At August’s Nerd Nite East Bay, Heather Jackson will talk about the strength of materials, Lita Stephenson will discuss platypusseseses, and Greg Babinecz will share his knowledge of oysters, as well as some samples.
DJ Ion the Prize and your hosts Rick and Rebecca will slurp down the extras.
Monday 8/26
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
The New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakland
(less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART)
$8
All Ages
Tickets
FB event
g+ event
HOW STUFF BREAKS OR: FAILURE IS AN OPTION by Heather Jackson
Materials are like people…it’s their defects that make them interesting. If real materials were perfect, we’d be missing out on steel, laser pointers, pop-top soda cans, and much more. On the other hand, defects sank the Titanic as well as square windows on airplanes. So, stuff breaks, and the structure and properties of materials has something to do with it. But how? Everyone knows that windows shatter and car bumpers dent, but what about the chassis that crumples in some places and is rigid in others? When design tweaks only take us so far, how can materials and process engineering optimize the performance of the structures, machines, and vehicles we depend on, and make them less likely to kill us or waste our money?
As a consulting engineer at Structural Integrity Associates in San Jose, Heather Jackson helps keeps the lights on. She works to prevent failures of structural components at nuclear and fossil power plants by harnessing lessons learned from metallurgy, corrosion, and fracture mechanics. Before that, she kept busy breaking stuff at Sandia National Labs and figuring out how stuff broke at NASA Johnson Space Center. Heather is an alum of MIT and Imperial College London and reckons the terrible weather helped by never distracting her from her studies.
PLATYPUS 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO by Lita Stephenson
It’s a duck! It’s a beaver! It’s a mole! It’s some kind of … what the hell is that thing? It’s a platypus! Arguably nature’s silliest creature, these adorable little guys have a lot of oddness going on. An ancient mammal, the platypus is the only living member of their family and genus. Among other bizarre traits, it is venomous, lays eggs, produces milk, but has no nipples, and is also one of the only mammals able to perceive environmental electrical signals. As long-time platypus dork and sensory-system enthusiast, I’ll give you a closer look at how these charming little beasts use this electroreception system in combination with mechanical stimuli, without other senses, to locate and capture their fleeing prey in 3-dimensional space. We may even tackle the age-old question: “What is the proper plural form of ‘platypus’?”.
Lita Stephenson began life as the child of two lunatics who dragged her, kicking and screaming, all over the planet. Along the way, she developed a great passion for weird and ugly animals, and pursued further information relentlessly. She used her appropriately abbreviated B.S. in Neurobiology and Physiology from UC Davis to spend as much time studying the platypus as she could get away with, but the crushing realization that she’d have to euthanize one at some point led her to pursue molecular cytogenetics at UCSF instead. Since then she’s filled her time telling people what’s wrong with them, professionally and personally, and writing badly about other people’s science.
BI-VALVE CURIOUS: THE IMPORTANCE OF OYSTERS by Greg Babinecz
Few foods create such a spark of excitement or gasp of revulsion in people. It certainly takes a culinary stalwart to slurp back his or her first briny bivalve. They are, after all, the only things we eat raw and alive besides each other. And, of course, we all know what they say about oysters. I’d be lying if I said that a few dozen have’t led to some amorous activity in my past and will hopefully continue to do so. However, the true value of oysters to us goes way beyond their gastronomic provocation or role as an aphrodisiac. We’ll discuss the historical importance of oysters in 19th century American development, oysters’ lifecycles and ecological impact, and their role as the most sustainable form of aquaculture. We’ll also explore what makes oysters so unique as to elicit so many cultural tributes such as poems, folklore, and festivals. You wouldn’t, after all, find M.F.K. Fisher writing a book titled “Consider the Crab.” Oh, and we’re serving free oysters!
Greg Babinecz received his BA from Johns Hopkins University in 2008 in Baltimore, Maryland. Working at a local fish market while completing a post graduate internship at University of Penn ignited Greg’s interest in local, sustainable seafood. He spent two years in Central America working on Pre-Colombian archaeological projects and teaching English. Upon returning to the States 2010, Greg moved to San Francisco where began moonlighting at Waterbar, a Bay Area Top 100 seafood restaurant. In 2012, Greg quit his day job and began managing the raw bar full time at Waterbar, where he continues to further his knowledge of oysters, aquaculture and sustainable fisheries. He is devoted to local food sourcing, supporting the reinstatement of Oysters in the Bay through the Watershed Project, and spends whatever little free time he has writing his blog.
The dog days of summer bring more nerdiness. Eric Simons tells us why we root, root, root for the home team; Consuelo Crosby reveals some of the incredible things that structural engineers are able to get away with, and Savino Sguera shares the labwork he does for one of California’s marijuana testing faciltiies.
DJ Citizen Zain, Rick, and Rebecca help you slide into summer. Be there and be square!
