- Rafe Sagarin: Learning from the Octopus
Despite the billions of dollars that have poured into wars, homeland security and disaster response, are we fundamentally no better prepared for the next terrorist attack or unprecedented flood than we were in 2001?Our response to catastrophes remains unchanged: add another step to airport security, another meter to the levee ... Where: San Francisco Cost: $20 General, $7 Students - GPS for Humanity
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is truly one of the United States' gifts to the world. Cell phones rely on GPS for timing. Ships and aircraft carry multiple GPS receivers to provide positioning information. Emergency personnel, the military and many others rely on it to do their jobs.Dr. Bradford Parkinson, ... Where: Stanford Cost: Free - Pelagic Trip to Cordell Bank
This all-day cruise aboard the "New Sea Angler" will be an exploration of the pelagic zone that lies off the Sonoma and Marin coasts. Just after leaving Bodega Bay the group will begin looking for migrating flocks of loon, scoter, and brant, while common murre and pigeon guillemot may dive ... Where: Bodega Bay Cost: $140
- RNA Interference Screens in Pancreatic Beta Cells
Speaker: Dr. Greg Ku, U.C.S.F. Where: Rohnert Park Cost: Free - Conservation Physiology: Ecology of Stress Responses in Wildlife Systems
Speaker: Dr. Dan Crocker, Sonoma State Where: Rohnert Park Cost: Free - San Francisco Math Circle Teachers' Circle
Speaker: Henri Picciotto Where: San Francisco Cost: Free, Please RSVP - The Future of Regenerative Medicine - What's Aging Got To Do With It?
Please join us for a panel discussion moderated by:Brian Kennedy, PhDBuck Institute President and CEO Featuring Buck Institute scientists:Victoria Lunyak, PhDAssociate Professor,Buck InstituteXianmin Zeng, PhDAssociate Professor,Buck InstituteDeepak Lamba, PhDAssistant Professor,Buck InstituteRegistration is requiredFor more information and to register, contact us at:[email protected] Where: Novato Cost: $10 Donation
- Free First Wednesday at Discovery Museum
Free Museum admission all day Where: Sausalito Cost: Free - Companions to solar-type stars: analysis of a wide variety of planets, brown dwarfs and small stars
Although they are relatively frequent as free-floating objects, brown dwarfs are scarcely found as companions to solar-type stars. The paucity of brown dwarfs in close-orbits first noticed by radial velocity surveys has led to the concept of the "brown dwarf desert".Dr. Guillot will show that this desert concerns in fact ... Where: Mountain View Cost: Free - Visualization and Analysis of Large Data From Simulations
Visualization and analysis are critical to the success of the simulation process; they help realize the value of computing by increasing the rate at which new science is discovered. Their techniques are used to confirm that simulations are running correctly, to communicate simulation results to an audience, and, most importantly, ... Where: Berkeley Cost: Free - The more the merrier: Seaweed biodiversity and ecosystem function
Speaker: Dr. Susan Williams, UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory Where: Tiburon Cost: Free - Climate change predictions and management options from coupled watershed and salmon population dynamics models
Speaker: Lisa Thompson, Department of Wildlife, Fish, & Conservation Biology, University of California, Davis Where: Bodega Bay Cost: Free - Opportunities in Cancer Therapy: An Overview of Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment and Surveillance and Directions for the Future
Cancer is a name that often evokes a homogeneous entity that is the second leading cause of death in the US and responsible for over 7 million deaths annually worldwide. But these numbers often belie where the greatest near term solutions in fighting an extremely heterogeneous disease (with an equally ... Where: Berkeley Cost: Free - Vibration mitigation challenges in modern Extreme Ultraviolet tools for semiconductor Applications
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Center for X-ray Optics (CXRO) works to further science and technology using short wavelength optical systems and techniques. Since the early 2000s, CXRO has worked with semiconductor companies to develop the infrastructure needed for world-leading research and development in the field of EUVL, contributing basic research ... Where: Stanford Cost: Free - Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age
At the turn of the millennium Time magazine listed Alan Turing among the twentieth century's 100 greatest minds, alongside the Wright brothers, Albert Einstein, DNA busters Crick and Watson, and the discoverer of penicillin, Alexander Fleming. Turing's achievements during his short life of 42 years were legion. Best known as ... Where: Stanford Cost: Free - How Important Is Genetics?
