Honeybees are regarded as one of the most important insects on our planet. Did you ever wonder about what really goes on inside a hive? Did you know that the colony is a finely tuned machine where every bee has a job and that these jobs are strictly divided by ...
Amory Lovins and Holmes Hummel, two thought-leaders with a track record of high-impact work on energy and sustainability, have returned to Stanford to invest in a new generation of scholars and innovators at the frontiers of the clean energy revolution.Speakers: Amory Lovins, author; Holmes Hummel, Clean Energy WorksRegister at weblink ...
Where: Cost: Free
The Social Media Hype Machine: Disrupting Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health - LivestreamIn a perfect storm of social unrest, fake news, and a global pandemic, the 2020 election may be the most vulnerable yet to interference by foreign actors. And that’s only one of many warnings about the dangerous influence of social media from Sinan Aral, the MIT researcher who helped uncover ...
Come be in your elements with Exploratorium host and scientific raconteur Ron Hipschman - follow tales of intrigue and invention, join in dynamic demonstrations, and uncover fascinating connections between individual elements and our collective human experience.Have you ever heard of an element that can cry, or get a disease? Tin does ...
Just when the world was finally getting used to only having eight planets orbiting the Sun, the presence of a new ninth one is slowly coming into view at the edge of the solar system. This planet -- Planet Nine -- is inferred from of its gravitational effects shaping the ...
Where: Cost: Free
Thursday, 11/12/20
ML Basics 1: Linear Regression Models WorkshopIn this workshop, you will explore linear regression models. You will learn about data preprocessing, predicting model parameters, bias, and variance trade-off, regularization, Ridge and Lasso Regression models, evaluating model performance, and how to tune up your models.Agenda:11:50 am - 12:00 pm Arrival and socializing12:00 pm - 12:10 pm Opening12:10 ...
Where: Cost: Free!
November LASER Event - Music from Other Worlds - LivestreamHeather Spence (Marine Biologists and Composer) on "Underwater Sound Research: Music of Marine Biology"Cheryl Leonard (Composer and Instrument Builder) on "Phantom Limbs: Composing Music Amidst the Sixth Extinction"Register at weblink to receive connection information.
Eric Hupperts is a houseplant enthusiast. He is also a horticulturist at UCBG caring for the Asian Collection, which includes favorites such as begonias, gingers, and rhododendrons. As a child, Eric was enthralled with the family houseplant, a dragon tree (Dracaena marginata) that provided a gateway into the world of ...
Where: Cost: $20
History and Mystery of the Refuge and the Bay - Livestream The Refuge was created in 1972, but this story starts 200 years earlier when Europeans discovered San Francisco Bay. Learn about the Bay’s history and the answers to mysteries such as: Why are mercury and gold a lethal duo? How did silver mining in Nevada affect the bay? Why was ...
Did you know that some birds of prey and ducks can use nest boxes? As a volunteer, Lee Pauser has been building, installing, and monitoring nest boxes for 19 nesting seasons. In this presentation, he will focus on the 6 species that he has had nest in large (Barn Owl, kestrel, ...
Where: Cost: Free
Hardcore Natural History: Small But Mighty: Monarch Butterfly Migration and OverwinteringEvery fall, thousands of monarch butterflies migrate to Monterey County from all across the western United States to spend the winter clustering together at special overwintering sites.  But how do they get here? And why do they spend the winter in certain groves of trees, but not others? How ...
What do animals know, and how do they know it? Author Peter Godfrey-Smith discusses his latest book, an inquiry into the origins of animal intelligence considering ocean creatures from sponges and shrimp to octopuses and whale sharks. These animals hold surprising lessons for some of philosophy's most vexing puzzles: how ...
Where: Cost: Free
Astronomy on Tap Seattle - LivestreamHave you ever wondered how exactly we can avoid the dinosaurs’ fate? Join as Dr. Siegfried Eggl talks about the science behind how we could deflect asteroids and keep the planet safe from interstellar objects. The event will begin at 7pm (note the early start!), and there will be lots ...
Jellies have no hearts, brains, or lungs, and are made up of 95% waterâ€"how interesting can they be? Find out during an evening with venomologist Anna Klompen, science writer Juli Berwald, and Academy biologist Riah Evin.See weblink for YouTube and Facebook Live buttons.
The observable universe is made of stars and galaxies and gas. However, it is commonly held in the astronomy community that our universe is also made of an invisible substance called dark matter that is five times more common than ordinary matter. However, dark matter has never been observed, and the ...
Where: Cost: Free
Friday, 11/13/20
Past, Present and Future on the Bay Area Ridge Trail - LivestreamJoin Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) and the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council for a discussion of the history and future of our region’s most ambitious trail network. We will hear from Elizabeth Byers, a founder of the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council and author of Bay Area Ridge Trail: ...
Green Friday: Extinction Rebellion on 'What To Do About the Coming Extinction' - LivestreamFounded by youth in Britain in 2018, Extinction Rebellion is a global movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimize the risk of social collapse. It has spread like wildfire across the globe - our local chapter XR SF Bay is aimed at ...
Where: Cost: Free
Saturday, 11/14/20
Here Come the Suns: The statistics and habitability of planets in binary star systems - LivestreamMost planet searches focus on single stars, like the sun. But half of all sun-like stars actually live in binary or multiple stellar systems, whose planet-hosting capability may be quite different. Although planets in binary systems are common in pop culture (think Tattoine in Stark Wars, or Gallifrey from Doctor ...
The study of animal communication challenges our ideas of intelligence and informs the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Among the most fascinating and sophisticated of vocalizations are the songs and sounds of humpback whales. Laurance Doyle, Ph.D, Research Scientist with SETI Institute will share his studies of humpbacks to understand ...
Where: Cost: Free
Virtual Telescope Viewing - LivestreamJoin our resident astronomers on Facebook Live every Saturday evening live from Chabot’s Observation deck!Each week, our astronomers will guide us through spectacular night sky viewing through Nellie, Chabot‘s most powerful telescope. Weather permitting we will be able to view objects live through the telescopes and our astronomers will be ...
Where: Cost: Free
Sunday, 11/15/20
Butterflies of the World - LivestreamOur Caterpillar lady Sally Levinson and Butterfly guy Sarab Seth are going global with this month’s virtual butterfly walk. Sarab’s travels and stunning photography will reveal butterflies from Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, India and Panama.Register at weblink for connection information
Where: Cost: $10 General, $5 Members
The Math Magi: Seminal figures in Western mathematics - LivestreamThis presentation outlines the development of mathematics in the West with a focus on "God Created the Integers" by Stephen Hawking. It spans more than two thousand years from Pythagoras to Turing with spotlights on Archimedes, Descartes, Newton, Boole, and Cantor. Bob Burchfield will present material from the text along ...
Rivers, Time, and Collaborative Research - LivestreamRivers are icons of climate change. They are also highly sensitive indicators of present climate conditions, recorders of historical climate, and predictors of climate in the future. Climate scientists research all of these factors by observing watersheds and the ecosystems they sustain.Conceived by Jonathon Keats, River Time is a multifaceted ...
Where: Cost: Free
The fall and rise of the mass on a spring - LivestreamSince antiquity, the mass on a spring and other simple mechanical systems have been used in everyday applications, like time-keeping clocks. But at one time, they were also employed in smarter information technologies such as calculators and computers, technologies now ruled by silicon-based microelectronics. In recent years, thanks largely to ...
 Information about the late-time Universe is imprinted on the small scale CMB as photons travel to us from the surface of last scattering. Several processes are at play and small scale fluctuations are very rich and non-Gaussian in nature. I will review some of the most important effects and I ...
LA’s Green New Deal, released by Mayor Garcetti in April 2019, sets a global model for upholding and exceeding the Paris Climate Agreement by prioritizing urgency, equity, and prosperity. Uniquely, the city of Los Angeles runs the largest municipally owned electricity and water utility in the country, the second busiest ...
Hierarchical materials - materials that include a hierarchy of bonding interactions because their basic building block are more complex than those of individual atoms - present a wide array of underexplored phase behaviors and emergent properties. Examples include many current functional materials comprised on molecules or small particle building blocks, ...
Throughout a 45-year career as an environmental regulator, Mary Nichols has been called everything from “Trump's nemesis†to “the most influential environmental regulator of all time.†A powerful climate champion for advancing climate action and limiting emissions, Nichols has taken on automakers and collaborated with them. Environmentalists have cheered her ...
Where: Cost: Free
Walk with Obi: Coast Redwoods on Fire - LivestreamTake a once-in-a-lifetime virtual walk with Obi Kaufmann as he explores habitat recovery & restoration of a burned coast redwood forest.The story of the coast redwood is the story of a genetic lineage that stretches back to a time before the dinosaurs. Having evolved over the past several hundred million ...
Fish are the most diverse group of vertebrates on the planet today, and the type and abundance of fish present in the marine ecosystem depends on the environmental conditions and food web processes in that area. Ichthyoliths - isolated microfossil fish teeth and shark scales - preserve a unique history ...
Where: Cost: Free
Frontiers in Optical and CMB Survey Cosmology - LivestreamObservations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the galaxy-filled sky provide images of the universe at its various stages that are sensitive to its physics from the earliest moments to recent times. These observations are key to expanding our understanding to the physics of inflation, neutrinos, dark matter, and dark energy - some ...
Where: Cost: Free
Basic Science: Quantum Information's Imminent Revolution - LivestreamUshering in the era of quantum computing, UC Berkeley serves as headquarters for the new Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Present and Future Quantum Computation. A panel that includes three of its scientific directors explores the institute’s research priorities and the campus vision for an integrated initiative across quantum science ...
How can you adapt your landscaping to better protect your home from wildfires? Fay Mark, a UC Marin Master Gardener will offer guidance on how to plan and maintain healthy fire-smart landscaping. With photos, videos, and real world examples of recommended best practices she will explain how to have ...
Nadia Eghbal is particularly interested in infrastructure, governance, and the economics of the internet - and how the dynamics of these subjects play out in software, online communities and generally living life online.Eghbal, who interviewed hundreds of developers while working to improve their experience at GitHub, argues that modern open ...
We know that our Universe is expanding, but how fast? Is it getting faster or slowing down? And why? The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), a state-of-the-art instrument on the Mayall telescope in Arizona, is equipped with 5,000 robotic optical fibers to capture the lights from 5,000 galaxies at one ...
Where: Cost: Free
Sea Otter Conservation and Ecology in the 21st Century - LivestreamHaving nearly been forced to extinction throughout much of their range in the 18th and 19th centuries, sea otters have made a remarkable comeback. Through their recovery, we are learning new things about their basic biology and ecology, which is forcing coastal scientists and managers to rethink the role of ...
Where: Cost: $10 Donation Requested
Thanksgiving on Mars: Exploration & Human Missions Beyond Earth Orbit - LivestreamHumankind has always dreamt of traveling to new places and exploring new frontiers. When the Pilgrims’ arrived in the New World on wooden sailing ships in the 1600’s, they celebrated the first Thanksgiving with Native Americans and began settling into life in their new home.  Over time, the exploration ...
Langdon Cook is an author, instructor, and lecturer on wild foods and the outdoors. We are pleased to announce that he will join MSSF on November 17th to present at our virtual general meeting. He says “I’ll guide participants through four seasons of mushroom hunting and cooking on the ...