Monday 7/29
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
The New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakland
(less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART)
$8
All Ages
Tickets
FB event
g+ event
SPORTS FANS: CRAZY? WHAT THE SCIENCE SAYS by Eric Simons
If you’re a sports fan like me, or you’ve ever just sat, like Jane Goodall, and observed a sports fan in its natural habitat, you can be forgiven for thinking that this is probably the stupidest, most irrational thing that human beings do. And that several billion people do it, with such enthusiasm, is all the more puzzling. But it’s not so irrational as it looks on the surface, which is what we’re going to talk about. We’ll start with the basics: what happens in a sports fan’s brain and body when they watch other people playing a game? Like what, for example, is happening to the testosterone of those young men setting city buses on fire following a game their team won. (Won! Seriously!) Then we’ll talk about some of the ways we control and interpret those reflexes — the way we use the newer parts of the brain to tell the reptile parts to fall in line, the way our apparent lack of free will in following the Cleveland Indians through misery and more misery is in fact not so pre-determined (or irrational) after all. And then we’ll talk about all the ways our high, refined culture influences our biology, with illustrative pictures of a dude who has worn a gorilla suit to every Oakland Raiders games for the last sixteen years. Perhaps, after seeing this guy’s wedding march, you will have some questions. I’ll leave a little extra time.
Eric Simons is a San Francisco based writer, the author of The Secret Lives of Sports Fans: The Science of Sports Obsession, and co-host of the Field Trip Podcast. He’s taught reporting at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and written a previous book, Darwin Slept Here, about Charles Darwin’s four years on mainland South America. He is a sports fan, much to his own consternation, and considers that maybe if any of the teams he likes ever won anything, even once, he could just quit and happily devote his life to gardening.
THAT SHOULD FALL DOWN… by Consuelo Crosby
90% of your daily existence relies on a built structure, yet no one knows what a structural engineer does. In reply, I say I design buildings. Oh, like an architect. No. Contractor? No, I defy gravity. Oh, you’re a plastic surgeon. Not to be defeated, we engineers go where no man, er, woman, has gone before in creating structures that defy the Forces of Nature. At times, the systems we design mimic the impossibility of science fiction and the courage of superheroes. And then there ones that seem dreamed up over too many shots of tequila. From cantilevers dangling 4000 feet above ground to a 1600 foot tall building relying on giant steel balls, the structures on this planet are testament to the wackiness of humans with too much freedom to complete their science projects. I will take you through the structures that have stood the test of time but really, should fall down.
After her idea of becoming a record album cover artist was dismantled by unapproving parents, Consuelo Crosby went on to use both sides of her brain as an engineer with creative aesthetic and sexy boots. She has worked over 25 years in the industry regardless of the hazing of being the first female hired by a large S.F. firm at the tender age of 21. Some of her handiwork can be seen in Oracle Headquarters in Redwood City and the highrise at the corner of 8th and Figueroa in L.A. Consuelo’s efforts at infusing the structural engineering profession with femininity are evident in a collaborative website, Nerdynista.com.
CANNABIS: FROM THE INSIDE OUT by Savino Sguera
What are YOU smoking? The director of the nation’s largest cannabis analysis laboratory guides us through the scientific secrets behind cannabis and its effects on people. What begins as a plant defense against invaders turns out to be a powerful medicinal tool for the human body (with the help of an entourage of terpenoid sidekicks). Whether a smoke, vapor, spray, capsule, tincture, cream, or suppository, these compositions have the potential to be controlled from growth through extraction and processing to achieve customized medicines directed at particular ailments. None of this can be achieved without studying cannabis in agonizing detail through the eye of modern technology and the edges scientific thought.
Savino Sguera has been the Laboratory Director and Chemist of Steep Hill Labs in Oakland, CA for the past two years. His time spent there has seen the lab grow from a small room to a large facility in East Oakland conducting analytical tests for potency, fungus, and residual chemicals using gas and liquid chromatography as well as mass spectrometry and near-infrared spectroscopy. Savino earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University in 2008 specializing in cell and tissue culture, drug delivery, and biomedical devices. Since then he has worked to fabricate composite prosthetics, orthotics, and medical devices as well as compounding pharmaceuticals.
Join us for June’s Nerd Nite East Bay, where Jennifer Schiffner will entice you with tales of Bettie Page, Mark Lescroart may make you trade the corset for a tinfoil hat as you hide your thoughts from functional magnetic resonance imaging machines, and Laith Ullaby will play us out with the pop music of the Arab Spring.
DJ Ion the Prize, Rick, and Rebecca are your East Bay dissonant dissidents for the evening. Be there and be square!
