Hello again, Fans of Science!
There are lots of things around us that we take for granted, yet are scientific marvels. Take, for instance, glass. We look through it. It shelters us from the elements in windows. We drink from vessels made from it. But what is it, really? Is it a solid? Liquid? The answer to both may be yes, as glass is a bit of a scientific mystery! This article will get you thinking!
COVID-19 is still around. If you’re like most people, you’ve forgotten about COVID. The constant parade of articles, the people you know who had it recently, and all that noise has mostly disappeared. But COVID hasn’t. While there was an increase in cases in the later part of the summer, things seem to be calming down again. If you are one of those people who contracted long COVID, then it certainly hasn’t gone far from your thoughts. While long COVID has remained a bit of a mystery, there’s new science research on the cause, and possible treatment for it. Hint: It involves the popular anti-depresent Prozac!
Looking to impress your friends at parties this holiday season? Here are 71 random fun scientific facts that you can use at parties. Don’t be surprised if these leave you isolated in a corner of the room though! And again, be thankful you aren’t a giraffe (see #2).
Here’s another female scientist you probably never heard of, but should know. Evelyn Fox Keller died late last month. Her efforts helped to broaden the focus of scientific inquiry to be more gender-inclusive.
March 26 marks the date of Jonas Salk’s announcement of the development of a vaccine against polio. Today, polio is almost forgotten, and for good reason, as the vaccine, and subsequent development of the oral vaccine years later, removed the fear from parents’ hearts. Those of you of a certain age may remember how concerned your parents were about you contracting this disease. I mention this because the Center for Inquiry (CFI) is proposing March 26 as National Science Appreciation Day, and they need your help. Sign the petition to designate this day and CFI will see that the petition results are delivered to all 50 states governors.
Artificial Inteligence (AI) is everywhere. You can’t read or listen to the news without the term AI appearing these days. That’s especially true here in Silicon Valley. While some of this news is about the negative side of AI (driverless car problems in San Francisco?), and the need for legislation to control it, there is also some really good stuff going on, especially in the medical field.
AI is assisting surgeons in the early stages of long surgeries for brain tumors by diagnosing the tumors and suggesting appropriate next steps during the surgery.
AI may also greatly change the interaction between you and your doctors in the near future, giving you, the patient, more power and control over your medical health. Here’s the state of the art, and a look at what’s coming.
Moving on to space, there’s good news for the local economy. UC Berkeley and NASA are joining forces to launch the Silicon Valley Space Center, a 26 acre research park in Mountain View at Moffett Field.
There’s a new, huge comet speeding towards the sun, and it is a strange one. For one thing, it is volcanic. And it has horns! It is the size of a small city.
The Siena Galaxy Atlas, a digital atlas of results from three astronomical surveys, contains information on nearly 400,000 galaxies in the general neighborhood of our Milky Way. The Universe is a pretty amazing, crowded place! Like much of the data about space, and objects it it, you can look at the results directly. Happy perusing!
Have a great week in Science!
Bob
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 10/23/2023
Tethering of H3K9me2 Chromatin to the Nuclear Periphery in Mammals - 10/23/2023 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Harold Marin, Ph.D. Candidate, UC San Francisco
Direct Observation of Anyonic Braiding Statistics - 10/23/2023 02:30 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
A basic tenet of quantum theory is that all elementary particles are either bosons or fermions. Ensembles of bosons or fermions behave differently due to differences in their underlying quantum statistics. Starting in the early 1980’s it was theoretically conjectured that excitations that are neither bosons nor fermions may exist under special conditions in two-dimensional interacting electron systems. These unusual excitations were dubbed “anyons”. Anyons possess fractional charge and fractional statistics, however directly probing these properties presents experimental challenges. This lecture will focus on the development of electronic Fabry-Perot interferometers that resulted in the first direct observation of anyonic braiding statistics in the fractional quantum Hall state at n=1/3. These experiments have now been extended to the more fragile multi-edge mode hierarchy state at n=2/5. Application of interferometry to the putative non-abelian state at n=5/2 will be discussed.
Speaker: Mike Manfra, Purdue University
Mitigating climate and air pollution from the electricity and transportation sectors in the United States - 10/23/2023 03:30 PM
Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) Colloquium Series Menlo Park
In this talk, I will cover a few recent papers and projects that focus on the measurement of emissions and the costs, benefits, and opportunities associated with a transition to sustainable, deeply decarbonized, and equitable energy systems is needed in the United States. For example, in [1], we show that with an increasing interconnected system that encompasses variable energy sources and complex markets, the emissions embedded in electricity generation and consumption are becoming more difficult to estimate. Using flow tracing and consumption-based accounting, we have characterized the health damages from exposure to PM2.5 from electricity imports and find that that 8% of our estimated premature deaths from electricity consumption in the United States are due to electricity imports. In [2] we assess the consequences of vehicle electrification across the country as a function of where vehicles are charged, and which types of plants are meeting that electricity demand, and in [3] we present a data-driven, realistic model of charging demand that captures the diverse charging behaviors of future adopters in the US Western Interconnection. We find that peak net electricity demand increases by up to 25% with forecast adoption and by 50% in a stress test with full electrification. In ongoing work, we develop tools and analysis that identify the most cost-effective strategies for retirement and replacements of existing electricity generation capacity, which can help guide state and federal decision-makers deep decarbonization plans.
Speaker: Inês M.L. Azevedo, Stanford University
Attend in person or via Zoom (see weblink)
Editor's Note: This event was originally scheduled for October 9
A New Lick Observatory - Bay Area Public College Consortium - 10/23/2023 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Dr. Metevier will describe a new effort to significantly expand Lick Observatory's education programs in the Bay Area. At the college level, this includes the development of a consortium of Bay Area public colleges (community colleges and Cal State campuses, including Sonoma State) that will have access to Lick Observatory's telescopes and technology for education programs. This effort reflects UC Observatories' strong interest in broadening access to Lick Observatory, which sits atop Mount Hamilton near San Jose. This consortium will provide students who may not have had access to a major astronomical research facility new experiences with observing, data analysis, and astronomical discovery. In addition to describing the new consortium and related activities, Dr. Metevier will describe how her career path led her to working with UC Observatories to direct the consortium.
