Vote SciSchmooze!
4 November 2024
Hello again, friends of science,
When the United States Constitution was adopted in 1788, the only women allowed to vote were property owners in several New Jersey jurisdictions. That ‘oversight’ was corrected in 1790 when a New Jersey law specifically banned women and non-whites from voting. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 is considered to be the beginning of America’s Women's Suffrage Movement. Internationally, the first country to extend voting rights to women was New Zealand in 1893. Women in America gained the right to vote 27 years later with the passing of the 19th Amendment.
It was not until 1960 that a woman became head of a modern country’s government. That was Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). As of today, 174 women have been heads of government for 87 different countries.
GEOLOGY
Popocatépetl continues to erupt. [ Video ] I’m hoping to see it out of the airplane window when we fly back to the Bay Area from Oaxaca, Mexico. I’m also hoping for a view of Citlaltépetl - the highest mountain i’ve climbed at 5,636 meters.
I joined the Bay Area Skeptics Hangout with geologist Steve Newton to explore the Hayward fault. Steve took us to several locations in the East Bay where curbs no longer lined up, pavements were cracked, and houses showed evidence of repairs. The west side of the fault is creeping northwest about 9mm per year faster than the east side. The fault extends about 25 km deep and is one of the few faults in the world that creeps. Regardless of which side of the fault you are standing on, the far side appears to have moved to the right. That makes it a “right-lateral strike-slip fault”. The fault is expected to lurch about 2 m at any moment creating a magnitude 6+ earthquake, as it did in 1868.
RAFFLE
We are offering a 1000 piece puzzle of the Solar System: 50 x 70 cm. Just send an email before noon Friday to david.almandsmith [at] gmail.com with your guess of an integer between 0 and 1,000. Last time, Ginger guessed closest to the randomly generated 645 to win a coffee mug disguised as a 480 ml laboratory beaker. (Ginger tells me these are banned in some workplaces since people might accidentally drink a noxious chemical from a real beaker.)
BIOLOGY
One way to keep track of California’s animal population densities and movements is to put out hundreds of microphones across the land and even into the Pacific Ocean to continuously listen for wildlife. ¿But whom do you get to listen to thousands of hours of daily recordings? The answer is A.I. Biologists have been training AI to recognize species of birds, whales, and forest creatures.
Learning where animal populations move is important to keeping them safe. Building animal crossings over or under highways is often critically necessary.
Previously, the SciSchmooze reported on a massive increase in human mortality in India linked to the inadvertent poisoning of vultures. Similarly, the white-nose syndrome that kills bats in the U.S. has led to economic problems and a thousand or more excess infant deaths. Unfortunately, the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has been found in California for the first time.
Comb Jellies (Ctenophora) are not related to jellies (jellyfish [Cnidaria]) but you can look right through them just the same. Comb jellies are extensively studied to learn how they developed nervous systems separately from the rest of the animal kingdom, and other aspects of these fascinating creatures. Quite accidentally, researchers learned that comb jellies can merge with each other and coordinate their nervous systems. Amazing.
Millipedes and centipedes are kinda creepy - until you get to know them. Now imagine a millipede that grew to 3 meters long, Arthropleura. The last of these died out millions of years ago, but for the first time an Arthropleura fossil was found with a well preserved head. No doubt about it, this is our nightmare creature of the week.
From the very large to the very small: Brachycephalus dacnis. It’s a newly-found frog from the Amazon so tiny it fits comfortably on top of a pencil eraser. Its eggs hatch to reveal eensy-weensy frog babies - not tadpoles.
