Speaker: Paula Welander is a microbiologist who received her undergraduate degree from Occidental College in Los Angeles. She pursued her PhD studies in microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and completed her postdoctoral studies at MIT in the Departments of Biology and of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. ...
Monitoring and Predicting the California Current System with Global and Regional ModelsGiven the ecological and socioeconomic importance of the California Current System (CCS), there is broad interest in monitoring and modeling its variability on multiple timescales. To that end, regional ocean models have become indispensable tools for leveraging available observations to predict conditions in unobserved locations and understand physical and biogeochemical ...
Speaker: Simone Alin, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and University of Washington School of Oceanography
Where: Bodega BayCost: Free
An Evening of Mushroom LoreAuthor and mycologist Lawrence Millman combines ecological, ethnographic, historical, and contemporary knowledge in his research and writings. His latest work, Fungipedia, takes us on a mycological journey - from John Cage and Terrence McKenna to mushroom sex and fairy rings.His work explores the lives of individuals like African American scientist George Washington Carver, ...
Cosmological Weak LensingWeak gravitational lensing is a unique technique to map the distribution of dark matter in the universe. It is also a sensitive probe of dark energy, large scale structures in the universe, and cosmological parameters. We will first briefly describe the principles of weak lensing. We will then review the ...
Join Point Reyes National Seashore and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary for a live "ship to shore" video chat with scientists from the E/V Nautilus. Ask questions, hear from the team about what they are seeing and learning about this unique deep sea ecosystem in the national marine sanctuaries offshore ...
Since Fall 2002, the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering has hosted the Silicon Valley Leaders Symposium (SVLS). The Symposium hosts industry and technology leaders to talk about business and technology trends. It also features prominent leaders who discuss broader societal and political issues that shape our life and society.Speaker: ...
If we are what we eat, what will we be in the future? From plant-based proteins to food-delivery systems to the integration of robotics and technology in food production and even serving the landscape of what and how we eat is changing rapidly. Explore what’s new in our diets and ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $19.95, $14.95 explO members, AD members free
Conversations at the Library: Keith Humphreys / Healing Addiction in AmericaThe numbers are staggering. According to the latest statistics, approximately 20.6 million Americans have an addiction. In recent years, an opioid crisis has rippled across America, leaving people and their communities devastated. But there is great hope - a wide range of treatments are available and effective. Join us for a ...
Where: San MateoCost: Free
Drugs, Plants, Brain, MindFor millennia, humans have cultivated relationships with psychoactive plants and fungi â€" relationships embedded within and guided by ritual frameworks honoring the powers of these plants and fungi as allies. As cultures have evolved, so also have these plant-fungal-human interactions. Our current era is one of reduction of organisms to ...
7:00-7:25: Irving Weissman(Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine) on "How normal stem cells regenerate the body but sometimes lead to cancer"Besides the more famous embryonic stem cells, there are also adult stem cells, and, unfortunately there are also tumor stem cells...Read more7:25-7:50: James Ferrell(Stanford/ Systems ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Remembering the Loma Prieta Earthquake 30 Years Later: Looking back to see how far we've comeThe Loma Prieta earthquake ended decades of seismic tranquility in the Bay Area - Is the earthquake threat in the Bay Area real and imminent?Up to $80 billion in earthquake mitigation investments have been made since the Loma Prieta earthquake. Are we safer?Learn how Loma Prieta has led to improvements ...
The "teenage" brain tests reality, seeks novelty, and is notoriously impulsive. In their new book, (not childhood but)Â Wildhood, Harvard biologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, MD, and science writer Kathryn Bowers explore telling similarities in teenage brains and behaviors across species. Of Wildwood, Frans de Waal says, "The wild adventure of adolescence has ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Chem trails, hollow earths, and other strange ideasFrom rejection of evolution and plate tectonics to questions about chem trails and crystal energy, many introductory science students come to class with strange ideas about the earth. Can animals predict earthquakes? Is the Earth hollow? Is climate change a hoax? Spoiler alert: no. Steven Newton, who teaches at the ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Friday, 10/11/19
Two KIPAC Tea TalksBlue Galaxies: Exploring the Origin of Nebular Emission in the Early UniverseSpeaker: Kirk BarrowSpinning and Connecting (in) the Cosmic SpiderwebSpeaker: Mark Neyrinck, Univ. of the Basque Country
Controlling the exact atomic structure is an ultimate form of materials engineering. Atomic manipulation and atom-by-atom assembly can create functional structures that are hard to synthesize chemically. Defects at the one- or few-atom-scale have intriguing properties that can be applied to fields like quantum engineering (e.g. nitrogen vacancy center, single ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Pluto’s atmosphere dynamics and volatile transport investigated with numerical climate modelsPluto’s tenuous atmosphere is mainly nitrogen and is in solid-gas equilibrium with the surface nitrogen ice. Over the past three decades, different Earth-based observations hinted at an exotic and dynamical atmosphere as they revealed (1) a much warmer atmosphere (70-100 K) than the surface (40 K), with a strong inversion ...
