Connecting Turbulence to Ecology at Multiple ScalesThe last 10-15 years of physical oceanographic research makes clear that a particular class of turbulent currents - thin, elongated fronts and filaments or swirling vortices 10 m - 1 km in horizontal scale - can dominate material fluxes on timescales of hours-to-days.  However, the aggregate impacts of these oceanic ‘weather’ ...
Now, there is intense, if uneven, pressure for prosecutors to indict police officers in the wake of high-profile killings of Black, Latinx and Indigenous people. However, there is as yet no centralized public database that tracks how prosecutors respond to alleged racially-biased misconduct of their law enforcement colleagues at scale. ...
Earth’s Moon is widely accepted to have been created 4.5 billion years ago through a giant impact between Earth and a hypothetical planet known as Theia. Yet, direct evidence for Theia's existence has remained elusive--until now. Here, we demonstrate that the mantle remnants of Theia explain fundamentally important features of ...
Bipedal locomotion, while captivating in its resemblance to human movement, presents a significant challenge within the field of robotics. The inherent multi-dimensionality and dynamic complexity of bipedal robots have posed substantial obstacles to traditional control methods, often limiting their real-world applications. This talk will delve into the complexity of bipedal ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Science on Tap: Cetaceans & Tales of WhalesWe’re going to have a whale of a time with our first Science on Tap of 2024! Just in time for whale migration season, join us for an in-depth look at whales and cetaceans with drinks from Peter B’s Brewpub and our panel of experts to discover the secret world ...
Where: Pacific GroveCost: $20 General adv. , $15 Members, Free for Students
Ancient human footprints at White Sands National Park and their implications for the peopling of the Americas.How old are the footprints? How do we know?What is the role of USGS scientist in this discovery?What's the link between these footprints & climate change?Speakers: Kathleen Springer and Jeff Pigati, USGS Geoscience & ...
Where: Cost: Free
Finding Aliens on Earth - LivestreamFinding life outside of Earth is one of the most interesting topics of Planetary Science. Is life possible on other planets? If so, on which ones? What would it be like, and what would they use as an energy source?Speaker: Miguel à Fernández, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, SpainWatch on YouTube ...
Where: Cost: Free
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 60,000 live animals (including familiar faces like Claude, our alligator with albinism), the night is sure to be wild.Step inside the iconic ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Varies
Searching for Trolls under the Electron Bridge Plants draw energy for all their chemical reactions from sunlight. Why can't we? In theory, this can be done by building a molecular bridge: Attach a molecule that absorbs light and gives the energy to electrons to a molecule that accepts the electrons and uses them to catalyze the desired ...
Coloring the Universe with Rubin Observatory - OnlineVera C. Rubin Observatory has developed a series of FREE online astronomy investigations using authentic data that provide rich and interactive experiences for students, from advanced middle school through college, covering topics commonly taught in introductory astronomy classes or units.This webinar, hosted by the ASP, will unpack how to access ...
Have a whale of a time with the PG Museum as we celebrate the birthday of beloved community icon Sandy the gray whale! Get ready for some major merrymaking and learn about whales and other animals that migrate.
Where: Pacific GroveCost: Free
Salamander Search at SanbornSanborn is famous for its amphibians; you just need to do some extra searching to find them! Join us for a fun day of looking under rocks, logs, and other unique hiding spots that Sanborn’s Salamanders call home!Ages 4 - 12, with registered adultRegister at weblink
Where: SaratogaCost: $25 per person
Stewardship Saturday: Icing Out IceplantsHelp protect our beaches with The Marine Mammal Center and Sonoma County Parks! Through this event you will learn about the impact of the iceplant along our coastal ecosystems and support in removing this plant from a section of Bodega Bay. We hope that by the end of this event ...
Where: Bodega BayCost: Free
Lunar Landing Sites, Past and FutureAs we look back on the discoveries of the Apollo program, now more than fifty years ago, and stand on the verge of a new generation of lunar exploration through the Artemis Program, it is appropriate to reflect upon the sites chosen for lunar exploration. In this talk, we will ...
Where: OaklandCost: Free
Is Anybody Out There? What’s New in the Search for Extraterrestrial CivilizationsWhat is the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe? Can we detect radio, infrared, or optical signals from other civilizations? Current and future SETI projects may provide an answer. Dan Werthimer will describe the rationale for past and future searches and will show how new technologies are revolutionizing ...
Dr. Smith is currently a Conservation Research Fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium:Â I am a community ecologist studying how species interactions shape the structure, functioning, and stability of nearshore marine ecosystems. I focus on temperate rocky reefs and am particularly interested in combining theory with observational and experimental approaches to ...
Where: Rohnert ParkCost: Free
Drivers of plankton communities and foodweb structure in a changing oceanZooplankton are essential components of marine pelagic ecosystems: as trophic intermediaries they play a key role in energy transfer up the food web, they mediate biogeochemical cycling and organic export, and their month-to-year life cycles and close species links to the physical environment make them important sentinels of climate change. ...
A large and growing share of the American public turns to social media for news. On these platforms, reports about crime increasingly come directly from law enforcement agencies, raising questions about content curation. We gathered all posts from almost 14,000 Facebook pages maintained by US law enforcement agencies, focusing on ...
Lake Tahoe is one of the longest studied lakes in North America. Yet, the processes that control its motions, health and clarity are still not fully understood. These processes are a complex interaction of physical, biological and biogeochemical processes, all of which are subject to large-scale changes associated with climate ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Shot noise in a strange metalStrange metal behavior has been observed in materials ranging from high-temperature superconductors to heavy fermion metals. In conventional metals, current is carried by quasiparticles; although it has been suggested that quasiparticles are absent in strange metals, direct experimental evidence is challenging to acquire. We measure shot noise to probe the ...
Muon colliders offer a unique path to multi-TeV, high-luminosity lepton collisions. Muon collisions with a center-of-mass energy of 10 TeV or above would offer significant discovery potential where the constituent collision energies exceed those of the LHC program by an order of magnitude.  Significant progress on the fundamental R&D and ...
Unprecedented development of renewable energy projects and infrastructure is expected across the U.S. to meet decarbonization goals by mid-century. How do Tribal Nations fit into this energy landscape? Tribal lands hold an estimated 6.5% of the utility-scale solar potential in the contiguous United States. Siting principles that support a just ...
Speaker: Jonas Cremer, Stanford UniversityAuditorium
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Flying robots: exploring hybrid locomotion and physical interactionAutonomous flying robots have become widespread in recent years, yet their capability to interact with the environment remains limited. Moving in multiple fluids is one of the great challenges of mobile robotics, and carries great potential for application in biological and environmental studies. In particular, hybrid locomotion provides the means ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
The Many Frontiers of High Magnetic Field ResearchMagnetic fields represent a remarkably flexible research tool that has opened up new frontiers of research in physics, engineering, chemistry, geochemistry, environmental sciences, biology, and biomedicine. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (the National MagLab) in the United States exists to provide uniquely powerful magnetic fields to thousands of researchers ...
The United States is strategically disadvantaged in building its critical mineral supply, in particular in the upstream and downstream portion. In this presentation, I will report findings on a year-long conversation with government officials, academics, and international industry experts on the status of the US critical mineral supply chain, in ...
The development of classical electromagnetism and quantum electrodynamics are highpoints of nineteenth and twentieth century physics, respectively. Recent, remarkable discoveries, involving neutron stars and black holes, are taking electrodynamics into unfamiliar and “extremeâ€Â territory, requiring new theoretical approaches. Examples include 100 GT (10^15 Gauss) magnetic fields surrounding neutron stars (and ...
I will discuss how vertebrate skin colours and skin appendages (scales, feathers, hairs, ...) are patterned through Turing and mechanical instabilities. First, I will show that Reaction-diffusion (RD) models are particularly effective for understanding skin colour patterning at the macroscopic scale, without the need to parametrise the profusion of variables ...
Brainstem trauma or neurodegenerative diseases can often result in the inability to move or speak, despite intact cognition. The inability to communicate often results in severely decreased quality of life for individuals living with these conditions. Our recent work has shown that brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), can employ neural signals to ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Innovative Patient-Centered Care for CancerThe current system of cancer care is not built to optimize for patients, according to our speakers. Clinical trials optimize for sponsor outcomes. Hospitals and clinics optimize for payer reimbursement. Translational research optimizes for publication impact. Electronic health records are optimized for billing efficiency.Join us in-person as Mark Laabs (cancer ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $20 General, $10 Members in person, $5/free online
Wonderfest: The Psychology of Confidence - RESCHEDULEDHow confident should we be? Overconfidence leads people to delude themselves with wishful thinking, take too many risks, pursue impossible goals, and waste their time on doomed ventures. Underconfidence dissuades people from taking risks that would pay off, and scares them away from trying things they would enjoy. Pschological studies ...
Where: NovatoCost: Free
Wednesday, 01/31/24
RoundTable: Taking Generative AI Enterprise Models to ProductionGenerative AI (GenAI) is an emergent area that has many AI users excited. One key feature of GenAI applications includes using Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to pull up text data from internal enterprise sources. Another key feature is to reason about the retrieval results, the question, and the context of ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
How to Make an Eye: Cephalopod Eye Development and the Evolution of ComplexityUnderstanding the mechanisms that enable the evolution of complexity remains a difficult problem in biology. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin discussed the eye as an important context to better understand his theory of natural selection and the generation of complex phenotypes. My lab is interested in the evolution ...
Can aquaculture be adapted to support conservation and ecosystem restoration? The only native oyster on our coast, the Olympia oyster, is depleted throughout its range. Many estuaries in central California are facing local extinction. Without a healthy oyster population, these estuaries lose vast amounts of biodiversity and cannot protect shorelines ...
 Around the world, people recognize that E=mc^2 oozes cosmic insight. But what does this "most famous equation" really say? What are energy and mass? And what makes the speed of light, c, so important? [Hint: mass, moving at speed c, doesn't turn into energy!] Using little more than common experience ...