Monday 6/24
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
The New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakland
(less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART)
$8
All Ages
Tickets
FB event
g+ event
LOW-DOWN ON THE PIN-UP: A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE ON FISHNETS AND FAME DURING THE 1950S by Jennifer Schiffner
Let’s talk about SEX, baby. No, really, let’s talk about S.E.X. The Situational context of the 1950s; the Erotic art of bondage and fetish photography; the eXhilarating and eXotic Bettie Page. We’re going to explore a bit of her-story by examining a modicum of culture from the decade of Leave It To Beaver. By analyzing the context and cultural dynamics of an era typified by gender-normative Americana, we can understand how the concept of gender roles and gender stereotyping evolved during the mid-20th century and, consequently, how this evolution created an underground movement of erotic and fetish art. But how, pray tell, do you really understand the 1950s as a bridge connecting the first and second wave feminist movements? Like any scientist, we have a model. The indelible Bettie Page serves as a metaphor for the abeyance structures in the feminist movements. We’ll examine her life, her career, and of course, her boobies. So tighten up your corset, Mr. Draper, it’s going to be a titillating ride.
When Jennifer Schiffner isn’t mourning her lost career as a trapeze artist or film critic, she practices law in San Jose (but don’t hold that against her). Before becoming an attorney (yawn), Jen took an interest in Bettie Page and gender-bending art during the 1950s. She finally convinced her conservative Catholic college to let her write a book on the topic called, “The Transcendent Bettie Page: The Art of Retro Erotica and Metaphorical Abeyance Structures in the Feminist Movement of the 1950s.” She still peruses her old Playboys for sport and has a lovely collection of fishnets, which she wears under most of her work suits.
FMRI: NEO-PHRENOLOGY OR “WINDOW INTO THE MOVIES IN OUR MIND”? by Mark Lescroart
Search the popular press and you can find stories about lie detection and dream reading via brain scans, or about the “neural correlates” of addiction or romantic love. These stories have gotten so much attention that a cottage industry of de-bunkers has emerged to counter the more grandiose claims of the neuro-imagers. Nay-sayers point to bad statistics, unreliable effects and over-blown conclusions in the fMRI literature. So what should we believe? What do the appealing flickers of color over the brain pictures next to pop neuroscience articles mean, anyway? Why involve magnets at all, and what is “resonating”? I’ll run through how an fMRI scan is different from a picture or X-ray, and explain what functional magnetic resonance imaging can and cannot measure with as little hand-waving as possible. By the time I’m through, you’ll know whether you need to worry about the government eavesdropping on your thoughts, whether you can trust an fMRI scan to tell a lie from the truth in a court of law, and generally what to look out for when interpreting claims based on fMRI evidence.
Mark Lescroart is a postdoctoral researcher in the Gallant laboratory at UC Berkeley. He got his PhD in 2011, working with Irving Biederman at the University of Southern California. Mark also went to USC for undergrad, and graduated in 2002 with a B.S. in Psychobiology and a minor in Japanese. Mark studies the way our brains transform patterns of light on our retinas into useful information about the shape and structure of objects in the world. That can be spooky. He has also written popular science articles for Scientific American Mind, and received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Fellowship in 2012.
OVERTURE OF THE ARAB SPRING: MUSIC AND REVOLUTION(S) by Laith Ulaby
From Tunisian hip-hop to 8-bit Egyptian party music, Lebanese indie-rock, a coup d’état scheduled around concerts in Libya, and assassinated Syrian folk singers—music can give us a unique insight into the lives and experiences of the people in the Arab world. This has proved especially true as the events of the 2011 January 25th protest unfolded in Egypt and thousands of people filled Tahrir Square to voice political dissent. Amid the turmoil many of the country’s biggest celebrities came out in support of the regime and denounced the revolution. The backlash against Egyptian pop stars resulted not only in a few high-profile TMZ worthy meltdowns, but the upending of the region’s music industry. The new terrain of the post-revolution landscape has also created opportunities for exciting new voices to emerge. This talk will look at the ways in which music has been intertwined with the events that have swept the region, before, during, and after the Arab Spring.
Laith Ulaby has a PhD in ethnomusicology and has conducted over 3 years of fieldwork in the Middle East. He enjoys explaining what he does and where he has been to the Department of Homeland Security when he returns home. Ulaby has also worked as a musician in Los Angeles contributing music to TV shows and documentary films. He currently lives in Oakland and works as an ethnographer.
Memorial Day brings us the next installment of Nerd Nite East Bay. First, Kate Poirier will teach you just enough topology to secure your bike. Then, we’ll hear new talk from NNSF alumni. Bioengineer Terry Johnson will discuss how we build new DNA from scratch and why and drawer of cute things Megan Elizabeth Carlsen will talk about color theory.
DJ Citizen Zain will keep you dancing while Rebecca and Rick will remind you to return to your seats. Be there and be square!
