimed to be, it would be the ultimate surveillance tool, and it would open the door to everything from stalking to totalitarian state control. Could it be true?
Hill tracked the improbable rise of Clearview AI and its astounding collection of billions of faces from the internet. Google and Facebook decided that a tool to identify strangers was too radical to release, but Clearview forged ahead, sharing the app with private investors, pitching it to businesses, and offering it to thousands of law enforcement agencies around the world.
Join us for a surprising look at the rise of a technological superpower and an urgent warning that, in the absence of vigilance and government regulation, Clearview AI is one of many new technologies that challenge what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called “the right to be let alone.”
Speaker: Kashmir Hill, The New York Times; in coversation with Casey Newton, New York Times podcaster
Attend in person or online
Wednesday, 10/04/2023
World Space Week Association Podcast - Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at SETI - 10/04/2023 07:00 PM
World Space Week
Hear Seth Shostak, Earth’s official Alien Hunter, talking about space exploration with host Haritina Mogoșanu.
Seth Shostak directs the search for extraterrestrials at the SETI Institute in California - trying to find evidence of intelligent life in space. He is also committed to getting the public, especially young people, excited about astrobiology and science in general.
Podcast is available at the weblink
What Do We (Really) Want from AI? - 10/04/2023 09:15 AM
Gates Computer Science Building Stanford
we are piloting a three-part Human-Centered AI Vodcast. A sort of hybrid podcast, live audience and seminar series. Through this series, we hope to better understand what all of you want from AI. So, welcome to Stanford Human-Centered AI Vodcast, where we don't sweep anything under the rug; where we question everything, starting with ourselves.
We will be looking forward to discussion with the live audience to address:
What do you (really) want from AI in the real world? - In your world?
How do we want to live with our technologies?
Through our technologies, how do we want to live with one another?
What are the foregone premises in AI that we could re-think?
Details:
Join us for an in-person breakfast with the speaker. The seminar will run from 10:00 am-11:00 am with an option to attend virtually through Zoom Webinar.
Speaker: Ge Wang and Vanessa Parli
Innovating Solutions at the Ocean-Climate Nexus - Livestream - 10/04/2023 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
This talk will provide an introduction to Ocean Visions, a relatively new organization working through a collaborative partnership to advance a new agenda for solutions at the ocean-climate nexus.With a range of partners including MBARI, Ocean Visions works on a “Four R” agenda to abate the ocean-climate crisis:
Reduce: Developing ocean-based pathways to a low carbon economyRemove: Advancing ocean-based pathways to a cleaning up legacy CO2 pollutionRepair/Regenerate: Researching interventions to repair critical marine ecosystems and avoid dangerous tipping pointsReach: Building a global community of solvers and makers
The talk will also feature how MBARI and OV can work together and where the entry points are for interested people.
Speaker: Brad Ack, Ocean Visions
Climate change in the coastal zone: social and ecological interactions at the land-ocean interface - Livestream - 10/04/2023 11:00 AM
Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute
Speaker: Rachel Carson, Bodega Marine Laboratory
Register at weblink to receive connection information
AI Agents That Do What We Want: Progress and Open Challenges - 10/04/2023 12:00 PM
CITRIS at UC Berkeley Berkeley
Researchers used to define objectives for artificial intelligence (AI) agents by hand, but with progress in optimization and reinforcement learning, it became obvious that it’s too difficult to think of everything ahead of time and write it down. Instead, these days the objective is viewed as a hidden part of the state on which researchers can receive feedback or observations from humans - how they act and react, how they compare options, what they say. In this talk, Dragan will discuss what this transition has achieved, what open challenges researchers still face and ideas for mitigating them. This lecture will go over applications in robotics and how the lessons there apply to virtual agents like large language models.
Attend in person or register to attend online
Speaker: Anca Dragan, UC Berkeley
The John and Mary Louise Riley Seminar Series at Bodega Marine Laboratory - 10/04/2023 12:00 PM
Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute
Join us for the John & Mary Louise Riley Seminar Series, featuring speakers from within the marine sciences community and beyond.
Please register to join us on Zoom.
Radical Founders AI: Geoffrey Hinton in Conversation with Fei-Fei Li - 10/04/2023 04:00 PM
Gates Computer Science Building Stanford
In this Radical AI Founders Masterclass, Geoffrey Hinton and Fei-Fei Li will share their experiences building tech-first startups and scaleups, offering up their guidance, advice, and personal viewpoints. This discussion is delivered in partnership with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
Stanford HAI will host a simulcast on Stanford's campus for those who would like to watch. Please register to attend at weblink. Walk-ins are welcome.
