Hello again, dear reader,
Of all the unexpected phenomena in our unfathomable universe, ambergris shat by sperm whales rates pretty high. A lump the size of a Costco muffin could sell for thousands of dollars - if it had floated in the ocean for a long time. Bafflingly, the stinky excrement is used in high-end perfumes.
A surprising situation 70 million years ago apparently isolated herbivorous dinosaurs on an island with no big predators. Result: Island Dwarfism and aerial predator gigantism.
Far more recently, Australia was home to a quarter-ton bird that suffered from osteomyelitis.
Climate change is having unexpected and gruesome consequences, like killing piglets and people in Australia.
¿Were you aware an eyedrop medicine can improve close-up vision?
For people who are reluctant to get vaccinated against COVID-19, they are recommended to talk with their physician. There’s a fundamental and unexpected problem with that: 10% of doctors in the U.S. themselves eschew those shots.
When an oil well reaches the end of its profitability - commonly yielding mostly water - it might get repurposed for heating buildings and/or producing a little electricity.
A healthy mouse pup was born from an unfertilized egg. (Actually, several were born but not all were totally healthy.)
John S. (unexpectedly from London, England) won the Hubble Telescope paper model kit. This time the prize is a limited edition pin (3.4cm across with 2 butterfly clasps) of a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. It was the December 2021 SciShow monthly pin. Just send an email (only one) to david.almandsmith@gmail.com before noon Friday with an integer between zero and 1,000. We will then use a random number generator to select the target number. The person who chose the closest number wins.
To avoid serious illness (or worse) from an excessive inflammatory response, a.k.a. cytokine storm, you may one day credit - wait for it - tick spit.
¿Were you expecting that your Pilates Ring came a cancer warning?
Health professionals advocate kicking the Centers for Disease Control out of Washington.
Sunlight is necessary for plants and aquatic organisms to produce the gaseous oxygen so necessary for vertebrates, but Nitrosopumilus maritimus unexpectedly creates its own oxygen when in the dark.
Now that the spectre of nuclear war is back at a level not seen since i was in grade school, i’ve heard a few people opine that only cockroaches will survive. Nonsense. (That link points to the “Difficulty” section on Wikipedia’s ‘Human Extinction’ page.) Professor Dirk Schulze-Makuch of the Technische Universität Berlin has nominated naked mole-rats as survivors that could possibly evolve into a technologically advanced civilization. ¿Would their King be duped into wearing clothes?
I’m sorta hoping you had not (yet) heard that red-light testicular treatments might assist guys in becoming ‘manly men.’ (I cannot help but reflect that ‘manly men’ are responsible for nearly all of the inhuman ruthless atrocities throughout history.)
PICKS OF THE WEEK
Giant Salamanders & Little Alligators: West Coast Biogeography: Livestream - Noon Monday
Protect, Accommodate, Retreat: Adaptation Strategies in the Face of Sea Level Rise: Livestream - Noon Wednesday
Starry Night Life: 6 - 10 PM Thursday, Cal Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, $
First Friday: Futuristic Foods: 6 - 10 PM Friday, Chabot Space & Science Center, Oakland, $
Rock dust can help alleviate the climate crisis. Huh? Stay with me here; i’ll explain.
For billions of years, CO2 has been constantly cycled from the atmosphere and sequestered for varying epochs. Without such a process, Earth would be nearly as hot as Venus.
Currently, over 99% of this process involves CO2 chemically reacting with olivine, the most common mineral in rocks on Earth’s surface. The resulting magnesium bicarbonate is washed to the sea where marine life locks the carbon away in carbonate rocks.
Since the industrial revolution, this natural process has not been able to keep up with CO2 emissions resulting in excess greenhouse gasses and ocean acidification.
Idea: Crush rocks into dust and (a) spread the dust lightly over farmland to sequester atmospheric CO2 and (b) dump the dust into oceans to alleviate ocean acidification.
Doctors want to employ dogs in medical labs. (A pun is lurking in there somewhere.)
Sadly, spinal cord injuries all too often lead to the permanent loss of muscular control of the lower limbs. Enormous research efforts hope to someday allow some healing, but then along comes an African mouse that recovers from a totally severed spinal cord!
There were significant science events this last week that i did not report on, (e.g. I watched the Dragon capsule dock with the ISS - thankfully as exciting as watching bean sprouts grow until the crews greeted each other) - so please forgive me for focusing only on “the unexpected.”
Have a great week -- and keep expanding your sphere of empathy,
Dave Almandsmith
Bay Area Skeptics
“All creative people want to do the unexpected.”
- Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler), inventor & actress (1914 - 2000). With financial support from Howard Hughes, she and composer George Antheil patented frequency hopping radio communications (using a player piano mechanism) and spread spectrum radio communications. At age 19, Ms. Kiesler was the star of the Czech movie Extase, "the first non-pornographic movie to portray sexual intercourse and female orgasm."
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 05/02/2022
Energy Forum: A Conversation with Condoleezza Rice - Livestream - 05/02/2022 11:45 AM
Stanford Energy
Please join us as we welcome Dr. Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State; Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business; the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution; a professor of political science, and Director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in conversation with Arun Majumdar, the Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor, Stanford University. This session focuses on the interplay between energy and climate challenges the world faces and global geopolitics. Kam Moler, Transition Dean, Vice Provost and Dean Research, Marvin Chodorow Professor and Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics at Stanford, will make introductory remarks.
Register at weblink to receive connection information.
Giant Salamanders and Little Alligators: Insights into West Coast Biogeography - Livestream - 05/02/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State Biology Colloquium
Speakers: Brian Lavin
See link for Zoom information
Structural disorder in topological materials - Livestream - 05/02/2022 02:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
The use of crystal symmetries and band representations have enabled a classification scheme for crystalline topological materials, leading to large scale topological materials discovery. Amorphous materials lie beyond this classification due to the lack of long-range order, but still can host topological states. In this talk I will first present data on amorphous Bi2Se3, which is a topological insulator in its crystalline form. I will show evidence of spin-momentum locked surface states in amorphous Bi2Se3. In the second part of the talk I will discuss how disorder in the local atomic environment of BiTeI induces a topological phase transition via first principles calculations. Understanding how local environments produce topological phases is a key step for predicting disordered and amorphous topological materials to be used in scalable topological devices.
Speaker: Paul Joseph Corbae, UC Berkeley
Attend in person or online. See weblink for Zoom information
Visualizing the electronics of WS2/WSe2 superlattices with ARPES - Livestream - 05/02/2022 03:00 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Superlattices of TMDCs and graphene have received well deserved attention by breaking the paradigm of "tunable" heterostructure electronics: moiresuperlattices are functionally completely new materials hosting exotic correlations and bearing little surface resemblance to their parents. By using nanoARPES to measure the holistic band structures of WS2/WSe2, we examine the relationship between moire phases and their constituent monolayers more closely. I will discuss the emergence of flat bands and strong interlayer hybridization as hallmarks of moireTMDC materials and show that ARPES provides insight into the electronics of moirematerials despite inaccessibly small superlattice unit cells.
The second half of the talk pulls on a parallel thread by taking a broader perspective on how we interpret ARPES data. NanoARPES, which enabled our WS2/WSe2 measurements, offers an emerging strength for the technique by making it possible to "image" a material or device's electronics, but it requires complex and expensive instrumentation. In this section, I present one simple approach based on regularized signal unmixing which permits recovery of the ARPES spectra on materials with much larger beams.
Speaker: Conrad Stansbury, UC Berkeley
Attend in person or online. See weblink for Zoom information
The great nuclear escape: the mechanism of membrane deformation during non-canonical nuclear export in herpesviruses - 05/02/2022 04:00 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
Herpesviruses are large viruses that infect nearly all vertebrates and some invertebrates and cause lifelong infections in most of the world's population. During replication, they export their capsids from the nucleus into the cytoplasm by an unusual mechanism termed nuclear egress. Too large to fit through nuclear pores, capsids instead bud at the inner nuclear membrane forming enveloped capsid particles in the perinuclear space. These particles then fuse with the outer nuclear membrane releasing the capsids into the cytoplasm where they mature into infectious virions. The seminar will focus on the nuclear budding step. This process is mediated by the virus-encoded heterodimeric complex termed the nuclear egress complex (NEC). This presentation will describe how the NEC uses lipid ordering and protein oligomerization to deform membranes and cause budding. Similar principles may underlie membrane deformation in other systems.
Speaker: Katya Heldwein, Tufts University School of Medicine
Assessing Health Benefits of Decarbonization by 2045 - Livestream - 05/02/2022 04:00 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar
As California Air Resources Board's Research Division Chief, Elizabeth Scheehle is in charge of planning and coordinating the agency's wide-ranging air quality and climate research. She directs a team of over 70 multidisciplinary scientists and engineers to develop and implement research plans and studies to provide a robust scientific foundation for our air quality and climate policy decisions. In addition, the Division implements programs to address indoor air quality and high global warming potential gas mitigation. Scheehle previously managed CARB's Oil and Gas and GHG Mitigation Branch. The Branch is responsible for programs related to oil and gas operations, fuel specifications, refinery operations, and carbon capture and sequestration. Prior to that, she managed the Climate Change Program Development Section, which focuses on allowance allocation under California's cap-and-trade program. She also previously managed the Greenhouse Gas Technology and Field Studies section, which covers a range of research topics including climate change mitigation strategies and field studies to characterize community exposures and verify and validate emission estimates. As staff, she was lead on carbon capture and sequestration and managed several High GWP initiatives.
See weblink for connection information
A biophysical hypothesis for the initiation of neurodegeneration - 05/02/2022 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Speaker: Liam Holt completed his Ph. D. at UCSF, was a Bowes Fellow at UC Berkeley, and is currently Associate Professor at New York University. His lab studies how mechanical compression affects cells, and how the physical properties of the cell interior affect biochemistry in both normal biology and disease. He cofounded Science Sketches (www.sciencesketches.org), an online dictionary of science videos now partnered with the Explorer's Guide to Biology and MBoC Journal; and Inspire Science, a symposium about maintaining happiness in a challenging career.
Room: Auditorium
Indigenizing Astronomy: Cultural Perspectives on the Sky and the Future of Research - 05/02/2022 07:30 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Canadian Indigenous Astronomer Dr. Laurie Rousseau-Nepton is inviting you for an immersive journey into the First Nation of Canada's perspective on our Universe. Myths and Legends often reveal a deep understanding of astronomical phenomenons from the physics concepts to the complex interaction between our environment on Earth, the seasons, and the movement of the celestial bodies. Ultimately aiming at reviving ancestral knowledge, she will also discuss different paths to indigenizing astronomy by transforming both our ways of talking about science, teaching, and conducting research.
Accompanying Dr. Rousseau-Nepton's presentation, we will host the West Coast premiere of cultural and Indigenous short films produced by the One Sky Project.
Speaker: Laurie Rousseau-Nepton, Canada-France-Hawaii Observatory
Tuesday, 05/03/2022
Dr. Deborah Birx: The Untold Story of Fighting COVID-19 - Livestream - 05/03/2022 12:30 PM
Commonwealth Club - Online Event
During the early days of the political and medical panic of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Deborah Birx was at the center of the storm. Appointed as the White House coronavirus response coordinator despite heavy distrust from the inner circles of the Trump administration, Dr. Birx, a seasoned diplomat, physician and political administrator, found herself facing the greatest public health crisis in a generation, with a mercurial and unpredictable president who made implementing an coordinated and consistent government response a daily challenge. She also amassed critics outside the White House as the pandemic grew.
In her new book Silent Invasion, Dr. Birx recounts how she balanced skepticism from the West Wing, bitter partisanship and media speculation with delivering the fastest vaccine ever created, reform of the public health system and the power of public health interventions in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. Giving a candid look at how the pandemic developed and her role in convincing President Trump to see the danger COVID posed to the country, Dr. Birx gives a sobering and comprehensive view of the ongoing pandemic, and provides advice on how to prevent another pandemic from tearing apart American society.
Join us as Dr. Birx retells her frantic battle to reform a broken federal response to the pandemic into one that could protect American lives, and gives a look to the future of the ongoing battle against COVID-19.
Seismotectonic and climatic controls on the geologic carbon cycle - 05/03/2022 03:30 PM
Natural Science Annex Santa Cruz
Plate tectonics and climate are two major drivers of the global carbon cycle over geological timescales. In this talk, I will present two studies examining how large earthquakes and a changing climate impact the carbon cycle, with a focus on particulate organic carbon (OC) - an important, yet less-well-understood component in the carbon cycle. The first study will illustrate how the 2008 Mw7.9 great Sichuan earthquake changed the carbon cycle in the eastern Tibetan mountains. Combining river system sampling and geochemical measurement, I will show that the earthquake-triggered landslides accelerated OC erosion and burial, promoting the capacity of the mountain range to draw down atmospheric CO2. The second study will focus on a tributary floodplain of the Yukon River, central Alaska, where the warming climate has largely altered the carbon cycle. In those Arctic floodplains, OC is eroded from permafrost soils and transported by rivers to the ocean for long-term storage. Previous studies suggest that the OC cycling processes are accelerated by warming-induced bank erosion. I will show that significant loss of OC occurred during the transfer from soils to rivers, using measurements of river sediment and soil samples collected from the studied floodplain. Overall, these two studies provide modern perspectives on how carbon cycle systems respond to changes in tectonics and climate, highlighting the importance of landforms and geomorphic processes in regulating the OC cycle.
Speaker: Gen Li, UC Santa Barbara
Biochemical and Structural Basis for tRNA Methylthiolation - 05/03/2022 04:00 PM
Latimer Hall Berkeley
Speaker: Squire Booker, Pennsylvania State University
Wednesday, 05/04/2022
Green Energy: The Current Research Landscape - 05/04/2022 11:00 AM
California Section American Chemical Society
From hydrogen fuel to solar cells to battery recycling, the race is on to develop green energy technologies that can accelerate the decarbonization of society. A panel of experts will present a landscape view of research and development efforts into hydrogen fuel production, storage, application, and cost-effectiveness in various sectors, as well as cutting-edge technologies in solar cells and rechargeable batteries. This ACS Webinar is moderated by VP and CSO, Gilles Georges of CAS and co-produced with CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society.
What You Will Learn:
Landscape views of research and development in hydrogen fuel energy and lithium-ion battery recyclingSolar cell and rechargeable battery technologiesSystems analysis of hydrogen useRegister at weblink
Protect, Accommodate, Retreat: Adaptation Strategies in the Face of Sea Level Rise - Livestream - 05/04/2022 12:00 PM
SF Planning + Urban Research Assoc. (SPUR)
There is widespread agreement that the Bay Area needs to invest in both protection and accommodation to allow communities to coexist with the inevitability of sea level rise. But managed retreat, itself, is bitterly contested. The history of the government taking land for the "public good" is synonymous with some of the greatest injustices in the United States, of which the displacement of Native Americans from their ancestral lands and the razing of non-white communities to build freeways and railroads are just two appalling examples. Managed retreat chips away at the communities that people love while reopening these old wounds. However, its alternative - allowing climate disasters to force when and how people move - is no better. And as climate change continues to impact the Bay Area, many neighborhoods will be at greater risk of regular flooding, even with protection and accommodation strategies in place. Take part in a difficult conversation about when, if ever, is the right time to talk about retreat.
Panel:
Laura Feinstein / SPURDana Brechwald / The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development CommissionJaclyn Mandoske / The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development CommissionJessica Fain / The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development CommissionNuin-Tara Key / California Governor's Office of Planning and ResearchEllen Plane / San Francisco Estuary InstituteJeremy Lowe / San Francisco Estuary InstituteJulio Garcia / Rise South City
Register at weblink to receive connection information
Ask the Scientist - Emily Lam - 05/04/2022 02:30 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
How do scientists go from OMG to PhD? How do they turn their passion for science into their profession? What advice do they have for future scientists?
If you are a 5th-12th grade student, undergraduate, teacher or parent, join us to ask these questions and more in a Q&A session with our weekly Seminar speakers on Wednesdays from 2:30 - 3 PM.
Parents must give permission for children under 18 to participate.
Speaker: Emily Lam. Emily spent a few years volunteering at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito and€¯at The Seal Rehabilitation and Research Center in the Netherlands as a seal nurse intern.€¯She shifted her focus to studying environmental physiology in porcelain crabs for her master's at the EOS Center. She is now a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Vázquez-Medina lab at UC Berkeley where she has returned to studying marine mammals. She is interested in understanding the implications of anthropogenic perturbations on physiology in elephant seals, whales, and sea lions by studying the effects of stressors at the molecular, cellular and organismal levels.
Physiological and behavioral thermoregulation of northern elephant seals among three northern California rookeries - Livestream - 05/04/2022 03:40 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
The physiological adaptations that have allowed marine mammals to overcome the challenges associated with the recolonization of the aquatic environment confer unique life history traits that are uncommon in terrestrial mammals and have converged independently in distinct lineages. While these life history strategies make marine mammals interesting models to study adaptations to stress, perturbations characteristic of modern environments may increase marine mammals' susceptibility to direct and indirect anthropogenic stressors. My dissertation seeks to contribute to our understanding of the effects of stress exposure through three projects that address the impacts of environmental stress at different levels of biological organization in marine mammals. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I am developing a model to study stress responses at the cellular level in seals and whales. In the second chapter, I use infrared thermal imaging to study physiological responses to climate change induced by habitat degradation in Northern elephant seals. In my last chapter, I will study the mechanisms driving neurological decline in California sea lions exposed to domoic acid.
Speaker: Emily Lam, UC Berkeley
See weblink for Zoom registration
Science at Extremes - Livestream - 05/04/2022 05:00 PM
UC Berkeley
From studying the origins of the universe in a low-oxygen desert in Chile, to large-scale volcanic eruptions in remote parts of the world, to highly infectious coronaviruses in biosafety level-3 labs, Berkeley researchers discuss what it's like to conduct science in extreme environments.
Register at weblink
Thursday, 05/05/2022
Walk on the Cowell-Purisima Trail - 05/05/2022 10:00 AM
Cowell Purisima Coastal Trailhead Half Moon Bay
Join Peninsula Open Space Trust for a beautiful walk along the Cowell-Purisima trail that POST helped create by protecting adjacent farmland. While it may be foggy, we hope to catch gorgeous views of the ocean, nearby farmland, and glimpses of harbor seals, pelicans, hawks, rabbits, and whales during the winter season.
You will be guided by POST ambassadors who will share details about POST's work with farmers on the coast, and to create recreational opportunities along one of the most scenic stretches of our state's coastline!
The walk is moderate at about 3 miles round trip with about 400 feet of gradual elevation gain. It is mostly flat throughout, however, it is quite a long walk.
Register at weblink
The search for radio emission from exoplanets using LOFAR low-frequency beamformed observations - 05/05/2022 12:10 PM
Campbell Hall, Rm 131 A Berkeley
The detection of radio emissions from exoplanets will open up a vibrant new research field. Observing planetary auroral radio emissions is the most promising method to detect exoplanetary magnetic fields, the knowledge of which will provide valuable insights into the planet's interior structure, atmospheric escape, and habitability. To date, many ground-based observations conducted to find exoplanet radio emissions have resulted in non-detections.
