Hello again Science Fans!
It has been a very busy few weeks, with lots of news on many scientific fronts, so let’s get to it.
Health
I remember all too well late August and early September, 2000. I was returning from a road trip and spent a night in Pensacola, FL. I went to dinner at a restaurant early in the evening. One of the staff came in behind me carrying a small bag which I would later overhear her say was full of medicine her doctor had given her to counter the infection she had. She coughed a lot. It turned out she was my waitress. By the time I got back to California, I too was sick and began coughing.
I went to my doctor who ran some blood tests and determined that I had contracted pertussis, better known as whooping cough. Believe me, it isn’t something you want to catch. I was coughing until Thanksgiving. But the whooping cough isn’t the subject of this tale, it is the other thing that I tested positive for…exposure to Valley fever. I never had symptoms and have no idea when I might have been exposed, but I had antibodies. It turns out that Valley fever is getting more prevalent, due to our old friend climate change.
Remember Pong? Scientists have grown a human “brain”, called dish brain, that learned to play Pong in just 5 minutes, as this video shows.
Other scientists developed a procedure that gives vision to mice with a congenital blindness condition, leading towards eventual sight potential for blind humans.
Evolution
While I’m talking about humans, the story of how our species came to be is ongoing. Six recent discoveries have changed how we look at our origins and other humanoid species.
Then there is the humble banana. It seems there are some ancestors to our common banana that weren’t known before, and the search is on to find if they still exist. The story of how we got to the banana of today is quite an interesting one.
COVID-19
President Biden said recently that the pandemic is over. While that may be, the disease is far from gone. Some would argue that the pandemic is still a pandemic. California will exit emergency status on February 28, 2023.
We got used to daily updates from our counties tracking newly reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths attributed to COVID. But much of that data is now only released weekly, and isn’t nearly as accurate as it once was, for several reasons. Here are some thoughts on what data is meaningful now, and what isn’t.
COVID keeps mutating, and is now showing the first signs of convergent evolution. And here are the variants likely to drive a surge of new cases this winter.
Bottom line…get boosted! I received my bivalent booster last week.
Fake News
It will probably come as no surprise to most of you to learn that the Trump administration pressured the CDC to change its weekly COVID morbidity and mortality reports.
Way back in 1991, work was already underway to undermine the climate change message, as this excerpt from “The Petroleum Papers” details.
Space
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)was wildly successful. If you haven’t seen video of DART reaching Dimorphos, see this article. The objective was to alter the orbit of Dimorphos, which circles Didymos, by measuring the time of an orbit to see if the mission was successful. Well, the orbit was shortened by 32 minutes, more than expected, proving that we can nudge an asteroid, thereby changing its orbit, and potentially knocking it off a path that might take it into Earth’s orbit.
Why is this DART accomplishment important? Consider this simulation of what a 310 mile-wide asteroid would do if it hit Earth.
We tend to think that Earth’s rotation, and our Moon’s orbit, have always been as they are now. But 2.46 billion years ago, we had a day of only 17 hours, and the moon was much closer! I wonder what a 17 hour clock would look like?
The current position of the moon, relative to the earth, allows for total solar eclipses. If the moon was closer to Earth, there would be more total eclipses as the moon would appear larger when seen from Earth. Over time as the moon drifts further away, there will be fewer, until eventually there won’t be a total solar eclipse ever again. But not to worry, that won’t happen for a very long time.
Coming up on November 8th, we’ll have a total lunar eclipse. Andrew Fraknoi has put together a nice article on this eclipse, and eclipses in general, that you can download here. Thanks for the info Andy!
Eclipses never come alone. A solar eclipse occurs either two weeks before or after a lunar eclipse. True to form, one will be visible this Tuesday, but only if you live in Europe, and it won’t be total. Here are the details. Parts of North America will have an annular solar eclipse (where the moon is centered on the sun, but is too far from earth to totally block the sun’s image) in October, 2023, and there will be a total solar eclipse across the eastern US in April , 2024. Here you can see information on the solar and lunar eclipses for the next 10 years.
The Curiosity rover on Mars has reached an area of salty deposits, believed to have formed billions of years ago, when Mars still had water on it.
Lastly, two pioneers of space travel died this week. Jim McDivitt, who flew both the Gemini 4 (which included the first US space walk) and Apollo 9 missions died at age 93. Lodewijk van den Berg, the first Dutch-born astronaut, who flew aboard the space shuttle Challenger, died at age 90.
Godspeed to them both.
Have a great week in Science!
Bob
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 10/24/2022
Mariage(s) Made in Heaven - 10/24/2022 11:00 AM
Varian Physics Building Stanford
The coming decade will see a plethora of large area astronomical surveys, from both the ground and space and across the electromagnetic spectrum. Combining these data is a wonderful example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. We will discuss two examples: gains from combining the Euclid space mission with the Vera C. Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), and cross-correlations of galaxy surveys with cosmic microwave background and X-ray imaging to take a comprehensive census of the components of the cosmic web - galaxies, diffuse gas, and dark matter - and their co-evolution, thereby directly tackling the Cosmic Ecosystem priority area called out in the Astro2020 decadal report.