Coactive AI @ Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Speaker Series - 10/04/2023 04:30 PM
Huang Engineering Center Stanford
Cody Coleman is a co-founder of Coactive AI, an analytics platform for visual content, and serves as the CEO. Coactive leverages AI to make it easy for enterprises to search, filter, and analyze large amounts of image and video data by bringing structure to unstructured data.
Coleman is also a founding member of MLCommons, a collaborative engineering organization focused on developing the AI ecosystem, and his work spans from high-performance deep learning to data-centric AI. He is an advisor to NZVC, which funds early-stage startups in New Zealand. He holds a PhD in computer science from Stanford and MEng and BS degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT.
Attend in person or online. See weblink for Youtube link.
Special Screening of 'Collision' - 10/04/2023 07:30 PM
Smith Rafael Film Center San Rafael
A worldwide increase in shipping traffic is threatening our oceans, its inhabitants and the planet. Collision is a powerful feature documentary which highlights the severely under-reported issue of fatal ship strikes on whales, a threat which is endangering their very existence. The film suggests solutions to encourage and convince governments and global shipping companies to make vital changes.
SCREENING + CONVERSATION WITH FILMMAKER PHILIP HAMILTON MODERATED BY JEFF BOEHM, CHIEF ENGAGEMENT OFFICER, THE MARINE MAMMAL CENTER
Zoom Lenses for Bird Photography - 10/04/2023 07:30 PM
Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society Cupertino
This presentation will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of zoom lenses for bird photography. Zoom lenses offer many benefits such as flexibility, excellent image stabilization, and portability. Mastering the zoom lens allows one to capture compelling, professional quality bird photographs without breaking the bank.
Speaker: Shravan Sundaram
See weblink for Zoom information. The web announcement for this meeting lists both an address and a Zoom link, so we assume this is a hybrid event that can be attended in person or online. Verify before attending in person.
Thursday, 10/05/2023
Building for Heat Resilience in Urban Areas - Livestream - 10/05/2023 11:00 AM
Stanford Energy
A majority of the population around the world, including nearly 80% of the U.S. population, reside in urban areas. As average temperatures rise and extreme heat events become more common due to climate change, the built environment and lack of vegetation in cities combine to make that heat even more intense for city residents. With heat being the number one natural disaster killer, mitigating its impact for city residents, especially children and the elderly who are most vulnerable, is critical.
Stanford scientists and urban experts will discuss a range of options for addressing heat challenges in cities that address cooling needs while also considering energy demand and pricing, including: new building materials and practices, tree canopy and increasing nature, and planning and land use.
Speakers:
Opening Remarks from Marta Segura, Chief Heat Officer & Climate Emergency Mobilization Director for the City of Los Angeles
Shanhui Fan, Joseph and Hon Mai Goodman Professor of the School of Engineering and, Professor, by courtesy, of Applied Physics at Stanford University
Anne Guerry, Senior Research Scientist at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and Chief Strategy Officer at Stanford Natural Capital Project
Dian Grueneich, Member, George P. Shultz Energy & Climate Task Force, Hoover Institution; Affiliated Scholar, Stanford Bill Lane Center for the American West
Moderated by Chris Field, Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
Register at weblink
Fair Machine Learning for Education - An Information Theorist’s Perspective - 10/05/2023 04:00 PM
Sonoma State Dept. of Engineering Science Rohnert Park
Is it a good idea to use machine learning (ML) predictions in education? Would machine learning models treat all students fairly? I will start this talk with our recent analysis on middle school and high school datasets that reveal potential fairness risks of applying vanilla ML on students. To improve fairness in ML for education, there are several practical challenges. First, there are missing values in the datasets that are not evenly distributed across groups (e.g., female and male) which could aggravate the ML model's bias. I will show a fundamental limit of learning with missing values and propose a decision-tree-based algorithm that outperforms state-of-the-art fair ML methods that do not consider missing values. In the second part, we address how to correct bias in a classifier with low-cost post-processing when we have multi-class labels and sensitive attributes. I will introduce the Fair Projection algorithm which utilizes the idea of “information projection” and how it can be applied to a wide range of classifiers while maintaining a competitive fairness-accuracy trade-off.
