Monthly Bird WalkJoin us in search of resident, migrant, and vagrant birds in the Garden's many bird friendly micro-habitats. Both beginning and experienced bird watchers are welcome! Bring binoculars if you have them. Advance registration required. (Includes Garden admission.)
Where: BerkeleyCost: $15 General, $10 Members
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY – LEVERAGING BIOLOGY TO ENABLE LUNAR IN SITU RESOURCE UTILIZATIONIn 2010, the United States set exploration milestones for sending humans beyond the International Space Station to the Moon and Mars. In President Obama's National Space Policy address, he declared the objective of these missions was to "live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways ...
Get ready for a night of mind-bending, cutting-edge science visualization.Discover what it means to live in a connected world and be among the first to peep the Academy's newest planetarium show Habitat Earth.From the comfort of your planetarium seat, explore the vast networks of life-from sea to space-that power the ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $12 General, $10 Members
The Digital Publishing LandscapeEveryone designing websites and publications needs to know how to design directly on their computers using interactive software, which can be shared with others. This lecture by Diane Burns, internationally recognized graphic designer, describes the differences between interactive PDFs, reflowable ePubs, fixed-layout ePubs and tablet apps and helps you keep ...
Is there a constitutional right to "physician-assisted suicide"? What about a "dignified death"-and what is a dignified death? Should terminally ill patients facing mental incapacitation or unbearable pain have access to fatal ingestion-also known as physician aid in dying? Or would that jeopardize our society's progress toward more compassionate, comfort-based ...
Is there intelligent life on other planets? UC Berkeley Professor of Astronomy Geoffrey Marcy, a pioneer in the discovery and characterization of planets around other stars, discusses new telescopic and biological observations that provide clues. A co-investigator of Kepler, the NASA space-born telescope dedicated to identifying Earth-like planets, his research ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $25 - $35 General, Members less 10%
Ospreys in the Bay AreaThe last decade has seen a remarkably rapid expansion of Osprey nesting into San Francisco Bay tidelands. From a single nest reported in 1990 in Vallejo, numbers have risen to 27 nesting pairs in summer 2014. What's behind this increase? What conservation challenges do nesting Osprey face here, and how ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: $5 or free for members.
Surgical Approaches to Facial PainTrigeminal neuralgia (TN) is one of the most common causes of facial pain characterized by recurring brief episodes of electric shock-like pains. This talk will focus on surgical approaches to treating this difficult disorder.Speaker: Casey H. Halpern, MD, Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery and, by courtesy, of Neurology and of Psychiatry and Behavioral ...
Where: Palo AltoCost: Free
Ice Plants, Mattress Wireweed & Other OnslaughtsHave you seen how much of our coastal parkland is now covered in succulent ground cover, hardy New Zealand vines, and just too many highly invasive species? Come hear Lew give us the low down on ground cover invasive plants. He's been working with the Presidio Trust, and before that the ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Friday, 01/16/15
Technology Innovation at GE HealthcareCome hear about recent innovations and opportunities at GE Healthcare with former CTO, Michael Harsh!Room: Auditorium
Discover the wonder of an old-growth redwood forest in winter on this leisurely walk on the Fern Creek and Alice Eastwood trails.Look for salmon, mushroom displays, winter wildflowers, waterfalls, and more!Dress for the weather and wear sturdy shoes as the trails are steep and may be muddy (strollers not advised).Bring ...
Join local naturalist and mycologist Debbie Viess, Co-Founder of the Bay Area Mycological Society, for a fun talk on local mushrooms that occur in our Bay Area woods, lawns and yes, even gardens. Beautiful photos, stories and plenty of easy to digest science will be value added. After this ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: $25 General, $20 Members
Biofuels and DNA sequencing: two sides of the same coin?The National Institutes of Health have a goal of $1000 to sequence a human genome. Last year in Lima, Peru, 190 countries committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Maybe not intuitively, these two goals are tightly connected.In the first part of the talk, I will discuss the basics of ...
MSI takes to the tidepools for a treasure hunt of nature's beautiful intertidal secrets. We'll spend our time taking advantage of the low tide to reach the outer edges of Pillar Point, while taking in spectacular vantages as we slowly retreat to shore. Will we find crabs, sea stars, eels ...
Where: Redwood CityCost: $20 General, $10 Members
Sunday, 01/18/15
Salt Marsh Walk - Special King Tide EditionThe salt marsh will be inundated by king tides and it will be a site to behold. Take a walk with docent Gregg Aronson around the wetlands of the wildlife refuge and learn about their history. See examples of salt collection ponds and learn what is being done to convert ...
In March 2014, the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial body of the United Nations, ruled that a Japanese whaling program in the Antarctic, ostensibly for scientific purposes, was not sufficiently research-oriented and was, therefore, illegal. UC Santa Cruz's own Marc Mangel served as a critical Independent Scientific Expert ...