Speaker: James Bartlett, Universite Paris Cite
Using Bioenergetic Analysis to Understand Cellular ATP Supply and Demand During Cell Growth, Cancer, and More - 10/24/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Dr. Shona Mookerjee, Tuoro University, California. College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Fall Birds of the East Bay Hills - Livestream - 10/24/2022 12:00 PM
UC Botanical Garden
The Bay Area is rich in varying habitats that are home to many bird species. Some birds are here throughout the year, but fall marks the return of a number of species that had gone elsewhere to breed. We'll talk about many bird species that can be found in our gardens at this time of year, with some discussion of things one can do to enrich these bird habitats and attract birds, as well as the impacts of drought and climate change. The Zoom talk includes many illustrations of our local birds.
Speaker: Bob Lewis, birding educator
Register at weblink to attend
End-User Auditing and Model Sketching: Tools for Centering Human Values in Machine Learning Model Authoring and Evaluation - 10/24/2022 12:30 PM
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg 460) Stanford
As AI-based technology has rapidly expanded into high-impact, user-facing domains, we have observed myriad ways in which it can perpetuate harmful biases, embed problematic values, or entirely fail. In the face of these errors, we are starting to see that algorithmic fairness and explainability methods may not be sufficient fixes for technological tools that were designed incorrectly or incompletely from the start. To improve these systems, we need a shift in voice and power in technology design. In this talk, I'll share two lines of work in this vein. In the first project, End-User Auditing, we built a tool to empower individual, non-technical users to leverage their distinctive expertise and lead their own system-scale audits of machine learning models. In the second project, Model Sketching, we sought to address the problem of technical design fixation in ML by taking inspiration from sketching practices in design, which purposefully distill ideas into rough, minimal representations to explore high-level design directions. We developed a tool that enables users to interactively author functional, sketch-like versions of ML models, focusing their attention on higher-level, human-understandable concepts rather than lower-level, technical implementation details in the early stages of model development. Every individual has unique expertise built up from their interests and skills in combination with the communities and environments they inhabit - my research aims to allow users to share this expertise to raise unanticipated issues and suggest novel solutions as co-designers of algorithmic systems.
Speaker: Michelle Lam, Stanford
Room 126
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar - 10/24/2022 02:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: Linda Ye, Stanford University
See weblink for Zoom information.
Mythbusting Knowledge Transfer - New Paradigms in Research, Education, and Publishing Through Shared Science Gateways - 10/24/2022 03:30 PM
SLAC Colloquium Series Menlo Park
Around 2008 our peer reviewers held these beliefs to be true: "No one will use computational research-based app to analyze or guide experiments. No one will use such apps in education. Such apps are not publications!" Today we measure how experimentalists, researchers in adjacent fields, and education researchers cite nanoHUB in the literature in over 2,600 papers. User behavior analytics points to over 90,000 students in over 3,600 structured classes who have used nanoHUB apps in education and these apps are now listed in the Web-of-Science and Google Scholar. This presentation will highlight these paradigm shifts.
Speaker: Gerhard Klimeck, Purdue University
Attend in person or watch online here.
Editor's Note: This series is usually held in Kavli Auditorium in building 51. The searchable Stanford map does not show Redwood Rooms C & D, so we don't know what building they are in, but suspect it is also building 51.
Imaging Atomically Thin Quantum Material Devices at the Nanoscale - 10/24/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
The harnessing and manipulation of electronic states in quantum materials has the potential to revolutionize computation, sensing, storage, and communications, thus impacting multiple facets of our everyday lives. In this talk I will discuss my group's recent experiments with monolayer graphene (MLG), Bernal stacked bilayer graphene (BLG), and trilayer graphene (TLG), highly versatile carbon-based quantum materials with electronic properties that are promising for future quantum technologies.
Specifically, I will focus on a set of experiments that utilize confinement, nanoscale visualization, and spectroscopy to reveal new properties of the surface states hosted by graphene based electronic devices. In one experiment, we use the scanning tunneling microscope to corral charges in MLG and then subject these charges to a perpendicular magnetic field. This enables the observation of a giant orbital Zeeman splitting for trapped ultra-relativistic electrons in our MLG devices, which can be leveraged for magnetic field sensing. In a second experiment, BLG charges are trapped and scanning tunneling microscopy is used to visualize the wavefunctions and quantum interference of these trapped charges. Thus, in this work we "look under the hood" of a potential quantum information processing material platform. Finally, in a third experiment, we use atomically resolved point spectroscopy to measure a giant and tunable magnetic moment for the charges in TLG devices. The results from these three experiments advance fundamental understanding of carbon-based quantum material devices towards their use for future quantum technologies.
Speaker: Jairo Valasco, UC Santa Cruz
Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) as scientific supercomputers - 10/24/2022 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Google's TPUs were exclusively designed to accelerate and scale up machine learning workloads, amid the ongoing planet-wide race to build faster specialized hardware for artificial intelligence. But one must surely be able to use this hardware for other challenging computational tasks, right? We explored how to turn a TPU pod (2048 TPU v3 cores) into a dense linear algebra supercomputer to e.g. multiply two matrices of size 1,000,000 x 1,000,000 in just 2 minutes. We then used this power to perform a number of quantum physics and quantum chemistry computations at scale. For instance, we recently completed two largest-ever computations: a Density Functional Theory DFT computation of electronic structure (with N = 248,000 orbitals), and a Density Matrix Renormalization Group DMRG computation (with bond dimension D = 65,000). Cloud-based TPU pods and GPU pods are accessible to anyone and are poised to revolutionize the scientific supercomputing landscape.