Where: Santa CruzCost: Free
Adult Night Hike and SipThe journey begins at sunset from the Center into the beautiful surrounding redwood forest. The 4-5 mile hike will be lit by the light of the moon. Along the way, you’ll learn about the local history and ecology of the forest and hear interesting stories and facts about the harvest ...
Where: OaklandCost: $30 General, $27 Member
An Evening With Dr. Jane GoodallEsteemed ethologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace, will start off Wildlife Conservation Expo weekend with a special Friday evening talk. Jane will share fascinating stories about her studies on wild chimpanzees in Gombe National Park beginning in 1960, ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $25 - $80
Green FridayJoin volunteers from the local chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, a non-profit, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy organization focused on national policies to address climate change, to learn more about the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (H.R. 763). If passed, the EICDA would reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 40% in just ...
Guided Nature Walk Experience the beauty and rich natural history of this 535-acre preserve. Our 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 and flower-carpeted oak woodland. Guided Nature Walks are no more ...
Where: Glen EllenCost: $20 suggested donation
All Things Fall With David HerlockerVisit Martin Griffin Preserve throughout our limited Fall Season, with Nature Guide-led walks, activities, or materials to open your eyes to our lovely preserve in a different way each week. Visitors are also welcome to hike our trails on their own, scoop up a newt at the ponds, peer at ...
As Above As Below is an Astro/Neuro/Art exhibit that aims to cultivate and optimize dialogue between artistic and scientific inquiry through collaborative exchanges. Â In this Origami Workshop, Mark will guide you in building the nearby galaxies, called "The Council of Giants", out of fabric and paper, and folding your own ...
Every year, WCN’s Wildlife Conservation Expos provide a unique opportunity to bring together wildlife’s most ardent supporters with some of the world’s leading conservationists to connect, share stories, and make life-long friendships. At Expo you can hear what it’s like to live and work in some of the most remote parts of the world ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $100 General, $50 Students
Invertebrate InvestigationSpend the morning touching and discovering the vast differences between Rocky Shore and San Francisco Bay invertebrates (animals without backbones) and then enjoy creating a take home craft. Great for young and older minds alike and for anyone who loves to get hands on with cool creatures.
Where: Redwood CityCost: $20
Adaptive Optics for Telescopes Large and SmallIn the past 20 years, adaptive optics (AO) technology to remove image blurring due to atmospheric turbulence has come a long way. In this talk I will describe the basic principles of AO and laser guide stars; a bit of AO history; its current status on 8-10m telescopes; and future ...
This month we celebrate Halloween with a creepy collection of stories about the animals that live in the deepest parts of the ocean! Learn how elephant seal's can dive to 5000 feet and stay underwater for 2 hours at a time without imploding (!), find out how a sperm whale ...
Where: SausalitoCost: Free
Monday, 10/14/19
Cosmic Shear in the Year-3 DES data: 2-point and 3-point correlationsThe cosmology analyzes of the Year-3 (Y3) data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) is at full speed ahead. Our preliminary weak lensing sample contains 120 million objects over 4200 square degrees of sky and is the largest shape catalog to date. This statistical power comes at a price: the ...
A new trust framework is emerging - fueled by social, economic and technological forces that will profoundly alter how we trust, not only what we see and read online, but also one another. At the same time, technology is influencing how we behave and relate to one another, with important ...
Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting area has been investigated for decades as a means to convert sunlight to fuels. To date, PEC still faces many challenges, ranging from low efficiency, poor stability and noncompetitive cost. I will present two examples of our recent efforts in overcoming some of the challenges facing ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
An Atomic-Scale Look at Point Defects in 2D SemiconductorsPoint defects in semiconductors are of great technological significance in semiconductor industry and have been proposed more recently as a room temperature qubit platform. In two-dimensional semiconductors such as transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers, defects have an even larger impact on material properties, but offer exciting possibilities as atomic quantum ...
The first major experiments at SLAC were the electron proton scattering studies at End Station A in the late 60’s. The deep inelastic scattering yielded a complete surprise - the electrons were scattering off charged points in the proton. Follow up experiments showed the analogous behaviour for the neutron and ...
Where: Menlo ParkCost:
Switches, sensors, and new shapes: from design of new functions to cellular consequences of allosteryI plan to discuss our most recent work in computational protein design (we have designed new, modular small-molecule sensors that function in living cells, and new protein shapes with atom-level control). I will then focus on a more biological problem: How do protein switches control diverse protein functions in the ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
THE SEARCH FOR RARE EARTHQUAKE-LIKE PRECURSORS: MAXENT MOUN-SPIN RESONANCE MgO STUDYAccording to Prof. Dr Freund (NASA Ames) currents of positive holes in the earth's crust are precursors of earthquakes; Menlo Park seismologists are not so sure. MaxEnt Muon-Spin research yields indirect evidence, these itinerant positives holes are indeed present in MgO; earthquake warnings of weeks (not seconds) ahead are well ...
Road transportation, which accounts for 22 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, is undergoing a major transformation with the advent of ridesharing, autonomous driving, and vehicle electrification. Collectively these technologies, in conjunction with renewable sources of electricity, have the potential to dramatically reduce the negative impact of road transportation on the ...
Natural sources, such as plants, fungi and microbes, have historically provided compounds with potent pharmaceutical properties. While it can be challenging to build complex natural products in a lab using existing chemistry methods, Nature has perfected these biosynthetic pathways. The work described leverages the power of Nature’s tools for building ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Two KIPAC Tea TalksI am data science and so can you!: My experience as a physicist in a technology start-upSpeaker: Sean McLaughlin, StanfordThe Polarization Behavior of Blazar JetsSpeaker: Lawrence Peirson, Stanford
Cosmic Shear in the Year-3 DES data: 2-point and 3-point correlationsThe cosmology analyzes of the Year-3 (Y3) data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) is at full speed ahead. Our preliminary weak lensing sample contains 120 million objects over 4200 square degrees of sky and is the largest shape catalog to date. This statistical power comes at a price: the ...
Clean Energy Systems (CES) has developed game-changing technology that is revolutionizing the power industry by eliminating the traditional exhaust stack and making zero-emission power a reality.Speaker: Keith Pronske, Clean Energy Systems
An Evening with Dr. Laurie Marker, Director of Cheetah Conservation FundLearn about the cheetah, its plight and the holistic approach that the Cheetah Conservation Fund has been utilizing to protect the world’s fastest land animal. The Cheetah Conservation Fund focuses on community education and wildlife-friendly farming techniques to allow cheetahs and humans to coexist. One of its most successful programs, ...
Where: OaklandCost: $10 - $30
Innovation in Sleep MedicineMany hard-charging professionals pride themselves on their ability to work long hours and get by on 5 or 6 hours of sleep. But the truth is that they’re shortchanging themselves. Sleep isn't a luxury. It’s a necessity for optimal functioning and optimally your brain needs 7 to 8 hours of ...
Where: Palo AltoCost: Free
Free Bay Currents Talk: (Green) Power to the PeopleBringing sustainable energy, low carbon emissions, and green jobs to low-income people is the passion of Zach Franklin of Bay Area non-profits Grid Alternatives and Rising Sun Center for Opportunity.Stories of struggle and success illuminate why these efforts matter for workers, volunteers, and all of us affected by global warming. Bay ...
Where: AlbanyCost: 0
New Ice Age Fossils Uncovered in FremontConstruction to expand 680 Freeway have uncovered new fossils of Pleistocene Age (Irvingtonian). Caltrans has paleontology moniters that make sure all fossils are recovered during construction. This lecture will go over the early finds of mammoths, mastodons, sabertooth cats, short faced bear, and other megafauna. Exhibits at the Children's Natural ...
Veteran Bay Area journalist Don Lattin will give a talk and slide show.Don draws from two of his books, The Harvard Psychedelic Club - How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America, and his most recent book, ...