Speaker: Dr. Anne Metevier, UC Santa Cruz
Mechanistic basis for amphibian resilience to climate change and disease - 10/23/2023 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Ana V. Longo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. Before starting this tenure-track position, Ana was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Maryland and Smithsonian Institution from 2015 to 2018. She received her PhD in 2015 from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. Ana has degrees in Biology (MS and BS) from University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras. Ana has taught courses in the topics of disease ecology and evolution, introductory biology, microbiome analyses, herpetology, and undergraduate field immersion experiences. Ana’s research interests are to identify and quantify the ecological and evolutionary processes that allow hosts to interact with their pathogens, parasites, and symbionts. Her interest in herpetology started as an effort to understand the role of fungal pathogens in global amphibian declines. Ana has built a research program primarily focused on identifying the determinants of disease defenses in tropical amphibians persisting with seasonal infections of the pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Her work on Puerto Rican direct-developing frogs combines field and experimental studies, providing mechanistic insights on how aquatic pathogens infect terrestrial species. In addition to her work in Puerto Rico, Ana has studied other amphibian systems in North America, México, Panamá, Brazil, and Chile.
Speaker: Ana Longo, University of Florida
Room: Auditorium
A vector spin glass made of atoms and photons - 10/23/2023 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Spin glasses are canonical examples of complex matter. Although much about their structure remains uncertain, they inform the description of a wide array of complex phenomena, ranging from magnetic ordering in metals with impurities to aspects of evolution, protein folding, climate models, combinatorial optimization, and artificial intelligence. Advancing experimental insight into their structure requires repeatable control over microscopic degrees of freedom. I will present how we achieved this at the atomic level using a quantum optical system comprised of ultracold gases of atoms coupled via photons resonating within a confocal cavity. This realizes an unusual form of transverse-field vector spin glass with all-to-all connectivity. The controllability provided by this new spin-glass system may enable the study of spin glass physics in novel regimes, with application to quantum associative memory.
Speaker: Benjamin Lev, Stanford University
Building Enduring Companies for Planetary Health - 10/23/2023 04:30 PM
Stanford University Energy Seminar Stanford
Climatetech refers to companies trying to reverse climate change using technology. We explore the key factors that drive long term success for companies that wish to make a positive impact on climate change and how startups can incorporate these learnings into their strategic plans. By using the physics of business, sectors with venture returns vs other asset classes can be elucidated.
Speaker: Arvind Gupta, Author
How to Build Personalization into LLM Recommendations - 10/23/2023 07:00 PM
Hacker Dojo Mountain View
We enable Large Language Models (LLM) with personalization capability. This is not specific to the LLM (Open AI's ChatGPT, Athropic's Claude, Meta's Llama 2, Googles,...)
Today, LLMs are not good at personalization and providing recommendations. They may advise physicians and financial advisors to "ask professionals" in their respective fields for help, even having user information available. When answering questions for software professionals, the LLM may need to deliver in-depth answers with code or algorithms, whereas for professionals in other fields would need definitions and main concepts.
The intent of this project is to make LLMs provide answers tailored to the needs of a specific user, taking into account available information about that individual. To do that, we need to generalize available documents about a person. Based on the needs of the application and with the permission of the individual being served, information used could include: their LinkedIn profile, visited web pages, investment history extracted from tax documents, and health forms (while maintaining the privacy of this person). We rely on meta-learning techniques to design an LLM prompt to produce a personalization prompt to obtain suitable relevant information. Such a “meta-prompt” is produced by a generalization operation applied to available documents for the user. These documents need to be de-identified so that they are sufficient for personalization, on one hand, and will maintain user privacy on the other hand.
A personalization profile is built from the link provided by the user.
Then, given a user question, this system will use the LLM to generate a set of queries. The URLs from search results are stored internally in a self.urls. A check is performed for any new URLs that haven't been processed yet (not in self.url_database). Only these new URLs are loaded, transformed, and added to the vector store. The vector store is queried for relevant documents based on the questions generated by the LLM. Only unique documents are returned as the final result.
This project build is in https://github.com/bgalitsky/LLM-personalization
Attend in person or online
Speaker: Boris Galitsky
Tuesday, 10/24/2023
The Quantum Age: From Bell Pairs to Quantum Computers - 10/24/2023 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Quantum mechanics has not one but two mysteries: the double-slit experiment and quantum correlations (entanglement) between two or more particles. Criticized by Einstein as “spooky action at a distance”, entanglement is now seen as an essential part of the physical world. The Bell inequalities, introduced to experimentally distinguish local hidden variable theories from quantum physics, have been confirmed to agree with quantum mechanics in many experiments.
Building on entangled Bell pairs, the last few years have seen a remarkable development in our ability to control many neutral atoms individually, and induce controlled interactions between them on demand. This progress ushers in a new era where one can create highly entangled states of many particles, break certain limits for quantum sensors, or study quantum phase transitions. I will present results on quantum simulation with atomic arrays containing more than 250 atoms. Finally, I will discuss prospects for near- and medium-term neutral-atom quantum computers with full quantum error correction.
Speaker:Vladan Vuletic, Massachusets Institute of Technology
Understanding the meteorological controls of landslide-inducing storms across California - 10/24/2023 03:30 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Johathan Perkins
Wonderfest: Pills for Aging - 10/24/2023 07:00 PM
Hopmonk Tavern Novato
How did society enable the distribution of drugs and supplements - principally in the form of pills - to billions of people? How, in particular, did "anti-aging treatments" come about? Can vitamins be efficacious against aging? Finally, what is the promise of recent supplements - developed based on our understanding of cellular biology - that influence aging in cells and model organisms, mainly mice?