Speaker: Guifre Vidal, Google Quantum AI
The Bioenergy Opportunity in California | Valorizing Nitrate-Polluted Wastewaters -Livestream - 10/24/2022 04:30 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar
Pathways to carbon neutrality in California: the bioenergy opportunity
California has an abundance of biomass-based resources derived from the state's diverse agricultural, urban waste and forest streams. These biomass resource types can be converted to bioenergy products that have many potential applications across California's energy system. However, today, most of the carbon from this biomass returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide or methane as the biomass naturally decays or gets burned, representing an opportunity lost for bioenergy production. We analyze the types, quantities, and the emission reduction potential of biomass resources available for bioenergy production currently, in 2025 and in 2045 as a result of existing practices and policies in California. We find that landfill gas holds the greatest energy potential currently while MSW and agricultural residues hold the most significant potential in 2045. We also find that if the total gross waste biomass potential were utilized for energy production, California's total emissions could be reduced by 1-8%, depending on the conversion process and the end-product. This study is one of the eight studies published as a part of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage effort to inform the discussion on pathways to carbon neutrality in California. Its results will be used in an integrated assessment model in the upcoming year to create decarbonization scenarios for the state.
Speaker: Anela Arifi, Stanford University
Engineering the electrochemical reaction microenvironment to valorize nitrate-polluted wastewaters
The nitrogen cycle is in urgent need of reinvention: Haber-Bosch fertilizer production has outpaced removal of N from wastewater, leading to continuous losses from the nitrogen economy and exerting great burden on the environment. As the most prevalent waterborne N pollutant, nitrate jeopardizes the health of ecosystems and human beings. By selectively producing ammonia, electrochemical nitrate reduction reaction (NO3RR) can directly transform nitrate pollutants into widely used commodity chemicals and fertilizers, thus balancing the nitrogen cycle while reducing energy consumption from the traditional Haber-Bosch process. The reaction microenvironment that is located at the interfacial region between the electrode and the electrolyte has been found to significantly impact the activity and selectivity of electrocatalytic reactions. Using a combination of electrochemical testing, advanced characterization and computation, we investigated both the electrocatalyst evolution and electrolyte properties in the NO3RR reaction microenvironment and provided engineering strategies to optimize ammonia production.
Speaker: Jinyu Guo, Stanford University
Introduction to the Ray AIR for Scaling AI/ML and Python Workloads - Livestream - 10/24/2022 07:00 PM
SF Bay Association of Computing Machinery
Existing production machine learning systems often suffer from various problems that make them hard to use. For example, data scientists and ML practitioners often spend most of their time-fighting YAMLs and refactoring code to push models to production.
To address this, the Ray community has built Ray AI Runtime (AIR), an open-source toolkit for building large-scale end-to-end ML applications. By leveraging Ray's distributed compute strata and library ecosystem, the AIR Runtime brings scalability and programmability to ML platforms.
The main focus of the Ray AI Runtime is on providing the compute layer for Python-based ML workloads and is designed to interoperate with other systems for storage and metadata needs.
In this session, we'll be exploring and discussing the following:
How AIR is different from existing ML platform tools like TFX, Sagemaker, and KubeflowHow AIR allows you to program and scale your machine learning workloads easilyinteroperability and easy integration points with other systems for storage and metadata needsAIR's cutting-edge features for accelerating the machine learning lifecycle such as data preprocessing, last-mile data ingestion, tuning and training, and serving at scale
Key takeaways for attendees are:
Understand how Ray AI Runtime can be used to implement scalable, programmable machine learning workflows.Learn how to pass and share data across distributed trainers and Ray native libraries: Tune, Serve, Train, RLlib, etc.How to scale python-based workloads across supported public clouds
Register at weblink to attend
Tuesday, 10/25/2022
Voluntary Carbon Markets Symposium - Livestream - 10/25/2022 09:00 AM
Stanford Energy
A large and increasing number of companies have voluntarily committed to science-based targets to reduce carbon emissions pursuant to the Paris Agreement. While abating current carbon emissions is the highest priority, many companies have also incorporated carbon offsets into their strategy, particularly for near-term, hard-to-abate emissions. As a result, Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCMs) have grown rapidly, and that growth is expected to continue.
However, VCMs present myriad problems from both a practical and theoretical standpoint; it is unclear whether these problems will be solved such that VCMs will function "healthily" on the timeline required by rapid global warming. Nevertheless, VCMs may be one of our best tools for mobilizing capital toward climate change solutions, and can be a valid part of a broader sustainability strategy for corporate actors under certain conditions. This event will cover the following relevant topics for companies participating in VCMs:
VCM history, context, and relative scale & importance in the overall effort to mitigate climate change.The theoretical limitations of the markets themselves, both as healthy, efficient markets and also in terms of their actual climate impact.Whether and how VCMs can contribute to an organization's overall sustainability strategy.If a company chooses to participate, what business and legal considerations are important (e.g., strategy, diligence), and how VCMs can be used responsibly?Corporate governance: Where & how VCM participation should be owned within an organization, and how it should be reported without.Confirmed Speakers*
Luciana Aquino-Hagedorn (General Counsel, NCX)
Amy Bann (Head of Supply & Ecosystem, Xpansiv)
Paul Barker (Partner, Kirkland & Ellis)
Danny Cullenward (Policy Director, Carbonplan)
Muireann Mageras (Environmental Strategy & Advisory, Vartree Partners)
Sam McClure (Director, Rock Center for Corporate Governance)
Mark Phillips (CMO Sustainability, McKinsey & Company)
Marc Roston (Research Fellow, Stanford Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance)
Alicia Seiger (Managing Director, Stanford Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance)
Frances Seymour (Distinguished Senior Fellow, World Resources Institute)
*Speakers subject to change
Register at weblink to attend
Gladstone Institutes Industry Partnership Forum - 10/25/2022 10:00 AM
Gladstone Institutes San FranciscoWhere Science Discoveries, Entrepreneurs, and Investors Converge
Get a sneak peek at the transformative biomedical research happening at Gladstone. In this first Industry Partnership Forum, you'll get a chance to talk to Gladstone scientists, learn more about our research programs that are ready for translational opportunities, and discover how you can partner with our labs.
See weblink for agenda and speakers
Register to attend in person or online.
Sixty years ago, Rachel Carson released her seminal book, Silent Spring, the publication of which gave birth to the EPA, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and sparked the ban on the toxic insecticide DDT and the movement for organic agriculture. Six decades on, the threats Carson warned about are still very real.
Pesticides are a central part of the ecological crisis driving biodiversity collapse and the climate crisis. Pesticide use is an under-appreciated human rights and environmental justice issue. But solutions do exist!
Hosted by Anna Lappe and featuring seasoned organizer Angel Garcia of Californians for Pesticide Reform, farmer George Naylor, investigative journalist Carey Gillam, Deputy Director of Science at Friends of the Earth Kendra Klein, and video remarks from Senator Cory Booker, next week's webinar will share perspectives and strategies for a healthier, pesticide-free future.
Register at weblink
October Butterfly Walk - First Session - 10/25/2022 01:30 PM
UC Botanical Garden Berkeley
Join Sally Levinson, 'caterpillar lady', and Sarab Seth, 'butterfly guy,' for a guided, family friendly, one hour walk through the Botanical Garden in search of butterflies. Bring binoculars if you have them. This walk follows uneven terrain, with areas of paved and unpaved trail. While masks are not required outdoors, we will be in close proximity during this walk, so you may consider bringing a mask for the tour. All program fees include same-day admission to the Garden, rain or shine.
October Butterfly Walk - Second Session - 10/25/2022 03:00 PM
UC Botanical Garden Berkeley
Join Sally Levinson, 'caterpillar lady', and Sarab Seth, 'butterfly guy,' for a guided, family friendly, one hour walk through the Botanical Garden in search of butterflies. Bring binoculars if you have them. This walk follows uneven terrain, with areas of paved and unpaved trail. While masks are not required outdoors, we will be in close proximity during this walk, so you may consider bringing a mask for the tour. All program fees include same-day admission to the Garden, rain or shine.
Southern Mexico and Central America Regional Precipitation Variability: Community-informed Science - 10/25/2022 03:30 PM
Natural Science Annex Santa Cruz
Southern Mexico and Central America (SMCA) is a geographically connected region that shares climate features as well as human livelihoods. The latest compilation of scientific work on the region (IPCC, 2021) is inconclusive regarding heavy precipitation trends during the observational period, both in direction and anthropogenic attribution. In contrast, case studies have reported food security hardship and labor migration due to severe hydroclimate variability and extremes especially in communities that depend on subsistence agriculture. However, communities' accounts of changing rainfall patterns vary vastly across the SMCA region. This signals that drought and precipitation indexing based on regional averaging may obscure sub-regional differences in the climatological baseline and trending, leading to products or conclusions with little transferability to the fine grid of human experience and that are ultimately of scarce utility to rural agricultural communities. To elucidate SMCA's precipitation spatio-temporal variability - particularly those most relevant to local communities' agricultural practices - I am using a combination of climate science methods and social science methods. I have analyzed the sub-regional and sub-seasonal patterns of precipitation, as well as their changes in the observational period, using 70 and 40 years of daily gridded rainfall estimates from two different data set (ERA5 and CHIRPS respectively). Concurrently, I have integrated ethnographic information - collected during an exploratory ethnographic fieldwork during Nov 15 - Nov 30, 2021, in two agricultural-rural communities of eastern El Salvador - to the numerical results examination and interpretation that provides immense insight on precipitation variability and changes that influence the agricultural sowing-harvesting cycle via the traditional, collective, and trans-generational knowledge of climate.