Monday 5/27
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
The New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakland
(less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART)
$8
All Ages
Tickets
FB event
g+ event
THE POINCARÉ CONJECTURE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOCK MY BIKE by Kate Poirier
At the beginning of the 20th century, Henri Poincaré, a French mathematician, stated a conjecture that would stump the mathematics world for a hundred years. At the beginning of the 21st century, Grigori Perelman, a Russian mathematician, announced a proof of Poincaré’s conjecture. Around the SAME TIME, Kate Poirier, a young mathematics student in Toronto, Canada, had her bike stolen. Coincidence? Perhaps. In this talk, we examine the statement of the conjecture, its history, and what, if anything, its proof has to do with bike theft. It’s a story of math, and love, and bikes…but mostly math. No mathematical expertise will be required, but some experience locking your bike may come in handy. We’ll make broad, uninformed, and likely wildly inaccurate claims about the shape of the universe, so any actual physics you know may count against you.
Kate Poirier got her start as a flaky art student in Toronto. She later learned that mathematicians can also spend all day drawing pictures, and they don’t even have to be any good at it to be taken seriously! She got her Ph.D. in math at the City University of New York and is currently a visiting assistant professor in the math department at UC Berkeley. She has four bikes as well as one cat, whose name is Batman.
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY: BEATING THE CELL AT ITS OWN GAME by Terry Johnson
Ten thousand years ago, give or take, humanity first attempted the deliberate use of microbes to create a particular product. That product was beer; joy and civilization soon followed. Today, synthetic biologists aim to produce biofuels, medicines, and commodity chemicals using wee little beasties, and to control wee little beastie behavior in ever more complex ways. To do this, we need to develop new ways to work with DNA, both physically and in the abstract.
Terry D. Johnson has a master’s degree in chemical engineering from MIT and is currently teaching bioengineering at UC Berkeley. He hopes that by doing so, he will be giving students the tools that they will need to repair him as he gets older. He teaches courses in a wide range of subjects, displaying a versatility that has prevented him from achieving any actual expertise. He is an international genetically engineered machine (iGEM) advisor and co-author of How to Defeat Your Own Clone (and other tips for surviving the biotech revolution).
DRUNK ON COLOR: FROM PIGMENT TO PIXELS by Megan Elizabeth Carlsen
Cows being fed mango leaves to make Indian yellow from their pee. Insects boiled in ammonia to manufacture Carmine red for lipstick. Burnt human bones used to create the darkest black for Rembrandt’s portraits. Our quest to produce the perception of color is filled with fables and facts. Let’s look back to a time when artists’ paint was packaged in small chunks of pig bladders instead of a nifty little tube. Have certain colors have been lost forever in our progress? Though time may have claimed some hues existence, what new colors have been born out of chemicals and screens? How might these new hues change our lives? We’ll explore a history and future riddled with adventure and death, all in the name of creating something that doesn’t exactly exist.
Megan Elizabeth Carlsen is an illustrator living in San Francisco. Currently she works as a Game Artist at TinyCo, making cool stuff for you to play while you are on BART or pooping. Her passions include creating illustrations in traditional watercolor, creating characters that connect with people, and teaching others to do the same. You can check out her art at www.meganillustration.com.
Let’s get back to our ABCs this month. Justin Quimby opens our set with a talk on airships (and blimps and zeppelins and dirigibles and whatever other lighter-than-air aircraft you please). I’m sure that his mention of “metallurgy” in the abstract is not just to placate me. We’re pleased to have George Baker from T.Y. Lin, who is helping to replace the East Bay Bridge. The bridge has been in the news lately, and we’re really excited to hear about the engineering that is making it safe. Darin Jensen is rounding out our set with a talk on cartography. His recently kickstarted Food: An Atlas has made me hungry to learn more about maps and map making.
DJ Ion the Prize and Rick and Rebecca will host through the evening, as usual. Be there and be square!
Monday 4/29
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
The New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakland
(less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART)
$8
All Ages
Tickets
FB event
g+ event
ZEPPELINS: NOT JUST EXPLOSIONS AND MEMES by Justin Quimby
Mention Zeppelins in casual conversation and you’ll get 1) humor: an ‘oh the humanity’ joke 2) confusion: “I love that band” 3) panic: stammering and then the sound of footsteps rapidly walking away from you. But Zeppelins are so much more than grainy newsreel footage! The talk will cover how Zeppelins impacted the politics, metallurgy, energy policy, and military doctrine of Europe and America in the first half of the 20th century. You’ll learn the difference between a Zeppelin, airship, dirigible, and blimp. You’ll learn why you should hate children’s birthday parties and how airships influenced the Wright brothers and other early airplane developers. The historical threads will be pulled through to present day, with an explanation of the modern resurgence of the airship. Plus, there will be a lot of sweet pictures of Zeppelins.
Justin Quimby has been obsessed with Zeppelins and airships since he was a kid. When not reading about antiquated transportation technology, he has worked in the video game industry for over 15 years. Starting as a programmer and then transforming into a pointy-haired boss, his games include Glitch, Spore, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Asheron’s Call, and a bunch of mobile social html5 games you haven’t heard of. Most recently, Justin works as a consultant in the architectural software field.
CROSSING THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY DURING THE NEXT BIG EARTHQUAKE by George Baker
The seismically vulnerable East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is being replaced with a 2 ¼ mile long dual roadway structure. The Self Anchored Suspension portion of the Bay Bridge is a unique and iconic structure that required innovative solutions and departures from conventional design.
- How does one prepare an elegant structure to resist the strongest earthquake of the millennium?
- How does one think out of the box and tie everything together?
The methods and technologies developed to meet these challenges resulted in a world class structure, an architectural icon, and a seismic innovation all at one time in one of the most seismically challenging areas in the world.
The bridge will be open to traffic later this year. You will want to be on it during the next big earthquake.
George Baker is a bridge expert with thirty-two years of experience working with the design and rehabilitation of suspension bridges. His expertise encompasses the design of cable systems and steel orthotropic decks, as well as the seismic design and rehabilitation of suspension bridges in active seismic zones. George has played a major role since 1998 in the design and construction the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Works in his career include: The first cutting and reattaching of the main cable of a suspension bridge (Manhattan Bridge, NY); analysis for supporting artwork by Christo on the Brooklyn Bridge (NY); downhill racing carts and a treehouse.
CARTOGRAPHY IN A DIGITAL AGE, OR WHY YOUR MAP APP ISN’T ONE by Darin Jensen
In an age of digital everything, maps have become ubiquitous on smart phones, car dashboards and interactive mapping websites. Darin will explain how these are not really maps and discuss the map as a narrative device that fuses traditional cartography, poster art, info-graphics, and journalistic text blocking. He will also discuss the concept of guerrilla cartography–collaborative knowledge-caching as a new model for data-collection and content sourcing.
Darin Jensen is a high-school dropout and the Staff Cartographer and Continuing Lecturer of Geography at UC Berkeley. His recently published Food: An Atlas and Mission Possible: A Neighborhood Atlas.
We’re expanding our monthly show at The New Parkway! We’ll have our usual live show in theater 1 and will be streaming to the comfy retro lounge that is theater 2. So: roll out of bed and listen to Matt Walker tell you why you probably should catch a few more Zs later, hear Guy Branum explain how we had the audacity to think we could take over our neighbors to the north (eh?), and catch a shooting star with Chabot’s Jonathan Braidman.
Be there and be square with beats by DJ Citizen Zain and general grumblings from Rick and Rebecca!
Monday 3/25
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
The New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakland
(less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART)
$8
All Ages
Tickets
FB event
g+ event
THE SECRETS OF SLEEP by Matt Walker
We spend one third of our lives asleep, yet doctors and scientists still have no complete understanding as to why. It is one of the last great scientific mysteries. This talk will describe new discoveries suggesting that, far from being a time when the brain is dormant, sleep is a highly active process critical for a constellation of different functions. These include the importance of sleep for learning, memory and brain plasticity. Furthermore, a role for sleep in intelligently synthesizing new memories together will be examined, the result of which is next-day creative insights. Finally, a new role for sleep in regulating emotional brain networks will be discussed, optimally preparing us for next day social and psychological challenges. Perhaps if you don’t snooze, you lose.
Matthew Walker earned his PhD in neurophysiology from the Medical Research Council in London, UK, and subsequently became an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School in 2004. He is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of California Berkeley. He is the recipient of funding awards from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. In 2006 he became a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. His research examines the impact of sleep on human brain function in healthy and disease populations. He provided his non-verbal implied consent that Rick can add an amusing remark at the end of the bio to make you less likely to fall asleep if you’ve read this far.
THE TIME WE TRIED TO STEAL CANADA: THE WAR OF 1812 AND YOU by Guy Branum
We all know about America rescuing Europe in World War I, defeating the Nazis in World War II, and saving the Union in the Civil War, but no one ever talks about America’s FIRST war. No, not that one, America’s first war as an independent nation: The War of 1812. It’s the 200th anniversary of America’s stupidest war, and together we’ll re-trace the idiotic steps that led to us declaring war on the greatest power of the age, expecting to be welcomed by Canadians as liberators, and finally learning, once and for all, what the Canadian dream is: to not be American.
Guy Branum is a writer and comedian best known for his work on Chelsea Lately and Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. Guy is also the host of the informational comedy series “The Factuary” on Youtube. He has a JD from the University of Minnesota, but that won’t really play into things much.