Our speaker, Dr. Steve Cummings, is Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics at UCSF. Dr. Cummings directs the San Francisco Coordinating Center, having designed and led many of the most important medical studies of human aging.
Antarctica and South Georgia: Birds, Beasts and Bold Adventure - Livestream - 10/24/2023 07:00 PM
American Cetacean Society
Join ACS San Francisco Bay Chapter for another exciting evening with wildlife photographer, Jodi Frediani. For this talk, Jodi takes us on her fourth trip to the Antarctic Peninsula and her first voyage to South Georgia in October 2022. Her love of polar regions began with her first voyage to Antarctica in 2016. Previous visits had all occurred during the southern hemisphere's early fall (our early spring), while this trip took place as spring was peering around the corner in the south. Weather challenges made this a voyage to remember - along with king penguins and their fluffy chicks, mating southern elephant seals, courting Gentoo penguins, lively leopard seals, killer whales, humpback whales, and lots of ice and wild seas. And, yes, these are just some of the species she encountered. Join us for an evening of stories illustrated by Frediani's photographs.
Speaker: Jodi Frediani, wildlife photographer
Register at weblink
Wednesday, 10/25/2023
Restoration of kelp forest habitat in Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary - Livestream - 10/25/2023 11:00 AM
Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute
Speaker: Rietta Hohman - Kelp Restoration Project Manager, Greater Farallones NMS
Independent Community-rooted AI Research - 10/25/2023 12:00 PM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
The Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) was launched in December 2021 by Timnit Gebru as a space for independent, community-rooted AI research, free from Big Tech’s pervasive influence. Unlike the current trend of centralizing power and claiming to build one giant model that serves the needs of everyone while stealing data and exploiting labor, DAIR works on small task-specific models that serve the needs of specific communities. The organization shows that this approach not only outperforms current models from Big Tech corporations in applications like machine translation and automatic speech recognition, but also serves to distribute power across the world in the hands of grassroots organizations. Instead of envisioning a future where technology is used to plunder resources, colonize the cosmos and disenfranchise cultural workers, DAIR urges technologists to use their skills to address the needs of communities that are often harmed by the race to build monopolies.
Speaker: Timmit Gebru, Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute
Register to attend in person, or watch online (See weblink)
Genomics for Immunity: from natural diversity to precise modifications - 10/25/2023 12:00 PM
Morgan Hall Berkeley
The innate immune system is ancient and shared across kingdoms. Most organisms utilize innate immunity in the absence of an adaptive immunity to recognize rapidly evolving pathogens and elicit disease resistance response. Our laboratory works with plant, bacterial and fungal host-pathogen systems to understand biodiversity of the innate immune receptors and responses as well as the biodiversity of pathogens. Our goal is to apply this knowledge towards rapid, precise and sustainable engineering of disease resistance.
Speaker: Ksenia Krasileva, UC Berkeley
Measuring the Health Effects of Implicit Air Pollution Trades on the European Carbon Market - 10/25/2023 12:10 PM
Giannini Hall Berkeley
Market-based climate policies decentralize abatement decisions by establishing a CO2 price, either via taxes or via a pollution permit market. Since CO2 emissions are often released jointly with conventional air pollutants, CO2 permit trades give rise to implicit trades of such co-pollutants. In contrast to CO2 emissions, co-pollution emissions are not traded on a ton-for-ton basis, and they have local environmental impacts. Depending on the spatial distribution of polluters and the polluted, these properties can lead to undesirable health outcomes. We develop an empirical framework for quantifying changes in plant-level air pollution emissions due to carbon permit trades on the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). Linking predictions of this framework to a purpose-built chemical transport model (Gu et al., 2023a, 2023b), we estimate the associated effects on ambient concentrations of PM2.5 and ozone in Europe on a 0.25° by 0.3125° grid. We apply this framework to provide first estimates of the health consequences of co-pollution trades on the European carbon market. We find that health co-benefits during the first decade of the EU ETS were substantially larger than under a counterfactual command-and-control regulation.
Speaker: Ulrich Wagner, University of Mannheim
Community-Engaged Climate Adaptation Research in Yucatán, Mexico - 10/25/2023 12:10 PM
Archaeology Research Facility Berkeley
In Yucatán, as in many regions around the world, a history exists of Indigenous land and heritage dispossession, which continue today. This presentation introduces a case in which archaeologists, in partnership with town leaders and residents, strive to counteract those tendencies. The current initiative of PACOY (the Proyecto Arqueológico Colaborativo del Oriente de Yucatán) involves research on past and present adaptations to climate change, with a focus on agriculture as practiced on commonly-held land (the town’s ejido). Methods employed as part of this project include interviews with expert farmers, LiDAR and ground survey within the ejido, and environmental studies. The goal is to generate activities that promote ongoing control of the land, as well as the cultural heritage it represents.
Speaker: Maia Dedrick, Santa Clara University
Attend in person or online (register at weblink)
Paths to climate resilience through groundwater chemistry and environmental justice - 10/25/2023 03:30 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center Tiburon
Speaker: Jory Lerback, Lawrence Livermore National Labs
Attend in person or via Zoom (see weblink to register)
Energy and Resources Group Colloquium - 10/25/2023 04:00 PM
Giannini Hall Berkeley
Customers are adopting new energy technologies, incentivized by state and federal electrification programs. At the same time, utilities and regulators are exploring new pricing strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs. Will the electrical distribution system be able to support these innovations without expensive system upgrades? In this talk, I explore challenges in price-signal control of distributed energy resources (DERs) and the potential congestion management issues that arise in the distribution system. I will then present a data-driven approach for voltage management and a novel electricity tariff designed for congestion management of DERs.
Speaker: Phillippe Phanivong
AI's Impact on Society: How Do We Do This the Right Way? - 10/25/2023 05:30 PM
ServiceNow San Francisco
Ready for a night out? We got views, food, and drinks - and an important panel discussion:
"AI's Impact on Society: How Do We Do This the Right Way?"
