'North: The Future of Post-Climate America'Climate change is already influencing how and where people live.Join us at BESI as urban planner Jesse M. Keenan discusses his new book, North: The Future of Post-Climate America, which explores how climate change is shaping the physical and demographic future of the United States. The book documents a new ...
I'm really interested in understanding how environmental factors impact an individuals' life history strategy and how this strategy in turn impacts their performance in future environments. In the Williams lab, I'm using the wing polymorphism in Gryllus crickets as a model to tease apart this interaction between the environment and ...
Scientific progress is a key driver of economic growth and prosperity. There is great excitement- but also concerns- about the impacts of AI on science, but so far little data. We provide early insights on this from three data sources: a sample of 15 million Gemini interactions, an inventory of ...
Speaker: Orion Weiner, UC San FranciscoRoom: Auditorium
Where: StanfordCost: Free
In-cell structural biology at a systems levelSpeaker:Julia Mahamid, European Molecular Biology Lab, HeidelbergSeth Shipman, Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco was originally scheduled to speak today.
The camera is a common metaphor for human vision. In the eyeball, the comparison holds up: both cameras and eyes have an aperture, a lens, and a sheet of detectors that turn light into an image. But once you consider the rest of the brain, the metaphor completely falls apart.In ...
Hydrodynamics provides a remarkably universal description of matter in terms of a few continuous?fields. But how does this continuum description emerge from the dynamics of discrete quantum particles? I will address this question in open quantum systems of bosons with a conserved particle-number symmetry. In mixed states this symmetry can ...
'Cosmic Coda: Detecting Ripples in Spacetime from Merging Black Holes and Neutron Stars'Screening of the film which features historical footage of 2017 Nobel prize winner Rainer Weiss and modern footage of LIGO, followed by Q & A with filmmaker M.J. Doherty and Sonoma State University professor Lynn Cominsky (emeritus). Rainer Weiss did some of the earliest work on experimental designs for LIGO. ...
Two black holes collide over a billion light-years away, creating waves in the fabric of spacetime. But by the time those waves reach us, their effect is so small that they would change the light-years of distance by less than the width of a human hair. When Einstein predicted gravitational ...
We are thrilled to put a spotlight on kelp forests with author and award winning journalist, David Helvarg as he discusses his newest book, ‘Forest of the Sea - the Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp’. Kelp forests need our attention - they inhabit up to one third of ...
For some people, compassion means sitting with another person's pain, listening, and emotionally connecting with their distress. For others, it means helping someone feel better by offering hope or a silver lining. And for some, it means doing both. But what if our understanding of compassion depends on culture?In this ...
Where: San JoseCost: $27
Wonderfest: Popular Myths of AstronomyMuch of what we think we know about outer space comes from film and television, but Hollywood’s job is more often to entertain than to educate. In this fun and informative presentation, Prof. Thomas Targett will sort fact from fiction, taking a tour through the worlds of Star Trek, Star ...
Speaker: Brian Gregory, University of Pennsylvania
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Activity-Based Assays for Monitoring Treatment and Prevention of Infectious DiseasesFor many infectious and chronic diseases, effective medications already exist, and prevention or treatment succeeds or fails on whether those drugs are dosed and taken correctly. Concentrations that are too low lead to new infection or treatment failure, and concentrations that are too high cause adverse reactions. Current methods for ...
The dual quests ??" to understand intelligence as it arises in biology and to build it in machines of our own making ??" have been with us for nearly a century. While neuroscience and psychology seek to characterize intelligence in terms of underlying neural mechanisms and emergent behavior, we still ...
The geologically young surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa shows multiple lines of evidence for both divergent and convergent tectonic activity: dilation bands, where fresh ice has been emplaced, and regions interpreted as “subduction” zones, where ice appears to have descended under the surface. These motions are likely driven by ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Walk with a NaturalistJoin Shelby Hendricks, group tour and family programs manager, for an observation-based exploration of works currently on view through the lenses of art and science.These cross-disciplinary tours invite visitors to engage with artworks in unexpected ways, bringing a more-than-human dimension to scientific ideas while deepening our emotional connection to the ...
Where: San JoseCost: Free with admission
All that is compute transforms into concrete: Monopoly rent and the fixity of AI’s infrastructureIn the capitalist imaginary, artificial intelligence is narrated on dematerialization. In this telling, capital has escaped the weight of human labor via the frictionless circulation of data. This paper argues the opposite: the AI economy is a geography of fixity, where training large language models requires warehouse-scale data centers anchored ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
SLAC on Tap: Night of the Dark MatterSomething is lurking in the dark. Dark matter makes up most of the matter in the universe, yet it continues to slip through our grasp. But could scientists be closing in? The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment recently made headlines after researchers spotted a mysterious particle interaction that they can’t easily explain ...
We talk to people every day, but research reveals surprising blindspots in our conversational awareness. We don't realize that we're quietly calculating the end of another person's sentence, actively building a shared sense of reality, or leaning on well-worn paths to make others laugh.In this talk, Zachary Reese, professor at ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $27
Virtual Skeptics on the PubThis is a casual night of socializing with fellow science-forward skeptics and with others inhabiting our oblate spheroidal planet.Please join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.Click here to join.
Come learn about our CA native bats with Director of NorCal Bats Corky Quirk. In her presentation, you will learn about the nature of bats and the importance of bats in our environment. We’ll also discuss the harmful myths that surround these animals. Live bats will be presented for viewing ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: $20 General, $10 Ages 3 - 17
After Dark: CreepatoriumGet ready for some hair-raising fun at our annual Halloween party! Embrace your dark side with Gothicumbia and dress to impress at the science-themed costume contest.
Where: San FranciscoCost: $22.95 General, Free for members
Fright NightLifeSomething wickedly fierce is roaming the museum. Join our annual Halloween haunt with Peaches Christ, roaming scares, a costume contest, and more thrills throughout the night. Costumes highly encouraged.
Look closely on your next Bay Area hike and you may discover an entire world hiding in plain sight.Beneath leaves, inside fallen wood, along streams and among native plants, insects are living remarkable lives all around us. They may be small and easy to overlook, but their behaviors, adaptations and ...
Science Saturday: Spooky ScienceJoin us on Halloween for a spine-chilling Science Saturday dedicated to exploring the spooky and creepy aspects of nature. Discover the eerie world of nocturnal creatures as we delve into the lives of bats, owls, and other mysterious animals that thrive in the darkness. Learn about the fascinating adaptations of ...
Where: Pacific GroveCost: Free
Spooky ScienceTrick or Treat across the universe and enjoy some ooey gooey spooky science.
Where: OaklandCost: Free with admission, and for members
Sunday, 11/01/26
Corn and Bean Mosaic ArtJoin us at Emma Prusch and learn how to create colorful mosaics using colorful corn kernels and beans. Participants will learn about corn and beans, two of the Three Sisters crops, and its importance to indigenous peoples of North America and later American agriculture while creating a colorful corn and ...
Where: San JoseCost: $16 SJ Residents, $20 non-residents
Solar ObservingIt’s there for us year round, lighting our days and providing energy for our lives, so maybe it’s time to give it a closer look. Join SJAA for amazing and detailed views of the Sun, and be assured that we’ll be using special telescopes that will keep your eyeballs perfectly ...