MY PICKS of the WEEK (Hint: save dates & times to your mobile phone)
Transforming Astrophysics with AI - Livestream Tues 2 pm
Flooding in California: A Paleo Perspective Wed 3:30, UC Berkeley
Intelligent Earthquake Monitoring Livestream or at Stanford, Thur Noon
Día de los Muertos Thur 6 - 10pm, ExplOratorium, S.F., $
Peculiar Slow-to-Fast Earthquakes, Northern Chile Fri Noon, UC Santa Cruz
Family Adventure: Arachnids Sat 10:30am - 2:30pm, Chabot Science Ctr, Oakland, $
Foothills Family Nature Walk Sat 11am - 12:30pm, Los Altos
City Public Star Party Sat 6 - 9pm, San Francisco
Coastal Walk: Scrub & Tide Pools Sun 10am - Noon, Moss Beach
Sausal Creek Salmon Stroll Sun 11am - Noon, Diamond Recreation Ctr, Oakland
If you’ve reached this far, you’d probably like to recommend the SciSchmooze to a friend. ¿No? Well, we would like you to recommend it. Send them this link along with an enthusiastic review: bayareascience.org/calendar/
FUN (?) NERDY VIDEOS
Existence Is Random, Not Deterministic - Big Think - Lee Cronin - 3 mins
Siberian Flying Squirrel - BBC Earth - David Attenborough - 3.5 mins
Dr. Kellogg, Masturbation, & Seinfeld - The Right Chemistry - Joe Schwarcz - 5.5 mins
Dark Matter Nightmare Inches Closer - Sabine Hossenfelder - 6.5 mins
Life in the Deep Underground - Kurzgesagt - 9.5 mins
When Our Ancestors Almost Went Extinct - SciShow - Hank Green - 11.5 mins
The Exoplanets Next Door - Nora’s Guide to the Galaxy - Nora Bailey - 15 mins
¿Do Neutron Stars Radiate Dark Matter? - PBS SpaceTime - Matt O’Dowd - 16 mins
Connecting another Billion to the Internet - The Future with Hannah Fry - 24 mins
In-Depth Review of the Europa Clipper Mission - Scott Manley - 26 mins
Solar System: Storm Worlds - PBS NOVA- 52 mins
Continuous video streams: Move the cursor to various places on the red line to experience earlier views.
ISS Earth Cam - NASA
Have a good week. Chat with a stranger, appreciate compassion & empathy, and join us again next week.
Dave Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics
“Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Upcoming Events:
Click to see the next two weeks of events in your browser.
Monday, 11/04/2024
Seeing the Forest for the Trees: How Northeastern Temperate Trees Are Responding to a Changing Climate - 11/04/2024 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Speaker: Angelica Patterson
From partners to populations: Balancing specificity and generalizability in the emergence of linguistic conventions - 11/04/2024 12:30 PM
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg 460) Stanford
One of the most important properties of social conventions is their generalizability. They amortize costly on-the-fly coordination into priors that allow us to interact flexibly with new social partners in new situations. But how do generalizable conventions emerge in the first place when so much of social interaction is situation-specific? In this talk, I will present a model that aims to explain the balance between specificity and generalization via three basic components: structured uncertainty about which conventions will hold for which people, social inference to adapt to specific partners given past interactions, and hierarchical learning to abstract away "communal lexicons" that may apply more broadly across entire communities. I will test the model's predictions using data from experiments where we connected participants over the web for a series of communication games, allowing us to measure the emergence of signaling conventions in social groups. Together, this line of work aims to bridge the "micro" level of individual cognition with the "macro" level of collective behavior.
Speaker: Robert Hawkins, Linguistics Department, Stanford University
See weblink for entry instructions
Room 126
Distributed Decision-making and Resilience in a Renewable-rich Power Grid - 11/04/2024 12:30 PM
Green Earth Sciences Building Stanford
The power grid has evolved from a physical system to a cyber-physical system that consists of digital devices that perform measurement, control, communication, computation, and actuation. With increased penetration in distributed energy resources (DER) that include renewable generation, flexible loads, and storage, these devices can be as large as 8 billion in number just in the US grid, many of whom are capable of monitoring and making crucial decisions. While these devices provide extraordinary opportunities for improvements in efficiency and sustainability, they also introduce new vulnerabilities in the form of cyberattacks. This brings up the following question: How can we ensure grid resilience in the face of escalating cyber threats while accommodating the intermittent and distributed nature of DERs?
In this talk, we’ll dive into this important question, and explore a framework that enables distributed decision-making and control. This framework is built around a local electricity market with a hierarchical structure that accommodates the distributed ownership of DERs, both in location and time as well as physical constraints due to power physics. This talk will explore the relation between market mechanisms, distributed optimization, and resilience for the grid. A variety of attack surfaces including those that compromise large IoT (internet-of-things) networks will be considered. The use of distributed visibility and the related situational awareness to the operators will be examined through simulation studies of a distribution grid with 100,000 nodes. The role of distributed decision-making principles of optimization and control in prevention, resilience, and detection & isolation will be examined.