Delve into the world of AI's development and its hidden complexitiesLearn about the tools and strategies used to tackle risksExplore responsible AI practices for a mindful future
A recipe for an unforgettable evening:
Passionate panel discussionFood + DrinksNetworkingRooftop patioSan Francisco Bay Views
Don't miss out on thought-provoking panel discussions and valuable insights! Whether you're a tech enthusiast, AI professional, or simply curious about the future, this event is for you.
Zombiology - Livestream - 10/25/2023 06:00 PM
The Leakey Foundation
What can zombie movies teach us about biology, behavior, evolution, and survival?
Join Dr. Jason Lewis for a crash course in Zombiology based on his popular Stony Brook University class. Dr. Lewis and The Leakey Foundation’s Brandon Upchurch will discuss contagion, conflict, cannibalism, and what a zombie apocalypse can reveal about small-group societies and the collapse of civilizations.
This online event includes an interactive Q&A and a chance to hang out and chat about science with other evolution enthusiasts.
Register at weblink
Curved Spaces - Geometry from the Inside - 10/25/2023 07:00 PM
Castro Valley Library Castro Valley
The geometry of the ancient Greeks took place on an ideal, infinite, flat plane. In the millenia since then, mathematicians have opened our minds to the more general and flexible geometries of curved spaces - from the fabric that makes up our clothing, to the spacetime around a black hole. Now, we can develop an 'insider's view' of such geometries. This newfound intuition has intriguing applications, including to recent images from the James Webb Space Telescope! Such understanding allows us to better appreciate Einstein's greatest insight: that gravity is not a force, but rather a consequence of living in a curvy world.
Our speaker, Dr. Steve Trettel, is Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of San Francisco. He is a geometric topologist who loves computer graphics and a good bike ride.
Archaeology and Ecological Crisis: Lessons in Sustainability from the Past - 10/25/2023 07:30 PM
Marin Science Seminar San Rafael
The world today is facing a variety of ecological crises and to combat these crises, policymakers are working hard to promote sustainability. While rarely included in policy discussions, archaeology has a part to play in contributing to a sustainable future. Archaeology uniquely provides us with thousands of years of information about how other societies interacted with their environments: how they used natural resources, managed their ecosystems, and either thrived or collapsed based on these interactions. Elic Weitzel - a human ecologist and archaeologist at the University of Connecticut - will describe some of the contributions archaeology can make to understanding sustainability, highlighting his own work on natural resource use and management in precolonial and early colonial North America. His research investigates how deliberately set fires can impact ecosystem health and resource abundance, how human demographic change impacts resource consumption, and how unsustainability often follows from commodification of natural resources in profit-driven economies. His talk will focus specifically on white-tailed deer, exploring why precolonial deer herds were hunted sustainably for millennia while colonial-era deer populations crashed soon after the arrival of European colonists. Elic will conclude his talk by discussing the environmental policy implications of these archaeological results, highlighting that the power of archaeology and the study of past societies is in reminding us that the way things are today is not necessarily the way that things must be.
Speaker: Elic Weitzel, University of Connecticut
Thursday, 10/26/2023
Degrowth for a New Generation - Livestream - 10/26/2023 10:00 AM
Post Carbon Institute
Post Carbon Institute is pleased to be in conversation with author and researcher, Timothée Parrique, and community organizer and writer, Jamie Tyberg. Together we will explore what degrowth is (and isn’t), how people are embracing the concept of degrowth, what needs to happen to move degrowth from classrooms to boardrooms and staterooms, and how to confront powerful people and institutions who are trying to keep us pinned to the ruinous growth paradigm.
Speakers: Timothée Parrique, Lund University; Jamie Tyberg, DegrowNYC
Development of an Open Data Platform for the Global South - 10/26/2023 12:00 PM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
Speaker: Dr. George Obaido, UC Berkeley
Attend in person or online (see weblink)
Virtual Halloween Event: Learning Through Death - Livestream - 10/26/2023 12:00 PM
Marine Mammal Center
At The Marine Mammal Center, our experts perform fairly unique work on every patient who dies at our hospital and on whales that wash ashore. Pathologists, who are like scientific detectives, search for underlying causes of why an animal died and identify patterns for different diseases through a necropsy, or animal autopsy. Performed at our hospital, or on the beach for large animals like whales, necropsy and pathology efforts provide us with valuable information that contribute to the body of research not just for our organization, but also for scientists and academic institutions worldwide.
Our pathologists are expanding our knowledge and increasing our ability to help future patients. What each animal teaches us, in life or in death, contributes to the greater understanding of these species and our ocean, allowing us to better protect them and effect change.
Join Dr. Maggie Martinez, an expert in diagnostic pathology and health-based research, for this fascinating virtual event where you will learn about the work of a pathologist and the important discoveries made through necropsy and pathology at the Center.
During this Zoom webinar event, you’ll be able to share your questions for Dr. Martinez to answer live along with host Adam Ratner, Director of Conservation Engagement.
Viewer discretion advised: Due to the nature of this webinar, there will be photos of our experts at work, including deceased animals and collecting samples of tissues, blood, and fur. Please consider whether this is an appropriate viewing experience for you.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
NightLife on Elm Street - 10/26/2023 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
One, two, NightLife’s comin’ for you. This Halloween, don’t sleep on NightLife because we're summoning all the creatures of the night for one of our favorite times of the year. Brace yourself for spine-chilling drag performances by Oaklash, scary stories, costumes, and more.
Get in the spirit and come dressed to impress! Costumes are highly encouraged and welcomed.
Please note: Any weapons and full face Halloween masks are not allowed. Let’s keep those ghoulish grins visible!
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
NightLife on Elm Street West Garden
8:30 - 9:30 PM - The Bay Area’s first and only drag and queer performance festival Oaklash is back and bringing 1980s Halloween slasher realness. Get ready for sickeningly spooky drag performances and bewitching music.
Paranormal Activity East Garden8:00 PM
Gather round: We’re telling ghost stories. East Bay filmmaker Ying Liu from Amazon Prime’s The Haunted Bayrecounts the creepiest moments they've experienced while filming ghost investigations in some of San Francisco's most historic places.
Little Shop of Horrors Swamp6 - 10 PM
Trick-or-treat yourself to a slew of spooky treasures at our Hallowen boo-tique, featuring:Gashly TentaclesHaunted Manor BoutiqueInky FingersOrphans of DudleytownTravesurasSan Franpsycho
The Craft Science Today6 - 10 PM
Draw inspiration from your favorite slasher film for hands-on crafts with the Museum of Craft and Design.
Cocktails handcrafted by Denizen Rum, Fiero Tequila, Tito's Handmade Vodka, and WhistlePig Whiskey, the official liquor of NightLife.
Life as a Space Weather Analyst - Livestream - 10/26/2023 06:00 PM
Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Ever wondered what Space Weather is? Curious to know what it’s like to analyze Space Weather real-time? Carina Alden will take us through a day in the life of what it’s like being a Space Weather Analyst, monitoring Space Weather real-time, and what it could take to get a job in the field.
Speaker: Carina Alden, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
After Dark: Thrills and Chills - 10/26/2023 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
What better place to celebrate spooky season than at the Exploratorium? Observe human heart cells beat on their own, discover how many blood cells you have, and watch your body turn transparent - skeleton, organs, and all! Your adventures will be scored by Oakland’s own Awesöme Orchestra as they perform music from classic thriller and fantasy films.
Science on Tap: Soaking Up Success: The Medicinal Molecules of Sponges - 10/26/2023 07:00 PM
Museum of Art and History Santa Cruz
Natural medicines and pharmaceuticals have gone hand in hand together for thousands of years, with up to 60% of the modern pharmaceutical market consisting of drugs derived from nature. Such examples include the fungal antibiotic penicillin, morphine from the poppy, or the anti-cancer drug taxol originating from the Pacific yew tree. Just a few miles away, our vastly unexplored oceans may hold the key to finding the next life-saving medicine. In this talk, I will explore one of nature's oldest organisms, the sea sponge, and its chemistry. There are two reasons to examine the sea sponge: its diverse chemistry, as it makes sense that they may hold insight into overcoming disease due to their long-lasting history on this planet. In this talk, I will discuss the process of natural product discovery, the many biologically active compounds produced by these organisms, and the promising future they may hold. I will also discuss my research into solving the structurally complex molecules sponges make, the selective antibiotics they produce, and the bright future they may have for human health.
Speaker: Samuel Mussetter, UC Santa Cruz
Friday, 10/27/2023
Granular Mechanics Across Time and Length Scales: Insights from In-Situ X-ray Measurements - 10/27/2023 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Ryan Hurley, UC Santa Cruz
High-stakes decisions from low-quality data: AI decision-making for planetary health - Livestream - 10/27/2023 01:00 PM
Berkeley Institute for Data Science
Planetary health recognizes the inextricable link between human health and the health of our planet. Our planet’s growing crises include biodiversity loss, with animal population sizes declining by an average of 70% since 1970, and maternal mortality, with 1 in 49 girls in low-income countries dying from complications in pregnancy or birth. Overcoming these crises will require effectively allocating and managing our limited resources. My research develops data-driven AI decision-making methods to do so, overcoming the messy data ubiquitous in these settings. Here, I’ll present technical advances in multi-armed bandits, robust reinforcement learning, and causal inference, addressing research questions that emerged from on-the-ground challenges across conservation and maternal health. I’ll also discuss bridging the gap from research and practice, with anti-poaching field tests in Cambodia, field visits in Belize and Uganda, and large-scale deployment with SMART conservation software.
Speaker: Lily Xu, Harvard University
Public Tours of Bodega Marine Laboratory - 10/27/2023 02:00 PM
UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory Bodega Bay
These tours are led by our wonderful crew of ocean-loving docents, and visitors will learn about ongoing marine and coastal science research at Bodega Marine Laboratory and its history on the Sonoma Coast. Plus, you'll get to meet a variety of colorful and diverse ocean creatures.
The front gates will be open to allow visitors in from 1:45 until 3:45pm on Fridays. Please plan to arrive no earlier than 15 minutes prior to your tour start time.
Public tours are only available by reservation on Eventbrite. If your preferred tour time is already full, you can place your name on a waitlist through Eventbrite to claim a spot if one becomes available.
Global Insights to Anticipate and Address Tomorrow’s Cybersecurity Challenges - 10/27/2023 03:10 PM
South Hall Berkeley
From ubiquitous software-controlled vehicles, innovations in gaming, virtual reality, and hyper-scale cloud adoption, to supply chain frictions, a proliferation of inexpensive tools available to cybercriminals, the emergence of synthetic image generators, and fractures in global internet governance, the landscape of digital security is constantly changing.
Cybersecurity Futures 2030 is a foresight-focused scenario-planning exercise, led by the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity in partnership with the World Economic Forum, to consider how cybersecurity is set to transform over the next five to seven years. This talk will discuss findings that have emerged from a series of international workshops on four continents, teeing up important choices in cybersecurity that decision-makers can use to seize opportunities, address challenges, and mitigate risks that exist just over the horizon.
Attend in person or online.
Editor's Note: This event was originally scheduled for October 20, 2023.
Saturday, 10/28/2023
Science Saturday: Spooky Science Saturday - 10/28/2023 10:00 AM
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Pacific Grove
Stewardship Saturday: Being Sea Otter Savvy in Morro Bay - 10/28/2023 10:00 AM
Morro Rock Morro Bay
This free program for high school students features rotating themes exploring the science of the Center.