While population and biomedical geneticists have been revealing a wealth of remarkable data regarding the origins of human populations, the nature of their historical successes and the role of genetics in health, in their preoccupations they have largely ignored old and new popular misconceptions regarding the significance of this information ... Where: Berkeley Cost: - Free Day at the Exploratorium
Museum admission is free the first Wednesday of every month. Where: San Francisco Cost: Free
- 2012 UC Berkeley Green Chemistry Conference: Collaborative Approaches and New Solutions
The 2012 Green Chemistry Conference will highlight green chemistry's growing role in education, research and outreach at UC Berkeley. The themes for the conference are: 1) Advancing legislation for innovation, 2) Creating new green catalysts, 3) Promoting greener materials use, and 4) Developing an ethics for ... Where: Berkeley Cost: $30 - Silicon Valley Leaders Symposium
Speaker: Dr. Paul Jacobs, CEO, QualcommRoom ENG 189. Where: San Jose Cost: Free - Environmental Influences on Brain Function and Risk for Mental Illness
Speaker: Dr. Andreas Meyer-Lindberg,Director, Central Institute of Mental HealthProfessor and Chairman of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of HeidelbergClinical Director of the Department Psychiatry and PsychotherapyRoom 299 Where: Stanford Cost: Free - What Does the Future Hold for the Generation of Electricity from Geothermal Energy?
Speaker: Dr. Roland Horne, Stanford University Where: Palo Alto Cost: Free - Incomplete Nature, radically reformulating the concept of emergence
By recasting emergence theory in dynamical terms and focusing on the role of constraint in explaining ascending levels of causal relationships, this talk will argue that such basic scientific challenges as explaining the origins of life, the nature of information, and the dynamics of mental function need to be rethought. ... Where: Palo Alto Cost: Free - Query Processing with People and Machines: CrowdDB
The challenge of "Big Data" analytics is not just data size -- it's about issues such as diversity, ambiguity, and incompleteness in both queries and the underlying data.While advances in scalable data processing are helping to address the data size problem, there remain many important data-centric tasks where humans are ... Where: Palo Alto Cost: Free - Cafe Inquiry
Meet up with rationalists, skeptics, and freethinkers south of San Francisco.Cafe Inquiry is a social event hosted by the Center for Inquiry|San Francisco. We'll meet at Café Borrone http://www.cafeborrone.com/ between Kepler's Books and the British Banker's Club! Where: Menlo Park Cost: Free - The World of Your Senses After Dark @ the explOratorium
The World of Your SensesSee the US premiere of a Tibetan thangka-style painting exhibition and engage with Tibetan monks from India to explore sensory perception through Buddhist and scientific perspectives.A collaboration between the Exploratorium, the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives (LTWA), the Sager Family Foundation's Science for Monks Program, ... Where: San Francisco Cost: - Color Science: What Your Teacher Left Out!
Speaker: Mike Higgins Where: Sebastopol Cost: $4 - Diagnosing Lung Cancer Early
New National Cancer Institute screening guidelines have been released demonstrating that screening by Chest CT scan in smokers can help detect early lung cancer and reduce lung cancer-related deaths by 20%. This talk will focus on this new diagnostic tool and how people who are most at risk can access ... Where: Stanford Cost: Free - How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior
To help us uncover and understand how the human mind works, Dr. Mlodinow explains why every aspect of our life plays out in two versions: our conscious and unconscious. He discusses the profound ways our perception, behavior, memory and social judgments are shaped by our subliminal minds and how that ... Where: Palo Alto Cost: $20 General, $12 Members, $7 Students - Free Day at Botanical Gardens
Free admission to the Garden the first Thursday of each month. Where: Berkeley Cost: Free
- Estimating the Impact of Restructuring on Electricity Generation Efficiency: The Case of the Indian Thermal Power Sector
This paper examines the impact of unbundling of generation from transmission and distribution on the operating efficiency of state-owned thermal power plantsin India. Using information collected by India's Central Electricity Authority we construct a panel dataset for thermal power plants for the years 1994-2008. We take advantage of variation across ... Where: Berkeley Cost: Free - Bedtime with the Beasts
What goes on in the Zoo once the rest of the guests leave? You'll find out when your group spends the night at the Oakland Zoo! A variety of themes allows you to visit the rain-forest, be a detective and snoop your way around the Zoo, or even create your ... Where: Oakland Cost: $60 - SudoRoom Oakland Hackerspace Kickoff & Fundraiser
Sudo Room is an open, collaborative community of tech developers, citizen scientists, activists, and artists who are interested in and working towards social change. The goal is to create the first inclusive, dedicated hackerspace in downtown Oakland, so that ideas and projects in areas such as citizen science, digital/online citizenship ... Where: Oakland Cost: free, but donations are encouraged - Come to Foothill Observatory and join us in the exploration of our Universe!
