Volcanoes and Mercury Mines in Clayton? Come learn about unique geology and mercury mining on Mt. Diablo. After a short talk about human impacts to the Watershed, the hike will continue up Perkins Canyon in Mount Diablo State Park. This 3 mile, 350 foot elevation gain loop hike offers opportunities ...
Where: ClaytonCost: Free
Guided Nature WalkExperience the beauty and rich natural history of this 535-acre preserve. Our half-day guided nature walks are on Saturdays throughout fall and spring. Participants are divided into small groups and paired with a trained Bouverie volunteer to explore the mixed evergreen forest, flower-carpeted oak woodland and rugged chaparral. Guided Nature Walks ...
Where: GeyservilleCost: $15 Donation suggested
Family Bird WalkLet family walks become a shared time of nature learning. We’ll begin by helping kids create their personal bird watching field guides, and then head out onto the trails to find those birds. A limited number of binoculars are available to borrow. Recommended for children ages 5-10. RESERVATIONS REQUIRED. Register ...
Where: FremontCost: Free
Science Saturday: Bats, Spiders and SnakesJoin us as we slither into the magical world of spiders, snakes and bats. Learn about these amazing animals as you visit fun and educational stations throughout the Museum. Don't miss this opportunity to meet a live animal up close, take home a creepy craft and more!
Where: Pacific GroveCost: Free
Stanford Energy Week: Day 3 Conference10:00 - 10:30am: Opening Remarks and Refreshments10:30 - 11:30am: Keynote Address with Ira Ehrenpreis11:30am - 1:00pm: Entrepreneurship in Energy: Founders’ Perspectives1:00-2:30pm: Lunch @ GSB Lawns3:00 - 6:00pm: Design Thinking Workshop @ GSB Gunn Building, Room G1014:30 - 6:00pm: Entrepreneurship in Energy: VC Perspectives6:00 - 7:30pm: Fireside Chat and Mixer with ...
Join the 5th annual Bay Area Science Festival for an Explorer Day at the EcoCenter: San Francisco’s best example of sustainable building located in the wetlands of Heron’s Head Park. We will explore the EcoCenter and surrounding nature and discover the deep connections between environmental justice and green engineering. Plus, ...
Start your Halloween celebration early with special Halloween-themed activities in the Ingenuity Lab and Animal Discovery Room. Pumpkins will fly during this annual outdoor event featuring our friends from UC Berkeley’s Pioneers in Engineering (PiE) program. Join us on the Hall’s C-level lawn and watch as a giant trebuchet sends ...
The Hawk Talk begins at noon, when a GGRO volunteer speaks about hawk migration and identification, and what we do here at the GGRO. Midway through, a banding volunteer brings up a newly banded hawk, talks about the banding program, shows everyone the hawk, and lets it go in front ...
Friday, October 28, 20169:00 - 11:00 am or 12:00 - 2:00 pmSaturday, October 29, 20161:00 - 3:00 pmAero Design Challenge is an exploration into design and engineering.  Each 2-hour program explores concepts in aeronautics that challenges participants to construct a working prototype.Each student in the Aero Design Challenge participates in a series ...
Where: San CarlosCost: Free with Registration
Back in Time18,000 years ago there was no San Francisco Bay Estuary and the delta was in a whole different location. Watch an accelerated time lapse and see how one of the world’s largest natural estuaries and one of the few inverted deltas on the planet were created. You will see how ...
How does the brain allow us to mentally wonder off to another time and place? How do we perceive our environment? How do people effectively communicate? What can evolutionary biology tell us about how species are formed and how new shapes and colors evolve?Six local students will review scientist presentations ...
Do you sometimes see paw prints in mud or scat (poop) on the trails and assume that a dog left it? It could be from something else. Come along with me and I will show you how to distinguish and identify the markings of a gray fox. Gain some insights ...
Where: FremontCost: Free
Bird Watching for BeginnersIn this beginner’s program, we will go over the use of binoculars, how to use a bird guide, and identify the birds we see on the trail. Recommended for ages 10 and up. Wear comfortable shoes. A limited number of binoculars are available to borrow.  Heavy rain cancels. Led by ...
Where: FremontCost: Free
Family Sundown SPOOKfariGrab your tent, bring your family, and get ready for an eerie overnight experience. Take a Trick-or-treat night tour through the Children’s Zoo. Make Jack-o-Lantern enrichment treats for the animals, and meet live, creepy, crawly animals up close! Before bedtime participate in a petrifying puppet show with Jungle Joe followed ...
Photo credit:Â Dallis WillardThis year, Tested traveled to the ends of the earth, meeting makers, creators, and scientists. Join us for a night of epic journeys into new realms - past, present, and future. This will be your chance to see and interact with Tested's projects, experiments, and explorations in a ...
Happy Creepy Hall-oweenStart your Halloween early and celebrate all weekend long during Happy Creepy Hall-oween.From pumpkin lifts in the Ingenuity Lab to giant trebuchet demonstrations with UC Berkeley’s Pioneers in Engineering program, you’re sure to find the perfect way to celebrate with science.Learn more about each day's events: http://hallsci.org/82gj304TLE7
You are invited to a behind-the-scenes tour of a UCSF Parasitology Lab where you’ll have the chance to see live parasites (worms and protozoa)!You’ll learn about the world of parasitic worms and protozoa that infect humans and have the chance see live parasites with a microscope!Restrictions: First Come, First Served (No RSVP). Children ...
The Hawk Talk begins at noon, when a GGRO volunteer speaks about hawk migration and identification, and what we do here at the GGRO. Midway through, a banding volunteer brings up a newly banded hawk, talks about the banding program, shows everyone the hawk, and lets it go in front ...
Where: MarinCost: Free
Synthetic Dreams: Artificial Intelligence And The Human BrainMight it someday be possible to manufacture sentient machines? Can we provide humans with android bodies or upload their minds into artificial brains? What are the similarities between brains and computers? Should we fear machine intelligence?To address these questions, we’ll start by reviewing the neuroscience that’s taking us closer to ...
Join us for a very special Eureka! that will be part of the Bay Area Science Festival!We will be hosting Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at SETI Institute(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute), who will discuss the search for extraterrestrial life in the universe. How does one go about detecting alien civilizations across interstellar ...
To prepare for an urban influx of 2.5 billion people by 2050, it is critical that cities are sustainable: Â low-carbon, resilient, and livable. Dr. Deborah Sunter will discuss options for sustainable urban energy systems by reducing energy consumption and providing robust, decentralized, and renewable energy. Through technical advancements in power ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Deep Robotic LearningThe problem of building an autonomous robot has traditionally been viewed as one of integration: connecting together modular components, each one designed to handle some portion of the perception and decision making process. For example, a vision system might be connected to a planner that might in turn provide commands ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
What Physicists DoDr. Sue Carter of UC Santa Cruz will discuss her work, which includes explorations of climate change and entrepreneurship.
Where: Rohnert ParkCost: Free
Innovation in Stationary Electricity Storage: The Liquid Metal Battery Massive electricity storage would offer huge benefits to today’s grid, reducing price volatility, improving stability against loss of power, increasing utilization of generation assets by enabling us to design towards average demand instead of peak demand, and deferring the costs of upgrading existing transmission lines. When it comes to tomorrow’s ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Science at the Library: Bones, Bones, Bones, A Million Bones There are 4 activities at each presentation after a show presentation. Parents work with their children to learn about science. Recommended for elementary age children. Families are encouraged to attend. Limited seating. Funding provided by Lam Research Foundation and free.Register at weblink
Join naturalists from the California Center for Natural History on a creepy-crawly night hike at Joaquin Miller Park in the Oakland hills. We’ll find spiders, moths, and night-dwelling creatures that glow under UV light.  Bring your headlamp, drinking water, warm layers, and sturdy hiking shoes. Please no pets on this walk!
Where: OaklandCost: $20 Donation suggested
Tuesday, 11/01/16
Collective Work and Play in Ant ColoniesAnts are an amazingly diverse group of more than 14,000 species that live in every conceivable habitat on earth. Like many distributed systems, both natural and engineered, ant colonies operate without any central control. No ant can assess what needs to be done. Each ant responds to its interactions with ...
Geological field trip to Gale crater, Mars: a view from the ChemCam on MSLLocated on Curiosity's mast, the ChemCam instrument ("Chemistry and Camera") uses a laser to provide the elemental composition of geological features along the rover's path. Since 2012, it has contributed to the investigation of geological units that record a time when on Mars, at Gale crater, liquid water was present ...
Laurence Tubiana is France’s lead climate negotiator and a key architect of the international climate agreement forged in Paris last December. Founder of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) in Paris, Tubiana is Professor and Director at the Sustainable Development Center at Sciences Po Paris. This is the first ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Vulnerability of the tropics to future changes in drought and fireIn the future, changes in precipitation across the tropics may have profound consequences for the survival of tropical forests and their vulnerability to fire and other agents of global change. I will discuss how the physiological response of forests to increasing CO2 is a primary mechanism responsible for this pattern, ...