Take to the water with The Marine Mammal Center, Sea Otter Savvy, and Central Coast Outdoors! Through this event you will learn more about the sea otters in Morro Bay that all three organizations work to protect and respect. We will be exploring safe wildlife viewing practices through human disturbance data collection on the shore and then getting into kayaks to practice what it looks like to safely share the space with these otters. We hope that by the end of this event you will feel empowered to share your experience with others and work to respect marine mammals in their natural environment. Lunch and light snacks will be provided.
Register at weblink. Also see weblink for exact location of start and finish, which are different.
Family Nature Walks - Foothills Nature Preserve - Rescheduled - 10/28/2023 11:00 AM
Foothills Nature Preserve Los Altos
Environmental Volunteers’ Family Nature Walks program is designed to help students and their families get to know our local open space areas. Small family groups will be guided by a knowledgeable environmental educator during an exploration of a local open space. These small groups will be introduced to fun nature-based activities, and a chance to learn more about the plants and animals all around us. Join us for some fun, outdoor learning!
Each group will have a maximum limit of 12 participants.
Families/groups are welcome to sign up for as many as they like. The nature walks are intended for children aged 6 to 11, and we ask that each group is accompanied by an adult.
If registration is full, get on the waitlist! If the waitlist is large enough, additional groups can be created if EV Nature Walk leaders are available.
Intended for ages 6 - 11, plus adult supervision.
This walk was originally scheduled on September 9, then October 21, then October 28. It is now back to October 21.
Exploring the Sky Through Astrophotography: From Cities to the Darkest Skies - 10/28/2023 07:30 PM
San Jose Astronomical Association San Jose
This presentation will take you on a journey through the cosmos, showcasing astro-images captured with everything from a DSLR on a tripod to a 500mm telescopes. Glenn will share his work from local urban skies, as well as the best observatory locations in Australia, Chile, and Spain. You'll see images of the Milky Way, the Moon and Sun, timelapse and star-trails, globular clusters, dark, reflection, emission, and planetary nebulae, and supernova remnants. Glenn will also cover some of the basic concepts of astrophotography, so you can start your own journey to capturing the beauty of the night sky.
Speaker: Glenn Newell, SJAA
A Wealth of Other Worlds: Planets through the Eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope - 10/28/2023 07:30 PM
East Bay Astronomical Society Oakland
Dr. Sarah Moran (University of Arizona) will discuss the chemistry, clouds, and climates of worlds within and beyond the Solar System. With the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we are seeing the worlds of our Solar System in a whole new light, seeing better into the infrared than ever before. Planets beyond the Solar System - aka “exoplanets” - put our own Solar System and Earth in context, helping us figure out whether life on Earth is unique. These planets also tell us about the limits of planetary formation and evolution. Though we have known of the existence of thousands of exoplanets for over a decade, detailed characterization has been limited with only the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories.
With JWST, new chemical and climate characterization is possible, letting us trace the carbon contents and complex molecules in other atmospheres. Dr. Moran will discuss the first 15 months of observations of other planets with JWST. In this time, we have made our first detection of sulfur chemistry on a warm Saturn-like planet, the first hints of an atmosphere on a rocky, Earth-sized planet, and have seen unprecedented views of our Solar System. She will put in context what these discoveries mean for finding habitable and possibly inhabited worlds in the future and celebrate the wonderful wealth of worlds that exist in our Universe.
Attend in person or online (see weblink)
Sunday, 10/29/2023
Morning Hike at Rancho Cañada del Oro - 10/29/2023 09:30 AM
Rancho Canada Del Oro Open Space Preserve Morgan hill
Join Peninsula Open Space Trust for an excursion where you’ll explore the Mayfair Ranch - Longwall Canyon trails of Rancho Cañada del Oro! You will be guided by POST Ambassadors who will share with you the history of the preserve, the region, and the importance of conservation in the area.
The hike is moderate to strenuous at about 4 miles round trip with about 700 feet of gradual elevation gain.
This wonderful preserve is a hub for wildlife, such as deer, bobcats, mountain lions, and more! In the Spring, you can expect a colorful array of wildflowers adorning the hillsides, and you may get a chance to see a beautiful little creek running through Llagas meadow.
Register at weblink
Animal Day - 10/29/2023 10:00 AM
UC Botanical Garden Berkeley
Join us at this celebration of animals at the UC Botanical with drop-in experiences including interactive booths and displays, crafts, tours, live animals to see and touch, and more! Non-scary costumes are welcome!
1-3pm Visit with live animals with the Lindsay Wildlife Experience educators!
Learn all about busy bees and watch them work in a demo hive
Explore the fascinating world of pollination with Garden docents
10am -1pm Watch slithering, stealthy snakes with Things that Creep
Check out some fascinating flyers and crawlers with the Essig Museum of Entomology
Animal themed body paint tattoos 11am-3pm
Get to know the coastal birds of the Bay with educators from the Shorebird Park Nature Center
Get crafty at our kids craft station and make an animal mask
Visit the Japanese Pool to learn out newts!
Take a little stroll with Garden volunteer Sal Levinson to explore butterflies and host plants! Space is limited. Reserve your spot that day at the Garden Kiosk.
Host Plant Stroll 1pm - 1:30pmButterfly Stroll 2pm - 2:30pm
Monday, 10/30/2023
Biofilm Benefactors: Unveiling the Role of Biofilms in Subsurface and Plant Rhizosphere Microbial Communities - 10/30/2023 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Dr. Mingfei Chen, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs
Physics Condensed Matter Seminar - 10/30/2023 02:30 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
Speaker: Trithep Devakul
Fate, form, and the organizing role of the supracellular nexus - 10/30/2023 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Amy Shyer earned her B.S. in Psychobiology from UCLA where she began her research career studying synaptic transmission in Drosophila. For her Ph.D. at Harvard, she bridged experimental developmental biology with biophysics through work with developmental geneticist Cliff Tabin and applied mathematician L. Mahadevan. As a Miller Research Fellow at UC Berkeley, she worked with the labs of Richard Harland and Sanjay Kumar, intersecting embryology with bioengineering tools to expose novel relationships between gene expression and morphogenesis. In 2018, she joined the Rockefeller University as an assistant professor and head of the Laboratory of Morphogenesis. She has been awarded a Miller Research Fellowship, a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award at the Scientific Interface, and is a 2020 Searle Scholar and a 2023 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award recipient.