Foothill Observatory Friday Evening ProgramCome to Foothill Observatory and join us in the exploration of our Universe!Foothill Observatory is open for public viewing every clear Friday evening from 9:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. Visitors can view the wonders of the universe through the observatory's new computer-controlled 16-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. Views ... Where: Los Altos Hills Cost:
- Coyote Creek Nature Walk
Take an easy walk with a Ranger to look for wildflowers, plants and wildlife along the Coyote Creek Trail. Meet at the park office at end of Malaguerra Ave. in Morgan Hill. Bring comfortable walking shoes, water and sun protection. Where: Morgan Hill Cost: Free - Get to Know Your Reptile and Amphibian Neighbors
Pepperwood has a remarkable diversity of frogs, salamanders, lizards, snakes, and turtles. Learn where they live, what they eat, how they reproduce, and how they are doing in the face of of urban and agricultural development. Dr. Nick Geist is an associate professor of biology at Sonoma State University where ... Where: Santa Rosa Cost: $20 - Guided Nature Walk
We hope you'll join us for this special opportunity to explore the Bouverie Preserve. Our half-day guided nature walks are on Saturdays throughout fall and spring. Participants are divided into small groups and paired with a trained Bouverie volunteer to explore the mixed evergreen forest, flower-carpeted oak woodland, and rugged ... Where: Glen Ellen Cost: Free - NASA/SOFIA Partners in Science Education
Speaker: Marita Beard, San Jose public schools Where: San Jose Cost: Free - San Jose Astronomical Association
Our speaker is Marita Beard, a San Jose high-school teacher, who is a participant in NASA/SOFIA "Partners in Science Education" program. Where: San Jose Cost: Free
- Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival
Vi Hart, YouTube recreational "mathemusician" sensation (http://www.youtube.com/user/Vihart) will lead an interactive mathematical session and banish any notion that math is boring at the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival. Register your 6 - 12th grader online early at https://hosted.msri.org/jrmf/2012/stanford/register before it fills up.The Julia Robinson Festival is challenging but noncompetitive, highlighting rich ... Where: Stanford Cost: $10 per student - Wildflower Hike
Join a Park Docent on a 3-mile hike to enjoy spring wildflowers and learn how the rolling serpentine grasslands provide critical habitat for endangered species. Meet at Calero Reservoir, then carpool to the trail nearby. Bring sun protection, water, camera, sturdy hiking shoes and layered clothing. Note: This is a ... Where: San Jose Cost: Free - Firesafe Gardens Symposium
With a diverse collection from areas around the world that share California's Mediterranean climate, the Garden offers an ideal site to learn about making your garden safe from wildfire. Join Cheryl Miller, from the Diablo Fire Safe Council and local fire agencies to explore how wildfire affects our neighborhoods and ... Where: Berkeley Cost: $20 General, $12 Members - Muir Woods After Hours
Explore the evening magic of Muir Woods, learning about the secret nightlife of an old-growth redwood forest.This special walk begins one hour before sunset and will conclude with the dark of night!We'll listen for owls, look for bats, and use our senses to guide us along the trails.This is an ... Where: Mill Valley Cost: Free