Hello again Science fans!
Like me, most of you are probably preparing for Thanksgiving, that annual tradition of food, football and family. I’ve got my turkey and the ingredients for some sides, and am only short cranberry sauce. The deli counter in my local market hasn’t got theirs out yet.
We have a lot of news to report, mostly astronomical. So lets jump in, starting with Mars.
The Perseverance rover has been climbing the 20 degree steep slopes out of the Jezero Crater, where it has explored for some time. It should reach the rim before the end of the year. Included in that article is a pretty cool animation showing the path Perseverance has taken during its journey on the surface of Mars, taking soil samples along the way. Now that Ingenuity is no longer functioning, path planning is more difficult as that helicopter was able to help with scouting easier paths. But what an incredible feat of engineering this mission has been!
November 12 here on earth marked the start of Mars year 0038! How can that be? We started counting Mars years in 1955 and it takes Mars 687 Earth days to make a revolution of the Sun.
Back in 1931, a meteorite was found in a desk drawer at Purdue University. How and when it was put in that drawer remains a mystery. But we now know it came from Mars, and it interacted with water on Mars. This find has helped add to the understanding of water on Mars earlier in its history.
Space (and other) anniversaries
Nearly 40 years ago, Voyager 2 flew by Uranus, taking just 5 hours of pictures and measurements before continuing on its journey. This is the only exploration of Uranus we have to date. It turns out that what we learned may have been affected by an exceptional increase in solar activity that coincided with the flyby causing us to draw faulty conclusions about the planet.
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has been up in space for 20 years and is working better than ever exploring gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe.
Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of an article in the New York Times covering the announcement that Spiral Nebulae are similar to our own system. The subject of the article was Dr. Edwin Hubble, after whom the space telescope is named, and what he posited was that the Milky Way is not the only galaxy, but one of many. Think how far we’ve come in our understanding of the Universe in 100 years!
Speaking of the Hubble telescope, it has seen the aftermath of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy passing and interaction with the Milky Way. The LMC managed to survive the encounter, although not without significant alteration.
The first time I saw Saturn through a telescope was awe inspiring. We’ve all seen pictures of the rings, but seeing them with my own eye was something else. Imagine then, that Earth had similar rings 466 million years ago! What a view that would have made in the night sky! The theory is that there’s a series of telltale impact craters and bizarre climage changes from that time that could be caused by rings.
Today, our cell phones keep time to the atomic clock. Before 1883, time was much more complicated. Localities measured time their own way. The hour didn’t start at a uniform time. This meant chaos for railroads which had timetables to keep that had to be adjusted every time a train entered a new time measurement area. The timetables were critical as trains were expected to be at certain points at certain times and risked catastrophic colisions if time wasn’t synchronized within their systems.
On November 18 of that year, the railroads adopted standardized time, creating five time zones across North America. To adjust to the new standardized time, Boston adjusted ahead 16 minutes, New York back 4 minutes, and Baltimore went ahead 6 minutes, 28 seconds! Historian Heather Cox Richardson describes this pivotal event.
Nature
Mary is an Asian elephant living at the Berlin Zoo. Mary has learned to give her self a shower, using a hose! Anchali, another elephant with Mary, sometimes plays pranks on her by crimping off or stepping on the hose! Elephant humor?
Another elephant at the same zoo previously learned how to peel bananas.
Meanwhile, not so far away, a dolphin called Delle is swimming around the Svendborgsund channel, off the coast of Denmark, talking to himself. Seems he’s there all alone and looking for other dolphins.
October set records for above-average temperatures and extremely dry conditions in the US. In some 80 reporting stations it was the driest month ever!
Technology
A surgical robot was trained to perform by “watching” videos of seasoned surgeons and afterwards was able to execute the same procedures as skillfully as the surgeons did. This was done using the same underlying design that ChatGPT uses to work with words and text, only now using videos for “learning”. This technology is advancing at breakneck speed.
Science and Government
I feel compelled to post a couple of things about the lack of science credentials in the cabinet appointees the incoming administration is nominating. I keep seeing images of the circus clown car when I think of these appointments.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services. He is an antivaxer, continuing to promote the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. He’s also against fluoride in water, doesn’t believe AIDS is caused by HIV and believes chemtrails are really hazardous chemicals released into the atmosphere by planes to poison us. In reality, the exhaust is mostly water vapor.
He’s also a proponent of raw milk. Here’s what the science has to say about that.
Be skeptical. Question changes in regulations by researching the science backing them. I’m afraid that in this new administration, should it actually come to be that these unqualified folks all get confirmed, we won’t find much science behind the rules.
Have a great week in Science and a wonderful Thanksgiving from all of us at the SciSchmooze!
Bob Siederer
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 11/25/2024
The Art and Science of Soundscape Ecology - 11/25/2024 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Jack Hines, Sonoma Ecology Center
Evolving understanding of electric fields and enzyme catalysis - 11/25/2024 04:00 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
Local internal electric fields created by the organized environment in complex systems like proteins can be measured using the vibrational Stark effect (VSE). We have found that these fields can be very large and can affect chemical reactivity. I will briefly explain the underlying physical concept and strategy we have developed to apply the VSE to a wide range of systems. The general concept of electrostatic catalysis and the methods we have developed have proven to be a general approach and have been applied to several enzymes to measure the electrostatic contribution to catalysis. The concept can be extended generally to chemical reactivity, an example being covalent drugs. Recent work addresses the question whether larger fields and correspondingly larger rates can be created either by design or by evolution? Using the hydride transfer enzyme liver alcohol dehydrogenase (LADH), we recently showed that mutations and metal replacements at the active site can produce both larger fields and lower activation free energies (and faster rates), and that these effects are additive, extending and strengthening the concept of electrostatic catalysis. This suggests that an important missing link in the quest for better catalyst design, whether biological or non-biological, may be the electric field.
Speaker: Steven Boxer, Stanford University
Emergent quantum phenomenon in crystalline graphene - 11/25/2024 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Condensed matter physics has witnessed emergent quantum phenomena driven by electron correlation and topology. Such phenomena have been mostly observed in conventional crystalline materials where flat electronic bands are available. In recent years, moiré superlattices built upon two-dimensional (2D) materials emerged as a new platform to engineer and study electron correlation and topology. In this talk, I will introduce a family of synthetic quantum materials, based on crystalline multilayer graphene, as a new platform to engineer and study emergent phenomena driven by many-body interactions. This system hosts flat-bands in highly ordered conventional crystalline materials and dresses them with proximity effects enabled by rich structures in 2D van der Waals heterostructures. As a result, a rich spectrum of emergent phenomena including correlated insulators, spin/valley-polarized metals, integer and fractional quantum anomalous Hall effects, as well as chiral superconductivities have been observed in our experiments.
Speaker: Long Ju, Massachussets Institute of Technology
Tuesday, 11/26/2024
Wonderfest: Hacking Gerrymandering - 11/26/2024 07:00 PM
Hopmonk Tavern Novato
In principle, we all love to hate political gerrymandering. But how can we learn to deal with it, to manage it, ... to hack it? In the past decade, mathematicians and computer scientists have developed inventive and revealing tools to find all kinds of gerrymanders: from the pretty-but-partisan, to the hidden firewall. Join us to explore some ugly maps and some beautiful ideas about how to hack gerrymandering.
Our speaker, mathematician Dr. Ellen Veomett, is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco. She helped design the nationally-acclaimed GEO metric to analyze redistricting maps created since the 2020 census.
Wednesday, 11/27/2024
Virtual Skeptics in the Pub: Becoming better consumers of information - 11/27/2024 07:00 PM
Bay Area Skeptics
This is a casual night of socializing with fellow skeptics who live in various locations around the oblate spherical planet Earth.
Please join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.
See weblink to connect.
Saturday, 11/30/2024
Science Saturday: Monarch Madness! - 11/30/2024 10:00 AM
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Pacific Grove
Join us for our Free Science Saturday event, where we will explore the fascinating world of monarch butterflies. Learn about their incredible migratory journey, the challenges they face, and the vital role they play in our ecosystem. This engaging day will feature collection displays, informative talks, and activities for the whole family. Discover how you can contribute to the conservation of these remarkable creatures. Don't miss this opportunity to celebrate and understand one of nature's most enigmatic wonders!
Family Astronomy: Discovering the Whole New Worlds of Exoplanets - 11/30/2024 06:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Create a new holiday tradition full of fun and learning - bring the family together with an interactive and engaging astronomy workshop designed for curious minds. Explore the wonders of exoplanets - distant, mysterious worlds beyond our solar system - through hands-on activities perfect for families with children ages 6-12. Led by our expert staff and enthusiastic high school Galaxy Explorers, this interactive experience will spark curiosity and excitement for space exploration. Don't miss out on the holiday magic. Hot chocolate and snacks will be provided. Bonus telescope viewings with Chabot astronomers on our observation deck and domes.
For Families with Children 6+
Starry Nights Star Party - CANCELED - 11/30/2024 06:45 PM
Rancho Canada Del Oro Open Space Preserve Morgan hill
Monday, 12/02/2024
Why Do Plants Use Water? - 12/02/2024 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Benjamin Blonder, UC Berkeley
The Need to Uplevel Human Mindset & Objectives for the Coming Age of Abundance - Livestream - 12/02/2024 12:00 PM
Gates Computer Science Building Stanford
By our nature, humans need challenge. We get bored easily and stop playing a game if it is too easy. We are happiest when we are living a purpose driven life, that is "just challenging enough". This talk will dive into the importance of Mastering Mindset, and discuss the question - "what do we do when we are living in technological socialism? When all of our needs are met, and challenges no longer arise?" The Universe 25 experiments (from the 1970's) tells of chilling result to a life of too much ease and abundance
Speaker: Peter Diamandis, XPRIZE Foundation
Register at weblink to attend via Zoom. Stanford community may attend in person.
Cell and Battery Design Considerations for Electric Aviation - 12/02/2024 12:30 PM
Green Earth Sciences Building Stanford
Lithium battery technology is critical to the decarbonization of air transport via electric aircraft, and is the enabler behind new concepts in air transportation such as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) air taxi services. The needs of battery technology for electric aviation are greatly different from consumer electronics and electric ground vehicles. This talk will discuss how lithium-ion battery cells of today can empower these technologies, and how the design and chemistry of these battery cells differ from those in other applications such as EV. Battery pack design considerations for aerospace will also be highlighted, especially those around safety and thermal runaway management.
Speaker: William Huang, Stanford University
Leveraging Operations Research for Responsible AI in Medicine - 12/02/2024 03:30 PM
Etcheverry Hall Berkeley
An estimated 133 million - or nearly half - of all Americans suffer from one or more chronic diseases. Chronic diseases consistently account for 5 of the top 10 leading causes of death. Moreover, 90% of annual healthcare expenditures are attributed to chronic diseases. Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD) and Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) specifically comprise a significant portion of these chronic diseases in the United States, and advances in disease management for ASCVD and T2D can potentially reduce healthcare expenditures and adverse outcomes associated with these diseases. To this end, many algorithmic approaches to disease management have been proposed in the name of personalized medicine. Yet, few have accounted for two key principles in the emerging area of Responsible AI - namely interpretability and equity. In this talk, I will discuss my recent work on designing models to facilitate disease management for ASCVD and T2D with a focus on interpretability and equity. Chiefly, this work includes the formulation and analysis of interpretable treatment planning for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We specifically analyze the problems of optimizing monotone policies, which increase treatment intensity with worsening patient health, and optimizing class-ordered monotone policies (CMPs), which generalize monotone policies by imposing monotonicity over classes (i.e., groups) of states and actions. We establish key analytical properties of both problems and propose exact formulations for optimizing interpretable policies in general. Next, we define and analyze the price of interpretability (PI), proving that the CMP's PI does not exceed the PI of the monotone policy. We then design and evaluate MDPs for hypertension treatment planning using a nationally representative dataset of the United States' population. At the patient level, we find that optimal MDP-based policies may be unintuitive, recommending more aggressive treatment for healthier patients than sicker patients. Conversely, monotone policies and CMPs never de-escalate treatment, reflecting clinical intuition. Across 66.5 million patients, optimized monotone policies and CMPs save over 3,246 quality-adjusted life years per 100,000 patients over current clinical guidelines, while paying low PIs. We conclude that interpretable policies can be tractably optimized, drastically outperform existing guidelines, and pay low PIs - potentially increasing the acceptability of decision-analytic approaches in practice. To conclude the talk, I will briefly discuss ongoing works that touch on interpretable personalized treatment via counterfactual optimization and a Responsible AI-based framework to design and evaluate risk estimation models for ASCVD and T2D.
Speaker: Gian-Gabriel Garcia, Georgia Institute of Technology
Room 3108
Advancements and Applications of Protein-Based Sensors for Neurochemical Detection - 12/02/2024 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Dr. Tian is a Scientific Director at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. The Tian Laboratory for Optical Neurophysiology engineers biosensors and optical probes for monitoring and controlling brain activity in living, behaving research animals. Dr. Tian and her team have created a novel class of genetically encoded indicators to sense neuromodulators, enabling the precise measurement of spatiotemporal dynamics of neuromodulator release. These tools, when combined with behavioral and circuit manipulations, can reveal the brain mechanisms underlying the control of various behaviors in health and disease and serve as drug discovery platforms for the identification of novel therapeutic targets.
