Autonomous navigation in complex environments with a micro-aerial vehicleIn this talk, I will discuss approaches that enable a quadrotor to autonomously navigate and explore complex indoor and outdoor environments. Micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs), and in our case quadrotors, offer exceptional 3D mobility over ground platforms, making them particularly suitable for search-and-rescue missions in which the vehicle must be able ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
By-product Becomes ProductIntersection for the Arts presents By-product Becomes Product, an innovative cross-disciplinary project using excess wood waste to explore safer alternatives to working with toxic material. Featuring lead artist Christine Lee (sculpture, furniture), U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Products Laboratory (FPL, the country's leading wood research institute) Research Engineer John F. ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Climate Change: Our New RealityWe'll put aside politics and take a hard look at what's really going on with our world's climate this talk and discussion will cover:What is the science telling us?What is our new reality?How do we talk about it?What can people do?Speaker: Wen Lee, Alliance for Climate EducationRoom 60
Dr. Werthimer will discuss the possibility of life in the universe and the search for radio and optical signals from other civilizations. Berkeley's SETI@home project analyzes data from the world's largest radio telescope using desktop computers from volunteers in 226 countries. SETI@home participants have contributed millions of years of computer ...
What's up in Power Conversion for the Smart GridThe ugly truth is that over 10% of the electricity in the generated in the US is wasted in converting power from the form in which it is delivered to the form necessary to be consumed. Power conversion is ubiquitous from laptop adapters to dataserver power supplies, Photovoltaic and hybrid ...
Cyberspace technology often grants us (or others) control over our self-representations. At the click of a button, one can alter our avatars' appearance and behavior. Indeed, in virtual reality we can often appear to others as ideal in stature and weight, what ever we want in terms of age and ...
Population genetics, quantitative genetics, life history theory and population dynamics are disparate, specialist fields. However, they all focus on a particular aspect of population biology. In recent work Tim Coulson has shown how these fields can be formally linked by modelling the dynamics of character distributions. In this talk he ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
February LASER EventThe LASER series began in 2008 in San Francisco under the aegis of Leonardo ISAST as a local forum for presenting art and science projects underway in the Bay Area. The LASERs now alternate between USF and Stanford, with a parallel series in DC at the National Academy of Sciences. ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
How Galaxies were Cooked from the Primordial SoupOne of the great mysteries of the night sky is why it's mostly dark, only punctuated by pinpoints of light in the form of stars and galaxies. The lumpiness of today's universe is a fundamental characteristic that took billions of years to grow. Dr. Faber will review the prevailing "Cold ...
A new class of pesticides, known as reduced risk pesticides, has been increasingly used in agroecological systems. While reduced risk pesticides have demonstrated reduced health risks to humans, their effects on natural enemy/predator populations is unclear. In fact, with the increased use of reduced risk pesticide, there have been increased ...
Where: AlbanyCost: Free
A RATIONAL FUTURE: Why A better world tomorow requires better cognition todayFour decades of cognitive science have confirmed that homo sapiens are far from "rational animals." Scientists have amassed a daunting number of ways that our brains' fast-and-frugal judgment heuristics fail in modern contexts for which they weren't adapted, or stymie our attempts to be happy and effective. Hence the project ...
