科学迷们,大家好!(Hello again science fans!)
Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) and Denisovans (H. denisova ??) interbred at various times and places. (The “??” following H. denisova refers to the current situation where insufficient Denisovan fossils exist to firmly classify them.) Modern humans interbred with Neanderthals so today we H. sapiens have varying snippets of DNA derived from Denisovans. Also, study of blood types of these three groups suggest that Rh incompatibility may have affected the health of some hybrids. (By the way, Denisovans are named after the Denisova Cave in Russia where hominin fossils were discovered that differ genetically from Neanderthals and us. The Denisova Cave is named after Denis, a hermit who once lived in the cave.) There is genetic evidence that a portion of Denisovan DNA helps Tibetans survive at high altitudes and natives in lowland New Guinea have Denisovan genes that apparently help them fend off some tropical diseases. The Australian Museum website has more information on Denisovans.
PROMISE & THREAT of A.I.
Computers using Artificial Intelligence methods have been taught to recognize pathologies in medical x-ray images. An A.I. system examined over 32 million possible battery designs and recommended 23 of them. Five of those were already known. When one of the novel designs was tested, it performed as predicted. The first Billy Joel song and video in over 30 years shows him playing the piano and singing as if he were much younger, courtesy of Artificial Intelligence. An A.I. therapist system analyzes the interviewee’s words, voice, and facial expressions to decide what to ask, what to say, and how to say it. The OpenAI company created SORA which in turn creates realistic videos based on a user’s prompts.
A.I. has been put to many additional productive uses and more are undoubtedly on the way. It is worrisome that medical professionals could become less proficient in diagnosing illness, prescribing therapies, and treatments if they defer to A.I. ¿And if A.I. is clearly wrong in some instance, as it could be, would there be legitimate experts around to catch the mistake?
In chemistry and other sciences, advances sometimes are due to an educated hunch or inspiration; something that Artificial Intelligence systems are currently incapable of. Although Large Language Model (LLM) A.I. systems can, in a narrow sense, ‘understand’ text, they cannot abstract concepts to a new circumstance, something human experts do all the time. This failure of A.I. clearly limits the abilities of an A.I. therapist.
A.I. systems are able to create entertainment and art, re-create moments in history, and glimpse possibilities of the future, all for our pleasure and enlightenment. This is awesome and fun, but those A.I. abilities are being exploited to create misinformation in the form of Deep Fake videos, fake audio, and fake text. A.I. systems are also being used to more effectively influence our attitudes and desires. ¿What can we do to free ourselves from being herded by others? Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher of the 17th century said it best: “I call him free who is led solely by reason.” But this is a tall order. It requires a thorough and ongoing education. It requires a structured skepticism. Fortunately, there are international efforts to inform us how to be a ‘good skeptic.’
RAFFLE
Adrienne was the winner of the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter model with her guess of 923. Let’s offer the model of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter as the prize again. Tip-to-tip the rotors are about 20 cm (8 inches) long. Just send an email before noon Friday to david.almandsmith [at] gmail.com with your guess of an integer between 0 and 1,000.
MY PICKS of the WEEK (save to your mobile phone)
Atmosphere & Energy Noon Tuesday, Stanford University
Understanding AI: Humanities, Social Sciences, Technology 9:30AM Wednesday, UC Berkeley
Astronomy on Tap Livestream 5PM Wednesday
The “Complex Systems” View of AI Ethics 4PM Thursday, UC Berkeley
Ancient Human Footprints at White Sands NP 2PM Friday, UC Berkeley
International Women’s Day 11 - 3PM Saturday, Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, $
FUN NERDY VIDEOS
Improving Memory - The Right Chemistry - Dr. Joe Schwarcz - 4 mins
Chinese Achieve Train Speed Record - Sabine Hossenfelder - 5 mins
Climate Scientists and Confirmation Bias - Sabine Hossenfelder - 8 mins
Gamma Ray Bursts - PBS Crash Course Astronomy - Phil Plait - 13 mins
¿Do Super Massive Black Holes Merge? - Dr. Becky – Becky Smethurst – 16 mins
Addiction Neuroscience 101 - Calif Correctional Health Care Services - Corey Waller - 22 mins
Making the blue LED - Veritaseum - Derek Muller - 32 mins
Have a great week, and add another person or group to your empathy sphere,
Dave Almandsmith
Bay Area Skeptics
„Solange er den Kreis seines Mitgefühls nicht auf alle Lebewesen ausdehnt, wird der Mensch selbst keinen Frieden finden.“ (Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.)
— Albert Schweitzer (1975-1965) Alsatian theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, physician, and Nobel Laureate
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 03/04/2024
Conservation & Ecology of the Red-legged Frog - 03/04/2024 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Jeff Alvarez and Jeff Wolcox, The Wildlife Project and Sonoma Mountain Preservation Foundation
Does Moral Practice Need Moral Theory? - 03/04/2024 12:30 PM
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg 460) Stanford
Speaker: Taylor Madigan, Stanford University
See weblink for instructions to gain entry to the building.
Room 126
Tuning Interactions for Water Quality Applications - 03/04/2024 12:30 PM
Shriram Center Stanford
The fundamental understanding and tuning of the interactions that occur between surfaces and chemicals or between surfaces and microorganisms may allow us to design materials or systems with enhanced binding and reactive properties for various industrial, environmental, and clinical applications. However, understanding and optimizing these interactions can also be used to limit the attachment and accumulation of undesirable substances and organisms to surfaces which may otherwise hinder their successful operation (biofouling). This talk will describe research detailing how the fundamental understanding of the interactions that exist between surfaces, microorganisms, and contaminants may be used for different applications such as bioremediation of emerging contaminants, biological treatment of water and wastewater, and the design of materials for the prevention of the undesirable attachment of microbial biofilms to functional surfaces.