Christopher Bollas, the most influential psychoanalyst writing in English today, asserts that mental life is innately hazardous. The steps we take through childhood are marked by mentally painful episodes that constitute ordinary breakdowns in the self. Adolescence stands as the most painful such period, during which some of the major ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Low (Car)bon CommunitiesWith an increasing awareness of the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions and a recognition of the social benefits of car-free and car-light living, more and more city planners, advocates and everyday urban dwellers are demanding new ways of building cities. The book Low Car(bon) Communities examines case studies from ...
Where: OaklandCost: Free
BASF: Nerd Nite at The Tech MuseumNerd Nite Silicon Valley returns to The Tech Museum! We celebrate the Bay Area Science Festival with two talks from Stanford genetics Ph.D.s Alex Dainis and Lisl Esherick. Coral sex and animal hearts, oh my! We'll have games, drinks, a little nerdy trivia and lots of nerdy fun. Food, beer ...
Health Policy Forum | Mental Illness: A Global ChallengeMental illness is the leading cause of disability and mortality around the globe. Even in wealthy countries, only about half of people with mental illness receive adequate care. In low and middle income nations, almost all mental illnesses are left untreated by trained mental health professionals. Yet many other healing ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Healthcare: Strategies That Move Disruptive Innovations To ScaleInnovations in healthcare have far outstripped the ability of large, established delivery systems to adopt and scale them, even when they arguable improve patient care, reduce costs and make populations healthier. What strategies can help developers optimize their early stage work to speed adoption? How is the market shifting - ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
UNMANNED SYSTEMS NETWORKS FOR OCEAN RESEARCH & MONITORINGField campaign results and future capabilities are reported for networked systems of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), autonomous surface vessels (ASVs), and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) off the California and Iberian coasts, in both arctic and Antarctic ecosystems, and for coral reef ecosystems. We highlight how Integrated networks of unmanned ...
Where: TiburonCost: Free
Recent Environmental Victories: Elements of Success and ChallengesWorking in the environmental field for several decades, at EDF and the EPA, has allowed Diane Regas to be part of several big wins and big challenges. In her colloquium, she’d like to share a few of the elements of success to reach long-term solutions that benefit people and the ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
BASF: Nerd Nite: SCIENCE MEETS CINEMAComing soon to a theater near you: Nerd Nite and the Bay Area Science Festival take over the Alamo Drafthouse for a special night of science, history, and booze! Celebrate the New Mission Theater’s 100th anniversary in all its newly restored glory, as we get a thrill out of cult ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $15
The Discovery of Gravitational Waves and the High Energy UniverseOne hundred years ago Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity, which predicts the kinds of changes in the universe that produce gravitational waves–which travel at the speed of light, but are much harder to detect than light waves. On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) ...
Correctness and Control for Human-Cyber-Physical SystemsCyber-physical systems deployed in societal-scale applications almost always interact with humans, e.g. semi-autonomous vehicles interacting with drivers in the car or on the road, semi-autonomous aerial vehicles interacting with human operators, or medical robots interacting with doctors. Due to the safety-critical nature of these human-cyber-physical systems (h-CPS), we, asdesigners, need ...
What were Albert Einstein's first wife's contributions to his extraordinary productivity in the first years of his career? A first biography of Mileva Marić was published in Serbian in 1969 but remained largely unknown despite being translated first in German, then in French in the 1990's. The publication of Mileva and ...
Where: Santa CruzCost: Free
EVERYTHING SLIPS: Design of Novel Omniphobic NanocoatingsLiquids entrapped within a nanostructured solid begin to exhibit unique behaviors often providing the surrounding material with unprecedented properties. Recently we have introduced a new technology to create self-healing, anti-fouling materials (so-called Slippery, Lubricant-Infused Porous Surfaces, or SLIPS). These bioinspired coatings that mimic slippery surfaces of a pitcher plant outperform ...
My address will look to assess the outlook for Saudi Aramco’s IPO, Saudiâ€Iranian Rapprochement, as well as key developments involving Iraq, Syria, and Libya. This to be evaluated in the context of slowing global economic growth and an aging conventional resource base.Speaker: Thomas Petrie, Petrie Partners
At depths up to 2,000 feet beneath the ocean’s surface researchers are unlocking mysteries of the deep, viewing areas largely unexplored by any human. Join us as we premiere spectacular new footage of California’s ocean wilderness, taken from a robotic submarine well below diver depths. Dirk Rosen, ocean engineer and ...