Speaker: Anu Annaswamy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Assessing climate impacts on inland and coastal water quality - 11/04/2024 12:30 PM
Shriram Center Stanford
Questions surrounding water sustainability, climate change, and extreme events are often framed around water quantity - whether too much or too little. The economic and ecological impacts of water quality impairments are equally compelling, however, and recent years have provided numerous examples of unprecedented harmful algal blooms and hypoxic dead zones. Linkages between climate change and water quality impacts are often poorly understood, however, due to the complexity of underlying processes, the difference in the spatial and temporal scales traditionally examined by limnologists, ecologists, and climate scientists, and the paucity of long-term observations to support attribution studies. This talk will draw on several recent studies that quantitatively link meteorological variability and eutrophication impacts to explore opportunities for characterizing water quality, for bridging from local to global scales, for identifying key drivers, and for understanding the role of climate.
Speaker: Anna Michalak, Carnegie Institution for Science
What Is the Next Milestone for High-Energy Particle Colliders? - 11/04/2024 03:30 PM
Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) Colloquium Series Menlo Park
The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has discovered the Higgs boson and confirmed the predictions for many of its properties given by the “Standard Model” of particle physics. However, this does not mean that particle physics is solved. Mysteries that the Standard Model does not address are still with us and, indeed, stand out more sharply than ever. To understand these mysteries, we need experiments at still higher energies. In this colloquium, I will argue that we should be planning for a particle collider reaching energies of about 10 times those of the LHC in the collisions of elementary particles. Today, there is no technology that can produce such energies robustly and at a reasonable cost. However, many solutions are under study, including colliders for protons, muons, electrons, and photons. I will review the status of these approaches to the design of the next great energy-frontier accelerator.
Attend in person or via Zoom (see weblink)
Speaker: Michael Peskin, SLAC
Graphene Quantum Dots - 11/04/2024 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
Dr. Jairo Velasco of UC Santa Cruz will present a talk regarding how the harnessing and manipulation of electronic states in quantum materials has the potential to revolutionize computation, sensing, storage, and communications, thus impacting multiple facets of our everyday lives.
Hitting a moving target: Next-generation therapies to counter SARS-CoV-2 evolution - 11/04/2024 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Speaker: Christopher Barnes, Stanford University
Room: Auditorium
Active Matter -The Physics of Self-Organization - 11/04/2024 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Birds flock, bees swarm and fish school. These are just some of the remarkable examples of collective behavior found in nature. Physicists have been able to capture some of this behavior by modeling organisms as "flying spins" that align with their neighbors according to simple but noisy rules. Successes like these have spawned a field devoted to the physics of active matter - matter made not of atom and molecules but of entities that consume energy to generate their own motion and forces. Through interactions, collectives of such active particles organize in emergent structures on scales much larger than that of the individuals. The paradigm of such behavior are living systems, but same behavior has also been mimicked in the lab through the engineering a variety of “active particles’’ that self-assemble to form smart materials.
In this lecture I will introduce the field of active matter and highlight ongoing efforts by physicists, biologists, engineers and mathematicians to model the complex behavior of these systems, with the goal of identifying universal principles. I will specifically focus on two examples of active behavior. The first highlights how active particles bypass the laws of equilibrium thermodynamics and spontaneously aggregate in the absence of any attractive interactions. The second describes the interplay of flow and topological defects in controlling dynamics and structure of active phases with liquid crystalline order, with relevance on scales from subcellular to entire organisms.
Speaker: Cristina Marchetti, UC Santa Barbara
AI in Health Care: Will the Reality Match the Hype? - 11/04/2024 06:00 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco
The 14th annual Lundberg Institute Lecture features Robert Wachter of UCSF and his predictions about what advances artificial intelligence will make, and will not make, in health care.
Why has health care not undergone the kind of digital transformation that has completely remade industries ranging from retail to entertainment to travel? Wachter will discuss health care’s bumpy road to digital nirvana, and why, to paraphrase Hemingway, generative AI may lead to medicine’s “gradually, then suddenly” moment.
Join us for a preview of the ideas Dr. Wachter discusses in his latest book on AI and health care.
Attend in person or online
Speakers: George Lundberg, Northwestern University; Robert Wachter, UC San Francisco School of Medicine; George Hammond, Author, Moderator
Discounts for members
Sunspots, Solar Storms, and Aurorae: Exploring Solar Maximum - 11/04/2024 07:00 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
With dazzling auroras lighting up the night sky across the US in recent months, the Sun's increasing activity has become more apparent than ever. These awe-inspiring and far-reaching light shows are tied to the increased solar activity as we move deeper into Solar Cycle 25. In this lecture, we will explore the dynamic behavior of our Sun and its 11-year solar cycle. Specifically, we will focus on the effects of solar maximum, a period of heightened solar activity that manifests through increased sunspots, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections. Beyond generating spectacular auroras, increased solar activity has the potential to disrupt and interfere with our technological infrastructure, including satellites, GPS, and power grids. I will also briefly discuss connections between the Sun's solar cycle and those observed in other stars. Lastly, I will summarize results from cutting-edge solar missions that reveal unprecedented insights into the behavior of our Sun.
Speaker: Oana Vesa, Stanford University
Register at weblink attend in person or to watch online
Seeing Beyond Sight: Astronomical Images and the Aesthetics of the Sublime - 11/04/2024 07:30 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Over the last several decades, astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to look deep into the Universe, a practice that continues with the James Webb Space Telescope. The images from these instruments, as well as those from ground-based telescopes and space probes, have introduced us to a celestial plentitude: pictures of galaxies that glitter with millions of points of light and nebulae that reach upward as giant gaseous columns; panoramas of Martian landscapes and close-ups of its geological features; aerial views of Jupiter’s swirling clouds and Saturn’s many rings in brilliant hues; visual reconstructions of black holes outlined in glowing orange.
Such cosmic pictures are based on scientific data, but they must address a vexing question: How to represent what our lies beyond our sight? This talk will consider how the aesthetics of astronomical images aid in the task. In particular, it will trace a recurring engagement with the rhetorical and visual tropes of the sublime, whether a resemblance to 19th-century landscape paintings of the American West or a reprise of the psychedelic styles of 1960s counterculture. Through the aesthetics of the sublime, astronomical images convey the awesomeness of reaching beyond our sensory limits, even as the familiarity of these tropes tame or contain the potentially terrifying aspects of transcendence.
Speaker: Elizabeth Kessler, Stanford University
Tuesday, 11/05/2024
Florilegium Exhibition 2024 Opening - 11/05/2024 10:00 AM
UC Botanical Garden Berkeley
The University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley Florilegium. A florilegium is a collection of illustrations featuring plants growing in a specific area such as a botanical garden.
Centuries before digital or analog photography was commonplace, people relied on detailed botanical illustrations to identify plants and flowers. This years’ participating artists are continuing this rich legacy. Through a range of media, the works on view capture the plant information from root to leaf tip, and more. Viewers enjoy the delicate beauty of each artwork, its subject painstakingly rendered; a testament to the artists’ technical skill and love of plants.
The project was conceived by renowned botanical illustrator and instructor, Catherine Watters, and developed with the support of staff and Advisory Board members Laura Sawczuk, Gina Baretta, and Katherine Greenberg. Advisory Board Member and former Director of Collections Chris Carmichael and Curator Holly Forbes developed the list of iconic plants from the collection for inclusion in the project.
We invite the public to explore The UCBG Florilegium - where art, history and science tangibly intersect. The exhibition is hosted this November, 2024
Transforming Astrophysics with AI - Livestream - 11/05/2024 02:00 PM
UC Berkeley
Joshua S. Bloom, Professor of Astronomy, will describe ways in which astrophysics is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to break through some computational and human bottlenecks that otherwise impede scientific progress.
Register at weblink to receive Zoom information
New Directions in Quantum Sensing and Imaging with Diamond Spins - 11/05/2024 03:30 PM
Hewlett Teaching Center Stanford
Solid state spin qubits, in particular the nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond, offer a path towards truly nanoscale magnetic imaging of condensed matter and biological systems with sensitivity to single nuclear spins. Here I discuss our NV-based magnetic imaging experiments as applied to condensed matter systems. I first present results where we employ DC magnetic field imaging to reveal current flow patterns in materials where electron-electron interactions are strong, leading to the observation of hydrodynamic flow. I also discuss a new sensing modality that leverages the NV center’s sensitivity to magnetic noise, which we use to differentiate electronic transport regimes in material systems. Lastly, I present ongoing efforts towards realizing entanglement-enhanced solid-state spin sensors and various many-body effects that can be realized in a strongly interacting spin ensembles.
Speaker: Ania Bleszynski Jayich, UC Santa Barbara
UC Berkeley Physical Chemistry Seminar - Rescheduled - 11/05/2024 04:00 PM
Latimer Hall Berkeley
Speaker: Stefano Sacanna, New York University
Editor's Note: This lecture has been rescheduled for November 12. See our listing for this date for the replacement speaker.
UC Berkeley Physical Chemistry Lecture - 11/05/2024 04:00 PM
Latimer Hall Berkeley
Speaker: Markus Raschke, University of Colorado, Boulder
Wednesday, 11/06/2024
Multi-Scale Spatial Analyses of Seamount Benthic Megafauna in the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain - Livestream - 11/06/2024 11:00 AM
Monterey Bay Research Institute
Knowledge gaps in the spatial distribution of habitat formers in the deep-sea leave communities at risk of anthropogenic disturbance such as bottom-contact fishing. Understanding how habitat formers, such as corals and sponges, are distributed on seamounts can inform area-based management necessary to protect biodiverse communities. This research therefore aims to investigate the multiple spatial scales of coral and sponge patches and habitats on seamounts of the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain. Patch size at multiple scales indicates coral and sponge patches inhabit patches of different sizes, and coral patches were larger and had a greater range in size than sponge patches. The habitats of corals and sponges investigated across three features of the HESC were distributed within a single water mass and associated with multiple sides and summits of the seamounts investigated. These analyses highlight the availability of spatial statistics and landscape methods to aid in area-based management of the seafloor, an incredibly important tool to mitigate current and future anthropogenic disturbance.
Speaker: Virginia Biede, Florida Sate University
Register at weblink to receive Zoom information
Biting into shark paleoecology with geochemical, morphometric, and modelling approaches - 11/06/2024 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Sora Kim, UC Merced
This talk was originally scheduled for October 16, 2024
Generative AI for Multimodal Biomedicine - 11/06/2024 12:00 PM
Gates Computer Science Building Stanford
Once medical foundation models achieved state-of-the-art performance on a variety of biomedical applications, there was a push to build even larger models by training on more medical datasets. Despite their encouraging performance on artificial biomedical benchmarks, critical gaps remain that must be filled before these models can be used in real-world clinics.
This talk addresses three gaps - unmatched patient information, privacy, and GPU constraints - and the models that can help resolve them. First, Sheng will introduce BioTranslator, a multilingual translation framework that projects a variety of biomedical modalities into the text space, allowing the comparison between patients with unmatched profiles. Next, he will discuss BiomedCLIP, a public medical foundation model trained on 15 million public text-image pairs that can be used as a proxy for clinicians to query large language models on the cloud without exposing private data. Finally, he will introduce LLaVA-Rad, a 7B parameter model that achieves a performance superior to Med PaLM M (84B) in radiology by exploiting the trade-off between domain specificity and model size, demonstrating the possibility of building small models for efficient fine-tuning and inference in clinics. The talk concludes with a vision of “everything everywhere all at once,” where medical foundation models and generative AI benefit every patient in every clinic all at once.
Speaker: Sheng Wang
Attend in person or online (See weblink)
Atmospheric rivers and flooding in California: a paleo perspective - 11/06/2024 03:30 PM
McCone Hall Berkeley
Atmospheric rivers are associated with some of the largest flood-producing precipitation events in western North America, particularly California. Insight into past extreme precipitation can be reconstructed from sedimentary archives on millennial timescales. Here we document past atmospheric river activity at two lake sites in California - Leonard Lake and Wildcat Lake - using a key metric of atmospheric river intensity called integrated vapor transport (IVT, kg m -1 s -1 ). Specifically, we leverage the positive and significant correlations between lake sediment layers enriched with silicon/aluminum (Leonard Lake) and titanium/aluminum (Wildcat Lake) with modern records of IVT. At the relatively undisturbed site Leonard Lake, the late twentieth century had the highest median IVT since the onset of the Medieval Climate Anomaly (~950 CE), with IVT increasing during the Little Ice Age (~1500-1800 CE). The reconstruction suggests northern California has recently experienced pluvial episodes that exceeded any in the meteorologic instrumental era, with the largest episodes occurring 2,000 and 3,000 years ago. Additional research to corroborate findings from Leonard Lake with sedimentary data from Wildcat Lake are promising. Despite the land-use change near Wildcat Lake, geochemical data indicate intense and long-lasting AR storms are identifiable in this sedimentary record. Take together, these results provide data to help avoid underestimation of potential risks from extreme precipitation and to aid management of water infrastructure.
Speaker: Clarke Knight, US Geological Survey
Trade, Equity, and the Environment: The Economics of the Inflation Reduction Act Electric Vehicle Subsidies - 11/06/2024 04:30 PM
Shriram Center Stanford
Speaker: Hunt Allcott, Stanford University
Attend in person or online (see weblink)
Thursday, 11/07/2024
Intelligent Earthquake Monitoring - 11/07/2024 12:00 PM
Mitchell Earth Sciences Building (04-560) Stanford
Speaker: Greg Beroze, Stanford University
Attend in person or via Zoom
Room 350/372
San José Clean Energy (SJCE) and the Grid of the Future: Challenges, Opportunities, and Innovations in Community Choice Energy - 11/07/2024 01:30 PM
Environment and Energy Building (Y2E2) Stanford
The City of San José continues to be a leader in climate action and San José Clean Energy (SJCE) plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of our energy grid. This presentation will share how Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs), like SJCE, are critical components in the transition. In addition, we will focus on the opportunities and challenges in transitioning to long-term renewable resources and include how implementing innovative programs and initiatives are key to a cleaner, more resilient energy system.
