Lakes, Fans, Deltas and Streams: Geomorphic Constraints on the Hydrologic History of Gale Crater, MarsIt has been proposed that in Gale Crater, where the Curiosity rover landed in August 2012, lakes developed to various depths after the large central mound (informally referred to as Mt. Sharp) had evolved to a form close to its current topography. Using a combination of CTX and HiRISE imagery and CTX, ...
Where: Mountain ViewCost: Free
Searching for the First StarsDr. Harvey Moseley (Laboratory for Observational Cosmology, Goddard Space Flight Center) will give the Applied Physics/Physics colloquium.
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth's Climate: Emulating Volcanoes and Brightening Marine CloudsSolar Geoengineering and Climate Change: Nearly everyone understands that the most effective way to reduce environmental risk associated with climate change is to deeply cut greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, yet emissions and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to increase. If current emissions trends continue, by the ...
Where: Menlo ParkCost: Free
Climate CognitionSigns of dangerous climate disruption are everywhere, and yet many people are going about business as usual. What's up with that? Are humans wired to deal with climate reality?Building a clean economy can be a positive and empowering story. The key lies at the intersection of economics, psychology and emotional ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 General, $12 Members, $7 Student
Forest Fires and Fungi: Losers, Winners and StrategiesFire is a natural part of most western forest ecosystems, and while plant strategies for surviving or recolonizing after fire are well known, much less is known about how fungi deal with this common disturbance. This talk will review some of the details that are known about how saprobic and ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Wednesday, 05/13/15
Secrets of the Antikythera Mechanism In 1900, sponge divers off the coast of the tiny Greek island of Antikythera made an astonishing discovery: the wreck of an ancient Roman ship lay 200 feet beneath the water, its dazzling cargo spread out over the ocean floor. Among the life-size statues and amphorae was an encrusted piece ...
The Arctic is rapidly warming with continued changes in sea ice, ocean chemistry, and marine ecosystems. Increased heat import via the atmosphere, flows from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and increased river runoff into the Beaufort Sea have dramatically reduced sea ice extent and thickness. We hypothesize that temperature, sea ...
Chiral asymmetry choices exhibited by molecules present in living organisms constitute a scientifically challenging set of observations. Such geometric preferences favoring one enantiomer over its mirror image are obvious in the structures of amino acids, sugars, and the biopolymers that they form. These facts generate fundamental questions about how those ...
Randomness is essential to cryptography: cryptographic security depends on private keys that are unpredictable to an attacker. But how good are the random number generators that are actually used in practice? In this talk, I will discuss several large-scale surveys of cryptographic deployments, including TLS, SSH, Bitcoin, and secure smart ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
The State of California's Water: Now and In The Future - SOLD OUTCalifornia is in the midst of a historic drought, with agriculture, communities, and fish and wildlife struggling with water shortages. At the same time, the state is looking at a future where these conflicts will be exacerbated by climate change, increased population, and other factors. Learn what California is doing ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 General, $8 Members, $7 Students
As Mitt Romney's "Green Quarterback," Gina McCarthy played a key role in helping the Massachusetts Governor craft a plan to protect the climate and grow the economy. Now she's the point person for President Obama's effort to do the same thing on a national scale.The Obama administration's clean power plan ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 General, $12 Member, $7 Student
Author and physicist Leonard Mlodinow (PhD, UC Berkeley) will explore how humans have won such a grand grasp of nature's workings - and what deeper understandings may lie ahead. He is the author of five bestsellers including two co-written with Stephen Hawking: A Briefer History of Time and The Grand Design. Dr. Mlodinow's The ...
Governor Jerry Brown is determined to build the Delta Tunnels through the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta. The once-and-future Peripheral Canal is the latest plumbing scheme to follow the damming and diking of rivers and swamps which began with intensive Chinese manual labor in the 19th century. California has already radically ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Thursday, 05/14/15
Who Owns the Data? An International Conference on Digital Assets, Data Philanthropy, and Public BenefitAs countless social, commercial and civic transactions are rapidly moving to online platforms, and sensors in our houses, cars, and mobile devices send endless streams of data to servers around the world, discussions of "Big Data" have become commonplace. But what happens to the information once it leaves our fingertips ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: $20 General, Free for students
Star formation on GMC and galactic scales The rate of star formation in star-forming disks is slow compared to the dynamical time, at least on kiloparsec scales, a result known as the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation. Candidates for opposing the force of self-gravity and thereby reducing the rate of star formation include magnetic fields, large scale turbulence, and feedback ...
Speaker: Saeed Amidi, Plug and Play Tech CenterThis event was originally scheduled for April 9 and has now been canceled.
Where: San JoseCost:
Magic: Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Indistinguishable From MagicArthur Clarke's Three Laws are "laws" of future predictions:1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture ...
Where: Palo AltoCost: Free
Nightlife LIVENightLife's summer music series returns! Inspired by science and powered by sound, the Academy will transform into an oasis of music and art on one special night per month.On the outdoor West Garden stage, catch a live performance by "electronic Renaissance man" Machinedrum, known for his rich exploration of multimedia ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $12 General, $10 Members
The Fog of ConcussionA concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury that is caused by a blow to the head or body, a fall, or another injury that jars or shakes the brain inside the skull. This talk will discuss the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and biology of concussion.Speaker: Jamshid Ghajar, MD, PhD, ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Unwrapping the Visual Discovery of Spiral Nebula Steve Gottlieb, a contributing editor for Sky & Telescope, will be our featured speaker on "Unwrapping the Visual Discovery of Spiral Nebula". This is the story of William Parsons' (Third Earl of Rosse) first visual observations of M51 with his massive 72-inch speculum reflector in the spring of 1845 ...
Where: Santa CruzCost: Free
CANCELLED! Trisect an angle? It seemed so easy!CANCELLED! Watch for it to be rescheduled in the fall. Angle Trisection: A problem many tried to solve.Throughout history many people have tried to find some seemingly simple solutions to problems that were not understood because of the limits of knowledge about how things really work. Alchemy, tried to do more ...
Dr. Sylvia Earle-fondly dubbed "Her Deepness" by the New York Times-holds the women's record for the deepest ocean dive and has led more than 100 undersea expeditions, logging more than 7000 hours underwater. Formerly Chief Scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Dr. Earle has garnered countless international honors ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 General, $12 Members
Beyond Kepler: Direct Imaging of Earth-like ExoplanetsIs there another Earth out there? Is there life on it? People have been asking these questions for over two thousand years, and we finally stand on the verge of answering them. The Kepler space telescope has already revealed that many stars have planets close to Earth size in regions ...
Where: LivermoreCost: Free
Saturday, 05/16/15
Maker FairePart science fair, part county fair, and part something entirely new, Maker Faire is an all-ages gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, students, and commercial exhibitors. All of these "makers" come to Maker Faire to show what they have made and to share ...
Satellites, nuclear explosions and the ability to reproduce in the laboratory the extreme conditions at our planet's center are revealing what is inside our planet, how it is changing and why. We'll open the hood to look at how Spaceship Earth works. Raymond Jeanloz, a professor in Earth and ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Black Holes, Space Warps and Time Machines (and What the Movie 'Interstellar' was Really About)In this nontechnical, illustrated talk, astronomer and popular lecturer Andrew Fraknoi (Foothill College) explores the bizarre and wonderful world of black holes. You do not need a background in science to enjoy this program. Everyone from ages 13 and up is most welcome.Although black holes have become part of our everyday language, few ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Celebrating ElephantsJoin Oakland Zoo for our 19th annual Celebrating Elephants Gala in honor of the 96 Elephants campaign. (Ninety-six elephants are killed each day by poachers.)Big Life, founded by photographer Nick Brandt and conservationist Richard Bonham, offers progressive solutions to protect and sustain East Africa's wild lands and wild elephant population.
Where: OaklandCost: $40 donation (minimum)
Sunday, 05/17/15
Maker FairePart science fair, part county fair, and part something entirely new, Maker Faire is an all-ages gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, students, and commercial exhibitors. All of these "makers" come to Maker Faire to show what they have made and to share ...
Where: San MateoCost: Varies, see website
WHAT LIES AHEAD? Sustainability in a High C02 OceanRising CO2 in the atmosphere is causing unprecedented changes in seawater chemistry. Scientists worldwide are working to predict what these changes (ocean acidification) will mean for marine life in the future, as well as what can be done about this global process.Join Kristy Kroeker on a virtual tour of her ...
Where: Santa CruzCost: Free with admission
Monday, 05/18/15
Detecting Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with SmartphonesCosmic rays which encounter the Earth's atmosphere produce showers of muons and high-energy photons, which can be detected using a smartphone camera. The CRAYFIS experiment was devised to observe cosmic rays at ultra-high energy (UHE) using the existing network of smartphones as a ground detector array. We'll describe our custom ...
Marine microbes are responsible for roughly half of the global annual carbon fixation and oxygen production; and yet our methods for directly connecting measurements of chemical fluxes with the activity of specific groups of microbes in the environment are relatively limited. Using multiple experimental approaches; the microbial sources suite of ...