Speaker: Pia Ramos, Stanford University
Attend in person or online. See weblink for stream information
Catch M(oor)e If You Can: Agile Hardware/Software Co-Design for Hyperscale Cloud Systems - 03/04/2024 02:00 PM
Cory Hall Berkeley
Global reliance on cloud services, powered by transformative technologies like generative AI, machine learning, and big-data analytics, is driving exponential growth in demand for hyperscale cloud compute infrastructure. Meanwhile, the breakdown of classical hardware scaling (e.g., Moore’s Law) is hampering growth in compute supply. Building domain-specific hardware can address this supply-demand gap, but catching up with exponential demand requires developing new hardware rapidly and with confidence that performance/efficiency gains will compound in the context of a complete system. These are challenging tasks given the status quo in hardware design, even before accounting for the immense scale of cloud systems. This talk will focus on two themes of my work: (1) Developing radical new agile, end-to-end hardware/software co-design tools that challenge the status quo in hardware design for systems of all scales and unlock the ability to innovate on new hardware at datacenter scale. (2) Leveraging these tools and insights from hyperscale datacenter fleet profiling to architect and implement state-of-the-art domain-specific hardware that addresses key efficiency challenges in hyperscale cloud systems. I will first cover my work creating the award-winning and widely used FireSim FPGA-accelerated hardware simulation platform, which provides unprecedented hardware/software co-design capabilities. FireSim automatically constructs high-performance, cycle-exact, scale-out simulations of novel hardware designs derived from the tapeout-friendly RTL code that describes them, empowering hardware designers and domain experts alike to directly iterate on new hardware designs in hours rather than years. FireSim also unlocks innovation in datacenter hardware with the unparalleled ability to scale to massive, distributed simulations of thousand-node networked datacenter clusters with specialized server designs and complete control over the datacenter architecture. I will then briefly cover my work co-creating the also widely used Chipyard platform for agile construction, simulation (including FireSim), and tape-out of specialized RISC-V System-on-Chip (SoC) designs using a novel, RTL-generator-driven approach. Next, I will discuss my work in collaboration with Google on Hyperscale SoC, a cloud-optimized server chip built, evaluated, and taped-out with FireSim and Chipyard. Hyperscale SoC includes my work on several novel domain-specific accelerators (DSAs) for expensive but foundational operations in hyperscale servers, including (de)serialization, (de)compression, and more. Hyperscale SoC demonstrates a new paradigm of data-driven, end-to-end hardware/software co-design, combining key insights from profiling Google’s world-wide datacenter fleet with the ability to rapidly build and evaluate novel hardware designs in FireSim/Chipyard. This instance of Hyperscale SoC is just the beginning; I will conclude by covering the wide-ranging opportunities that can now be explored for radically redesigning next generation hyperscale cloud datacenters.
Speaker: Sagar Karandikar, UC Berkeley
Controlled Nuclear Fusion: Scientific Achievement or Power to the Grid? - 03/04/2024 03:30 PM
Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) Colloquium Series Menlo Park
On Dec 13, 2022, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Accelerator Laboratory achieved Ignition. 2.05MJoule produced by 192 lasers were converted into 3.15Mjoule of fusion power. The first time on earth, controlled nuclear fusion produced a net positive power reaction. This is a major scientific milestone that took decades to plan, build and deliver. A boost in private and public funding already preceded this event, but this major success boosted the enthusiasm even further. As of today, about 40 privately funded start-ups around the world are in place and race to deliver nuclear fusion anywhere from a few years from now to within the next two decades or so. In parallel the largest science experiment, the tokamak based Fusion reactor is under construction by an international collaboration in the south of France (ITER) and presently faces a series of technical set-back. Between the sprawling enthusiasm in the private sector and ITER’s and NIF’s status today, a lot of scientific and technical questions still have to be resolved, some specific to laser driven inertial confinement fusion, others specific to magnetic confinement fusion, but also many in common. The challenge to deliver a First Fusion Power Plant (FPP) within a decade is now out there. Like the word “Power Plant” indicates, it is supposed to deliver net electrical power to the grid. Apart from controlling the fusion process itself, this provides an additional layer of engineering challenges that have to be solved in parallel in order to meet the decadal timeline. Some of the major impediments that have to be overcome towards net power production will be discussed.
Speaker: Norbert Holtkamp, Stanford University
Attend in person or online via Zoom.
This event was originally scheduled on February 5, 2024
How does the brain know it's cold? - 03/04/2024 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Speaker: Viktor Feketa, Yale University
A Magic Show of the Neutrinos - 03/04/2024 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Dr. Kam-Biu Luk will present an exploration of an intriguing phenomenon called neutrino oscillation.
Speaker: Kam-Biu Luk, UC Berkeley
Measuring the Effect of Gravity on Antimatter - 03/04/2024 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Recent experiments have measured the effect of gravity on antimatter with the first “direct”, i.e., freefall-style or Galilean Leaning Tower of Pisa-style measurements. In agreement with theory and indirect experiments, these experiments, performed by CERN’s ALPHA collaboration, show that antimatter, specifically antihydrogen atoms, fall downward with an acceleration within about 25% of g=9.8ms2. Strongly ruled out is the possibility of antimatter falling upwards. Thus, the results are compatible with the weak equivalence principle. This talk will review why this topic remained a perhaps open question, document some of the current other experiments attempting to make a direct measurement, discuss some of the history of early, failed, attempts to do a direct measurement, and conclude with a description of how the measurement was actually made using a magnetic balance.