Speaker: Lori Mitchell, City of San José
Binary Stars - 11/07/2024 03:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Speaker: Jan Aldridge, Auckland, NZ
Socially-Aware Navigation for Robots in Public Spaces - 11/07/2024 04:00 PM
Sonoma State Dept. of Engineering Science Rohnert Park
As robots become increasingly integrated into public spaces such as hospitals, shopping malls, airports, and museums, their ability to navigate intelligently and socially is crucial. Socially-aware navigation (SAN) goes beyond simply moving from one point to another; it involves understanding and respecting human social norms to ensure that robots’ interactions are comfortable and non-intrusive.
A key aspect of SAN is the robot's ability to detect and respond to the context of its environment. In this work, we propose a novel method for context detection that allows robots to accurately interpret their surroundings and adjust their behavior accordingly. By understanding social cues and the dynamics of the environment, robots can navigate in a way that maintains personal space and fosters a sense of safety and comfort for the people around them.
Additionally, we developed an innovative architecture for SAN in which the robot dynamically executes social navigation behaviors based on the detected context. This system enables robots to seamlessly adapt to diverse social settings, ensuring their presence is perceived as natural and non-disruptive. With this enhanced level of social intelligence, robots can integrate more effectively into public environments and contribute more meaningfully to the spaces they inhabit.
Speaker: Roya Salek Shahrezaie, Sonoma State University
Attend in person or online (see weblink for Zoom information)
After Dark: Color Uncovered - 11/07/2024 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Take a deep dive into the science of color, from their natural occurrences to our aesthetic perceptions.
Age 18+
NightLife: Día de los Muertos - 11/07/2024 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Las puertas del más allá están abiertas. Join us in honoring departed souls in celebration of Día de los Muertos.
Total Uruguay - Livestream - 11/07/2024 07:00 PM
Golden Gate Bird Alliance
Last year GGBA offered Total Uruguay for the first time - a 15-day small group trip at a great price. Two of the participants on that inaugural trip, Viviana Wolinsky and Steve Hunter, will lead us on a GGBA Travel Program Speakers trip through Uruguay.
What can you expect to see? While Uruguay is a small country (roughly the size of Washington state) with a temperature climate (very similar to ours in California), it has a wide range of habitats: the Pampas, the Atlantic Forest, savannas, wetlands, ocean coasts, countless riparian corridors, grasslands, ravines, several hill ranges, and palm tree forests. This richness in habitat types results in a great diversity of bird species that can be seen easily in a short time traveling short distances. Uruguay is also an important feeding and breeding destination for many migrant species.
We’re visiting Uruguay again next year in November (Austral Spring) when we’ll see birds on migration to the southernmost areas of South America as well as South American birds coming to nest in Uruguay.
On our tour we’ll visit the country’s most important birding hot spots, including every national park and the majority of the country’s IBAs (Important Bird Areas). Expect to see 250 species of birds on this trip!
For an exciting preview of this tour, join us for Viviana and Steve’s presentation
See weblink for Zoom information
Friday, 11/08/2024
The peculiar spectrum of slow-to-fast earthquakes around the Copiapó ridge, Northern Chile - 11/08/2024 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Speaker: Jannes Münchmeyer, Institut des Sciences de la Terre
Nanoparticles for biomedical imaging - Lecture 1 of 2 - 11/08/2024 04:00 PM
Latimer Hall Berkeley
One of the challenges in biomedical sciences is the development of next-generation tools that can accurately image, identify, and execute desired missions in a selectively programmed manner. In this lecture, I will discuss magnetic nanoparticles as core platform materials and tools for a variety of functionalities such as sensing, targeting and signaling of cells and live animals in a selective and efficient way. These tools serve not only as a contrast agent for highly accurate MR imaging but also a modulator for neurons via magneto-mechanical genetics (MMG) for the behavior control of live animals. MMG serves as one of the most advanced technologies in controlling neurons for brain stimulations via remote and wireless fashion.
