SETI Talks: AI - Augmenting humanity for good - LivestreamArtificial Intelligence (AI) is probably one of the most revolutionary developments in human history, and the world is already witnessing its transformative capabilities. Like most great inventions by humans (e.g., nuclear energy), it has two sides, a side that could be used maliciously and a positive one that powers cutting-edge ...
Where: Cost: Free
Another Bite at the Apple: First Apple-1 Computer to Be Brought Back to LifeWhat happened to the very first computer Apple produced? Inventor Steve Wozniak presented the Apple-1 - Serial Number One - to educator Liza Loop. It’s one of the rarest and most important objects of the computing revolution. Join us as vintage computing expert Corey Cohen attempts to bring to life that ...
Where: Cost: Free
When Earth Breathed Deeply - LivestreamOxygen levels in the atmosphere have increased by many orders of magnitude throughout Earth’s history, profoundly affecting biologic and chemical cycles at the surface of the Earth. In this lecture, Bucholz will explore how shifts in atmospheric oxygen concentrations went even deeper, altering Earth’s inner workings.Speaker: Claire Bucholz, CaltechRegister at ...
Where: Cost: Free
What Seals Can Teach Us About Risk and Reward in the Open OceanMarine mammals undertake some of the most extraordinary migrations on the planet to eat and avoid being eaten. They make behavioral decisions based on the ecology of their prey and predators, all while keeping within the confines of their physiological limits. By attaching electronic instruments to seals, Assistant Professor Roxanne ...
Where: Santa ClaraCost:
Drawing Birds with John Muir Laws & SFBBO - LivestreamLearn to draw birds with with the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory and acclaimed artist, author, educator, and scientist John Muir Laws! In celebration of SFBBO's 40th anniversary, we're learning to draw 3 species SFBBO scientists have worked with extensively over the years: the Snowy Plover, Least Tern, and White-crowned ...
Where: Cost: Free
January LASER Event - LivestreamThis evening will feature three presentations:- Josh Bongard (University of Vermont) on evolutionary robotics and evolutionary computation- Jessica Angel (Media Artist) on blockchain art- Eran Kahana (Stanford Law School) on "The Metaverse and its Potential Impact on Agency for Artificial Intelligence Entities"Register at weblink to receive Zoom information
Where: Cost: Free
The Science of SmellIn 2010, Harold McGee, world-renowned authority on the chemistry of foods and cooking, began work on a book about the flavors of food and drink. A decade later, he published a book about food and drink--but also about outer space, pets, people, laptops, petrochemicals, perfumes, and more. In this virtual ...
Join us as long-time members of SFAA share their experiences with the founding of our  organization, focused on bringing astronomy to a wide amateur audience. Members and the public enjoyed star parties, lectures and telescope making, then at the Wallace Telescope Makers Workshop. The very first lecture was held at ...
Where: Cost: Free
The Future of Conversational AI - LivestreamIn the last 2 years, we are seeing rapid development of conversational AI technology. Current chatbots can speak coherently and meaningfully, almost matching human performance. Are we close to cracking Turing Test? What are the other challenges we face today? In this talk, I will review the state-of-the-art dialog systems, ...
Climate change and social justice are two intersecting crises that will define the coming decades on Earth. According to Prof. Dan Kammen, addressing both challenges together makes each campaign more effective, both for meeting and setting new domestic climate and social justice targets, and as part of a coherent pro-justice, ...
Another Bite at the Apple: First Apple-1 Computer to Be Brought Back to LifeWhat happened to the very first computer Apple produced? Inventor Steve Wozniak presented the Apple-1 - Serial Number One - to educator Liza Loop. It’s one of the rarest and most important objects of the computing revolution. Join us as vintage computing expert Corey Cohen attempts to bring to life that ...
Nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas and ozone destroying agent, is produced and consumed by microbial processes in seawater. While production in surface waters is attributed mostly to nitrification, which is considered an obligately aerobic process, there are no known consumption processes that occur under oxygenated conditions. Nevertheless, we are ...
Where: Cost: Free
Birth of a large volcanic edifice offshore Mayotte via lithosphere-scale dyke intrusion - LivestreamVolcanic eruptions shape Earth’s surface and provide a window into deep Earth processes. How the primary asthenospheric melts form, pond and ascend through the lithosphere is, however, still poorly understood. Since 10 May 2018, magmatic activity has occurred offshore eastern Mayotte (North Mozambique channel), associated with large surface displacements, very-low-frequency ...
Where: Cost: Free
Climate Conversations: Ocean Carbon Dioxide Removal - LivestreamTo combat climate change, in addition to reducing emissions, we will also need to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Ocean CDR (ocean carbon dioxide removal) is a set of strategies to sequester carbon dioxide in ocean waters. Speakers will discuss social acceptance, environmental governance, and other issues around ocean ...
Where: Cost: Free
COVID Outbreaks and Outrages - LivestreamIn her new documentary In the Same Breath, director Nanfu Wang recounts the origin and spread of the novel coronavirus from the earliest days of the outbreak in Wuhan to its rampage across the United States. In a deeply personal approach, Wang, who was born in China and now lives ...
As we kick-off our "Year of The Leaf", the UC Botanical Garden is pleased to host Dr. Douglas Daly, Curator of Amazonian Botany and Director of the Institute for Systematic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden, to take us into the world of leaf architecture, the place of leaves ...
Please join us as the Ig Nobel forces of improbable research and The Conversation combine for a dangerously smart and rational discussion.Have you wondered why cats are so nimble, malleable, flexible and agile? How do cats fit in cups and vases? Why do felines grab our attention and love (well, ...
The epic saga of Big Basin began in the late 1800s when the surrounding communities saw their once "inexhaustible" redwood forests vanishing. Expanding railways demanded timber as they crisscrossed the nation, but the more redwoods that fell to the woodman's axe, the greater the effects on the local climate. California's ...
Where: Cost: Free
After Dark: Discover Wonder - CANCELEDSpark your curiosity at After Dark! As the sun sets, we’ll hit the rainbow lights, turn the music up, and open our doors, inviting you to take your imagination out to play. Be ready to bring fresh eyes to old favorites and uncover phenomenal new experiences.Cell Phone Miniscope 6:00 - ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $19.95 General, Free for members
NightlifeCalling all creatures of the night: explore the nocturnal side of the Academy at NightLife and see what's revealed. With live DJs, outdoor bars, ambiance lighting, and nearly 40,000 live animals (including familiar faces like Claude the albino alligator), the night is sure to be wild.Step inside the iconic Shake ...
On the open grasslands and hillsides of the South Bay Area lives an elusive little bird that likes to live part of its life underground - the Burrowing Owl!Join Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center (WERC), and Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority (OSA) as we ...
You can have a beautiful native plant garden that attracts amazing birds, butterflies and other wildlife. Learn about the benefits of local, native plants and some of the wonderful birds that are drawn to this place and to these plants. Noreen Weeden and Eddie Bartley will discuss what migrating and ...
Where: Cost: Free
Implicit Neural Representation Networks Fitting Signals, Derivatives & Integrals - LivestreamImplicitly defined, continuous, differentiable signal representations parameterized by neural networks have emerged as a powerful paradigm, offering many possible benefits over conventional representations and new capabilities in neural rendering and view synthesis. However, conventional network architectures for such implicit neural representations are incapable of modeling signals at scale with fine ...
Where: Cost: Free
Virtual Telescope ViewingJoin our resident astronomers on Facebook Live and YouTube 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 available ...
Where: Cost: Free
Friday, 01/21/22
Another Bite at the Apple: First Apple-1 Computer to Be Brought Back to LifeWhat happened to the very first computer Apple produced? Inventor Steve Wozniak presented the Apple-1 - Serial Number One - to educator Liza Loop. It’s one of the rarest and most important objects of the computing revolution. Join us as vintage computing expert Corey Cohen attempts to bring to life that ...
The simplest analogy for the earthquake cycle is a spring-slider driven at a constant velocity - stress builds up in the spring as it is stretched and then released once the slider moves and the system has caught up with the loading condition. However, the Earth does not entirely subscribe ...
Where: Santa CruzCost: Free
The Road from Semiconductors to Metals: Engineering Topological States in Nanographene - LivestreamOur group has recently demonstrated the rational design and experimental realization of graphene nanoribbon (GNR) superlattices that host a 1D array of symmetry-protected topological states, thus generating otherwise inaccessible electronic structure. This new class of materials can be thought of as an extended form of poly-acetylene wherein highly ...
Where: Cost: Free
Free Telescope ViewingsJoin Chabot astronomers on the Observatory Deck for a free telescope viewing! Weather permitting, this is a chance to explore stars, planets and more through Chabot’s historic telescopes. Chabot’s three large historic telescopes offer a unique way to experience the awe and wonder of the Universe. Our observatory deck offers ...
In this informative, engaging virtual art exhibit, experience the photography of Chris Stevens-Yu with commentary from the photographer himself. Learn about what makes the Baylands Nature Preserve and other Northern California open spaces special for photography.Register at weblink to receive Zoom information.
Where: Cost: Free
Free Telescope ViewingsJoin Chabot astronomers on the Observatory Deck for a free telescope viewing! Weather permitting, this is a chance to explore stars, planets and more through Chabot’s historic telescopes. Chabot’s three large historic telescopes offer a unique way to experience the awe and wonder of the Universe. Our observatory deck offers ...
Where: OaklandCost: Free
Sunday, 01/23/22
50th Anniversary Golden Jubilee Revival Fungus Fair - CANCELEDThe public is invited to this family friendly event to celebrate the diversity and ecology of fungi found in every part of our environment, from urban garden to mountain forest.Tickets go on sale December 1, 2021. Advance Tickets sold on Eventbrite and will be available at the door. Early bird ...
Where: OrindaCost:
Afternoon Walk at Pillar Point Bluff - FullJoin Peninsula Open Space Trust for an afternoon walk at Pillar Point Bluff just north of Half Moon Bay! You will be guided by a POST representative who will share details about the area’s interesting natural history, from the coastal scrub habitat to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve that hosts tide ...
Where: Moss BeachCost: Free
Monday, 01/24/22
Athermal Phonon Sensor R&D for Low-Mass Dark Matter Detectors - LivestreamIn the direct detection of dark matter with masses down to O(keV), the energies im- parted in the detector become vanishingly small. Many novel ideas have been proposed for instrumenting athermal phonon sensors on Fermi-degenerate materials [1], polar crys- tals [2-4], and CVD diamond [5], requiring detector energy thresholds of ...
Where: Cost: Free
Florilegia: From Historic Voyages to the Present-day Revival - LivestreamA florilegium is a collection of botanical illustrations depicting the plants of a notable location. This online lecture by botanical artist Catherine Watters will take you on a journey from 16th century voyages of exploration to gather and document plants from far corners of the world, to contemporary collections illustrating ...
Where: Cost: $10 General, $5 for Members
How do we know anything at all about space? - LivestreamNo one has ever travelled beyond our cosmic back yard, so all we really have to go off is the tiny drizzles of light that hit our telescope.The Andromeda Galaxy weighs 800 billion times the mass of the sun. The Galaxy M51 is 26 million light years from earth. The ...
One surprising barrier to improving our habits is the English language. Our vocabulary for behavior change is impoverished. And frankly, I don’t know why. On one hand, we have common words (like reward and habit) that are ambiguous. On the other hand, we lack English words for important behavior-related concepts ...
Where: Cost: Free
Continuous Single-Shot Detection of Quasiparticle TrappingSuperconducting quantum circuits are plagued by nonequilibrium populations of quasiparticle excitations. These quasiparticles can cause relaxation and spurious excitation of qubit states, producing errors in a quantum algorithm, and can cause correlated errors that are particularly difficult to address with error correction. To mitigate the effects of these quasiparticles, we ...
How does diversity intertwine along a pathway as a researcher, teacher, public intellectual, presidential advisor, husband, and father (along with 11D supergravity)?This will be recounted by our speaker, Jim Gates, Brown University
Where: Cost: Free
Fertile grounds for agricultural resilience: Harnessing multiple interactions in agroecosystemsDr. Aidee Guzman is interested in agroecological approaches that could harness biodiversity and ecosystem functioning for improved agricultural resilience. She is currently an NSF and UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Irvine. Previously, she completed her PhD in the Department of Environmental ...
Vivas Kumar is CEO and founder of Mitra Chem, which is the first lithium-ion battery materials manufacturer focused on shortening the lab-to-production timeline by over 90%, addressing the largest barrier to innovation: R&D and scale-up speed. Vivas received his MBA for Stanford University.Livestream here.
Where: Cost: Free
Breaking the Standard Model (of Embryonic Development) - LivestreamOver the last few decades, we have witnessed a revolution in the study of living matter. However, we have yet to reach a predictive understanding of such matter that is on par with the successes seen in physics for inanimate matter. In this talk, I will show how we take ...
Long Now continues our dialog with the acclaimed writer Kim Stanley Robinson around COP26 and his most recent book The Ministry for the Future. Tickets for the in-person talk in San Francisco & RSVP for the livestream will be released to Long Now Members first, about one month before the ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: TBA General, Free for members and online
The next several decades pose enormous challenges, and opportunities, for the global oil and gas industry. While oil and gas will continue to be used for decades to come, it is now recognized that enormous quantities of CO2 have to be stored in subsurface geologic formations to reach global decarbonization ...
Death to DAMA? Designing and assessing model independent tests of DAMA's modulation signal - LivestreamParticulate dark matter is a long hypothesized solution to various astrophysical observations seemingly at odds with a completely luminous universe. Despite the success of dark matter in explaining these observations, to date physicists have been unable to conclusively observe its interactions with Standard Model matter directly.This talk will focus on ...
Digitized data and computational methods have revolutionized the way we understand ourselves, society, and our place in society. On the one hand, this moment has revived calls for a social physics: a social science that can identify the underlying laws that govern social interaction and behavior. On the other hand, ...
Without phytoplankton, single-celled organisms that live in the water, life as we know it would not exist. Join our speakers to explore the histories of these fascinating organisms that cause beautiful, blue luminescent oceans or deadly red tides. Learn about the current state of phytoplankton in Monterey Bay and around ...
Where: Cost: Donation Suggested, Free for members
Whale Conservation on the US West Coast: Decreasing the Risk of Deadly Ship Strikes - LivestreamPoint Blue Conservation Science has been conducting research to decrease ship strikes along the US West Coast. In this talk, Cotton Rockwood, Senior Marine Ecologist with the California Current Group at Point Blue, will provide an update on their work to estimate whale mortality in the West Coast exclusive economic ...
