Catalytic Depolymerization of Plastic Waste to Produce Value-Added ChemicalsPlastics play a large role in human life, from providing effective and safe packaging for food and medicine to materials for consumer products like clothing and electronics. Unfortunately, many of these plastic materials are only used once before they are discarded, and as a result these single-use plastics are accumulating ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Ancient human footprints at White Sands National ParkArchaeologists and researchers in allied fields have long sought to understand human colonization of North America. Questions remain about when and how people migrated, where they originated, and how their arrival affected the established fauna and landscape. Excavated surfaces in White Sands National Park (New Mexico, United States) revealed multiple ...
Will CRISPR gene editing change our idea of what defines a species? Is gene editing simply a continuation of our long history of modifying animals through selective breeding? Or is it something radically new? Â Artist-in-Residence Heather Dewey-Hagborg and the Exploratorium present the world premiere of Xeno in Vivo, a multimedia ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 general $10-members
In Town Star PartyCome join San Jose Astronomical Association (SJAA) for an evening of stargazing.Event details:Events are held at the parking lot of our headquarters, Houge Park San Jose. The event duration is 2 hours. SJAA volunteers will share night sky views from their telescopes.Please refrain from bringing your own telescopes (Binoculars are ...
The North Bay Science Discovery Day is a one-day public free science festival designed to spark children's wonder and curiosity for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. With over 70 organizations and 100 hands-on interactive exhibits, youth explore rockets and beehives, robots and sharks, catapults and hearts, animation, animals, and art, ...
Where: Santa RosaCost: Free
Family Nature Adventures: BeesLearn about bees, from familiar favorites to lesser known native species, and how to spot them in a hands-on workshop and nature walk.
Where: OaklandCost: $25 Adults w/children, $15 Youth age 3+
International Women's Day at the Lawrence Hall of ScienceCelebrate women and girls in science, technology, engineering, and math on International Women’s Day! Design, build, and test hands-on engineering activities with the UC Berkeley chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. This national non-profit organization celebrates the achievement of non-male individuals as leaders and engineers.Admission is free for UC ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free with museum admission ($20 for guests 3+)
Sunday, 03/10/24
Electrified Home TourDo you know that electrifying your home can save you money, protect your and your children’s health, help reduce global warming, and keep you more comfortable?Come learn how on the upcoming, free Electrified Home Tour, a new program of the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour and Green Home Features ...
Predictive algorithms are used across a wide variety of settings in order to inform consequential decisionmaking about people’s lives, ranging from pretrial detention decisions in the criminal justice system to surgical intervention decisions in medical contexts. With the increasing deployment of these algorithms comes the risk that they could make ...
With population growth, urbanization, and rapidly changing environments, challenges to meeting basic human and societal needs are becoming increasingly complex. In many cases, the 20th century model of environmental technologies and infrastructure systems - often characterized by robust but inflexible components that are energy- and chemical-intensive - is no longer ...
We study the unintended environmental consequences of “bonus depreciation,†one of the largest investment tax incentives in US history. To do so, we pair emissions data from the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory and National Emissions Inventory with quasi-experimental policy variation in the extent to which establishments benefited from the policy. ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Zooming into the Landscape of Topological States and Collective ExcitationsNanoscale electrodynamics offers a unique perspective on states with bulk-edge correspondence or spatially-dependent excitations. This presentation will introduce our latest advancements in optically coupled microwave impedance microscopy, a technique that enhances our capability to explore electrodynamics at the nanometer scale. I will discuss our recent studies utilizing this technology to ...
The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report shows that we will need several gigatons of carbon dioxide removal annually to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. A nascent but rapidly growing private sector is attempting to meet that demand. These companies are deploying a myriad of technologies ...
Storytelling and the Climate CrisisContemporary writers and activists have described the climate crisis as, in part, a crisis of the imagination, of culture, and of storytelling. In this panel, we’ll hear from writers and scholars of different genres - science fiction, journalism, history, literary fiction, and comedy - about how the climate crisis has ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Manipulating the symmetry of charge order with lightNew experimental tools can provide unexpected insights that can resolve `blind men and the elephant’ type issues that we often encounter in the study of complex materials. In this work we use a newly developed instrument that combines laser light with a scanning tunnelling microscope, to obtain crucial insights into ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Electric vehicle green charging with marginal emissions signalsElectric vehicles (EVs) are a promising clean transportation option, but they still release CO2Â emissions when charging from the electricity grid. Often, EV drivers charge their vehicles when it is cheap or convenient, not when grid carbon intensity is lowest. Green charging, or smart charging control, is a solution to this ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Three talks: Stanford Energy Seminar Student LecturesElectric vehicle green charging with marginal emissions signalsElectric vehicles (EVs) are a promising clean transportation option, but they still release CO2Â emissions when charging from the electricity grid. Often, EV drivers charge their vehicles when it is cheap or convenient, not when grid carbon intensity is lowest. Green charging, or smart ...
Energy Storage at TeslaThe Atmosphere/Energy Seminar is an interdisciplinary seminar with talks by researchers and practitioners in the fields of atmospheric science and renewable energy engineering. Addresses the causes of climate, air pollution, and weather problems and methods of addressing these problems through renewable and efficient energy systems.Speaker:Â Timothy Hall
What if our understanding of capitalism and climate is back to front? What if the problem is not that transitioning to renewables is too expensive, but that saving the planet is not sufficiently profitable? This is Brett Christophers’ claim. The global economy is moving too slowly toward sustainability because the ...
Enteric infections, including antibiotic-resistant infections, disproportionately impact low-resource communities. Among all global deaths due to antibiotic resistant bacterial infections, 86% occur in low- and middle-income countries. Scalable prevention strategies are urgently needed. In this talk I will present field and lab studies that exploit new tools in molecular microbiology to ...
Over the last century, the construction and discovery of the Standard Model of particle physics has been one of the greatest accomplishments in physics. To explore this new frontier, we built larger and larger colliders utilizing the two charged particles that are easiest to produce and manipulate, the proton and ...
Whose values and voices are prioritized in climate change solutions? In other words, as different countries, regions, cities, and communities try to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and implement strategies to cope with the impacts of climate change, who will benefit? Who will lose? Who will be left out? This ...
Where: Cost: Free
How Social Media Impacts Collective Understandings of WarHow does the prevalence and ubiquity of social media impact and change perceptions of global conflict in the 21st century?In the last 20 years, conflict and war have unfolded in real time on our phone screens and across social media. While historically information and images of war were filtered through ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $15 - $30
The Bureau of Linguistical Reality Performance LectureThe Bureau of Linguistical Reality is a participatory artwork facilitated by artist Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante which collaborates with the public to create new words for feelings and experiences for which no words yet exist. Recognizing the climate crisis is causing new feelings and experiences that have yet to ...
The Stanford Sustainability Accelerator invites you to a seminar with Ned Tozun, co-founder of d.light, as he shares the transformative journey from a Stanford class project to impacting 150 million lives in Asia and Africa through innovative solar energy solutions.Speaker: Ned Tozun, d.lightRoom 350
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Sticking Together: How Bacterial Collectives (Re)Shape ThemselvesBacteria are arguably the simplest form of life; and yet, as multi-cellular collectives, they perform complex functions critical 
to environment, food, health, and industry. What principles govern how complex behaviors emerge in bacterial collectives? And how can we harness them to control bacterial behavior? In this talk, I will describe ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
AI and TranslationIn a December 2023 op-ed in the New York Times, pioneering artificial intelligence researcher and inventor of the world’s first global-scale online language translator De Kai writes, “You’d be hard pressed to find any arguments against developing translation AIs. Reducing misunderstanding between cultures is probably one of the most important ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Solar Eclipse programOn April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will pass over the United States. The next chance to observe one in the contiguous USA will be in 20 years! Join us for an in-person talk with astronomy professor Mohsen Janatpour to learn about the nature of an eclipse, how eclipses come ...
 The population of black holes, objects left over from dead stars, in the Milky Way is almost entirely unexplored. Only about two dozen black holes are confidently known in our Galaxy -- all in “binary systems†where they orbit a living star. As a result, some of the most basic ...
Where: Los Altos HillsCost: Free
Thursday, 03/14/24
Pi (Ï€) DayJoin the 37th 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. Explore math-inspired activities and presentations, then join our pi parade and eat a free piece of pie. Come for the STEAM and stay ...
The Thwaites Interdisciplinary Margin Evolution (TIME) project investigates the processes influencing the dynamics and future evolution of the Eastern Shear Margin of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica. This presentation will summarize results from TIME’s seismic team. TIME deployed 14 broadband seismometers from 2019 to 2021. We investigate passive seismic signals to ...
The transition to zero-emission fleets represents an excellent opportunity for transportation decarbonization, especially for medium and heavy-duty (MHD) vehicles, as 75% of the commercial trucks on the road and 98% of Class 8 trucks are currently powered by diesel. From a nationwide perspective, MHD vehicles accounted for only 6% of the ...
After Dark: Pi NightMath is everywhere in our lives, from geometric designs to the irrational, transcendental, and non-real numbers that help us make sense of the world. This Pi Day, keep the fun going to infinity at the Exploratorium. Learn the mathematically optimal way to slice a pie. Witness an amazing math phenomenon ...
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 60,000 live animals (including familiar faces like Claude, our alligator with albinism), the night is sure to be wild.Step inside the iconic ...
The continued onslaught of myths and misinformation surrounding Covid and Covid vaccines has been unrelenting and contributes to the low uptake of this vaccine. I will try to debunk some of these myths and put them in context.Speaker: Paul Offit, MD, University of PennsylvaniaWatch the lecture here.