Speaker: Haewon Jeong, UC Santa Barbara
Attend in person or online here. Passcode: 2009A
Leading the Circular Revolution - 10/05/2023 05:30 PM
swissnex San Francisco San Francisco
Join us and the city of Zurich for an evening exploring how cities can lead the way towards a more sustainable way of living by embracing the circular economy.
While occupying only 3% of the planet's territory, cities use 75 % of global resources. The circular economy has emerged as a pivotal tool to move towards a way of living that is not only sustainable, but also regenerative - respecting the planetary boundaries.
Cities as hyperconnected hubs and epicenters of intersecting systems provide ideal platforms to lead the way towards the circular revolution and thus a more sustainable future.
But implementing the circular economy comes with its challenges, requiring collaboration among diverse actors and systems. The event will feature a panel with speakers from four different backgrounds (government, academia, startup, corporate sector) to explore how cities can lead the way.
They will exchange best practices in circular living that cities can implement to foster sustainable production methods and economic prosperity while utilizing resources effectively.
Register at weblink
After Dark: Users - 10/05/2023 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Grapple with the complicated relationship between people and technology tonight at After Dark. In the feature-length documentary Users, filmmaker Natalia Almada explores major questions confronting humanity as we develop increasingly intimate relationships with technology. Then immerse yourself in the power and harmony of the natural world with the west coast premiere of The Great Animal Orchestra.
NightLife: The Art of Nature - 10/05/2023 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
At this NightLife, Mother Nature takes center stage as our ultimate muse. See what happens when art and nature collide as we celebrate 10 years of our BigPicture: Natural World Photography exhibit.
Featured events:
Dive into the enchanting world of underwater kelp forest ecosystems with a talk and photography showcase from 2023 BigPicture “Aquatic Life” winner Kate Vylet.In a special Planetarium presentation featuring live music by Fire and Grace, neuroscientist Indre Viskontas will take you on a journey through this years’ winning BigPicture photos, sharing the impact evocative imagery has on us, our minds, and the world at large. If you love what you see, you can purchase the new book: Seeing It All: Women Photographers Expose Our Planet, a stunning collection of photography and essays highlighting the work of 11 remarkable female photographers - all award-winners and jurors of BigPicture.Join us for the debut of Tales of the Urban Wild: A Puma's Journey, a graphic novel by conservation scientist Dr. Tiffany Yap and artist Meital Smith. Dr. Yap and Academy carnivore ecologist Dr. Christine Wilkinson reveal the power of art to drive conversations about human coexistence with wildlife, inclusivity in science, and the heartfelt compassion found within conservation storytelling.Roses are red, violets are blue, without Mother Nature, this rhyme would not hold true! Join the Museum of Craft and Design to channel your inner romantic and write your very own love letter to Mother Nature on uniquely textured stationery from the age-old practice of plant rubbing - the art of creating impressions by rubbing crayons over paper stacked on foliage.Take a piece of art home with you from a nature-themed art market featuring:Chentomology ArtMenminmadeThailanThe Garden HomeWhodunitMystitches
CFC Birdy Hour: Burrowing Owls of the Bay Area - Livestream - 10/05/2023 06:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
Learn the latest about the life and times of our local Burrowing Owls from a researcher who has studied them for over 30 years. There's more to know about their migratory behavior and about the attachment Burrowing Owls show to their mates and to where they nest. While Burrowing Owls are fascinating in and of themselves, they are also indicators of environmental sustainability, especially with respect to some of the nation's most endangered habitats--grasslands. Learn what Burrowing Owls are telling us about how to preserve and sustainably manage grasslands for the benefit of wildlife and people. Speaker: Dr. Lynne Trulio, San Jose State University
Friday, 10/06/2023
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics Seminar - 10/06/2023 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: TBA
Block Party on the Bluff - 10/06/2023 05:30 PM
Seymour Marine Discovery Center Santa Cruz
First Friday: Light & Dark - 10/06/2023 06:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Since the creation of our planet, light has been crucial to the survival of all living things on Earth. Equally important is the absence of that light where shadows play an important role in understanding the world around us. At October’s First Friday event, try your hand at creating an eclipse post card or solar paper craft. Discover more about the phenomena of solar and lunar eclipses and their astronomical and cultural significance throughout history with exciting guest speakers. View the night sky through our historic telescopes on Chabot’s Observation Deck. Then end the night with stunning visuals from our Tales of the Maya Skies Planetarium show, exploring how Maya civilization was able to predict celestial events, including eclipses.
Getting Started with Astronomical Spectroscopy - Rescheduled - 10/06/2023 08:00 PM
College of San Mateo Bldg 36 San Mateo
Editor's Note: This talk has been rescheduled for December 1, 2023
Studying Exoplanets with The James Webb Space Telescope - 10/06/2023 08:00 PM
College of San Mateo San Mateo
The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful and complex astronomical space observatory ever built. It launched in December 2021 into orbit in the Sun - Earth system. The large 6.5-m diameter JWST primary mirror and its infrared instruments allow it to see some of the very first luminous objects that formed in the Universe shortly after the Big Bang. Other major science themes of JWST encompass studying the assembly of galaxies, the birth of stars and planetary systems, and the origins of life. JWST is the premier astrophysics space observatory for NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), with an expected 20+ year mission lifetime. It will augment the Hubble Space Telescope, which primarily works at visible and ultraviolet light wavelengths. Many scientists will use JWST to make discoveries that we have not yet imagined!
In this talk Dr Thomas Greene (NASA Ames) will illustrate how the JWST is being used to discover and characterize exoplanets in our galaxy, and present some of the exciting findings to date.
Saturday, 10/07/2023
Young Birders Club: Cuesta Park - 10/07/2023 08:30 AM
Cuesta Park Mountain View
Join the Young Birders Club to bird the lush green grass and towering Oak and Redwood trees of Cuesta Park! We'll look for resident birds, including Red-tailed Hawks, White-breasted and Pygmy Nuthatches, Western Bluebirds, and American Robins, and keep an eye out for incoming wintering sparrows.
This trip is designed for young birders, but parents and siblings are welcome to attend. We welcome birders of all skill levels - whether you’ve been birding for years, or never picked up a pair of binoculars before, we’d love to bird with you! Young birders can socialize and have fun birding together. Loaner binoculars are available for participants.
Lead: Allison and Valerie
Meet: Cuesta Park parking lot near the restrooms in the Mountain View Tennis building
Critter Search at Sanborn - 10/07/2023 10:30 AM
Sanborn Science and Nature Center Saratoga
Some of the most interesting critters are hard to find. Join us as we look for some of the smaller residents of Sanborn Park. Look for Salamanders under rocks, Millipedes under logs, and newts in the ponds! Let’s see who we can find!
Register at weblink
Bioethics Past and Present - Livestream - 10/07/2023 03:00 PM
Bay Area Humanists
Bioethics (or Medical Ethics) has emerged and developed rapidly as an independent (but interdependent) discipline from standard ethics since WWII. While the Nazi doctors trial and atrocities brought to light many previously unthinkable transgressions, a developing discipline actually pre-dated the Nazi regime with respect to protections of human subjects in research. The late 20th and 21st centuries have brought rapid and significant development in the understanding of biology, genetic engineering and therapeutics. Each of these areas (and many others) if not carefully considered, can impact our functioning as a civil society. Some examples of past, present and potential future cases will be presented for a (hopefully) robust and interactive discussion.
Speaker: Rafa Escandon, Consultant
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Sunday, 10/08/2023
Five Dollar Day at The Lawrence Hall of Science - 10/08/2023 10:00 AM
Lawrence Hall of Science Berkeley
Visit The Lawrence and enjoy all the hands-on science we offer for just $5 per person. $5 Days are part of our efforts to increase access to our programs for all.
Solar Observing - 10/08/2023 02:00 PM
San Jose Astronomical Association San Jose
It’s there for us year round, lighting our days and providing energy for our lives, so maybe it’s time to give it a closer look. Join SJAA for amazing and detailed views of the Sun, and be assured that we’ll be using special telescopes that will keep your eyeballs perfectly safe.
We’ll have white-light telescopes with dense solar filters that reveal sunspots. Further, we’ll show you hydrogen-alpha telescopes that isolate a very specific color of red that reveals prominences (often thought of as solar flares) and intricate texture within the Sun’s chromosphere (its atmosphere).
We can also share with you a little about how the Sun works and how complex magnetic fields drive the number of sunspots and prominences that we’ll see on a given day.
Around 2:15, we'll have a short, informal introductory talk, and at other times, you can enjoy the views and ask questions about the Sun, telescopes, or astronomy in general.