Speaker: Janin Guzman-Morales, UC Santa Barbara
From free electrons to bound electrons: attosecond science with X-ray free-electron lasers - 10/25/2022 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
X-ray free-electron lasers have recently broken the femtosecond barrier, which separates the motion of nuclei from the much faster motion of electrons in molecules and solids. Evolving from a cutting-edge R&D project to a new scientific program, attosecond XFELs are now producing time-resolved observations of coherent electronic phenomena with atomic site specificity and unprecedented temporal resolution.
In my talk I will introduce the physics of X-ray free-electron lasers and the experimental FEL R&D program at SLAC. I will then present our results on attosecond pulse generation and its application to the observation of coherent electron dynamics in molecules. Finally, I will present our ongoing R&D efforts towards plasma-based attosecond sources, capable of combining the peak power of XFELs with the fractional bandwidth of state of the art few-cycle lasers.
Speakers: Agostino Marinelli, SLAC
The Secrets of Chimpanzee Society - Livestream - 10/25/2022 05:00 PM
Leaky Foundation
What can the private behavior of chimpanzee society teach us about human evolution and our own societal development?
Biologist Liran Samuni from Harvard University's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology specializes in the study of underlying mechanisms of cooperation and intergroup relations in chimpanzees. In this lecture, she'll explore some of the more fascinating aspects of group relationships in chimpanzees, from cooperation and conflict to group belonging, solidarity, and in-group support, providing a glimpse into how our own human behavior in societal systems might have occurred.
Listening Live for Orcas from Washington to California - Livestream - 10/25/2022 07:00 PM
American Cetacean Society
Join us for an enthralling presentation by Dr. Scott Veirs who will summarize Orcasound, a project that began as a cooperative effort to listen for the calls, clicks, and whistles of the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales within the inland marine waters of Washington State. More recently, Orcasound has been building open-source software to make it easier for humans to listen live to the oceans and identify soniferous cetaceans and deleterious noises. The software includes artificial intelligence to help humans detect more whale sounds, including at frequencies above human hearing. Finally, Dr. Veirs will discuss how the range of these salmon-seeking orcas extends as far south as Monterey Bay and he will open a discussion of how Orcasound's conservation technology could be deployed in northern California.
The James Webb Space Telescope: A New Era of Distant Galaxies - 10/25/2022 07:00 PM
Lathrop Library Stanford
The most distant galaxies in the universe cannot be seen from the Earth, and are invisible at the optical wavelengths seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. This means that understanding the earliest history of our universe requires a space-based telescope that can see infrared light. In this lecture, Dr. Suess will describe the 25+ years of incredible planning and engineering that went into making this goal a reality. Specifically, she will discuss some of the earliest and most exciting science results from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), including insights into the most distant galaxies humans have ever seen and previously-invisible giant galaxies. Dr. Suess will close the lecture by talking about outlooks for the future and the science JWST observations will make possible in the next few years.
Speaker: Dr. Wren Suess, Stanford University/UC Santa Cruz
Attend in person, or view on line. Register at weblink.
Editor's Note: The KIPAC web page and the Eventbrite registration had differing locations listed for this event on the Stanford campus. It has now been moved to Bishop Auditorium.
Wonderfest: Neuroplasticity, Sensitive Periods, & the Adolescent Brain - RESCHEDULED - 10/25/2022 07:00 PM
Hopmonk Tavern Novato
Speaker: Dr. Linda Wilbrecht, UC Berkeley
This event has rescheduled to January 31, 2023.
Editor’s note: Rescheduled date corrected.
Wonderfest: WHY did I eat THAT?! - Alterations in brain & behavior that contribute to obesity - 10/25/2022 07:00 PM
Hopmonk Tavern Novato
Beyond hunger and energy-demand, food cues can strongly influence the urge to eat. These sights, sounds, and smells of food can trigger cravings that promote over-eating. What are the neurobiological mechanisms of cue-triggered food craving? How are we susceptible to diet-induced obesity via consumption of sugary and/or fatty "junk foods"?
Speaker: Dr. Carrie Ferrario, University of Michigan
Wednesday, 10/26/2022
AI Wildfire Detection: Customer Stories - Livestream - 10/26/2022 12:00 PM
CITRIS Research Exchange
Everyone can contribute in wildfire risk mitigation with the right yool. This talk will share how an animal center, a wind farm and a smart city each apply artificial intelligence (AI) wildfire detection technologies to reduce their forest fire risks.
Speaker: Andre Cheung, RoboticsCats
Register at weblink to attend.
Symbiosis in flux: Algal endosymbiont contributions are shaped by sea anemone diet and size - 10/26/2022 03:30 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
Speaker: Sam Bedgood, Oregon State University
Register at weblink to receive Zoom information
The Argyle Diamond Mine in Australia - Livestream - 10/26/2022 07:00 PM
Peninsula Gem and Geology Society
Speaker: Dick Weber
See weblink for details on obtaining connection information.
Toxic Fungi of North America, with an emphasis on California species - 10/26/2022 07:30 PM
Bay Area Mycological Society Berkeley
This engaging and detailed talk, first developed for an advanced biology/chemistry class at a private East Bay high school, provides a synopsis of mushroom poisonings in California and North America, including species involved, reasons for ingestions, symptoms, treatments and preventions.
