Communicating about climate change can be a rollercoaster, let’s face it. We know we need to be addressing it, and urgently, and yet the topic can be fraught, triggering and evoke strong reactions for people. As researchers, scientists, educators and concerned citizens, how can we apply best practices for engaging ...
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, one truth continues to be proven time and time again: the vaccine is saving lives, and to Pfizer CEO Dr. Albert Bourla, it was the product of one of the most incredible private sector achievements in history. Mobilizing the corporation amid some of the most ...
How do scientists go from OMG to PhD? How do they turn their passion for science into their profession? What advice do they have for future scientists?If you are a 5th-12th grade student, undergraduate, teacher or parent, join us to ask these questions and more in a Q&A session with ...
Where: Cost: Free
Copepods through a molecular lens - LivestreamDiapause is a type of dormancy used in arthropods to enter a state of “suspended animation†that, with a delay of development, allow organisms to overcome periods of unfavorable conditions. The sub-arctic calanoid copepod Neocalanus flemingeri has been a good model for studying diapause: dormancy is obligatory and post-embryonic and ...
Where: Cost: Free
March LASER Event - LivestreamSpeakers: Summer Praetorius (USGS Geologist) on "The Heliocene"Ewa Domanska (Stanford Univ & Adam Mickiewicz Univ) on "Prefigurative Art and Micro-Utopias"Lily Xiying Yang (Virtual Reality Artist) on "Land of Illusions - Creativity and Activism in the Metaverse" Register here or here
Normal stars, like our Sun, shine because they undergo nuclear fusion, turning hydrogen into helium and converting matter into radiation. But what if a star wasn't able to fuse? What would such a "dud" look like? These were purely theoretical question until the 1990s, when the first examples of non-fusing ...
The Black-headed Duck is a duck with the lifestyle of a cuckoo or a cowbird - they never raise their own offspring but depend entirely on other species to do so. This species is unique among the hundred species of professional brood parasitic birds in that their precocial chicks fend ...
Got math problems? We’ve got solutions! Mathematics, as a fundamental language to describe the world, is as integral to the engineering of buildings as it is to beauty. Discover various aesthetic expressions hidden in fractions, digits, and equations. From the transcendence of pi to the psychedelia of fractals, we’ll highlight ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $19.95 General, Free for members
NightLifeCalling all creatures of the night: explore the nocturnal side of the Academy at NightLife and see what's revealed. With live DJs, outdoor bars, ambiance lighting, and nearly 40,000 live animals (including familiar faces like Claude the alligator with albinism), the night is sure to be wild.Step inside the iconic ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $19 - $17 depending on entrance time
“Voted off the islandâ€. “Will you accept this rose?†“You’re fired!†“Sashay away!†Reality TV has permeated American culture, and spread internationally as well. But what do we know about the behind-the-scenes world of reality TV? Yau-Man Chan was a fan favorite on two rounds of Survivor, and will tell ...
 The human immune system is complex - so complex and dynamic that it can actually adapt to a changing environment; i.e., it can evolve. Accordingly, we call the immune system a complex adaptive system. Within biology, species are complex adaptive systems whose environmental fitness tends to improve over time; species ...
Information technology has fundamentally changed the daily lives of Americans - crunching years of data in seconds and automating seemingly infinitely complex tasks. Yet, as congressman Ro Khanna warns, technological progress has great power to either hurt or heal the country - creating division and furthering inequality if left unchecked, ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $25 In Person, $10 Online
Saturday, 03/12/22
First Dive Into the World of Fungi - LivestreamMushroom enthusiast and research associate Christian Schwarz will take us on a guided tour of this vast branch of the Tree of Life, highlighting the breathtaking range of scale, ecologies, and morphologies of these mysterious organisms.Speaker: Christian Schwarz, author
Where: Cost: $15 General, $10 Members
Language Development Across Communities and CulturesIn this talk, Dr. Mahesh Srinivasan will present recent work from his lab that challenges two broad claims within the field of developmental science: First, that there are “optimal†methods for speaking to one’s child; and second, that parents from lower socioeconomic-status backgrounds sometimes lack knowledge of these methods, thus ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Saturday Cinema: Artis MathematicaeWatch a screening of John Sims’ math art video work, Artis Mathematicae (2022, 22 min.), followed by a Q&A. The work explores a visual and poetic language of fractals, pi, and the square root of love.   John Sims is a Detroit native, Sarasota-based conceptual artist, writer, and activist who creates art ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free with admission
Sunday, 03/13/22
Afternoon Hike at Mindego HillJoin Peninsula Open Space Trust for a beautiful 5-mile hike from the Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve to the top of the POST-protected Mindego Hill. You will be guided by POST ambassadors who will share details about how we protected this beautiful property featuring panoramic views of redwood ridges and ...
Join the 35th annual celebration of our own homegrown holiday! March 14th (3/14) commemorates the irrational, transcendent, and never ending ratio that helps describe circles of all sizes. Watch math artist John Sims showcase his handmade Pi Quilt and perform spoken word poems and original music based on pi. Explore ...
Electron transfer and charge transport are most elementary processes in liquid and solid condensed matter. Both femtosecond spectroscopy and structure-resolving x-ray methods give insight in electron dynamics at atomic length and time scales. This talk focuses on many-body dynamics of free electrons in water and alcohols, and on soft-mode excitations ...
Folds, cuts and isometries: art and scienceFor millennia, origami and kirigami artists have used folds and cuts to create beautiful shapes from a simple sheet of paper. I will describe our recent scientific attempts to catch up with these remarkably imaginative arts phrased as inverse problems in physical geometry that aim to control the shape and ...
Weekday Morning Hike at Rancho Cañada del OroJoin Peninsula Open Space Trust for an excursion where you’ll explore the Mayfair Ranch - Longwall Canyon trails of Rancho Cañada del Oro! You will be guided by POST Ambassadors who will share with you the history of the preserve, the region, and the importance of conservation in the area. The ...
Our group is developing methods and strategies for the rapid and controlled formation of molecular complexity. Driven by identifying innovative disconnections using natural products, several case studies from our laboratory will be presented, ranging from aminoglycosides to terpenoids. For example, we will show how an enantioselective hydroamination of benzene enables ...
Housing dynamics in the United States have historically been racialized through explicitly discriminatory laws like redlining, which created connections between neighborhood quality and racial composition. The perpetuation of racialized housing dynamics, like segregation and gentrification suggests that neighborhood race is still entwined with perceptions of neighborhood quality. This study investigates ...
Thea Chesney is a lifelong Sierra Nevada foothill resident and naturalist. She has had an interest in mushrooms (and plants, and the rest of the natural world) since early childhood, which gradually became an obsession. She holds a B.S. in forestry from UC Berkeley, with an emphasis in botany and ...
