Science Circle

Classical Concert
2023-10-08 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-10-15 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-10-22 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-10-29 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-11-05 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-11-12 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-11-19 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-11-26 07:00 - 08:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Lighthouse Café

Mathematics Club
2023-10-12 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-10-19 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-10-26 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-02 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-09 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-16 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-30 16:00 - 17:00 | Maths Club

Beragons Bistro: Science Crackpots
2023-10-14 10:00 - 11:00 | The Lighthouse Café
Many science communicators must cope with push back from people who don’t know what they are talking about but who think they are experts. Additionally, this phenomenon is often seen with YouTube commenters and the like who claim they know why physics is all wrong and how they fixed the standard model. It is occasionally also seen with prominent scientists who go off the rails into crackpottery. What is a crackpot? We will look at some examples and try to identify what makes a person a crackpot, why they are a problem for science communications, and strategies for coping.
A discussion led by Matt Burr

Mental Health Day
2023-10-14 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
Mental Health Day
Today we will talk about our own battles with mental health, feel free to share your experiences and how you got through them.

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Observe the Moon Week
2023-10-21 06:00 - 2023-10-28 00:00 | The Science Circle region
OBSERVE THE MOON WEEK (21-28 October 2023)
Do you remember how The Science Circle ( https://www.sciencecircle.org/ ) celebrated International Observe the Moon Night ( https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/ ) last year? We had presentations about the Moon and our relationship with it throughout history, live images from Kass’s telescope in Switzerland, a planetarium show, and a scheduled tour of the International Space Museum.
This year we decided to celebrate in two ways. One is a presentation for Science Circle EAST participants about this event (see https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/observe-the-moon-night/ for details). The other is a display in Second Life on Science Circle Island (see https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/72/129/30 ) explaining the phenomena of solar and lunar eclipses, during which the Earth’s Moon plays a pivotal part.
>> This is a week-long event, open to visitors from Saturday, 21 October, through Saturday, 28 October 2023.
The eclipse display is on a platform on the water between the Amphitheater where SC WEST presentations are held at 10am SLT Saturday and the underwater site where SC EAST holds its events at 9pm SLT Saturdays. You can walk to it on bridges from either the Moon Base Group site or the peninsula where other exhibits on SC Island are located.
Educational posters in the display provide information about International Observe the Moon Night, The Science Circle non-profit organization, the Moon Base Group (our year-long celebration of our 15th Anniversary), and an explanation about eclipses, including the following:
—What is an eclipse? They are fairly common events in our solar system, if you consider all events, not only those seen from Earth.
—What is a lunar or solar eclipse? This is usually what we think of when we hear ‘eclipse’. How do they occur?
—Total, annular, and partial eclipses. What you see from a location on Earth depends on where you are in the Moon’s shadow. How does that work?
—Total vs. annular eclipses. The Moon’s orbit around the Earth is elliptical, which affects how big the Moon appears in the sky compared with the Sun. Why is that?
—Why are solar and lunar eclipses so rare? The tilt of the Moon’s orbit around Earth compared with Earth’s orbit around the Sun plays a major factor in creating eclipses seen from Earth. Why is that?
—Why is a total solar eclipse so rare? A total eclipse requires another condition on top of seeing an eclipse. What is that? Why are we fortunate on Earth to witness such as event?
—Will there always be total eclipses? The answer to that question may surprise you! Come visit the eclipse display to learn what it is!

Artificial Intelligence in Medical Image Diagnosis
2023-10-21 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
In 2021, I had the privilege of delivering a presentation on computer vision at the Science Circle. During the presentation, I explored the dominant role of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in image-oriented tasks like classification, segmentation, and analysis. I also delved into practical applications within histopathology, showcasing how AI aids in diagnosing diseases using microscopic tissue images. The emergence of the attention mechanism, the foundation of technologies including ChatGPT, has profoundly impacted computer vision. This rapid introduction of novel techniques has opened new opportunities in the field of medical image diagnosis with AI. In this presentation, I will delve into these exciting developments, including data fusion across different imaging modalities, image captioning and diagnostic explainability.
A presentation by Karthik Prathaban

Observe the Moon Night
2023-10-21 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
Observe the Moon Night

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Hope on the Horizon
2023-10-28 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
Hope on the Horizon

TOPIC: As worldwide disasters and destruction may confound us in a sea of despair, a sea-wise scan of the horizon spots some islands of hope ahead. Along with the epochal shifts of today, we all also share common bonds that tie us to the unlimited possibilities in technologies, economics, education, and shared abundance. Let’s look beyond today’s disorienting headlines into the solutions already at hand — and yet ahead in decades to come — as experts in media, technology, academia, science, business, and society shed rays of hope.

BIO: Dr. Steven R. Van Hook has designed and taught communication and culture classes for universities in the USA and abroad for 25 years, including one of the first hybrid virtual courses for UCSB in 2000. He is President of Educare Research, a nonprofit program advancing international education and technologies. He’s been a newspaper columnist, radio reporter, TV news anchor, and podcast host. He was a television producer and bureau chief in Moscow, USSR from 1989-91; and for three years directed public education media programs in Ukraine through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He served as a trainer and officer for organizations including VISTA, Head Start, and the US Coast Guard. He has a PhD specializing in transcultural learning, and is published in scholarly journals including UNESCO’s Prospects, and by SAGE. He has presented on virtual world education to administrators and groups at UCLA, UCSB, VWBPE, VWEC, The Science Circle, and elsewhere. Research website
A presentation by Dr. Steven Van Hook

United Nations day
2023-10-28 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
United Nations day
Today’s discussion is about the United Nations, what are your feelings regarding it, do you think it’s a good/bad idea? How can it be improved?

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The New Climate We Live With
2023-11-04 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
The New Climate We Live With
Over the past several decades we have had predictions of global warming and climate change due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The underlying physics isn’t that difficult to understand. Greenhouse gases make the atmosphere more opaque to infrared radiation, resulting in the Earth radiating energy to space from a higher altitude in the troposphere, where it is colder. A colder temperature means less energy radiated to space, so more energy is absorbed by the Earth than it sheds to space.
Now, observations are catching up with the predictions: an increase in summer heat waves, more droughts or floods, wildfires and smoke from wildfires, thinning of west Antarctic ice sheets from warmer water beneath them, and stronger hurricanes that develop intensity in just 24 hours. June, July, August, and September all set records in global average temperature, even without a full El Niño. Underground aquifers across the United States are being irreversibly depleted. At the same time, The Economist reports an increasing global populist backlash against climate-change mitigation policies. In this talk, I will present more specifics.
A presentation by Dr. Keith Eric Grant

Anti-Bullying Week
2023-11-04 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
Anti-Bullying Week
In observation of anti-bullying week we invite you to come and share your experiences on the subject, were you bullied, were you a bully yourself?

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BB: Intellectual Property
2023-11-11 10:00 - 11:00 | The Lighthouse Café
The law recognizes rights in property created from the human mind. This is different from other types of property, such as real property (land) and personal property (things). Property from the mind is called intellectual property. It’s not necessarily intellectual, though. More often it is a product of human creativity and imagination. Matt Burr (Beragon Betts) is an attorney in the U.S. with over 30 years of experience in the practice of this area of law. Please join us to learn what rights the law recognizes and how to protect and enforce your rights.
Discussion led by Matt Burr

Celebrating Men
2023-11-11 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
Celebrating Men
We will be observing international men’s day by inviting you to join us and talk about men who inspire you and how they inspire you, whether they be loved ones, strangers, celebrities, or fictional!

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Human Migration – What it can tell us about our past and our future
2023-11-18 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
Human Migration – What it can tell us about our past and our future
Every migration tells a story. The migrations of people is the story of us, individually and collectively. Whether it was by choice or by force, migration is how we all have come to live where we life. It’s our global history and local present. In our rapidly changing world, many millions of people will migrate within our lifetimes. Maybe some of them will be us. Major migrations have been and will continue to be driven by environmental and societal (political and economic) events that disrupt people’s lives. The geography of where we find ourselves to be provides both challenges and opportunities for the future we can make.
Join Delia Lake and Meryl McBride for an exploration of past migrations and some future prospects. We’ll set the context for this very timely discussion. Bring your own stories, your thoughts, your concerns to this timely, important conversation.

World Television Day
2023-11-18 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
World Television Day
“Good evening… and welcome, to television” -Bruce Gyngell, launch of Television on Australia 1956.
In 1926 John Logie Baird transmitted a picture from one room to another. In 1927 he successfully sent a moving image along telephone wires from London to Glasgow, and the following year he achieved the first trans-atlantic television broadcast.
In honor of television day we will discuss the unthinkable effect television has had on generations of humans, the good, and the bad.
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A Brief History of Genetic Modification in Agriculture
2023-11-25 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
A Brief History of Genetic Modification in Agriculture
At some point, humans believed they could mold and manipulate their natural food supplies to suit their needs better. This domestication of plants changed the course of human history by helping enable brain development as well as structuring populations into larger cities. Many early civilizations thrived and some fell based on their agricultural output as most growth conditions heavily relied on the climate. Modification of plants generally relied on a crude form of artificial selection of picking each season’s best plants and replanting them. In modern times, the scale of food production to meet population needs has also required a dramatic change to our breeding to select for large-scale output as well as even shipping. In the late 20th century, a new method of plant modification via molecular biology dramatically changed how we can modify plants. And it came as no surprise that major yield gains have come about in those crops amenable to that modification. Although, along with that technology came those resistant to its usage. Modern computational power has also changed how breeding works. But, at the current pinnacle of plant biotech, we now have the ability to directly manipulate the genetic code of most plants via site-specific DNA cutters like CRISPR.
This presentation gives a historical overview of these changes to modern day.
Presentation by Stephen L. Gasior PhD

Do not try this at home!
2023-11-25 21:00 - 22:00 | Auditorium
Do not try this at home!
Join us for a multimedia livestream into Second Life of Chemistry demonstrations and explanations from Mike Shaw’s RL laboratory.

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