Speaker: Lin Tian, Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience
Room: Auditorium
Microbiomes in the Anthropocene: A genes to ecosystem approach to understanding how global change is shaping microbial community dynamics - 12/02/2024 04:00 PM
Valley Life Sciences Building Berkeley
We are in the Anthropocene, a period when human activity is a dominant influence on the Earth's climate and environment. Anthropogenic change threatens ecosystem services by pushing environments around the world to new extremes and exposes organisms to unprecedented levels of stress. Microbiomes and their interactions with plants are important to our future on Earth; they not only underpin many ecosystem services, but their incredible diversity and long evolutionary history provides a deep well of biological innovation and function that can ameliorate host stress. In this talk, I will highlight how my lab uses a multiscale approach to understand (1) how microbiomes can mediate plant responses to global change, (2) mechanisms plants can use to regulate microbial symbiosis to match changing environmental conditions, and (3) how stress reshapes microbiome community dynamics and function. The research will emphasize the importance of integrating plant-microbial interactions with key ecological and evolutionary concepts (e.g., keystone species, community stability and assembly, habitat connectivity, context-dependency, gene family expansions, and gene duplications) to develop a holistic perspective of resilience of microbiomes and their interactions with plants in our changing world.
Speaker: Michelle Afkhami, University of Miami
Note time change. Originally listed for 12:30.
Chemical methods to monitor and manipulate the proteome - 12/02/2024 04:00 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
The development of potent probe molecules and drug leads for proteins that lack deep pockets remains an important and difficult problem. This seminar will focus on methods being developed in the Kodadek Laboratory to address this problem. Topics to be discussed will include the development of "beyond rule of 5" macrocycles to engage difficult targets, screening strategies that will allow the facile discovery of molecular glues and the development of Ubiquitin-independent protein degraders.
Speaker: Thomas Kodadek, University of Florida
Statistical methods for assessing the factual accuracy of large language models - 12/02/2024 04:00 PM
Evans Hall Berkeley
We develop new conformal inference methods for obtaining validity guarantees on the output of large language models (LLMs). Prior work in language modeling (Mohri & Hashimoto, 2024) identifies a subset of the text that satisfies a high-probability guarantee of correctness. These methods work by filtering a claim from the LLM's original response if a scoring function evaluated on the claim fails to exceed some estimated threshold. Existing methods in this area suffer from two deficiencies. First, the guarantee is not conditionally valid. The trustworthiness of the filtering step may vary based on the topic of the response. Second, because the scoring function is imperfect, the filtering step can remove many valuable and accurate claims. Our work addresses both of these challenges via two new conformal prediction methods. First, we show how to issue an error guarantee that is both valid and adaptive: the guarantee remains well-calibrated even though it can depend on the prompt (e.g., so that the final output retains most claims). We will also show how to optimize the accuracy of the scoring function used in this procedure, e.g., by ensembling multiple scoring approaches. We will explain how this methodology works and demonstrate its performance on several real-world examples.
Speaker: John Cherian, Stanford University
An Exploration of the Milky Way: Our Cosmic Home - 12/02/2024 07:30 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Our Universe is made up of many billions of galaxies, yet astronomers are still trying to figure out how they form, evolve, and assemble themselves. The question of how and when galaxies - including our own - take shape across cosmic time is among the most fundamental in modern astronomy. But the answer still eludes us. One of the best ways to answer this question is to explore our home galaxy, the Milky Way, which is made up of some 200 billion stars - and is the optimal laboratory for answering the questions of galaxy formation because, to date, it is one of the only systems where we can obtain detailed and precise data on the positions, motions, and chemical compositions of billions of individual stars. Using our own galaxy as a sandbox for exploring galaxy assembly is the essence of galactic archaeology. In this talk, Dr. Keith Hawkins will take us on a journey through our own galaxy and explore how we can use state-of-the-art data from large-scale missions - visualized in the planetarium - to chart the Milky Way's structure and assembly over the last 10 billion years.