Here, we present our recent study using Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) circularly polarized beamformed observations of the three exoplanetary systems 55 Cnc, Upsilon Andromedae, and Tau Bootis. All three systems are predicted to be ideal candidates to search for radio emission.
For the Tau Bootis system, we tentatively detected circularly polarized bursty emissions from 14 - 21 Mhz at 3 sigma and slowly variable circularly polarized emissions from 21 - 30 Mhz at 8 sigma. We will discuss in detail all the arguments for and against an actual detection.
Furthmore, no signals are detected from the 55 Cancri and Upsilon Andromedae systems. Assuming the detected signals are real, we discuss their potential origin. Their source probably is the Tau Bootis planetary system, and a possitlbe explanation is radio emission from the exoplanet Tau Bootis b via the cyclotron maser mechanism.
Assuming a planetary origin, we derived limits for the planetary polar surface magnetic field strength, finding values compatible with theoretical predictions. Follow-up observations are ongoing with LOFAR and other low-frequency telescopes to confirm this possible first detection of an exoplanetary radio signal. We will also briefly discuss the first results from these follow-up observations.
Speaker: Jake Turner, Cornell
Starry NightLife - 05/05/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
From using stars for wayfinding to the stories sparked by constellations, humans throughout history have pondered the night sky from every corner of the globe. This NightLife, we're collaborating with One Sky Project to celebrate Indigenous astronomy and spotlight how the myriad ways cultures see the cosmos have contributed to our collective knowledge of the Universe. Join us in the Morrison Planetarium for the San Francisco premiere of the project's short films - a collaborative effort with Academy planetarium director Ryan Wyatt - each representing the perspective of a different culture or Indigenous society. Hear astronomer Laurie Rousseau-Nepton and director of the University of Hawai'i's €˜Imiloa Astronomy Center Ka'iu Kimura discuss the intersection of ancestral and contemporary astronomy. Come with a wish in mind to add to 1000s of Wishes Upon a Star, a participatory art installation in the Piazza.
Fix your gaze on the night sky to ponder: are we alone in the Universe? Discover galaxies near and far through the lens of the Unistellar telescope, and explore the possibilities of life beyond Earth in a telescope demonstration with SETI Institute astronomer Franck Marchis. Get a sneak peek into the James Webb Space Telescope - NASA's revolutionary new observatory - which will peer more than 13.5 billion years back into cosmic history and transform our understanding of the early Universe.
NightSchool: Earth to Astronomy - Livestream - 05/05/2022 07:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences
Hear from scientists & communicators who share stories of outer space here on Earth.
See weblink for YouTube and Facebook links.
Friday, 05/06/2022
Using passive seismics and experiments to understand transient glacial slip - 05/06/2022 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Luke Zoet, University of Wisconsin - Madison
First Friday: Futuristic Foods - 05/06/2022 06:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Get a taste of the future and explore how new advancements in space, robotics, climate and biotechnology will influence tomorrow's food. Bring a healthy curiosity to a delicious First Friday.
The Handspring Story: Renegades, Aspirations, and Disasters - 05/06/2022 07:00 PM
Computer History Museum Mountain View
A decade before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, a tiny team of renegades attempted to build the modern smartphone.
The 30-minute documentary Springboard: The Secret History of the First Real Smartphone tells their story, complete with big aspirations, bad decisions, and outside disasters.
Join us for a screening of the documentary and a panel discussion featuring Host Dieter Bohn and two key players in the story: Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan.
What You'll LearnDive into the rat race of the late €˜90s internet, before the tech monoliths were set in stone and when many futures seemed possible.Hear the story of the people whose ideas are inside the phones you use every day.Learn how what Donna Dubinsky calls "the biggest mistake of my career" forced the company to find a buyer.Why You Should Join Us
Nearly forgotten by history, a little startup called Handspring tried to make the future before it was ready.€¯ Their story casts light on questions that continue to impact technology today:
If a company's products don't succeed, is the company a failure?If a company goes out of business, does that mean they have the wrong ideas?What are the risks and rewards of being early to market?
Monday, 05/09/2022
Mechanisms Underlying Flight Polymorphisms in Gryllus Crickets - Livestream - 05/09/2022 12:00 PM
Sonoma State Biology Colloquium
Speakers: Caroline Williams, UC Berkeley
See link for Zoom information
Mayte Sanchez, Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) - Livestream - 05/09/2022 04:00 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar
Mayte Sanchez is Director of Energy at Los Angeles Cleantexh Incubator
Wonderfest: Ask a Science Envoy: Memory & Supernovae - Livestream - 05/09/2022 08:00 PM
Wonderfest
Wonderfest Science Envoys are early-career researchers with special communication skills and aspirations. Following short talks on provocative modern science topics, these two Science Envoys will answer questions with insight and enthusiasm:
Stanford neuroscientist Douglas Steven Miller on Why Can't I Remember? - Memory is a fundamental component of life. However, memory within and across individuals can vary. By studying attention, we can illuminate key components of these differences and perhaps strengthen our memory.UC Berkeley astrophysicist Sergiy Vasylyev on Cosmic Fireworks - Some stars go out with a bang: a cataclysmic explosion known as a supernova. Supernovae allow us to study the composition and dynamics of the Universe. Astronomers are able to use certain properties of light and atoms to peer inside the extreme environments of these cosmic fireworks from the safety of planet Earth.
See weblink for Zoom information
Tuesday, 05/10/2022
May Bird Walk with Chris Carmichael - 05/10/2022 09:30 AM
UC Botanical Garden Berkeley
Transdisciplinary explorations of sustainability at the Bonneville Salt Flats - 05/10/2022 03:30 PM
Natural Science Annex Santa Cruz
Dark Matter in the Disordered Cosmos - 05/10/2022 07:00 PM
KIPAC Public Lectures
Wednesday, 05/11/2022
Climate Change: Insights from Indigenous Peoples - 05/11/2022 11:00 AM
California Section American Chemical Society
Bird Migration: Opportunity Wants A Map - Livestream - 05/11/2022 12:00 PM
Stanford University
Revealing the hidden diversity, abundance, and feeding interactions at the base of aquatic food webs - Livestream - 05/11/2022 03:40 PM
Estuary & Ocean Science Center
May LASER Event - Livestream - 05/11/2022 06:00 PM
LASER Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous
Building Great Things - 05/11/2022 07:00 PM
Computer History Museum Mountain View
Thursday, 05/12/2022
Weekday Morning Walk at Pillar Point Bluff - 05/12/2022 10:00 AM
Pillar Point Bluff Half Moon Bay
Frank Drake Award Ceremonies - 05/12/2022 06:00 PM
SRI International Menlo Park
Blinded by the Light! How Light Pollution Affects the Behavior, Physiology, and Ecology of Birds - Livestream - 05/12/2022 06:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
Nightlife - 05/12/2022 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Superstitions, Aliens, and Conspiracies: Tales from the Frontlines of Astronomy Outreach - Livestream - 05/12/2022 07:30 PM
Bay Area Skeptics
Friday, 05/13/2022
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics Seminar - 05/13/2022 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Saturday, 05/14/2022
Impacts of Fire on Reptiles and Amphibians in Sonoma County - Livestream - 05/14/2022 10:00 AM
Audubon Canyon Ranch
Celebrating 175 Years of Neptune: A Story from its Discovery to the Present - Livestream - 05/14/2022 07:30 PM
Mt. Tam Astronomy
Sunday, 05/15/2022
Afternoon Walk at Pillar Point Bluff - 05/15/2022 04:00 PM
Pillar Point Bluff Half Moon Bay
Total Lunar Eclipse Watch Party - 05/15/2022 08:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Lunar Eclipse Viewing Party - 05/15/2022 08:30 PM
Stanford University Stanford
Monday, 05/16/2022
Shell Long-Range Research Platform - Livestream - 05/16/2022 04:00 PM
Stanford Energy Seminar