Speaker: Jinwoo Cheon, Yonsei University
Saturday, 11/09/2024
Family Nature Adventures: Spidey Spectacular: Adventures with Arachnids! - 11/09/2024 10:30 AM
Chabot Space and Science Center Oakland
Get ready for a web-tastic adventure as we dive into the amazing world of spiders and arachnids! Join us for a fun-filled workshop designed especially for young explorers, where we’ll discover the fascinating secrets of these eight-legged wonders. You’ll learn about native spiders, their interesting adaptations, and how spiders react to the conditions of space.
After the workshop voyage on a spider safari to hunt for hidden arachnids in the redwood forest! Children will explore their surroundings with magnifying glasses, searching for spiders and their intricate webs.
Leave the adventure with a greater appreciation for these misunderstood creatures and their importance in the ecosystem.
What to Expect:
Interactive Workshops: Dive deep with hands-on activities and scientific tools! Yummy Snacks: Enjoy a tasty treat to keep your energy up! Nature Walks: Discover the forest’s secrets on a guided stroll! Don’t miss out on this unforgettable family experience - adventure awaits!
General admission included
Foothills Family Nature Walk - 11/09/2024 11:00 AM
Foothills Nature Preserve Los Altos
Join us at Foothills Nature Preserve for a family-friendly nature walk, guided by EV docents. Good for ages 6 and up; all children must be accompanied by an adult.
Register at weblink. Space is limited
The Universe in 100 Colors - 11/09/2024 12:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
Artists and science enthusiasts Tyler Thrasher and Terry Mudge wrote about obscure colors from nature and science in their book The Universe in 100 Colors, and now they’re bringing their insight and passion for color to the Exploratorium.
Learn about the shades created by sound, the hues invented for medicinal purposes, and the average color of the universe. Don’t miss this colorful demo and book signing co-hosted with local business and collector of science curiosities Paxton Gate.
City Public Star Party - 11/09/2024 06:00 PM
City Star Parties - Tunnel Tops Park San Francisco
Come join the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers for free public stargazing of the Moon, planets, globular clusters and more!
The event will take place in Tunnel Tops National Park, parking is located adjacent to Picnic Place (210 Lincoln Blvd for GPS) with the telescopes setup in the East Meadow.
Dress warmly as conditions can be windy or cold in the Presidio. Rain, heavy fog or overcast skies cancel the event. Check the SFAA website for a cancellation notice before leaving for the star party.
SFAA members with telescopes are encouraged to attend and share their views of the stars with the general public.
Sunday, 11/10/2024
Coastal Walk at Pillar Point Bluff - 11/10/2024 10:00 AM
Pillar Point Bluff Parking Lot Moss Beach
Join Peninsula Open Space Trust for a beautiful walk at Pillar Point Bluff just north of Half Moon Bay! You will be guided by POST ambassadors who will share details about the area’s interesting natural history, from the coastal scrub habitat to the Fitzgerald Marine Preserve which hosts tide pools and breeding grounds for harbor seals.
The walk is moderate at about 2.5 miles round trip with about 300 feet of gradual elevation gain.
In 2004, POST stepped in to fund protection of the Bluff, restore it to ecological health, and construct a 1.6-mile section of the California Coastal Trail that now runs across it. Today all 161 acres of the Bluff are fully protected in perpetuity - a process that took four transactions, 11 years of work, and an array of visionaries, landowners, and donors, both public and private.
Register at weblink
Sausal Creek Salmon Stroll - 11/10/2024 11:00 AM
Dimond Recreation Center Oakland
Join CalTrout for a walk along Sausal Creek to learn more about salmonid migration and monitoring in the Bay Area. In just one hour, you’ll discover the fascinating migration journey of Bay Area salmon and how we help protect them. Don’t miss this chance to connect with nature and the fish living in your backyard. All ages welcome.