Monday, 10/09/2023
Choanoflagellate Transcriptional Networks: Towards the Origin of Animal Cell Types - 10/09/2023 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Maxwell Coyle, UC Berkeley
The role of the rhomboid superfamily: Guardians of membrane-related processes and homeostasis - 10/09/2023 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Speaker: Sonya Neal, UC San Diego
Room: Auditorium
The Motions of Stars and Gas in Disk Galaxies - 10/09/2023 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Speaker: Dr. Kyle Westfall, UC Santa Cruz
Tribal Energy Development - today and prepare for the future - 10/09/2023 04:30 PM
Stanford University Energy Seminar Stanford
US Tribes are developing their energy visions, but there are challenges. Strategic Energy Planning assists to meet many of the challenges.
Speaker: Sandra Begay, Sandia National Labs
Tuesday, 10/10/2023
Cybersecurity Futures 2030: National Security Implications for Policymakers - Livestream - 10/10/2023 10:00 AM
Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity
Imaging frozen electrons in a 2D Wigner crystal - 10/10/2023 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Resilient Societies: Silicon Valley's Reinvention - 10/10/2023 04:30 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Learn about the Upcoming Solar Eclipses (with Andrew Fraknoi) - Livestream - 10/10/2023 06:00 PM
Oakland Public Library
Wednesday, 10/11/2023
Within and trans-generational responses of sea urchins to climate change - Livestream - 10/11/2023 11:00 AM
Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute
Exploring Health and Environment: Navigating Chemicals in Our Everyday Lives - 10/11/2023 05:00 PM
4D Molecular Theraputics Emeryville
Doors Open 2023: Go Behind - the - Scenes at the Physical Archive - 10/11/2023 06:00 PM
Internet Archive Physical Archive Richmond
The Peril and Profit of Near-Earth Objects - 10/11/2023 07:00 PM
Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series Los Altos Hills
What Can AI Teach Us About the Human Mind...and vice versa? - 10/11/2023 07:30 PM
Marin Science Seminar San Rafael
Thursday, 10/12/2023
Silicon Valley Leaders Symposium - Nicole Magnus - 10/12/2023 12:00 PM
Silicon Valley Leaders Symposium San Jose
After Dark: California Coastal Sounds - 10/12/2023 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
NightLife - 10/12/2023 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
How Birds are Responding to Climate Change - Livestream - 10/12/2023 07:00 PM
Golden Gate Audubon Society
Potholer54 discussion with Eugenie Scott - Livestream - 10/12/2023 07:30 PM
Bay Area Skeptics
Friday, 10/13/2023
Icy Moon Geology - 10/13/2023 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Public Astronomy Viewing Nights - 10/13/2023 07:30 PM
Sonoma State University Public Astronomy Rohnert Park
How to Survive the A.I. Apocalypse - 10/13/2023 08:00 PM
Grand Theater San Francisco
Saturday, 10/14/2023
Annular Solar Eclipse - 10/14/2023 07:30 AM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Partial Eclipse Viewing At Houge Park - 10/14/2023 07:30 AM
San Jose Astronomical Association San Jose
Solar Eclipse viewing party - 10/14/2023 08:00 AM
Sage and Drifter bar. San Francisco
Eclipse Viewing Party - 10/14/2023 08:30 AM
Lawrence Hall of Science Berkeley
Partial Solar Eclipse at Stanford/KIPAC - 10/14/2023 08:30 AM
Stanford University
Fall Baylands Bioblitz - 10/14/2023 09:00 AM
Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter Palo Alto
Solar Eclipse Viewing - 10/14/2023 09:00 AM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
TechFest - 10/14/2023 10:00 AM
Computer History Museum Mountain View
Sunday, 10/15/2023
Presidio: Changes Through Time - 10/15/2023 11:00 AM
The Presidio San Francisco
Wonderfest: Innovation in the Search for ET - 10/15/2023 02:00 PM
Alameda Free Library Alameda
Monday, 10/16/2023
Citizen Science: Making Science Accessible & Working with Animals - 10/16/2023 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 - 10/16/2023 12:00 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Synthetic biology for sustainability - 10/16/2023 03:30 PM
Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) Colloquium Series Menlo Park
Social dynamics in swarming bacterial colonies - 10/16/2023 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Quantum Nanophotonics - 10/16/2023 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
The Joy of Science - 10/16/2023 05:30 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco