Bay Area Planetary Science ConferenceThe Bay Area Planetary Science (BAPS) Conference was created to bolster collaborations among planetary enthusiasts around the Bay Area, CA. We welcome participants at all academic levels, students and professionals alike. BAPS does not focus on any specific sub-field within the planetary sciences, and welcomes contributions from all areas relevant ...
The deep sea is one of Earth’s most diverse and least understood ecosystems, where biodiversity is shaped by both natural and anthropogenic processes. This seminar explores the intricate dynamics of deep-sea life through three key phenomena: woodfalls, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWH), and sediment patchiness. Woodfalls create ephemeral but ...
The rapid emergence of generative AI technologies has been shaped by a wave of early excitement and hope for a broad range of use cases. Yet, the impacts of the latest models on historically marginalized communities is still relatively understudied, including the potential for sociotechnical harm.In this session, the speakers ...
Speakers: Aaron Micallef and Giancarlo TroniThe speaker originally scheduled for today, Sora Kim, UC Merced, has been rescheduled for November 6, 2024.
As global food demand grows, new approaches are needed to produce food in resource-limited environments beyond traditional agricultural systems. I will discuss two areas of research from our group: (1) our development of a hybrid inorganic??"biological artificial photosynthesis system that uses electrochemically derived acetate to cultivate food-producing organisms independent of ...
Steady advancement in microelectronics technology over the past six decades have had transformative impact on life in modern society, as they have enabled exponential growth in information collection and processing, ushering in the age of artificial intelligence. Challenges for sustaining the AI revolution will require disruptive innovation and collaboration to ...
The electricity sector is the linchpin in any path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Over a decade of research, Prof. Jenkins has explored what it will take to build an affordable, reliable, carbon-free grid. Wind power, solar photovoltaics and lithium-ion batteries are now affordable, mature, rapidly scaling industries, providing the ...
Challenges and Safeguards against AI-Generated DisinformationDistinguishing between human- and AI-generated content is already an important enough problem in multiple domains ??" from social media moderation to education ??" that there is a quickly growing body of empirical research on AI detection and an equally quickly growing industry of its non/commercial applications. But will current tools ...
The adoption of renewable energy technologies hinges on the availability of many critical minerals. To meet the large demand for critical minerals, it is vital to scale up mineral supply chains that are resilient and sustainable. In this talk, Karan will introduce the STEER program at Stanford which is guiding ...
In this talk, Jesse Conklin will discuss how his own career in ornithology, including 18 years of research on Alaska-breeding Bar-tailed Godwits, has been irreparably entwined with the quest to understand just how far a bird can fly. Jesse will discuss how our understanding of the godwits’ incredible trans-Pacific migration ...
Space exploration is increasingly privatized, from Earth's orbital space to the Moon and beyond. This has led to increasing congestion and environmental degradation of low-Earth orbits. Along with dramatic rises in ground-based light pollution, this has caused brightening night skies worldwide. The loss of dark skies and increasing space debris ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Thursday, 10/17/24
Lunch Break Science - LivestreamLunch Break Science is a dynamic live web series featuring fascinating short talks, engaging interviews, and lively Q&A with Leakey Foundation scientists. Each episode digs deeper into the latest human origins discoveries, with topics like Neanderthals, chimpanzee behavior, and more! Even better, you can interact with researchers during the show ...
Radio echo sounding is a uniquely powerful geophysical technique for studying the interior of ice sheets, glaciers, and icy planetary bodies. It can provide broad coverage and deep penetration as well as interpretable ice thickness, basal topography, and englacial radio stratigraphy. However, despite the long tradition of glaciological interpretation of ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Invertebrate Pirates: Mechanism and Evolution of a Stolen DefenseThe complexity of life is a critical driver of animal biodiversity. Complex phenotypes, which are those that integrate both co-opted and novel features at multiple levels of biological organization (e.g., genes, tissues, behaviors), are commonplace in biology. Many even require other organisms to function, but we know little about how ...
The seemingly magical ability of a spinning top to stay upright fascinated people for many thousands of years and in many civilizations. Clay spinning tops dated to about 6,000 years ago were excavated in Iraq. And for all these millenia another similarly counterintuitive phenomenon hovered undiscovered until 1908, when Stephenson observed that imposing ...
In this talk, I will introduce two AI-driven systems designed to address key challenges in educational mentorship and social learning, aligning with research on how technology can enhance development and collaboration.The first project explores the concept of “Thinking assistants” aimed at fostering reflective thinking and self-directed learning. Thinking assistants act ...
This presentation shows the steps to design a bandpass filter starting with a specification of the passband, then to derive a prototype lowpass filter using network synthesis, and finally to convert to a bandpass filter.Speaker: Robert Lee Bruce, RetiredAttend in person or online (see weblink for Zoom information)
Where: Rohnert ParkCost: Free
Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles and a Just FutureCalifornia’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the country. Recently, however, it has also become ground zero in the new “lithium gold rush”??"the race to power the rapidly expanding electric vehicle and renewable energy storage market. The immense quantities of lithium lurking ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $22 General, discounts for members
NightLife: Hella '89NightLife’s reppin’ the YAY AREAAA with Bay Area history, music that slaps, and hella local love.
Where: San FranciscoCost: Varies
After Dark: Decision TimeDiscover the science behind decision-making at After Dark. Explore our galleries for eye-opening exhibits that reveal the psychology and sociology behind elections, voting, and collective decision-making. How do we reach consensus, and how do we influence each other in the process? Make the best decision of your week by joining ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $22.95 General, Free for members
Generative AI & The Future of InnovationDiscover the future of creativity and technology at our event with a panel discussion on "Generative AI & The Future of Innovation." This gathering brings together professionals from various industries to explore how generative AI is revolutionizing everything. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a business leader, or a creative thinker, ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 General, $10 Students
How the East Bay Got Its Regional Parks - LivestreamCelebrate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the East Bay Regional Park District with an evening of short presentations about the history of the Park District and its role in protecting birds.Speakers:Amelia Marshall is a local history author; Natalie Reeder is a Wildlife Biologist at East Bay Regional Park ...
Join POST and Dr. Emily Fairfax - ecohydrologist, beaver dam enthusiast, and Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota - for an engaging evening where we’ll gnaw through the big issues and chew on the critical role of beavers in our climate.This event offers a unique opportunity to ...
Where: Cost: Free
Friday, 10/18/24
Land x Good Fire: Trione-AnnadelJoin fellows from Audubon Canyon Ranch's Fire Forward fellowship program for Sonoma County residents to learn about Good Fire.Join fellows from Audubon Canyon Ranch’s Fire Forward fellowship program for Sonoma County residents to learn about good fire. Land x Good Fire is part of the Resilient Forests and Watersheds Workshops ...
Where: Santa RosaCost: Free
Maker Faire Bay AreaSee the weblink for information on activities, classes and schedules, talks, and free ferry shuttle service from Vallejo (Saturday and Sunday only).Single day advance tickets: $48 General, $24 Youth; Day of tickets at door: $60/$30Weekend advance tickets: $80 Adult, $40 Youth; Day of tickets at door: $100/$50Parking passes for weekend ...
Urban air mobility (UAM) enables highly automated, cooperative passenger- or cargo-carrying air transportation services in and around urban areas. In order to increase the volume of UAM operation, the key is to understand and enable the “highly automation.” The highly automation does not just apply to vehicle automation but to ...
The reductive chemistry of the rare-earth and actinide metals has undergone major changes in recent years. New +2 oxidation states are available for these elements in molecular complexes and these new complexes expand the range of physical properties observable for compounds of the f orbital metals. This includes their ...
Ancient and unhurried, long-lived and majestic, turtles - some individuals living longer than 200 years - have a lineage that stretches back to the time of the dinosaurs. In literary terms, turtles are "the perfect conduits for meditations on aging, disability, and chosen family," according to Scientific American. Such meditations ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Saturday, 10/19/24
Dinosaur Lookout Grand OpeningA new exhibit is roaring into The Lawrence! Join us for the grand opening of Dinosaur Lookout! Meet five colossal creatures that roar and move in our outdoor dinosaur park. Take in our sweeping view of the San Francisco Bay as you engage in hands-on dinosaur-themed activities. After meeting a ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free with admission
Maker Faire Bay AreaSee the weblink for information on activities, classes and schedules, talks, and free ferry shuttle service from Vallejo (Saturday and Sunday only).Single day advance tickets: $48 General, $24 Youth; Day of tickets at door: $60/$30Weekend advance tickets: $80 Adult, $40 Youth; Day of tickets at door: $100/$50Parking passes for weekend ...
Join YSI as we walk around Alum Rock Park and teach you about our feathered friends! Learn how to identify birds by their key characteristics, how to use binoculars, and then make a craft that will help you attract birds into your backyard!A registered adult must accompany their child(ren) for ...
Where: San JoseCost: Free
Electric Home Tour 2024This fall, Acterra: Action for a Healthy Planet (Acterra) invites the public to explore innovative, electrified homes across the Bay Area. Homeowners throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties will open their doors to showcase the electric appliances and equipment they’ve installed as replacements for gas-powered products. Building on ...
Where: Cost: Free
City Public Star PartyCome join the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers for free public stargazing of the Moon, planets, globular clusters and more!The event will take place in Tunnel Tops National Park, parking is located adjacent to Picnic Place (210 Lincoln Blvd for GPS) with the telescopes setup in the East Meadow.Dress warmly as conditions ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Comet 2023/A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS viewingThe Foothill College Astronomy Department and the Peninsula Astronomical Society will hold a special event to view newly discovered comet 2023/A3. It has just survived it's close pass by the sun, and is now moving past the Earth on it's many thousands of years orbit... so come enjoy it for ...
In the evolution of the Universe, there remains a gap in understanding the formation of first stars and galaxies, ~300,000 years after the Big Bang. These early stars brought with them the first light in the Universe, thus leading to ‘Cosmic Dawn’. Although this is an event of the past, ...
Where: San JoseCost: Free
Sunday, 10/20/24
Land x Good Fire: Northwest Sonoma CountyJoin fellows from Audubon Canyon Ranch's Fire Forward fellowship program for Sonoma County residents to learn about Good Fire.Join fellows from Audubon Canyon Ranch’s Fire Forward fellowship program for Sonoma County residents to learn about good fire. Land x Good Fire is part of the Resilient Forests and Watersheds Workshops ...
Where: Sonoma CountyCost: Free
Maker Faire Bay AreaSee the weblink for information on activities, classes and schedules, talks, and free ferry shuttle service from Vallejo (Saturday and Sunday only).Single day advance tickets: $48 General, $24 Youth; Day of tickets at door: $60/$30Weekend advance tickets: $80 Adult, $40 Youth; Day of tickets at door: $100/$50Parking passes for weekend ...
Where: Mare IslandCost: See description
Monday, 10/21/24
Global Encryption Day ConferenceGlobal Encryption Day (GED) is an annual event organized by the Global Encryption Coalition (GEC), designed to raise awareness about the importance of encryption in protecting privacy and securing digital communications. It brings together various stakeholders, including civil society organizations, technology companies, and individuals, to advocate for strong encryption policies ...
What can we learn about the structure of individual minds, human or artificial, using large-scale social data, such as the textual or visual data flowing through search engines and social media platforms? In this talk, I present a range of studies showing that large-scale social data can reveal striking insights ...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gained increasing global attention for its transformative potential across industries. Alongside robotics, it has become central to efforts aimed at accelerating clean technology and mitigating climate change. At the intersection of AI, automation, and energy storage, several critical questions emerge: What can data-driven approaches achieve that ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Water for All: Global Solutions for a Changing ClimateAs the cumulative effects of population pressure, increasing wealth and a changing climate intersect with water policies and investments that fail to consider impacts on human health and the natural environment, the world will experience more severe water crises in the coming decades. To provide transformative solutions that are likely ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Butterfly Walk in the GardenJoin our butterfly docent specialist Sally Levinson and Andy Liu for a guided walk through the Garden in search of butterflies, as you learn about their plant relationships and amazing life cycle. Bring binoculars if you have them.Registered children welcome. Pre-registration is required, space is limited. Groups larger than 6 ...
Topology plays a key role in describing quantum matter, which has been greatly explored in recent decades [for an introduction: Hasan & Kane, Rev. of Mod. Phys. 82, 3045 (2010)]. I present how tuning a topological insulator featuring a Dirac fermion can be used as a platform to realize emergent ...
Neutrinos, the only neutral elementary fermions, have provided many surprises. Flavor oscillations reveal the non-conservation of the lepton flavor number and demonstrate that neutrino masses are finite; yet they are surprisingly much smaller than those of other fermions (by at least six orders of magnitude!) It is then natural to ...
Where: Menlo ParkCost: Free
Dark Matter Searches Using Gravitational Wave DetectorsDr. Nancy Aggarwall of UC Davis conducts precision measurements of fundamental physics. She uses techniques from Quantum Optics, atomic physics, and condensed matter physics to look for new physics in the form of dark matter candidates or gravitational waves from astrophysical, cosmological, and exotic sources.
Speaker: Lloyd Trotman, Cold Spring Harbor LabRoom: Auditorium
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Mechanisms and importance of lysosome repairDamaged lysosomes are harmful to cells and participate in propagation of neurotoxic protein aggregates. Recent studies have shown that damaged lysosomes can be repaired by several alternative mechanisms. In our group we have been characterizing lysosome repair mediated by ESCRT proteins and lipids transferred from the endoplasmic reticulum. In my ...
The spins of black holes in binaries observed with gravitational waves are an essential probe of physics on multiple scales, from the astrophysical formation environments of compact binaries to fundamental physics. At the same time, the imprint of spin on the observed signals is weak, making constraints more challenging compared ...
Register here. Amy Ione (Diatrope Institute) on "Neuroscience and Art: The Neurocultural Landscape" Meredith Tromble (Artist and Curator) on "The New College Circle: The Lifelong Impact of a Creative School" Caroline Jones (MIT Art Historian) on "Impressionism as a Function of Techno-shock"
Where: Cost: Free
Tuesday, 10/22/24
Integrating blue foods into national climate strategies - LivestreamBlue or aquatic foods - foods that are wild-caught or farmed from oceans, rivers, and lakes - are increasingly recognized as a priority for climate action, yet they are often overlooked in climate discussions and underfunded in mitigation and adaptation financing. Policymakers have an opportunity to address climate impacts on ...
In her presentation, Katrin will discuss a newly developed methodology for projecting the costs of novel low-carbon technologies, with a focus on Direct Air Capture (DAC) technologies. This research introduces a novel approach for projecting technology costs by assigning empirically grounded experience rates to technology components based on their similarity ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Sewers for surveillance: Harnessing wastewater monitoring data for public health action - LivestreamThis month, the Bay Area Open Science Group will be joined by Elana Chan, a Civil & Environmental Engineering PhD Candidate in the Boehm Research Group at Stanford studying how wastewater monitoring data may be interpreted for public health action. Elana was recently awarded the Stanford University Libraries Data Sharing ...
I will discuss how vertebrate skin colours and skin appendages (scales, feathers, hairs, ...) are patterned through Turing and mechanical instabilities. First, I will show that Reaction-diffusion (RD) models are particularly effective for understanding skin colour patterning at the macroscopic scale, without the need to parametrise the profusion of variables ...
Super-resolution imaging and other fluorescence techniques have become seminal tools for scientists due to their ability to resolve heterogeneity and features normally obscured in traditional diffraction limited imaging. Super-resolution imaging has been optimized for and enabled important findings in cellular biophysics and catalysis, yet, super-resolution microscopy techniques have had limited ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Electric Vehicle Expo at StanfordThe EV Expo features 6 different makes / models of electric vehicles brought to campus by local residents who volunteer to share their insight and expertise as owners.Ice cream will be served to people who can demonstrate engagement with EV owners.Stanford’s Solar Car Team is also anticipated as an exhibitor ...
In the high-technology world, organizations innovate or die. Standing still is not an option. Too often, team leaders are selected for their technical expertise; the best contributor gets selected to lead. Unfortunately, this often leads to disaster. Leadership requires a particular set of soft skills, and, too often, companies promote ...