Houge Park Start PartyMeet with members of San Jose Astronomical Society for a Star Party, weather permitting.
Where: San JoseCost: Free
Oaks For the Future: Sonoma County's Oak Conservation StrategySonoma County's majestic oaks are evocative of our region's rich ecological history and continue to provide amazing beauty today. But how will we ensure our grandchildren will still have these graceful landscapes to enjoy? Local scientists and oak lovers have developed a "Voluntary Oak Woodland Management Plan for Sonoma County" ...
The last decade has seen a revolution in scientific thinking about astrobiology – the study of possible life beyond earth. Multi-disciplinary research, from extreme environments such as the high Andes Mountains on earth, as well as exploration results such as from MER (Mars Exploration Rover), MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter), Cassini ...
Our ocean coastline is filled with maritime treasures, and we love leading classrooms on our explorations of the magical habitats that ring our shores. In 2013 we begin offering these programs to the public. Come join us as we explore the secrets of sandy beach habitat, then move inland through ...
Where: Redwood CityCost: $20 General, $10 Members
Hiking with a chemist?admiring plants through a chemist's eyesJoin us for our popular series of free public lectures on a broad array of topics related to plants and natural history. Named in honor of its founder, the Wayne Roderick Lecture Series takes place in the Visitor Center of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. These illustrated presentations are enjoyable for ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Groundhog's Day CelebrationYou're invited to journey into the hills of the Marin Headlands as we take a closer look into the science of weather folklore. Visit a nation of newts, discover the secret lives of groundhog relatives in the Headlands, and learn how weather plays a part in the nature around us.
Calling all Citizen Scientists! – California Phenology Project Become a scientist and contribute to a project studying the timing of plant life cycles throughout the seasons. Are plants responding to climate variability? Come learn about projects being set up in the South Bay and how you can participate. We will begin with an indoor presentation followed by practicing plant monitoring outside, weather permitting. For ...
Where: AlvisoCost: Free
Trekking the ModelJoin a ranger guided tour of the Bay Model, a 1.5 acre hydraulic model of San Francisco Bay and Delta. Discover the stories of the two major operations that took place at this location between 1942 – 2000.
Where: SausalitoCost: Free
Fish Feeding FrenzyHelp Ranger Bill feed the hungry inhabitants of our fresh and saltwater tanks. Watch the different feeding styles of rock cod, sea stars, and steelhead trout.
Where: SausalitoCost: F
San Mateo County Astronomical Society Star PartyThe City of San Carlos Department of Parks and Recreation and the San Mateo County Astronomical Society have open Star Parties. These events are held in Crestview Park, San Carlos California. Dates and Sunset times are below. Note that inclement weather (clouds, excessive wind and showers) will cause the event ...
Where: San CarlosCost: Free
Sunday, 02/03/13
Free Day of ScienceFirst Sundays are FREE! OMCA is free all day the first Sunday of every month. Tour the building with members of the Museum's Council on Architecture at 1 pm and enjoy a Docent-led tour of the Gallery of California Art at 2 pm. Grab lunch or a snack at Blue ...
Taking sunlight and converting it to chemical bonds and then to electricity is one of the most promising carbon-neutral energy cycles. At the Chueh group, we are developing new materials to electrochemically convert energy between sunlight, fuel, and electricity. We take a rational approach towards materials discovery and optimization. Using ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
SFMC Teachers' Circle, Alissa CransSFMC is sponsoring monthly dinners just for teachers with a special Math Circle speaker. This program supports a professional learning community built from the strong foundations of the SFMC. Join us for a presentation by MSRI's Alissa Crans. SF Math Circle Teachers' Circle – meets on the 1st Tuesday of the month; to see more details ...
Join Megan Isador, co-founder of the River Otter Ecology Project, for a beautifully illustrated talk about the exciting return of river otters to the Bay Area, what these elusive hunters mean to habitat and healthy watersheds, and how you can help.An avid naturalist and wildlife rescuer, Megan has led volunteers ...
Learn about how an iota of space-time 13.7 billion years ago grew into 100 billion galaxies, including everything we know and love. The big bang is the scientific story of creation and it's supported by a web of evidence pointing to an extremely hot and dense early state for the ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $12 General, $8 Members
Social Prosthetics: Technology and the Human FormWhat gizmo can we use to read our minds, expose our hearts, or settle disputes? What gadget can improve our communication with house plants or buildings or glaciers? We are rapidly reinventing the ways in which we relate to each other and the world around us. Working with communication and ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Stories told by RocksEvery rock is a record keeper and has a story that's millionsof years old.Speaker: Dr. Joyce Blueford, Math/Science Nucleus.
Where: OaklandCost: $7 Donation
Tuesday, 02/05/13
Brown Dwarfs, Planetary Mass Objects, and their Disks in the Nearest Star-Forming RegionsObjects with masses (<0.08 solar masses) too small to sustain hydrogen fusion were theorized to exist five decades ago, and discovered 30 years later, due to their extreme faintness. Even less massive (<13 Jupiter or <0.01 solar masses) are the planetary mass objects (PMOs, so-called because they are not orbiting ...
Where: Mountain ViewCost: Free
Africa's Food Systems in 2030Paul Collier will talk about how to manage the difference between helpful and damaging commercialisation, and puts forth three arguments. First, we need to face the tough reality that African food production has failed to keep pace with demand over the course of several decades, suggesting that there is a ...
Leonard Susskind: The Theoretical Minimum – What You Need to Know to Start Doing PhysicsEver wish you knew more about physics? Want to know how to think like a physicist? Here is your chance. Come listen to world-class physicist Susskind, a father of string theory, to discuss the Theoretical Minimum – an alternative to the conventional go-to-college method. Susskind will discuss what you need ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students
Through all the growing pains and political attacks, the U.S. solar industry is still moving ahead. Costs are down, new financing models are removing capital barriers for residential and commercial buyers, and sun energy is no longer just for hippies. What is the solar forecast for 2013? How will the ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 General, $12 Members, $7 Student
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 ...
Before smartphones and iPads, before the Internet or the personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world's largest machine: the telephone system. Phil Lapsley will trace the birth of the telephone, the rise of AT&T's monopoly, the discovery of ...
Experience the wildlife and natural beauty that make Younger Lagoon an exceptional local treasure on this docent-led tour to the lagoon and its beach habitat. Younger Lagoon is excellent for bird watching and seeing animals that call the reserve's intact coastal dunes home, such as: bobcats, foxes, seabirds, raptors, and ...
Microwave Sensor Technology for Advancement of Nanoscale MeasurementFor the past two decades, Nanotechnology has become one of the frequently used buzzwords that superficially connected science to the popular culture, promising advancements that can change our lives. However, the sluggish progress in delivering such promises is partly due to the challenges presented in Nanoscale measurements. This presentation proposes ...
Where: Rohnert ParkCost: Free
Cafe InquiryMeet up with rationalists, skeptics, and freethinkers south of San FranciscoCafe Inquiry is a social event hosted by the Center for Inquiry|San Francisco. We'll meet at Café Borrone http://www.cafeborrone.com/ between Kepler's Books and the British Banker's Club! Look for the black balloon.For more information or if you have questions please ...
Where: Menlo ParkCost: Free
Living Carbon Neutral: A Family Shows the WayWe talk about achieving energy independence as a country. We talk about being more energy efficient, being less dependent on fossil fuels, increasing renewable energy, and being carbon-neutral. But what can we do as individual families-it just seems too hard and too expensive. Dr. Indradeep Ghosh and his family live ...
Where: San JoseCost: $6.50
The Aesthetics of Necessity: Climate Change, Infrastructure and the SublimeProfessor Kristina Hill lectures internationally on urban design and ecology, and her current book project is focused on adapting urban waterfronts to climate change. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University, and was a member of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington in Seattle, ...
Virtual Colonoscopy: What is Its Role in Diagnosing Cancer?Virtual Colonoscopy is a medical imaging procedure which uses computed tomography (CT), sometimes called a CAT scan, and advanced computer software to produce two- and three-dimensional images of the colon that can be viewed on a video screen.The major reason for performing virtual colonoscopy is to screen for polyps or ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Lecture with Gary TaubesLeading science writer, NY Times contributor and co-founder of Nutrition Science Initiative, Gary Taubes will challenge us to consider: What constitutes a healthy diet? What are the politics behind nutritional guidelines? How do we make sense of conflicting recommendations? What should we eat if we want to remain lean and ...