Speaker: Joel Fajans, UC Berkeley
Navigating Africa's Trifecta of Energy, Climate, and Development with Pragmatism - 03/04/2024 04:30 PM
Stanford University Energy Seminar Stanford
The talk will delve into a comprehensive exploration of the interplay between energy, climate, and development on the African continent. The discussion will acknowledge the critical intersection of these three elements and propose pragmatic approaches as the guiding principle for charting a sustainable course forward. The African continent, rich in resources and potential, faces a unique challenge of balancing its burgeoning energy needs with the imperative of mitigating climate change and fostering inclusive development. This talk aims to unravel the complexities inherent in this trilateral relationship, emphasizing the practical consequences and tangible outcomes that arise from strategic decision-making. By adopting a pragmatic lens, I will dissect existing paradigms, shedding light on solutions that work in real-world contexts. The presentation will draw from concrete examples, successful case studies, and lessons learned from across the continent. The audience can expect to gain insights into actionable strategies that harmonize energy production, climate resilience, and socio-economic development. Ultimately, the talk seeks to inspire a shift in mindset, encouraging stakeholders to approach the challenges of energy, climate, and development in Africa with a problem-solving orientation. As the continent navigates this trifecta, the pragmatic perspective becomes a beacon, guiding the formulation of policies and initiatives that not only address immediate concerns but also pave the way for a sustainable and prosperous future.
Attend in person or online (see weblink)
New Approaches to Resilience: Policy and Practice - 03/04/2024 04:30 PM
Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center Stanford
The concept of resilience has become part of the lexicon for disaster researchers in universities and government agencies. The concept has evolved significantly over the past 10-20 years. In 2010-11, the engineering community was coming to grips with the two paradigms of resilience: 1) an engineering approach that focused on predictability and stability in a steady state; and 2) an ecological definition that focused on persistence and the ability to reorganize while undergoing change. In the past 5 years, the concept of resilience is again being redefined, in part because of experience with the Covid pandemic, and climate change, and in part because recent disasters have overwhelmed humanitarian aid and recovery programs. There simply have not been sufficient resources to meet disaster recovery needs in a timely fashion even with a resilience rebuilding approach.
In this talk I will focus on what we have learned from recent disasters, from the pandemic, and from evolving polices for addressing climate change as well as disasters. It is important to discuss what goes wrong and what works with case studies from multiple disaster recovery efforts, but equally important to evaluate policies and programs that are designed to improve resilience as an ex-ante recovery measure. I will discuss two examples of lifeline policies and programs with a community resilience focus, and one on investment in the creation of housing programs to meet baseline needs and reduce housing losses in future disasters. There are similar opportunities for resilience through investment in many infrastructure sectors, as well as schools, health care, and other services. A new approach to resilience requires policies and programs that include linking needs in multiple sectors and improving public and private sector capacity in the full range of critical services before disaster strikes.
Speaker: Mary Comeria, UC Berkeley
Room: Mackenzie 300
NASA Spacecraft Swarms for Low Earth Orbit and Beyond - 03/04/2024 07:30 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Humanity’s future in space will depend on autonomous robotic spacecraft, whether in orbit around Earth or exploring the far reaches of our solar system. Spacecraft swarms, or groups of autonomous cooperative spacecraft, have the potential to revolutionize future space exploration and science missions. In 2023, NASA’s Starling project launched a team of four satellites to test swarm technologies in orbit around Earth. Additionally, Starling will be exploring advanced space traffic management techniques to cope with an increasingly crowded Low Earth Orbit environment. Nicknamed Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde, these robotic spacecraft are paving the way for a future in which telescopes can be as large as a planet, hundreds of autonomous spacecraft can coordinate to map the Solar System, and thousands of satellites can sustainably orbit Earth to benefit humanity.
Speaker: Scott Miller, NASA Ames
Tuesday, 03/05/2024
Atmosphere & Energy Winter Seminar - Florian Dahlhausen - 03/05/2024 12:00 PM
Lane History Corner, Bldg 200 Stanford
The Atmosphere/Energy Seminar is an interdisciplinary seminar with talks by researchers and practitioners in the fields of atmospheric science and renewable energy engineering. Addresses the causes of climate, air pollution, and weather problems and methods of addressing these problems through renewable and efficient energy systems.
Speaker: Florian Dahlhausen, Chief of Staff at Quilt
Room:200-030
Exploring many-body problems with arrays of individual atoms - 03/05/2024 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Over the last twenty years, physicists have learned to manipulate individual quantum objects: atoms, ions, molecules, quantum circuits, electronic spins... It is now possible to build "atom by atom" a synthetic quantum matter. By controlling the interactions between atoms, one can study the properties of these elementary many-body systems: quantum magnetism, transport of excitations, superconductivity... and thus understand more deeply the N-body problem. More recently, it was realized that these quantum machines may find applications in the industry, such as finding the solution of combinatorial optimization problems.
This seminar will present an example of a synthetic quantum system, based on laser-cooled ensembles of individual atoms trapped in microscopic optical tweezer arrays. By exciting the atoms into Rydberg states, we make them interact, even at distances of more than ten micrometers. In this way, we study the magnetic properties of an ensemble of more than a hundred interacting ½ spins, in a regime in which simulations by usual numerical methods are already very challenging. Some aspects of this research led to the creation of a startup, Pasqal.
Speaker: Antoine Browaeys, Stanford University
Are Dogs Our Best Friends? - 03/05/2024 05:00 PM
Wheeler Hall Berkeley
The philosopher Stanley Cavill argues that we are friends with someone not because of what we do with them but because what we do, we do with them. That is, friendship is based on a shared life. Montaigne when writing about why La Boétie was his best friend said “because he is he and I am I.” This lecture asks whether we can be friends with animals and specifically whether we can be friends - and indeed best friends - with dogs. The lecture will be based on ethnographic, literary, and visual evidence.
Wednesday, 03/06/2024
Understanding AI: Humanities x Social Sciences x Technology - 03/06/2024 09:30 AM
Social Sciences Building Room 820 Berkeley
Understanding and interpreting AI is the new frontier in AI research. While advances in the performance of AI models have seen enormous successes, a profound understanding of how learning happens inside the models remains to be thoroughly explored.
Understanding how AI learns has the potential to help us gain novel insights in science, technology, and other fields, as well as to observe novel causal relationships in various types of data. Interpreting the internal workings of AI models can also shed light on how the human mind works and how we are similar to and different from machines.
The answers to these questions have highly consequential implications across disciplines, which is why it is imperative for scholars from a variety of fields to come together and collaborate. Our symposium represents a step towards fostering these interdisciplinary discussions. We will identify immediate challenges in AI interpretability and explore how the humanities, social sciences, and the tech world can join forces in this highly consequential research.
Panel:
Joshua Batson of AnthropicAI
Gašper Beguš, Assistant Professor of computational Linguistics at UC Berkeley, linguistics lead on studying whale language at Project CETI
Benjamin Bratton, Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at UC San Diego, Director of the Berggruen Institute’s Antikythera
Dawn Song, Professor at EECS at UC Berkeley
Claire Webb, Director of the Berggruen Institute’s Future Humans
Attend in person or register to attend online.
Evolving Organisms to Grow new Nanomaterials for Energy, the Environment and Medicine - 03/06/2024 12:00 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
Organisms have been making exquisite inorganic materials for over 500 million years. Although these materials have many desired physical properties such as strength, regularity, and environmentally benign processing, the types of materials that organisms have evolved to work with are limited. However, there are many properties of living systems that could be potentially harnessed by researchers to make advanced technologies that are smarter, more adaptable, and that are synthesized to be compatible with the environment. One approach to designing future technologies which have some of the properties that living organisms use so well, is to evolve organisms to work with a more diverse set of building blocks. The goal is to have a DNA sequence that codes for the synthesis and assembly of any inorganic material or device. We have been successful in using evolutionarily selected peptides to control physical properties of nanocrystals and subsequently use molecular recognition and self-assembly to design biological hybrid multidimensional materials. These materials could be designed to address many scientific and technological problems in electronics, environmental remediation, medicine, and energy applications. Currently we are using this technology to design new methods for building batteries, fuel cells, solar cells, carbon sequestration and storage, environmental remediation, catalysis, and medical diagnostics and imaging. This talk will address conditions under which organisms first evolved to make materials and scientific approaches to move beyond naturally evolved materials to genetically imprint advanced technologies with examples in lithium and sodium ion batteries, lithium-air batteries, environmental clean-up and ovarian cancer imaging and treatment.
Speaker: Angela Belcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Molecular and cellular bases of coral symbiosis and its breakdown - 03/06/2024 12:00 PM
Weill Hall Berkeley
interaction and is hypothesized to have given rise to much of eukaryotic cellular complexity. The endosymbiosis between corals and dinoflagellate algae is essential to the energetic requirements of coral-reef ecosystems. However, coral reefs are in danger due to elevated ocean temperatures and other stressors that lead to the breakdown of this symbiosis in a process called “coral bleaching”. Despite the importance of coral reefs, the molecular and cellular basis of how corals maintain a healthy endosymbiosis and avoid bleaching is poorly understood, partly because of the lack of tractable genetic model systems. My lab has focused on developing genetic tools in several symbiotic cnidarians to allow rigorous functional testing of candidate genes and pathways. One side of my lab uses the small anemone Aiptasia, which is symbiotic with similar algal strains to those found in reef-building corals, as an experimentally tractable model. Excitingly, we have recently developed reverse-genetic methods in Aiptasia, allowing us to test gene function for the first time. While we are progressing in understanding symbiosis and bleaching mechanisms in Aiptasia, we want to compare these mechanisms to ecologically important reef-building corals. To this end, we have successfully used the CRISPR/Cas9 technology to create genetic changes in the coral Acropora millepora. We have used this technique to functionally characterize genes that underlie coral heat tolerance and other ecologically important traits. However, the once-a-year access to zygotes dictated by natural spawning events limits our ability to rapidly study gene function in reef-building corals. To solve this issue, we have combined novel methods to spawn corals in the lab with our CRISPR/Cas9 methods to generate a genetically tractable coral model system. Using this approach, we can generate genetically modified coral lines to study mechanisms of symbiosis and bleaching throughout the year. Our long-term goal is to gain critical molecular insights into how corals can adapt to climate change. Finally, by comparing Aiptasia and corals, we also hope to gain insights into the evolution of endosymbiosis.
Speaker: Phillip Cleves, Carnegie Institution for Science
Generative AI in the Cloud: Inside Microsoft AI Innovation - 03/06/2024 12:00 PM
Gates Computer Science Building Stanford
Join Mark Russinovich, Azure CTO and Technical Fellow, and get an under-the-hood look at Microsoft’s AI architecture, including the large-scale supercomputers that train foundational models and the infrastructure that efficiently serves small and large pretrained and finetuned models. He’ll cover everything from how we design servers, to the AI-aware resource management service that schedules training and inference, to the AI-specific techniques we’ve developed for maximizing GPU usage. You’ll also get a look at advancements and opportunities in trending AI research and confidential AI.
Attend in person or online. Zoom information at weblink.
Harnessing Microorganisms with Innovative Materials for Water, Food, Energy, and Health - 03/06/2024 12:30 PM
Environment & Energy Building (Y2E2) Stanford
Microorganisms in the environment play an important role in human lives: microbial metabolism can be used to treat our waste and generate useful products (e.g., food, medicine, and energy), while pathogenic microorganisms in our water and food can threaten human health. Developments of innovative materials help us to better harness microbial activities for human needs. In this presentation, I would like to talk about three examples about applying innovative materials for cultivation, inactivation, and detection of microorganisms, respectively. First, I will show a series of nano-enhanced 3D porous conducting materials, which can serve as high-performance bioelectrodes for colonization of exoelectrogens in microbial electrochemical systems. Second, I will introduce a chemical-free microbial inactivation approach named locally enhanced electric field treatment (LEEFT), which is an electrophysical method that relies on nanowire-enabled low-voltage electroporation to kill bacteria. The third, I will present new 3D filtration processes based on superabsorbent polymer (SAP) beads, which have been successfully applied to concentrate and preserve water samples for microbial quantification.
Speaker: Xing Xie, Georgia INstitute of Technology
Room: 101
Combining Field- and Laboratory-Based Analyses to Characterize how Ammonia-Oxidizing Archaea Respond to Changing Conditions - Livestream - 03/06/2024 03:40 PM
Estuary and Ocean Science Center
Speaker: Bradley Tolar, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina Wilmington
See weblink for Zoom information
Astronomy on Tap San Antonio: Two Talks - Livestream - 03/06/2024 05:00 PM
Astronomy on Tap
A Flight Over the Mysterious Hydrocarbon Lakes on Saturn’s Moon Titan
Speaker: Xinting Yu, University of Texas, San Antonio
Lunar Orbiter Divides the Old Moon from the New
Speaker: Robert Reeves, astrophotographer
See weblink for YouTube and Facebook links
What You Need to Know About Generative AI - 03/06/2024 05:30 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Have we finally discovered the holy grail of artificial intelligence (AI) - machines that match or exceed human intelligence?
Advances in generative AI (GAI) have created a new class of computer systems that exhibit astonishing proficiency on a wide variety of tasks with superhuman performance, producing novel text, images, music, and software by analyzing enormous collections of digitized information. Soon, these systems will provide expert medical care; offer legal advice; draft documents; write computer programs; tutor our children; and generate music and art. These advances will accelerate progress in science, art, and human knowledge, but they will also bring new dangers.
Which industries and professions will thrive - and which will wither? What risks and dangers will it pose? How can we ensure that these systems respect our ethical principles? Will the benefits be broadly distributed or accrue to a lucky few? How will GAI alter our political systems and international conflicts? And are we merely a stepping stone to a new form of nonbiological life, or are we just getting better at building useful gadgets?
Join us for a provocative talk by Jerry Kaplan, author of Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know, as he addresses these pressing questions.
Attend in person or online
Rotorcraft Flight Control Technology - Advancements and Future Challenges - 03/06/2024 06:30 PM
Santa Clara University Santa Clara
In his updated Nikolsky Lecture “Rotorcraft flight control technology advancements and future challenges,” Dr. Tischler first summarizes the key flight control design drivers that distinguish rotorcraft from their fixed-wing counterparts. The second part of his presentation review the key advancements in flight control technology over the past 50 years. Dr. Tischler researched the literature extensively to ensure that his presentation would cover both the activities of Army and their research partners as well the contributions of the many other research organization world-wide that together have affected a “sea change” in how flight control systems for rotorcraft are developed.
In the next part of his lecture, Dr. Tischler considers the flight control challenges for future rotorcraft concepts, include the Army’s Future Vertical Lift, autonomous air systems (UAS) based on existing piloted rotorcraft, and eVTOL multicopter configurations (often referred to as drones in the popular media) for package delivery and air taxi (UAM - Urban Air Mobility). This section proposes how the flight control technologies of the past 50 years will be key to address the challenges of these new configurations. Finally, Dr. Tischler present his own personal thoughts on some keys to flight control research advancements and some broader thoughts on lessons learned as a career long flight control engineer and senior technologist. Key messages of this last section are the importance of collaboration, technology transfer, and mentors throughout one’s career.
Speaker: Mark Tischler, Tischler Aeronautics
Registration required. Attend in person or online.
Renewable Power: Powering Electric Cars and Storing Renewable Energy with Energy-dense Batteries- Livestream - 03/06/2024 07:30 PM
Marin Science Seminar San Rafael
See weblink to register and receive connection information
Speaker: Jason Lipton is a chemical engineer and research scientist at HRL Labs in Malibu, California
Thursday, 03/07/2024
UC Berkeley Tech Policy Summit - 03/07/2024 08:30 AM
University Club Berkeley
The inaugural UC Berkeley Tech Policy Summit brings together world-renowned academics, thought leaders, policymakers, industry pioneers and innovators to discuss and debate the most pressing issues at the intersection of technology and policy.
UC Berkeley is dedicated to supporting the responsible development and use of emerging technologies - from groundbreaking work in data privacy and cybersecurity to the development of human-compatible AI systems, prosocial platforms, and multidisciplinary tech and AI-focused policy training.
Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a policymaker or simply someone interested in the societal impacts of technology and how to effectively harness them for good, this summit offers an unparalleled opportunity to navigate the complex landscape of tech policy and to help forge a path that fosters innovation while promoting social good.
Hear from notable thought leaders; celebrate individuals who have made significant impacts in tech policy governance, journalism and innovation; and join in an engaging activity with our inaugural cohort of Tech Policy Fellows at the first annual UC Berkeley Tech Policy Summit!
Generative AI in the Cloud: Inside Microsoft AI innovation - 03/07/2024 01:00 PM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
Join Mark Russinovich, Azure CTO and Technical Fellow, and get an under-the-hood look at Microsoft’s AI architecture, including the large-scale supercomputers that train foundational models and the infrastructure that efficiently serves small and large pretrained and finetuned models. He’ll cover everything from how we design servers, to the AI-aware resource management service that schedules training and inference, to the AI-specific techniques we’ve developed for maximizing GPU usage. You’ll also get a look at advancements and opportunities in trending AI research and confidential AI.
UC Berkeley Astronomy Colloquium - CANCELED - 03/07/2024 03:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: Nitya Kallivayalil, University of Virginia
The Complex Systems View of AI Ethics - 03/07/2024 04:00 PM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
In this talk, I will argue that we should study AI ethics from the perspective of complex systems. In particular, machine learning (ML) systems are not islands. To understand and mitigate the risks and harms associated with ML systems, we need to examine the broader complex systems in which ML systems operate. By broader complex systems, I mean our cultural, social, economic, and political systems. Thus, we must remove our optimization blinders. That is, we should not focus solely on maximizing some notion of constrained expected utility. I will provide examples from the impact of misinformation on democracy and the complexities of interventions for information access equality, and time-permitting the use of algorithms for school admissions
Speaker: Tina Eliassi-Rad, Northeastern University
Attosecond pulse trains, RABBITT and applications - 03/07/2024 04:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Attosecond pulse trains (APT) emerged from high harmonics (Anne L’Huillier et al, 1987) and their spectral phase determination by RABBITT (Pierre-Marie Paul et al, 2001). Although the record of the shortest pulse of 43 as belongs to the technique of isolated attosecond pulse (IAP), APT and RABBITT have been extremely popular over the last 20 years. In this talk I will briefly review the physics involved in both as well as some applications at Ohio-State including photoionization delays, and the recent timing of non- sequential double ionization. In conclusion I will evoke the advent of zeptoseconds in photoionization delays and the future of attosecond science high- power IAP at free-electron laser.
Speaker: Pierre Agostini, Stanford University
NightLife Intersections: Dance - 03/07/2024 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
From Bhangra to Pan Afro-Urban dance and Samba, see how the dance floor becomes a canvas for self-expression. Stay tuned for more info!
After Dark: Living Systems - 03/07/2024 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
We’re all in this together - just ask the cells in your body. Stop by the Exploratorium on Thursday night to learn about the surprising and awesome ways human cells interact and work together. Observe 20 sculptural portraits made from the same person’s DNA information: how do they meet or challenge your expectations? Do you know how many blood cells are in your body, and can you sync your heartbeat to the living heart cells in our lab? Don’t miss this opportunity to take a long, hard look at the existence of yourself and others around you - down to a cellular level.
Xeno in Vivo: A Live Multimedia Opera Performance - 03/07/2024 07:30 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Will CRISPR gene editing change our idea of what defines a species? Is gene editing simply a continuation of our long history of modifying animals through selective breeding? Or is it something radically new?
Artist-in-Residence Heather Dewey-Hagborg and the Exploratorium present the world premiere of Xeno in Vivo, a multimedia opera and live film performance investigating xenotransplantation - in which an organ is transplanted into a human from another animal, such as a pig. The thirty-minute work, featuring a live operatic chorus, will reflect upon the ten thousand-year relationship between pigs and humans, and brings the words of scientists and archaeologists to life in song. Each night's performance will be followed by a discussion about the work and the questions raised by the evolving biomedical technology of xenotransplantation.
Heather Dewey-Hagborg is a transdisciplinary artist and educator interested in art as research and critical practice. Heather’s work investigates the social implications of the technological advances of biological science to explore our human nature.
Following Thursday's performance, Heather Dewey-Hagborg will be in conversation with Tanya Zimbardo, Assistant Curator of Media Arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Following Friday's performance, Heather Dewey-Hagborg will be in conversation with Daphne O. Martschenko, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford School of Medicine.
Both conversations will be moderated by Kristina Yu, PhD, Senior Director, Science R&D at the Exploratorium.
Note: These are separate performances from regular programming at the explOratorium. Enter through the Kanbar Forum's Bulkhead entrance. Doors open at 7:00 p.m.
Friday, 03/08/2024
Catalytic Depolymerization of Plastic Waste to Produce Value-Added Chemicals - 03/08/2024 02:00 PM
Etcheverry Hall Berkeley
Plastics play a large role in human life, from providing effective and safe packaging for food and medicine to materials for consumer products like clothing and electronics. Unfortunately, many of these plastic materials are only used once before they are discarded, and as a result these single-use plastics are accumulating in landfills and leaking into the environment, causing harm to the ecosystem and human health.
Mechanical recycling is one way to give a second life to waste plastics, in which plastic is collected, separated, and reformed into new products. But these recycled products often have lower quality than virgin polymers, and eventually end up in landfills, are incinerated, or end up in the environment. Chemical recycling is a method in which polymers such as polyolefins can be deconstructed into chemical building blocks, which can be used to produce higher value chemicals or monomers for the synthesis of new plastic. The use of catalysts can help lower the energy required to break the strong carbon-carbon bonds in polyolefins and improve selectivity towards desired products.
This talk will discuss advances in the catalytic depolymerization of waste polyolefins, with a focus on recent progress in the thermal catalytic deconstruction of polyethylene and polypropylene under mild conditions.
Next, the talk will discuss emerging frameworks and technical challenges for the chemical recycling of mixed plastic waste feedstocks.
Finally, the talk will present ongoing efforts to reduce the cost and environmental impacts of polymer deconstruction and upcycling.
Speaker: Julie Rorrer, University of Washington
Room 3108
Ancient human footprints at White Sands National Park - 03/08/2024 03:30 PM
McCone Hall Berkeley
Archaeologists and researchers in allied fields have long sought to understand human colonization of North America. Questions remain about when and how people migrated, where they originated, and how their arrival affected the established fauna and landscape. Excavated surfaces in White Sands National Park (New Mexico, United States) revealed multiple in situ human footprints that are stratigraphically constrained and bracketed by seed layers that yield calibrated radiocarbon ages between ~23 and 21 thousand years ago. This timing coincided with a Northern Hemispheric abrupt warming event, Dansgaard-Oeschger event 2, which drew down lake levels and allowed humans and megafauna to walk on newly exposed surfaces, creating tracks that became preserved in the geologic record. The White Sands footprints chronology has remained controversial, however, because of potential old carbon reservoir effects that could have compromised the accuracy of the seed ages. Here, we present new calibrated radiocarbon ages of terrestrial pollen collected from the same stratigraphic horizons as the seeds, along with optically stimulated luminescence ages of sediments from within the human footprint-bearing sequence, to evaluate their veracity. The new ages show that the chronologic framework originally established for the White Sands footprints is robust and reaffirm that humans were present in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum.
Speakers: Kathleen Springer and Jeff Pigati, USGS
Xeno in Vivo: A Live Multimedia Opera Performance - 03/08/2024 07:30 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Will CRISPR gene editing change our idea of what defines a species? Is gene editing simply a continuation of our long history of modifying animals through selective breeding? Or is it something radically new?
Artist-in-Residence Heather Dewey-Hagborg and the Exploratorium present the world premiere of Xeno in Vivo, a multimedia opera and live film performance investigating xenotransplantation - in which an organ is transplanted into a human from another animal, such as a pig. The thirty-minute work, featuring a live operatic chorus, will reflect upon the ten thousand-year relationship between pigs and humans, and brings the words of scientists and archaeologists to life in song. Each night's performance will be followed by a discussion about the work and the questions raised by the evolving biomedical technology of xenotransplantation.
Heather Dewey-Hagborg is a transdisciplinary artist and educator interested in art as research and critical practice. Heather’s work investigates the social implications of the technological advances of biological science to explore our human nature.
Following Thursday's performance, Heather Dewey-Hagborg will be in conversation with Tanya Zimbardo, Assistant Curator of Media Arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Following Friday's performance, Heather Dewey-Hagborg will be in conversation with Daphne O. Martschenko, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford School of Medicine.
Both conversations will be moderated by Kristina Yu, PhD, Senior Director, Science R&D at the Exploratorium.
Note: These are separate performances from regular programming at the explOratorium. Enter through the Kanbar Forum's Bulkhead entrance. Doors open at 7:00 p.m.
In Town Star Party - 03/08/2024 08:15 PM
San Jose Astronomical Association San Jose
Come join San Jose Astronomical Association (SJAA) for an evening of stargazing.
Events are held at the parking lot of our headquarters, Houge Park San Jose. The event duration is 2 hours. SJAA volunteers will share night sky views from their telescopes.Please refrain from bringing your own telescopes (Binoculars are welcome). If you like to be a volunteer with or without a telescope please email at "itsp@sjaa.net".
Register at weblink
Saturday, 03/09/2024
North Bay Science Discovery Day - 03/09/2024 10:00 AM
Sonoma County Fairgrounds Santa Rosa
The North Bay Science Discovery Day is a one-day public free science festival designed to spark children's wonder and curiosity for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. With over 70 organizations and 100 hands-on interactive exhibits, youth explore rockets and beehives, robots and sharks, catapults and hearts, animation, animals, and art, and more. Youth meet and talk to professional scientists and engineers. Rain or shine.
Family Nature Adventures: Bees - 03/09/2024 10:30 AM
Chabot Space and Science Center OaklandLearn about bees, from familiar favorites to lesser known native species, and how to spot them in a hands-on workshop and nature walk.
International Women's Day at the Lawrence Hall of Science - 03/09/2024 11:00 AM
Lawrence Hall of Science Berkeley
Celebrate women and girls in science, technology, engineering, and math on International Women’s Day! Design, build, and test hands-on engineering activities with the UC Berkeley chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. This national non-profit organization celebrates the achievement of non-male individuals as leaders and engineers.
Admission is free for UC Berkeley students & staff, Members, children 2 and under, Museums for All, and active-duty military.
Sunday, 03/10/2024
Electrified Home Tour - 03/10/2024 11:00 AM
Various
Do you know that electrifying your home can save you money, protect your and your children’s health, help reduce global warming, and keep you more comfortable?
Come learn how on the upcoming, free Electrified Home Tour, a new program of the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour and Green Home Features Showcase.
We hope you’ll check out these green homes, take your own steps to electrify, and then reap the benefits:
Savings: Transitioning to solar-powered, fully electrified homes and vehicles could save the average household between $1,050 and $2,585 per year in energy costs.
Health: Protect your own, and your family’s health: cooking with a gas stove emits pollutants that are linked childhood asthma, heart problems, cancer, and other adverse health conditions.
Comfort: Heat pumps, which both heat and cool your home, do a better job of keeping your home at a constant, comfortable temperature than a gas furnace - while using much less energy to do so.
Climate: Burning fossil fuels in buildings is a major source of climate warming
The Electrified Home Tour is an in-person, free event that will take place at four electrified homes in Alameda and Contra Costa County.
Friendly, knowledgeable homeowners and volunteers will be available to answer your questions.
Choose the homes you would like to visit, and see them in any order you like.
You can register for this event here. Attendance will be capped: sign up now if you would like to participate.
The homes that will be open are:
Stefanie Pruegel’s fully-electrified home in San Leandro
Janet Parks’ home in Kensington
Kathy and Mike’s home in San Pablo (accessed via 25 garden steps)
Anne Chambers and Ed McAlpine’s fully-electrified home in Moraga
Monday, 03/11/2024
Understanding Chromosome Organization and its Implications in Human Disease - 03/11/2024 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Lisa Hua, Sonoma State University
The original speaker, Meghan Laturney, UC Berkeley, is unavailable.
Symbolic Systems Forum - 03/11/2024 12:30 PM
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg 460) Stanford
Speaker: Kara Schechtman, Stanford University
Room 126
Unintended Environmental Consequences of Investment Stimulus Policy - 03/11/2024 02:00 PM
Evans Hall Berkeley
We study the unintended environmental consequences of “bonus depreciation,” one of the largest investment tax incentives in US history. To do so, we pair emissions data from the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory and National Emissions Inventory with quasi-experimental policy variation in the extent to which establishments benefited from the policy. Differences-in-differences estimates show bonus depreciation increased annual emissions by 30%. To quantify aggregate damages associated with the policy we integrate our estimates into a pollution transport model. We estimate overall environmental damages at between $17 and 39 billion per year. These estimates represent between 56 and 125% of the policy’s annual fiscal cost during the period we study. Damages differ by race and were 75% higher for African-Americans compared to the national average. More stringent environmental regulations decreased damages from bonus depreciation by 40%.
Speaker: Eric Ohrn, UC Berkeley
Note start change from the original listing
Zooming into the Landscape of Topological States and Collective Excitations - 03/11/2024 02:30 PM
Birge Hall Berkeley
Nanoscale electrodynamics offers a unique perspective on states with bulk-edge correspondence or spatially-dependent excitations. This presentation will introduce our latest advancements in optically coupled microwave impedance microscopy, a technique that enhances our capability to explore electrodynamics at the nanometer scale. I will discuss our recent studies utilizing this technology to extract spectroscopic information on exciton excitations within transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) systems. Additionally, I will share some of our recent findings on probing topological and correlated electronic states, specifically those induced by flat bands in twisted TMD bilayers.