Speaker: Amy Shyer, The Rockefeller University
Room: Auditorium
N ~ 1: Alone In The Milky Way - 10/30/2023 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Planetary scientist Dr. Pascal Lee will reviews our present knowledge about each term of the Drake Equation, which is at the heart of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He will examine in turn star and planet formation, geological and biological evolution, the emergence of intelligence and technology, and possible fates of advanced civilizations. He reaches the surprising conclusion that N is likely a small number, most likely N~1. We could be it. Implications of N~1 would be profound and will be discussed.
Speaker: Pascal Lee, SETI Institute
Accelerating the Transition to Electric Vehicles: EV Charging Solutions for Rideshare - 10/30/2023 04:30 PM
Stanford University Energy Seminar Stanford
Transportation accounts for 29% of greenhouse gas emissions in the US today. In the State of California, this figure is closer to 38%, with over 140 million metric tons of GHG emissions in 2020 alone. Electrifying the transportation sector can reduce more than 75% of its GHG emissions nationwide. Recognizing this significant opportunity electric vehicles provide, California is requiring all new cars sold in 2035 and beyond to be zero-emission vehicles. The state has also passed legislation mandating that 90% of miles driven by rideshare fleets be fully electric by 2030. EVCS, one of the largest public EV charging networks on the West Coast, aims to accelerate EV adoption by expanding access to fast, affordable, reliable, and conveniently located charging stations that are powered by 100% renewable energy. Hertz, one of the largest worldwide vehicle rental companies, is investing in the largest EV rental fleet in North America, with plans to have 25% of its vehicle fleet be electric by the end of 2024. In alignment with California's ambitious rideshare electrification goals, Hertz has also introduced EVs to their rideshare partners, making driving electric accessible and attractive. Earlier this year, EVCS and Hertz launched an EV charging pilot program for rideshare EV renters in California, and we celebrated a major milestone of 2 million miles of carbon-free EV charging. In this talk, EVCS and Hertz will share insights on our rideshare electrification efforts, highlighting how a startup and major corporation are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of EVs in California and beyond.
Bay Area Bats - 10/30/2023 05:00 PM
UC Botanical Garden Berkeley
Come learn about our CA native bats with Director of NorCal Bats Corky Quirk. In her presentation, you will learn about the nature of bats and the importance of bats in our environment. We’ll also discuss the harmful myths that surround these animals. Live bats will be presented for viewing and discussion. Seeing these small, almost cuddly creatures might forever change how you feel about these amazing mammals.
The Warped Side of Our Universe - 10/30/2023 05:30 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Take a walk on the warped side with this in-person program featuring stars in their respective fields.
The new book The Warped Side of Our Universe is the result of the collaboration of Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne and award-winning artist Lia Halloran. It brings to vivid life the wonders and wildness of our universe’s “Warped Side”―objects and phenomena made from warped space and time, from colliding black holes and collapsing wormholes to twisting space vortices and down-cascading time. Through poetic verse and otherworldly paintings, the scientist and the artist explicate Thorne’s and his colleagues’ astrophysical discoveries and speculations, with an epic narrative that asks: How did the universe begin? Can anything travel backward in time? And what weird and marvelous phenomena inhabit the "warped side"?
In their book, Thorne and Halloran take readers on an Odyssean voyage using epic verse and more than 100 pulsating paintings to shed light on time travel, black holes, gravitational waves and the birth of the universe. Join us in-person to hear them share tales of the warped side.
Use WonderfestPromo for a $10 discount
Experimental proof that nonlocal quantum entanglement is real - 10/30/2023 05:30 PM
International House Berkeley
I describe experiments and theory that provide the first experimental proof that nonlocal quantum entanglement is real. Sadly, the experimental results also undermine Albert Einstein’s basic platform for providing a mathematical description of nature in a space-time framework, and make quantum mechanics very difficult to understand. Quantum entanglement now provides the basis for the second quantum revolution. It is used by quantum encryption and quantum computers.
Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR, 1935) proposed Local Hidden Variable Theories as a possible completion of Quantum Mechanics for entangled-state systems. John Bell (1964) ironically showed mathematically that the existence of EPR’s local hidden variables is incompatible with the predictions of Quantum Mechanics. Inspired by his result, Clauser, Horne, Shimony, and Holt (CHSH, 1969) designed a specific experiment employing entangled photon pairs. Assuming that a general Local Hidden Variable Theory governs the experiment, they derive the CHSH inequality as an experimental prediction for it. Alternatively, they show that Quantum Mechanics predicts measurably different results for the experiment. Hence, the two theories are experimentally distinguishable. The 1969 CHSH inequality is the first experimentally testable so-called “Bell inequality”. The first experimental test of it was by Freedman-Clauser (1972), performed at the UC Berkeley Physics Dept. and LBNL. That experiment measured the polarization correlation of entangled photon pairs produced by an atomic cascade in Calcium. The second experimental test was also at UC Berkeley [Clauser (1976)]. It used photon pairs produced by Mercury. These two experiments were the first observations of a violation of the CHSH - Bell inequality, and disproved general Local Hidden Variable Theories.
Given limitations of available technology at that time, fully conclusive tests of the CHSH - Bell inequality were not possible, and highly plausible auxiliary assumptions were additionally offered to facilitate the tests. The need for these auxiliary assumptions identified various associated so-called loopholes associated with the experiment. Subsequent experimental efforts eventually closed these loopholes.
In 1974, Clauser and Horne formulated the theory of Local Realism as a significant generalization of EPR’s Local Hidden Variable Theories, and derived its important experimental prediction - the 1974 Clauser-Horne (CH) inequality. Additional contributions were subsequently added to the theory by Abner Shimony and John Bell. The 1974 CH inequality is the second experimentally testable “Bell inequality”. It is loophole-free. Given even milder assumptions than those used by CHSH, the CH inequality reduces to the CHSH inequality, and the Freedman-Clauser (1972) and Clauser (1976) experiments then also refute Local Realism. The CH inequality is experimentally much more demanding to test than is the CHSH inequality when the auxiliary assumptions are not imposed. Observations of its violation have occurred only more recently in 2015 and 2017.
In addition to closing several so-called “loopholes” left by CHSH inequality tests, Local Realism and CH inequality tests provide an important test of the minimal elements of Einstein’s whole theoretical platform for providing a mathematical description of nature in a “laboratory” space-time framework. Local Realism minimally assumes that nature consists of matter, a.k.a. “elements of reality”, objectively real objects, i.e. “stuff” or “matter” that is distributed throughout space and evolves in time. Stuff may evolve either deterministically or stochastically, and may or may not have a finite mass-energy density. Local Realism simply assumes that experimental results are definite, whether or not they are observed. (That is, the cat is either dead or alive. We just may not know which.) It further assumes that the presence and properties of the stuff determine the probabilities of the results of experiments performed locally. Finally, Local Realism also prohibits super-luminal signals from propagating and thereby influencing these probabilities. Surprisingly, these simple assumptions are sufficient for a derivation of the CH inequality, and, in turn, are now refuted by experiment.
Speaker: John Francis Clauser, 2022 Nobel Laureate
AI + Humanity - 10/30/2023 07:00 PM
Computer History Museum Mountain View
Is AI a threat to humanity or a partner with the power to unlock our full potential?
Explore a vision of the future with Reid Hoffman, cofounder of Inflection AI and former board member of OpenAI. Reid Hoffman will expand on key issues from his new book, Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI, cowritten with AI chatbot GPT-4.
Can AI be put to work to make human life more meaningful and prosperous? Can chatbots play a role in helping to solve global challenges? What will AI's impact be on work, education, creativity, and privacy?
The discussion will help you make informed decisions as AI becomes increasingly integrated into daily life. Don't miss it!
Register at weblink
Tuesday, 10/31/2023
Stanford Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium - 10/31/2023 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Speleothem constraints on tropical hydroclimate dynamics - 10/31/2023 03:30 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Unveiling the Sun: Exploring the Wonders of Solar Astrophysics - 10/31/2023 07:00 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Wednesday, 11/01/2023
Hacking for Impact (H4I): University students solving real-world environmental challenges at the speed of a start-up - Livestream - 11/01/2023 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Leveraging old monitoring programs for new insights into San Francisco Estuary temperature trends - Livestream - 11/01/2023 11:00 AM
Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute
November LASER Event - Livestream - 11/01/2023 12:00 PM
LASER Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous
'Hydrological intelligence' in streamflow forecasting: finding a happy medium between data-driven and physically based approaches - 11/01/2023 03:30 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center Tiburon
Science Uncorked: Stemming the Tide: Building Climate Resilience with Ocean-Based Solutions - 11/01/2023 06:00 PM
Gourmet au Bay Bodega Bay
The Quest for Environmental and Climate Justice - 11/01/2023 06:00 PM
David Brower Center Berkeley
We Need New Antibiotics - Why Do We Have So Few? - 11/01/2023 07:30 PM
Marin Science Seminar San Rafael
Thursday, 11/02/2023
Easy Walk at Wavecrest - 11/02/2023 10:00 AM
Wavecrest Open Space Preserve Half Moon Bay
Generative AI: Race, Art, and Power - 11/02/2023 10:30 AM
South Hall Berkeley
Smart Grid Seminar: Aurora Winslade, Edison International - Livestream - 11/02/2023 01:30 PM
Environment & Energy Building (Y2E2) Stanford
AI Alignment and RLHF: What we've accomplished, what we've learned, and what's missing! - 11/02/2023 04:00 PM
Sonoma State Dept. of Engineering Science Rohnert Park
After Dark: See for Yourself - 11/02/2023 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
NightLife: Día de los Muertos - 11/02/2023 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Goodbye Gas, Hello EVs! - Livestream - 11/02/2023 07:00 PM
City of Sunnyvale
Friday, 11/03/2023
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics Seminar - 11/03/2023 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Public Tours of Bodega Marine Laboratory - 11/03/2023 02:00 PM
UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory Bodega Bay
First Friday: Science Obscura - 11/03/2023 06:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Public Astronomy Viewing Nights - 11/03/2023 07:30 PM
Sonoma State University Public Astronomy Rohnert Park
The Vera Rubin Observatory and LSST Camera - 11/03/2023 08:00 PM
College of San Mateo Bldg 36 San Mateo
Saturday, 11/04/2023
Raptor Fest at Rancho San Vicente! - 11/04/2023 09:30 AM
Rancho San Vicente Open Space Preserve San Jose
Crawlies Aren't Creepy - 11/04/2023 10:30 AM
Youth Science Institute Los Gatos
Shining light on solar cells and their material impacts - Livestream - 11/04/2023 10:30 AM
California Section American Chemical Society
Part 2 Neurobiology of Religious Experiences - 11/04/2023 03:00 PM
TBA
Starry Nights Star Party - 11/04/2023 07:00 PM
Rancho Canada Del Oro Open Space Preserve Morgan hill
Sunday, 11/05/2023
Solar Observing - 11/05/2023 01:30 PM
San Jose Astronomical Association San Jose
Monday, 11/06/2023
Sonoma State University Biology Colloquium - 11/06/2023 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
From quantum hard drive to foliated manifold - 11/06/2023 02:30 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
Species, sex, and silk: arachnid evolution in three parts - 11/06/2023 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
From Astronomical Research to Communicating Astronomy - 11/06/2023 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
UC Berkeley Physics Colloquium - 11/06/2023 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Real Reliability: The Value of Virtual Power - 11/06/2023 04:30 PM
Stanford University Energy Seminar Stanford