Monday, 11/11/2024
Quantitative flux analysis of energy metabolism in mice - 11/11/2024 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Speaker: Sheng Hui, Harvard University
Room: Auditorium
Tuesday, 11/12/2024
The Renaissance of Astrophysics - Livestream - 11/12/2024 02:00 PM
UC Berkeley Retirement Center
Direct observation of non-classical crystallization pathways in binary colloidal systems- CANCELED - 11/12/2024 04:00 PM
Latimer Hall Berkeley
Wonderfest: Inverse Darwinism: Complementary Natural Selection - 11/12/2024 07:00 PM
Hopmonk Tavern Novato
Wednesday, 11/13/2024
Understanding Earth's Paleoenvironmental Evolution (on long timescales) - 11/13/2024 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
The Petro-state Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty, and Power in Trinidad and Tobago - 11/13/2024 03:30 PM
McCone Hall Berkeley
Energy of Computing: Unsustainable Trends and Potential Solutions - 11/13/2024 04:30 PM
Shriram Center Stanford
Observing with the James Webb Space Telescope: Glimpsing the First Stars - Livestream - 11/13/2024 07:00 PM
Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series
What We Were Missing: How Studying the Whole Skeleton Changes our Understanding of Carnivore Evolution and Ecology - 11/13/2024 07:30 PM
Marin Science Seminar San Rafael
Thursday, 11/14/2024
Geodynamical Investigations via Hotspot Paleomagnetism? Insights from the Walvis Ridge - 11/14/2024 12:00 PM
Mitchell Earth Sciences Building (04-560) Stanford
UC Berkeley Integrative Biology Seminar - 11/14/2024 12:30 PM
Valley Life Sciences Building Berkeley
Future Energy Ventures - 11/14/2024 01:30 PM
Environment and Energy Building (Y2E2) Stanford
Astronomy and Physics Education - 11/14/2024 03:30 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Science on Tap: Bears - 11/14/2024 05:30 PM
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Pacific Grove
After Dark: Gathering - 11/14/2024 06:00 PM
ExplOratorium San Francisco
NightLife - 11/14/2024 06:00 PM
California Academy of Sciences San Francisco
Christmas Bird Count - Livestream - 11/14/2024 07:00 PM
Marin Audubon Society
Mis- and dis-information during the 2024 election - Livestream - 11/14/2024 07:30 PM
Bay Area Skeptics
Megastorms, California, and You - 11/14/2024 07:30 PM
Bay Area Mycological Society Berkeley
Friday, 11/15/2024
Circadian clocks, glia, and Alzheimer's Disease - 11/15/2024 12:00 PM
ChEM-H/Neuroscience Building, Gunn Rotunda (E241) Stanford
The mechanics of (laboratory) earthquakes and aseismic slip due to fluid injection - 11/15/2024 12:00 PM
Earth and Marine Sciences Building Santa Cruz
Nanomachines for neuroscience and beyond - 11/15/2024 04:00 PM
Latimer Hall Berkeley
Sonoma State Public Astronomy Viewing Nights - 11/15/2024 06:30 PM
Sonoma State University Public Astronomy Rohnert Park
Saturday, 11/16/2024
Raptor Fest at Rancho San Vicente! - 11/16/2024 09:30 AM
Rancho San Vicente Open Space Preserve San Jose
Nature's Best Hope - 20th Anniversary Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour - 11/16/2024 10:00 AM
Oakland Museum of California Oakland
EV Expo - 11/16/2024 10:00 AM
Sunnyvale Civic Center Sunnyvale
Salamander Search at Sanborn - 11/16/2024 10:30 AM
Sanborn Science and Nature Center Saratoga
I Flew Around the World - 11/16/2024 10:30 AM
Hiller Aviation Museum San Carlos
Sunday, 11/17/2024
Tule Boat and Doll-making with Ohlone Cultural Leaders - 11/17/2024 11:30 AM
Lawrence Hall of Science Berkeley
Nature's Best Hope - 20th Anniversary Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour - 11/17/2024 01:00 PM
Santa Clara University Santa Clara
Monday, 11/18/2024
Quantum mechanics of 2D electron crystals - 11/18/2024 02:30 AM
Physics North Berkeley
Exploring the Function and Dynamic Regulation of the Nuclear Lamina - 11/18/2024 12:00 PM
Sonoma State University - Biology Colloquium Rohnert Park
Stanford Symbolic Systems Forum - 11/18/2024 12:30 PM
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg 460) Stanford
Illuminating the Biochemical Activity Architecture of the Cell - 11/18/2024 04:00 PM
Stanley Hall Berkeley
Nature versus Nurture: Unraveling genetic and environmental contributions to cell fitness - 11/18/2024 04:00 PM
James H. Clark Center (Bldg 340) Stanford
Getting Lost in Machine Learning Safety Vibes - 11/18/2024 04:00 PM
Sutardja Dai Hall Berkeley
Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Technology Development - 11/18/2024 04:00 PM
Sonoma State University - What Physicists Do Rohnert Park
UC Berkeley Physics Colloquium - 11/18/2024 04:15 PM
Physics North Berkeley
Time for a Tech Reformation? - 11/18/2024 05:30 PM
Commonwealth Club San Francisco