Mathematics Club
2024-02-01 16:00 - 17:00, 2024-02-15 16:00 - 17:00, 2024-02-29 16:00 - 17:00, 2024-03-07 16:00 - 17:00, 2024-03-14 16:00 - 17:00, 2024-03-21 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Maths Club

Ethics and AI - What Do You Think?
2024-02-03 10:00 - 11:00 | The Lighthouse Café
Unfortunately, professor Giuseppe Longo had to postpone his presentation “Ethics and Artificial Intelligence” for today to a later date.
Since many people have already prepared for the topic, Phil will lead a discussion at the lighthouse about it.
Phil Youngblood is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Information Systems and Cyber Security and has been working with computers and AI for over 50 years.

Classical Concert
2024-02-04 07:00 - 08:00, 2024-02-11 07:00 - 08:00, 2024-02-18 07:00 - 08:00, 2024-02-25 07:00 - 08:00, 2024-03-03 07:00 - 08:00, 2024-03-10 07:00 - 08:00, 2024-03-17 07:00 - 08:00, 2024-03-24 07:00 - 08:00 | The Lighthouse Café

Mathematics Club
2024-02-08 16:00 - 17:00 | Maths Club
PITCH FOR MATHS CLUB for 8.February 2024
Do you sometimes get strange images running around in your head?
Images composed of circles, ovals, rectangles and triangles?
Has anyone ever told you that your pivot point is a bit off center?
If the answer to any of the above is yes, then you too might be ECCENTRIC.

I was talking to an old friend from St. Louis, Missouri, Chuck Berry,
and I asked him
“Chuck, do you ever consider coming to MATHS CLUB of SCIENCE CIRCLE?”
and Chuck said these words to me:
“Sometimes I do, and then again I think I don’t.
Sometimes I do, then again I think I don’t.
Sometime I will and then again I think I won’t.”
So I looked at my watch and it was 4 PST
Come to Thursday Maths Club ’cause you can believe what you see!”
Then Chuck asked me,
“Tagline, I hear a POINT has NO PARTS and NO MAGNITUDE?
But you say two points determine a line,
and that line is full of points with no height and no width,
but it can be as long as you want to make it?
So how does that line with its length full of points come from things
that have no parts and no magnitude?
Sounds like you got something from nothing coming to something
– I always heard that something from nothing’s still nothing!”
I told him,
“Chuck, you come on down to Maths Club up there in the Maths dojo
and we’ll be REELIN’ AND ROCKIN’ in Virtual space,
discussing this for an hour just thinking about it!
We got it that two points determine a long-enough line,
and three points determine a plane all spread out to the horizon
with you standing there at some point of your own choosing.
This plane is is long and wide but has NO THICKNESS
and still you do not fall through to the other side!
So we ask, WHAT DOES A POINT and a LINE DETERMINE?
Some answers depend on the ECCENTRICITY!
Now just look at yourself! You know about ECCENTRICITY just by how you are living your life!
So early this morning when I came out of this dream, I was left with a simple idea I personally had never
before seen,
and that was this:
Let the initial M represent a SPACE CURVE from a CONIC SECTION which we will name Molly.
The LIMIT of Molly as ECCENTRICITY e APPROACHES ZERO is a CIRCLE!
Lim M = CIRCLE
e → 0

So come on up to the Maths Dojo at 4 PDT on Thursday and step into our circle and we’ll take it to the
limit, and find out what for!

“Place” and Its Pedagogical Expression in Social Virtual Worlds
2024-02-10 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
“Place” and Its Pedagogical Expression in Social Virtual Worlds
By Meryl McBride (aka Merrill Johnson, Ph.D., Professor of Geography, Colorado State University)
Every avatar in SL functions in space and each occupies places in that space. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the meaning of “place” in social virtual worlds from a geographer’s perspective. We will apply common definitions of place to the virtual-world context, asking the fundamental question: Is place still a place in social virtual worlds? Finally, we will look at the promise of social virtual worlds for building “pedagogical places” that offer new and different approaches to teaching. Find that favorite “place” by the fire and join us!

Darwin Day: Frances Arnold
2024-02-12 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
Heroes of Evolution Darwin Day Talk: Frances Arnold — When Engineering Meets Evolution

Long gone are the days of dustry textbooks filled with examples of evolution seeking to capture the hows and whys of species came to be on the planet. Modern biology is progressing forward MAKING evolution happen. Genes and whole organisms are made to be evolved in a flask or test tube and modern computational methods can both guide and explain the complexity that is happening.
The primary revolutionary in this change was the scientist Frances Arnold. In her seminal work she adapted an enzyme that worked well in an aqueous environment to work well in an organic solvent by creating mutations, picking the best working ones, and mutating those, and repeating the process. This is a technique called directed evolution and has found its way into engineering in many sectors from agriculture, pharmaceuticals, environmental remediation, and chemical synthesis just to name a few.
For this seminal contribution she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018.
Come to this Darwin Day talk in which we celebrate the professional achievements of Frances Arnold and have an introduction to the world of directed evolution and synthetic biology.
By Dr. Stephen L. Gasior

Solar Eclipses - Myths and Predictions
2024-02-17 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
Long ago, before we knew the true nature of our Sun and Moon, there were many myths about what they were, who controlled them, and what they meant in our lives. The most auspicious, or dreaded, event was when the Moon seemed to blot out the Sun on rare occasions.
While it was clear to even the most casual observer that the Sun and Moon and other ‘planets’ (meaning wanderers) moved across the sky, those who observed their motions more carefully discovered short- and long-term periodicities or ‘harmonies’ that could be used to predict when they passed in front of each other. This information was often kept as a tightly guarded secret because being able to predict heavenly events was a source of power.
Join me at the Science Circle Amphitheater to learn how people in different cultures viewed solar eclipses and how you too can have the ‘power’ to predict the next solar eclipses by learning what the ancients discovered.
Presentation by Phil Youngblood, Ph.D

Moon Base Meeting
2024-02-19 10:00 - 11:00, 2024-02-26 10:00 - 11:00, 2024-03-04 10:00 - 11:00, 2024-03-11 10:00 - 11:00, 2024-03-18 10:00 - 11:00 | Moon base

Mathematics Club
2024-02-22 16:00 - 17:00 | Auditorium

Mass Immigration, part 2
2024-02-24 10:00 - 11:00 | The Lighthouse Café
We continue our conversation about mass immigration. Why is it unsustainable? What are possible solutions?

Do not try this at home!
2024-03-02 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
Join us for a multimedia livestream into Second Life of Chemistry demonstrations and explanations from Mike Shaw’s RL laboratory.
Presentation by Dr. Mike Shaw

Ethics & Artificial Intelligence
2024-03-09 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
The recent hype about Artificial Intelligence tools which are becoming ubiquitous in all sorts of applications, hides under the carpet many problems which are far from finding a proper answer from the society and the governmental bodies who should regulate them. In the talk I shall shortly describe some of the most relevant implications and risks which need to be urgently addressed.
By Professor Giuseppe Longo

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education
2024-03-16 10:00 - 11:00 | VWBPE
VWBPE-website
QUADRIVIUM 3: Essential Digital Skills for Living and Learning in the Age of Fake News and Unfettered Speech

Facilitator: Linda Sautereau/Peggy Daniels-Lee
Assistant: Wisdomseeker
Transcriptionist: TBD
With the polarization of ideas posted in social media and personal blogs, it has become more difficult to use the Internet for teaching and learning. The International Society for Technology in Education has for years proposed dedicated curricula that focus on the digital citizen: skills that include being safe online, securing your digital footprint, and how to critically evaluate the content we read online. This discussion will focus on the skills and practical strategies that both students and educators can employ to engage in positive and productive discourse that moves beyond what is fake and what is polarizing.
VWBPE Program

Who is Emmy Noether & Why Have You Never Heard of Her?
2024-03-23 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
WHO IS EMMY NOETHER & WHY HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF HER?
Trail Guide: Tagline – a.k.a. Robert Hendrix

Did you know that Saturday March 23rd, 2024 is World Maths Day? A tradition since 2007, millions of students from 240 countries and territories around the world are participating.
Quite appropriately, that date also happens to be the birthday of one of the greatest mathematicians in human history, Amalie Emmy Noether, PhD (pronounced NOY-ter). Furthermore, Dr. Noether is widely considered to be the number one, greatest female mathematician in the history of mathematics.
So why do you not know about her already?
Emmy Noether was the “go to” person for other scientific geniuses for her depth of understanding of INVARIANCE, and is known for having “put it all together” with her deep, encompassing concepts in modern ABSTRACT ALGEBRA, particularly with regard to Noether Rings and Modules, as well as
NON-COMMUTATIVE ALGEBRAS, in which ORDER MATTERS IN MULTIPLICATION OF PAIRS OF ELEMENTS, i.e.,
A x C ≠ C x A
Aside from her seminal, creative work in the foundations of modern mathematics, Dr. Noether also developed FUNDAMENTAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO FIRST and SECOND NOETHER THEOREMS of MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS in which she shared her deep insights into the natural universe by proving the equivalence of CONSERVATION LAWS with inherent SYMMETRY in Space and / or Time. This has provided a powerful tool to physics right up to quantum dynamics and current work on SUPERSYMMETRY.
We will discuss these intellectual achievements by a general, heuristic approach. And we will explore her life to better understand where such extraordinarily creative humans come from and how they are sometimes capable of pervasive impacts on the world, even in the worst of circumstances.
Finally, we will discuss the first great woman ever of mathematical history, Hypatia. As one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria, Hypatia studied and taught mathematics, astronomy, and
Neoplatonist philosophy. Hypatia is credited with the invention of the Astrolabe as an astronomical instrument.
In 380 CE, Christianity was proclaimed the official state religion of the Roman Empire. Though Hypatia was very popular among the people of Alexandria, she was regarded as a heretical pagan by zealots of the early church. In March 415 CE, a mob of Christian monks under direction of Bishop Cyrus of Alexandria attacked Hypatia, dragged her into a church and brutally tortured and murdered her.

Hypatia was the last of the Alexandria school of philosophy. Her death was an ominous setback for progress in civilization. Subsequently, the decaying western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, and the stagnation of Dark Ages began in Europe.
WORLD MATHS DAY Saturday 23. March 2024