Come learn about what NOT to eat if you forage for fungi in California!
Speaker: Debbie Viess, Bay Area Mycological Society founder
Thursday, 10/27/2022
The Growth of Supermassive Black Holes in the Early Universe - 10/27/2022 11:00 AM
Kavli Institute Astrophysics Colloquium Stanford
The existence of luminous quasars hosting supermassive black holes within the first billion years of cosmic history challenges our understanding of black hole growth. An important piece of the puzzle is the lifetime of quasars - the time that galaxies shine as active quasars and during which the bulk of the black hole growth occurs. I will present a new method to obtain constraints on the lifetime of high-redshift quasars based on the sizes of ionized regions around quasars known as proximity zones, which can act as a "quasar clock" that enables us to study the early assembly of supermassive black holes from a new perspective. Furthermore, I will show the first results on the clustering properties of z>6 quasars based on slitless spectroscopy observations with JWST/NIRCam, which provide new insights onto the duty cycle of quasars in the early universe and their dark matter halo properties.
Speaker: Anna-Christina Eilers, Massachusets Institute of Technology
A DAO-First World - 10/27/2022 04:00 PM
Faculty Club Berkeley
Blockchain technology has transformed the financial services industry over the past decade. The rise of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) highlights shifts in how people, organizations, and governments spend, make, and understand the role of money in society. More recently, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) promise radical new forms of collective organization and ownership. But can they deliver? Is a DAO-first economy, political structure, or world possible? Desirable?
Science fiction author Annalee Newitz moderates a debate between technologists Jake Hartnell and Amber Case on this topic.
Bay Area Bats - 10/27/2022 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.
Effects of the CZU Lightning Complex Fire on Hermit Thrushes of Big Basin Redwoods State Park - Livestream - 10/27/2022 05:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
In August 2020 through July of 2021, the CZU Lightning Complex fire burned 97% of Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Coast Range of California. The fire burned at high severity levels in areas where concentrations of hermit thrushes (Catharus guttatus slevini) were known to breed, including two field sites where Allison Nelson studied the species from 2013-2015. Join us to learn about her past geolocator tracking studies on hermit thrushes breeding in Big Basin, as well as those wintering at SFBBO's Coyote Creek Field Station, and how she used this previous capture data to compare the pre-fire population to numbers observed post-fire in summer 2021. She'll also touch on her work recording hermit thrush songs and collecting data and samples from populations breeding north of the San Francisco Bay.
Register at weblink
NightLife of the Living Dead - 10/27/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Calling all creatures of the night: We're dying to have you join us for our annual NightLife Halloween bash! Get into costume and come ready for a night dead-icated to mad science, killer music, and scary good drag performances by Reparations and Rice Rockettes.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
NightLife of the Living Dead Drag Show West Garden 8:30 PM
For one night only, iconic drag performance groups, Reparations and the Rice Rockettes are joining forces to serve the most chilling and thrilling Halloween performance, hosted by Nicki Jizz and Estee Longah. DJ'd by the one and only Charles Hawthorne.
Body Snatchers & Flesh Eaters Swamp 6 - 10 PM
What if we told you zombies are real? Chat with Dr. Brian Fisher, the Academy's entomology curator, and explore what happens when fungal body snatchers take over the bodies of ants.Watch Ornithology & Mammalogy graduate students Adan Deeb and Daniela Sanchez skeletize specimens (removing muscle from bones) so our flesh-eating dermestid beetles can get to work and finish the job.
Haunting Photos Swamp 6 - 10 PM
Sift through a graveyard of discarded and forgotten vintage photos to find one that speaks to you, pick a "soulmate" symbol for your chosen image, and create your own eerily romantic charm bracelet as a keepsake, courtesy of the Museum of Craft and Design.
After Dark: Death and Life - 10/27/2022 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Autumn is a season of transition. As vital summer gives way to a quieter, more dormant period, we witness falling leaves and shortening days. Traditions from around the globe like DÃa de Muertos (and even Halloween) reflect this time of change by recognizing death and the role it plays in the cycle of life. Join us tonight as we consider this seasonal transition and its cultural significance through the lenses of astronomy, agriculture, and thanatology - the study of death.
Blowing in the Wind - Livestream - 10/27/2022 06:00 PM
US Geological Survey Public Lecture Series
Science to help understand and help reduce wildlife impacts from wind energy
A key challenge facing the wind industry is the potential for wind turbines to impact wild animals both directly, via collisions, as well as indirectly due to noise pollution, habitat loss, and reduced survival or reproduction.
Learn about the efforts and studies that have been going on for the past two decades to measure direct motality of wildlife from wind power development and to test ways of reducing this impact.
Speaker; Manuela Huso, USGS
Goodbye Gas, Hello EVs! - Livestream - 10/27/2022 07:00 PM
Acterra
Everybody's talking about electric vehicles right now - with good reason! EVs don't pollute, cost less to fuel and maintain, and play a major role in fighting climate change. New models are being announced weekly. California's ambitious climate policy and the new federal tax credits are making headlines. Come learn why EVs are all the rage and how to make your next (or first!) car electric. Join a breakout room after the main presentation to ask about a specific model you're eyeing. RSVP now to get in on the EV action!
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Friday, 10/28/2022
How and when granular materials fail (in the lab, and maybe in the field?) - 10/28/2022 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Karen Daniels, North Carolina State University
An Evening with Richard Crossley: Learning to Look - 10/28/2022 05:30 PM
Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society Cupertino
Richard Crossley will talk about birding lessons learned from living on 3 continents to paying back through conservation initiatives and youth birding. He will also talk about the unique design of his books - some of it will surprise you! Come and get to know Richard in a beautiful setting; be ready to ask a question or two.
Register at weblink to attend
Saturday, 10/29/2022
Spooky Science Saturday - 10/29/2022 10:00 AM
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Pacific Grove
Join us as we crawl and slither into the spooky world of bats, spiders, and snakes! Learn some animal tricks and make some treats as we explore these amazing animals and their importance in our ecosystem.
Halloween: Spooky Science - 10/29/2022 10:00 AM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Uncover the creepy crawlies of the night in our special Halloween science program. Learn about animals and insects that frighten us and get to see them up close. People of all ages are welcome to come in full costume, ready to trick-or-treat for a frightful collection of spiders, insects, bats, slime, and ghosts!
Schedule
Coco. Theater, Spanish screening at 11:00 a.m., English screening at 2:00 p.m.
PG, 1 hr., 45 minutes
Aspiring musician Miguel, confronted with his family's ancestral ban on music, enters the Land of the Dead to find his great-great-grandfather, a legendary singer.
Ralph Washington, Jr., "Six-legged Scares", Studio 3
Demos: 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.. Talk: 12:00 p.m.
Insects are among the most superficially alien creatures we know, yet they feature prominently in our daily lives. This contrast between foreign and familiar has influenced designs in many horror films, including the work of H.R. Giger, David Cronenberg, and Guillermo Del Toro. Despite their apparently bizarre traits, it is easy to appreciate the virtues of insects when we learn more about their lives. Join us for a Halloween-inspired discussion of the potent ways that insects provoke fear and fascination.
Ralph Washington, Jr. has a master's degree in entomology and is a three-time national and international champion of entomological natural history trivia. He has been an enthusiastic student of arthropods since his early childhood.
Hack-O-Lantern workshop, Lab 2, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Why limit yourself to plastic toy knives and kitchen spoons when you can use power tools? Throw hole saws, Dremel's, and power drills in the mix, and who knows what possibilities might open€¦add LEDs, motors, and switches, you'll find a new way to enjoy Halloween!
Sugar Skull-Making Demonstrations, Classroom 2, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
See local artist Irma Ortiz shape skulls from molten sugar, then decorate a confectionary calavera of your own. Capacity is limited, first come, first served.
Galaxy Explorers, Make Your Own Paper Masks, Bat and Spider Lollipop crafts. Mezzanine 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Get into the holiday spirit by creating your own spooky paper mask! Choose from a robot, skull, alien, pumpkin and more, and use your creative skills to color a custom mask to take home. Then put together your own bat or spider sweat treat with our lollipop bat and spider activities!
Scary Storytime with Galaxy Explorers. Touch the Sun exhibit, below the Rotunda, 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m.
Join the Galaxy Explorers to hear spooky Halloween stories.
Slime, Courtyard, 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Get sticky with some Halloween slime. Use common ingredients to make your own stretchy slime.
Galaxy Explorers, Boo Bubbles, Rotunda, 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
What do you get when you combine dry ice and soap? Ghostly, smoke-filled bubbles, that's what!
Planetarium:
10:30 a.m. Tales of the Maya Sky (English)
11:30 a.m. Big Astronomy (English)
12:30 p.m. Lunaverse
1:30 p.m. Zodiac Tours
2:30 p.m. Tales of the Maya Sky (Spanish)
3:30 p.m. Big Astronomy (Spanish)
All About Bats - EcoCenter Family Event - 10/29/2022 02:30 PM
Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter Palo Alto
Bring your family to the Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter, located on the Baylands Nature Preserve, for an afternoon of environmental education. Activities are intended for ages 6-11.
Are you curious about bats? Join the Environmental Volunteers in our Community Program, All About Bats to learn about different types of bats, how they hunt, and what they eat! We will be doing several activities and will even explore real bats! We explore some of the myths and mysteries of our local California bats.
Capacity is limited. If tickets sell out, join our waitlist!
Halloween Hike & Sip - 10/29/2022 06:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
The journey begins at sunset from the Center into the beautiful surrounding redwood forest. We'll moderately hike 3-4.25 miles (90-120 minutes) along some of the most popular trails as you learn about the history of Oakland, local plants, and the majestic Redwood trees. We'll stop to watch the first few planets and stars appear and constellation storytelling before heading back to Chabot. Upon return, hikers will enjoy a charcuterie board and two complimentary glasses of wine, beer, or non-alcoholic beverages. The night will end with stargazing and telescope viewing (weather permitting). A perfect evening for a date night or fun with friends! Limited to 40. Advance sale required.
Jazz Under the Stars - 10/29/2022 07:00 PM
College of San Mateo Bldg 36 San Mateo
Jazz Under the Stars is amonthly public stargazing event! Join us on the 4th floor planetarium for a night of smooth jazz, bright stars, and a lot of fun! We play our jazz from CSM's own KCSM 91.1. Founded in 1964, KCSM has grown to become one of the top 35 most listened to non-commercial stations in the US. With their help, the Astronomy department at CSM opens its observatory doors and balcony, for a night of science and fun! We operate for public viewing four 8" dobsonian telescopes, prefect for viewing the planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. We also have a 140mm refractor, with which we view the craters on the moon. Finally, our 8' schmidt-cassegrain is for our deep sky needs. It can peer deep into globular clusters, and nebulae! Our astronomers will also be available for questions and conversation, which you wouldn't get anywhere else! Feel free to ask us your questions about the cosmos. Occasionally we even have the chance to image galaxies! Don't miss out, join us at our next Jazz Under the Stars!!
See weblink for additional details
Sunday, 10/30/2022
Dia de los Muertos Festival - 10/30/2022 10:00 AM
Fruitvale Oakland
Experience hands-on science in the Fruitvale community with bilingual Cal scientists in celebration of Dia de los Muertos with Science at Cal and The Lawrence On-The-Go team!
Monday, 10/31/2022
Sonoma State University Biology Colloquium - 10/31/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Rosa Schneider, Senior Environmental Scientist, California State Parks - Bay Area District.
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar - 10/31/2022 02:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: TBA
See weblink for Zoom information.
What Physicists Do - 10/31/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Speaker: Wing To, Staislaus State University
UC Berkeley Physics Colloquia - 10/31/2022 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: Liang Dai, UC Berkeley
Tuesday, 11/01/2022
Tigers, Transit and Trees, Oh My! BART's Living Roof Project - Livestream - 11/01/2022 11:00 AM
SF Planning + Urban Research Assoc. (SPUR)
Title: Response of tropospheric transport to abrupt CO2 increase: dependence on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - 11/01/2022 03:30 PM
Natural Science Annex Santa Cruz
Stanford Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium - Rescheduled - 11/01/2022 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Stanford Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium - 11/01/2022 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Why the Rational Believe the Irrational - 11/01/2022 05:30 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Computers v. Crime with NOVA - 11/01/2022 07:00 PM
Computer History Museum Mountain View
Biodiversity Trivia Night with California Academy of Sciences - 11/01/2022 07:00 PM
KQED, The Commons San Francisco
Wednesday, 11/02/2022
Decoding Diatoms: The unusual nutrient metabolism underlying their ecological dominance - Livestream - 11/02/2022 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Reproductive Rights in a Post-Dobbs America: Where Do We Go From Here? - Livestream - 11/02/2022 12:00 PM
Stanford Continuing Studies
Envorinmental and Energy Economics - 11/02/2022 12:10 PM
Giannini Hall Berkeley
In Pursuit of the Organic Archaeological Record: Micromorphology Meets Lipid Analysis - 11/02/2022 12:10 PM
Archaeology Research Facility Berkeley
Shedding light on symbiosis: lessons from a bioluminescent coral reef fish - Livestream - 11/02/2022 03:30 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
Wonderfest: High Hopes: The Thirty Meter Telescope - Livestream - 11/02/2022 08:00 PM
Wonderfest
Thursday, 11/03/2022
The Milky Way's Dynamic Atmosphere - 11/03/2022 11:00 AM
Kavli Institute Astrophysics Colloquium Stanford
Learning Preferences for Interactive Autonomy - Livestream - 11/03/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State Engineering Colloquium
Lil' NightLife - 11/03/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
After Dark: Poetic Machines - 11/03/2022 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
NightSchool: Ephemeral Ecosystems - Livestream - 11/03/2022 07:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
Friday, 11/04/2022
Bay Area Robotics Symposium 2022 - 11/04/2022 08:30 AM
International House Berkeley
Predicting and Observing Patterns of Modern Sea Level Change and Crustal Deformation - 11/04/2022 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
How We Can Live with Fire: Lessons Learned from California's Investments in Wildfire Resilience - 11/04/2022 04:00 PM
Mulford Hall Berkeley
First Friday - Nocturnal - 11/04/2022 06:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Saturday, 11/05/2022
Morning Hike at La Honda Open Space Preserve - 11/05/2022 10:00 AM
La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve La Honda
Sunday, 11/06/2022
Afternoon Hike at Mindego Hill - 11/06/2022 02:00 PM
Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve Los Altos
Monday, 11/07/2022
Elucidating Leopard Shark Life History with Stable Isotope Analysis - 11/07/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar - 11/07/2022 02:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
What is Physics Education Research (PER)? Why? - 11/07/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
The Decarbonization Imperative - Livestream - 11/07/2022 04:30 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar
14 billion years on, what can we learn about original imperfection? - 11/07/2022 05:30 PM
International House Berkeley
JWST: NASA's Greatest Observatory and Its Great Science! - 11/07/2022 07:30 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Total Lunar Eclipse - 11/07/2022 11:30 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland