Hello again, dear science fan,
No one - arguably - knows more about ghost hunting than Kenny Biddle. At this year’s SkeptiCal, he shared stories from his ghost-hunting forays, including the techniques and the electronic instrumentation he used. Some years ago, however, Biddle did a turn-around, climbed out of the ghost-hunting rabbit hole, and became a scientific skeptic joining the likes of Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, et al. Read about his ‘conversion’ here as told by Jonathan Jarry, a recent SkepTalk presenter.
¿Are vampires real? And will garlic ward off those blood sucking denizens of darkness?
A willing suspension of disbelief when watching horror movies might not altogether be a bad thing and may even help us to deal with life.
Five people guessed numbers that were within 12 of the randomly generated 733, but Nina W was closest with 726. She won the 450ml glass beaker ‘caffeine’ mug. This time the prize is a JWST mirror lapel pin from Saint-Rivoal, France measuring 3cm wide. Just send an email to david.almandsmith [at] gmail.com (only one) before noon Friday with an integer between zero and 1,000. We will then use a random number generator to select the target number and mail the JWST pin to the person who was closest.
Daylight Savings Time ends next Sunday at 2:00 a.m. at which time you can reset your clocks to 1:00 a.m. unless you are in Arizona (outside of the Navajo Nation), or in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, or any of 125 countries that do not observe Daylight Savings. Mexico already left Daylight Savings for good on October 30. The next time you cross from Pakistan into India, remember to add 30 minutes. When crossing from India into Nepal, add 15 minutes, and when you cross from Nepal into China, you need to add 2¼ hours. Pilots everywhere file their flight plans using Universal Time (formerly called Greenwich (pronounced Grennitch) Mean Time and would be glad if everyone else did too.
My Picks for the Week
SETI Live: How to Die on Other Worlds Livestream 2:30 - 3:00 Monday
Biodiversity Trivia Night 7- 9 pm Tuesday, San Francisco, $
High Hopes: The 30 Meter Telescope Wonderfest Livestream 8 - 9 p.m. Wednesday
Night School: Ephemeral Ecosystems Livestream 7pm Thursday
First Friday - Nocturnal 6-10 pm Friday, Oakland, $
La Honda Creek Open Space Hike 10 am - 1 pm Saturday, La Honda
Bret Stephens is a conservative journalist who used to be “...agnostic on the causes of climate change and a scoffer at the idea that it was a catastrophic threat to the future of humanity” changed his mind and now suggests a governmental and market based approach for ameliorating the worst effects of planet warming.
As if there isn’t enough to deal with, flu season has struck early and may be rather severe. Get your flu vaccine this week at the same time as your COVID booster. The latest booster targets COVID’s spike protein of Omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5. New variants are continuously evolving around the world, so laboratories are working to create a vaccine that will target spike proteins that do not differ from one variant to another - those that are ‘conserved’ between variants.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation just pledged $1.2B toward the eradication of polio. Other than minor polio outbreaks (including in the U.S.), Afghanistan and Pakistan have the highest incidences but their governments are making some progress administering vaccines. Due to misinformation, however, resistance sometimes results in killings. Last February, eight vaccination workers were killed in Afghanistan, and at least three guards for vaccination workers were killed in Pakistan this year.
Studies continue to suggest that regularly drinking tea or coffee can give you some health benefits. ¿But which is better for you? It’s a split decision with coffee being rated slightly better.
¿Would you like to receive the SciSchmooze in your own mailbox each week? Go to https://www.bayareascience.org/calendar/index.php and enter your email address.
If you’re a biology nerd then you know that bacteria swap genes with each other - a process known as horizontal gene transfer. But what about snakes contributing their genes to frogs! In a nutshell: some viruses can borrow genes from their hosts and also add genes to a different host’s DNA. Genetic sleuths are working to discover just how common eukaryotic horizontal gene transfer might be.
You gotta love - or be grossed out by - just how amazing biology is. Another example of amazing biology comes with this video introduction to the axolotl.
We know that birds belong to the family of dinosaurs and that some dinosaurs were quite large. Well, how about a 340 lb (154 kg) bird! Gastornis fossils have been found in North America, Europe, and Asia. They went extinct several million years ago but their closest relatives still survive - ducks.
Being a science-aware person you’re probably aware that SETI is short for Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. But what about CETI? It’s a project that hopes to communicate with the largest mammals on our blue planet, the cetaceans.
Here are some entertaining videos for you:
Calculating π (calculus helpful)
Stay curious and kind,
Dave Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics
“One metric of human progress … is the expansion over time of our empathy sphere. By this I mean the range of beings that we consider coequally a person with ourselves, deserving of the same rights, dignities, and protections.”
– Ada Palmer (1981 - ) Author, Professor of History
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 10/31/2022
Protecting Biodiversity and Natural Resources at California State Parks - 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.
SETI Live - HOW TO DIE ON OTHER WORLDS - Livestream - 10/31/2022 02:30 PM
SETI Institute
Welcome to outer space. Life is harsh out here. We come from a beautiful, pale blue dot thriving with a wide variety of life. And now we're planning for lunar bases and heading off to Mars. These worlds - and others in our solar system - are not friendly to human life. In honor of Halloween, just how will these other worlds try to kill us if we were to go there? (Including Europa, even though we should "attempt no landing there".) Join Seth Shostak and Beth Johnson for a spirited and humorous discussion on the horrors of death on other worlds.
See weblink for Youtube and Facebook connections
Making Fluids and Solids from Microwave Photons - 10/31/2022 03:30 PM
SLAC Colloquium Series Menlo Park
In this talk I will discuss recent results from a collaboration between the Simon & Schuster labs, where we have developed techniques for assembling quantum matter from strongly interacting microwave photons. Beginning with a description of the platform - an array of capacitively coupled transmon qubits acting as a Hubbard-regime lattice for photons - I will motivate the challenges associated with teaching photons to order into materials. From here, I will describe two experiments: (1) assembly of mott insulators by coupling to an non-markovian reservoir capable of cooling the system whilst simultaneously injecting photons; and (2) assembly of photon fluids by controlled introduction and removal of disorder + the ability to extend this technique to assembly of superpositions of superfluids - photonic cat states. I will conclude with prospects for assembly of topologically ordered matter, and a brief overview of our other collaborative efforts.
Speaker: Jon Simon, Stanford University
Attend in person, or online here.
An Unexpected Journey: Finding Opportunities, Climbing Out of Pitfalls and Searching for Adventures in Physics - Livestream - 10/31/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Speaker: Wing To, Staislaus State University
The speaker will be remote via Zoom. Attend in person at Sonoma State, or online here.
Stars and star clusters in the distant Universe seen through Einstein's Lens - 10/31/2022 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Galaxy clusters are the most massive gravitational lenses Nature offers that really augment our observational capability to study celestial objects in the younger Universe using man-made telescopes. In recent years, a growing list of individual stars or clusters of stars that acquire large to extreme gravitational magnification factors have been uncovered with the Hubble Space Telescope and lately with James Webb. In this talk, I will explain how we understand the phenomenology of such extreme lensing phenomena, and what the potential use is for fundamental physics and astrophysics. I will first explain extremely magnified stars in the vicinity of lensing caustics, and discuss how they might be used to probe the theoretically predicted self-gravitating halos of Cold Dark Matter that are too small to host galaxies, as well as to probe minihalos possibly formed from QCD Axion Dark Matter that would be difficult to see otherwise. I will then talk about our recent study of newborn super star clusters in a magnified galaxy at Cosmic Noon, which represent one of the densest star-forming environments in the Universe. These systems are thought to be the progenitor of globular clusters but are no longer easily found in our cosmic backyard. Such studies can test the theory of how radiation, gas and gravity interact in the first ~ 10 million years of a crowded starburst when the most massive stars are still around.
Speaker: Liang Dai, UC Berkeley
Unique Issues for Developing Economies - Livestream - 10/31/2022 04:30 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar
With the COP27 in Egypt and the G20 in Indonesia just weeks away, we will discuss some of the unique challenges facing developing countries pursuing energy transition. While cost declines for solar and wind technologies over the past decade have made renewable energy competitive with fossil-fuel based power, investment in these technologies has not taken off in developing economies. We will explore what is preventing a rapid scale up in renewable energy and energy efficiency investments and what solutions are being discussed on the world stage to address this problem.
Speaker: Lauren Culver, The Workd Bank
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)
Market Street and Montgomery Street, parallel to the Salesforce Transit Center and Park - serve as two of San Francisco's most significant transit arteries. Every day, cars, buses, cyclists, and pedestrians travel these streets, likely unaware of a neighbor that's been present since the 1970s:the Western Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly. To the butterfly, the city landscape resembles its natural habitat: a tree-lined "river" of vehicles, nearby parks, rooftop gardens and plazas make up an urban canyon. But a lack of nectar sources and larval food - as well as pending tree removal - call for a revamped place for our winged friends to call home. This year, Nature in the City, in partnership with BART, is launching two living roof pilots atop the new Montgomery and Powell Street BART stations, where 1,800 sq ft of elevated habitat will bring each station to life with insects, birds, and our beloved Swallowtails. Join us in BART's 50th anniversary year to learn about the potential opportunities and challenges for this exciting project.
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Stable and Radiogenic Sr Isotopes in Barite Clues on Links Between Weathering, Climate and the C Cycle - 11/01/2022 12:30 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Adina Pattan, UC Santa Cruz
Response of tropospheric transport to abrupt CO2 increase: dependence on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - 11/01/2022 03:30 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Sally Zhang, Johns Hopkins
Long baseline clock atom interferometry - 11/01/2022 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Atom interferometry and atomic clocks continue to make impressive gains in sensitivity and time precision. I will discuss the potential science reach and feasibility of using such precision atomic sensors for gravitational wave detection and searches for dark matter. Excitement for these applications has driven the growth of an emerging sub-field in precision measurement: long-baseline atomic sensing, which aims to scale up "tabletop" experiments to the kilometer-scale and beyond. A key ingredient to this is the development of a new type of "clock" atom interferometry based on narrow-line optical transitions that combines inertial sensitivity with features from the best atomic clocks. This technique is central to the MAGIS-100 experiment, a 100-meter-tall atomic sensor under construction at Fermilab that will probe for ultra-light dark matter candidates and will serve as a prototype for a future gravitational wave detector targeting the unexplored "mid-band" frequency range that is optimal for multi-messenger astronomy. I will also present recent results toward enhancing sensitivity to the required levels by increasing the enclosed interferometer space-time area. Using Floquet modulation of the atom-light interaction, we realize clock atom interferometers with pulse fidelities exceeding 99.4%, allowing for a record-setting momentum separation between the interferometer arms of over 400 ћk.
Speakers: Jason Hogan, Stanford University
Why the Rational Believe the Irrational - 11/01/2022 05:30 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Long a fringe part of the American political landscape, conspiracy theories are now mainstream: 147 members of Congress voted in favor of objections to the 2020 presidential election based on an unproven theory about a rigged electoral process promoted, in part, by followers of the mysterious QAnon community, itself a network of believers of a wide-ranging conspiracy involving pedophilia among elected officials and other civic and business leaders. But these are only the latest examples of a long history of conspiracies that have gained adherents in society. In his timely new book, Conspiracy, Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, discusses what makes conspiracies so appealing to segments of the population.
Shermer finds that conspiracy theories cut across gender, age, race, income, education level, occupational statusۥand even political affiliation. One reason that people believe these conspiracies, Shermer argues, is that enough of them are real that we should be constructively conspiratorial: elections have been rigged, medical professionals have intentionally harmed patients in their care, your government does lie to you, and, tragically, some adults do conspire to sexually abuse children. But Shermer reveals that other factors are also in play: anxiety and a sense of loss of control play a role in conspiratorial cognition patterns, as do certain personality traits.
Join us for Dr. Michael Shermer's discussion in our continuing series on false narratives. It is for anyone concerned about the future direction of American politics, as well as anyone who has watched friends or family fall into patterns of conspiratorial thinking.
Computers v. Crime with NOVA - 11/01/2022 07:00 PM
Computer History Museum Mountain View
In police departments and courts across the country, artificial intelligence is being used to help decide who is policed, who gets bail, how offenders should be sentenced, and who gets parole. But is it actually making our law enforcement and court systems fairer and more just?
NOVA explores these questions with Computers v. Crime, an investigation into the hidden biases, privacy risks, and design flaws of this controversial technology.
Join us for a screening of a selection of clips from the film paired with a panel discussion featuring leading experts in technology, science, and social justice.
NOVA's Computers v. Crime premieres WED OCT 12 at 9/8c on PBS. Check local listings for details. You can also watch it online or on the PBS Video App ahead of the premiere
Biodiversity Trivia Night with California Academy of Sciences - 11/01/2022 07:00 PM
KQED, The Commons San Francisco
Cal Academy scientists and KQED Science reporter Laura Klivans team up to challenge you to trivia about local flora and fauna. Featuring short videos by Deep Look, a PBS/KQED video series that zooms way in to show us what we can't see with the naked eye.GuestsSarah Jacobs, Assistant Curator of Botany and Howell Chair of Western North American BotanyRebecca Johnson, Co-Director of the Center for Biodiversity and Community ScienceAlison Young, Co-Director of the Center for Biodiversity and Community Science.
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
In the nearly two decades of research conducted since the first diatom full genome sequence was published, several key insights into the strategies diatom use to outcompete other phytoplankton taxa have been made. This research has furthered our knowledge on the function of the diatom urea cycle, and how this and other metabolic anomalies allow diatoms to respond quickly to nitrate inputs and release from iron limitation. New research has shown that these many of the molecular responses observed in diatom model organisms under controlled experimental conditions, can be replicated in nutrient perturbation experiments of complex natural communities. This talk will focus on how in-depth investigation of gene expression and patterns of metabolic flux in diatom models has facilitated the identification of biomarkers for nutrient status of diatoms in the field, towards development of ecogenomic sensors capable of deployment in high-resolution spatial and temporal sampling.
Speaker: Sarah Smith, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Reproductive Rights in a Post-Dobbs America: Where Do We Go From Here? - Livestream - 11/02/2022 12:00 PM
Stanford Continuing Studies
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Envorinmental and Energy Economics - 11/02/2022 12:10 PM
Giannini Hall Berkeley
Speaker: Panle Jia Barwick, Cornell University
In Pursuit of the Organic Archaeological Record: Micromorphology Meets Lipid Analysis - 11/02/2022 12:10 PM
Archaeology Research Facility Berkeley
In recent years, "bioarchaeology" has become a prominent term in archaeological research worldwide. Invisible genetic, protein and lipid residues are increasingly being recovered from artifacts and sediments and have become an integral part of the empirical archaeological record. Their identification in archaeological contexts from different time periods is allowing us to fill important gaps in our knowledge about past diets, technology, population dynamics, and human evolution. At the same time, we have refined the degree of resolution at which we approach human occupation contexts, and we are increasingly aware of the palimpsest effect and the microstratigraphic scales at which disturbance and reworking may take place in archaeological sediments. Conducting bioarchaeological investigations within a microstratigraphic framework is a reliable approach to facing these challenges. I present an overview of the research we carry out at the Archaeological Micromorphology and Biomarker Research Lab (AMBILAB), University of La Laguna, Spain. Our general approach is to integrate soil micromorphology and sedimentary lipid biomarker analysis, obtaining contextualized paleoclimatic and behavioral data linked to human occupation contexts from different time periods and regions.
Speaker: Carolina Mallol, University of La Laguna, Spain
Shedding light on symbiosis: lessons from a bioluminescent coral reef fish - 11/02/2022 03:30 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center Tiburon
Virtually all organisms depend on symbiotic interactions with bacteria for their success. Most bacterial symbionts are acquired horizontally from the environment, including those in highly dynamic marine environments.Despite the diverse pool of bacteria in the environment,hosts typically associate with only a select subset of symbiont species.The mechanisms that promote host-symbiont specificity are critically important to promote the stability of these critical associations through time yet they remain largely uncharacterized. The highly specific, bioluminescent symbiosis between coral reef fish in the Siphamia genus and a luminous member of the Vibrio family, Photobacterium mandapamensis, is providing new insights into the mechanisms that regulate the formation and maintenance of microbial symbiosis from an evolutionary scale down to the molecular level. Ultimately, this experimentally tractable, binary association can help disentangle the ecological and physiological complexities underlying the establishment, persistence, and evolution of host-microbe specificity.
Speaker: Alison Gould, California Academy of Sciences
Wonderfest: High Hopes: The Thirty Meter Telescope - Livestream - 11/02/2022 08:00 PM
Wonderfest
Sometimes, bigger is better. The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will collect 9 times more light than the largest currently existing telescope and, with adaptive optics, make images 9 times sharper. Overall, that's 81 times better! The TMT International Observatory (with members from the US, Japan, China, India, & Canada), together with its partner in the southern hemisphere, the Giant Magellan Telescope, will give humanity a powerful new system to probe the full sweep of the cosmos - from the nearest stars and their planets, to black holes in our Galaxy, and on out to the edge of the visible universe where we see the very first stars and galaxies beginning to form.
Our speaker is astronomer Dr. Robert Kirshner, Executive Director of the TMT International Observatory and Clowes Professor of Science, emeritus, at Harvard University. Formerly, Dr. Kirshner was head of the science program at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
See weblink for Zoom information
Thursday, 11/03/2022
The Milky Way's Dynamic Atmosphere - 11/03/2022 11:00 AM
Kavli Institute Astrophysics Colloquium Stanford
The Galactic atmosphere is as essential to setting the global conditions in the Milky Way as our planet's atmosphere is for sustaining life on Earth. Dramatic, multiphase gas flows course through the disk-halo interface and into the more extended circumgalactic medium (CGM), redistributing the materials generated over billions of years of star formation. In this talk, I will review observational data taken over the last decade from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Keck telescope, and the Gemini telescopes that uniquely constrain the content of the CGM and the nature of these flows around present-day galaxies. Then, I will show new HST data indicating that the Milky Way itself is an outlier among galaxies of similar mass at low redshift. Finally, I will describe an ongoing experiment with HST (and show new spectra from March 2022!) in which we use a newly-discovered sample of UV-bright, low-Galactic-latitude QSOs to address this Milky Way anomaly.
Speaker: Jess Werk, University of Washington
Learning Preferences for Interactive Autonomy - Livestream - 11/03/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State Engineering Colloquium
In human-robot interaction or more generally multi-agent systems, we often have decentralized agents that need to perform a task together. In such settings, it is crucial to have the ability to anticipate the actions of other agents. Without this ability, the agents are often doomed to perform very poorly. Humans are usually good at this, and it is mostly because we can have good estimates of what other agents are trying to do. We want to give such an ability to robots through reward learning and partner modeling. In this talk, I am going to talk about active learning approaches to this problem and how we can leverage preference data to learn objectives. I am going to show how preferences can help reward learning in the settings where demonstration data may fail, and how partner-modeling enables decentralized agents to cooperate efficiently.
Speaker: Erdem Blylk, UC Berkeley
Lil' NightLife - 11/03/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Lil’ NightLife, big vibes. We’re focusing on the little things with a line up of mini marvels: from microbes to tiny homes, mini arcade games, and everything in between. Join us for an evening devoted to all the little (but important) things.
After Dark: Poetic Machines - 11/03/2022 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
With inspiration and ingenuity, even the most functional machines can be used to express creativity. Tonight, unlock the aesthetic potential of pre-digital machines. Explore a collection of analog exhibits that are more than the sum of their parts. Let artist PNosa translate your words into imaginative imagery using a sewing machine. And experience new 16mm-projector performances by Madison Brookshire and Tomonari Nishikawa that push the boundaries of cinema.
Expanded Cinema With Madison Brookshire and Tomonari Nishikawa 8:00 p.m. Osher Gallery 1, Kanbar Forum
Three new projector performance works by Madison Brookshire and Tomonari Nishikawa challenge the conventions of cinema and illuminate our theater through layerings of light and stripping of shadow.
Featuring:
Double or Nothing by Madison Brookshire (2022) Performance for two 16mm projectors, harmonium, sine tone, and voice.
Offset 16mm projectors create an un-moving image: a field of light with a bright, inset rectangle.
No. 1, 2022 by Madison Brookshire (2022) One 16mm film on six reels, overlapping projection, color, and sound.
Temporally symmetrical 16mm films fail to negate one another, creating a work of non-cinema.
Six Seventy-Two Variations, Variation 2 by Tomonari Nishikawa (2022) 16mm-film projection performance and sound.
Nishikawa uses a wood-carving knife to scratch off the photographic emulsion of looped film and produces visuals and sound as a live performance.
Madison Brookshire makes films, paintings, and performances. His work invites viewers to become aware of perceptual processes and the sensuous experience of time. He frequently collaborates with musicians and composers such as LCollective, Laura Steenberge, Mark So, and Tashi Wada.
Tomonari Nishikawa is a filmmaker whose work explores the idea of documenting situations and phenomena through a chosen medium and technique, often focusing on the process itself. He is one of the cofounders of KLEX: Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film and Video Festival and Transient Visions: Festival of the Moving Image. He teaches in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University.
Sewn Scenarios With PNosa 6:30 - 9:30 p.m. Gallery 2
Think of any scenario. Describe your scenario in a sentence using five words or less. Now watch as artist PNosa interprets your words and uses a sewing machine to draw the resulting image on fabric.
Embroidered patches will be available for purchase.
PNosa is a sewing artist who draws with a sewing machine (without a computer or a template) powered by a solar panel and a bicycle electric generator. PNosa is on a sewing tour across America facilitating people's creativity and demonstrating alternative energy sources.
NightSchool: Ephemeral Ecosystems - Livestream - 11/03/2022 07:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
For some environments, "here today, gone tomorrow" is the MO. From flooded flyways to the bottom of the sea, temporary ecosystems pop up (or sink down) all over the world, supplying numerous species with abundant, although momentary, habitats. We're looking at the organisms that rely on these ephemeral ecosystems, and what humans are doing to protect them.
See weblink for YouTube and Facebook connections.
PubScience with Alexa Zytnick - 11/03/2022 07:00 PM
Ocean View Brew Works Albany
Alexa Zytnick, a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley, will be giving a CLEAR PubScience talk about using microbes to recycle metals!
This Moment Used To Be The Future - 11/03/2022 07:00 PM
The Interval at Long Now San Francisco
Interdisciplinary artist Alicia Eggert and Long Now's Executive Director Alexander Rose will be in conversation for this special evening discussion of time, art and long-term thinking.
Eggert's sign work uses sculpture to bring time to the foreground, embodying its passage through carefully chosen quotes. These words, rendered in neon and steel, cycle rhythmically through subtle text changes designed to encourage a heightened awareness of time and place in the viewer. In the sculpture "This Present Moment," she uses an epigram of Stewart Brand's from his book The Clock of The Long Now, which she first encountered while doing research in 02008.
Attend in person or online at weblink.
Friday, 11/04/2022
Bay Area Robotics Symposium 2022 - 11/04/2022 08:30 AM
International House Berkeley
The 2022 Bay Area Robotics Symposium aims to bring together roboticists from the Bay Area. The program will consist of a mix of faculty, student and industry presentations. For more details, see the event schedule.
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
Speaker: Sophie Coulson, Los Alamos National Laboratory
How We Can Live with Fire: Lessons Learned from California's Investments in Wildfire Resilience - 11/04/2022 04:00 PM
Mulford Hall Berkeley
California is investing $2.8 Billion in wildfire resilience over three years - one of the largest investments to prevent catastrophic wildfire ever. Deputy Secretary More will discuss the current State of California's wildfire crisis and how this novel investment in wildfire resilience is helping both communities and ecosystems better withstand fire and lay the ground work to restore natural fire regimes throughout the State.
Speaker: Jessica Morse, California Natural Resources Agency
First Friday - Nocturnal - 11/04/2022 06:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Have you ever wondered how bats catch food without using their sight, why fireflies glow or if mountain lions run into things in the dark? Join us at Chabot Space and Science Center for First Fridays, and this month discover all the ways nocturnal animals are adapted to life at night! You will have the chance to meet nocturnal animals from the Oakland Zoo and Lindsay Wildlife Experience up-close and to see their adaptations in action. Learn about insects and nocturnal adaptations as Ralph Washington Jr. presents these amazing creatures. Then test your own nocturnal adaptations as you try out night vision goggles and other hands-on activities.
Other special guests include cellist Shannon Hayden, and Exotopia which will lead you through digital exoplanet exploration.
Citizen Astronomy with the Unisteller Network - Asteroids, Exoplanets & Education - 11/04/2022 08:00 PM
College of San Mateo Bldg 36 San Mateo
Speaker: Dr. Franck Marchis, SETI Institute
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
Join Peninsula Open Space Trust for a beautiful hike at Lower La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve where you'll experience the area's sweeping views and gorgeous rolling grasslands! The preserve is over 6,100 acres, of which POST has contributed 5,200 acres. You will be guided by a POST Ambassador on the meandering trails of Lower La Honda Creek, featuring a still-active cattle operation and views of the surrounding ridgelines! You will hear all about the human and natural history of this beautiful preserve!
The hike is moderate to strenuous at about 6 miles round trip with about 1100 feet of gradual elevation gain. There are some steep portions of this hike so hiking poles, closed-toed shoes with tread, and plenty of water/snacks for yourself is recommended.
Register at weblink
Planetary Defense from Asteroids and Comets - 11/05/2022 12:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Come join AIAA-SF for food and fun. Your ticket includes lunch, admission to the Chabot Science Center and all of its exhibits, and a presentation from our special guest Dr. Nahum Melamed about planetary defense. (Advance registration required! https://aiaa-sf.org/event/aiaa-banquet-2022/)
Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that pose a local, regional or continental threat. Although major cosmic collisions with Earth are infrequent, their consequences could be severe. Advanced planning is critical to mitigating future asteroid threats. This talk highlights evolving public and educational outreach, new simulation tools, recent space missions, and actions at the United Nations that support planetary defense.
Dr. Melamed is a project leader in the Embedded Control Systems Department in the Guidance and Control Subdivision at The Aerospace Corporation. As a technical lead in Launch Vehicle Software, Melamed coordinates and guides a team of interdepartmental technical experts, and supports validation and mission readiness certification of the flight software and mission parameters for the Delta IV launch vehicles. He conducts planetary defense technical and policy studies, serves on planetary defense conferences, and exercises organizing committees.
Please register at: https://aiaa-sf.org/event/aiaa-banquet-2022/
Sunday, 11/06/2022
Afternoon Hike at Mindego Hill - 11/06/2022 02:00 PM
Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve Los Altos
Join Peninsula Open Space Trust for a beautiful 5-mile hike from the Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve to the top of the POST-protected Mindego Hill. You will be guided by POST ambassadors who will share details about how we protected this beautiful property featuring panoramic views of redwood ridges and undulating hillsides.
The hike is strenuous at about 5 miles round trip with about 1,000 feet of elevation gain, so be prepared for a workout! Athletic wear and sturdy shoes are recommended! If you'd like to bring your own hiking poles, you're more than welcome.
Protected by POST and recently opened to the public by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, Mindego Hill is an excellent example of how POST works with various partners to protect some of the most threatened lands in our area.
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
Speaker: Jonathan Kuntz, UC Merced
Autonomous Vehicles and the City 2022 - 11/07/2022 01:00 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
What are the issues and opportunities for cities as autonomous vehicles hit the road? How can we plan for and accommodate new forms of transport and smart city infrastructure that serves the public good?
Join us on November 7 as a part of the 6th international Autonomous Vehicles and the City symposium. We will feature international discussions on the different ways that new platforms are being used to serve diverse populations and help global cities meet climate goals.
Join conversations with leaders from the following organizations and more: Motional, Nissan, Aurora, Smartcar, San Francisco County Transportation Authority, Cruise, Zoox, and Populus.
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar - 11/07/2022 02:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: TBA
See weblink for Zoom information.
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Survey (DESI) and Beyond - 11/07/2022 03:30 PM
SLAC Colloquium Series Menlo Park
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is mapping the sky with a 5000-fiber robotic focal plane and 10 optical spectrographs. I will describe the challenges in construction, installation, commissioning, operations, and data reduction. The 13 million galaxies mapped in the first year already promises to improve our understanding of cosmic expansion and dark energy.
Future upgrades of the DESI instrument will enable efficient mapping of the high-redshift (z > 2) universe, necessary for probing early universe inflation models. I will briefly describe the R&D for these upgrades.
Speaker: David Schlegel, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
Attend in person or online here.
What is Physics Education Research (PER)? Why? - 11/07/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Physics Education Research or PER (pronounced P-E-R) was one of the first education research specialties. Physicists have long led the way for high-quality STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education. Where did this history come from? And more importantly, why should we care? Spoiler alert, but the one of the quick answers was (and still is) war. With growing global challenges (World War II and the Cold War), the United States faced a rising storm of problems. There were not enough trained scientists and engineers to take on other nations. However, is the motivation for war, national security, and competitiveness enough to spur PER? What might be a new motivation for STEM education research? I end this talk with considerations of equity, social justice, and community as new models for why we should care about PER.
Speaker: Kevin Nguyen, Sonoma State University
The Decarbonization Imperative - Livestream - 11/07/2022 04:30 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar
Michael Lenox is the Tayloe Murphy Professor in Business Administration at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. He helped found and served as the inaugural president of the multiple-university Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability. Prior to joining Darden in 2008, Professor Lenox was a professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, where he served as the area coordinator for Fuqua's Strategy Area and the faculty director and founder of Duke's Corporate Sustainability Initiative. He received his Ph.D. in Technology Management and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999 and the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.
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14 billion years on, what can we learn about original imperfection? - 11/07/2022 05:30 PM
International House Berkeley
The conventional wisdom is that if you want to learn more about the early universe, you build a bigger telescope, and that if you want to learn more about subatomic particles, you build a bigger accelerator. I will talk about a third and complementary way to get at both sorts of questions: table-top precision measurement. As an example I will discuss the result of our recent attempt to see tiny differences between the north pole and the south pole of the humble electron.
Speaker: Eric Cornell, University of Colorado, Boulder
Registration required
Theoretically Speaking: PACE Tech: Physics and Algorithms Coupled to Enhance Technology - 11/07/2022 06:00 PM
David Brower Center Berkeley
The digital revolution affects every aspect of human society and infrastructure - communications channels, medical imaging, and radar systems, to name just a few. This revolution is based on sensing the physical signals around us and representing the acquired signals as digital bits that can be processed by a computer. But information is lost in this process: acquisition and digitization are limited by physical and mathematical bounds. In this talk, Yonina Eldar will consider how the interplay among science, physics, and algorithms can pave the way to enhanced technology that is not limited by these bounds.
Speaker: Yonina Eldar, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Compress Deep Learning models 10,000x with Probabilistic Hash Functions - Livestream - 11/07/2022 07:00 PM
SF Bay Association of Computing Machinery
Neural Scaling Law informally states that an increase in model size and data automatically improves AI. However, we have reached a point where the growth has reached a tipping end where the cost and energy associated with AI are becoming prohibitive.
This talk will demonstrate the algorithmic progress that can exponentially reduce the compute and memory cost of training and inference with neural networks. We will show how data structures, particularly randomized hash tables, can be used to design an efficient "associative memory" that reduces the number of multiplications associated with the training of the neural networks. Implementation of this algorithm challenges the common knowledge prevailing in the community that specialized processors like GPUs are significantly superior to CPUs for training large neural networks. The resulting algorithm is orders of magnitude cheaper and energy-efficient. Our careful implementations can train billions of parameter recommendations and NLP models on commodity desktop CPUs significantly faster than top-of-the-line TensorFlow alternatives on the most potent A100 GPU clusters, with the same or better accuracies. The same idea can also result in more than 50x faster and cheaper inference.
In the end, I will highlight a cache-friendly compression scheme that can compress embedding models by 10000x (100GB Embedding Table to 10MB) and still achieves the MLPerf benchmark AUC of 0.8025 on the Terabyte click-through Criteo data, getting significant inference speedup for free.
Speaker: Anshumali Shrivastava, Rice University
JWST: NASA's Greatest Observatory and Its Great Science! - 11/07/2022 07:30 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the most complex and powerful astronomical space observatory ever built. It launched on Christmas Day in 2021 and has recently been commissioned in its final orbit in the Sun - Earth system. The large 6.5-m diameter JWST primary mirror and its science instruments will allow it to see some of the very first galaxies that formed in the Universe shortly after the Big Bang. Other major science themes of JWST encompass studying the assembly of galaxies, the birth of stars and planetary systems, and studying planetary systems and the origins of life. JWST will be the premier astrophysics space observatory for NASA and the European and Canadian Space Agencies (ESA and CSA), and it was in development for over 20 years. Scientists from all over the world will use it during its mission lifetime - which could be 20 years or more! JWST will augment the Hubble Space Telescope, which primarily works at shorter visible and ultraviolet light wavelengths. In this talk, Dr. Greene will illustrate the mission's science goals and highlight some aspects of its design, technologies, and initial science results. In addition to these topics, many scientists will use JWST to make discoveries that we have not yet imagined.
Speaker: Thomas Greene, NASA Ames Research Center
Total Lunar Eclipse - 11/07/2022 11:30 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Join Chabot's astronomers for a live watch party of one of the two great eclipses of 2022. The moon will pass the earth's shadow. Once covered, the moon will appear red in color, often referred to as a Blood Moon. Arrive by 11:30pm to learn from our astronomers. Our expert Astronomer Gerald McKeegan will give a live presentation about the eclipse at 12am. Visibility from Chabot will begin at 1:09am. At 2:59am the eclipse will be at its peak. The full eclipse will end at 3:41am and we will end our Chabot viewing at 4am. A partial eclipse will continue concluding at 5:56am.
This event is weather permitting. In the event of rain, fog or cloud cover the event will be cancelled and tickets will be refunded on request.
Tuesday, 11/08/2022
Total Lunar Eclipse - 11/08/2022 01:09 AM
Out your window!
Whole Earth Seminar - 11/08/2022 03:30 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Quantum Matter Out of Equilibrium - 11/08/2022 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Wednesday, 11/09/2022
The Critical Role of Cybersecurity in M&A: A Framework for Mitigating and Managing Risk - Livestream - 11/09/2022 09:00 AM
Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity
Good thing, bad thing: Rapid evolution of native salt marshes and an introduced seaweed - Livestream - 11/09/2022 03:30 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
I'm a Botanist (and unfortunately I don't know why your succulent isn't flowering!) - 11/09/2022 07:30 PM
Marin Science Seminar San Rafael
Thursday, 11/10/2022
2022 Bay Area Chemistry Symposium - 11/10/2022 07:00 PM
Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union Berkeley
Coastal Walk at Cowell-Purisima Trail - 11/10/2022 10:00 AM
Cowell Purisima Coastal Trailhead Half Moon Bay
What it Will Take to Prevent the Next Big One: Pandemics, Planetary Health and Our Global Future - 11/10/2022 05:00 PM
Hay Barn Santa Cruz
SpiceLife - 11/10/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Thriving Parrots, Thriving Planet - Livestream - 11/10/2022 06:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
After Dark: See for Yourself - 11/10/2022 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Science Education in an Age of Misinformation - Livestream - 11/10/2022 08:30 PM
Bay Area Skeptics
Saturday, 11/12/2022
Empowering Women Scientists: In Your Past, Present, and Future - Livestream - 11/12/2022 10:30 AM
California Section American Chemical Society
Sunday, 11/13/2022
Family Friendly Tour - California Native People and Plants - 11/13/2022 02:00 PM
Regional Parks Botanic Garden Visitors Center Berkeley
Monday, 11/14/2022
Environmental Gradients and Seaweed in Tomales Bay - 11/14/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
UC Berkeley Condensed Matter Physics Seminar - 11/14/2022 02:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
An Astronomical Perspective on Globular Clusters, Planet Earth, and the Climate Crisis - 11/14/2022 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Narrowing the search for axion dark matter - 11/14/2022 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Jay Apt, Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business - Livestream - 11/14/2022 04:30 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar