Science Circle

Mathematics Club
2023-11-16 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-09 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-02 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-10-26 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-10-19 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-10-12 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-10-05 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Maths Club

Classical Concert
2023-11-12 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-11-05 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-10-29 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-10-22 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-10-15 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-10-08 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-10-01 07:00 - 08:00 | The Lighthouse Café

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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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

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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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

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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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

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

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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 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!

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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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

World Teachers Day
2023-10-07 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
World Teachers Day
In honor of World teachers day, we invite you to discuss with us your favorite teachers, who changed your life, inspired, or showed you that education can be fun?

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Artificial Intelligence and the Metaverse
2023-10-07 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
“Artificial Intelligence and the Metaverse”
by Phil Youngblood, PhD
AI is very much in the news these days. We have been talking about in the Science Circle. Same thing with the Metaverse. I was at the VWEC Expert Series last Friday and the topic was the Metaverse.

Why so much interest in these computer technologies? What really is artificial intelligence and the metaverse?
I think it is time to look at these perfectly logical ‘next steps’ in computer technology from a historical and scientific perspective.
Here are some of the topics that I think will be helpful to review or explore:
—Why did we invent and use computers? What can they do and what are they incapable of doing?
—What is the ‘hype cycle’ (coined by Gartner Inc.) and how does it pertain to this subject?
—Why do think of some of ways that computers operate as being intelligent?
—How have telecommunication technologies developed over the last two centuries?
—Is the metaverse here already? What would it take to make the concept of the metaverse real?
—What is the difference between Web3 and Web 3.0 with regards to the metaverse?
—What is the relationship between artificial intelligence and the metaverse?

Come join us and learn about these fascinating emerging technologies while sharing what you know and think and have heard about them!

World Tourism Day
2023-09-30 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
World Tourism Day
WORLD TOURISM DAAAY! Come and discuss with us, what countries have you been to, what did you do there, did you experience culture shock, what are your recommendations to fellow globe trotters?

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XYZWs of Sex Determination
2023-09-30 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
In mammals, birds and some reptiles, sex is determined by sex-specific chromosomes. In mammals, the sex-determining chromosomes are called X and Y, and only males have both. In birds and reptiles, these chromosomes are called Z and W, and only females have both. How are these related to one another and to the rest of the genome? Do the X chromosomes of all mammals have similar genes? Do all birds have similar Z chromosomes? Are the Z chromosomes of birds and reptiles genetically similar? How do all of these chromosome participate in sex determination? Come and find out some of what we do and don’t know about these interesting questions.
By Dr. Mary Anne Clark

Mathematics Club
2023-09-28 16:00 - 17:00 | Maths Club
For this 4PM Thursday 28.September 2023 meeting of Maths Club of Science Circle, we will take a deep dive into “The Painter’s Dilemma”, based on Gabriel’s Horn (La Trompette de Gabriel) which has FINITE VOLUME but INFINITE SURFACE AREA, as studied by Evangelista Torricelli in 1641. The relationship of this unbounded structure to the harmonic series and the concept of volume of rotation underlying Gabriel’s Horn will be discussed. Finally, we will consider the existence of 3-dimensional structures that are finite and bounded in volume, yet of infinite surface area. One of these can be constructed using fractal geometry, and the other I developed while on holiday.