Where: Santa CruzCost: Free with admission
Monday, 01/19/15
Martin Luther King Day King Tides WalkMLK Day this year brings the highest daytime tides -- a look at a future of rising sea levels. Friends of Five Creeks and Citizens for East Shore Parks explore history, thriving restorations, how rising sea levels may affect infrastructure and wildlife, and possibilities for buffering the effects on an easy, ...
Where: RichmondCost: Free
Tuesday, 01/20/15
A new model for the origin of life: Coupled phases and combinatorial selection in fluctuating hydrothermal pools Hydrothermal fields on the prebiotic Earth are candidate environments for biogenesis. We propose a model in which molecular systems driven by cycles of hydration and dehydration in such sites undergo chemical evolution and selection in a dehydrated surface phase followed by encapsulation and combinatorial selection in a hydrated phase. This ...
Where: Mountain ViewCost: Free
Adventure Tuesday Club: Counting With CrittersA four-week class, for ages 4 to 5. Adult attendance is not required. Numbers are everywhere, especially in nature. "Count" on meeting some animal ambassadors.Register online with the link listed below.Class ID: CC-390
'Sand Wars'Most of us think of it as a complimentary ingredient of any beach vacation. Yet those seemingly insignificant grains of silica surround our daily lives. Every house, skyscraper and glass building, every bridge, airport and sidewalk in our modern society depends on sand. We use it to manufacture optical fiber, ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $15 General, $10 Student/Senior
Annual Consumer Electronics Show DownloadThis is one of our more popular meeting topics - a look at some of the latest and greatest, and sometimes weirdest new products shown at the Consumer Electronics Show. Additionally, there are a number of related events that are held just before and after CES that will be talked ...
Where: Santa ClaraCost: $10 General, $5 members at door, free in advance
Rocks and FossilsThe Fremont area is known for its Ice Age fossils, but there are also other fossils that help geologist determine our past. Learn about the Hayward Fault and how it moves these rocks through time. Reading: Mammoth Mary
Particulate iron is a significant fraction of the total iron pool in the ocean, usually accounting for at least a third and often the majority of the total iron pool. Most iron studies to date have focused on the dissolved iron fraction, but studying the particulate iron fraction has the ...
As more and more data moves to the cloud, data replication has become prohibitively costly and there is an acute need for efficient, fault-tolerant schemes for data storage. Coding theory offers solutions for fault-tolerant storage that are potentially far more efficient than replication. At the same time, the cloud storage ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Computational Epidemiology: The role of big data and pervasive informatics Pandemics such as H1N1 influenza are global outbreaks of infectious disease. Human behavior, social contact networks, and pandemics are closely intertwined. The ordinary behavior and daily activities of individuals create varied and dense social interactions that are characteristic of modern urban societies. They provide a perfect fabric for rapid, uncontrolled ...
Dr. Sylvia Earle – fondly dubbed "Her Deepness" by the New York Times – holds the women's record for the deepest ocean dive and has led more than 100 undersea expeditions, logging more than 7,000 hours underwater. Formerly chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Dr. Earle has garnered countless ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 General, $7 Students, $12 Members
Due to its enormous heat capacity and ability to move heat around the globe, the ocean plays an out-sized role in climate and climate change. The ocean is at the center of contemporary questions such as: Why have global-mean surface temperatures not warmed in the last decade despite CO2 continuing to rise ...
Where: Palo AltoCost: $45 General, $30 Members
Birds of the San Francisco AreaJoin us for an illustrated talk about Bay Area birds by a local photographer and Bay swimmer.The program will cover bird anatomy, adaptation and migration, with a handout and reading list, and features photos & two short films on aquatic birds that live in or visit our area, especially in ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Breast Cancer and the Patenting of GenesGeneticist Mary-Claire King spent over a decade tracking down a gene mutation that she believed leads to a hereditary disposition to breast and ovarian cancer. Then a biotech company stepped in and patented the gene! Legal arguments over whether this naturally occurring gene can be patented went all of the ...
Dr. Vint Virga (The Soul of All Living Creatures) is likely the only veterinarian in the country whose fulltime job is tending to the psychological welfare of animals in captivity. What does it mean when an elephant lowers her head and folds her trunk beneath it? Or when a zebra ...
Alan Rockefeller is a mycologist and photographer specializing in mushroom identification and taxonomy.Alan has been collecting mushrooms for ten years, and has traveled to Mexico to collect mushrooms for the past 8 years. Alan is a network security expert who has a mushroom DNA lab in Berkeley and posts all ...
What actually happened to Darling Clementine? Historian Joel Pomerantz explores the California floods of 1862. Learn how this historic storm, which killed thousands and caused a number of San Francisco houses to collapse, can be an example for what a really extreme weather event could be like in our future.
