Emerging contaminants, such as pesticides, plasticizers, and perfluorinated compounds, are well-documented for their harmful eGects on ecosystems and human health. However, the chemicals we have identified so far represent only the tip of the iceberg, with countless potentially harmful contaminants remaining unknown in our environment. In this seminar, Dr. Zhao ...
The global pandemic highlighted a medical oxygen crisis in African health systems. Poor electricity quality has emerged as a major bottleneck. This talk explores the intersections between power and health, focusing on a study of 25 health facilities monitored between 2022-2024 in East and SouthEast DRC using IoT sensors and ...
The transition from an economy mainly driven by fossil fuels to one that is more sustainable, secure, and resilient is often discussed in terms of climate and energy policy. But in reality, shifting from an extractive to a more distributed energy model will have profound impacts on workers, tax structures, ...
Noah Whiteman is Professor of Genetics, Genomics, Evolution and Development in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology and the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. His new book is Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature’s Toxins - From Spices to Vices, published in 2023. Professor Whiteman will ...
The story of the anesthesia service at Stanford is one of many firsts. In 1909, Caroline Palmer, MD founded a modern, all-physician anesthesia department at the Cooper Medical College, the predecessor of Stanford's Medical School, creating a model for other hospitals in the country. William Neff, her successor, later ...
Building Smarter, Safer Systems: Unlocking AI’s Potential for Autonomous Systems with Proven PerformanceToday’s most exciting technologies - self-driving cars, air taxis, space transportation, and healthcare breakthroughs - rely on advanced systems that combine physics, computing, and data. However, the inherent uncertainty in ensuring their safety, reliability, and performance is challenging. Traditional methods often fall short, and while AI techniques like machine learning ...
Copernicus’ work in 1543 was the kick-off date in the cosmic decentralization of Planet Earth. First, we were relegated to be just another planet in the solar system, then our sun to being just another star in the Milky Way. Now our galaxy seems to be just a suburban member ...
Where: Los Altos HillsCost: Free
Earthquakes and their impact on San FranciscoSan Francisco sits on shaky ground. How prepared are we for the next big earthquake?Join us at Manny’s for a fascinating conversation with Dr. Annemarie Baltay, a leading geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey, as we dig into the science behind earthquakes and what they mean for our city.How likely ...
In 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered that our Universe is expanding. Eighty years later, the Space Telescope that bears his name is being used to study an even more surprising phenomenon: that the expansion is speeding up. The origin of this effect is not known, but is broadly attributed to a ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Thursday, 03/06/25
The impacts of hybridization: from molecular mechanism to evolution in natureHybridization, or the exchange of genes between different species, is much more common than previously recognized. In the past decade, the genome sequencing revolution has allowed us to peer into the evolutionary histories of myriad species. This has led to the realization that many if not most plant and animal ...
Our cities are changing profoundly, experiencing increasing urbanization and more frequent extreme weather events. To understand how these drivers impact our cities, we need precise tools to measure and track urban change over time. However, existing census and survey data have constraints in spatial and temporal granularity, failing to capture real-time physical ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
SETI Live: Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) - LivestreamNASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH mission, is a constellation of four small satellites in low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to better understand how the mass and energy there become the solar wind that fills the solar system. ...
Where: Cost: Free
AI Governance at a Turning Point: New Realities Post AI Action SummitAI governance is at a turning point. The Paris AI Action Summit (Feb 10??"11) marked a shift from AI safety to societal harms like environmental impact??"while also moving toward a pro-innovation, deregulatory agenda. Rising geopolitical tensions, fueled by China’s DeepSeek model and the AI arms race, led to the US ...
The increasing capability of Large Language Models (LLMs) makes them appealing for adoption in labor-intensive human tasks. For example, significant efforts have recently focused on developing agents -- systems that map observations and instructions to executable actions -- and their benchmarks in real-world tasks like web navigation. In this talk, ...
Where: Rohnert ParkCost: Free
Clear Thinking About Climate | Bill Nye - LivestreamSkeptical Inquirer was honored to have Bill Nye as the guest editor of its January/February issue, in which he called climate change and critical thinking “the two most serious problems facing us.” Nye has spent his award-winning, decades-long career working to address both of them - and has plenty of ...