THE SKY IS FALLING! CRAP FROM OUTER SPACE AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT by Jonathan Braidman
Two meteor impacts and a near miss asteroid; all in one weekend! What’s up with that, Space? Find out if these events are a coincidence or a cosmic warning shot from the universe. We’ll talk about how this crap gets to Earth and if that emergency kit has the tools you need to survive. There will be real meteorite samples for you to handle (no licking). It’s the closest thing to touching space!
Jonathan works at Chabot Space and Science Center (right here in the Oakland hills!) as a planetarium show developer, educator, and news liaison. He also runs the Challenger Learning Center, which is just about the closest thing to a space mission that the average non-astronaut can experience. When not searching the skies, Jonathan likes bicycling, making bagels, and any kind of space video game.
Grab a drink and join us for a journey from the very small and close to the very far and vast. Jessica Richman shares a bit about the microbial cells found in you that out number your own cells 10-to-1 (and may have genes that out number your own genes 100-to-1). Next, Will Fischer talks to us about modern manufacturing. Finally, we go to Mars with Guy Pyrzak. How do we drive something that might be 249 million miles away? S-L-O-W-L-Y.
Be there and be square with DJ Ion the Prize and your maniacal managers Rebecca Cohen and Rick Karnesky!
Monday 2/25
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
The New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakland
(less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART)
$8
All Ages
Tickets
FB event
g+ event
THERE ARE 100 TRILLION CELLS IN EACH OF OUR BODIES, BUT ONLY 10% OF THEM ARE HUMAN! by Jessica Richman
Who are the 90 percent? What are they doing there? And how do they affect our health? We’ll cover the latest scientific research on how our microbes correlate with obesity, anxiety, heart disease, tooth decay, and sinusitis, or can contribute to our health.
uBiome is a San Francisco-based citizen science project that offers personal microbiome genomics. Jessica Richman is finishing a PhD at Oxford in mathematical sociology and is working with Will Ludington and Zac Apte, two scientists at UCSF.
TAKE YOUR BITS FOR A SPIN: A LOOK AT CONVENTIONAL MACHINING, HOW STUFF IS MADE, AND THE FUTURE OF FABRICATION by Will Fischer
Conventional machining is the basis for all modern fabrication and it’s also really frickin’ cool. Come on an epic trek to take a look at a bit of its history, the physics at work, modern advances, and some advantages over other types of fabrication. We’ll cover milling, turning (lathing), threads, 3D printing, laser cutting, and more! I’d tap that!
Will Fischer started learning about fabrication at an early age by building magnificent Lego contraptions to be painfully stepped on by family members. As a cocksure adolescent, he taught himself to weld, worked summers as a professional Lego roboticist, and rebuilt a 1970 Chevelle. College was a blur of mechanical engineering, breaking and entering, Dungeons and Dragons, and a lot of welding and machining. After completing his Masters in Mechanical Engineering, Will moved from Texas to the Bay Area to take a job as the first employee of a local medical device startup. The daily rigors of being the only mechanical engineer had him regularly cursing, prototyping, and machining components, but after a few years of being the company’s only machinist, he can mill with the finest.
HOW TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO ROVER HAS GONE BEFORE by Guy Pyrzak
Operating a one-ton rover on the surface of Mars requires more than just a joystick and an experiment. With 10 science instruments, 17 cameras, a radioisotope thermoelectric generator and lasers, Curiosity is the largest and most complex rover NASA has sent to Mars. Combined with a 1 way light time of 4 to 20 minutes and a distributed international science and engineering team, it takes a lot of work to operate this mega-rover. The Mars Science Lab’s operations team has developed an organization and process that maximizes science return and safety of the spacecraft. These are the voyages of the rover Curiosity, its 2 year mission, to determine the habitability of Gale Crater, to understand the role of water, to study the climate and geology of Mars.
Guy is a Science Planner for the Curiosity Rover. When he isn’t exploring another planet, Guy is the lead designer for the ground software used to command the rover. In the past Guy has worked on software for the International Space Station, the Phoenix Polar Lander and the Mars Exploration Rovers. In his free time he watches Star Trek, BSG, Firefly and other sci-fi space TV shows on Netflix, you know, research.
2013 brings you even more Nerd Nite.
We kick off the year with a talk on collective behavior from Daniel Cohen of UC Berkeley/UCSF. Is it just me or are most swarms just creepy. Ants, bees, pirahnas? Ick. Geologist Andrew Pike shares how he is just as interested in scissors and paper as he is in rocks and Cal’s Lina Nilsson tells us about about “cool science and tech work for ‘global good.'”
And if you haven’t yet been back to The New Parkway Theater since our last night before they were officially opened, you should really check it out. They’ve dusted out the last few cobwebs, they’re showing programs on both screens and, most importantly, their kitchen is now up-and-running. You’ll be able to buy a tasty burger or some pizza along with that pitcher of beer for our show.
Be there and be square with DJ Ion the Prize and your humble hosts Rebecca Cohen and Rick Karnesky!
Monday 1/28
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
The New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakland
(less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART)
$8
All Ages
Tickets
FB event
g+ event
THAT’LL DO, PIG: ADVENTURES IN COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR FROM SHEEP TO CANCER by Daniel Cohen
Should the day come where our civilization is laid waste to by swarms of vengeful nanobots, killer bees, and ambulatory piranha, the secrets of the Swarm discussed in this talk, will give you a competitive advantage. On a less somber note, these same secrets happily pertain to everyday things like the herding of sheep, schooling of fish, swarming of ants, flocking of birds, and decisions taking place inside your body. ‘Collective behavior’, our theme, describes the surprising ability of large groups of simple critters to behave in very complicated ways. If all goes well, you will leave this talk with a nose for these phenomena in everyday life, possessing a secret of bird flocking, and having a better sense of how the trillions of cells inside you work together (most of the time).
Daniel Cohen is eyeing the finish line of a bioengineering PhD at UC Berkeley/UCSF. In addition to swarms and cells, his work touches on dinosaurs, medical devices, and medical devices for dinosaurs (awaiting testing).
GETTING THE UPPER HAND: HOW TO WIN AT ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS by Andrew Pike
Child’s play it’s not! Rock Paper Scissors, or RPS as it’s known among enthusiasts, has gained a cult following over the past decade. Fingersmiths from around the globe compete in local and international tournaments for a shot at thousands of dollars in prize money. Although each athlete comes equipped with all but three humble throws, only the best leave with blood on their hands. But is there truly a way to win at our beloved pastime? What is the strategy of champions? Join us as we delve into the complexity of this deceivingly simple game. We will examine common rookie mistakes and study the tightly-guarded secrets of the grandmasters. It’s every bit as elegant as the World Series of Poker, but with more booze!
Dr. Andrew Pike holds a PhD in Geology from the University of Pennsylvania. During graduate school, he was a regular contestant in a competitive Rock Paper Scissors league held in various pubs throughout Philadelphia, where he was known as “The Rock Doctor”. Currently a resident of Santa Cruz, he works as a hydrologist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Contrary to his name, he does not always throw Rock. Watch out!
NERDS VS. THE WORLD’S MOST WICKED PROBLEMS: A GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGE by Lina Nilsson
From the wheel to the iPhone, technology innovation has the power to fundamentally and rapidly transform the way we live our daily lives. In this talk, we’re going to explore a wickedly difficult problem: how we can create tech solutions to some of our most extreme global problems while also sticking to pricetags that make these solutions relevant to the 50% of the world’s people who live off of less than $2.50 per day. Nerds of the world, here is a call to use your powers for the good of the planet!
Lina is the Innovation Director at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, at UC Berkeley. Previously, has spent time at the lab bench, and has worked at a fishery in Norway and on a vineyard in Germany, so she can purify proteins, gut salmon and remove weeds at alarming speeds should the need arise. Lina is a dreamer and an engineer; she believes in the power of science to make the world a better place.
December holidays mean an early edition of Nerd Nite East Bay. And we mean early. We take Nerd Nite to the big screen at The New Parkway theater, a much beloved and anticipated brew-and-view in Oakland. We’re invading before their official opening. They’ll provide the awesome screen, comfy seats, and sell you a bit of beer and, if the tastings we’ve been part of are any indication, ridiculously awesome grub. We’ll bring the learning: with KQED QUEST discussing black holes, one of the New Parkway’s experts talking about audio/visual systems, and a talk about NASA’s balloon-based measurements of space weather. Also: the nerdiest animated music video you will ever see. Be there and be square!
So: please join DJ Citizen Zain and hosts Ian Davis and Rick Karnesky as we break-in the (brand) New Parkway theater!
Thursday 12/13
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
The New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakland
(less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART)
$8
All Ages
FB event
g+ event
Black holes have been the stuff of science fiction since their discovery in the late sixties. But now a new, nimble NASA telescope is using its powerful x-ray vision to hunt for these abundant yet invisible, massive space oddities.
Alex Filippenko is the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences at Cal. His accomplishments, documented in about 700 research papers, have been recognized by several major prizes, and he is one of the world’s most highly cited astronomers. An avid tennis player, hiker, and skier, he enjoys world travel and is addicted to observing total solar eclipses (11 so far).
Bill Craig is an instrument manager at the Space Sciences Lab at UC Berkeley and has worked on numerous space missions with acronyms like including XMM-Newton, CHIPS, and GLAST as well as a number of balloon-borne instruments. He works on NuSTAR, which will open a new window on the Universe by being the first satellite to focus high-energy X-rays into sharp images.
Lauren Sommer is a science producer for KQED radio. Her work has appeared on Marketplace, Living on Earth, and NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
AUDIOVISUAL SYSTEMS: HELPING PEOPLE GET LAID SINCE 1926 by Cliff Tune
Dinner and a movie – the classic date! We’ll take a look at the history of audiovisual systems, geek-out on video display and audio transducer technology, and delve into modern cinema specifications to help understand why audiovisual system technology touches us so profoundly. Be warned! You may be up all night rearranging your living room.
The product of a family of musicians and engineers, Cliff started playing music at age six. Starstruck by the knobs, buttons and blinky lights on an audio mixing console, he dived headlong into live sound engineering in his teens. Nowadays, after years of backstage doughnut trays and burned coffee, Cliff has designed and built audiovisual systems for theatres, recording studios, airports, hotels, courthouses, churches, funeral homes, cars, boats and airplanes. When not trying to save the world from mediocre audio, Cliff spends his time running his recording studio “The Playground”, producing records, playing drums, and perfecting his BBQ pork shoulder recipe under an ever-gorgeous Oakland sky.
KILLER ELECTRONS FROM SPACE: A MICRO-BREWED MISSION by Alexa Halford
Ever since the invention of the telegraph, we have seen that space weather can affect our technology. However, we’ve only been in space for about 50 years studying the weather up there and lately it’s been getting stormy. We are approaching solar maximum, the time period when we expect to see more solar storms, more northern lights, and possibly more space weather impacts on our technology. With the successful launch of the Van Allen Probes and upcoming launch date of it’s much smaller (but in my biased opinion way cooler) sister mission BARREL, we hope to gain a better understanding of these space weather events and possibly one day be able to predict the next attack from killer electrons.
Alexa Halford is a prime example of what happens when you go to college in MN to take up space. She became a space physicist, and because she got her PhD in Oz, some times says x, y, zed instead of x, y, zee. When not having way too animated discussions about plasma waves, she teaches figure skating… which also happens to have a lot of physics involved in it. Physics is every where man, it’s just so cool!
Rise from your Thanksgiving food coma with three nerdy lectures (and light-producing chemistry demonstrations) in a bar. Be there and be square!
With DJ Ion the Prize and hosts Ian Davis and Rick Karnesky, who know now that AT-ATs aren’t tanks. The fiveten burger truck will have food for sale outside.
Tuesday 11/27
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph
(less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART)
$8
21+
FB event
g+ event
FRUITVALE FOLLIES: 6 GENERATIONS OF TINKERING AND FAILED EXPERIMENTS IN OAKLAND by Emma Bassein
The anecdotal and biased story of technology in Oakland told through the first hand accounts of 6 generations of one family living in the east bay. From exploding radio vacuum tubes to shop fires, the dependents of the Cohen-Bray family have managed to injure themselves, but preserve their historic house in the Fruitvale neighborhood and are here to tell the tale.
Emma has absolutely no qualifications as a historian, except that her family has lived in the East Bay for 6 generations. As the child of two aged hippies, she spent her youth roaming the bay area protesting everything in existence, and then went off to MIT and Princeton to study Environmental Engineering. She now works as an engineer for an energy efficiency company in San Francisco.
A PHYSICIST GOES LOOKING FOR A TUMOR CELL by Lydia Sohn
It is a strange and circuitous route from studying superconductivity to searching for Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs). CTCs are cancer cells that have “blebbed” off a primary tumor and travel through the blood stream. They are thought to cause metastases in the body, and their numbers (anywhere from 1-10 cells in 10 mL of patient blood) indicates prognosis and how well a patient is responding to treatment. Currently, there are no true methods to isolate and enumerate CTCs in blood. Biology meets solid-state electronics to help find a solution.
Lydia Sohn, a low-temperature physicist, is now a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley. When not searching out tumor cells, she combs the academic lite rature, looking for duplicated plots.
LET’S MAKE LIGHT OF THE SITUATION by Mitch Anstey
LEDs, glow-in-the-dark t-shirts, and detergents that “make your whites whiter” are all possible thanks to a property called luminescence. It comes in many shapes and sizes, but it’s all the same general principle: turn energy into light! Humanity has quickly taken this property, carved it up, marketed it, and given it cool names like triboluminescence, cathodoluminescence, and sonoluminescence. Now it’s time to take luminescence back to the streets! The streets of Oakland! Come see some examples of this incredible property, and learn all you ever wanted to know about making light!
Mitch Anstey is a chemist by day and a sleeping chemist by night. He made esoteric metal chemistry his specialty at UC Berkeley. Thankfully, someone found that useful in the job market, and he now makes metals emit light for the good of the nation at Sandia National Labs. You’ll find him loving on the Easy Bay just about any day of the week, and he’s glad Nerd Nite has jumped over to the Sunny Side of the Bay.