Speaker: Zhurun Ji, Stanford Univerisity
Comparing Leading Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies - 03/11/2024 03:30 PM
TBD Stanford
The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report shows that we will need several gigatons of carbon dioxide removal annually to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. A nascent but rapidly growing private sector is attempting to meet that demand. These companies are deploying a myriad of technologies that capture and store carbon in unique pathways, with their own benefits and tradeoffs. I will discuss these tradeoffs, with an eye to scaling from todays tens of kilotons of removals to the needed gigaton scale.
Speaker: Edward Young, Charm Industrial
Attend in person or online. See weblink for Zoom connection
Mechanisms of co-translational folding and assembly of proteins - 03/11/2024 04:00 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
Speaker: Bernd Bukau, ZMBH Heidelberg
Storytelling and the Climate Crisis - 03/11/2024 04:00 PM
Social Sciences Building Room 820 Berkeley
Contemporary writers and activists have described the climate crisis as, in part, a crisis of the imagination, of culture, and of storytelling. In this panel, we’ll hear from writers and scholars of different genres - science fiction, journalism, history, literary fiction, and comedy - about how the climate crisis has impacted their craft and what practices of storytelling have to offer us at this pivotal moment in human history.
Panelists:
Daniel Gumbiner, novelist and editor
Annalee Newitz, science fiction writer and journalist
Aaron Sachs, Cornell University
Rebecca Solnit, writer, historian, activist
Rebecca Herman, UC Berkeley, moderator
Register at weblink to attend
UC Berkeley Physics Colloquium - 03/11/2024 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: Vidya Madhavan, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Electric vehicle green charging with marginal emissions signals - 03/11/2024 04:30 PM
Stanford University Energy Seminar Stanford
Electric vehicles (EVs) are a promising clean transportation option, but they still release CO2 emissions when charging from the electricity grid. Often, EV drivers charge their vehicles when it is cheap or convenient, not when grid carbon intensity is lowest. Green charging, or smart charging control, is a solution to this problem that optimizes to reduce emissions by shifting electricity demand in between and across charging sessions. In this talk, I will present and validate a green charging control strategy based on actual EV driver data and historical grid emissions. The basis for this control is marginal emissions, or the emissions released when a new generator must be dispatched to the grid, which we find performs better than using average grid emissions data.
Speaker: Sonia Martin, Stanford University
Attend in person or online (see weblink)
Tuesday, 03/12/2024
What I Did On My Fall Vacations - Submersible Research on the Fishes of Southern California Oil/Gas Platforms - Livestream - 03/12/2024 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save The Planet - Livestream - 03/12/2024 12:00 PM
UC Berkeley
Muon Colliders: the Next Generation of Particle Accelerators - 03/12/2024 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
CFC Birdy Hour - Livestream - 03/12/2024 06:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
Designing More Equitable Climate Solutions - Livestream - 03/12/2024 06:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
The Bureau of Linguistical Reality Performance Lecture - 03/12/2024 07:00 PM
The Interval at Long Now San Francisco
Wednesday, 03/13/2024
Sticking Together: How Bacterial Collectives (Re)Shape Themselves - 03/13/2024 12:00 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
AI and Translation - 03/13/2024 05:00 PM
Stephens Hall Berkeley
Solar Eclipse program - 03/13/2024 06:00 PM
San Mateo Public Library San Mateo
Black Holes and the Technology to Find Them - 03/13/2024 07:00 PM
Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series Los Altos Hills
Thursday, 03/14/2024
Pi (π) Day - 03/14/2024 11:00 AM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Integration of EVs in Electric Systems - 03/14/2024 01:30 PM
Environment & Energy Building (Y2E2) Stanford
UC Berkeley Astronomy Colloquium - 03/14/2024 03:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
NightLife - 03/14/2024 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
After Dark: Math Curious - 03/14/2024 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
COVID Myths: And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’ - Livestream - 03/14/2024 07:30 PM
Bay Area Skeptics
Friday, 03/15/2024
Precision Sleep Health: Harnessing Technology and the Exposome to Tackle Disparities - Livestream - 03/15/2024 12:00 PM
ChEM-H/Neuroscience Building, James Lin and Nisa Leung Seminar Room (E153) Stanford
Designing the Plasmonic Response of Complex Nanoparticle Assemblies - 03/15/2024 02:00 PM
Etcheverry Hall Berkeley
Saturday, 03/16/2024
Space for Her: Celebrating Women in Space Science - 03/16/2024 10:00 AM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Buzzing Through Nature: Palo Alto Pollinator Walk - 03/16/2024 10:00 AM
Lucie Stern Theatre Palo Alto
Spring flowers at Bouverie Preserve - 03/16/2024 10:00 AM
Bouverie Preserve Glen Ellen
City Public Star Party - 03/16/2024 07:00 PM
City Star Parties - Tunnel Tops Park San Francisco
Jazz Under the Stars - 03/16/2024 08:00 PM
College of San Mateo Bldg 36 San Mateo
Sunday, 03/17/2024
Free Talk on a North American Eclipse of the Sun April 8 - Livestream - 03/17/2024 03:00 PM
San Francisco Public Library
Monday, 03/18/2024
Physics Condensed Matter Seminar - 03/18/2024 02:30 PM
Birge Hall Berkeley
The Age of Human-Robot Collaboration: Deep-Sea Robotic Exploration - 03/18/2024 03:30 PM
TBD Stanford
Lessons from sleep in the deep: seal sleep at sea reveals clues to sleep's function and evolution - 03/18/2024 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
What Physicists Do Seminar - CANCELED - 03/18/2024 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
UC Berkeley Physics Colloquium - 03/18/2024 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Gaming and Inclusivity - 03/18/2024 05:30 PM
swissnex San Francisco San Francisco