Where: Cost: Free
NightLife: Hot Dino NightsStep into a colossal party millions of years in the making that will awaken your dino-loving inner child. We’re celebrating the launch of our latest exhibit Dino Days with a nod to the most popular dinosaur movie of all time.
Where: San FranciscoCost: Varies
After Dark: Play of LightImmerse yourself in the world of moving images, cinema arts, and optical illusions.
Where: San FranciscoCost: $22.95, free for Members
Take a visual journey into the diverse and lush natural world of Greece. Ancient forests, traditional land-based living still exists, providing a rich culture weaved within nature itself. Connections to fungi are ever-present and they’re only gaining attention. Take a look into the relationships the locals have with certain species ...
Recent years have seen a dramatic rise in extreme wildfires, driven by climate change factors likeincreasing temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and prolonged droughts. The escalating wildfire crisis poses a complex and growing environmental engineering challenge, threatening ecosystems, communities, and critical infrastructure. Climate change intensifies these wildfire events, with areas like ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Morning Hike at Bear Creek RedwoodsJoin us for this beautiful hike! A POST volunteer will share a few words about POST’s decades of conservation success before the hiking group explores a strenuous but mostly shaded 5.4 mile hike with ~900 feet of elevation gain.In one of the county’s best preserved, second-growth coastal redwood forests, we’ll ...
Science is for everyone - and benefits everyone. When the federal government supports scientific research through taxpayer funding, it fuels innovation, creates jobs, and sustains the world we live in. From purified water to the polio vaccine to the cell phone you might be reading this on, science has significantly ...
Join us for a conversation with Eric Schmidt as he delves into AI’s societal and ethical implications. Drawing from his new book, Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit, Schmidt will share insights and stories about the critical role of AI in U.S. national security, the ethical and trust ...
UCSC Silicon Valley Graduate Student Assembly Presents an afternoon with Nathan Lambert, Alessio Fanelli, and Dylan Patel.Room: Event CenterAttend in person or watch on Youtube
Where: Santa ClaraCost: Free
First Friday: Space for HerIn September of 2025, NASA’s Artemis 2 is set to launch their first crewed mission of the Orion Spacecraft, which will land the first woman on the moon. Meanwhile, women have been making monumental advancements in space science for decades. This First Friday, come hear from some phenomenal women and ...
Where: OaklandCost: $10 General, $5 kids/seniors, free for members
Free First Friday: Wild Monterey Bay Book Talk and 'From the Unreal to the Real' exhibit openingJoin us for a special night with the editors and storytellers of Wild Monterey Bay, a beautiful book that explores the interactions between humans and the wildlife that lives here. Authors of the book will be there to tell their amazing tales, and copies of the book will be available ...
The Moon and Mars are humanity’s destinations in space this century. Why and how will we explore these worlds? When will we go? Where will we land, what will we see, and what will we do? And who will go? Dr. Pascal Lee is a leading planetary scientist working on planning ...
Where: San MateoCost: Free
Saturday, 03/08/25
Morning Hike at Windy HillJoin POST on a guided hike on one of the first open spaces we protected as an organization! A POST Representative will share a few words about POST’s decades of conservation success before hiking groups leave to explore a strenuous but rewarding 7 mile hike with 1,500 feet of elevation ...
Where: Portola ValleyCost: Free
Mt. Tamalpais Frog Docent Program TrainingFoothill yellow-legged frogs (Rana boylii) are special because they are only found in isolated ranges in California and nowhere else in the world and are a federal and state listed species. They also tell us important things about the health of fast-flowing streams where they live.Join ecologists at Marin Water, ...
Where: FairfaxCost: Free
Wake up to Nature Breakfast BenefitWe are excited to announce Environmental Volunteers annual Wake Up to Nature breakfast benefit! Join us for a morning of inspiration, connection, and celebration of the work that we do to nurture the next generation of environmental stewards. We will have inspiring speakers, testimonials, and more!Speakers: Alison Cormack, former Palo ...
Where: Palo AltoCost:
Fire ecology hike at Bouverie PreserveJoin us for a walk and talk through the oak woodlands, covering prescribed fire management at the Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen. We will look at prescribed fire sites burned last spring and fall of 2024.The hike will be led by Hannah Lopez, projects manager of our Fire Forward program.Hannah ...
Where: Glen EllenCost: Donations encouraged
Future of Food Grand OpeningCome experience our newest hands-on exhibition Future of Food! Discover a world where food choices can help heal the planet, fuel our bodies, and build more sustainable communities. Explore a cow’s microbiome, learn about farmbots, and see how new technologies can be to produce foods with a respect for cultural ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: $20 or free for members, active duty, UCB students
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, explore rockets and beehives, robots and sharks, catapults and hearts, animation, animals, and art, and ...
Where: Santa RosaCost: Free
Family Nature Adventures: The Buzz About Bees - Discovering Nature’s Tiny Heroes!Buzz into the world of bees, from beloved honeybees to the other hidden helpers of our local ecosystem! Learn all about these amazing pollinators, their unique behaviors, and how to identify different species. Head into the redwood forest for a closer look at bees in their natural environment and explore ...
Where: OaklandCost: $25 General, $35 Youth 3 - 8, Members $10 off
EV Ride and Drive Charge up your weekend and experience electric vehicles (EVs). At this event, you’ll have the opportunity to:Sit in, ride and drive EVs to experience the joy of switching to electric firsthand.Explore a lineup of various electric vehicles.Learn from local EV owners and experts.Discover how to save on your next ...
Where: SunnyvaleCost: Free
CuriOdyssey Weekend Workshop: Rocket PowerBecome a rocket scientist for the day! Participants will design and test different methods of launching rockets and discover what shapes make the best flyers. From using air pressure to causing a chemical reaction blast see how far your designs can go!Ages 5 to 10 years old
Where: San MateoCost: $45-$55
Cinema Arts: 'Universe in a Grain of Sand'How do we make sense of the world around us? Our understanding of nature is shaped by the tools we create to observe it. Both scientists and artists have pushed the frontiers of understanding through an astounding array of human ingenuity and innovation: from glassmaking to semiconductors; from Leibniz’s 17th ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free with admission
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
Jazz Under the StarsJazz Under the Stars is a FREE monthly public stargazing event! Occurring on the Saturday nearest the 1st quarter moon, join us for a night of smooth jazz, bright stars, and a lot of fun! We play our jazz from CSM's own KCSM 91.1. Founded in 1964, KCSM has grown to ...
Where: San MateoCost: Free
Sunday, 03/09/25
'SEA Adventures: Stories of Wildlife Encounters'Meet the editors and some of the storytellers from the 2024 published book: "Wild Monterey Bay: Up Close and Personal Stories of Memorable Wildlife Encounters". Within its pages, over 40 people from all walks of life were interviewed about their most memorable wildlife encounter in Monterey Bay.Learn about the history ...
With the advent of large language models, the number of artificial texts we encounter on a daily basis is about to increase substantially. This talk asks how this new textual situation may influence what one can call the “standard expectation of unknown texts,” which has always included the assumption that ...
In this talk, i describe the problem of “future contingents” - in effect, how we determine the truth of statements about the future - and outline “branching times” theoretic approaches to this question. in recent work in linguistic semantics, these models have shed light on the notion of “reality status”, ...
Humidity in the air is a vast water resource representing 6 times more freshwater than all rivers and lakes. This humidity can be converted to drinking water via moisture sorption-desorption, serving as a potentially decentralized, passive, and low-cost pathway to mitigate the pressing water scarcity challenge. However, the productivity and ...
The quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE), first observed in Cr/V-doped (Bi,Sb)2Te3 [1], holds promise as a disruptive innovation in quantum metrology, for its potential to define a new generation of quantum standards of resistance. A goal of modern metrology is to combine the various standards into a combined “quantum electrical ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
AWAKE: beam-plasma interactions and plasma wakefield accelerationPlasma-based accelerators have demonstrated their ability to accelerate electrons at very high gradients (>100GeV/m). They have a number of niche applications. The AWAKE experiment, located at CERN, aims at producing high-energy electron bunches (50 to 200GeV) for application to particle physics. Large energy gain is in principle possible by avoiding ...