Where is the line between persuasion and manipulation? What are the tools of propaganda and can they be used for honorable as well as deceptive intentions? While the art of persuasion has existed since antiquity, propaganda has thrived with the rise of mass communications.Justice for Our Lives and Wheatpasting 101Â With ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $15 General; $10 Members; Free for Lab Members
Being Human: The Power ParadoxHow do we get power? How does power change our behavior? Join psychologist Dacher Keltner on November 3rd and learn about how enduring power comes from empathy and giving.
Where: San FranciscoCost: $10
Cafe InquiryMeet up with rationalists, skeptics, and freethinkers south of San Francisco
Where: Menlo ParkCost: Free
Discover Plasma at Plasma Sciences ExpoWhat is Plasma Sciences Expo? Plasma Sciences Expo is an exhibition that focuses on hands-on science education. It is for students at all levels, parents, teachers and the general public. Examples of activities are:•Make lightning with a Van de Graaff generator.  •Observe your fluctuating body temperature on a special monitor. ...
Where: San JoseCost: Free
The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech WorldWe are living in extraordinary times. Rapid advances in information technology continuously transform our lives in countless ways. But we are now aware that our increasingly information-saturated world, coupled with growing expectations of constant availability and immediate responsiveness, can place excessive demands on our brains. The consequences can include detrimental ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 General, $8 Members, $7 for Students
The Power ParadoxHow do we get power? How does power change our behavior? Join psychologist Dacher Keltner on November 3rd and learn about how enduring power comes from empathy and giving. In this talk Dr. Dacher Keltner will detail the evolution of power over human history and how it influences basic social thought ...
We’ve all been fooled. Understanding how and why we’re fooled is the beginning of wisdom. Wonderfest, the Bay Area Beacon of Science, presents experts in physics, psychology, and magic to help us avoid getting fooled, again.Our speakers/performers are: Dr. Luigi Anzivino, neuroscientist; Marc "Zeke" Kossover, physicist; Robert Strong, master magician.
Where: San FranciscoCost: $15 General, $12 Members
A total solar eclipse, when the Moon fully covers the bright disk of the Sun and reveals its breathtaking corona, is one of nature’s most magnificent spectacles truly an awe-inspiring experience that moves some people to tears. On August 21, 2017, for the first time in 38 years, the very narrow ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: free
The Soul of a New Camera: The design of Facebook's Surround Open Source 3D-360 video CameraAround a year ago we set out to create an open-source reference design for a 3D-360 camera. In nine months, we had designed and built the camera, and published the specs and code. Our team leveraged a series of maturing technologies in this effort. Advances and availability in sensor technology, ...
Where: SunnyvaleCost: Free (donations for food)
Friday, 11/04/16
Birds and BotanyHike the forests, meadows and hills around Pine Flat and up Redhill with ACR Volunteer Patrick Woodworth & ACR Resource Ecologist Dave Self. We’ll be watching (and listening) for birds on the hike out. After lunch, we'll botanize as we consider the seasonal interplay between bird foods, habitat history and current activity ...
Where: GeyservilleCost: Free
Student Plasma Expo 2016 and Public Expo Open HouseIntroduction to Plasma Sciences ExpoWho should attend?Middle and high school students and teachers can register to attend during school hours. A special evening Expo for the general public will be offered on Thursday evening from 6 pm -8:30 pm. There is no registration required for the Thursday evening Expo. (See registration ...
Where: San JoseCost:
Teacher Workshop: Biogeology - integration of biological and geological principles that create soilCollecting data on energy release from compost;Â decomposers found in compost; soil classification; creating soil from biological and geologic componenets; measuring food waste that turns to compost and record observation; learn how to make a compost lab on campus while preventing food waste going to landfills.Editor's note: Rescheduled from 10/20.
Where: FremontCost: Free
Public Talk '“Water in the Universe: from the Milky Way to Distant Galaxiesâ€Water is widely believed to be the key  to the existence of life. Water was discovered in the interstellar space  in 1969, and is now known to be wide-spread  in the universe, from nearby star-forming regions to distant galaxies. Dr. Kaufman will discuss how we study water in the space. Public Stargazing Night: Enjoy a free public ...
Where: San JoseCost: Free
Charon: Pluto's Fascinating Moon Updates from the New Horizons MissionCharon is Pluto's large companion, and in the summer of 2015 it went from a distant point of lightto a full-fledged world in human understanding. Join us as we discuss the interesting fracturedgeology of Charon. Dr. Ross Beyer, member of the New Horizons team and a Research Scientist atthe SETI ...
