Traveltime-based tomographic methods have been extensively explored and employed by researchers since the 80s. Such algorithms have been successfully applied to various geophysical applications, ranging from seismic exploration to global to regional seismological scales. However, given the advancements in computational architectures over the last 20 years, full-waveform methodologies are now ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Nanotechnology: Tiny Science with a Big Impact - LivestreamDid you know that October 9th was National Nano Day? To celebrate the exploration of this miniscule world that holds immense potential for our future, this month’s Midday Science Cafe delves into the fascinating realm of nanoscience, where matter is studied at the mind-boggling nanoscale, a dimension one thousand times ...
Our past 150 years of experience with communication technology holds key lessons for how electricity technology could transform in the coming decades. With communications there were many decades of relative stasis in telephone technology before the transformation of the fundamental mechanism of our communication with the introduction (and wild success) ...
Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everythingâ€"from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock marketâ€"runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the most advanced chips and used its control over computing power to maintain its lead as the world's ...
Conventional reinforcement learning (RL) techniques face the formidable challenge of high sample complexity and intensive computation load, which hinders RL's applicability in real-world tasks.  To tackle this challenge, Warm-Start RL is emerging as a promising new paradigm, with the basic idea being to accelerate online learning  by starting with an initial policy ...
By Hon Ip, USGS Diagnostic Virologist As an introduction to how we investigate the causes of diseases in wildlife, we will use zombies to illustrate how disease is portrayed in the movies and how we would we investigate zombieism as an infectious disease. Learn about the different specialists who work at he ...
Where: Cost: Free
Astronomy on Tap Santa Cruz: Modern Alchemy and the (Stellar) Birds & BeesWe may all be made of starstuff, but what are the stars made of? Learn the answer, and discover how to turn gold into lead with cosmic alchemy at this month’s Astronomy on Tap!Speakers: Thummim Mekuria & Matthew Shetrone, UC Santa Cruz
Throughout our open spaces and urban areas, the Bay Area is home to many diverse reptiles and amphibians. From slippery serpents to charming croakers, prepare to learn about creatures that crawl, slither and hop their way through the Bay. 🦎Santa Cruz Black Salamander (Aneides niger). Photo by Brandon Kong.We’ve invited ...
Kick off spooky season with a nerdy twist at our Halloween special! Featured will be a talk on the real Gray’s Anatomy, tarot readings by Nerd Nite alum Ben Grandis, a pumpkin decorating contest (with prizes!), music by dj andjelly, and our friends in nerdom, the SF Public Library crew. ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $10 Advance, $15 at door
Los Angeles Times journalist and Pulitzer finalist Rosanna Xia and Dr. Charles Lester, director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center at UC Santa Barbara, explore the inexorable challenge of sea level rise in this probing talk. Xia, author of California Against the Sea: Visions for our Vanishing Coastline (Heyday, 2023), has traveled ...
These tours are led by our wonderful crew of ocean-loving docents, and visitors will learn about ongoing marine and coastal science research at Bodega Marine Laboratory and its history on the Sonoma Coast. Plus, you'll get to meet a variety of colorful and diverse ocean creatures.The front gates will be ...
Where: Bodega BayCost: Donations suggested
Global Insights to Anticipate and Address Tomorrow’s Cybersecurity Challenges - RescheduledFrom ubiquitous software-controlled vehicles, innovations in gaming, virtual reality, and hyper-scale cloud adoption, to supply chain frictions, a proliferation of inexpensive tools available to cybercriminals, the emergence of synthetic image generators, and fractures in global internet governance, the landscape of digital security is constantly changing.Cybersecurity Futures 2030 is a foresight-focused ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Saturday, 10/21/23
Wellness WalkJoin us for an informative and reflective stroll through wetlandsWellness Walk Join Peninsula Open Space Trust, Climate Resilient Communities, and Grassroots Ecology at Cooley Landing for a fun walk along the Bay Trail! The walk will be approximately 2 miles along the flat, paved trail to the Ravenswood lookout. We ...
Join us as psychologist Brian A. Sharpless discusses unusual psychological conditions described in his new book, Monsters on the Couch: The Real Psychological Disorders Behind Your Favorite Horror Movies. We’ll delve into Clinical Lycanthropy, a psychiatric syndrome within which the patient has the delusional belief of turning into a wolf, ...
Where: Cost: Free
Family Nature Walks - Foothills Nature PreserveEnvironmental Volunteers’ Family Nature Walks program is designed to help students and their families get to know our local open space areas. Small family groups will be guided by a knowledgeable environmental educator during an exploration of a local open space. These small groups will be introduced to fun nature-based ...
Where: Los AltosCost: Free
Bat Fest 2023It's our biggest and most exciting event of the year - Bat Fest! Join Saved By Nature for an evening festival celebrating local animals of the night, with live bats, owls, and other creatures. It's a fun time under the stars! With a special guest speaker, food trucks, live music, ...
Where: Morgan HillCost: $25 General, $10 Age 6 - 15, under 4 Free
City Public Star PartyCome join the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers for an evening of stargazing at Land’s End! We meet at the USS San Francisco Memorial at El Camino del Mar parking lotTelescopes will be set up to show you the craters and mountains of the Moon, planets, bright and colorful double stars, ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Jazz Under the StarsJazz Under the Stars is a FREE monthly public stargazing event! Occurring on the Saturday nearest the 1st quarter moon (check our Events Page), join us on the 4th floor observatory for a night of smooth jazz, bright stars, and a lot of fun! We play our jazz from CSM's own ...
Visit our birding station at the Charleston Slough observation deck, where our volunteers will help you identify ducks, shorebirds, and more. No need to sign up - come by anytime we’re there! This event is wheelchair accessible.
Where: Palo AltoCost: Free
Hike at Windy HillJoin POST on a guided hike on one of the first open spaces we protected as an organization! A POST Representative will share a few words about POST’s decades of conservation success before hiking groups leave to explore a strenuous but rewarding 7 mile hike with 1,500 feet of elevation ...
Where: Portola ValleyCost: Free
Resilient Forest SeriesJoin Forestree Collective, Regenerative Forest Solutions and Audubon Canyon Ranch’s Fire Forward program for this series highlighting forest health practices, ecological stewardship, regional milling infrastructure, prescribed burning, and more.Each series date will engage participants in stewardship strategies employed at Green Valley Farm + Mill for improving the forest and watershed, ...
Where: SebastopolCost: $25
Above and Beyond: How Women Astronomers and Astronauts Brought Space Down to EarthJoin author Dale DeBakcsy on a tour through two thousand years of women's contributions to the study and exploration of space, from the first Babylonian astronomers to the women directing planetary surveys and working in space.Dale is the author of A History of Women in Astronomy and Space Exploration and ...
Direct Observation of Anyonic Braiding StatisticsA basic tenet of quantum theory is that all elementary particles are either bosons or fermions. Ensembles of bosons or fermions behave differently due to differences in their underlying quantum statistics. Starting in the early 1980’s it was theoretically conjectured that excitations that are neither bosons nor fermions may exist ...
In this talk, I will cover a few recent papers and projects that focus on the measurement of emissions and the costs, benefits, and opportunities associated with a transition to sustainable, deeply decarbonized, and equitable energy systems is needed in the United States. For example, in [1], we show that ...
Where: Menlo ParkCost: Free
A New Lick Observatory - Bay Area Public College ConsortiumDr. Metevier will describe a new effort to significantly expand Lick Observatory's education programs in the Bay Area. At the college level, this includes the development of a consortium of Bay Area public colleges (community colleges and Cal State campuses, including Sonoma State) that will have access to Lick Observatory's ...
Ana V. Longo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. Before starting this tenure-track position, Ana was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Maryland and Smithsonian Institution from 2015 to 2018. She received her PhD in 2015 from ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
A vector spin glass made of atoms and photonsSpin glasses are canonical examples of complex matter. Although much about their structure remains uncertain, they inform the description of a wide array of complex phenomena, ranging from magnetic ordering in metals with impurities to aspects of evolution, protein folding, climate models, combinatorial optimization, and artificial intelligence. Advancing experimental insight ...
Climatetech refers to companies trying to reverse climate change using technology. We explore the key factors that drive long term success for companies that wish to make a positive impact on climate change and how startups can incorporate these learnings into their strategic plans. By using the physics of business, ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
How to Build Personalization into LLM RecommendationsWe enable Large Language Models (LLM) with personalization capability. This is not specific to the LLM (Open AI's ChatGPT, Athropic's Claude, Meta's Llama 2, Googles,...)Today, LLMs are not good at personalization and providing recommendations. They may advise physicians and financial advisors to "ask professionals" in their respective fields for help, ...
Quantum mechanics has not one but two mysteries: the double-slit experiment and quantum correlations (entanglement) between two or more particles. Criticized by Einstein as “spooky action at a distanceâ€, entanglement is now seen as an essential part of the physical world. The Bell inequalities, introduced to experimentally distinguish local hidden ...
Antarctica and South Georgia: Birds, Beasts and Bold Adventure - LivestreamJoin ACS San Francisco Bay Chapter for another exciting evening with wildlife photographer, Jodi Frediani. For this talk, Jodi takes us on her fourth trip to the Antarctic Peninsula and her first voyage to South Georgia in October 2022. Her love of polar regions began with her first voyage to ...
 How did society enable the distribution of drugs and supplements - principally in the form of pills - to billions of people? How, in particular, did "anti-aging treatments" come about? Can vitamins be efficacious against aging? Finally, what is the promise of recent supplements - developed based on our understanding ...
The innate immune system is ancient and shared across kingdoms. Most organisms utilize innate immunity in the absence of an adaptive immunity to recognize rapidly evolving pathogens and elicit disease resistance response. Our laboratory works with plant, bacterial and fungal host-pathogen systems to understand biodiversity of the innate immune receptors ...
The Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) was launched in December 2021 by Timnit Gebru as a space for independent, community-rooted AI research, free from Big Tech’s pervasive influence. Unlike the current trend of centralizing power and claiming to build one giant model that serves the needs of everyone while ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
nano@stanford Open HouseAll are welcome to visit us for the nano@stanford Open House, which will be held in the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center (Foyer & Amphitheater)!! This event will feature a Research Showcase (poster session), a Vendor Expo, and the opportunity to interact with industry professionals and representatives from other NNCI sites.  The nano@stanford Lab Member Collaborative and ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Silicon Valley Talks: Chris Clay, 'Unstoppable'Unstoppable explores the life of Roy L. Clay Sr. from his time as a teenager using his uncanny math skills to run back-room craps game in segregated, rural Missouri, to his rise as a Silicon Valley technology pioneer. Unstoppable has been featured by Stephen Curry's Underrated Book Club, USA Today, NBC Bay Area ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Community-Engaged Climate Adaptation Research in Yucatán, MexicoIn Yucatán, as in many regions around the world, a history exists of Indigenous land and heritage dispossession, which continue today. This presentation introduces a case in which archaeologists, in partnership with town leaders and residents, strive to counteract those tendencies. The current initiative of PACOY (the Proyecto Arqueológico Colaborativo ...
Market-based climate policies decentralize abatement decisions by establishing a CO2 price, either via taxes or via a pollution permit market. Since CO2 emissions are often released jointly with conventional air pollutants, CO2 permit trades give rise to implicit trades of such co-pollutants. In contrast to CO2 emissions, co-pollution emissions are ...
Customers are adopting new energy technologies, incentivized by state and federal electrification programs. At the same time, utilities and regulators are exploring new pricing strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs. Will the electrical distribution system be able to support these innovations without expensive system upgrades? In this ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
AI's Impact on Society: How Do We Do This the Right Way?Ready for a night out? We got views, food, and drinks - and an important panel discussion:"AI's Impact on Society: How Do We Do This the Right Way?"Delve into the world of AI's development and its hidden complexitiesLearn about the tools and strategies used to tackle risksExplore responsible AI practices ...
What can zombie movies teach us about biology, behavior, evolution, and survival?Join Dr. Jason Lewis for a crash course in Zombiology based on his popular Stony Brook University class. Dr. Lewis and The Leakey Foundation’s Brandon Upchurch will discuss contagion, conflict, cannibalism, and what a zombie apocalypse can reveal about ...
The geometry of the ancient Greeks took place on an ideal, infinite, flat plane. In the millenia since then, mathematicians have opened our minds to the more general and flexible geometries of curved spaces - from the fabric that makes up our clothing, to the spacetime around a black hole. ...
Where: Castro ValleyCost: Free
Archaeology and Ecological Crisis: Lessons in Sustainability from the PastThe world today is facing a variety of ecological crises and to combat these crises, policymakers are working hard to promote sustainability. While rarely included in policy discussions, archaeology has a part to play in contributing to a sustainable future. Archaeology uniquely provides us with thousands of years of information ...