Digital technologies are transforming fresh produce retail by enabling real-time freshness tracking and direct consumer access to supply chain data. However, adopting these technologies comes at a high cost. It is therefore essential to determine whether an innovator - the first retailer to adopt supply transparency technology - gains a ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
The quantum limit of gravitational-wave detectionSpeaker: Prof. Victoria Xu from UC Berkeley will share how the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) uses subtle tricks in quantum squeezing to expand our new gravitational-wave window into the Universe.
The enduring mystery of high-temperature superconductivity in copper-based materials, with critical temperatures surpassing earlier expectations set by the BCS theory, remains one of the most intriguing puzzles in physics, even three decades after its initial discovery. What makes this enigma so captivating is its simultaneous simplicity - characterized by a ...
Join Stanford Energy Club for an in-depth conversation with Scott Burger, Director of Business Development & Analytics at Form Energy, to explore the evolving landscape of long-duration energy storage.Form Energy is pioneering multi-day energy storage with its iron-air battery technology, designed to enable a reliable, fully renewable electric grid.With extensive experience in clean energy investment, economic ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
March LASER EventFor this LASER we'll experiment a different format than the traditional 20-minute talks. We'll try the "A.T.O.M.I.C." format: A for Anthropology, T for Technology, O for "Omega Point", "M" for Music, "I" for Images, "C" for Cognitive Science. Six discussions on six topics. "I" will be led by Jennifer Parker, ...
The Golder Research Team utilizes fundamental principles of molecular structure to control synthetic polymer function. Many of society’s greatest advancements spanning health, sanitation, construction, electronics, and transportation have been enabled by the invention and application of plastics. Simultaneously, these materials have created significant concerns about global sustainability, climate impact, ...
Body size drives the energetic demands of organisms, constraining trophic interactions between species and playing a significant role in shaping the feasibility of species' populations in a community. On macroevolutionary timescales, these demands feed back to shape the selective landscape driving the evolution of body size and diet. We develop ...
Agilent is a global leader in analytical instrumentation, software, and services, supporting scientists and engineers in addressing complex challenges across life sciences, pharma and biopharma, clinical diagnostics, advanced materials, and food and environmental analysis. With a legacy originating from Hewlett-Packard (HP) and operating independently since 1999, Agilent combines decades of ...
Where: Cost: Free
Large scale data processing with MapReduceLarge scale data analytics frameworks (e.g., Apache Spark, Apache Hadoop, Map Reduce, FlumeJava, and Dryad) are now widely used to derive value from massive amounts of raw data. In this talk, I’ll describe how these frameworks work. I’ll introduce the Map Reduce paradigm, and describe why it made it much ...
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. ...
Excitons are composite bosons made of bound electron-hole pairs in semiconductors. With a much smaller mass than atoms, they are expected to Bose-condense at much higher temperature scales. This is especially the case for the tightly bound excitons in two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors; theoretical studies have predicted the possibility of realizing ...
Zeolites are the principal solid catalysts in the chemical industry and are also widely used as adsorbents and detergent builders. Their remarkable topological diversity - 255 realized polymorphs to date, with over 300,000 more proposed - enables highly tunable shape-selective catalysis and adsorption. However, this same diversity underlies a longstanding ...
Why is the human brain so vulnerable to false beliefs and conspiracy theories despite evidence to the contrary? And what can be done to protect ourselves, our families, and society from our collective propensity to fall into these seductive traps?Dr. Joe Pierre, health sciences clinical professor at UCSF and a ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $22 General, discounts for members
Spritacular: Electrical Discharges Above Thunderstorms - LivestreamSpritacular is a community science project that aims to collect observations of sprites and other optical phenomena occurring above thunderstorms - collectively known as Transient Luminous Events (TLEs). TLEs have been frequently captured by storm chasers all around the globe with off-the-shelf DSLR cameras, however, they are sporadically shared over ...
Where: Cost: Free
Sal Khan's Brave New WordsSave the date for an inspiring evening with Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, as he shares insights from his upcoming book, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing). Discover how artificial intelligence is reshaping the future of learning and why it offers ...
Where: Mountain ViewCost: Free
Feed the Planet: A Photographic Journey to the World’s FoodDo you know where your food comes from? To find out, acclaimed photographer George Steinmetz spent a decade documenting food production in more than 36 countries on 6 continents, 24 US states, and 5 oceans. In his new book, Feed the Planet, filled with never-before seen aerial images, Steinmetz documents ...
