A Healthy Society Series: Communicating Science (in a Science-Skeptical World) - LivestreamAs a driver of global health, prosperity and planetary sustainability, science pervades all realms of human activity. The COVID pandemic of the past year and the prospect of its eventual resolution have put science (and scientists) at the forefront of an international cultural conversation. Yet communicating facts and credible research ...
Where: Cost: Free
Full-Spectrum Science: LASERS! - LivestreamJoin Exploratorium scientist Ron Hipschman for colorful explorations of the physical world - in this case, lasers! Find out what's special about laser light, how it's made, and how it's used in everything from Blu-ray to eye surgery to fusion energy research.See weblink for YouTube and Facebook Live links.
Small molecule transformations, such as CO2 or N2 reduction, in biology and solar fuels chemistry require multi-electron and multi-proton reaction sequences. The goal of synthetically realizing these reaction types provides a rich landscape for exploring new ideas in the design, synthesis, and characterization of inorganic and organometallic molecules. This talk ...
Where: Cost: Free
Efficiently Protecting Software Innovations on a Global Scale - LivestreamTo be competitive, software companies often employ designers and developers in different locations and countries to implement and update different versions of software. With this increasing workforce in other countries, software company competition can also stem from other countries, and can provide different flavors of a software product to different ...
The Arecibo Telescope may have tragically collapsed last year, but it doesn’t mean the end of the era of giants in astronomy. Giant ground-based telescopes currently being built will get their first light this decade. The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and the Giant Magellan Telescope ...
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are mysterious events that were discovered only in the last decade by astronomers. They last a few milliseconds at most but are extremely bright sources of radio waves. They are so bright that we can spot them from distant galaxies. Although we are not fully certain ...
Computer vision systems are now capable of surpassing the performance of human experts in fields like radiology and dermatology. Can they also help us discern real videos from deepfakes - videos manipulated by artificial intelligence? This presentation will provide an overview of the state-of-the-art machine-learning models for detecting deepfakes. It will also present evidence ...
Selection bias occurs when the method by which a statistical sample is obtained prevents the sample from accurately representing the population about which one wishes to draw inferences. As straightforward as the issue may seem, selection bias is among the most pernicious perils of statistical inference. In this lecture, Dr. ...
Insects are the most abundant and diverse group of animals, and have co-evolved with plants over hundreds of millions of years. Insects living on plants face a variety of mechanical problems, which has far-reaching ecological and evolutionary consequences.In this talk, Dr Walter Federle, University of Cambridge, will show the important ...
Where: Cost: Free
Vision 2022: Climate & Clean Air Zoomposium #3Over the past several months, SPUR and Move LA have convened a series of panels laying the foundation for a statewide ballot measure that would generate the funding necessary to accelerate the deployment of climate change-abating transportation, infrastructure and other technologies. In October, we heard from elected officials, environmental luminaries ...
 Journalist Annie Jacobsen is well known for her best sellers The Pentagon's Brain, Area 51 and Operation Paperclip. In her latest book, First Platoon, she investigates "warfare, good and evil in the age of biometrics, the technology that would allow the government to identify anyone, anywhere, at any time." Come ...
Humans rely on the sensations of itch, touch, and pain for a broad range of essential behaviors. For example, acute pain acts as a warning signal that alerts us to noxious mechanical, chemical, and thermal stimuli, which are potentially tissue damaging. Likewise, itch sensations trigger reflexes that may protect us ...
The latest climate science supports what millions of people and animals are experiencing daily: the impacts of climate change are hitting harder and faster than expected, posing grave threats to human health and planetary health. We are already pushing against multiple global tipping points that could unleash abrupt and irreversible damage ...
For this special After Dark, we invite you to view the acclaimed documentary Human Nature in advance and join us for a live conversation with executive producers Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner, bioethics expert Alta Charo, and staff biologist Dr. Jennifer Frazier.Human Nature is a provocative exploration of the biggest ...
NightSchool dedicates a night to Lepidoptera, the order of insects that include the very recognizable, (often) colorful, scale-winged moths and butterflies.EVENT HIGHLIGHTSExplore specimens from the vaults of the Academy’s vast entomology collection with collection manager Chris Grinter. He’ll show you a wide range of audience favorites, from extinct species to ...
Speaker: Alexis Cartwright-Taylor, University of Edinburgh, School of GeoSciencesSee weblink for connection information
Where: Cost: Free
Saturday, 01/23/21
Mushrooms of the Garden - LivestreamBotanical gardens are obviously known for their plants, but with plants come fungi. In fact, the diversity of plants and fungi are coupled through their many ecological interactions. The UC Botanical Garden is a great place to showcase the fungal side of life, particularly during the rainy season when mushrooms ...
Join our resident astronomers on Facebook Live every Saturday evening live from Chabot’s Observation deck!Each week, our astronomers will guide us through spectacular night sky viewing through Nellie, Chabot‘s most powerful telescope. Weather permitting we will be able to view objects live through the telescopes and our astronomers will be ...
Where: Cost: Free
Monday, 01/25/21
AI at the exascale - LivestreamIt is no coincidence that the rise of AI as a valuable tool for science has come at an interesting time for computing, where the end of Moore’s Law has meant that energy constraints are increasingly driving hardware innovation. AI is playing a growing role in shaping computing architecture, even ...
Where: Cost: Free
Weird New Worlds - LivestreamWith literally thousands of exoplanet candidates discovered to date, we now know of a few relatively Earthlike worlds -- and many many more planets very different from those in our own solar system! Beth will discuss what we know already about these worlds and what we will be learning in ...
With all of the concern around disinformation online, what can be done about it? One proposal is to improve digital literacy, but what does this mean and how should we do it? In this talk we'll discuss research showing how different kinds of people encounter, process and detect (or not) ...
Where: Cost: Free
Magnetic Textures in Quantum Materials - LivestreamQuantum materials are rapidly emerging as the basis for possible novel computation devices. However, fully understanding the interplay between magnetic and electronic excitations are preventing us from realizing their full potential. In my talk I will show how realizing the microscopic magnetic textures in quantum materials is crucial to the ...
What is the Universe made of? In modern cosmology only 4% of the universe is deeply understood, while the other 96%, Dark Energy and Dark Matter, remains a mystery. The Vera Rubin Observatory, currently under construction, will observe billions of galaxies, billions of stars in our own galaxy the Milky ...
For decades, the world’s governments have struggled to move from talk to action on climate. Many now hope that growing public concern will lead to greater policy ambition, but the most widely promoted strategy to address the climate crisis - the use of market-based programs - hasn’t been working and ...
Where: Cost: Free
From the Black Hole Conundrum to the Structure of Quantum Gravity - LivestreamHaving a complete quantum theory of gravity has long been a major goal of theoretical physics. This is because a naive merger of quantum mechanics and general relativity---though it works in certain limited regimes---suffers from major theoretical problems. A particularly acute one arises when one considers the quantum mechanics of ...
Speaker: Nikki Seymour, StanfordSee weblink for Zoom information
Where: Cost: Free
'The Planets - Mars' NOVA Virtual Movie Night and discussionJoin your TeamSETI friends for Movie Night, featuring an episode of NOVA's docuseries The Planets about Mars. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, will host the viewing, and Dr. Lori Fenton, a planetary scientist who studies climate change on Mars, will join us as a special guest to ...
What About Climate Change and the Impact on Ocean Life? - LivestreamWhat is the evidence of climate change?What impact do we see on ocean life?What adaptations might we expect from human and marine mammals alike?Join us as we explore these crucial questions with three experts in the field in a panel discussion moderated by ACS San Francisco Bay Chapter Board Member ...