Speaker: Dr Keith Hawkins, University of Texas, Austin
Tuesday, 12/03/2024
Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Natural Products and the Chemistry They Inspire - 12/03/2024 11:00 AM
Latimer Hall Berkeley
Detailed life-cycle carbon intensity of United States natural gas including extraction, processing, and transmission - 12/03/2024 12:00 PM
Green Earth Sciences Building Stanford
Climate Models for Guiding Action: Adequacy, Inadequacy, and the Ethics of Downstream Model Use - 12/03/2024 04:00 PM
Mitchell Earth Sciences Building (04-560) Stanford
Sustainability and Open Innovation: Honda's Approach to Realigning Global Manufacturing - 12/03/2024 04:30 PM
Lathrop Library Stanford
Wednesday, 12/04/2024
WaterPalooza! 2024 - Livestream - 12/04/2024 10:00 AM
Acterra
Broadband Submarine Fiber Sensing: Unveiling Ocean Dynamics from Acoustics to Tsunami Waves - Livestream - 12/04/2024 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Research Institute
Whole Earth Seminar - 12/04/2024 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Temperature-responsive circuitry that drives fungal pathogenesis - 12/04/2024 12:10 PM
Barker Hall, Rm 101 Berkeley
Mapping and Mending Dexterous Movement Control with Neurotechnology - 12/04/2024 04:00 PM
Soda Hall Berkeley
The Arc of Energy Justice: A Pursuit to Ensure Affordable, Reliable, and Clean Energy for All - 12/04/2024 04:10 PM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
Sea Meets the Stars: How Artificial Intelligence is Accelerating the Scientific Pursuit - 12/04/2024 05:30 PM
UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Campus Santa Clara
From Perception to Pleasure: the Neuroscience of Music and Why We Love It - 12/04/2024 05:30 PM
San Mateo Public Library San Mateo
After COP29: The Energy Transition Challenge - 12/04/2024 06:00 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Refusing Silicon Valley - 12/04/2024 07:30 PM
Shaping San Francisco San Francisco
Thursday, 12/05/2024
WaterPalooza! 2024 - Livestream - 12/05/2024 10:00 AM
Acterra
Deciphering Continental Collision: Earthquakes, Helium, and Rheology of Tibet - 12/05/2024 12:00 PM
Mitchell Earth Sciences Building (04-560) Stanford
Disrupting a delicate balance: Emerging pathogens in a changing world - 12/05/2024 12:30 PM
Valley Life Sciences Building Berkeley
High Res Exoplanet Spectra - 12/05/2024 03:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
When Do Firms Oversell or Undersell Their Environmental Sustainability? - Livestream - 12/05/2024 04:00 PM
Stanford University
Living with Lions - Livestream - 12/05/2024 05:00 PM
Audubon Canyon Ranch
After Dark: Figure It Out - 12/05/2024 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
NightLife: Santa Claude's Workshop - 12/05/2024 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
A Just Transition for Whom? Book launch and Discussion - 12/05/2024 06:00 PM
London Nelson Community Center Santa Cruz
The Cosmic Mystery of Fast Radio Bursts - 12/05/2024 07:00 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Expecting the Unexpected with AI at Particle Colliders - 12/05/2024 07:00 PM
Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) Public Lecture Series Menlo Park
Friday, 12/06/2024
Deep Learning for Earthquake Monitoring - 12/06/2024 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Manipulating Phase Transitions and Free Volume: From Solid Refrigerants to Microporous Water - 12/06/2024 04:00 PM
Latimer Hall Berkeley
Cyber Alliance: Grassroots Efforts for a Safer Cyber Future - 12/06/2024 04:00 PM
Night Heron Oakland
First Friday Nights - 12/06/2024 05:00 PM
CuriOdyssey San Mateo
First Friday: Shooting Stars - 12/06/2024 06:00 PM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
The Future of Mars Helicopters - 12/06/2024 08:00 PM
College of San Mateo Bldg 36 San Mateo
Saturday, 12/07/2024
Techfest: Robots and AI in Action - 12/07/2024 10:00 AM
Computer History Museum Mountain View
Jazz Under the Stars - 12/07/2024 05:30 PM
College of San Mateo Bldg 36 San Mateo
City Public Star Party - 12/07/2024 06:00 PM
City Star Parties - Tunnel Tops Park San Francisco
Sunday, 12/08/2024
Mycological Society of San Francisco 52nd Annual Fungus Fair - 12/08/2024 10:00 AM
El Camino High School South San Francisco
Sensory Sunday - 12/08/2024 02:00 PM
CuriOdyssey San Mateo
Monday, 12/09/2024
Mechanisms of enzyme regulation by dynamic polymerization - 12/09/2024 04:00 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
Beyond the cellular powerhouse: Mitochondrial cell biology and genetics - 12/09/2024 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford