Podcast appearances and mentions of lawrence berkeley

Few organizations use as wide a range of technology as the nation's national laboratories. To learn about AI and cloud innovations at Lawrence Berkeley, Federal News Network's Tom Temin talks with the lab's science IT advisor and cloud manager, Jeff D'Ambrogia, during Google Cloud Next '25.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Cuốn sách là câu chuyện người thực việc thực (tác giả cũng là nhân vật chính) kể về cuộc săn đuổi hacker bất đắc dĩ của một nhà khoa học chuyển tay ngang trở thành nhà quản lý hệ thống mạng máy tính ở Phòng Thí nghiệm Lawrence Berkeley, California, Mỹ.Từ một mức chênh lệch 75 xu trong hệ thống kế toán của phòng thí nghiệm, Clifford Stoll nghi ngờ có người đang sử dụng trái phép hệ thống của mình. Với quyết tâm tìm cho ra sự thật, Stoll bắt tay vào chuyến phiêu lưu một mình cùng gã hacker bí ẩn. Với những công cụ theo dõi thô sơ tự chế do không nhận được sự hỗ trợ của bất cứ ai – dẫu đã năm lần bảy lượt gõ cửa FBI, CIA và vô số các cơ quan an ninh, quân sự khác, Stoll đã rong ruổi theo gã hacker qua những mạng lưới quân sự nhạy cảm, các căn cứ quân sự, vệ tinh xuyên Đại Tây Dương, Nhật, và Đức. Cuối cùng, cũng bằng một chiến lược tự chế, anh đã bắt được một hacker quốc tế với động cơ là tiền, cocaine, và những âm mưu tình báo.Câu chuyện ly kỳ đến phút chót này đã trở thành nguồn cảm hứng cho nhiều chương trình truyền hình sau này ở Mỹ, và Stoll còn được nhận bằng khen của CIA, đồng thời trở thành một chuyên gia – có phần bất đắc dĩ – được nhiều người tìm kiếm để xin tư vấn về an ninh mạng.--Về Fonos:Fonos là ứng dụng sách nói có bản quyền. Trên ứng dụng Fonos, bạn có thể nghe định dạng sách nói của những cuốn sách nổi tiếng nhất từ các tác giả trong nước và quốc tế. Ngoài ra, bạn được sử dụng miễn phí nội dung Premium khi đăng ký trở thành Hội viên của Fonos: Tóm tắt sách, Ebook, Thiền định, Truyện ngủ, Nhạc chủ đề, Sách nói miễn phí cho Hội viên.--Tải ứng dụng Fonos tại: https://fonos.app.link/tai-fonosTìm hiểu về Fonos: https://fonos.vn/Theo dõi Facebook Fonos: https://www.facebook.com/fonosvietnam/Theo dõi Instagram Fonos: https://www.instagram.com/fonosvietnam/Đọc các bài viết thú vị về sách, tác giả sách, những thông tin hữu ích để phát triển bản thân: http://blog.fonos.vn/

An article from the Lawrence Berkeley national library, based on the publication in Nature Communications "The biogeographic differentiation of algal microbiomes in the upper ocean from pole to pole".

Our guest on this episode of Construction Disruption is Dr. Jordan Clark from the Ohio State University where he has a majority appointment in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geodetic Engineering and a minority appointment in the  Construction Systems Management program.  He is also a core faculty of the  Sustainability Institute at Ohio State, an interdisciplinary collaboration aimed at answering the challenges of a quickly changing world; and has PhD advising status in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Environmental Sciences Graduate Program.Dr. Clark shares with us details on things he has worked on in the past with Lawrence Berkeley and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and how those things are impact construction today. He also discusses some of the key areas of changes he sees coming up.Dr. Clark can be contacted at clark.1217@osu.edu.Construction Disruption is sponsored and produced by Isaiah Industries, manufacturer of specialty metal roofing systems and other building materials. You can learn more about our products at https://isaiahindustries.com

The glut of plastics is one of the world’s most challenging environmental problems.  The average American generates over 200 pounds of plastic waste each year and most of that ends up in landfills.  Researchers around the globe continue to work on potential solutions to the plastic waste problem. Two years ago, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley […]

Tom is metal worker and machinist currently working at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab with scientists and physicists developing and building machines to use in scientific research. Tom also has a YouTube channel Oxtoolco and is the author of several books about metal working. 0:00 intro1:33 The machinist community2:15 Machinist education6:22 Tom's background11:07 Clorox12:20 Thrasher magazine15:04 A great opportunity19:37 Lawrence Berkeley lab23:00 Physics & machinery27:53 Tom becomes an author32:15 Tom's YouTube channel36:52 Where to find Tom YouTube: OxToolCoInstagram: oxtoolsBooks:https://amzn.to/3nl61G9 https://amzn.to/35fFZhm https://amzn.to/3njyjRz

Harnessing the power of supercomputing and state of the art electronic structure methods, the Materials Project provides open web-based access to computed information on known and predicted materials as well as powerful analysis tools to inspire and design novel materials. In this episode we talk with Patrick Huck, High Energy Physicist turned Computer Systems Engineer and Developer. Patrick helps maintain the project and he joins Nic and I to explain how the project works, how it's used and how the project leverages MongoDB. Get more information at https://materialsproject.org

How will Artificial Intelligence Change the Smart Buildings Industry? Dollar Driven Decision-Makers want Data into Insights, Insights into Action, and Action into Revenue. Will AI Deliver? CTN 305 Interviews: Show Notes Eric Stromquist: 00:00:00 Hi. Welcome to Control Talk Now, you’re Smart. Buildings video cast and podcast for the weekend in March 3rd., 2019 . We give you all the Smart Building and HVAC Controls News of the Week. and That’s right. Folks marches here. Episode 305 I am Eric Stromquist. , I am joined as usual by your co host and mine The Man, The Myth, the legend the one, the only Kenny Smyers the control man from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Kenny. you’ve been out sunbathing today, right? Ken Smyers: 00:00:26 No, I have not been sounds good. We got another two to four inches of snow again last night. And, February beat us up pretty bad, but we’re looking forward to the break in the weather. Eric Stromquist: 00:00:52 well, listen dude, we don’t have time to talk about that. We don’t have time to talk about much of anything. You know why we got two fabulous guests lined up. So, let’s get right to that. But before we do check out the post on controlled trends this week a big one, our friend Aaron Gorka, another next generation innovation podcasts dropped on Friday,, so be sure to check that out. Alot of good stuff on the on that which we’ll come to. Well you just have to go to the site to read it at controltrends.com Kenny with that, let’s introduce our first guest Ken Smyers: 00:01:27 Our next guest is the one and only Ken Sinclair, owner editor of automated buildings. And this month we’ve got something really interesting because I think Ken is going to help us differentiate between artificial intelligence and automated intelligence. Welcome to the show. Ken Sinclair. Ken Sinclair: 00:01:45 Welcome Ken! Thank you very much. ControllTrends. Always a pleasure to be here I appreciate it. Eric Stromquist: 00:01:51 I guess we should just start with you have to be intelligent before any of that’s relevant. Ken Sinclair: 00:01:59 Actually. Actually you’re quite right on, I’m one of the tweets. They actually picked that up and uh, they just pointed out that the, the, the intelligent part is us. We keep forgetting that we, I think we tried to imitate the artificial piece of artificial intelligence rather than the intelligent part. Uh, and it’s hard. It’s harder to be the intelligence. Ken Smyers: 00:02:20 No, I guess just going to say Ken, you know, it’s another great addition. Uh, just, uh, keep a common and is an amazing benefit to our industry that you’re, you’re able to grab all this new stuff coming out and start to make sense of it because when I read, whereas reading some of your, your, uh, entry, sir, in your first, uh, your editorial, when will we ever see a artificial or automated intelligence come into being? I mean, we close. I mean like when you didn’t have, are like, say Scown foundry and I had mentioned, you know, you know, you got, uh, somebody collecting information data. So we wrote a program, so you’re autonomize or automate the collection data, sends it somewhere Ken Smyers: 00:03:00 where it’s being processed by another basically program. So we took the humans out of the elements is going from, you know, machine information, but that back to computer machine information and it completes it. In your opinion, artificial intelligence or what does that sort of striving for is that we maybe try and redefine that a little better once it’s done and once it works and once it’s successful, I believe what it is is automated intelligence, right? And what we’ve done is we’ve learned how, and we probably did that through augmented intelligence and we may have used a artificial intelligence from computers to create that. But in the final analysis, it’s when it’s done, it’s actually a couple of lines of code in this machine and a couple of lines of code and that machine pushing information back and forth. So really all we’ve done is does that look any different than the DDC? Ken Sinclair: 00:03:59 Looper you know, it’s just, it’s just artificial or pardon me, automated intelligence. I keep getting my words mixed up here. The other thing is, uh, took a look at Wikipedia unwell. They define artificial intelligence and it’s totally clear that they’re confused as well. One of their, one of their best definitions is that they like is that artificial intelligence is what hasn’t been done. And I kind of liked that definition too, is every once in a while we hear somebody thinking about something that’s never been done and they actually believe that they can do it. And uh, once they do it, I think it changes. I think it is no longer artificial. I think it’s either automated and it’s either augmented, uh, it’s uh, you Eric Stromquist: 00:04:49 Ken, you’re going to go down in the history books for this cause Descartes said, I think therefore I am. And now I think you’ve just rephrase that to I think therefore I am artificial. Ken Sinclair: 00:05:00 Well actually there’s a good one. Whoever, whoever chose the acronym for for this, this broad method of having machines out think us and they called it artificial, you know, and it’s like wow, artificial has never been a positive word. I don’t think. I don’t think it’s a, it’s an adjective that we, you know, you look real artificial. I think it’s optimistic thinking on our part. But you’ve told us a story right before we turned the recorder on about the, the two machines and the camera. Will you tell our audience that story? Cause I think that is very interesting now. Okay. What kind of goes along like this is a, as we start to automate intelligence, we, we have two machines. The first machine, uh, is, uh, is uh, a ring. Somebody’s doorbell and it, it sees the person walking up and re prerecorded it. And when they push the button and it sends that prerecording to another machine than the other machine determines whether it’s going to allow that person in. Ken Sinclair: 00:06:02 And there’s all this data going back and forth. But when the artificial intelligence machines, uh, they start to, so the decisions are no longer made by people. The two machines, they get together and they say, these people are so dumb. Why did they bother generating a picture and sending the file when in fact, all we really need is the data. Because we don’t look at, we don’t know what a picture looks like, getting way, we just know what the data looks like. So we see that face. There’s a Pi data pattern. When we see that data pattern, that’s what we let the person in. So all of a sudden this gets really scary because they can do stuff faster, quicker and better than us. Uh, so that’s sort of getting into what I think artificial intelligence is, is when the machines start mocking us. What’s, I think they may be doing a bit now. Eric Stromquist: 00:06:51 Well, but Ken, I mean this is what Ilan Musk and some others have really gotten up in arms about and concerned about and I, and he’s a hell of a lot smarter than I am, but okay, so let’s take that same conversation between the two machines and instead of, they’re so dumb. They got it. You know, why do we don’t need a picture too? They’re so dumb. Why do we need them? So let’s just, we got him in the building over there was talk to our friend, the building automation system and building x, and we’ll tell building automation says to lock all the doors and turn the heat on and override the bypass on the boiler. So blows up. That’s one where we could get rid of, right? I mean, this is Ken Smyers: 00:07:25 Guys, you know, there’s several, there’s several books on this and I’ll tell you what, I’m reading one right now and it’s by a Daniel Sora as it is exactly that. It’s the Damon. So the guy passes away and as he leaves behind a, a giant Damon that runs and competes against the top minds in the world where it’s based on a game. So your concept, can I, I’m digging it and here’s why. I looked up their artificial intelligence and it basically just as anything that’s not human. So you have human intelligence that’s, that’s an eight to us that’s coming out of great minds like yours and Eric’s and, and some of mine. But the, Eric Stromquist: 00:08:01 these are such thing as a dumb ass machine, right? Ken Smyers: 00:08:05 When anything is not human is considered to be non human or artificial. So, but I think what we’re seeing, um, and, and again, I think we move into it because of exactly what you just said there. The data going on so fast with the recognition a week, last week, our big thrust, uh, on controlled trans was we did a shot, a recognition. So you had to ballistic sensors and things that could move so much faster. It makes so quick notifications. They can, human errors couldn’t differentiate between shot a gun or I’m sorry, a bullet being fired versus a backfire from a vehicle where the odd, the sensor could distinguish it immediately threw the ballistics through the, um, the sound acoustics and, and the, um, the flash she gives and notify something in three seconds, which takes a human that they’re not sure what they heard. They don’t know what to do, they’re stymied or whatever. Ken Smyers: 00:08:56 So that disbenefit, uh, is, is exactly, I think too, it’s, it’s an artificially gained intelligence where we did, we don’t have the capabilities in Nate Dar, so I’ll, we, we turn it over to our, our algorithms that are powered by Ip conductivities and Zip. We, did we get the benefit of this artificially, uh, you know, provided intelligence that is, or isn’t the bad guy or is, or is it the good guy? Whatever. So anyhow, great, great, great subject. Eric Stromquist: 00:09:26 No, no, no but, but, but I just want to get one step further. Kenny and Kevin Hart had a chance to listen to last week’s episode, but you know, Roger, even I can Honeywell come up with this sort of, you know, using those centers and then incorporating them so that if something does happen, you know, the first responders know exactly where, where to go and it can save a lot of lives. But Kenny, you know, the next step of this is they’re not going to send first responders. You can just send a drone in there. A drone is going to go into school and track those guys down or are bad people down just like that. So again, it’s very ironic that a one level we get very, very much, much safer and everything has a lot more convenient. But on another level, we’re really open ourselves up to some huge vulnerabilities here. Eric Stromquist: 00:10:11 If Elon Musk and some of these other folks are right, it’s okay. I’m not worried about gas cause I’m already, you know, Elon Musk has got this deal. He’s already started this company where they got the chips for the brains. And I’ve already, I’m on the, I’m on the waiting list for that and if it gets too bad with the machines, I got a ticket tomorrow so I’ll be out of here. But maybe I’ll go back and spinning off of Ken’s comment is that his definition of artificial is anything that doesn’t involve us. And I think, uh, I’m not sure about you, but I’m not sure I want to talk about anything that doesn’t involve us. So that’s what happened back to automated intelligence and action camp. But the other component has to be the self learning aspect of it too, right? I mean that has to filter in whether it’s automated or harder official that he can begin to learn right. With the cell phone in Algorithms. That’s gotta be a piece of it. Ken Sinclair: 00:11:02 Thanks Ken. But I’m not sure that, I don’t see that as a, that’s again, as an automated intelligence is basically, it’s just learning, learning how to better automate cause another perception, the way you look at that. Anyway, it’s early days. Um, the, uh, I don’t know if you caught the end of one of my articles there and then I talked about awful made it buildings and uh, uh, we were, we went through eight, we went through a period, it’s actually a 2002 article that I included a linking to. And uh, what happened with, uh, this was as we hit the web. So we went through the DDS, we went through awful, made it building several times. We went through awful, made it buildings. In the early days of DDC we had all these DDC systems that didn’t really work, but there so exciting that we kept on pursuing the, we actually figured out how to make those things work. And then we hit the web and we started getting a whole bunch of stuff as a web controlling MREs, the DDC controller. We have those. And I don’t see this as any different. We’re exactly in the same spot, except we’ve got this intelligence automation that’s Kinda falling from the sky on us. And, uh, we’re, we’re into another period of awful made it buildings until we get this straightened out. Eric Stromquist: 00:12:21 Hmm. What do you see some of the possible headwinds? I mean in terms of the problems, when you say awful, awful, made it, I mean obviously we went from pneumatics to DDC, there was a learning curve and things sorta had to, to get worked out. Do you see anything different with on the automated Ken Sinclair: 00:12:38 controls now it’s going to go faster if there’s going to be more people involved in it because of the iot industry. And ultimately I think, I think, but the problem is, is the uh, uh, Ben Ben, back to what Ken said, is it artificial is defined as things that don’t involve us. And I think if somebody, if we turn loose a machine, it’s not going to run the building the way we want, whether it, whether it attacks us or, uh, even if it doesn’t attack this as even tries to run it to the best of it’s knowledge, it’s going to need some guidance and what we need to learn. So what I see the, uh, intelligent automation phase era, that’s the year I think we’re in right now is we need to learn more about what we can do with this technology. How much should we can machine learn, uh, because we got to learn how to walk before we can allow AI to run our buildings. Ken Smyers: 00:13:42 Well, I, I agree with you and again, it’s always fun to take things to a, you know, an immediate, uh, you know, the word, the farthest point from, from reality, you know, or likelihood. But, um, in the, um, in your march edition, you also, we have another, a great article and great background to some really heady thought, but actually it gives us the, the nuts and bolts of it from a sit. How young thing again and, and, and how, you know, she takes the example of autonomous vehicle and how it would, it does, it reduces the risk of life. It reduces, you know, allows, it frees humans to do more things. Uh, you know, that the car can do that. It alleviates you from doing work. It’s, you know, it’s like a, the amazing thing the locomotive did versus the horse and buggy thing. So she has a great article in there. Um, what, what, what did she bring to you as far as the, you know, her insight using the autonomous vehicle? A analogy to our buildings. I mean, it’s a great article, but I thought, you know, what was your synopsis of that? Ken Sinclair: 00:14:42 I summarize, summarized it in a, in a tweet this morning and the fact that we were pushing back and forth some stuff and it, uh, I said that, uh, you know, the having your driverless vehicles running into our buildings I think is really good stuff because this whole atonomous side of the automated vehicle has whole bunch of social issues. It has a whole bunch of quick control things you were talking about. There’s no way that you know, that some of this stuff can be controlled so quick, but, and that’s of course, the second part of our theme that we were talking a theme is the automated intelligence with autonomous interactions. I don’t know that we’ve really thought of of it in two pieces like that. Here’s the intelligence of what it is we’re going to do. And then as soon as we do it, there’s a reaction, let’s put in another control loop to control the reaction. Ken Sinclair: 00:15:38 And I think if we look at the auto industry, they’ve got their spending scabs of bucks on this and they’re moving through. So I think we need to kind of try and understand better what they’re doing. Ironically enough for articles this month or right on our nose talking about, uh, what they’re doing in Stanford there. And, uh, the young girl on energy prediction is amazing. It picks up on last month and fills right in and she’s particularly well spoken and she’s speaks to it. I think what we also have to, you know, get used to, as people are going to call it artificial intelligence or call it augmented intelligence or automated intelligence and, uh, we’re going to be getting used to the fact that maybe it’s just best we call it AI and then substitute our own, uh, uh, okay. Okay. Different definition of that connotative definition. Yeah, that’s, that’s, yeah, I think you’re right. Yeah. Well, okay. Got It. Cool. Eric Stromquist: 00:16:41 Let me hop in real quick, if you don’t mind, Kenny, before we get to the next article, I think one of your buddies is responsible for all these annoying phone calls I’m getting from these chat bots. Oh those damn things are talkative as hell. But uh, but speak a bit if you would, because it seems like we might be going from a Gui graphical user interface, you s C U I, which you’ve been talking about for a while. But now I see it in black and white and I connecting the dots are going inadvertently can you’re responsible for all these damn calls. I’m getting Ken Sinclair: 00:17:19 no doubt, no doubt. My only defense is as they all, they all sit that they all come with an autonomous interaction. And the autonomous interaction is as if you don’t ever answer the phone or say hello. They won’t, they don’t do anything. So if you actually can out think them. So if you, uh, when it comes, you get one of these chat bot calls. If you don’t say anything and nobody says anything for about a half minute or something, you can just hang up cause it’s no person. So anyway, uh, the, yeah, the, you see, what do we call it? User interface, text voice. The more, so we’re seeing this, I mean it’s running rampant now with the speakers and all kinds of devices that actually have, uh, these, Ken Sinclair: 00:18:08 the Hay googles and the Alexa’s built right into them. And I think we’re going to see more and more of that. And now what I think the, the, the conversational user interfaces is that now devices, we’ll start talking like that and we can start using whatsapp, WeChat, uh, ims soldier and in some of these things. And actually, uh, the very quick segue is that we could actually, uh, you know, text to turn the lights on. The big advantage of that is it keeps a record of all of the commands you can, you can, you can say to your wife, you turned the heat up. And she said, no, she didn’t. And she says, it shows that Santa Time you put it up five degrees. So how that conversation goes, that damn machine is obviously wrong. Ken, you’re not going to win that argument or call my lawyer. Actually, I was going to bring that up. I was going to bring that up early when, when Ken was talking about how, how carefree these machines, good thinking. I think that was the biggest single thing is that the machines can move without lawyers. So that’s the thing that mobilizes us all. Well there then, you know what, there might be a silver lining after all I’m ever my friend. Eric Stromquist: 00:19:27 Ken do you have any more question for Ken? Ken Smyers: 00:19:30 No, no, no. I just, again, that does so much to talk about every time we were bringing something up. So again, it’s a collection of jewels I think, you know, because uh, you know, going over the march articles and how they come together, like you say, it’s like a phenomenon. You started at subject and all of a sudden something provides, you know, it’s like willing it into being like you get this critical mass and all of a sudden people were also thinking that way and just that part from Sydney. Uh, the article from us sit on a jump. The, that contributions inside that article or immense because it talks about, you know, the, you know, the energy, the automatic provisioning of, of, of, you know, in other words, if we had a limited amount of energy on the grid and we had sustained the most important critical buildings and whatever, uh, you know, we’re going to one day rely on that to be done, you know, through uh, I just watched a presentation on, on a new drive coming from Siemens and this drive is already smart grid ready. Ken Smyers: 00:20:29 In other words, it’s ready to go to the next level, uh, and not go into the network would go right to the cloud and put VFDs on, on an application, uh, and it can alleviate a btu meters because the, the VFD can calculate the flow and see how many BTUs you’re using saving of Dagon. Holy Moly. This is, this is another thing that you were talking about right before we have our session here. I listened to this and I’m thinking this is getting really, really interesting because if you could put this artificial intelligence or augmented intelligence or automated intelligence to work, we are going to become a greener planet quicker. We’re going to be able to use this to make our take the best steps forward. But you know, I think would you said true that if somebody doesn’t answer the phone, guess what? Nothing happens. No, no artificial or augmented intelligence occurs because people don’t start using this technology in buildings. We’re not getting anything done. Eric Stromquist: 00:21:31 Well yeah, but you’re saying it’s reactive now, meaning you have to initiate this step, but Ken Smyers: 00:21:36 pretty easy. Did you have to make this step, you have to take the investment, you have to invest, you have to invest in technology, Eric Stromquist: 00:21:40 right? No, you have to invest in technologies. But would your, your point, which is a very valid one. We like your, Ken’s point about the following. If you just don’t say anything, right, it doesn’t, it doesn’t activate, you know, the program. Yeah. But, and I think that’s kind of a very calm, you know, good thought. But then eventually it will be where they’ll just be proactive. They’ll figure it out, west cans and clear again. I’m just going to start damn talking cause I know he’s not going to answer first and then, uh, then we’ll start sending pictures or something to you. That’d be crazy. But Ken Sinclair: 00:22:13 I think this might be the, the edge of the automated automated buildings and automated interfaces and stuff that we need to work out. And I think that’s why we have to be involved in this too, as I, yeah, I’m not sure that artificial intelligence is going to be able to figure that out and come up with any better solution. Uh, what it would say is it’s a solution we don’t want to hear is don’t ever talk to a human. They’re just, they’re just impossible. Only talk to machines. You know? It’s funny you say that because, Eric Stromquist: 00:22:45 you know, I was thinking while you were talking about what’s the definition of artificial intelligence, you know, Kenny had a good one. You had a good one. And I was going to say that, well, uh, you’d have to have an original thought to not be artificial intelligence, but then I think about it, I’m not sure. Most humans have many original thoughts either. You know, there’s some of us who do, but it’s a, it really is fascinating. And then what I’m really interested, forget the buildings. I am serious about this, putting the brain, the chip and the brain. I mean, have an augmented intelligence on board connected to your mind. And Musk has been working on that. So it’s literally, you know, you’re not gonna have to go to school and, and what are you just going to buy the, uh, the chip for American history and you’ll know everything you need to know about it? Ken Sinclair: 00:23:30 Actually, uh, I think, uh, as, I was really pleased with Theresa’s article this month, and, uh, I think it came partly from her going up and spending some time with the folks at bedrock and in Detroit and watching what they’re doing up there. She, she came out and she’s picked up on this theme and she calls it the community of practice in building automation. Uh, you can actually even drop the building automation because it’s basically, I hadn’t seen it so clearly as she depicts it, that we all belong to a community of practice and both of your supply companies are, they are communities of practice and basically that’s what you’re selling. Then that’s your, you’re really your value and automated buildings is a community of practice. People who actually believe in somewhat a common belief of, you know, of how we might automate buildings. We also have things like backnet, which is a community of practice. Ken Sinclair: 00:24:27 We have Niagra and basically what’s happening is they’re becoming the building blocks of our industry. And this is how we build stuff is uh, when you find a community of practice that you haven’t, haven’t been exposed to, you guys are all excited and then you figure out how can we make that community of practice part of our community of practice and that increases your value. That’s a lot of what I, I think we all do is, is basically share this information. The advantage of attaching yourself to a community of practice is it comes complete with resources. People, people who understand that and we need to keep creating those and, and basically distributing that information. So anyway, I think that’s going to be our next direction. That’ll not, that won’t be the theme for, um, April because the theme for April is going to be cybersecurity. Speaker 4: 00:25:25 But halfway through it I’m going to write an article on the community of practice and just kind of tie all of these communities together. And if you just let your mind role and think how important, how important are all those things to your business, your everyday business. I mean, you could say you could, you could almost go down your drawers there, your La Aisles, and you say this belongs in the back net. This is a Nagra. This is a Johnson. This is a, you know, all of them are communities of practice that you’re doing it. What’s your big claim to fame? One of your big claims to fame is that you crossover many lines of a communities of practice. Ken Smyers: 00:26:04 Hmm. Not sure when I read that I had this word Papa, they kept coming up with that was, or your collaboratorium. In other words, you know, the, the thing that I think I’ve witnessed or we’ve all witnessed, but in particular is how quickly certain things get done when there’s that collaboration or does community of practice where you overlay all these experts and all this, all these, you know, leading, uh, you know, uh, pioneers because we’re talking about three things right there that we’re are all articles, project haystack, biennial, haystack connects conferences coming up from San Diego, mid May, uh, Co controls con con a skull, Scott Cochran. He’s got a great spring Ken Smyers: 00:26:44 conference coming up where the, uh, you know, Cochran is going to share a great deal of information, um, you know, regarding new technologies and things that the, uh, you know, it’s very important. So yeah, I did that community practice. It makes total sense what you’re saying would tree says, but um, can you see it? I’ve shared it that she went back to this Nydia and got approval to reproduce this graphic. But if you Kinda, if you kind of just read all the little, uh, you know, things that are written around there, that’s what you do every day, right? Listening, challenging buildings, sharing everything that’s on that thing is basically what your companies do to pull together your community, give and get support. Yup. Yup. So, uh, you know, just it’s, it’s kind of, I dunno, we used to, you know how you have to filter because there’s so much out there. Uh, the malty general generational engagement. So there’s our young guns. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s kind of amazing that, that this is kind of a map of who we are and where we came from. Um, and I think we need to work more on this map so we can better understand what I might be talking about. Cause I probably don’t understand what automated intelligence might be. I think what we have to do is kind of maybe do an intelligence inventory. Eric Stromquist: 00:28:14 You know, Ken, listen, listen, you’re missing the whole point here. Look, I’ll have my machine, my machine call, uterine machine and they a lunch and figure all this stuff out. We’re not going to have to communicate anymore. We just have the machines. We’ll have the community of practice. That’s, that’s where you’re going with this, right? Ken Sinclair: 00:28:30 Uh, well I dunno, look, look at, look at all the touchy feely things on the, on the docket there. Yeah. That’s one thing that machines aren’t y’all like, you know, like you’re saying caring, healing and listening or new superpowers. Yeah. Eric Stromquist: 00:28:46 I’m going to tell you some, most of it you have to ask yourself a question is empathy, which is what all those things are. Is that a learned skill? Cause I told you this on a show before when I was in southern California about two years ago, the debate on the radio, because they just come out with the sex Bot and they were teaching them artificial intelligence that can be more empathetic and the debate on the radio as a view if you had sex with the sex bot where you cheating and so it’s, you know, it’s, I maybe you think about it. I think empathy is learned. We teach our children how to be empathetic. I think I’m at least, I think that we could debate that. Whether that’s an innate human quality or dress up. We just learn when we get culturized by growing up by our parents and going to school. It is the question, then we’ll be able to program it into the machines and there’ll be more empathetic than we are. Ken Smyers: 00:29:36 Well, to Ken’s point, I think that’s both. I think that’s what you can’t put inside the artificial intelligence or machines is you can’t put Ken Smyers: 00:29:42 that inate stuff. And you know, you have different psychologists saying different things, but we all come from the same well of consciousness. You know, we pass through a w what’s his name, your different Freud. Another colleague came through with young where we all with this guy, Joe Campbell travels the world, hundred 50 countries and how 150 different countries come with the same basic belief system. You know, about how you got here and where you’re going afterwards, you know. But to your point, I think, um, the, uh, subjects that we’re talking about is, is that this thing almost looks like a 1970. Remember how we did the we generation iGeneration we generation or the me Generation Innovation is almost looks like our whole concepts or taken a different direction where it used to be individuals, there were the major players in the industry and they dictated science stuff and now we’re seeing all this technology come in and it’s just dumping all these new possibilities. Ken Smyers: 00:30:41 And so this community of practice to me is an extension of of basically the thing you did with the collaboratorium. I’ve never seen so many people be willing to share so much what used to be like a sensitive information or proprietary information, but they want to get something done in order for them to get their agenda done quicker. They collaborate with somebody that’s also doing something better than they are and instead of each trying to create your own wheel, they’re putting together a, you know, this, this, this community and it’s an amazing thing because Hastac is it? We’re going to talk about haystack some at some point and, and we just have to celebrate what they did because that’s what they did. They did this, this amazing linkage of, of a lot of people that couldn’t really define how they were going to get there. Somebody laid down a map and then people contributed to it. And next thing you know, you’ve got a yellow brick road. Eric Stromquist: 00:31:29 Well listen, I want to, Ken, I want to follow up, uh, on your last episode, uh, El or semi last, last month’s edition because you know what, you had become quite a cult hero amongst the young young guns in our industry for, for numerous reasons. But the big one is a, and I’m going to ask you to expand on this is, you know, when you become, when you’re disrupted disruption. And so one of the questions we got from our community has asked, can you know, talk about the process of disrupting disruption. I mean, how would I do that? Because you know, you’ve seriously the young, I mean we were bringing in it kind of like a hero to these folks. Now again, how do we disrupt disruption? Well, I think it’s interesting once you learn how to grow younger, which is a, is a skill that takes a bit and you basically, Ken Sinclair: 00:32:27 yeah, Ken Sinclair: 00:32:27 bring these guys on his trusted advisors and start to understand and try to get inside their heads are at least closer to it. You understand this whole what the significance Ken Sinclair: 00:32:40 of being a digital native is. I mean, we’re looking at this from such a wrong way. You know, all our, we keep going off on these tangents. They don’t even think about that. They grew up with all this stuff falling on them and they understand they had been, don’t have the fear of the machine that we do because they understand the machine, they understand data that give it the data. We take the data away, you know, and uh, I think they just see it in a completely different light. So for them disrupting disruption, although they do it to themselves as well because they’re there a way ahead on the front. Some of the stuff they’re disrupting is totally amazing. I barely understand. But our disruption is easy. It’s easy to disrupt us and to disrupt the disruption is, is uh, is easy as well because our industry is slow to move. Ken Sinclair: 00:33:32 And, uh, we’re actually starting to see some of this stuff coming. We’re actually seeing, uh, you know, wifi sensors. We’re seeing the wire disappearing in our buildings and more, more devices, more it devices starting to appear. So that’s, that’s very disruptive. But it inside of it comes a gazillion opportunities and we’re getting where we had a, like a very small slice of the industry, things that were involving, now we’re involving integrator piece of the industry. So yeah, I don’t know. That answer wasn’t very good answer. I was kinda hoping you’d say something like, we know we got to kill the machines or something like that. You know, that’s what I was going for, Matt. Ken Smyers: 00:34:20 Well, I’ll tell you that again. You got an amazing job to kill the kids first day. Cause that’s the, they’re, they’re, they’re becoming closer and closer to these machines and they’d rather talk to the machines and us. I saw somebody put a, uh, I don’t know where it was, linkedin or somewhere, but it had all these kids in this beautiful museum in front of one of the most classic art and they’re all single child was looking up at the art, uh, and they were on their phones, iPhones or smart devices or whatever. And it just really caught it. Oh know to be in the middle of it, you know, our world thinking that we had, we had put these things on the wall to the epitomize the highlights of humankind and our loftiest, you know, artists and these kids just totally not interested. And so we’ll accept it. It’s funny cause sometimes the guys looking at it and what they’ll tell you is that’s not really the original. The original is in Spain, in the small town, this is a copy. Ken Sinclair: 00:35:21 We’re always checking facts. You assume that sometimes they’re, you know, they’re doing something different, but sometimes they’re just, they’re just way ahead of you. And lucky. Now, I’ll tell you what I learned my lesson and I, when we were talking about an old timer, walks into the office, a Johnson controls had a uh, a, a couple years ago, Eric and I were at it and they explained the mistake. They’d invested so much money in recruiting the top a young guns that could possibly get their hands on. Uh, and, and then they were losing them after the second year and it all boiled down to their boss and, and the one classic example they gave through where they had the outbrief thing and the people had to, could, could hear what they were being accused of or the bosses criticism from the young person’s perspective. And here it was that the guy who thought they were all screwing around on their smartphones and they were actually doing work and research because the companies that their, their, their, their computer system was so slow and lagging and they had so many security still at that they couldn’t get the information they needed to complete the project that was due. Ken Smyers: 00:36:20 So they were actually doing double time using their own device to get some information that the computers that they were given to is their work. Computers couldn’t perform and be, he looked outside, he said, everybody’s playing with their phones or playing games. There was an assumption that they were screwing off and here they were very, you know, professionally you’re trying to get the Dang job done. And they were being, you know, uh, there were being hindered by, anyhow, we, you’ve got a couple of good articles, this thing by Marc p talk and it’s got a picture and it says, you know, the built environment has been changing drastically, but what, what does mark say he says is two nights, 2019 the year of truth for the built environment. And he has all these questions. He has, well, two nights, 2019 be the truth that our dialogue senators around the proven technologies. So what’d you think about that? And it’s like the 10 commandments of, of the built space. Ken Smyers: 00:37:14 Yeah, that’s good. I’ve been, I’ve included in my article a link to it. Uh, it’s super mark. Mark always is very succinct and being able to kind of pull out around, uh, and it’s okay. So maybe this is the truth of artificial intelligence that I’m talking about is that I’m saying maybe, maybe we don’t want to call it that. Maybe we want to call it art or a automated intelligence. And I don’t know, sometimes by just calling something different, you start to discussions and I think that’s what I really want to do is start the discussion. We can, I think you’ve got an add on. Your name needs to be automated buildings and intelligence. How’s that? That’s right. Well the other problem is if I didn’t call it automated intelligence yeah then that’d be obsolete. I’d have to, I’d have to, how I got it. There was two choices. I either had to change automated buildings.to artificial buildings.com and I don’t think I would’ve sold with it after 20 years. Automated building Sterns to artificial buildings. So we had to, had to go to automated intelligence. I like that. I do automated versus our, I don’t like artificial either. Not to think about it cause you know, it always meant something unnecessarily sinister but not necessarily Ken Smyers: 00:38:31 as, as as you know, as firing as it could be. Artificial means that’s made up and, and, and not genuine. And so maybe we will help the mate, the next group of solution providers change it from artificial intelligence to automated intelligence. Eric Stromquist: 00:38:46 So Ken, uh, listen to about march of March issue is out automatedbuildings.com, be sure to check the I can, would you be able to hang around a bit longer and talk with us with our next guest?. Okay. Ken. So where are you going to be traveling this spring where it looks like we might be crossing paths a little bit. Okay. Well we’re off to Detroit and early May to control con we was just before this conference call, I was talking with Scott and the bedrock, a Joe from bedrock and uh, exciting stuff happening there. Actually. He, he just come back from Korea and some going to be some amazing stuff. I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you, but don’t, don’t, don’t do that. We’re going to be there too. So it’s going to, okay, I told you today I’d have to kill you. But Scott was Scott. Speaker 4: 00:39:32 It was Scott in Korea or a the gift. Actually, Scott Scott was a fighting icebergs and a theory coming out of the lake or something like that. He was driving in his car, asked for video, and he took his phone and held it up against the windshield and told me I was driving. So, so listen to, you can still go there. Are there links both on automated buildings.com site and control trends, uh, hey, be get a chance to go to this conference is fantastic. And uh, the next big conference had coming up is haystack and our next guest is going to be able to talk a bit about that, Kenny. So how about introducing him? Ken Smyers: 00:40:07 I’d love to, in fact, um, I’d like to introduce Ruairi Barnwell. He is a group principal at d l r and the DLR group, uh, was recently recognized that the controlled trends awards because they won the project haystack award. And that’s a very, very exciting thing. And, uh, we’re very happy to welcome to the show, Rory Barnwell. Welcome to show Roy everyone. Good to see you again, buddy. Ruairi Barwell: 00:40:32 Hey guys, how’s it going? Great to be here. Eric Stromquist: 00:40:34 Good to see you too. You were on episode 222 and uh, I’ll always remember that it was great, lively conversation and, uh, could you give a sort of a refresher and an update on what’s going on with DLR group? Ruairi Barwell: 00:40:48 Sure. Well, thanks again guys. Really excited to be back on again. Um, I guess just to recap on DLR group who we are and what we do. And so we’re a large design firm. Um, you know, 1200 people, 30 offices around the, around the globe, um, architects and engineers, um, you know, our core American sectors or education, workplace justice and civic, uh, hospitality. We’re actually the largest education design firm in the world. So that leads us down some pretty interesting paths. Um, so yeah, that’s kind of a, we’re busy. I’m sitting here in Chicago right now and looking out the window and, uh, all the cranes and all new construction going on. So, yeah, Ruairi Barwell: 00:41:32 we’re trying to make it, Ken Smyers: 00:41:36 yeah. Good stuff. All right, well, we’re really happy to see you down in Atlanta and, uh, recognize you right away. And we have to say hello before the show actually gotten underway. But, uh, you wonder, pretty impressive. Tell us about the project Haystack Award and how you guys won that. Ruairi Barwell: 00:41:54 Well, it was quite an honor. We’ve obviously been big believers in haystack and you know, practitioners, the haystack methodology and what we do and how we, you know, collect and, uh, organize and analyze data to our, our smart building a praxis are amongst monitoring based commissioning. Uh, you know, how we, what we call building optimization. That’s the practice I lead. Um, so yeah, it was quite an honor, right? I mean, well, the night that was a controlled times Lord. Eric Stromquist: 00:42:36 Yeah. So an engineer and designer standpoint as well as a, you know, an energy optimizer and buildings for our community might not know. What do you see the advantage is to project haystack? Ruairi Barwell: 00:42:49 Um, well, again, for us, you know, a large part of what we do within DLR group, uh, our building optimization practice is, I mean, it’s just dealing with data and at the end of the day, um, we’re answering the try to answer the same questions as everyone else in our community is what do we do with that data? How do we make it actionable? How do we organize it, you know, create some actionable insights from that data. So what are, we’re trying to optimize the energy use of a million square foot commercial office in downtown Chicago or, you know, a college campus in the suburbs. MMM. It’s, you know, it’s the same drive trying to answer the same questions as everyone else. Ken Smyers: 00:43:35 What are your clients asking for now? What are your types of clients and what do they ask? So you’re the largest provider of services to the education world. What are they asking for? Ruairi Barwell: 00:43:46 Yeah, I mean, as an example, you know, we’re working with large school districts here in Chicago across the country. Um, you know, going and getting ready to go out for a large bond referendums, you know, they’re trying to answer some big questions like, are we, uh, you know, how are we, you know, here in Chicago, we’ve got a couple of districts going out for $180 million contract for, and then down in Texas, they don’t, they’re close to a billion. I mean, figuring out Texas, right? But we’re all trying to answer the same questions. You know, are we, should we build new versus renovation, throwing good money after bad, you know, how are the buildings performing and should we invest in these existing buildings? Should we decommission them, build a new, know you were high performing buildings and, um, you know, they’re, they’re asking the same questions. You know, how, you know, how do we benchmark buildings? Ruairi Barwell: 00:44:40 You know, I think we’re, we’re recognized as a, as an industry and this community in particular that, you know, energy benchmarking alone. There’s not a, it’s not a good indicator of how well, or poorly performing. So we’re starting to look at the other key performance indicators that, you know, how is, how, how, how well a building is performing. I in indoor environmental quality tracking, indoor air quality and thermal comfort of occupants, Acoustic Comfort, visual comfort, your user functionality. Now these are, these are things that we’re trying to tie real data to versus, you know, we’ve, we’ve talked about him, I think this conversation has been pretty mainstream for the last couple of Ken Smyers: 00:45:22 the metrics. Are you able to provide additional metrics to improve the understanding of how important those, those things that you had mentioned, lighting, acoustics, I mean, does that, does that really have a profound impact on the educational environment or is that more, is that hard? Ruairi Barwell: 00:45:38 No, no, absolutely. I think we’re getting past, we’ve made a very focused decision to kind of try and there’s so much noise and marketing, you know, yeah. Spills everyone to call them. Um, we’ve already focused on trying to get some good case studies and trying to, you know, for example, in a couple of cool projects you’re working on right now we’re doing a large project with the GSA. We’re part of the Harvard School of Public Health. Um, it’s doctor Joe Allen’s group, um, where we’re trying to evolve their post occupancy evaluation process. Um, really tried to add another dimension to, um, to their, you know, what they’re, they’re trying to fill it up and evidence based design library so they can continually iterate there. We’re working directly with their workplace, um, uh, workplace global workspace leader and um, you know, adding in that realtime indoor air quality, indoor environmental quality is more than just the air quality and all the occupants satisfaction. Ruairi Barwell: 00:46:44 Um, putting real metrics to that and tying that back to work or productivity. So that’s again, I think that’s been a manager in conversation now for, for a couple of years where I’m, I’m pretty excited with the crossover between, you know, worker productivity, the workplace, um, you know, getting some proper metrics for that to education. So now we’re starting to see equal amounts of research being done and if not a little more now at the moment with, um, you know, students, you know, student achievement, you know, how does the, out of the class, how did the before, how does the performance of the built environment, the classroom impacts a student’s learning ability, you know, the cognitive of a, of a child brain. How that, um, how, you know, is is the classroom ventilated enough? Is it too hot, too cold or the acoustics poor, the lights too harsh or too damn, you know, we’re working in a school districts that have, you know, kind of okay lighting retrofits that were driven by energy, not so much the, you know, the function of the classroom. Um, and, and again, and try and tie that back to, you know, how engaged the student is and ultimately student achievement. And I think we’re looking at more or less the same ties as a, as far as on the workplace side and an office and productivity. Ruairi Barwell: 00:48:11 Okay. Well, uh, honestly we’re in the middle of, uh, of working on this GSA project is ongoing. It’s on the boards right now. That’s why it’s top of my mind. But he’s kind of, well, I’m, I’m excited about. Um, so I would say look for the, I think this would be the third iteration of the cog effect study from Harvard School of Public Health. Um, and so that, you know, that’s only going to get, there’s just going to be more iterations of that until, you know, I think, okay, we’ve withdrawn it’s common sense, you know. Um, I think that we’re just trying to put real data to it. Um, you know, another project I’m really excited about, we’re working with Chicago public schools and the third largest school district in the country where, you know, there, uh, there, uh, exploring an initiative for a lot of textile and that’s zero school and you know, we can have a, it’s really easy. You haven’t that Sarah School, right? Turn off the light board up the windows, tell the kids the worst, some colts and light some candles. You know, we want a second, but Marcy sophisticated approach than that. Um, so we’re, uh, you know, using the same data gathering, collecting, collecting data, organizing it, analyzing it, modeling it for future retrofits, you know, trying to show, uh, I’m not, uh, basically a roadmap for how can we get to the zero? What is it feasible? I mean, that’s the question we’re trying to answer. Ken Smyers: 00:49:51 Amazing work bringing our, bringing emotions to buildings. In other words, we’re taking the things like comfy that began way back when, where it was giving people with smart devices the opportunity to interface with building automation system to get some kind of an immediate response if they needed air conditioning or heating, whatever. And as soon as they were company, they hit a button, say coffee. So Ken has done a lot of studies and a lot of work on it. Can, I know you got to have a good question for Rory regarding these, these exact studies because isn’t this the chance that they, the, the emotional side of a building can be exposed through these new retrofit new programs? Ken Sinclair: 00:50:29 I think he has an excellent start. And actually I’d like to start by applauding what, uh, what he’s doing. And his company is certainly for a major consultant to embrace haystack and, uh, the other health parameters of buildings and put them in their lead is, is significant than I think he is definitely an example to, oh, a lot of consultants who are, are kind of hiding, hiding their head from all of this. And uh, so he’s well on his way and as the exposes all his data, he is going to be able to interpret the emotion of a building. I’ll be better than anybody. And uh, the fact it’s going to be in haystack standards, uh, is also exciting, uh, because that means that when we do analytics and we start to use a voice interface and device lifts interfaces and the autonomous interactions, uh, I think he’s ahead of the game and even even to speak to our, uh, our march theme, the Automated Intelligence, uh, I think he’s well on his way to achieving that as well. So I would probably just start with a whole bunch of Kudos. Ruairi Barwell: 00:51:51 Thank you. Ken Sinclair: 00:51:54 No, actually the question I would like to ask you is how do we get a string of consultants like you? I mean that’s our problem as an industry is really have traditional consultants that are controlled by lawyers that are immobilized and they’re putting in their 1956 system because they worried that they’re going to get sued if they try anything new. So you guys somehow, uh, moved over into risk management. They’re looking at changing world. How’d you do that? Ruairi Barwell: 00:52:31 We’re talking about energy or whatever we’re talking about indoor air quality, indoor environmental quality in general. The level of transparency. We’re at the tip of the iceberg there. Um, you know, the sensors are becoming cheaper and more available. You know, we can, where we can practically do realtime indoor air quality monitoring. We’re working because you know, a friend of the show, Albert, he’s on it, you know, how is already working on a real time. We’re going to be using his sensors for, to, to track this real time. It’s very affordable sensors that are high quality that are going to still meet the well building standards for accuracy. The problem with answers as you got what you pay for. So if you can get, you know, the correct, mmm, Ruairi Barwell: 00:53:26 nope. We’re tracking typically CO2, that’s the one we all kind of default to, but also PLCs, how the material selection impacts the environments. Um, pm 2.5, you know, how the, how to particulate matter in the air stream, you know, how well are we still trading the air, how clean was the air. A lot of this technology comes from China, I believe it or not because the outdoor air so poor over there. This is kind of initiatives, you know, the badge of honor in China is to show that, hey, it’s not necessarily I got to lead platinum building , I’ve got to building with clean air.. You start to see initiatives like, uh, you know, the recess, uh, certification reset in the certification. That’s primarily based on just, uh, it’s only based on indoor air quality, you know, so, Speaker 6: 00:54:19 right. Ruairi Barwell: 00:54:25 Well, you know, it, it’s, it’s, it’s a fun vibe, you know, practice a little bit. You know, scary time, you know, for, for uh, when we disclosed this amount of information to a building operators, we work with property management firms. We work with a nutshell reads, um, ourselves as a design firm. Now our level of transparency, our post postdoc, the evaluation for our own designs, it’s become a lot more rigorous. So, you know, not only are we focused on energy and the outcomes and okay, are we know we got to hit this Gui for the building. What now? What are we going to hit this threshold for co two levels for particulate matter or you know, for um, the materials that were, that, you know, everything from them at the carpet that’s been selected impacts the indoor air quality impacts. Ken Sinclair: 00:55:16 Go ahead. No, I was just wanting to pick, pick up on that. That’s another interesting side of it is as the devices and the things are starting to talk to us, I just came off a conference call with getting ready for the control con event in Detroit and Joe from bedrock had just come back from Korea and he’d been talking to the LG folks and the LG folks on their units are absolutely prepared to provide complete open all of the information they have internal to their units and so all of a sudden pick up. That’s like a whole new world to us was where the OEM always kind of kept everything and you bought it and you know he never really knew what it does now into your transparency of data. You’re having this, these machines and as a consultant you can control that in the fact that you say, I want devices that are more transparent and that they give me new data. If they don’t give me my data, I’m going to buy product B, not product day because Ken Sinclair: 00:56:24 this guy gives me more data every week. Gives me the most data, maybe the product as long as it gets Ruairi Barwell: 00:56:32 after your original question. And how do we get more people on board? I think the really nice thing about working with an entity like the GSA is that they’re doing this to be the, to be a leader. Everything we’re doing is going to be published publicly available. There’s no secret there. You know, everything. We’re going to be doing this completely open and we’re kind of share best practices super. And that’s why, you know, so we’ve teamed with Harvard, uh, there they’re just going to continue to do great things and change the industry. Um, uh, we’re starting to see, you know, Lawrence Berkeley national labs and the Department of Energy got on board with these, you know, these same metrics and uh, um, ourselves and, uh, four or five or order pure group, uh, your, um, companies are, are currently work in the early stages with the national labs and Department of Energy to, to kind of just a roadmap out how prevalent types of analytics that we’re doing. Ken Smyers: 00:57:34 A couple of things, you just came back from an important trip this morning, didn’t you? You were in Minneapolis, Minnesota this morning and you came back. Ruairi Barwell: 00:57:41 Yeah. Minneapolis is a near and dear to my heart. That’s where if my second city, so I grew up in Ireland. If you can’t tell from my accent, cargo is my city. Been here for 20 years now, but my wife is from Minneapolis, are on Minneapolis office. Nope. We’re kind of tied at the hip with, with, uh, with them how we’re structured regionally, our CEO, it’s up there. Um, so yeah, I came back from probably the only place right now do any major city that’s colored in Chicago at the mall. I didn’t, I wasn’t very sure if I’d make it out with the smell. Um, but I was up there. Yeah. For a, a very special read them. We were actually taken off, well, don’t kick it off. My good friend, uh, broad culture over at Hga, uh, has, uh, has over the past a year, 18 months. It’s been very successful with a couple of more teammates that heads up there and getting the big TC, uh, group going up at the building intelligence group, twin cities. And um, so we had a great, uh, meeting. We thought I had some great meetings over the past couple of months and that’s really, uh, so last night there was maybe 60, 70 people. Um, kind of the same cross section of card that you’d see at real calm. I’d be gone, you know, systems integrators, vendors, you know, some more proactive, um, design consultants, you know. MMM. Usual Xbox, you know. Um, Ruairi Barwell: 00:59:22 but everyone comment that, um, there’s really no outlet for smart. There’s really no smoking. We got USG, we see receive, got Ashrae for the engineers, but there’s really no local connection point or you know, people in the smart building industry. I was amazed. I had done a fantastic job up there. In fact, I should probably got him on Eric Stromquist: 00:59:46 right. It’s very dynamic individual. Ruairi Barwell: 00:59:50 Oh yeah. It’s fantastic. And uh, he’s done a great job with that. So, um, as a result of the success of a big building intelligence group, twin cities, we’re going to start a big shy here, April. So we’re saying we’re going to basically start the Chicago franchise here for anyone out there that’s in the Chicago area. Hit me up and I’ll give you the details on the first meeting. It’s going to be on April 11th year. We’re going to host the first one at our office, uh, looking for volunteers and Geneva, our committee members and everything else. So we’re looking to get a good group here. It’s a kickoff. The, uh, the first one, Ken Smyers: 01:00:30 critical. How’s the soccer program going? I understand. Last time we talked to you, you are, and your soccer outfit because you were heading down practice, Ruairi Barwell: 01:00:39 right? You know, uh, I got one thing I have in mind for soccer. I have plenty of sad. Ken Smyers: 01:00:45 Yeah. Ruairi Barwell: 01:00:47 Liverpool happened to have my liver big Liverpool Fan, so nervous times at the moment that we got them to every run in here for the Premiere League. Hopefully. Uh, the first year [inaudible] 92 I think so, Eric Stromquist: 01:01:07 yeah. We’ve got a pretty good soccer team down in Atlanta now that make us do Ruairi Barwell: 01:01:12 awesome. Yeah, no, I’m a, I’m a big Chicago fire power as well. They were doing nearly as good as your guys are doing. Ken Smyers: 01:01:21 Yeah, you can pay more money. Eric Stromquist: 01:01:31 You know, I wanted to sort of ask and sort of cycled back around to, it seems like you’re doing things and getting things done that, you know, we treat very few consultants sort of getting the traction. You aren’t terms of changing how people are doing, building automation controls and, and making a more emotional and all that stuff. You know, for our audience in mind, I know you guys have all of the offices I think in 30 countries or there abouts. Ruairi Barwell: 01:01:57 Well it’s, it’s 30 location. The majority of those are in the Norton in North America. We’ve got an office in Shanghai, Dubai in Nairobi stuff. The kind of global reach it. Yeah. Yeah. Ken Smyers: 01:02:09 So I was just curious if, if you see things differently or done differently in different countries and is it part of how you guys are sort of being innovative, the fact that you sort of have a global perspective instead of a just a North American history Ruairi Barwell: 01:02:23 perspective? I think it’s definitely an advantage. You know, I think myself personally, we have a lot of interactions with my, my old college buddies are working across the world and uh, your fellows kind of been a front runner, but I truly believe we’re in the right place here and not there. There’s so much exciting things going on here in North America. I think the change that’s going to happen from here, there’s so much innovation, so much, uh, so much, okay, it’s mainstream now. You know, we’re not talking about someone, not something on the periphery. You know, when you see big players like the GSA, you know, when you see people like Chicago public schools, you know, I’ve mentioned there their public sector. I think I actually Ma personally got most enjoyable working with developers that I, you know, I enjoy the fast paced nature of a working with developers. Ruairi Barwell: 01:03:16 And you know, when you start to see, you know, the people who are typically focused on dollars and cents and bottom line and that’s it gotta be like that when they start to focus on wellness and amenities. But you know, again, it’s still dollars and cents. Attracting and retaining the best tenants in your building is still attracting and retaining the best talent for those tenants. So when you start to see, you know, a smart building, uh, strategies start to filtrate into the, into the mainstream because it makes sense for these dollars are the developers to do it. You know, that that’s a woodwind. Eric Stromquist: 01:03:55 Yeah. Cause it seems like the buildings are going to be more competitive as Ken Saint Claire, who’s our resident millennial here has pointed out that, uh, you know, you better have a nice space if you want me to come into the office and work. So, so I think, you know, there’s a lot of awareness about wanting to have a great space and energy efficient space and obviously a space that leads to productivity. So it seems like that conversation is shifting. Where will you say developers and owners are more open to having that versus just being driven by energy or low cost when so hopefully that trend will Ruairi Barwell: 01:04:25 absolutely. Yeah. I mean one of the most progressive developers we’re working with here locally in Chicago, Sterling Bay, you know, they uh, they, uh, Google’s Midwest headquarters, Mcdonald’s global headquarters, moved downtown from suburbs group on Gogo, go down the list. And uh, you know, we’re doing a lot of work with them on their existing building side. But also we’re, we’re really lucky in Chicago. We’ve got a very progressive utility as well. So we’ve got combat in Chicago and we’ve got some legislation at the state level, like the future and jobs act, that kind of mine bass. But these guys have to invest in energy efficiency programs. But we’ve got the monitoring based commissioning program here in Chicago, which is really a, you know, it’s a fantastic

Eight Berkeley Lab scientists present eight game-changing concepts in eight minutes each. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 28806]

Eight Berkeley Lab scientists present eight game-changing concepts in eight minutes each. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 28806]

Eight Berkeley Lab scientists present eight game-changing concepts in eight minutes each. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 28806]

Eight Berkeley Lab scientists present eight game-changing concepts in eight minutes each. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 28806]

Mathias Craig, Co-Founder and Exec. Dir. of Blue Energy. Blue Energy is a not for profit, NGO working in Caribbean coastal communities of Eastern Nicaragua to help connect them to energy, clean water, sanitation and other services. Blueenergygroup.orgTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 3: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k l x Berkeley, a biweekly [00:00:30] 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of loads Speaker 1: [inaudible] and news. Speaker 4: Hi listeners, my name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show this week on spectrum. We present part two of two with our guests, Mathias Craig Co, founder and executive director of Blue Energy. Blue Energy is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization working among the Caribbean coastal communities of [00:01:00] eastern Nicaragua to help connect them to energy, clean water, sanitation, and other essential services. Monte has, Craig is an engineer by training from UC Berkeley and MIT. He talks about what he and blue energy have learned about adapting and localizing technology through projects they undertake with remote isolated communities. Monte has also talks about the future of applied technologies and blue energy in developing areas. Here is part two. [00:01:30] As you work with the technologies that you choose from, how much are you changing those technologies? Are you able to feed back to the people who are actually manufacturing and designing those things? Speaker 1: When we started the organization, we thought of ourselves as sort of a technology creator. When we started working with small scale wind power locally manufactured small scale wind turbines, you know, we were early pioneers in that working with the earliest pioneers like Hugh Pigott, as I had mentioned in another group up in [00:02:00] Colorado, went by the name other power. We really saw ourselves as the primary design. We spent a lot of time. We did design workshops, we did a lot of cad drawings and we were really deep into the technology when we thought that technology was going to be 80% of what we could contribute. What we learned a number of years later was that that's not where we can add the most value. There's a lot of people around the world that can work on technology that had better setups and more experience, more resources to throw at the problem, and we needed to leverage [00:02:30] that. Speaker 1: That was one key realization. Now, on the other end of the spectrum though, we know that just taking technology from around the world and plugging it in never works. It's a lot of romance about that, but the reality is there's tweaking. There's adaptation that has to take place generally not with a cell phone, not with a pencil against her self-contained units, but with systems. These are systems, not products generally and for that you need adaptation and so we started thinking ourselves as technology [00:03:00] tweakers or packers, hackers or we use the word localize a lot to mean not inventing, but how do you take something that is successful somewhere else in a completely different context or if you get lucky, you find something that's operating in a relatively similar context and you say, okay, what needs to change for that to be effective where we are? Speaker 1: We have a ton of examples of this and we found we're very good at this and it's a place where we can add a tremendous amount of value. One example is you have [00:03:30] the mayor's office in Bluefields, which is where we're, we're operationally headquartered there on the Caribbean coast has a lot of requests for latrines to be installed for the communities. It's very poor sanitation in the area. They want to comply with that request. Right now there's thousands of latrine designs out there. How does a severely under-resourced government office figure out which one is going to be appropriate for the local context? The answer is they can't and it's just paralysis there and that's an example of where [00:04:00] we've built very strong partnerships and where we can add a ton of value. We can do that study, we can look at the designs, we can go visit a design in Honduras and check it out and say, oh, this design Central America.Speaker 1: Certain cultural similarities. Certain cultural differences can be very different environment, so let's try it out, but it seems promising. Let's test it for a year and let's study. Let's study the the decomposition of the waste. Is it working? Is it not working? And we did a pilot a few years ago looking at a solar latrine where [00:04:30] you you use passive solar heating, sort of greenhouse effect to help decompose the waste faster. We thought it was very promising. It didn't work in Bluefields because very high humidity, the rainiest part of the country and it didn't work like in the highlands of Honduras, but we saved a ton of money by studying that for a year rather than going out and building a thousand units because there was demand for latrines, so we did a lot of work on that. We've done that now with the water filters, with the well [00:05:00] drilling techniques and technology done that with cookstoves biodigesters everywhere in the technology portfolio. Speaker 1: I'd say we've had a hand in localizing the technology, adapting it and seeing what's going to work and then helping to roll it out slowly. At the end of last year we built our first latrines and built 55 latrines. We'd been studying and working on the trains for over two years. And one of the key elements of being able to do that technology localization are [00:05:30] the students and the international fellows that come work with us on the ground for either short term programs in the summer summer fellows that come in or longer term fellows that come for three months, six months or a year and work with us on adapting the technology. So behind that latrine program of two years, they was, you know, over half dozen students that did research that contributed to their schoolwork on campus and pushed the design forward. [00:06:00] So that's part of our global leadership program. They get the benefit of learning what real technology design is like in the field and learn about that social element that they don't hear about in class generally. Speaker 1: And what we get is we get to move along sort of the r and d side of things. And do you have a good relationship with local governments? Is that one of the things you try to cultivate? Yes, and I think that's something that sets us apart from a lot of nonprofit organizations in development, [00:06:30] generally speaking, but also in Nicaragua's, we've chosen to engage the government directly. The government in some form is what is going to be there and is representative of the people's will in some form. There's always challenges and just like we have in this country about how representative is it, et Cetera, but at the end of the day, it's the ultimate authority in the region and so if you choose to go around it and not engage it as many organizations do, we feel that you severely [00:07:00] limit the potential for your longterm impact. So we engage directly.Speaker 1: It's not always easy and we engage at different levels. We engage the national government. We have an office in Managua and the capital city where we're in constant contact with the ministries, with all levels of national governments. We engage there over on the coast. We engage with the regional government. We engage with the indigenous and creole territorial governments. It's a semi-autonomous region. [00:07:30] It's a very complex governance structure in the country, but we engage at all those levels. To discover what their plans are, to help build capacity where we can, you know, we learn and we teach. And then in the best cases to coordinate, you know, we've done a project with the Ministry of Health. We work with the Ministry of Health, the local nurse. We designed an energy system, install it, the Ministry of Health puts in the vaccine freezer and fills it with medicine and we both train the nurse. Well now that is a very [00:08:00] challenging collaboration to manage, but it leads to very big impact if you're willing to do it the right way. Speaker 1: You know, one of our strongest partners is the municipal office of Bluefields, the municipal government, the mayor and his staff where we're collaborating on a number of initiatives both within the city of Bluefields and the surrounding communities around water and sanitation, around building a biodigester for the slaughter house so that all that animal waste will cease to be dumped into the river untreated [00:08:30] and will actually become a useful byproduct of methane for cooking. And how many may oriel administrations have you dealt with in the Bluefield? There's been sort of three that we've worked with. Nicaragua is a highly polarized country, politically even more so than the United States. You know, we like to think where the extreme example, but not even close. When you look at the world that Greg was highly political and highly polarized. And when I say highly political, meaning that many [00:09:00] government functions and the services that they deliver are dictated by political affiliations. Speaker 1: So the risk of engaging as we do is that you end up on one side or the other and we're on the side of civil society. We want to help strengthen Nicaragua and strengthen the population of Nicaragua regardless of political affiliations. And so in our internal policies, that's very clear. We work with different political parties and in fact we play a very big facilitator [00:09:30] role convening people who would never meet on their own. If we can get the PLC and the Sandinistas to sit down on a table and think about a water and sanitation issue where they politically cannot meet by themselves. We have broker meetings between u s government officials who can't officially sit down or meet directly with with sanity, still government officials because of US policy, but they can be in a meeting talking to us and that can be overheard. Conversations that can be very productive. Speaker 4: [00:10:00] Spectrum is public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley. Our guest is Monte Craig Blue Energy Blue Energy is a nonprofit working along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Speaker 1: Are there technologies out there that you'd love to use, are introduced that you just can't really approach? [00:10:30] Oh absolutely. There's a very clear answer to that. For me, it's mobile payments outside of blue energy. Last year I was part of a Fulbright nexus program, a relatively new program. They launched looking at issues of entrepreneurship, climate change and energy in the Americas. So with 20 of us scholars last year and one of the topics I was investigating was pay as you go solar micro grids or home solutions as a new way of opening up access to electricity [00:11:00] to more remote populations in a cost effective way. And it's very powerful, but it hinges on a few technologies. One is the mobile phone. That's going pretty well already. It's exploding worldwide. Nicaragua has pretty good coverage on a population basis, on a geography basis. That's not great in particular in the region we work in because it's isolated and low population density, so not a strong incentive for the network providers, but it's still coming. Speaker 1: It's coming and every year is, oh, there's one more cell tower. The communities are getting connected [00:11:30] piece by piece, so that's great. Now if you can layer this concept of mobile payments on top of the cell phone network, it allows you to think of lots of creative ways of delivering your services more cost effectively. For example, if you designed the communal energy system, you can envision a system where somebody has a cell phone, they have a payment application on the cell phone, they make a small payment, you know, a couple of cents. They can pre buy a certain amount of energy and then you have a remote control meter [00:12:00] on their charge controller in their home that you can activate through the cell phone network. So they pre-buy, you receive your money digitally, you turn on their system and provide them x number of units of energy that they pre-bought and when it runs out it goes off the operates. Speaker 1: Just like the cell phone and most of the world, they don't have plans, monthly plans, you pre-buy credit, you use them when you're out of credit, you can't make a call. You could do the exact same thing with energy. If you had this mechanism and in a place like the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua where the cost of making a payment [00:12:30] is often as much or more than the payment because you have to take a long boat ride and if it's rainy you could take your days and you have to buy fuel and if you could just do that over your cell phone, you reduce the transaction costs tremendously, which opens up just a ton of new solutions. You know, microfinance, which is taken off all around the world. One of the biggest challenges on the Korean coast in Nicaragua is in microfinance. What people are doing is they're making micropayments over a long period of time, 12 months, 18 months, multiple years in some cases. Speaker 1: [00:13:00] But if paying a dollar costs you $2 to make the payment, it all breaks down. If you could make a $1 payment for a couple pennies on your mobile phone, and that's not to mention the traceability, you get digital records of all transactions in a place where it's very hard to collect information. You can also envision it as a mechanism to push back a lot of information to the user. For example, they could remind them to perform maintenance on their batteries rather than sending [00:13:30] a technician out there to check the batteries. Very easier to train somebody how to check the batteries. The problem is they forget to do it, so if you could send them a text every couple months, check the water level on your batteries could have powerful implications in terms of the cost effectiveness of the life cycle of that system for very cheap. That's the one, it's just to me that would revolutionize how we work and I think that the barrier is mobile payments are starting to take off around the world, particularly in east Africa, parts of Southeast Asia [00:14:00] where the underpinning technology platform is strong enough of the cell phone network and government regulation or non regulation is incentivizing in one way or another.Speaker 1: The creation of those payment systems. There are a few starting to pop up in Central America, but central and Latin America is very far behind the innovation that's been happening in Africa and in Nicaragua in particular. It's just getting off the ground as one initiative and Pesto in the capital city of Managua, [00:14:30] but it's not clear when or how they're going to expand to a more national network. If that's not something that blue energy will create. It's something we can advocate for and speak about, but ultimately we're sort of waiting for that next wave of innovation and technology to come out there so that we can build our services on top of it. Do you have any insights or challenges for engineers out there building technologies that you could potentially use? Like the latrines and solar [00:15:00] and wind? Absolutely. I mean, I think that engineers, especially at fancy institutions like Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT, are often sort of skewed towards thinking about flashy, shiny, new high tech things, which are very fun and exciting and can have an impact on their own, right? Speaker 1: But if you're thinking about engineering and technology for the developing world, it is my belief now that you can have a much bigger impact [00:15:30] by looking at simpler technologies and making incremental gains on those. It's not a sexy, right? I mean, studying latrine for multiple years, you're like, how complicated is a latrine? Right? It doesn't have a ton of moving parts. It's from an engineering perspective, it's a little boring, frankly, but there is surprisingly a ton of work to localize the technology to have it create impact and people's first reaction is, hmm, that sounds kind of boring. Second reaction is we ought to be able to figure that out quickly, but that's not true. You know, haven't latrines been figured out? [00:16:00] Aren't there already latrine designs? Absolutely. And there's latrines that work very well in specific contexts and the challenge is not to go and vent a brand new latrine if you're doing that good for you and maybe you'll invent the best one ever. Speaker 1: But for the majority of engineers out there, we don't need all of them going out there and renting a new latrine. Most of them, I believe could be most productive if they want to work in the development space to think about the process of localizing technology that already exists fundamentally in other [00:16:30] places and doing the tweaking. When you're in the field and you're working with people and you've seen the impact it's creating, it's very exciting and that's what the summer fellows we receive from. We have a partnership here with UC Berkeley, with the cal energy core, four of their fellows come and work with Berliner g every summer. You can ask them. It's a very rewarding experience and a very exciting experience that doesn't look very exciting on paper. Studying latrines for example, but you get out in the field see the impact. Make the progress and learn the social dimensions which ultimately [00:17:00] are the most critical, so I think a lot of the opportunity for creating impact if you're a young engineer is be willing to get your hands dirty, get out there in the field, understand that it takes time and focus on making a real meaningful contribution that's well documented and that builds on the previous person's work and that is prepared to interconnect with the next person who's going to come down. Speaker 1: If you can achieve that, that's how you have a huge impact over time. You're not going come in in six weeks [00:17:30] and sign some brand new thing that's going to solve the water and sanitation problem in the developing world. Those solutions don't exist. Speaker 5: [inaudible] you are listening to the spectrum KLX Berkeley Co founder and executive director of Blue Energy Matiaz Craig is our guest. Blue energy facilitates sustainable development in eastern Nicaragua. Speaker 1: [00:18:00] Have you learned things about sustainability in your experience in Nicaragua that might reflect back on the developed world? I think that is one of the most critical things that I've learned in the last 10 years is that this really is a two way street. It's very arrogant for people from the quote unquote developed world to go into a poor community in the developing world. See, for example, that they don't have a sanitation solution and say, oh, [00:18:30] what they need. Obviously here is this kind of latrine, like you're an instant expert. Like they've never thought of this before and you're an expert. Why? Because you come from the developed world and you can lecture them and train them on sustainability and what do you really know about sustainability? Last 10 years have been very humbling. We in the United States, for example, as a country, don't live anywhere near sustainably, right? Speaker 1: We're consuming resources just left and right. And one approach is to say, oh my gosh, I don't want to [00:19:00] be a hypocrite, so I'm not going to go help. And some people take that path. I know I'm not sustainable, so I'm not going to go help people be sustainable, but I don't think that's very productive. I think what is most productive is to engage in that process out there in the field with an explicit intent of thinking. What can you learn from that experience and how can you take that back to where you come from. That is now an explicit part of our model where we have really two initiatives. We have the community development side, which is the physical work that [00:19:30] gets done in Nicaragua and we have what we call the global leadership program, which is bringing people in in part to contribute to the community development work, but the longterm impact of the global leadership program is to build more awareness in those people who are going to go back to their home countries and be leaders in their community around issues of sustainability for example, and climate change and all these other critical topics because their greatest sort of point of leverage is back in their own community, right? Speaker 1: [00:20:00] They can come contribute some in the field, learn something, but if they go on to be a mayor of their town, for example, like that's going to be a huge impact where a business leader in their community with a more heightened sense of awareness of these critical issues like sustainability work on greening initiatives in their town back in the developed world where we're burning through most of the world's resources. Right? I know that. I know I can have a much bigger impact by cutting my electricity consumption in half than I can by installing [00:20:30] a 50 watt solar panel in a remote community. From a global perspective, obviously locally, that 50 watt panel has a huge impact, so I think we have to approach this as a give and take. We can contribute in the field if we do it in an appropriate longterm way, and that we need to be open to that learning experience in the field and take that back in the developed world. Speaker 1: I think that's vital. What are the future plans for blue energy? We made [00:21:00] a critical decision a couple of years ago that for our community development work, we're going to stay geographically concentrated. We're gonna stay focused on Nicaragua with a strong emphasis on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. We feel that there is a tremendous amount of work to be done there and we have 10 years of experience building relationships, understanding that the culture and society, the key ingredients we feel to actually having a meaningful impact and those are things that we've invested heavily in and we feel [00:21:30] that they don't scale very well and so we feel that if we were to expand geographically, we would have to change our model and work in a different way that would be less impactful. We'd have bigger numbers and less impact. We feel strongly that we can have the most impact by staying focused in this geography until every person on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua has access to basic sanitation, clean water and electricity. Speaker 1: Why would we go work anywhere else? Was the question we finally asked ourselves then. Oh, right now [00:22:00] the way that we have an explicit model for creating impact beyond Nicaragua, it's through the global leadership program and there's different components to that. One I mentioned earlier was bringing in international people to work in Nicaragua, take that transformational experience back home with them and be agents of change in their own lives, in their own communities all around the world. The second component is the institution to institution strengthening. That's when we work with a local government office and train them on it tools [00:22:30] so that they can be more effective in their work. Or we work with another development partner and share technology, so it's a way to have an impact beyond any border, but it's not us going out and physically doing another project. And then the third one is sort of based on the practical action, which is one of the organizations I mentioned earlier that has been an inspiration to me is doing a better job of documenting case studies and the learning and publishing that experience documents that can be shared globally. Speaker 1: We are often [00:23:00] requested people say, oh, I see you worked on, you know this bio sand filter. Can you tell me how it's gone? Well, right now that's a long conversation and we do that, but it's not very resource efficient. If we had really well written out, documented case studies of our experience, what worked, what didn't and why and publish that for the global community, I think that could have a big impact and how can people get involved in blue energy? Well, the first thing we need is to grow our support base financial support base. The number [00:23:30] one thing that people can do to help blue energy is to contribute financially to the organization because honestly we feel we have a model that's working very well. We have a very committed, dedicated staff and what we need to do is do more of what we're doing. Speaker 1: The second thing is if you are a student or young professional who is looking to compliment traditional classroom education with experiential learning and personal learning and growth opportunities, you should take a look at our global leadership program. [00:24:00] There is a program fee associated with that that helps us run a professional program that is financially self-sustainable and helps fund the project work that you actually do in the field that has local impact. The primary opportunity for that if you're a current student is during the summer and if you're a young professional, we have longer term fellowship opportunities that range from three months to a year. Some of them requiring a two year commitment, but that's an opportunity to really get out there and go through the full cycle, you know, help develop, project, execute, analyze [00:24:30] it. At the end you get an opportunity to see the full picture and that's an opportunity for professional and personal growth that people again have leveraged for all sorts of future opportunities. Speaker 1: And then the third thing is technology partnerships. Organizations that we can partner with that are champions of a particular technology, like the water filter for example, that we use. We learned that from an organization in Canada called cost c. A. W. S. T. They issue new plans every year. [00:25:00] We share back our design iterations with them so that it can be incorporated into the evolution of the plans. We're always looking for organizations like that. Just the caveat is we're looking for people that have a longterm commitment and are into design iteration. We're not necessarily looking for the flashiest new gadget that somebody just conceived of. We're looking more for long term technology partnerships. Matiaz Craig, thanks very much for being on spectrum. Thanks very much for having me. It was a pleasure. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 5: [00:25:30] To learn more about blue energy, visit their website. The URL is blue energy group.org spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We've created a simple link for you to get there. The link is tiny url.com/k a l [00:26:00] x spectrum. Speaker 4: Now several science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks in honor of its 40th anniversary. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center is sponsoring a series of lectures describing the research behind four Nobel prizes. The laureates are also longtime users of the national energy research. Scientific Computing Center is super computing resources. The last two lectures are being [00:26:30] held at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in June. These lectures are free. Tuesday, June 3rd mapping the universe. The Speaker is George Smoot of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley lab. He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006 for his work on the cosmic background explorer. The lecture will be in the building 66 auditorium, Tuesday, June 3rd noon to 1:30 PM then on Wednesday, June 11 [00:27:00] data computation and the fate of the universe Speaker as salt Perlmutter of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. This lecture will be in Lawrence Berkeley lab building 50 auditorium, Wednesday, June 11th noon to 1:30 PM now we'll follow up on a previous spectrum news story. Speaker 4: [00:27:30] The Berkeley News Center reports scientists working together on Kelp Watch 2014 announced today that the west coast shoreline shows no signs of ocean born radiation from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. Following their analysis of the first collection of Kelp samples along the western US coastline Kelp Watch 2014 is a project that uses coastal kelp beds as detectors of radioactive seawater arriving from Fukushima [00:28:00] via the North Pacific current. It is a collaborative effort led by Steven Manley, marine biology professor at California State University, Long Beach and Kai vetter, head of applied nuclear physics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a nuclear engineering professor at the University of California Berkeley. The new results are from samples primarily collected from February 24th through March 14th our data does not show the presence of Fukushima radio isotopes [00:28:30] in west coast, giant kelp or bull kelp. Manly said these results should reassure the public that our coastline is safe and that we are monitoring it for these materials. At the same time, these results provide us with a baseline for which we can compare samples gathered later in the year. Information about the procedures and results including the results of the first samples analysis are available to the public at the website. Kelp watch.berkeley.edu the researchers [00:29:00] will continually update the website for public viewing as more samples arrive and are analyzed, including samples from Canada. The second of the three 2014 sampling periods is scheduled to begin in early July. Speaker 4: The Muse occurred during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Speaker 6: Thank you for listening to spectrum. [00:29:30] If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com us in two weeks Speaker 7: at the same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mathias Craig, Co-Founder and Exec. Dir. of Blue Energy. Blue Energy is a not for profit, NGO working in Caribbean coastal communities of Eastern Nicaragua to help connect them to energy, clean water, sanitation and other services. Blueenergygroup.orgTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 3: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k l x Berkeley, a biweekly [00:00:30] 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of loads Speaker 1: [inaudible] and news. Speaker 4: Hi listeners, my name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show this week on spectrum. We present part two of two with our guests, Mathias Craig Co, founder and executive director of Blue Energy. Blue Energy is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization working among the Caribbean coastal communities of [00:01:00] eastern Nicaragua to help connect them to energy, clean water, sanitation, and other essential services. Monte has, Craig is an engineer by training from UC Berkeley and MIT. He talks about what he and blue energy have learned about adapting and localizing technology through projects they undertake with remote isolated communities. Monte has also talks about the future of applied technologies and blue energy in developing areas. Here is part two. [00:01:30] As you work with the technologies that you choose from, how much are you changing those technologies? Are you able to feed back to the people who are actually manufacturing and designing those things? Speaker 1: When we started the organization, we thought of ourselves as sort of a technology creator. When we started working with small scale wind power locally manufactured small scale wind turbines, you know, we were early pioneers in that working with the earliest pioneers like Hugh Pigott, as I had mentioned in another group up in [00:02:00] Colorado, went by the name other power. We really saw ourselves as the primary design. We spent a lot of time. We did design workshops, we did a lot of cad drawings and we were really deep into the technology when we thought that technology was going to be 80% of what we could contribute. What we learned a number of years later was that that's not where we can add the most value. There's a lot of people around the world that can work on technology that had better setups and more experience, more resources to throw at the problem, and we needed to leverage [00:02:30] that. Speaker 1: That was one key realization. Now, on the other end of the spectrum though, we know that just taking technology from around the world and plugging it in never works. It's a lot of romance about that, but the reality is there's tweaking. There's adaptation that has to take place generally not with a cell phone, not with a pencil against her self-contained units, but with systems. These are systems, not products generally and for that you need adaptation and so we started thinking ourselves as technology [00:03:00] tweakers or packers, hackers or we use the word localize a lot to mean not inventing, but how do you take something that is successful somewhere else in a completely different context or if you get lucky, you find something that's operating in a relatively similar context and you say, okay, what needs to change for that to be effective where we are? Speaker 1: We have a ton of examples of this and we found we're very good at this and it's a place where we can add a tremendous amount of value. One example is you have [00:03:30] the mayor's office in Bluefields, which is where we're, we're operationally headquartered there on the Caribbean coast has a lot of requests for latrines to be installed for the communities. It's very poor sanitation in the area. They want to comply with that request. Right now there's thousands of latrine designs out there. How does a severely under-resourced government office figure out which one is going to be appropriate for the local context? The answer is they can't and it's just paralysis there and that's an example of where [00:04:00] we've built very strong partnerships and where we can add a ton of value. We can do that study, we can look at the designs, we can go visit a design in Honduras and check it out and say, oh, this design Central America.Speaker 1: Certain cultural similarities. Certain cultural differences can be very different environment, so let's try it out, but it seems promising. Let's test it for a year and let's study. Let's study the the decomposition of the waste. Is it working? Is it not working? And we did a pilot a few years ago looking at a solar latrine where [00:04:30] you you use passive solar heating, sort of greenhouse effect to help decompose the waste faster. We thought it was very promising. It didn't work in Bluefields because very high humidity, the rainiest part of the country and it didn't work like in the highlands of Honduras, but we saved a ton of money by studying that for a year rather than going out and building a thousand units because there was demand for latrines, so we did a lot of work on that. We've done that now with the water filters, with the well [00:05:00] drilling techniques and technology done that with cookstoves biodigesters everywhere in the technology portfolio. Speaker 1: I'd say we've had a hand in localizing the technology, adapting it and seeing what's going to work and then helping to roll it out slowly. At the end of last year we built our first latrines and built 55 latrines. We'd been studying and working on the trains for over two years. And one of the key elements of being able to do that technology localization are [00:05:30] the students and the international fellows that come work with us on the ground for either short term programs in the summer summer fellows that come in or longer term fellows that come for three months, six months or a year and work with us on adapting the technology. So behind that latrine program of two years, they was, you know, over half dozen students that did research that contributed to their schoolwork on campus and pushed the design forward. [00:06:00] So that's part of our global leadership program. They get the benefit of learning what real technology design is like in the field and learn about that social element that they don't hear about in class generally. Speaker 1: And what we get is we get to move along sort of the r and d side of things. And do you have a good relationship with local governments? Is that one of the things you try to cultivate? Yes, and I think that's something that sets us apart from a lot of nonprofit organizations in development, [00:06:30] generally speaking, but also in Nicaragua's, we've chosen to engage the government directly. The government in some form is what is going to be there and is representative of the people's will in some form. There's always challenges and just like we have in this country about how representative is it, et Cetera, but at the end of the day, it's the ultimate authority in the region and so if you choose to go around it and not engage it as many organizations do, we feel that you severely [00:07:00] limit the potential for your longterm impact. So we engage directly.Speaker 1: It's not always easy and we engage at different levels. We engage the national government. We have an office in Managua and the capital city where we're in constant contact with the ministries, with all levels of national governments. We engage there over on the coast. We engage with the regional government. We engage with the indigenous and creole territorial governments. It's a semi-autonomous region. [00:07:30] It's a very complex governance structure in the country, but we engage at all those levels. To discover what their plans are, to help build capacity where we can, you know, we learn and we teach. And then in the best cases to coordinate, you know, we've done a project with the Ministry of Health. We work with the Ministry of Health, the local nurse. We designed an energy system, install it, the Ministry of Health puts in the vaccine freezer and fills it with medicine and we both train the nurse. Well now that is a very [00:08:00] challenging collaboration to manage, but it leads to very big impact if you're willing to do it the right way. Speaker 1: You know, one of our strongest partners is the municipal office of Bluefields, the municipal government, the mayor and his staff where we're collaborating on a number of initiatives both within the city of Bluefields and the surrounding communities around water and sanitation, around building a biodigester for the slaughter house so that all that animal waste will cease to be dumped into the river untreated [00:08:30] and will actually become a useful byproduct of methane for cooking. And how many may oriel administrations have you dealt with in the Bluefield? There's been sort of three that we've worked with. Nicaragua is a highly polarized country, politically even more so than the United States. You know, we like to think where the extreme example, but not even close. When you look at the world that Greg was highly political and highly polarized. And when I say highly political, meaning that many [00:09:00] government functions and the services that they deliver are dictated by political affiliations. Speaker 1: So the risk of engaging as we do is that you end up on one side or the other and we're on the side of civil society. We want to help strengthen Nicaragua and strengthen the population of Nicaragua regardless of political affiliations. And so in our internal policies, that's very clear. We work with different political parties and in fact we play a very big facilitator [00:09:30] role convening people who would never meet on their own. If we can get the PLC and the Sandinistas to sit down on a table and think about a water and sanitation issue where they politically cannot meet by themselves. We have broker meetings between u s government officials who can't officially sit down or meet directly with with sanity, still government officials because of US policy, but they can be in a meeting talking to us and that can be overheard. Conversations that can be very productive. Speaker 4: [00:10:00] Spectrum is public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley. Our guest is Monte Craig Blue Energy Blue Energy is a nonprofit working along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Speaker 1: Are there technologies out there that you'd love to use, are introduced that you just can't really approach? [00:10:30] Oh absolutely. There's a very clear answer to that. For me, it's mobile payments outside of blue energy. Last year I was part of a Fulbright nexus program, a relatively new program. They launched looking at issues of entrepreneurship, climate change and energy in the Americas. So with 20 of us scholars last year and one of the topics I was investigating was pay as you go solar micro grids or home solutions as a new way of opening up access to electricity [00:11:00] to more remote populations in a cost effective way. And it's very powerful, but it hinges on a few technologies. One is the mobile phone. That's going pretty well already. It's exploding worldwide. Nicaragua has pretty good coverage on a population basis, on a geography basis. That's not great in particular in the region we work in because it's isolated and low population density, so not a strong incentive for the network providers, but it's still coming. Speaker 1: It's coming and every year is, oh, there's one more cell tower. The communities are getting connected [00:11:30] piece by piece, so that's great. Now if you can layer this concept of mobile payments on top of the cell phone network, it allows you to think of lots of creative ways of delivering your services more cost effectively. For example, if you designed the communal energy system, you can envision a system where somebody has a cell phone, they have a payment application on the cell phone, they make a small payment, you know, a couple of cents. They can pre buy a certain amount of energy and then you have a remote control meter [00:12:00] on their charge controller in their home that you can activate through the cell phone network. So they pre-buy, you receive your money digitally, you turn on their system and provide them x number of units of energy that they pre-bought and when it runs out it goes off the operates. Speaker 1: Just like the cell phone and most of the world, they don't have plans, monthly plans, you pre-buy credit, you use them when you're out of credit, you can't make a call. You could do the exact same thing with energy. If you had this mechanism and in a place like the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua where the cost of making a payment [00:12:30] is often as much or more than the payment because you have to take a long boat ride and if it's rainy you could take your days and you have to buy fuel and if you could just do that over your cell phone, you reduce the transaction costs tremendously, which opens up just a ton of new solutions. You know, microfinance, which is taken off all around the world. One of the biggest challenges on the Korean coast in Nicaragua is in microfinance. What people are doing is they're making micropayments over a long period of time, 12 months, 18 months, multiple years in some cases. Speaker 1: [00:13:00] But if paying a dollar costs you $2 to make the payment, it all breaks down. If you could make a $1 payment for a couple pennies on your mobile phone, and that's not to mention the traceability, you get digital records of all transactions in a place where it's very hard to collect information. You can also envision it as a mechanism to push back a lot of information to the user. For example, they could remind them to perform maintenance on their batteries rather than sending [00:13:30] a technician out there to check the batteries. Very easier to train somebody how to check the batteries. The problem is they forget to do it, so if you could send them a text every couple months, check the water level on your batteries could have powerful implications in terms of the cost effectiveness of the life cycle of that system for very cheap. That's the one, it's just to me that would revolutionize how we work and I think that the barrier is mobile payments are starting to take off around the world, particularly in east Africa, parts of Southeast Asia [00:14:00] where the underpinning technology platform is strong enough of the cell phone network and government regulation or non regulation is incentivizing in one way or another.Speaker 1: The creation of those payment systems. There are a few starting to pop up in Central America, but central and Latin America is very far behind the innovation that's been happening in Africa and in Nicaragua in particular. It's just getting off the ground as one initiative and Pesto in the capital city of Managua, [00:14:30] but it's not clear when or how they're going to expand to a more national network. If that's not something that blue energy will create. It's something we can advocate for and speak about, but ultimately we're sort of waiting for that next wave of innovation and technology to come out there so that we can build our services on top of it. Do you have any insights or challenges for engineers out there building technologies that you could potentially use? Like the latrines and solar [00:15:00] and wind? Absolutely. I mean, I think that engineers, especially at fancy institutions like Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT, are often sort of skewed towards thinking about flashy, shiny, new high tech things, which are very fun and exciting and can have an impact on their own, right? Speaker 1: But if you're thinking about engineering and technology for the developing world, it is my belief now that you can have a much bigger impact [00:15:30] by looking at simpler technologies and making incremental gains on those. It's not a sexy, right? I mean, studying latrine for multiple years, you're like, how complicated is a latrine? Right? It doesn't have a ton of moving parts. It's from an engineering perspective, it's a little boring, frankly, but there is surprisingly a ton of work to localize the technology to have it create impact and people's first reaction is, hmm, that sounds kind of boring. Second reaction is we ought to be able to figure that out quickly, but that's not true. You know, haven't latrines been figured out? [00:16:00] Aren't there already latrine designs? Absolutely. And there's latrines that work very well in specific contexts and the challenge is not to go and vent a brand new latrine if you're doing that good for you and maybe you'll invent the best one ever. Speaker 1: But for the majority of engineers out there, we don't need all of them going out there and renting a new latrine. Most of them, I believe could be most productive if they want to work in the development space to think about the process of localizing technology that already exists fundamentally in other [00:16:30] places and doing the tweaking. When you're in the field and you're working with people and you've seen the impact it's creating, it's very exciting and that's what the summer fellows we receive from. We have a partnership here with UC Berkeley, with the cal energy core, four of their fellows come and work with Berliner g every summer. You can ask them. It's a very rewarding experience and a very exciting experience that doesn't look very exciting on paper. Studying latrines for example, but you get out in the field see the impact. Make the progress and learn the social dimensions which ultimately [00:17:00] are the most critical, so I think a lot of the opportunity for creating impact if you're a young engineer is be willing to get your hands dirty, get out there in the field, understand that it takes time and focus on making a real meaningful contribution that's well documented and that builds on the previous person's work and that is prepared to interconnect with the next person who's going to come down. Speaker 1: If you can achieve that, that's how you have a huge impact over time. You're not going come in in six weeks [00:17:30] and sign some brand new thing that's going to solve the water and sanitation problem in the developing world. Those solutions don't exist. Speaker 5: [inaudible] you are listening to the spectrum KLX Berkeley Co founder and executive director of Blue Energy Matiaz Craig is our guest. Blue energy facilitates sustainable development in eastern Nicaragua. Speaker 1: [00:18:00] Have you learned things about sustainability in your experience in Nicaragua that might reflect back on the developed world? I think that is one of the most critical things that I've learned in the last 10 years is that this really is a two way street. It's very arrogant for people from the quote unquote developed world to go into a poor community in the developing world. See, for example, that they don't have a sanitation solution and say, oh, [00:18:30] what they need. Obviously here is this kind of latrine, like you're an instant expert. Like they've never thought of this before and you're an expert. Why? Because you come from the developed world and you can lecture them and train them on sustainability and what do you really know about sustainability? Last 10 years have been very humbling. We in the United States, for example, as a country, don't live anywhere near sustainably, right? Speaker 1: We're consuming resources just left and right. And one approach is to say, oh my gosh, I don't want to [00:19:00] be a hypocrite, so I'm not going to go help. And some people take that path. I know I'm not sustainable, so I'm not going to go help people be sustainable, but I don't think that's very productive. I think what is most productive is to engage in that process out there in the field with an explicit intent of thinking. What can you learn from that experience and how can you take that back to where you come from. That is now an explicit part of our model where we have really two initiatives. We have the community development side, which is the physical work that [00:19:30] gets done in Nicaragua and we have what we call the global leadership program, which is bringing people in in part to contribute to the community development work, but the longterm impact of the global leadership program is to build more awareness in those people who are going to go back to their home countries and be leaders in their community around issues of sustainability for example, and climate change and all these other critical topics because their greatest sort of point of leverage is back in their own community, right? Speaker 1: [00:20:00] They can come contribute some in the field, learn something, but if they go on to be a mayor of their town, for example, like that's going to be a huge impact where a business leader in their community with a more heightened sense of awareness of these critical issues like sustainability work on greening initiatives in their town back in the developed world where we're burning through most of the world's resources. Right? I know that. I know I can have a much bigger impact by cutting my electricity consumption in half than I can by installing [00:20:30] a 50 watt solar panel in a remote community. From a global perspective, obviously locally, that 50 watt panel has a huge impact, so I think we have to approach this as a give and take. We can contribute in the field if we do it in an appropriate longterm way, and that we need to be open to that learning experience in the field and take that back in the developed world. Speaker 1: I think that's vital. What are the future plans for blue energy? We made [00:21:00] a critical decision a couple of years ago that for our community development work, we're going to stay geographically concentrated. We're gonna stay focused on Nicaragua with a strong emphasis on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. We feel that there is a tremendous amount of work to be done there and we have 10 years of experience building relationships, understanding that the culture and society, the key ingredients we feel to actually having a meaningful impact and those are things that we've invested heavily in and we feel [00:21:30] that they don't scale very well and so we feel that if we were to expand geographically, we would have to change our model and work in a different way that would be less impactful. We'd have bigger numbers and less impact. We feel strongly that we can have the most impact by staying focused in this geography until every person on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua has access to basic sanitation, clean water and electricity. Speaker 1: Why would we go work anywhere else? Was the question we finally asked ourselves then. Oh, right now [00:22:00] the way that we have an explicit model for creating impact beyond Nicaragua, it's through the global leadership program and there's different components to that. One I mentioned earlier was bringing in international people to work in Nicaragua, take that transformational experience back home with them and be agents of change in their own lives, in their own communities all around the world. The second component is the institution to institution strengthening. That's when we work with a local government office and train them on it tools [00:22:30] so that they can be more effective in their work. Or we work with another development partner and share technology, so it's a way to have an impact beyond any border, but it's not us going out and physically doing another project. And then the third one is sort of based on the practical action, which is one of the organizations I mentioned earlier that has been an inspiration to me is doing a better job of documenting case studies and the learning and publishing that experience documents that can be shared globally. Speaker 1: We are often [00:23:00] requested people say, oh, I see you worked on, you know this bio sand filter. Can you tell me how it's gone? Well, right now that's a long conversation and we do that, but it's not very resource efficient. If we had really well written out, documented case studies of our experience, what worked, what didn't and why and publish that for the global community, I think that could have a big impact and how can people get involved in blue energy? Well, the first thing we need is to grow our support base financial support base. The number [00:23:30] one thing that people can do to help blue energy is to contribute financially to the organization because honestly we feel we have a model that's working very well. We have a very committed, dedicated staff and what we need to do is do more of what we're doing. Speaker 1: The second thing is if you are a student or young professional who is looking to compliment traditional classroom education with experiential learning and personal learning and growth opportunities, you should take a look at our global leadership program. [00:24:00] There is a program fee associated with that that helps us run a professional program that is financially self-sustainable and helps fund the project work that you actually do in the field that has local impact. The primary opportunity for that if you're a current student is during the summer and if you're a young professional, we have longer term fellowship opportunities that range from three months to a year. Some of them requiring a two year commitment, but that's an opportunity to really get out there and go through the full cycle, you know, help develop, project, execute, analyze [00:24:30] it. At the end you get an opportunity to see the full picture and that's an opportunity for professional and personal growth that people again have leveraged for all sorts of future opportunities. Speaker 1: And then the third thing is technology partnerships. Organizations that we can partner with that are champions of a particular technology, like the water filter for example, that we use. We learned that from an organization in Canada called cost c. A. W. S. T. They issue new plans every year. [00:25:00] We share back our design iterations with them so that it can be incorporated into the evolution of the plans. We're always looking for organizations like that. Just the caveat is we're looking for people that have a longterm commitment and are into design iteration. We're not necessarily looking for the flashiest new gadget that somebody just conceived of. We're looking more for long term technology partnerships. Matiaz Craig, thanks very much for being on spectrum. Thanks very much for having me. It was a pleasure. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 5: [00:25:30] To learn more about blue energy, visit their website. The URL is blue energy group.org spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We've created a simple link for you to get there. The link is tiny url.com/k a l [00:26:00] x spectrum. Speaker 4: Now several science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks in honor of its 40th anniversary. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center is sponsoring a series of lectures describing the research behind four Nobel prizes. The laureates are also longtime users of the national energy research. Scientific Computing Center is super computing resources. The last two lectures are being [00:26:30] held at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in June. These lectures are free. Tuesday, June 3rd mapping the universe. The Speaker is George Smoot of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley lab. He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006 for his work on the cosmic background explorer. The lecture will be in the building 66 auditorium, Tuesday, June 3rd noon to 1:30 PM then on Wednesday, June 11 [00:27:00] data computation and the fate of the universe Speaker as salt Perlmutter of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. This lecture will be in Lawrence Berkeley lab building 50 auditorium, Wednesday, June 11th noon to 1:30 PM now we'll follow up on a previous spectrum news story. Speaker 4: [00:27:30] The Berkeley News Center reports scientists working together on Kelp Watch 2014 announced today that the west coast shoreline shows no signs of ocean born radiation from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. Following their analysis of the first collection of Kelp samples along the western US coastline Kelp Watch 2014 is a project that uses coastal kelp beds as detectors of radioactive seawater arriving from Fukushima [00:28:00] via the North Pacific current. It is a collaborative effort led by Steven Manley, marine biology professor at California State University, Long Beach and Kai vetter, head of applied nuclear physics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a nuclear engineering professor at the University of California Berkeley. The new results are from samples primarily collected from February 24th through March 14th our data does not show the presence of Fukushima radio isotopes [00:28:30] in west coast, giant kelp or bull kelp. Manly said these results should reassure the public that our coastline is safe and that we are monitoring it for these materials. At the same time, these results provide us with a baseline for which we can compare samples gathered later in the year. Information about the procedures and results including the results of the first samples analysis are available to the public at the website. Kelp watch.berkeley.edu the researchers [00:29:00] will continually update the website for public viewing as more samples arrive and are analyzed, including samples from Canada. The second of the three 2014 sampling periods is scheduled to begin in early July. Speaker 4: The Muse occurred during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Speaker 6: Thank you for listening to spectrum. [00:29:30] If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com us in two weeks Speaker 7: at the same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ken Singer, managing director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at UC Berkeley, discusses his role in Skydeck, the start-up accelerator, and his own background as an entrepreneur in part two of this two part series on entrpreneurshipTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness of biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley celebrating bay area innovator. Good afternoon. This is your host, Vanessa ing. Two weeks ago we learned about skydeck and the Berkeley method of entrepreneurship from Equinox. Did you founding director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and technology at UC Berkeley, otherwise known as the CET. [00:00:30] Joining us today is Ken Singer, Managing Director of the CET. Today we'll learn more about how skydeck helps to develop Berkeley's entrepreneurial culture. Thank you for joining us, Ken. So just in case some of our listeners weren't able to tune in two weeks ago. What is skydeck? Speaker 2:Yes. A skydeck is a joint venture between three big groups on campus. The College of Engineering, which is the, the school that I work for and [00:01:00] the business school, Haas business school, and the vice chancellor of research and few years ago the deans and the vice chancellor got together and realized we had a missed opportunity in entrepreneurship, that we should have a a coordinated effort in facilitating and developing startups that are popping up all over campus. You know, we all have different skillsets and different kinds of strengths that we can contribute to the growth of [00:01:30] small companies. And, um, while we were seeing Stanford and several other universities make inroads by having, um, it seemed to be a more collective effort that it only made sense for us to do the same thing and pulled together a brand that was Berkeley wide, right. Berkeley campus wide rather than just in everyone's different colleges. Speaker 1:Could you tell us more about your relation to skydeck? Speaker 2:So I s I started, um, I started working [00:02:00] at, at Berkeley about eight years ago as an instructor for the mobile applications course. It was the first class that they did taught in that and I was running a startup at the time and two years ago the startup was sold and I got, was pretty exhausted. It was five years of just 24, seven working. And I thought, well, what if I go back to the university, maybe teach a little bit more and just kind of take a breather. And, uh, in talking to ECLAC, he said, hey, actually we're looking for someone [00:02:30] who might be people to head up the CET, uh, because I'm moving into developing more programs. And so he brought me in and we became co-directors of the CET two years ago and they had just started skydeck around that. And that was the first, I think, cohort of teams that had gone into skydeck. Speaker 2:And, um, and so I was there kind of at the beginning to help form some of the programmatic elements of how teams might be selected. We at CET were, were [00:03:00] we're, we're, we're partners with skydeck in many ways, one of which is we share resources, we share mentors. But what we also do is we feed teams up to skydeck. So a lot of our teams from CET, which were part of the engineering school. So most of our teams are our heavy engineering based. So some, uh, some devices, some, uh, research based, uh, algorithm stuff, you know, some applications. But [00:03:30] a lot of it is heavy, heavy research based and the teams that have come up with those concepts or those products need a little bit more help before they are ready for skydeck. Right. So a lot of the business school students, they already know how a terms sheet should look like. Speaker 2:They already know what negotiations should sound like. The, they've had some of that training. In fact, most business school students have had business experience. They're back at school, right? But most of our engineers that [00:04:00] their undergrads of course have oftentimes never worked before. And if they're graduate students, they've gone through the whole track where they've never really been an industry. So they, they, they themselves have not had much industry experience. So what we do is we put them through a, what we call an incubator, which is venture lab and venture lab is Kinda like Kinda like your, um, what does that first five kind of head start program for [00:04:30] engineering-based startups where we help you learn how to hire and fire people on your team. Cause many of these people haven't even been hired before, right? Because they've never been in an industry. We help them talk to investors, how to find them, how to talk to them. Speaker 2:We also help them find first customers or how to even talk to a customer, how to even look at a customer. Cause they'll, they'll use the name, hey we want to sell to apple. They don't realize there are multiple groups at apple, [00:05:00] different people who have different agendas that you need to find the right person who will be an advocate. So they don't even fundamentally understand the, the, the challenges ahead of them in some of the things that they absolutely have to master. So what we do is in venture lab and they stay for anywhere between three to six months. We help them through those elements, get used to those, those activities before the ones that are ready, we graduate them up to Skydeck and they perform much better [00:05:30] when they get get up to skydeck cause they're ready for what Skydeck, which we consider a skydeck and accelerator. Speaker 2:And what that means is that a team is pretty well formed. So they know who, what everyone is doing on the co in the company, there's no real hole in the company. It's a strong fundable team. They have a product, they know what their product market fit is, they know who the customers are. They have probably a dozen or so customers and [00:06:00] they know how their customers purchased product and they're there really to fundraise and, and grow. And so what you'll see with a lot of teams up there, they've got really strong presentations, really sharp pitches. They know how to sell their product. They also know their market extremely well and now they're trying to find the right mechanism of for growth. And that could be the right partner that can fund their growth or the right venture capital firm that can fund their [00:06:30] expansion. So it's really for more mature teams that have gone through, you know, they've gone through the ropes either through venture lab or through other means, but they, they tend to be well positioned to get funding and, and grow from there. Speaker 1:Could you tell us how skydeck is different from all the other um, hubs and accelerators in the bay area? If I am an entrepreneur, how would I know which tech space I should use? Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's been, there's [00:07:00] been this incredible explosion of incubators and accelerators and programs and, and, and whatnot. And, and I'm actually part of several international ones to bring companies from other countries here to be incubated or to get injected with some of the silicon valley culture as they say. And I think they have a list of several thousand of these programs around the world. And just in Berkeley I heard there's something like six or seven and sometimes they're topical, sometimes [00:07:30] they are just physical space and other times they're really programmatic. And um, I would say the difference between them and that will actually, let me tell you what I think they are. Incubators are really, they provide a few things. One is obviously space. Many of them provide space and either at a discount or free. They also by virtue of giving you space, they give you a community of other startups and entrepreneurs [00:08:00] who you, by virtue of being next to them, you'll find ways to collaborate and share information and be able to really fast track your, your path to success by learning from each other. Speaker 2:It's a pure driven educational model, right, where you're learning from each other and that actually I would say from being an entrepreneur myself as the way that I learned a lot is that you build a community of, [00:08:30] of likeminded folks who are dealing with same issues and frankly actually what you end up talking about is not much. It's not really the, the technical parts or the vcs. Even you don't. You do share some information about that, but the vast majority of stuff that you share is around, I am dealing with some serious stress right now. I've got a guy who's about to leave or have IP issues or I'm running out of money and it's not really, can you solve this problem for me? It's just can you listen [00:09:00] to me, have a freak out so that I don't freak out in front of my team? Speaker 2:Right? And maybe you can commiserate with me for a little bit and then I can sound totally with it when I'm talking to, to my team. Because being an entrepreneur, being a founder of a company is by far the loneliest experience you will ever have. Because you cannot share a lot of information with a lot of people, especially the people you're closest to your team. You can't tell them you're running out of money, you can't tell them. You might have some concerns about the IP, [00:09:30] you can't tell them you might be getting sued by apple or by Google or whomever, right? And these things happen, right? And so you end up having to hold back enormous amounts of information because that's the nature of the game. And you have to be careful about what you hold back. But there's certain things that will randomize your team or your effort. Speaker 2:And what drives a startup is momentum. It's this belief that you're, you're going to be doing something great. And so it becomes a very lonely road for, for that founder. So if you have a community [00:10:00] of people who, who get together because they share space, you have that valve, it's a safety valve that just blows steam, you know, and, and keeps you saying it's a really important element of all of that. And if you talk to people who have successfully exited out of these incubators, you'll hear a very common theme about, you know, it was really important that we are, we were in that environment with all these other entrepreneurs, right? And this is why the good incubator's and accelerators like skydeck are extremely careful about [00:10:30] who they select because you, you don't want to introduce a wrong element in there that can cause people to stop sharing with each other across the different companies. Speaker 2:The other thing that, that incubators and accelerators do is that they leveraged the extended network of the people involved in the incubator. So you see these independent incubators pop up in San Francisco and throughout the country. And the person who started it usually has a huge Rolodex of people that they know [00:11:00] from investors to partners, to vendors, to all these folks, lawyers, consultants, all these people who can help your business and they become the connector. Right. What's that? The, the huge advantage that skydeck has is its association with UC Berkeley and UC Berkeley has something like 475,000 alumni that who are currently alive and that can be resources for [00:11:30] companies that are starting up and that's where I think Stanford's done a great job. Where we can do a better job here is that they've engaged their alumni network of course are alumni network tends to be very, very technical as well as well because there's so many that stayed in the bay area. Speaker 2:Um, so that network is what drives the growth of these startups. The more people that you meet who might have relevant connection to your business is equivalent to maybe 15 connections because they can introduce [00:12:00] you to so many more people. So you know skydeck because of its connection with Berkeley is probably these potentially the strongest network that you can have. Because it's not just Jeff Burton who runs Skydeck, who's network you're going to be tapping. And by the way, he's a Stanford Grad, right? And he's such a huge advocate for this program at Berkeley. But you're also tapping the networks of all of the deans, all of the executives, the professors, [00:12:30] all the people who want to give back to Berkeley. And we have tons of people who come back who want to help smart, small companies. Those people become your resource that you can't buy. You just can't buy access like that. That's something that you have to be a part of in order to get access to. Speaker 1:It does seem like Berkeley has a very strong alumni network, but a lot of the national press seems to focus on Stanford and its ability to produce entrepreneurs [00:13:00] with great commercial innovations. Why do you think this is the case? Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, I can take you back as I was, I was a history major. So I like looking at this in a chronological and historical way. And actually it's both historical and geographic. So if you look at Berkeley, Berkeley abuts a hill. And so growth potential for Berkeley for companies that might sprout up around the campus are fairly limited. And that happened [00:13:30] actually fairly early because after World War II, the East Bay exploded, you know, um, and during World War Two, so, uh, there wasn't much room for growth, you know, for, for cheap space. And if you look at Stanford, it, there is a reason why they call it the farm is that there's a lot of, there was a lot of space, not so much anymore, but back then it was a strawberry fields. So geography had something to be to play into it over the course of the last 50 years. Speaker 2:Right. Because companies could find inexpensive places to, to build their businesses. [00:14:00] But also there was a strategic decision that was made back during World War II. Right? Um, during World War II, the government enlisted several universities to help them develop a weaponry, right? So MIT did a lot of work, um, and so did so did Berkeley, you know, with our role in, in discoveries around nuclear technology. And so Berkeley saddled up with government and got a lot of research grants and a lot of research money. And when you start that, it [00:14:30] just becomes easier to get government money. And Stanford went the other direction. They partnered up with the private industry. And so if you look at who set up shop, literally on their campus, you had HP built literally on their campus, you have Xerox Park, you have now SAP. So you have some of the very largest companies literally on their location. Speaker 2:And that strategy has proven out to be probably the better one. Um, and when you are a [00:15:00] private university, you get to make a lot of decisions faster. And I think you're also allowed to make some more mistakes because you know, you're afforded that luxury of, of changing course and, and try new things. So, um, you know, with those two things, Stanford was able to grow very quickly with these, you know, other companies that were built around their campus with their professors, with their students, and it was [00:15:30] also in the company's best interest to promote themselves. And if you think about government research, it's really not in the government's research agenda to promote, you know, on the scale that small, large companies do. Um, what they've been successful at, especially if some things have military application, they don't really want to let people know. So that, that's kind of what I think has created that disconnect between what Stanford now represents and what Berkeley, the, the, [00:16:00] the lack of a PR engine that Berkeley has had. Speaker 2:And you know, with, with the way that these communities work, you can't just be the only one talking about how great you are. You need to have other people talk about you. And when you have thousands of companies down, you know, Google and Yahoo have that all and Cisco and, and sun that spun out of, of the Stanford campus. And of course Berkeley has a role in Sun as well, but you know, when it came out of, out of Stanford, they talk about [00:16:30] that and they end up promoting a, that campus by virtue of, of, of them promoting themselves. Speaker 1:You're listening to method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley. Joining us today is Ken Singer, Managing Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and technology at UC Berkeley. You mentioned earlier that Stanford's strategy of partnering with Industry ultimately proved to be the better method. What do you mean by that? [00:17:00] Are The CET and skydeck part of an effort to emulate Stanford's entrepreneurial direction? Speaker 2:Yeah, so I, I would, I would correct my previous statement. I do, I wouldn't say that it's better. I think it was more effective in achieving some of the goals that, that I'm sure Stanford had, which was to become the nexus of, of startups and innovation. And, and Berkeley, I would say is on par. If you were to look at just the kinds of innovation that comes off of the Berkeley, uh, Lawrence Berkeley [00:17:30] labs and within our own campus here, but we don't have the same kind of marketing machine or the, or the kind of, um, push towards promoting it. So it's, um, it's, it's different. And this is, if you look at the reputations, and in fact I just have recently talked to some students are trying to figure out whether they should go to Berkeley or to Stanford. And the pitch that they get from Stanford is very much around, hey, we have an entrepreneurial community here. Speaker 2:Everyone's [00:18:00] doing a startup. And you know, you'll, you'll love that cause this is what, uh, what real researchers do. And, and you know, Berkeley is great academically, it's great, but that they produce professors and researchers. And I heard, I've heard that a couple of times now from students who have gotten that, that pitch and to some degree they're, they're right, right? They're right. That Berkeley does produce professors and researchers, but they are world-class that turn around and create companies like Marvell and cadence and, and [00:18:30] companies that you might not be familiar with, but there are multibillion dollar businesses that power every, virtually every machine that you use, right. If you use up in the bay area. Okay. Yeah. Right. So if you use anything with a chip in it, um, other than a potato chip, you're, you're dealing with something that was designed by Kate on Caden software. Speaker 2:Right. We don't know that because many people don't know that because Berkeley oftentimes does the kind of research and the kind of of applications [00:19:00] that aren't necessarily sexy, but they're foundational and so everyone touches them. You just don't necessarily know. You do. So earlier you mentioned that you, uh, had been a history major. I was wondering if you could speak a little about that and then tell us more about your background and how you got here. Yeah. So I, uh, so I grew up in, in the Seattle area and um, had always wanted to be a, a microbiologist. I always wanted to do some research where I could some somehow have an impact. And [00:19:30] My mother was an English teacher, so I ended up coming to Berkeley as a dual major between English and microbiology. And I quickly lost the love of microbiology cause in my classes it was mostly premed students who didn't necessarily like the material, but they're there to, to get good grades. Speaker 2:And I wanted to be around people who I could have interesting conversations with. Right. And where I could find that was in my history courses that I took and I, I took a few too many actually, [00:20:00] and realized in order for me to graduate on time, I would end up having to be a history major. And um, yeah, that's, that's poor planning. But, uh, it was felicitous because I learned an enormous amount. Yeah. And every, it's funny because I always get the first day of class, I teach several classes every year in the engineering school and, and it's a multidisciplinary course. So I have students from, from Haas, I have students from the humanities, but half of them are engineers of some flavor. And I [00:20:30] always get that question from someone who has pulled up their iPad or their their computer and Google searched my bio and there's one hand that goes up and says, um, so I noticed that you were a history major at, at Berkeley. Speaker 2:Uh, can you tell us more about that? Or the braver ones will say, hey, can you tell us how that applies to entrepreneurship? Which would they really mean is how are you qualified to teach me today? Right? Which is a classic Berkeley, you know, it's a classic [00:21:00] Berkeley thing for students to do that. I, I'm used to it. And so what I tell my students is that history is not what you might think it is, which most students, because of AP tests and because of the way we teach thinks, think that it's a string of, of facts and string of dates and people to memorize and wars and all of these things that are just something that you have to, to memorize and get tested for. And what I tell them is if [00:21:30] you take a really good history course, you find out very quickly that history is not about these things. Speaker 2:History is about decisions. History doesn't exist in a vacuum. It actually can only exist when there's human beings involved. That is actually the definition of history. Every day as an entrepreneur, you do maybe 50 to 60 decisions of which three or four are so consequential. If you make the wrong one, your company might die. Right? And so if you've spent years [00:22:00] studying what goes into a decision, what are the consequences, what are the unintended consequences? What are the things that you might not even know might be exogenous things that affect a decision. If you spent years analyzing that stuff, you become very comfortable making calculated decisions that hopefully will be good ones and you're comfortable with that. And so I tell my students, if they haven't studied history, they haven't studied decision making and they're going to [00:22:30] be pretty far behind when they need to make a couple of really key ones in their startup that usually shuts them up. Speaker 2:Could you tell us a little bit about your background in entrepreneurship? So I came to Berkeley as, as I mentioned before, completely planning to do something different. And in 1999, the Internet bubble was still quite, quite huge. It Ha it was still expanding. And I sat down with a couple of friends [00:23:00] and we just started kicking around some ideas and it just kind of rolled down the hill and we started a company, raised a bunch of money. And before I knew it, I turned around and realized I was doing a startup and I'd quit school and, and, and headed down this career path that, that I look back now and go, that's insane. I was 1920. I couldn't even run a car in Germany as I was, as I found out, as I was trying to go to a meeting that was not possible. So, uh, [00:23:30] you know, it just kind of happened I think by the luck of the draw of being the right in the right place at the right time. Speaker 2:You know, you're in the bay area, you're around other people who are innovative and, and, and interested in starting something. And also my father was an entrepreneur. He had started his own company, his of consulting business for, for, for banks. But uh, so it wasn't really foreign in my, in my family to do something like this. And actually they are fairly supportive of me doing that. They were one of the investors in [00:24:00] that first company, which, uh, didn't make money. We ended up selling the remnants of that company to, to a company in Singapore, but learned an enormous amount during that process. And once you've gone through it, it's really difficult to do something else. You know, I'm one of those people who is curious about everything and if you're curious about everything, there's kind of two paths for you. Either you become a museum curator or a professor, which I didn't have the, uh, the patients for that path. Speaker 2:[00:24:30] But, uh, the other thing is to be a consummate tinker and be an entrepreneur because as an entrepreneur, you don't just do technology stuff. If you're tech entrepreneur, it's not just building product. But it's also working with customers. It's also working with finance, it's working with legal, it's working with patents and and conferences and marketing and all the elements that go into making a company fire up all the different [00:25:00] parts of your brain. And it's all interesting. It's all interesting to see how they're all connected. And if you're a systems thinker like I am I, it's just really fascinating how, you know, you pull a string over here and marketing and suddenly product changes, right? You change a little bit on the product and suddenly customers change the type of customers who come to you. And it's just kind of this game of, I was just trying to describe this to someone. Speaker 2:It's like a game of Kerplunk, right? You've got a bunch of marbles on top of this things and you pull different things and suddenly for whatever reason, that last thing that you pulled out and made [00:25:30] everything collapsed. But why was it just that last one? Right? So it's really fascinating to me to seal all those kinds of things. And so I was driven to entrepreneurship and startups. Part of it was because of time and place, but I think I'm well suited for it because of this natural curiosity that I had. Could you tell us about some notable startups that skydeck has helped accelerate? Yeah, so we've had a few that have recently got funded, uh, you know, small, small amounts that pre series a, [00:26:00] we have one company called Lilly and they were two guys who are in my mobile class a few years ago were actually my big data class. Speaker 2:They created a, an indicis outside of of the course. They created a drone company, so that's a bit scary. But what they did was they put a camera on it and a sensor so that it follows you while you're doing extreme sports. So you know you've got the, the GoPro, but it's your, it's very solid cystic, right? It's from your [00:26:30] standpoint, it's where you're jumping off of something. This thing is actually watching you as if you're having an out of body experience. So you can watch yourself do this stuff as if you're an observer. And a, they recently got some and they didn't know each other until my class. One was a business student and the other one was an engineer. And in our, in our class they, they met and now they're best friends and they've created a company together. And I would say that if there was ever a legacy that I would like to leave behind [00:27:00] is that I created an environment in which people who wouldn't have typically met or collaborated found a venue to do that and some really cool, amazing things happen there that, uh, had an impact. Speaker 2:Right. That that would be for me, what I would love to leave behind at Berkeley, we've got a couple others that are earlier stage that we're really proud of. If they're successful, it will be a huge deal. We have one in cancer research and [00:27:30] these guys are, one is a researcher, the other one is a business major. They're called XL bio. And what they discovered was that metastasizing cancer cells are very difficult to replicate out of the lab. Other cells you can replicate outside the outside of the body, right? And um, and metastasizing cancer cells, if you're familiar with it, spread very quickly. And you might have a few attempts at chemo before you know, it ravages your body. [00:28:00] So you gotta get that Chemo right? But you know, chemo is very individual, right? It's, it might work for one person and it might not work for another. Speaker 2:And so what doctors typically do is they find that the chemo that they think would work on you, and that's just based on the population, it works on the highest percentage of people, they'll try that on you. That's the logic they gave go through to figure out what chemo to use. So what these guys have found was they could get metastasizing cancer to replicate outside [00:28:30] the body. They discovered a way to do that and now you can test chemo, all the different types of chemo on the cells outside the body to figure out which one will work for you to tailor the chemo to your body, which is amazing because you know, this has an, this has the potential of saving lives. But it also has the potential of making life a little more pleasant for those who don't have a chemo that will work for them. Speaker 2:They don't have to spend their last year destroying their body and feeling [00:29:00] horrible. They just can have, you know, enjoy the last, last year. So if you think about the human impact of some of this research that's going on, it only happens if someone finds a way to commercialize it. And that's the role that we play is to take these amazing things that are happening up on the hill that's happening on campus and helping those researchers and those innovators turn that discovery into something that can impact all of us. That doesn't just [00:29:30] reside in a paper, but that can have a human impact on us. So that's how I think, you know, if I were to look at what we do as a center, I can't tell people that I'm, I'm curing cancer, but I can certainly say that I'm helping people who are trying to cure cancer. Right. And that that's, it's an [inaudible]. Speaker 2:It's good to say it's, it's a good thing to be able to look at your job and say, hey, we're, we're doing something that has that kind of impact. Thanks so much for joining us today. [00:30:00] If people want to get in touch with you, how can they do so? Yes, so there's a couple of ways you can email me. I have an open door policy. It's at 10 dot singer@berkeley.edu so k e n Dot s, I n g e r@berkeley.edu. You can also go to our website, [inaudible] dot berkeley.edu and you can get more information about our programs. Thanks again for joining us today, Ken. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me. It was great. Speaker 1:[00:30:30] If you have questions or comments about this show, go to the k a l x website and find method to the madness. Drop us an email. Tune in again, two weeks from now at this same time. Have a wonderful weekend. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michel Maharbiz & Daniel Cohen. Michel is an Assoc Prof with EECS-UCB. His research is building micro/nano interfaces to cells and organisms: bio-derived fabrication methods. Daniel received his PhD from UCB and UCSF Dept of Bioengineering in 2013.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k [00:00:30] a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Hello and good afternoon. My name is Chase Jakubowski and I'm the host of today's show. Today we present the final of our two interviews with Michelle Ma Harbas and Daniel Cohen. Michelle is an associate professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley. His [00:01:00] current research interests include building micro nano interfaces to cells and organisms and exploring the bio derive fabrication methods. Daniel Cohen received his phd from the Joint UC Berkeley U CSF Department of Bioengineering Program in 2013 together they have been working on the fronts project funded by the National Science Foundation. Fronts is an acronym for flexible, resorbable, organic nanomaterial therapeutic systems. In this part [00:01:30] two of our interview, we discussed the current limits of instrumenting the human body, the ethics that swirl about bioengineering and the entrepreneurial urges of engineers. Here's part two. Yeah. Speaker 3: What sort of limits do you think there might be with these kinds of interfaces? Do you foresee any limitations on the technology or is it off we go, we don't have Saturday that work well in the body right now we don't have a sense of what to do with a lot of the data. It's not clear what you'd put in and out [00:02:00] getting the thing in. You're not going to do that on your own for most implants to put designs and so I think the limitations are huge, especially for electrical stimulation. There are very few safe ways of stimulating with DC fields inside the body. You need very special materials, short time periods. From an engineering perspective there are enormous challenges. Then people aren't going to be running around doing this anytime soon, but I think the data deluge is probably the biggest one we'll wind up with cause we'll eventually solve the technology side and then it's what do you do with all of this stuff? Speaker 3: [00:02:30] I think there are an enormous engineering challenges, but I think of course for us it's exciting because we are engineers. I think that people see something like this and immediately we're very good at linear extrapolation, right? So, oh that means in five years we'll all look like terminator or something. So I think there's a lot of work to be done, as Daniel said, in building things that robustly survive in the body for very long periods of time, if that's what's required. You know we were talking about resorbable stuff, but you're talking about adding therapeutics or things that have a therapeutic function that are electrical in nature at some level. A lot of the there is, you actually want Speaker 4: [00:03:00] them to last a long time in there and do their business and that's a very, very big open challenge. I would also say if you wanted to put on the futurist hat, you know in the end you're also limited by the substrate, right? You have a certain genetic code in your cells are predisposed to do certain things. So you know you're working with those base materials and what those cells are doing. And so I think there's a lot of future for this type of instrumentation, but you know, we're not going to look like the Borg anytime soon. I don't think. Are there any challenges that we haven't really gotten [00:03:30] to in developing these electronics so that they interact with biological systems in specifically technical stuff, environmental stuff, even legal and ethical things. Are there questions you guys wrestle with? We've had a lot of these cars, agent Daniel smiling because we've had conversations by often, not just with Daniel, with Peter [inaudible], who's another student that just graduated from the group. Speaker 4: It does neuro. It started back when we were doing some of the bug work. I think for this project, I'm pretty comfortable. You know, we're working on very fundamental things. [00:04:00] I don't know that I could address them in intelligently today, but I think that there are interesting ethical concerns, societal concerns as we instrument ourselves more and more and they've been discussed. I mean, this is something that if you're interested in this topic, you can find quite a bit of discussion on the web or in various talks. When I started instrumenting my body to some extent. Where's the line, for example, between traditional FDA approved devices and consumer gadgets that you buy with your iPhone, where should that data go? You know, what are you going to do with it? Who's gonna do what with it? Is [00:04:30] it all yours? You know, there's an interesting argument that came, a friend of mine, David Lieberman, who's doesn't do this kind of work, but he's very interested in sensors and he's recently been interested in genetic screening and he brings up the fact that a lot of this extra information sometimes isn't very actionable and so it just adds noise. Speaker 4: But from our perspective, I think what we're doing is pretty exciting and I think it has a chance to help people and it's early days, Speaker 3: there's a lot more transparency than there used to be too. So the maker movement and just people are much more interested in trying things on themselves, [00:05:00] not cutting their arms up in, but instrumenting, looking at heart rate, looking at salinity of the skin, just different things that various startup companies are playing with and that you can look up schematics for on the Internet and so there's more of a culture of what you can get out of it. The enhancement side I think is somewhat behind right now because it's not even clear what we're doing with any of these. So ethically we haven't run into that issue quite yet. Speaker 4: And in terms of the group that fronts contains all the different disciplines [00:05:30] that are working on it, it's a rather interdisciplinary project. Do you feel that your training taught you how to do interdisciplinary work or did you learn it on the job? I think I've always been in interdisciplinary environment in my work. I think it's always been accepted. I think it's been encouraged. I think that's the name of the game. Interestingly enough, I was just having a conversation with Edward Lee from our department two days ago where I was joking. I said the days of monastic academia are largely ending or, but interestingly enough, a lot of us choose academia [00:06:00] because we want to go live in a monastery. So it's say it's a very interesting sort of thing these days. I think certainly in a place like Berkeley, you want to make sure you're deep in your competence to, you're making contributions in a meaningful and deep way, but the nature of everything is very interdisciplinary.Speaker 4: Do you ever feel like, Oh, if I'd had more of this or more of that, if I'd had more exposure than I would just be so much more comfortable in this invited more money. No, I'm kidding. Now we're well funded. You know, you've only have so much time to spend in your field and to get competency. It's hard to do everything [00:06:30] and know everything. You can't really, you can't, but you should know who to talk to. Right. Interdisciplinary stuff is not trained and it's not easy to train someone in per se. It's a mindset and the environment is important. And in undergraduate work, you tend to be a specialist in something. And in Grad school you're expected to completely specialize, but I think you really miss out on a lot. So what's Nice, at least in Berkeley is it's very easy to transition across. Labs, talk to different people, set up collaborations, but at the end of the day, you're not going to be an expert in those things, [00:07:00] but you're going to know who to talk to and that creates a very nice network that is very innovative at the end of the day. Speaker 4: So sub specialty in a way, or you're familiar with it, you can do the work if you need to, but you know people who really know that and that's the most important part. You put a good team together and that's where most of the innovations today are coming from. Not from single disciplines. Yeah, I think Berkeley is great for this. You have the freedom to go and you have brilliant people around that can inform and willing to participate with visibility and guide and mentor. I mean it's the freedom to do this and the mentors [00:07:30] to do it. I think all the top American institutions do this. But in engineering that's the modern approach. Speaker 5: Mm MM. Speaker 6: Spectrum is a public affair show on k a l ex Berkeley. Our guests are Michelle Maha [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen of UC Berkeley. They went to build a smart badge for wounds. In the next segment they talk about multidisciplinary work and [00:08:00] science fiction. Speaker 4: Well, you started a company, you took research out of the lab and started a company and then sold it. And what did you learn from that process? Is there something, it's fun. Do you have an Aha moment of like, is this how to do it kind of a thing? No, no. I have a great deal of respect for people who make it their business to make money in the private sector in, in technology. I mean, of course these days that's a trivial thing to [00:08:30] say, right? Cause in the bay area, that's what we live off of. But I was fortunate enough that I met a number of individuals that were already in the private sector and we're interested in commercializing and I wanted to go off and be an idealist professor. We developed out the this company and the day came where I decided to go be a professor and they said, you know, if you stay, we'll give you a bigger piece of the pie. Speaker 4: And I said, no, I'm going to go. I literally said, no, I want to go off and you know, do all these other crazy things and if this company has more than 50% market [00:09:00] share on this little narrow part of a, that'll be good enough for me. Right. It's a very famous last words. And that would have is when it was sold, I was happy with what, but my wife will never forgive me. Right. And so she's like, yeah, what are you, how do you feel now? No, I find the whole process of thinking about how what you're working on in academia might be commercializable to be very sanguine about it. I find it fascinating. I think that that process, understanding that a lot of what you do is not relevant to that field of endeavor. Working with people, valuing academics, sometimes people tend to [00:09:30] under value the contributions of the non technical people, which is silly is ridiculous actually. Speaker 4: And so valuing all of the components at a great time doing that. And I've done this a couple times and we have lots of little things bubbling. My cofounder of Cork, Tara Neurotech, I'm co founder of a company called tweedle tech, which builds hardware for games. I went often for a year, worked at a startup in San Francisco and energy startups. So I'm a big fan of this type of thing. I think it actually for engineers in certain fields, it's very useful because it calibrates you to reality to be honest with you on [inaudible], something you [00:10:00] can help mentor people with and you see that as a, a role for you. I mean, there's always a role, but I'm always very modest about it because I certainly haven't made $100 million out of any of these companies. Right. You have to be humble, humble, or I mean, and also there's an opinion of, for every person that thinks about this, there's a very um, neat quote I read, I think it was Eric Lander who said that we live our lives prospectively, but then we reconstruct our history is retrospectively, right? Speaker 4: So effectively we pick and choose and create a narrative, right? And so [00:10:30] for all of this stuff, like let's mentor how to have a great startup, the people mentoring or giving you a story, they are doing a pattern fit to whatever they experienced to tell the story, how they feel comfortable telling it. Right? And there's a billion different versions of this narrative. How is it you should transition your company or your idea to a company. But it's a lot of fun. That's the main thing I would say. Anybody out there that's interested in, I think it can be a lot of fun. It's very humbling and it forces you to change directions constantly and reevaluate what you're doing. And it works. A set of mental muscles [00:11:00] that are very different, I think in some cases from the academic ones. So it's, it's overall, just very good. Speaker 4: Michelle, you commented that science fiction was a source of inspiration. Sure. Dune. Is that the key one I was going to ask, are there any stories or themes that stick out? Oh, there's tons, but I mean, I, I have to say maybe this will be disappointed to people that like thinking about cyborgs and putting stuff, but honestly it's, I mean the, I think the single piece of science fiction that impacted me the most was doing, when I read it in [00:11:30] early high school or high school, what are doing his blown up and continues to blow my mind. Like I just, every 10 years I read and it just makes me happy. Yeah. I'm a big fan of all of the, I certainly love all the traditional stuff and more recently for me in the late eighties all this cyber punky kind of stuff. I'm trying to think of something more recent that I've read. Oh, and then Vernor Vinge would probably be the last big phase of my science fiction Aha moment. I Speaker 3: love [inaudible] stuff. I consider science fiction to be particularly hard. Sai FYS, [00:12:00] they take the last three data points and they take a ruler and they extrapolate it out to infinity. Right? And so you read it and you particularly very good hard science fiction. It just feels like, oh, I'll definitely turn out this way. Right? It must turn out this way. If there's no doubt, how can I ever, right. We're all gonna upload ourselves or whatever. Right? And that's the beauty of the really good one that I'm a big fan, Daniel, for you, any allure of science fiction? You were waxing wonderfully about Frankenstein and I actually only just read Frankenstein for the first [00:12:30] time in the last year and it's amazing. Everyone should read it and it perfectly captures the mindset of being a scientist, especially a graduate student. But I grew up with drastic park. I also read Dune periodically and the golden compass and things that aren't even traditional Scifi things where any sort of alternate reality where people have to come up with a way of how something would be done. Speaker 3: Authors tend to be very good at coming up with strange things. And that was more the fun part. So there wasn't any direct inspiration, [00:13:00] but there's this synthesis and putting together a different ideas. And so that's where you get a lot of the ethical discussion too. I mean ethical education and especially for bioengineering, most of it probably comes from the media and [inaudible] really mean we all know these concepts now, not because we were formally taught them, but because it's in a movie somewhere or we read about some world where people are engineered or something like that. So you get a pretty good perspective actually. And then you go to Grad school thinking you're going to build those things out that it [00:13:30] takes a little bit longer. So you figured out in Grad School. So that's my problem. I haven't figured it out. I, I'm aware of the problem I can't solve. Speaker 3: I'm still subject to it. But uh, I also just enjoy reading all over the place. These ideas came from old science papers. I have to say. Daniel is amazing in that regard. Daniel shows up and he's like, ah, I was just reading a 13th century manual for rhinoplasty. Where do you even, how do you, what's, you know, like it's awesome. And then he's, and you're right, like was it 13th century, 16th century? [00:14:00] And there's all these digresses like, look, he figured out right away I'll do this. So I have to stay voracious. Appetite in reading is a big plus if you want to join my group. And as the Internet, what's unleashing your ability to find these old documents? It certainly helps with things like the databases. So Frankenstein was recently just fully released. In fact, facsimile with Mary Shelley's own handwriting and the preface and everything, but also just library libraries. Speaker 3: So some of the earliest medical engineering books are from the, actually the late 17 hundreds it [00:14:30] was already starting in those you only find in the library in manuscript form and you can just go pick them up. The hard library is still actually quite useful for this, but the Internet certainly a great place to get lost. Also, just reading papers from different fields and looking through the bibliographies. That's really just a good way to backtrack and find where these things really started. And even with the history of bioelectricity, most people cite back to one particular person and it turns out that there's a second person before him and then there's this story. It's just fun to bounce all [00:15:00] over the place. And I think that's something that at least in bioengineering you do a ton of because there's no one discipline, no one knows what bioengineering means. Speaker 3: You go all over the place. And so for any of this stuff and interdisciplinary stuff, that's really one way to find out is just started reading tons of things including science. And so the history of science comes to life absolutely with a lot of these pioneering efforts and it's exceptionally humbling too. So if you look at the materials they used in the first rhinoplasties to help seal people's noses off after they'd [00:15:30] been chopped off and duals that material on a microscopic level. But then electron microscope is very, very similar to cutting edge medical technology today that we use for similar treatment. And they had no idea what they were doing, they just knew what worked. It is pretty humbling when you come across things like that. And it also puts a lot of stuff in perspective and there's a lot of stuff that's been lost as well. So when you come across it from either a different field or it just hasn't been looked at in a while, that's always exciting. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 7: [00:16:00] You're listening to spectrum a science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Michelle [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen bear research in the electric field that is generated by wounds and mammals. In the next segment they talk more about ethics and their work Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 4: Do you want to talk a little bit [00:16:30] more about your insect work that dated this? No bugs, but now we can talk about the, like the bugs is a, I say this is sort of my peewee Herman idea. You know, peewee Herman could never unfortunately ever not be peewee Herman. He tried very hard. I felt like the bugs is my peewee Herman curse. The brief version is we demonstrated that you can put very small electronics with neural in your muscular stimulators into insects and control their flight remotely via signal sent to the transmitter on the electronic package. And that would then control what signals [00:17:00] were sent to the insect. So what we do now is we have these incredibly small atronix weighs less than 200 milligrams such that these grasshoppers can carry it happily. We have these new systems that bias the way the insect receives certain information and we use that to affect how it's flying. Speaker 4: So we're still very interested in that. I find it a very interesting area. To me it's one of these places where you can most acutely demonstrate how much electronics has actually miniaturized. People have very visceral reaction [00:17:30] to the work because it takes these insects and incredibly small electronics that most people really don't think about usually and builds this sort of compound construct, right? That does something, the thing that isn't doing what an insect normally wants to do but isn't really a robot in the traditional sense of being made out of plastic and metal. For me, that's really why I do it. And I think it's right at that bleeding of what you can show you can do. And one of the side things that interests me profoundly is sort of the ethics of this. And most people like their initial reaction is either, oh [00:18:00] that's horrible. Speaker 4: How could you do that to an insect or at an insect? I swapped them against the wall all the time. Right. So there's usually, cause we like to be in quickly. So it's an interesting question. So let's say we get very good at putting these little packages on it such that almost anybody can do it as a hobby. Would you find it permissible to have, just like you have the San Francisco chapter of the RC helicopter flying hobby, would you find it permissible to have the San Francisco chapter of the Cyborg insect? Where do you go find yourself a grasshopper and you slap some stuff on its back or inside [00:18:30] it and use little pins to make holes to the right nerves and you let it go and then you start doing stuff. Our, what we normally consider to be animals, fair game, a spare part. Are they machines? Speaker 4: Are they not machines? I think this is fascinating. I think that we don't have very good ethical tools. In my opinion. I'm not an ethicist. I'm certainly not a philosopher, but I don't think we have very good ethical tools for dealing with this issue in the way we usually think about stuff. What is the argument against doing that? You usually fall back to things having to do with minimizing suffering and so on, but if you really spend some time [00:19:00] thinking about it, it's a lot of those become very murky very quickly with things like insects, things that are to our interpretation from our frame of reference are very distant from our cognitive function. It's the old argument that bad to hurt a dog, fine. Is it bad to hurt a fly? Is it bad to hurt a bacteria where, where in the spectrum of things do you fall? I think that this insect work really tickles that, whatever that is really struggle. I've had very interesting conversations after my talks and is that part of any of the engineering training? Speaker 3: Well, all [00:19:30] graduate students do ethical training and this sort of stuff is disgusting. It's more or less field dependent, but especially in bioengineering, you do a full seminar at the beginning where everything from this to genetics I adjustment and children and things like that, it's discussed. So that doesn't mean there are good tools for it, but everyone's very aware of it and I think maybe more effort should be made to derive those tools. But it's something people are working on at least. When you refer to a tools, are you talking of procedures and protocols, halls? Speaker 4: [00:20:00] What are you imagining as a tool in the ethics realm? I was thinking methods, algorithms, heuristics to think about this and come to conclusions. So for example, what I think of a tool I think of philosophical, philosophical tools, right? Thinking about what should I use as a basis for making a judgment? Should I just work to minimize singer style work to minimize suffering? That should be it. Is there something more complex or show you something else? So that's what I meant by tools. But of course there's another interpretation which is simply teaching students. They are in fact functional tools you use to determine ethical kind of in a narrower sentence, [00:20:30] right? Of for example, don't drop data points, you know? Right. If you have 43 data points in 42 of them look like you want the 43rd one doesn't, you should not get rid of the 43rd one. That kind of stuff. Sure. I mean I think we're very good at teaching that to the extent that it's well understood. I think it's just trickierSpeaker 3: when you do any animal work or bioengineering work where you have this utilitarian calculus, which is pretty much what most engineering revolves around. You're taught that you need to improve society. You have this idea that utility [00:21:00] is a valuable way of thinking about things, but it leaves too many questions open for bioengineering type stuff where utility comes at the cost of working on some living system that everyone is very aware of and very careful with and we have all sorts of protocols and procedures when we work with any living things, but it's still something that is very difficult to pin down when you talk to different people. And how they think about it. The consensus varies. Yes, sure, sure. Everyone has a good sense of like we're all sort of aligned, but where [00:21:30] you might draw the line or what types of experiments you personally might want to do is very different. Speaker 3: So some people fully support the idea of medical research but would never do it themselves for the reason that they don't want to work on the living system. And some people like myself say, if you are gonna work on a living system, you should do it. The courtesy of being in the room with it and at least seeing what you're doing. So there are different standards, but there's no formal approach to that. Yeah, there are lots of opinions. I mean, I think even in our larger super [00:22:00] set of people that work on this effort, there's lots of different comfort levels. The different researchers that run the whole gamut. Even calling it a living system, I think some people would say, well, it's out. Let me system. It's a, it's an animal. It's an organism. Your de de emphasizing its identity by calling it living, stuff like that. I mean, I think these things are all very interesting and we're all in the middle of it. It's an interesting area. Michelle [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you very much. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:22:30] spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link to get you there. The link is [00:23:00] tiny, url.com backslash and Kaa LX spectrum. We hope you can get out to a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Kornacki joins me Speaker 8: presenting the calendar this Sunday. The ninth call, HUD ash is hosting a Darwin Day celebration Brunch at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin avenue from 11:00 AM until 1:00 PM [00:23:30] eat bagels and lox while hearing about looking for Darwin's footprints in the world of zombies, ucs f professor John Halfer. Nick is also the interim director of the Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies and trustee and president of the California Academy of Sciences as an entomologist professor, half or nick, studies of the Zombie fly and its relationship to bees. He will also discuss how Darwin's ideas were influenced by his knowledge of the insect [00:24:00] world. The event is $10 per person and more information is available@coladash.org Speaker 1: as average temperatures continue to rise due to human changes to the composition of the atmosphere, cases of extreme weather are very likely to occur. On February 12th come join expert Michael F Wainer, a senior staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and learn about the science of climate change, current areas of research and some possible implications [00:24:30] for the future. Tickets are free for UC Berkeley Students, faculty and staff, and $10 to the public. Once again, this event will take place on February 12th from 1230 to 1:30 PM at the freight and salvage in Berkeley. The Bay area skeptics present Kernan Coleman for a personal recollection. He has titled Escaping. We've Vale a journey out of magical thinking, a telling of his 10 year journey out of magical thinking, alternative [00:25:00] medicine, new age, and fear-based denialism and learn how the woo woo bill still affects them even though he knows better. This takes place February 13th at La Penea Lounge 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley, seven 30 to 9:00 PM admission is free on February 15th the science of cow lecture will be given by Professor Marty Hearst and his entitled Natural Search User Interfaces. Speaker 1: What does the future hold for search user [00:25:30] interfaces? Can there be a natural user interface social rather than solo usage of information technology? More integration of massive quantities of user behavior and large scale knowledge basis. Marty Hurst is a professor in the school of Information at UC Berkeley with an affiliate appointment and the computer science division. She wrote the first book on search user interfaces. The lecture will be presented Saturday, February 15th and Stanley Hall Room One oh five at 11:00 AM [00:26:00] Stanley Hall is on the east side of the UC Berkeley campus. A feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find interesting. Rick Curnutt ski and I present our news. Speaker 8: Science now reviewed an article appearing in January 2nd proceeding of the National Academy of Science that suggests the black death left a mark on the human genome. Me. Hi, Natalia from Rad bough university and colleagues analyze the genomes from three populations. [00:26:30] The first population consisted of a hundred Romanians of European descent, Speaker 8: the second of a hundred Roma or gypsies that had migrated to the same region from India a thousand years ago. The third population was 500 people from Northwestern India, where the Roma were originally found. Genetically. The Roma are still quite similar to the Northwestern Indians, but 20 jeans have differences that could be explained by the environmental pressures the Europeans [00:27:00] and aroma have shared over the last millennia. Some jeans controlled skin pigmentation and others control immunological responses. The team found one such set of differences on chromosome four they code for proteins that latch onto bacteria initiating a defensive response. They showed the genes, help respond to the bacteria that caused the black death and speculate that it was this evolutionary pressure shared by the people living in the same area at the [00:27:30] same time. To exhibit these genomic differences, Speaker 1: researchers from the California State University Long Beach and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have launched Kelp, watched 2014 a scientific campaign designed to determine the extent of radioactive contamination of the state's Kelp forest from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant initiated by long beach biology professor Steven Manley and the Berkeley labs head of applied nuclear physics, Kai vetter. The project were ally on [00:28:00] samples of giant Kelp and bulk help from along the California and Mexico coast lines. The project includes the participation of 19 academic and government institutions. These participants will sample kelp from the entire west coast as far north as del Norte, Tay County, and as far south as Baja California. Sampling will take place several times in 2014 and processed kelp samples will be sent to the Lawrence Berkeley national labs. Low background facility for detailed radionucleotide analysis. As data [00:28:30] becomes available, it will be posted for public access. Professor Manley says at the present time, this initiative is unfunded by any state or federal agency with time and costs being donated by participants. So those interested in taking part in the project can contact Manley at California State University. Long Beach Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 6: [00:29:00] The music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us at eight nine days. Speaker 9: Hey, email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same [00:29:30] time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michel Maharbiz & Daniel Cohen. Michel is an Assoc Prof with EECS-UCB. His research is building micro/nano interfaces to cells and organisms: bio-derived fabrication methods. Daniel received his PhD from UCB and UCSF Dept of Bioengineering in 2013.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k [00:00:30] a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Hello and good afternoon. My name is Chase Jakubowski and I'm the host of today's show. Today we present the final of our two interviews with Michelle Ma Harbas and Daniel Cohen. Michelle is an associate professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley. His [00:01:00] current research interests include building micro nano interfaces to cells and organisms and exploring the bio derive fabrication methods. Daniel Cohen received his phd from the Joint UC Berkeley U CSF Department of Bioengineering Program in 2013 together they have been working on the fronts project funded by the National Science Foundation. Fronts is an acronym for flexible, resorbable, organic nanomaterial therapeutic systems. In this part [00:01:30] two of our interview, we discussed the current limits of instrumenting the human body, the ethics that swirl about bioengineering and the entrepreneurial urges of engineers. Here's part two. Yeah. Speaker 3: What sort of limits do you think there might be with these kinds of interfaces? Do you foresee any limitations on the technology or is it off we go, we don't have Saturday that work well in the body right now we don't have a sense of what to do with a lot of the data. It's not clear what you'd put in and out [00:02:00] getting the thing in. You're not going to do that on your own for most implants to put designs and so I think the limitations are huge, especially for electrical stimulation. There are very few safe ways of stimulating with DC fields inside the body. You need very special materials, short time periods. From an engineering perspective there are enormous challenges. Then people aren't going to be running around doing this anytime soon, but I think the data deluge is probably the biggest one we'll wind up with cause we'll eventually solve the technology side and then it's what do you do with all of this stuff? Speaker 3: [00:02:30] I think there are an enormous engineering challenges, but I think of course for us it's exciting because we are engineers. I think that people see something like this and immediately we're very good at linear extrapolation, right? So, oh that means in five years we'll all look like terminator or something. So I think there's a lot of work to be done, as Daniel said, in building things that robustly survive in the body for very long periods of time, if that's what's required. You know we were talking about resorbable stuff, but you're talking about adding therapeutics or things that have a therapeutic function that are electrical in nature at some level. A lot of the there is, you actually want Speaker 4: [00:03:00] them to last a long time in there and do their business and that's a very, very big open challenge. I would also say if you wanted to put on the futurist hat, you know in the end you're also limited by the substrate, right? You have a certain genetic code in your cells are predisposed to do certain things. So you know you're working with those base materials and what those cells are doing. And so I think there's a lot of future for this type of instrumentation, but you know, we're not going to look like the Borg anytime soon. I don't think. Are there any challenges that we haven't really gotten [00:03:30] to in developing these electronics so that they interact with biological systems in specifically technical stuff, environmental stuff, even legal and ethical things. Are there questions you guys wrestle with? We've had a lot of these cars, agent Daniel smiling because we've had conversations by often, not just with Daniel, with Peter [inaudible], who's another student that just graduated from the group. Speaker 4: It does neuro. It started back when we were doing some of the bug work. I think for this project, I'm pretty comfortable. You know, we're working on very fundamental things. [00:04:00] I don't know that I could address them in intelligently today, but I think that there are interesting ethical concerns, societal concerns as we instrument ourselves more and more and they've been discussed. I mean, this is something that if you're interested in this topic, you can find quite a bit of discussion on the web or in various talks. When I started instrumenting my body to some extent. Where's the line, for example, between traditional FDA approved devices and consumer gadgets that you buy with your iPhone, where should that data go? You know, what are you going to do with it? Who's gonna do what with it? Is [00:04:30] it all yours? You know, there's an interesting argument that came, a friend of mine, David Lieberman, who's doesn't do this kind of work, but he's very interested in sensors and he's recently been interested in genetic screening and he brings up the fact that a lot of this extra information sometimes isn't very actionable and so it just adds noise. Speaker 4: But from our perspective, I think what we're doing is pretty exciting and I think it has a chance to help people and it's early days, Speaker 3: there's a lot more transparency than there used to be too. So the maker movement and just people are much more interested in trying things on themselves, [00:05:00] not cutting their arms up in, but instrumenting, looking at heart rate, looking at salinity of the skin, just different things that various startup companies are playing with and that you can look up schematics for on the Internet and so there's more of a culture of what you can get out of it. The enhancement side I think is somewhat behind right now because it's not even clear what we're doing with any of these. So ethically we haven't run into that issue quite yet. Speaker 4: And in terms of the group that fronts contains all the different disciplines [00:05:30] that are working on it, it's a rather interdisciplinary project. Do you feel that your training taught you how to do interdisciplinary work or did you learn it on the job? I think I've always been in interdisciplinary environment in my work. I think it's always been accepted. I think it's been encouraged. I think that's the name of the game. Interestingly enough, I was just having a conversation with Edward Lee from our department two days ago where I was joking. I said the days of monastic academia are largely ending or, but interestingly enough, a lot of us choose academia [00:06:00] because we want to go live in a monastery. So it's say it's a very interesting sort of thing these days. I think certainly in a place like Berkeley, you want to make sure you're deep in your competence to, you're making contributions in a meaningful and deep way, but the nature of everything is very interdisciplinary.Speaker 4: Do you ever feel like, Oh, if I'd had more of this or more of that, if I'd had more exposure than I would just be so much more comfortable in this invited more money. No, I'm kidding. Now we're well funded. You know, you've only have so much time to spend in your field and to get competency. It's hard to do everything [00:06:30] and know everything. You can't really, you can't, but you should know who to talk to. Right. Interdisciplinary stuff is not trained and it's not easy to train someone in per se. It's a mindset and the environment is important. And in undergraduate work, you tend to be a specialist in something. And in Grad school you're expected to completely specialize, but I think you really miss out on a lot. So what's Nice, at least in Berkeley is it's very easy to transition across. Labs, talk to different people, set up collaborations, but at the end of the day, you're not going to be an expert in those things, [00:07:00] but you're going to know who to talk to and that creates a very nice network that is very innovative at the end of the day. Speaker 4: So sub specialty in a way, or you're familiar with it, you can do the work if you need to, but you know people who really know that and that's the most important part. You put a good team together and that's where most of the innovations today are coming from. Not from single disciplines. Yeah, I think Berkeley is great for this. You have the freedom to go and you have brilliant people around that can inform and willing to participate with visibility and guide and mentor. I mean it's the freedom to do this and the mentors [00:07:30] to do it. I think all the top American institutions do this. But in engineering that's the modern approach. Speaker 5: Mm MM. Speaker 6: Spectrum is a public affair show on k a l ex Berkeley. Our guests are Michelle Maha [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen of UC Berkeley. They went to build a smart badge for wounds. In the next segment they talk about multidisciplinary work and [00:08:00] science fiction. Speaker 4: Well, you started a company, you took research out of the lab and started a company and then sold it. And what did you learn from that process? Is there something, it's fun. Do you have an Aha moment of like, is this how to do it kind of a thing? No, no. I have a great deal of respect for people who make it their business to make money in the private sector in, in technology. I mean, of course these days that's a trivial thing to [00:08:30] say, right? Cause in the bay area, that's what we live off of. But I was fortunate enough that I met a number of individuals that were already in the private sector and we're interested in commercializing and I wanted to go off and be an idealist professor. We developed out the this company and the day came where I decided to go be a professor and they said, you know, if you stay, we'll give you a bigger piece of the pie. Speaker 4: And I said, no, I'm going to go. I literally said, no, I want to go off and you know, do all these other crazy things and if this company has more than 50% market [00:09:00] share on this little narrow part of a, that'll be good enough for me. Right. It's a very famous last words. And that would have is when it was sold, I was happy with what, but my wife will never forgive me. Right. And so she's like, yeah, what are you, how do you feel now? No, I find the whole process of thinking about how what you're working on in academia might be commercializable to be very sanguine about it. I find it fascinating. I think that that process, understanding that a lot of what you do is not relevant to that field of endeavor. Working with people, valuing academics, sometimes people tend to [00:09:30] under value the contributions of the non technical people, which is silly is ridiculous actually. Speaker 4: And so valuing all of the components at a great time doing that. And I've done this a couple times and we have lots of little things bubbling. My cofounder of Cork, Tara Neurotech, I'm co founder of a company called tweedle tech, which builds hardware for games. I went often for a year, worked at a startup in San Francisco and energy startups. So I'm a big fan of this type of thing. I think it actually for engineers in certain fields, it's very useful because it calibrates you to reality to be honest with you on [inaudible], something you [00:10:00] can help mentor people with and you see that as a, a role for you. I mean, there's always a role, but I'm always very modest about it because I certainly haven't made $100 million out of any of these companies. Right. You have to be humble, humble, or I mean, and also there's an opinion of, for every person that thinks about this, there's a very um, neat quote I read, I think it was Eric Lander who said that we live our lives prospectively, but then we reconstruct our history is retrospectively, right? Speaker 4: So effectively we pick and choose and create a narrative, right? And so [00:10:30] for all of this stuff, like let's mentor how to have a great startup, the people mentoring or giving you a story, they are doing a pattern fit to whatever they experienced to tell the story, how they feel comfortable telling it. Right? And there's a billion different versions of this narrative. How is it you should transition your company or your idea to a company. But it's a lot of fun. That's the main thing I would say. Anybody out there that's interested in, I think it can be a lot of fun. It's very humbling and it forces you to change directions constantly and reevaluate what you're doing. And it works. A set of mental muscles [00:11:00] that are very different, I think in some cases from the academic ones. So it's, it's overall, just very good. Speaker 4: Michelle, you commented that science fiction was a source of inspiration. Sure. Dune. Is that the key one I was going to ask, are there any stories or themes that stick out? Oh, there's tons, but I mean, I, I have to say maybe this will be disappointed to people that like thinking about cyborgs and putting stuff, but honestly it's, I mean the, I think the single piece of science fiction that impacted me the most was doing, when I read it in [00:11:30] early high school or high school, what are doing his blown up and continues to blow my mind. Like I just, every 10 years I read and it just makes me happy. Yeah. I'm a big fan of all of the, I certainly love all the traditional stuff and more recently for me in the late eighties all this cyber punky kind of stuff. I'm trying to think of something more recent that I've read. Oh, and then Vernor Vinge would probably be the last big phase of my science fiction Aha moment. I Speaker 3: love [inaudible] stuff. I consider science fiction to be particularly hard. Sai FYS, [00:12:00] they take the last three data points and they take a ruler and they extrapolate it out to infinity. Right? And so you read it and you particularly very good hard science fiction. It just feels like, oh, I'll definitely turn out this way. Right? It must turn out this way. If there's no doubt, how can I ever, right. We're all gonna upload ourselves or whatever. Right? And that's the beauty of the really good one that I'm a big fan, Daniel, for you, any allure of science fiction? You were waxing wonderfully about Frankenstein and I actually only just read Frankenstein for the first [00:12:30] time in the last year and it's amazing. Everyone should read it and it perfectly captures the mindset of being a scientist, especially a graduate student. But I grew up with drastic park. I also read Dune periodically and the golden compass and things that aren't even traditional Scifi things where any sort of alternate reality where people have to come up with a way of how something would be done. Speaker 3: Authors tend to be very good at coming up with strange things. And that was more the fun part. So there wasn't any direct inspiration, [00:13:00] but there's this synthesis and putting together a different ideas. And so that's where you get a lot of the ethical discussion too. I mean ethical education and especially for bioengineering, most of it probably comes from the media and [inaudible] really mean we all know these concepts now, not because we were formally taught them, but because it's in a movie somewhere or we read about some world where people are engineered or something like that. So you get a pretty good perspective actually. And then you go to Grad school thinking you're going to build those things out that it [00:13:30] takes a little bit longer. So you figured out in Grad School. So that's my problem. I haven't figured it out. I, I'm aware of the problem I can't solve. Speaker 3: I'm still subject to it. But uh, I also just enjoy reading all over the place. These ideas came from old science papers. I have to say. Daniel is amazing in that regard. Daniel shows up and he's like, ah, I was just reading a 13th century manual for rhinoplasty. Where do you even, how do you, what's, you know, like it's awesome. And then he's, and you're right, like was it 13th century, 16th century? [00:14:00] And there's all these digresses like, look, he figured out right away I'll do this. So I have to stay voracious. Appetite in reading is a big plus if you want to join my group. And as the Internet, what's unleashing your ability to find these old documents? It certainly helps with things like the databases. So Frankenstein was recently just fully released. In fact, facsimile with Mary Shelley's own handwriting and the preface and everything, but also just library libraries. Speaker 3: So some of the earliest medical engineering books are from the, actually the late 17 hundreds it [00:14:30] was already starting in those you only find in the library in manuscript form and you can just go pick them up. The hard library is still actually quite useful for this, but the Internet certainly a great place to get lost. Also, just reading papers from different fields and looking through the bibliographies. That's really just a good way to backtrack and find where these things really started. And even with the history of bioelectricity, most people cite back to one particular person and it turns out that there's a second person before him and then there's this story. It's just fun to bounce all [00:15:00] over the place. And I think that's something that at least in bioengineering you do a ton of because there's no one discipline, no one knows what bioengineering means. Speaker 3: You go all over the place. And so for any of this stuff and interdisciplinary stuff, that's really one way to find out is just started reading tons of things including science. And so the history of science comes to life absolutely with a lot of these pioneering efforts and it's exceptionally humbling too. So if you look at the materials they used in the first rhinoplasties to help seal people's noses off after they'd [00:15:30] been chopped off and duals that material on a microscopic level. But then electron microscope is very, very similar to cutting edge medical technology today that we use for similar treatment. And they had no idea what they were doing, they just knew what worked. It is pretty humbling when you come across things like that. And it also puts a lot of stuff in perspective and there's a lot of stuff that's been lost as well. So when you come across it from either a different field or it just hasn't been looked at in a while, that's always exciting. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 7: [00:16:00] You're listening to spectrum a science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Michelle [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen bear research in the electric field that is generated by wounds and mammals. In the next segment they talk more about ethics and their work Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 4: Do you want to talk a little bit [00:16:30] more about your insect work that dated this? No bugs, but now we can talk about the, like the bugs is a, I say this is sort of my peewee Herman idea. You know, peewee Herman could never unfortunately ever not be peewee Herman. He tried very hard. I felt like the bugs is my peewee Herman curse. The brief version is we demonstrated that you can put very small electronics with neural in your muscular stimulators into insects and control their flight remotely via signal sent to the transmitter on the electronic package. And that would then control what signals [00:17:00] were sent to the insect. So what we do now is we have these incredibly small atronix weighs less than 200 milligrams such that these grasshoppers can carry it happily. We have these new systems that bias the way the insect receives certain information and we use that to affect how it's flying. Speaker 4: So we're still very interested in that. I find it a very interesting area. To me it's one of these places where you can most acutely demonstrate how much electronics has actually miniaturized. People have very visceral reaction [00:17:30] to the work because it takes these insects and incredibly small electronics that most people really don't think about usually and builds this sort of compound construct, right? That does something, the thing that isn't doing what an insect normally wants to do but isn't really a robot in the traditional sense of being made out of plastic and metal. For me, that's really why I do it. And I think it's right at that bleeding of what you can show you can do. And one of the side things that interests me profoundly is sort of the ethics of this. And most people like their initial reaction is either, oh [00:18:00] that's horrible. Speaker 4: How could you do that to an insect or at an insect? I swapped them against the wall all the time. Right. So there's usually, cause we like to be in quickly. So it's an interesting question. So let's say we get very good at putting these little packages on it such that almost anybody can do it as a hobby. Would you find it permissible to have, just like you have the San Francisco chapter of the RC helicopter flying hobby, would you find it permissible to have the San Francisco chapter of the Cyborg insect? Where do you go find yourself a grasshopper and you slap some stuff on its back or inside [00:18:30] it and use little pins to make holes to the right nerves and you let it go and then you start doing stuff. Our, what we normally consider to be animals, fair game, a spare part. Are they machines? Speaker 4: Are they not machines? I think this is fascinating. I think that we don't have very good ethical tools. In my opinion. I'm not an ethicist. I'm certainly not a philosopher, but I don't think we have very good ethical tools for dealing with this issue in the way we usually think about stuff. What is the argument against doing that? You usually fall back to things having to do with minimizing suffering and so on, but if you really spend some time [00:19:00] thinking about it, it's a lot of those become very murky very quickly with things like insects, things that are to our interpretation from our frame of reference are very distant from our cognitive function. It's the old argument that bad to hurt a dog, fine. Is it bad to hurt a fly? Is it bad to hurt a bacteria where, where in the spectrum of things do you fall? I think that this insect work really tickles that, whatever that is really struggle. I've had very interesting conversations after my talks and is that part of any of the engineering training? Speaker 3: Well, all [00:19:30] graduate students do ethical training and this sort of stuff is disgusting. It's more or less field dependent, but especially in bioengineering, you do a full seminar at the beginning where everything from this to genetics I adjustment and children and things like that, it's discussed. So that doesn't mean there are good tools for it, but everyone's very aware of it and I think maybe more effort should be made to derive those tools. But it's something people are working on at least. When you refer to a tools, are you talking of procedures and protocols, halls? Speaker 4: [00:20:00] What are you imagining as a tool in the ethics realm? I was thinking methods, algorithms, heuristics to think about this and come to conclusions. So for example, what I think of a tool I think of philosophical, philosophical tools, right? Thinking about what should I use as a basis for making a judgment? Should I just work to minimize singer style work to minimize suffering? That should be it. Is there something more complex or show you something else? So that's what I meant by tools. But of course there's another interpretation which is simply teaching students. They are in fact functional tools you use to determine ethical kind of in a narrower sentence, [00:20:30] right? Of for example, don't drop data points, you know? Right. If you have 43 data points in 42 of them look like you want the 43rd one doesn't, you should not get rid of the 43rd one. That kind of stuff. Sure. I mean I think we're very good at teaching that to the extent that it's well understood. I think it's just trickierSpeaker 3: when you do any animal work or bioengineering work where you have this utilitarian calculus, which is pretty much what most engineering revolves around. You're taught that you need to improve society. You have this idea that utility [00:21:00] is a valuable way of thinking about things, but it leaves too many questions open for bioengineering type stuff where utility comes at the cost of working on some living system that everyone is very aware of and very careful with and we have all sorts of protocols and procedures when we work with any living things, but it's still something that is very difficult to pin down when you talk to different people. And how they think about it. The consensus varies. Yes, sure, sure. Everyone has a good sense of like we're all sort of aligned, but where [00:21:30] you might draw the line or what types of experiments you personally might want to do is very different. Speaker 3: So some people fully support the idea of medical research but would never do it themselves for the reason that they don't want to work on the living system. And some people like myself say, if you are gonna work on a living system, you should do it. The courtesy of being in the room with it and at least seeing what you're doing. So there are different standards, but there's no formal approach to that. Yeah, there are lots of opinions. I mean, I think even in our larger super [00:22:00] set of people that work on this effort, there's lots of different comfort levels. The different researchers that run the whole gamut. Even calling it a living system, I think some people would say, well, it's out. Let me system. It's a, it's an animal. It's an organism. Your de de emphasizing its identity by calling it living, stuff like that. I mean, I think these things are all very interesting and we're all in the middle of it. It's an interesting area. Michelle [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you very much. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:22:30] spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link to get you there. The link is [00:23:00] tiny, url.com backslash and Kaa LX spectrum. We hope you can get out to a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Kornacki joins me Speaker 8: presenting the calendar this Sunday. The ninth call, HUD ash is hosting a Darwin Day celebration Brunch at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin avenue from 11:00 AM until 1:00 PM [00:23:30] eat bagels and lox while hearing about looking for Darwin's footprints in the world of zombies, ucs f professor John Halfer. Nick is also the interim director of the Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies and trustee and president of the California Academy of Sciences as an entomologist professor, half or nick, studies of the Zombie fly and its relationship to bees. He will also discuss how Darwin's ideas were influenced by his knowledge of the insect [00:24:00] world. The event is $10 per person and more information is available@coladash.org Speaker 1: as average temperatures continue to rise due to human changes to the composition of the atmosphere, cases of extreme weather are very likely to occur. On February 12th come join expert Michael F Wainer, a senior staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and learn about the science of climate change, current areas of research and some possible implications [00:24:30] for the future. Tickets are free for UC Berkeley Students, faculty and staff, and $10 to the public. Once again, this event will take place on February 12th from 1230 to 1:30 PM at the freight and salvage in Berkeley. The Bay area skeptics present Kernan Coleman for a personal recollection. He has titled Escaping. We've Vale a journey out of magical thinking, a telling of his 10 year journey out of magical thinking, alternative [00:25:00] medicine, new age, and fear-based denialism and learn how the woo woo bill still affects them even though he knows better. This takes place February 13th at La Penea Lounge 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley, seven 30 to 9:00 PM admission is free on February 15th the science of cow lecture will be given by Professor Marty Hearst and his entitled Natural Search User Interfaces. Speaker 1: What does the future hold for search user [00:25:30] interfaces? Can there be a natural user interface social rather than solo usage of information technology? More integration of massive quantities of user behavior and large scale knowledge basis. Marty Hurst is a professor in the school of Information at UC Berkeley with an affiliate appointment and the computer science division. She wrote the first book on search user interfaces. The lecture will be presented Saturday, February 15th and Stanley Hall Room One oh five at 11:00 AM [00:26:00] Stanley Hall is on the east side of the UC Berkeley campus. A feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find interesting. Rick Curnutt ski and I present our news. Speaker 8: Science now reviewed an article appearing in January 2nd proceeding of the National Academy of Science that suggests the black death left a mark on the human genome. Me. Hi, Natalia from Rad bough university and colleagues analyze the genomes from three populations. [00:26:30] The first population consisted of a hundred Romanians of European descent, Speaker 8: the second of a hundred Roma or gypsies that had migrated to the same region from India a thousand years ago. The third population was 500 people from Northwestern India, where the Roma were originally found. Genetically. The Roma are still quite similar to the Northwestern Indians, but 20 jeans have differences that could be explained by the environmental pressures the Europeans [00:27:00] and aroma have shared over the last millennia. Some jeans controlled skin pigmentation and others control immunological responses. The team found one such set of differences on chromosome four they code for proteins that latch onto bacteria initiating a defensive response. They showed the genes, help respond to the bacteria that caused the black death and speculate that it was this evolutionary pressure shared by the people living in the same area at the [00:27:30] same time. To exhibit these genomic differences, Speaker 1: researchers from the California State University Long Beach and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have launched Kelp, watched 2014 a scientific campaign designed to determine the extent of radioactive contamination of the state's Kelp forest from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant initiated by long beach biology professor Steven Manley and the Berkeley labs head of applied nuclear physics, Kai vetter. The project were ally on [00:28:00] samples of giant Kelp and bulk help from along the California and Mexico coast lines. The project includes the participation of 19 academic and government institutions. These participants will sample kelp from the entire west coast as far north as del Norte, Tay County, and as far south as Baja California. Sampling will take place several times in 2014 and processed kelp samples will be sent to the Lawrence Berkeley national labs. Low background facility for detailed radionucleotide analysis. As data [00:28:30] becomes available, it will be posted for public access. Professor Manley says at the present time, this initiative is unfunded by any state or federal agency with time and costs being donated by participants. So those interested in taking part in the project can contact Manley at California State University. Long Beach Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 6: [00:29:00] The music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us at eight nine days. Speaker 9: Hey, email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same [00:29:30] time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Thomas Immel is Assistant Research Physicist at SSL at UC Berkeley. His expertise is interpretation of remote-sensing data and modeling of physical processes in the upper atmosphere & ionosphere. His work includes UV imaging observations from 4 NASA missions. ICON.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today's interview is part two of our two part interview with Thomas Emel. Thomas is an assistant research [00:01:00] physicist at the space sciences laboratory at UC Berkeley. In April of this year, NASA selected the Ayana spheric connection explorer known as icon to be the next heliophysics explorer satellite mission. The icon mission is to be led by the space sciences laboratory at UC Berkeley. Thomas Emo is the principal investigator of the icon mission icon will be providing NASA's heliophysics [00:01:30] division with a powerful new capability to determine the conditions in space modified by weather on the planet and to understand the way space weather events grow to envelop regions of our planet with dense Ayana spheric plasma. In today's interview, Dr Emo talks in detail about the icon explorer. He gets into the instruments that will be on the icon. What they hope to learn from the mission, [00:02:00] the schedule for the project and the orbit they hope to achieve and what will happen to the data they collect onto the interview. NASA has recently selected the Speaker 4: space sciences lab to do icon and congratulations are in order. Do you want to describe the icon project and how that's come together? Yeah, well thanks. It's been a long process. It was sort of a glimmer in our eye when we first were discovering this [00:02:30] things about the coupling of the atmosphere in the ionosphere, which I've talked about and how it's much stronger than we ever expected and structured and variable. And basically at some point it was unexplainable. And when we devise the mission, we wanted a mission that would measure not one particular thing, but it would measure each of the key parameters of the system that you need to put together to understand, let's drive in the system and how is the system responding? So this was the design for icon and a little bit more flushed out on our, which is icon.ssl.berkeley.edu [00:03:00] explaining what icon stands for to ionosphere connection explorer. Speaker 4: It's one of these things where you come up with an acronym. It sounds so good. Then later on you've tried to figure out what it meant and so we were close but I came up with icon and we have some discussions. We improved it and we basically just simplified it to ionosphere connection and it seemed to make a, it told, it says, well we want to say ins your connection explore because we are in the explorer line, but [00:03:30] icon x didn't sound is too long, so it's just icon. So you have to pitch this to NASA. Right, right. And so you have to verify that all your instruments are going to work and think what's the process of getting, you have the idea, but then there's more to it than that. Obviously in this mode, NASA has some different modes of missions. They have one where this is our mission. Speaker 4: Tell us what instruments you want to put on it. And we'll talk to you maybe and they select your instruments [00:04:00] and then you're on for the ride and the instruments have to meet some requirements and so forth. In this case it's up to the Pi, the principal investigator, to select the right instruments for the science to clearly define the science goals and the requirements for the instruments and demonstrate to the instruments, meet those requirements. So that's the mode we're working in. So it helps to have previously flown instruments that have demonstrated capability. If you don't have a exact replica of an instrument or you're doing some new [00:04:30] changes to an instrument design, then you have to model and predict how their instrument is going to behave on orbit and its capability and show them how much margin you have in your current design. So for instance, we need to know how the plasma is moving in space at all times with accuracy of five meters per second. Speaker 4: And we have a capability of three meters per second. So we have some 60% margin on that value. Do they believe it while we are flying basically a copy of that instrument right now that has that capability [00:05:00] or it would have that capability if they had the pointing capability on the current spacecraft that is flying on. There's a little bit of pointing control and knowledge that we're going to be able to provide better than maybe the last one. So you have to roll all these things in. You know, you have to have the instrument providers talking and knowledgeable of the capability of the spacecraft. You need the spacecraft and know those requirements or the instruments. While you said you need pointed like this, but do you need pointing for three seconds or three minutes or three hours? And so you [00:05:30] have to facilitate a lot of conversations and a lot of discussion in the the principal investigator and basically it's a systems engineering problem through and through and you need a great system engineering look and you need systems engineers in each department talking to each other with the overarching system engineer on the project, making sure that everyone's messages are being conveyed and everything's being captured in your requirements. Speaker 4: Pitching it to NASA. Yeah, we've been through this now twice. This is our second time around when we weren't [00:06:00] selected the first time. Everyone said, well it takes twice, so don't worry about it. Well it was, it was no fun, but we did it twice. And so luckily I don't have to sit here and say, third time's a charm. Uh, we're really pleased to be able to do this now and we think we have a great concept. How much change between the first and the second approach to NASA? Well, we added some capability. We added some real capability to spin the spacecraft very quickly to make measurements here and there. We enhanced the capability of the [00:06:30] spacecraft basically to support a number of different experimental modes that we wanted to be able to perform that they original spacecraft didn't actually have. So we want to spend the whole thing in three minutes. Speaker 4: The whole spacecraft has to spin like a top and three minutes to capture the atmosphere moving in this way and then moving in that way. We want it all. So the new spacecraft's got that. It's got a lot more power to go with that. You need more power. Needed bigger, bigger solar panels to meet your margins on meeting your science goals. We brought [00:07:00] on new team members. We added naval research lab. They're great partners in science and are really one of the original places in the United States for investigations of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. It's nice to have them on board to have a great wind instrument for imaging. We can image of the wind, which is really cool. Speaker 1: Our guest today is Thomas Emo and the next segment Thomas [00:07:30] talks about the icon instruments and what the project scientists hope to learn from icon. This is KALX Berkeley. Speaker 4: Are there any interesting stories in terms of getting the instruments fleshed out? Testing a design, two instruments [00:08:00] coming from Berkeley and two from other institutions. Ut Dallas and naval research lab. Each instrument is different. The navel instrument coming from naval research lab is a Michelson interferometer and Michelson invented the interferometer to prove that the earth was not moving through an ether back in 1903 so it's not a new instrument, but don't tell NASA. It's not as new instrument. It's a Michaelson guys come on. But they took a very close look at that. It's a very new implementation of a Michelson that's been [00:08:30] proven on the ground and proven in space actually, but in a little different way that was used in space previously. Uh, the UV instruments one is an astronomical instrument that was created to measure one photon at a time, which we have a lot more photons now, so we've got to take off the whole back end electronics that made sure that every photon was actually a photon a, we don't need that anymore. Speaker 4: I'm happy to say because it was massive. We just have the front end of the spectrograph and it's a beautiful little instrument, the far ultraviolet [00:09:00] instrument, which is a little different as an imager and it's a near copy of the one we flew on image, which was the imager we used to make the original observation of the variability in the ionosphere. And again, the Ut Dallas instrument has been flown, I don't know, 20 times. You like to have no interesting stories with your instruments that have whatsoever, so I'm sorry to say. What's interesting is that, you know, it was getting all these instruments that had a lot of heritage, had a lot of experience on orbit, and putting them in the same place on the same time, giving them enough, powering, [00:09:30] putting them in the right directions and designing the science mission to support this. Speaker 4: The interesting thing is the magnetic field at the low latitudes constraints, the plasma controls the plasma at low latitudes where we're going, we're flying out to Florida and we'll never come that far north again. We're going to do a little burn to get to lower latitudes, not too low that we can still operate it from space sciences. I would Berkeley with our dish, we'll still be able to see it in the sky. We're on the magnetic field that we're measuring every, so we're measuring the motion of the plasma and the magnetic field, [00:10:00] and we're measuring the winds and the conductivity all along the magnetic field. The winds of the neutral atmosphere on the conductivity of the ionosphere that together control the electric fields that are generated in the low latitude dynamo or there's a dynamo, it's like a motor where you take a conductor and you run it through a magnetic field, you get a current. So we're on that magnetic field and we're measuring the processes occurring along that magnetic field that drive the currents, that low latitudes. So putting together that mission concept [00:10:30] was actually the interesting part for us and deciding what altitude we had to be at, what inclination was the best trade off for measuring those atmospheric tides, which are extensive and being right at the magnetic equator where you'd like to spend quite a bit of time making these coupled measurements. Speaker 3: Within those discussions, do you rely more on what you know about what's happening or is it blue sky and you're thinking about what are we going to find out? Speaker 4: Hmm, I see. [00:11:00] That's a good question. So depending on who you talk to, we know a lot about the ionosphere and its interaction with the thermosphere, but we have no idea why it changes so much from day to day. And one of the reasons we think we really don't have a handle on that is because we don't have a good measurement of the driver of where that energy is and most of the energies in the atmosphere. So we think that the key to understanding the variability atmospheres to measure that driver first while [00:11:30] you're measuring the response to the ionosphere. So we're measuring the neutral windless first, the motion of the atmosphere, but also key to that is you know how much plasma is on that field line. How much of an electric field are you generating by pushing that plasma across the magnetic field with that wind. Speaker 4: So you need to measure the ionosphere at the same time. Those are overarching belief that the neutral wind is really important. Why is it important? Is it because of the neutral wind pushing the plasma around and suppressing it, keeping it down [00:12:00] or blowing it up? Or is it the electric field that's comes from the Dynamo action itself of the neutral wind pushing the plasma around? Or is it something to do with the temperatures that vary from, you know, this large temperature variability that comes with the tides that can affect the whole upper atmosphere and change how the plasma recombines how it settles at night and change the composition of the apparatus here. One thing I didn't talk about is how in the upper atmosphere that different species separate, so the heavy stuff like and [00:12:30] to basically sits at the bottom of the upper atmosphere, but atomic oxygen becomes a dominant species and as you go up in altitude, the ratio of oxygen, the nitrogen changes, and that's not something that happens anywhere else below a hundred kilometers. Speaker 4: So there's a number of things that can control the atmosphere. And I guess where you'd like to be is being able to predict what's going to happen tomorrow. And if there is a key parameter that you could save yourself some time and going out and measuring instead of flying icon [00:13:00] again, you would fly, say a constellation measure in one thing. Then we should be able to inform that process and inform the next mission or this next space weather mission is trying to capture the most important parameter for predicting the conditions in the atmosphere. Uh, you may be able to reduce your set of measurements we are carrying to enter for ominous for instruments. We're measuring the east, west and the north south wind. Well one of them might make no difference whatsoever and you just need to carry one and [00:13:30] Gosh, you know, it's really, really bright and you only need to measure this part of it. So maybe your requirements aren't so strict as what icon had to carry. You carry a smaller instrument with a smaller detector and a smaller aperture. So there's some things that we can inform in the future. Speaker 2: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on Kal experts. Our guest today is Thomas Ilk. In the next [00:14:00] segment Thomas Talks about the icon project integration, presenting the data and how long icon will remain on orbit. And so how long is it? Is Speaker 4: the project going to take the construction side of it before you launch? We're looking at a three and a half year development, so a year of design and then NASA takes a [00:14:30] strong interest in us from now on. I've been arms length for this whole time since it's been a competitive selection. We've haven't really had any time to talk to NASA about what do you really, what do you think, what is this going to work? How you guys gonna like this, you know, we just have to say everything that we think is needed and prepare the way we think and also how NASA requirements cause us to work, do our best job to put together NASA mission. Uh, now we're going to be finally working with NASA very closely on this. So, [00:15:00] um, we have a year of design and then two and a half years of build, which gets us onto this launch vehicle we had planned for a late 2016. Speaker 4: I'm seeing signs that we're probably gonna slip to 2017. So our launch in 2017 is what we're currently planning, but we haven't had our first discussions with NASA yet. They are getting their marvels together and we are too. And we're going to meet later this month and start planning for the future, but we should be launched in 2017 the other instruments are [00:15:30] going to be built at Texas naval research. Yup. And here at the space sciences lab. And then how do you integrate, is that so far out in the distance that you're not there yet? No, we're, we'll integrate here. So the spacecraft has a payload plate where we'll integrate all the instruments on the plate and deliver the instruments all at one time as one unified payload with one interface. So we also build a box that talks to all the instruments that knows what their outputs are that [00:16:00] interfaces to each of them. Speaker 4: So along with our delivery of the instruments to orbital sciences, who's our spacecraft provider will deliver a interface box. So that'll actually go on their side. It'll mount on the spacecraft, but our side is just the payload plate and we'll do that as space sciences lab. And do you end up publishing papers as a result of this or is it really just a making all the data available with something that we've invested a lot of work and time [00:16:30] into the old battle days that you'd sit on your data and never release it and publish all the papers and take all the credit and NASA doesn't support that model anymore. All of our data have to be supplied freely and openly within 30 or 60 days. I forget the exact requirement and so we'll be helping all these other investigators as well get into the data. Speaker 4: So our job is to make the data as plain as possible. What I'm really interested in doing is how to visualize those data so someone can download say a movie or a [00:17:00] some other tool that would really give them our Google earth click here and you show up in Google earth and you can spin around the planet and look at things the way you want to look at them. And instead of writing to particular software, I mean a lot of people don't want to write any software or want to have a look at the data and probably make some headway before getting too deeply into analysis just by having a good view of what you've got. So we will be providing a number of tools to let people do that. I envision a lot of papers coming out of, uh, from these [00:17:30] data and me s I'll be involved in that. Speaker 4: Our team, a number of co-investigators, a lot of professors around the u s at Colorado and Illinois for instance, and at Cornell to make the best sense, we can have our observations given our immediate knowledge of what the spacecraft doing, it's capability, the uncertainties of the measurements and so forth. So certainly expect to be involved in that. It's been a little bit of a lull in my publication career working [00:18:00] on this mission over the past few years, but I think that's going to change as soon as we get on orbit. I'm really looking into looking forward to, uh, just the other day I was writing some code again, I felt fantastic. You know, I've been writing word documents for many years now and it's just been great to get back into some data. And so I really look forward to having the data from his mission as well. And how long will icon fly? Speaker 4: We have a two year mission that we've proposed. [00:18:30] Most heliophysics missions do go into an extended phase. You usually find things that are new and exciting or find other collaborations you'd like to do or other science you'd like to science goals that you might like to achieve in another two years. So we'll have that capability to extend as well. But we actually don't have any fuel on the spacecraft. So we'll be coming home probably 12 or 15 years. Uh, we started 550 kilometer altitude circular orbit, so a nice stable orbit, but eventually it'll be coming back. [00:19:00] But that's the longterm short term is to get up and do our two year mission and then talk about the future. But we will be on orbit for a decade and in terms of coming back to earth, do you have to plot out when and how that'll happen as best you can or is that a randomness to the whole thing? Speaker 4: The only control you have is on the how. You can't the solar panels possibly to try to control the three entry and in our case it will be uncontrolled reentry. A, you need a rocket to take you home if you're going to say [00:19:30] it's controlled, but what we have shown is that everything's going to burn up. Once you crash into the lower atmosphere. Again, you end up burning up everything, all the aluminum and all the gear and all the glass. It does burn up it so it doesn't pose a hazard to any people. Right. Anything below and the chances of running into something else up there, there's something that will be predictable at the time. Yes. You literally, you could camp to solar panels in a wrong direction for a while. Stop Science ops and for a week do something [00:20:00] with your solar panels or see if the guys you're going to fly into are interested in not colliding. Speaker 4: Maybe they have some fuel. For instance, the space station. I don't see any, uh, there's a lot of space in space. Uh, although it's a lot of junk too. There's a lot of junk and we're more concerned about that than ever. We're almost to that point, right where it's just going to start growing no matter what we do. So we don't want to contribute to that. Everything attached to icon will be coming home in 15 years or we're not allowed to contribute to the [00:20:30] problem. Thomas emo. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Okay. Thank you very much. Good luck with icon. Thanks. Getting go. Have you back after. That'd be great. Where along the way maybe. Well, here's some horror stories. Well, every mission, some terrifying moments. Speaker 5: So I know that at least I know that now we look forward to that development though and it's going to be a great mission for Berkeley and for NASA. Thanks again. Thank you. Speaker 6: Okay. Speaker 2: [00:21:00] The icon explorer mission website is icon dot s s l. Dot. berkeley.edu Speaker 6: Oh [inaudible] Speaker 2: [00:21:30] now a few of the science and technology events are happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Renee Raul join me for the calendar Speaker 5: as part of the second international by annual evolution and cancer conference. USCSF is hosting a free public lecture at 7:00 PM Tonight in the Robertson Auditorium on their mission bay campus. Popular Science Writer Carl Zimmer. [00:22:00] We'll pose the question is cancer or Darwinian demon after his talk science rapper Baba Brinkman will perform selections from the wrap guide to evolution and a preview of his forthcoming rep guide to medicine. For more information, visit cancer dot ucs F. Dot Edu tomorrow. The Science at Cau lecture series will hold it. Student talk, a discussion by the Berkeley Professor [00:22:30] Mariska Craig about the two types of galaxies in the known universe. Well, most consider galaxies as the building blocks of the universe to be incredibly diverse. Professor Creek divides them into two broad types. Those that make new stars and those that don't. Professor Creek will discuss her reasons for making the distinctions and theories over how the differences are originated. The speech will begin tomorrow at 11:00 AM in room 100 of the genetics and plant biology building on the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. [00:23:00] How Lou Longo from the New York botanical garden is giving a three hour introduction to botanical Latin at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden located at 200 centennial drive on June 22nd learn the names for plants and the way the names are constructed from Latin and Greek. He'll also give simple rules of thumb to pronounce. Plant names with confidence and mission is $30 [00:23:30] register online@botanicalgardendotberkeley.edu June 27th is the exploratorium is Thursday night. Adults only program featuring two physicists discussing the prodigious and Speaker 3: startling theoretical leaps and the epic experimental program that produced the monumental discovery of the Higgs bows on the physicists will be Maria Spira, Pullo Phd and experimental physicist [00:24:00] from Cern and Joanne Hewitt, Phd, a theoretical physicist from Stanford linear accelerator. The 7:30 PM lecture is included with museum admission and we'll have limited seating in the discussion. Spiro Pullo and Hewitt will also explore the implications discovering the Higgs has for future inquiries in physics. Beyond shedding light on the way elementary particles acquire mass, [00:24:30] understanding the Higgs mechanism will likely push the frontiers of fundamental science towards a greater understanding of our universe. June 27th at the exploratorium in San Francisco at 7:30 PM Speaker 7: [inaudible].Speaker 3: [00:25:00] The feature of spectrum is to present news stories that we find interesting. Rick Karnofsky and Renee arou present the news. Speaker 5: A team of researchers led by Lawrence Berkeley national labs. Paulo Monteiro has analyzed a slab of concrete that has drifted in the Mediterranean Sea for the past 2000 years. [00:25:30] The ancient Robin's lab proved to be more durable than most of today's concretes as well as more sustainably made. The creation process of modern Portland cement usually requires temperatures of up to 2,642 degrees Fahrenheit and the fossil fuels burned to reach that temperature are responsible for 7% of industry carbon emissions worldwide. The composition of the Roman slab is such that it can be baked at only 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit, [00:26:00] which would require far less fuel making the production of Roman concrete, both greener and glass expensive. The other concrete uses ash from volcanic regions in the Gulf of Naples that can be reacted with lime and sea water to create mortar chemically similar ash known as Paul is on can still be found in many parts of the world today. Well, currently there are a few green concretes that do use ash in their manufacturing process. This lab has provided the industry with concrete proof of the long term performance [00:26:30] of aspace summit. Yeah. The elusive electron orbitals of the hydrogen atom have been observed directly. Anita stir donut at the FLM for atomic Speaker 6: and molecular physics in Amsterdam. Mark Rakin at the Max Borne Institute in Berlin and their colleagues published these findings in physical review letters. On May 20th the team implemented photo ionization microscopy [00:27:00] first proposed theoretically over 30 years ago. They used UV lasers to excite electrons and then Adam placed and then electric field. These photo electrons went through electromagnetic lenses which focused them onto a CCD detector by collecting tens of thousands of electrons. The team map the shape of the orbitals. Speaker 5: This may you see Berkeley's Ecig Museum of entomology opened a new [00:27:30] citizens science project known as cow book. The museum has begun posting high resolution photos of its more than 1 million specimens and accompanying field notes to the cow bug website where anyone with an interest in the bugs can transcribe the original handwritten information about the specimens, origins and collection. The project is an effort to digitize terrestrial arthropod specimen records with a focus on those hailing from California. The cal boat science team will then use the [00:28:00] newly digitized data to assess how insects have responded to climate change and habit modification over time. The museum began a project in collaboration with eight other California museums in 2010 after realizing that cataloging their vast collection would be impossible with their small staff. The resulting website known as notes from nature host the cow book project as well as her Berrien and ornithological collections. Also waiting to be classified. You can take a look@theircollectionsandperhapsstarttranscribingatnotesfromnature.org Speaker 7: [00:28:30] [inaudible] music or during the show was written, produced by Alex Simon [inaudible]. Spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. The link to the archive is incomprehensible, Speaker 1: so we created a short link for you. That [00:29:00] link is tiny, url.com/ [inaudible] spectrum, all one word. That's tiny, url.com/cadillacs spectrum. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com Speaker 6: join us in two [00:29:30] weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Thomas Immel is Assistant Research Physicist at SSL at UC Berkeley. His expertise is interpretation of remote-sensing data and modeling of physical processes in the upper atmosphere & ionosphere. His work includes UV imaging observations from 4 NASA missions. ICON.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today's interview is part two of our two part interview with Thomas Emel. Thomas is an assistant research [00:01:00] physicist at the space sciences laboratory at UC Berkeley. In April of this year, NASA selected the Ayana spheric connection explorer known as icon to be the next heliophysics explorer satellite mission. The icon mission is to be led by the space sciences laboratory at UC Berkeley. Thomas Emo is the principal investigator of the icon mission icon will be providing NASA's heliophysics [00:01:30] division with a powerful new capability to determine the conditions in space modified by weather on the planet and to understand the way space weather events grow to envelop regions of our planet with dense Ayana spheric plasma. In today's interview, Dr Emo talks in detail about the icon explorer. He gets into the instruments that will be on the icon. What they hope to learn from the mission, [00:02:00] the schedule for the project and the orbit they hope to achieve and what will happen to the data they collect onto the interview. NASA has recently selected the Speaker 4: space sciences lab to do icon and congratulations are in order. Do you want to describe the icon project and how that's come together? Yeah, well thanks. It's been a long process. It was sort of a glimmer in our eye when we first were discovering this [00:02:30] things about the coupling of the atmosphere in the ionosphere, which I've talked about and how it's much stronger than we ever expected and structured and variable. And basically at some point it was unexplainable. And when we devise the mission, we wanted a mission that would measure not one particular thing, but it would measure each of the key parameters of the system that you need to put together to understand, let's drive in the system and how is the system responding? So this was the design for icon and a little bit more flushed out on our, which is icon.ssl.berkeley.edu [00:03:00] explaining what icon stands for to ionosphere connection explorer. Speaker 4: It's one of these things where you come up with an acronym. It sounds so good. Then later on you've tried to figure out what it meant and so we were close but I came up with icon and we have some discussions. We improved it and we basically just simplified it to ionosphere connection and it seemed to make a, it told, it says, well we want to say ins your connection explore because we are in the explorer line, but [00:03:30] icon x didn't sound is too long, so it's just icon. So you have to pitch this to NASA. Right, right. And so you have to verify that all your instruments are going to work and think what's the process of getting, you have the idea, but then there's more to it than that. Obviously in this mode, NASA has some different modes of missions. They have one where this is our mission. Speaker 4: Tell us what instruments you want to put on it. And we'll talk to you maybe and they select your instruments [00:04:00] and then you're on for the ride and the instruments have to meet some requirements and so forth. In this case it's up to the Pi, the principal investigator, to select the right instruments for the science to clearly define the science goals and the requirements for the instruments and demonstrate to the instruments, meet those requirements. So that's the mode we're working in. So it helps to have previously flown instruments that have demonstrated capability. If you don't have a exact replica of an instrument or you're doing some new [00:04:30] changes to an instrument design, then you have to model and predict how their instrument is going to behave on orbit and its capability and show them how much margin you have in your current design. So for instance, we need to know how the plasma is moving in space at all times with accuracy of five meters per second. Speaker 4: And we have a capability of three meters per second. So we have some 60% margin on that value. Do they believe it while we are flying basically a copy of that instrument right now that has that capability [00:05:00] or it would have that capability if they had the pointing capability on the current spacecraft that is flying on. There's a little bit of pointing control and knowledge that we're going to be able to provide better than maybe the last one. So you have to roll all these things in. You know, you have to have the instrument providers talking and knowledgeable of the capability of the spacecraft. You need the spacecraft and know those requirements or the instruments. While you said you need pointed like this, but do you need pointing for three seconds or three minutes or three hours? And so you [00:05:30] have to facilitate a lot of conversations and a lot of discussion in the the principal investigator and basically it's a systems engineering problem through and through and you need a great system engineering look and you need systems engineers in each department talking to each other with the overarching system engineer on the project, making sure that everyone's messages are being conveyed and everything's being captured in your requirements. Speaker 4: Pitching it to NASA. Yeah, we've been through this now twice. This is our second time around when we weren't [00:06:00] selected the first time. Everyone said, well it takes twice, so don't worry about it. Well it was, it was no fun, but we did it twice. And so luckily I don't have to sit here and say, third time's a charm. Uh, we're really pleased to be able to do this now and we think we have a great concept. How much change between the first and the second approach to NASA? Well, we added some capability. We added some real capability to spin the spacecraft very quickly to make measurements here and there. We enhanced the capability of the [00:06:30] spacecraft basically to support a number of different experimental modes that we wanted to be able to perform that they original spacecraft didn't actually have. So we want to spend the whole thing in three minutes. Speaker 4: The whole spacecraft has to spin like a top and three minutes to capture the atmosphere moving in this way and then moving in that way. We want it all. So the new spacecraft's got that. It's got a lot more power to go with that. You need more power. Needed bigger, bigger solar panels to meet your margins on meeting your science goals. We brought [00:07:00] on new team members. We added naval research lab. They're great partners in science and are really one of the original places in the United States for investigations of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. It's nice to have them on board to have a great wind instrument for imaging. We can image of the wind, which is really cool. Speaker 1: Our guest today is Thomas Emo and the next segment Thomas [00:07:30] talks about the icon instruments and what the project scientists hope to learn from icon. This is KALX Berkeley. Speaker 4: Are there any interesting stories in terms of getting the instruments fleshed out? Testing a design, two instruments [00:08:00] coming from Berkeley and two from other institutions. Ut Dallas and naval research lab. Each instrument is different. The navel instrument coming from naval research lab is a Michelson interferometer and Michelson invented the interferometer to prove that the earth was not moving through an ether back in 1903 so it's not a new instrument, but don't tell NASA. It's not as new instrument. It's a Michaelson guys come on. But they took a very close look at that. It's a very new implementation of a Michelson that's been [00:08:30] proven on the ground and proven in space actually, but in a little different way that was used in space previously. Uh, the UV instruments one is an astronomical instrument that was created to measure one photon at a time, which we have a lot more photons now, so we've got to take off the whole back end electronics that made sure that every photon was actually a photon a, we don't need that anymore. Speaker 4: I'm happy to say because it was massive. We just have the front end of the spectrograph and it's a beautiful little instrument, the far ultraviolet [00:09:00] instrument, which is a little different as an imager and it's a near copy of the one we flew on image, which was the imager we used to make the original observation of the variability in the ionosphere. And again, the Ut Dallas instrument has been flown, I don't know, 20 times. You like to have no interesting stories with your instruments that have whatsoever, so I'm sorry to say. What's interesting is that, you know, it was getting all these instruments that had a lot of heritage, had a lot of experience on orbit, and putting them in the same place on the same time, giving them enough, powering, [00:09:30] putting them in the right directions and designing the science mission to support this. Speaker 4: The interesting thing is the magnetic field at the low latitudes constraints, the plasma controls the plasma at low latitudes where we're going, we're flying out to Florida and we'll never come that far north again. We're going to do a little burn to get to lower latitudes, not too low that we can still operate it from space sciences. I would Berkeley with our dish, we'll still be able to see it in the sky. We're on the magnetic field that we're measuring every, so we're measuring the motion of the plasma and the magnetic field, [00:10:00] and we're measuring the winds and the conductivity all along the magnetic field. The winds of the neutral atmosphere on the conductivity of the ionosphere that together control the electric fields that are generated in the low latitude dynamo or there's a dynamo, it's like a motor where you take a conductor and you run it through a magnetic field, you get a current. So we're on that magnetic field and we're measuring the processes occurring along that magnetic field that drive the currents, that low latitudes. So putting together that mission concept [00:10:30] was actually the interesting part for us and deciding what altitude we had to be at, what inclination was the best trade off for measuring those atmospheric tides, which are extensive and being right at the magnetic equator where you'd like to spend quite a bit of time making these coupled measurements. Speaker 3: Within those discussions, do you rely more on what you know about what's happening or is it blue sky and you're thinking about what are we going to find out? Speaker 4: Hmm, I see. [00:11:00] That's a good question. So depending on who you talk to, we know a lot about the ionosphere and its interaction with the thermosphere, but we have no idea why it changes so much from day to day. And one of the reasons we think we really don't have a handle on that is because we don't have a good measurement of the driver of where that energy is and most of the energies in the atmosphere. So we think that the key to understanding the variability atmospheres to measure that driver first while [00:11:30] you're measuring the response to the ionosphere. So we're measuring the neutral windless first, the motion of the atmosphere, but also key to that is you know how much plasma is on that field line. How much of an electric field are you generating by pushing that plasma across the magnetic field with that wind. Speaker 4: So you need to measure the ionosphere at the same time. Those are overarching belief that the neutral wind is really important. Why is it important? Is it because of the neutral wind pushing the plasma around and suppressing it, keeping it down [00:12:00] or blowing it up? Or is it the electric field that's comes from the Dynamo action itself of the neutral wind pushing the plasma around? Or is it something to do with the temperatures that vary from, you know, this large temperature variability that comes with the tides that can affect the whole upper atmosphere and change how the plasma recombines how it settles at night and change the composition of the apparatus here. One thing I didn't talk about is how in the upper atmosphere that different species separate, so the heavy stuff like and [00:12:30] to basically sits at the bottom of the upper atmosphere, but atomic oxygen becomes a dominant species and as you go up in altitude, the ratio of oxygen, the nitrogen changes, and that's not something that happens anywhere else below a hundred kilometers. Speaker 4: So there's a number of things that can control the atmosphere. And I guess where you'd like to be is being able to predict what's going to happen tomorrow. And if there is a key parameter that you could save yourself some time and going out and measuring instead of flying icon [00:13:00] again, you would fly, say a constellation measure in one thing. Then we should be able to inform that process and inform the next mission or this next space weather mission is trying to capture the most important parameter for predicting the conditions in the atmosphere. Uh, you may be able to reduce your set of measurements we are carrying to enter for ominous for instruments. We're measuring the east, west and the north south wind. Well one of them might make no difference whatsoever and you just need to carry one and [00:13:30] Gosh, you know, it's really, really bright and you only need to measure this part of it. So maybe your requirements aren't so strict as what icon had to carry. You carry a smaller instrument with a smaller detector and a smaller aperture. So there's some things that we can inform in the future. Speaker 2: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on Kal experts. Our guest today is Thomas Ilk. In the next [00:14:00] segment Thomas Talks about the icon project integration, presenting the data and how long icon will remain on orbit. And so how long is it? Is Speaker 4: the project going to take the construction side of it before you launch? We're looking at a three and a half year development, so a year of design and then NASA takes a [00:14:30] strong interest in us from now on. I've been arms length for this whole time since it's been a competitive selection. We've haven't really had any time to talk to NASA about what do you really, what do you think, what is this going to work? How you guys gonna like this, you know, we just have to say everything that we think is needed and prepare the way we think and also how NASA requirements cause us to work, do our best job to put together NASA mission. Uh, now we're going to be finally working with NASA very closely on this. So, [00:15:00] um, we have a year of design and then two and a half years of build, which gets us onto this launch vehicle we had planned for a late 2016. Speaker 4: I'm seeing signs that we're probably gonna slip to 2017. So our launch in 2017 is what we're currently planning, but we haven't had our first discussions with NASA yet. They are getting their marvels together and we are too. And we're going to meet later this month and start planning for the future, but we should be launched in 2017 the other instruments are [00:15:30] going to be built at Texas naval research. Yup. And here at the space sciences lab. And then how do you integrate, is that so far out in the distance that you're not there yet? No, we're, we'll integrate here. So the spacecraft has a payload plate where we'll integrate all the instruments on the plate and deliver the instruments all at one time as one unified payload with one interface. So we also build a box that talks to all the instruments that knows what their outputs are that [00:16:00] interfaces to each of them. Speaker 4: So along with our delivery of the instruments to orbital sciences, who's our spacecraft provider will deliver a interface box. So that'll actually go on their side. It'll mount on the spacecraft, but our side is just the payload plate and we'll do that as space sciences lab. And do you end up publishing papers as a result of this or is it really just a making all the data available with something that we've invested a lot of work and time [00:16:30] into the old battle days that you'd sit on your data and never release it and publish all the papers and take all the credit and NASA doesn't support that model anymore. All of our data have to be supplied freely and openly within 30 or 60 days. I forget the exact requirement and so we'll be helping all these other investigators as well get into the data. Speaker 4: So our job is to make the data as plain as possible. What I'm really interested in doing is how to visualize those data so someone can download say a movie or a [00:17:00] some other tool that would really give them our Google earth click here and you show up in Google earth and you can spin around the planet and look at things the way you want to look at them. And instead of writing to particular software, I mean a lot of people don't want to write any software or want to have a look at the data and probably make some headway before getting too deeply into analysis just by having a good view of what you've got. So we will be providing a number of tools to let people do that. I envision a lot of papers coming out of, uh, from these [00:17:30] data and me s I'll be involved in that. Speaker 4: Our team, a number of co-investigators, a lot of professors around the u s at Colorado and Illinois for instance, and at Cornell to make the best sense, we can have our observations given our immediate knowledge of what the spacecraft doing, it's capability, the uncertainties of the measurements and so forth. So certainly expect to be involved in that. It's been a little bit of a lull in my publication career working [00:18:00] on this mission over the past few years, but I think that's going to change as soon as we get on orbit. I'm really looking into looking forward to, uh, just the other day I was writing some code again, I felt fantastic. You know, I've been writing word documents for many years now and it's just been great to get back into some data. And so I really look forward to having the data from his mission as well. And how long will icon fly? Speaker 4: We have a two year mission that we've proposed. [00:18:30] Most heliophysics missions do go into an extended phase. You usually find things that are new and exciting or find other collaborations you'd like to do or other science you'd like to science goals that you might like to achieve in another two years. So we'll have that capability to extend as well. But we actually don't have any fuel on the spacecraft. So we'll be coming home probably 12 or 15 years. Uh, we started 550 kilometer altitude circular orbit, so a nice stable orbit, but eventually it'll be coming back. [00:19:00] But that's the longterm short term is to get up and do our two year mission and then talk about the future. But we will be on orbit for a decade and in terms of coming back to earth, do you have to plot out when and how that'll happen as best you can or is that a randomness to the whole thing? Speaker 4: The only control you have is on the how. You can't the solar panels possibly to try to control the three entry and in our case it will be uncontrolled reentry. A, you need a rocket to take you home if you're going to say [00:19:30] it's controlled, but what we have shown is that everything's going to burn up. Once you crash into the lower atmosphere. Again, you end up burning up everything, all the aluminum and all the gear and all the glass. It does burn up it so it doesn't pose a hazard to any people. Right. Anything below and the chances of running into something else up there, there's something that will be predictable at the time. Yes. You literally, you could camp to solar panels in a wrong direction for a while. Stop Science ops and for a week do something [00:20:00] with your solar panels or see if the guys you're going to fly into are interested in not colliding. Speaker 4: Maybe they have some fuel. For instance, the space station. I don't see any, uh, there's a lot of space in space. Uh, although it's a lot of junk too. There's a lot of junk and we're more concerned about that than ever. We're almost to that point, right where it's just going to start growing no matter what we do. So we don't want to contribute to that. Everything attached to icon will be coming home in 15 years or we're not allowed to contribute to the [00:20:30] problem. Thomas emo. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Okay. Thank you very much. Good luck with icon. Thanks. Getting go. Have you back after. That'd be great. Where along the way maybe. Well, here's some horror stories. Well, every mission, some terrifying moments. Speaker 5: So I know that at least I know that now we look forward to that development though and it's going to be a great mission for Berkeley and for NASA. Thanks again. Thank you. Speaker 6: Okay. Speaker 2: [00:21:00] The icon explorer mission website is icon dot s s l. Dot. berkeley.edu Speaker 6: Oh [inaudible] Speaker 2: [00:21:30] now a few of the science and technology events are happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Renee Raul join me for the calendar Speaker 5: as part of the second international by annual evolution and cancer conference. USCSF is hosting a free public lecture at 7:00 PM Tonight in the Robertson Auditorium on their mission bay campus. Popular Science Writer Carl Zimmer. [00:22:00] We'll pose the question is cancer or Darwinian demon after his talk science rapper Baba Brinkman will perform selections from the wrap guide to evolution and a preview of his forthcoming rep guide to medicine. For more information, visit cancer dot ucs F. Dot Edu tomorrow. The Science at Cau lecture series will hold it. Student talk, a discussion by the Berkeley Professor [00:22:30] Mariska Craig about the two types of galaxies in the known universe. Well, most consider galaxies as the building blocks of the universe to be incredibly diverse. Professor Creek divides them into two broad types. Those that make new stars and those that don't. Professor Creek will discuss her reasons for making the distinctions and theories over how the differences are originated. The speech will begin tomorrow at 11:00 AM in room 100 of the genetics and plant biology building on the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. [00:23:00] How Lou Longo from the New York botanical garden is giving a three hour introduction to botanical Latin at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden located at 200 centennial drive on June 22nd learn the names for plants and the way the names are constructed from Latin and Greek. He'll also give simple rules of thumb to pronounce. Plant names with confidence and mission is $30 [00:23:30] register online@botanicalgardendotberkeley.edu June 27th is the exploratorium is Thursday night. Adults only program featuring two physicists discussing the prodigious and Speaker 3: startling theoretical leaps and the epic experimental program that produced the monumental discovery of the Higgs bows on the physicists will be Maria Spira, Pullo Phd and experimental physicist [00:24:00] from Cern and Joanne Hewitt, Phd, a theoretical physicist from Stanford linear accelerator. The 7:30 PM lecture is included with museum admission and we'll have limited seating in the discussion. Spiro Pullo and Hewitt will also explore the implications discovering the Higgs has for future inquiries in physics. Beyond shedding light on the way elementary particles acquire mass, [00:24:30] understanding the Higgs mechanism will likely push the frontiers of fundamental science towards a greater understanding of our universe. June 27th at the exploratorium in San Francisco at 7:30 PM Speaker 7: [inaudible].Speaker 3: [00:25:00] The feature of spectrum is to present news stories that we find interesting. Rick Karnofsky and Renee arou present the news. Speaker 5: A team of researchers led by Lawrence Berkeley national labs. Paulo Monteiro has analyzed a slab of concrete that has drifted in the Mediterranean Sea for the past 2000 years. [00:25:30] The ancient Robin's lab proved to be more durable than most of today's concretes as well as more sustainably made. The creation process of modern Portland cement usually requires temperatures of up to 2,642 degrees Fahrenheit and the fossil fuels burned to reach that temperature are responsible for 7% of industry carbon emissions worldwide. The composition of the Roman slab is such that it can be baked at only 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit, [00:26:00] which would require far less fuel making the production of Roman concrete, both greener and glass expensive. The other concrete uses ash from volcanic regions in the Gulf of Naples that can be reacted with lime and sea water to create mortar chemically similar ash known as Paul is on can still be found in many parts of the world today. Well, currently there are a few green concretes that do use ash in their manufacturing process. This lab has provided the industry with concrete proof of the long term performance [00:26:30] of aspace summit. Yeah. The elusive electron orbitals of the hydrogen atom have been observed directly. Anita stir donut at the FLM for atomic Speaker 6: and molecular physics in Amsterdam. Mark Rakin at the Max Borne Institute in Berlin and their colleagues published these findings in physical review letters. On May 20th the team implemented photo ionization microscopy [00:27:00] first proposed theoretically over 30 years ago. They used UV lasers to excite electrons and then Adam placed and then electric field. These photo electrons went through electromagnetic lenses which focused them onto a CCD detector by collecting tens of thousands of electrons. The team map the shape of the orbitals. Speaker 5: This may you see Berkeley's Ecig Museum of entomology opened a new [00:27:30] citizens science project known as cow book. The museum has begun posting high resolution photos of its more than 1 million specimens and accompanying field notes to the cow bug website where anyone with an interest in the bugs can transcribe the original handwritten information about the specimens, origins and collection. The project is an effort to digitize terrestrial arthropod specimen records with a focus on those hailing from California. The cal boat science team will then use the [00:28:00] newly digitized data to assess how insects have responded to climate change and habit modification over time. The museum began a project in collaboration with eight other California museums in 2010 after realizing that cataloging their vast collection would be impossible with their small staff. The resulting website known as notes from nature host the cow book project as well as her Berrien and ornithological collections. Also waiting to be classified. You can take a look@theircollectionsandperhapsstarttranscribingatnotesfromnature.org Speaker 7: [00:28:30] [inaudible] music or during the show was written, produced by Alex Simon [inaudible]. Spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. The link to the archive is incomprehensible, Speaker 1: so we created a short link for you. That [00:29:00] link is tiny, url.com/ [inaudible] spectrum, all one word. That's tiny, url.com/cadillacs spectrum. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com Speaker 6: join us in two [00:29:30] weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Janet Jansson is the Senior Staff Scientist in the Earth Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Her expertise is in molecular microbial ecology and “omics” approaches with a focus on soil, marine sediment and human gut environments.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, [00:00:30] a biweekly 30 minute program, bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm your host, Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Janet Jansen, UC Berkeley, adjunct professor of molecular microbial ecology. She is a senior staff scientist in the Earth Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and president elect of the International Society of microbial [00:01:00] ecology. Her expertise is in the area of molecular microbial ecology and Omix approaches with a focus on soil, marine sediment and human gut environments. Today she talks about the human microbiome project, the Earth microbiome project and American Gut, a crowdsourced research project. Onto that interview. Janet Jansen, welcome to spectrum. Hi, what'd you give us a short description [00:01:30] of microbial ecology and give some examples of complex microbial communities. Speaker 4: Sure. So microbial ecology is the study of micro organisms in the environment and their interactions with other microorganisms, plants, animals, that particular habitat that they happen to be living in. So it's really not just studying a single microorganism, but a community of microorganisms. Uh, so some examples [00:02:00] of complex communities. Well, the most complex ecosystem is soil and that's because it has such a diversity of microorganisms and it's really packed full of microbes. So there's so many microorganisms living in soil. So that combined with the diversity makes it a very complex system. The human ecosystem is very complex. Our own intestines have a very complex microbial community. [00:02:30] The oceans or other examples, sediments. So I think this is my community college that you had to think differently than one would when you study organisms in pure culture and their physiology is much more complex Speaker 3: and microbial research seems to have jumped in stature in the past few years. You have a broader view of it than I do. What's your take on the trajectory of microbial research? I think Speaker 4: [00:03:00] particularly the microbial ecology part has increased in stature recently. Microbiology as a field has been around for a long time. But the thing that I think has really boosted the field of microbial ecology is the advent of these new technologies, the new tools to be able to really look at these complex communities and understand them. Until I guess it was about the 1980s there wasn't [00:03:30] any way to really look at these micro organisms in soil. Again, I'll use that as an example, unless you cultivated them onto augur media or looked at them in a microscope. So when the field was limited to looking at what was possible to cultivate, that was only a fraction of the microorganisms that live in soil habitat. So probably fewer than 10% could be cultivated. So the majority of the organisms that were there, [00:04:00] nobody knew anything about them. Their identities or their functions were really unknown. Speaker 4: So it was considered like a black box eco system. But after the late, I guess the 80s and into the 90s there were the developments in DNA extraction techniques. So it was possible to extract DNA from soil and then came PCR amplification methods and methods to be able to amplify specific [00:04:30] pieces of DNA that you had extracted that made it possible to actually study soil microorganisms without cultivating them. And now we have these deep sequencing technologies, so it's really made it much easier to do very deep analysis of these communities and not have to rely on cultivation. Speaker 3: The human microbiome project is in its last year. What were the goals of it and can you speak to that about what the goals were and what you think [00:05:00] you've found out? Speaker 4: The first stage of the h and p was to sequence different bodies sites and understand which micro organisms are residing in different sites in the human body. And so this was looking at a large cohort of humans, healthy humans, and just basically understanding who are the microbial inhabitants of the human body. So that part is winding down. We have that knowledge now. We know that there are different micro organisms that live on your skin, [00:05:30] then in in your gut for examples and also in the oral cavity. So these organisms are specialized to live in different parts of the human body and there are differences between different individuals though. So that means that each human has their own individual microbiome and it can almost be used as a fingerprint. So that was a successfully completed project. The next stage there has been a recent call too, I think it's even called h and p two [00:06:00] to go the next step. So to use other kinds of methods to look at not only which microorganisms are there, but what are they doing. So this would be looking at the functional capabilities of the human microbiome. Another thing that is still ongoing with the h and p is looking at how does disease influence the human microbiome and vice versa. What is the correlation with the microorganisms living with us and disease? And it seems like there are many different links between many [00:06:30] human disease that send the human microbiome Speaker 3: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 5: Our guest today is microbiologists, Janet Jansen. In the next segment she talks about the microbiome and disease correlation. This is k a l x, Berkeley. Speaker 3: Well, and often in science there's a lot of correlation [00:07:00] that goes on and sometimes you get fooled by the correlation. Sometimes you don't. Are there strategies you use in terms of validating what you think correlates? Speaker 4: Oh, correlations are can be quite challenging. Definitely. So, um, that's an interesting question because then one of the things that is very tricky is if you find a difference in an environmental sample, for example, with the civic treatment or in a human with disease often all we have, [00:07:30] we can then say, well it's correlated to this organism that is higher in abundance or it's correlated to this protein that is higher or lower in abundance. That's a little frustrating. So that the next step, and we're not quite there yet in this field, would be then to say, okay, go beyond correlations and then actually do the proof, you know, to take that organism like Cox postulates, you then prove that this correlation that you see is actually [00:08:00] occurring. But it's difficult with these complex samples, like I was saying before, because you have to move away from the complex environment where you have all these different factors. Speaker 3: So the complexity defeats you in a way because you can't isolate the specific from the general. Exactly. Exactly. And so within this correlation of disease, are there particular diseases that seem to be top priorities in a sense or are most likely to be effected by [00:08:30] the microbiome? An example of Crohn's diseases, Speaker 4: Crohn's disease is the example. I would give us a very clear example and also other inflammatory bowel diseases where there has already been established a link between the gut microbiome and the disease. The details are still under investigation, but there is a difference in the micro organisms that inhabit the intestine in individuals that have Crohn's disease compared to healthy. [00:09:00] So that's known. Speaker 3: And is that the case with ulcers as well? Or they were sort of one of the first, it seems that had this association with the microbiome in the gut, Speaker 4: right. So systemic ulcers, there was a Nobel prize awarded for the discovery of [inaudible] go back to Pylori as the cause of ulcers in the stomach. And so that's a good example, this specific microorganism that can contribute to a disease. And then of course a lot of medications were subsequently [00:09:30] developed to dampen hillcoat back to pylori through new research. We know that there is a considerable diversity of microorganisms in the stomach that people weren't aware of before using these techniques and also in your teeth and then in the oral cavity. There's a very large diversity. I should mention that one of the things that is a really hot topic right now is the link between the brain and the human microbiome, including [00:10:00] the gut microbiome because it's known that some of the metabolites that are produced by these intestinal microbes can pass the blood barrier and then migrated essentially in impact the brain, so some current research is looking at the link between autism and schizophrenia, these kinds of things. Then I think that's really interesting. That's one future direction of the field. Speaker 3: The new initiative in brain mapping exactly [00:10:30] now ties that together. That would be great. At least the findings here was just a new funding. Speaker 4: Yeah, I know. I don't know if they've really decided to make that link for funding, but it probably will come. Speaker 3: Can you talk a bit about American gut and how it's set up to help people figure out their own microbiome? Speaker 4: Sure. So the American get is, it's a relatively new way of doing research [00:11:00] is crowdsourcing. And the idea is that if a person such as myself is interested in knowing quip, my gut microbiome is I can pay a small amount, it's like $100 to get my sample sequence. So that is the way that the project is funded. And so this project, it had a funding goal, I think it was $300,000 to be able to launch the sequencing. And so there was the campaign [00:11:30] and it was sent out to the community and through connections such as Facebook and another with this nice little carrot that if you pay $100 you can get your microbiome. And in addition to gut, it could be your skin sample, oral cavity, your pet. And so this idea really caught on and is a good example of crowdsourcing for funding. Speaker 3: And how are people able to leverage that information? [00:12:00] Is there some characterization that you do as well? Speaker 4: The data that they get back is, it's different kinds of information. So first which micro organisms do I have? That's kind of fun to know. It's sort of like 23 and me where you get information back about which genes you have in, which kind of markers for different things. So depending on your microbial community composition, you may have markers that are more indicative of health, certain kinds of diets like [00:12:30] vegetarian or a protein rich diet, even obesity, there's certain microbial indicators of obesity. So that's just interesting. Another thing that is valuable for the consumer, the person who does this is that you can compare your microbiome to everybody else's. It's all anonymous of course. And nobody knows who's this, who's, but you have your own data and can see how your microbiome fits into a pattern. So do you cluster [00:13:00] with obese people or with a disease type microbiome or a certain kind of eating pattern Speaker 3: and are these online tools that you have available through American gut for people to do this kind of characterization? Speaker 4: So the analysis has to be done by the actual scientists that are doing the samples because it's still quite elaborate and involves a lot of bioinformatics. So currently it's not possible [00:13:30] to do a lot of that on your own, but still to get an output, the actual data, the results of the analysis is what the individual can get through this project. Speaker 2: [inaudible] you were listening to spectrum on a k a l x Berkeley. Our guest today is Janet Jensen. In the next segment she talks about the earth microbiome project. Speaker 3: [00:14:00] Can you talk a bit about the earth microbiome project and maybe differentiate it from the human project? Speaker 4: Yeah, sure. So the Earth microbiome project, which I'll call the emp, is, um, instead of just looking at humans, it's including basically all of earth. So it has a very lofty goal of understanding earth microbial diversity. That project also relies [00:14:30] on collaborators, so it's sort of a crowdsourcing project as well, but limited to the scientific community. So the way that Earth microbiome project works is if a collaborator has an interesting set of samples, for example, from the deep sea or from Yellowstone hot springs that have the required kinds of environmental data, so Ph, nutrients, things like that. Then they can [00:15:00] send an email to the steering committee and say, well, would this study be of interest to the earth microbiome project to the ENP? And then the steering committee looks through the data and decides whether the environmental data is sufficient and if the samples are filling a hole and providing novel information and if so the samples are accepted and the sequencing is done without any costs to the investigator. That's the win win scenario for the emp [00:15:30] because the investigator does of course provide the funding for the study and collection of the samples and the emp provides the funding for the sequencing. Now the funding for emp is also kind of fuzzy because it's through different kinds of companies that have supported by providing regions or equipment and then in turn they get advertisement through the emp that they're sponsors of the project. And so that [00:16:00] also seems to be quite successful. Speaker 3: And the intent again to build a catalog Speaker 4: basically, yes, to build a catalog to find out who's there and are there patterns. The nice thing about heading samples from so many different disparate environments is that you can see, well does this particular microorganism occur across different kinds of environments or is it really endemic only to one kind of habitat? And if you tweak the environment, [00:16:30] for example, with climate change to have increases or losses of certain members of the community that are predictive, one of the aims is to have something like a Google map and then you can highlight all of this sort of organism type in pink. If you click on a button and see where they are localized around the globe. But then if the climate increases by five degrees, then you can click another button and see what happens. Does that organism increase or decrease there? Does another microbial typing [00:17:00] green become more abundant? Speaker 3: The methods you use that you apply to your research. So often we're results oriented with science or at least to the public, you know, what did you find out? It becomes more important than how did you find it out? Can you give us some sense of your methods to doing the research that you do? Speaker 4: I think that the methods, as I mentioned earlier, that's been a limitation to my particular field, but that [00:17:30] also makes it kind of fun because we're always trying to develop better methods and new methods to be able to investigate these systems. And so it's quite challenging, which is something I like. So the method in my own lab that we're developing are different kinds of what I call omix quoting. Oh, mixed methods. So that's everything from sequencing everything, which would be metogenomic x to extracting RNA and [00:18:00] sequencing that. That would be looking at express genes. That's Meta transcriptomics or extracting all the proteins and looking at that. That would be metaproteomics. You can even do the metabolites metabolomics. So these are the current methods that are stated. The art right now for looking at these kinds of complex communities. Speaker 6: [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 5: this is k [00:18:30] a l x Berkeley. The show is spectrum. I'm Brad swift. Our guest is professor Janet Jansen, microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley lab and UC Berkeley. Speaker 3: In your experience working on these large projects and also then working in small projects, I'm curious about the, the idea of big science versus small science. You know, the individual scientists toiling [00:19:00] away versus the big group that gets together and decides what they'll do and [inaudible]. Speaker 4: So personally I, I'm a big science kind of person. I definitely appreciate the value of a small science than I do have some smaller targeted projects. I moved to Berkeley lab about five years ago. I was a professor in Sweden before that and my funding was more individual, smaller projects in Sweden. But uh, one of the reasons I came to Berkeley lab was because of the big team science. I really [00:19:30] like that I'm a super collaborator and I can see the value of having people with different skills working together to tackle some really big problems. [inaudible] Speaker 3: and I suppose the culture then becomes really important to the group, the dynamics, the sharing, the openness. And how does that happen, do you think? Have you seen it work well and work badly? Speaker 4: Oh, it's very important. So you had to choose your collaborations as well and sometimes if they, the dynamics [00:20:00] aren't working, then it might be time to rethink the collaborations and revise it in a certain way. But ideally you have people that are so motivated that they are, I know that start delisting, but in the best case situation you have people that are so motivated towards a specific goal that it works quite well. There is an example of one project that is ongoing right now at the lab. It's called the next generation ecosystem [00:20:30] experiment in the Arctic, which is looking at the impact of climate change on permafrost communities. And that's the big doe funded project that involves probably hundreds of researchers at different laboratories, different doe laboratories and universities that are all focusing on one location in Barrow, Alaska, using all of the different tools available at the national labs and expertise at universities as well. Speaker 3: [00:21:00] And how long has that been going on? Speaker 4: It's been about a year and a half. It's a new project, but I'd like it because it has the necessary funding. Of course, when you spread it out, you know, everybody gets a little chunk of it, but it enables incredible things to be done at that site. It's just so much fun to go to these meetings and hear about the lidar sensing team and the modeling team and the hydrology team with their sleds and the geochemists go [00:21:30] in and my part is the microbial ecology. We get deep cores and we extract DNA and sequence them. It's just really a lot of fun Speaker 3: and there's a lot of emphasis on trying to encourage young people to get into science, technology, math. Is there really an opportunity in this field for, for people? Speaker 4: I have to say that right now it's a huge opportunity and there aren't enough persons educated in this field [00:22:00] to be able to fill these growing companies that are starting up. I'm getting several calls from companies that are asking for postdocs from my lab if they're interested in joining and if I were starting right now as a biologist, I would definitely look into bioinformatics and also the metagenome mix fields because these are the sorts of persons that there aren't that many yet. It's not that widespread yet [00:22:30] and there are companies that really need that expertise. Speaker 3: Would you characterize both of those briefly? Speaker 4: The bioinformatics would be more of generation of software algorithms, ways to look at these big data that are generated from different kinds of biological samplesSpeaker 3: and that might include visualization as well as other normal text output kind of a thing. Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. Everything from the database [00:23:00] management to the visualization of the data and things in between. The statistical analysis, that's a huge growth area and I predict this is going to continue because the data is just getting bigger. It's not going away from that a genomics and these other kinds of omix areas. I think that that would also involve some computing skills, but in addition to differentiate it from bioinformatics, more of the combination with lab skill. Speaker 3: [00:23:30] Janet Johnson. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Speaker 4: Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Speaker 3: Well, we'd like to mention a few of the science and technology events locally over the Speaker 7: next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky joins me for the calendar. The Saturday the science of cow lecture will be given by Dr Nadir Mirabal Fathi. The lecture is entitled, connecting infant decimal to infinity, the search for dark matter. [00:24:00] He will speak about a new class of elementary particles known as weakly interacting massive particles or Wimps to resolve inconsistencies in our understanding of the nature at both extreme, large and small scales and how they are connected together. He will also explore the experimental efforts to detect these particles. Interest real laboratories. Nadir r Mirabal Fathi earned Phd in elementary particle physics and cosmology at the University of Paris. He did his postdoctoral [00:24:30] studies at UC Berkeley and has been an associate research physicist at UC Berkeley since 2008 the lecture is Saturday, May 18th at 11:00 AM in room 100 of the genetics and plant biology building. Makerfair. The self-proclaimed greatest show and tell on earth is this weekend, May 18th and 19th at San Mateo fairgrounds. Speaker 7: We talked last year with Tony to rose and Michelle, who? Bianca. Two of the founders of young makers about [00:25:00] the maker fair. Find our interview with them@itunesuortinyurl.com slash calix spectrum one day prices range from $15 to $30. Highlights of this year's maker fair include KQ [inaudible] kitchen sisters with their new radio series, the making of what people make in the bay area and why NASA makers with astronauts, John Grunsfeld, Dennis Bartell's discussing building the new exploratorium, [00:25:30] how to tie a perfect neck tie with Nobel prize physicist Arno Penzias, DIY research with Tekla labs and amazing science. Tornadoes, smoke rings and more. For more information, visit makerfair.com that's maker F A I r e.com the long nose Stuart brand. It's presenting on reviving extinct species on Tuesday, May 21st [00:26:00] at the San Francisco Jazz Center, two Oh one Franklin Street at 7:30 PM tickets are $15 he'll summarize the progress of current de extinction projects including the Europe's Oryx Australia is gastric brooding frog and America's passenger pigeon. Speaker 7: He'll also discuss some of the ancient ecosystem revival projects such as Pleistocene Park in Siberia. New Genomic technology can reassemble the genomes of extinct species [00:26:30] whose DNA is still recoverable from museum specimens and some fossils. Sorry. Jurassic Park fans. No dinosaurs. It is hoped that the jeans unique to the extinct animals can brought back to life in the framework of the genome of the closest living relative. For more information, visit long now.org now Rick Karnofsky and I present to news stories. Alberto Saul from Brown University and colleagues [00:27:00] published an article in science on May 9th that suggests the water that is on the moon came from Earth. The team measured the relative abundance of deuterium that is heavy hydrogen that contains an extra neutron to hydrogen in the water, found in small bubbles of volcanic glass and Melt inclusions in moon rocks. They found the ratio was very similar to the ratio found on earth and from carbonaceous chondrites meteorites that are thought to have supplied [00:27:30] the earth with water. Speaker 7: Higher. Deuterium levels were expected by some who had hypothesized the comments from the Kuyper belt in Oort cloud could have been the source of the Moon's water. If the moon's water did come from Earth, it is likely the earth already had this water when the moon was formed. Some four and a half billion years ago when the earth and another Mars sized planet collided. However, such a collusion may have been hot enough to vaporize the lunar water. There is sir now [00:28:00] debating whether it may have been retained because of the earth's gravity or because the moon shared some of the earth's high temperature atmosphere when it formed pregnant mothers exposure to the flu was associated with a nearly four fold increased risk that their child would develop bipolar disorder in adulthood. In a study funded by the National Institutes of health. The findings add to mounting evidence of possible shared underlying causes and illness processes [00:28:30] with schizophrenia, which some studies have also linked to prenatal exposure to influenza, principal investigator Allen Brown and MD mph of Columbia University says prospective mothers should take common sense preventative measures such as getting flu shots prior to and in early stages of pregnancy and avoiding contact with people who are symptomatic in spite of public health recommendations, only a relatively small fraction of such women [00:29:00] get immunized. Speaker 7: The weight of evidence now suggests that benefits of the vaccine likely outweigh any possible risk to the mother or the newborn. Brown and colleagues reported their findings online. May 8th, 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry Speaker 2: [inaudible]. The music heard during the show is written and produced by Alex Simon. [00:29:30] Thank you for listening to spectrum. Had comments about the show, please send them to us via email or email address is spectrum dot k a l s@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Janet Jansson is the Senior Staff Scientist in the Earth Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Her expertise is in molecular microbial ecology and “omics” approaches with a focus on soil, marine sediment and human gut environments.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, [00:00:30] a biweekly 30 minute program, bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm your host, Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Janet Jansen, UC Berkeley, adjunct professor of molecular microbial ecology. She is a senior staff scientist in the Earth Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and president elect of the International Society of microbial [00:01:00] ecology. Her expertise is in the area of molecular microbial ecology and Omix approaches with a focus on soil, marine sediment and human gut environments. Today she talks about the human microbiome project, the Earth microbiome project and American Gut, a crowdsourced research project. Onto that interview. Janet Jansen, welcome to spectrum. Hi, what'd you give us a short description [00:01:30] of microbial ecology and give some examples of complex microbial communities. Speaker 4: Sure. So microbial ecology is the study of micro organisms in the environment and their interactions with other microorganisms, plants, animals, that particular habitat that they happen to be living in. So it's really not just studying a single microorganism, but a community of microorganisms. Uh, so some examples [00:02:00] of complex communities. Well, the most complex ecosystem is soil and that's because it has such a diversity of microorganisms and it's really packed full of microbes. So there's so many microorganisms living in soil. So that combined with the diversity makes it a very complex system. The human ecosystem is very complex. Our own intestines have a very complex microbial community. [00:02:30] The oceans or other examples, sediments. So I think this is my community college that you had to think differently than one would when you study organisms in pure culture and their physiology is much more complex Speaker 3: and microbial research seems to have jumped in stature in the past few years. You have a broader view of it than I do. What's your take on the trajectory of microbial research? I think Speaker 4: [00:03:00] particularly the microbial ecology part has increased in stature recently. Microbiology as a field has been around for a long time. But the thing that I think has really boosted the field of microbial ecology is the advent of these new technologies, the new tools to be able to really look at these complex communities and understand them. Until I guess it was about the 1980s there wasn't [00:03:30] any way to really look at these micro organisms in soil. Again, I'll use that as an example, unless you cultivated them onto augur media or looked at them in a microscope. So when the field was limited to looking at what was possible to cultivate, that was only a fraction of the microorganisms that live in soil habitat. So probably fewer than 10% could be cultivated. So the majority of the organisms that were there, [00:04:00] nobody knew anything about them. Their identities or their functions were really unknown. Speaker 4: So it was considered like a black box eco system. But after the late, I guess the 80s and into the 90s there were the developments in DNA extraction techniques. So it was possible to extract DNA from soil and then came PCR amplification methods and methods to be able to amplify specific [00:04:30] pieces of DNA that you had extracted that made it possible to actually study soil microorganisms without cultivating them. And now we have these deep sequencing technologies, so it's really made it much easier to do very deep analysis of these communities and not have to rely on cultivation. Speaker 3: The human microbiome project is in its last year. What were the goals of it and can you speak to that about what the goals were and what you think [00:05:00] you've found out? Speaker 4: The first stage of the h and p was to sequence different bodies sites and understand which micro organisms are residing in different sites in the human body. And so this was looking at a large cohort of humans, healthy humans, and just basically understanding who are the microbial inhabitants of the human body. So that part is winding down. We have that knowledge now. We know that there are different micro organisms that live on your skin, [00:05:30] then in in your gut for examples and also in the oral cavity. So these organisms are specialized to live in different parts of the human body and there are differences between different individuals though. So that means that each human has their own individual microbiome and it can almost be used as a fingerprint. So that was a successfully completed project. The next stage there has been a recent call too, I think it's even called h and p two [00:06:00] to go the next step. So to use other kinds of methods to look at not only which microorganisms are there, but what are they doing. So this would be looking at the functional capabilities of the human microbiome. Another thing that is still ongoing with the h and p is looking at how does disease influence the human microbiome and vice versa. What is the correlation with the microorganisms living with us and disease? And it seems like there are many different links between many [00:06:30] human disease that send the human microbiome Speaker 3: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 5: Our guest today is microbiologists, Janet Jansen. In the next segment she talks about the microbiome and disease correlation. This is k a l x, Berkeley. Speaker 3: Well, and often in science there's a lot of correlation [00:07:00] that goes on and sometimes you get fooled by the correlation. Sometimes you don't. Are there strategies you use in terms of validating what you think correlates? Speaker 4: Oh, correlations are can be quite challenging. Definitely. So, um, that's an interesting question because then one of the things that is very tricky is if you find a difference in an environmental sample, for example, with the civic treatment or in a human with disease often all we have, [00:07:30] we can then say, well it's correlated to this organism that is higher in abundance or it's correlated to this protein that is higher or lower in abundance. That's a little frustrating. So that the next step, and we're not quite there yet in this field, would be then to say, okay, go beyond correlations and then actually do the proof, you know, to take that organism like Cox postulates, you then prove that this correlation that you see is actually [00:08:00] occurring. But it's difficult with these complex samples, like I was saying before, because you have to move away from the complex environment where you have all these different factors. Speaker 3: So the complexity defeats you in a way because you can't isolate the specific from the general. Exactly. Exactly. And so within this correlation of disease, are there particular diseases that seem to be top priorities in a sense or are most likely to be effected by [00:08:30] the microbiome? An example of Crohn's diseases, Speaker 4: Crohn's disease is the example. I would give us a very clear example and also other inflammatory bowel diseases where there has already been established a link between the gut microbiome and the disease. The details are still under investigation, but there is a difference in the micro organisms that inhabit the intestine in individuals that have Crohn's disease compared to healthy. [00:09:00] So that's known. Speaker 3: And is that the case with ulcers as well? Or they were sort of one of the first, it seems that had this association with the microbiome in the gut, Speaker 4: right. So systemic ulcers, there was a Nobel prize awarded for the discovery of [inaudible] go back to Pylori as the cause of ulcers in the stomach. And so that's a good example, this specific microorganism that can contribute to a disease. And then of course a lot of medications were subsequently [00:09:30] developed to dampen hillcoat back to pylori through new research. We know that there is a considerable diversity of microorganisms in the stomach that people weren't aware of before using these techniques and also in your teeth and then in the oral cavity. There's a very large diversity. I should mention that one of the things that is a really hot topic right now is the link between the brain and the human microbiome, including [00:10:00] the gut microbiome because it's known that some of the metabolites that are produced by these intestinal microbes can pass the blood barrier and then migrated essentially in impact the brain, so some current research is looking at the link between autism and schizophrenia, these kinds of things. Then I think that's really interesting. That's one future direction of the field. Speaker 3: The new initiative in brain mapping exactly [00:10:30] now ties that together. That would be great. At least the findings here was just a new funding. Speaker 4: Yeah, I know. I don't know if they've really decided to make that link for funding, but it probably will come. Speaker 3: Can you talk a bit about American gut and how it's set up to help people figure out their own microbiome? Speaker 4: Sure. So the American get is, it's a relatively new way of doing research [00:11:00] is crowdsourcing. And the idea is that if a person such as myself is interested in knowing quip, my gut microbiome is I can pay a small amount, it's like $100 to get my sample sequence. So that is the way that the project is funded. And so this project, it had a funding goal, I think it was $300,000 to be able to launch the sequencing. And so there was the campaign [00:11:30] and it was sent out to the community and through connections such as Facebook and another with this nice little carrot that if you pay $100 you can get your microbiome. And in addition to gut, it could be your skin sample, oral cavity, your pet. And so this idea really caught on and is a good example of crowdsourcing for funding. Speaker 3: And how are people able to leverage that information? [00:12:00] Is there some characterization that you do as well? Speaker 4: The data that they get back is, it's different kinds of information. So first which micro organisms do I have? That's kind of fun to know. It's sort of like 23 and me where you get information back about which genes you have in, which kind of markers for different things. So depending on your microbial community composition, you may have markers that are more indicative of health, certain kinds of diets like [00:12:30] vegetarian or a protein rich diet, even obesity, there's certain microbial indicators of obesity. So that's just interesting. Another thing that is valuable for the consumer, the person who does this is that you can compare your microbiome to everybody else's. It's all anonymous of course. And nobody knows who's this, who's, but you have your own data and can see how your microbiome fits into a pattern. So do you cluster [00:13:00] with obese people or with a disease type microbiome or a certain kind of eating pattern Speaker 3: and are these online tools that you have available through American gut for people to do this kind of characterization? Speaker 4: So the analysis has to be done by the actual scientists that are doing the samples because it's still quite elaborate and involves a lot of bioinformatics. So currently it's not possible [00:13:30] to do a lot of that on your own, but still to get an output, the actual data, the results of the analysis is what the individual can get through this project. Speaker 2: [inaudible] you were listening to spectrum on a k a l x Berkeley. Our guest today is Janet Jensen. In the next segment she talks about the earth microbiome project. Speaker 3: [00:14:00] Can you talk a bit about the earth microbiome project and maybe differentiate it from the human project? Speaker 4: Yeah, sure. So the Earth microbiome project, which I'll call the emp, is, um, instead of just looking at humans, it's including basically all of earth. So it has a very lofty goal of understanding earth microbial diversity. That project also relies [00:14:30] on collaborators, so it's sort of a crowdsourcing project as well, but limited to the scientific community. So the way that Earth microbiome project works is if a collaborator has an interesting set of samples, for example, from the deep sea or from Yellowstone hot springs that have the required kinds of environmental data, so Ph, nutrients, things like that. Then they can [00:15:00] send an email to the steering committee and say, well, would this study be of interest to the earth microbiome project to the ENP? And then the steering committee looks through the data and decides whether the environmental data is sufficient and if the samples are filling a hole and providing novel information and if so the samples are accepted and the sequencing is done without any costs to the investigator. That's the win win scenario for the emp [00:15:30] because the investigator does of course provide the funding for the study and collection of the samples and the emp provides the funding for the sequencing. Now the funding for emp is also kind of fuzzy because it's through different kinds of companies that have supported by providing regions or equipment and then in turn they get advertisement through the emp that they're sponsors of the project. And so that [00:16:00] also seems to be quite successful. Speaker 3: And the intent again to build a catalog Speaker 4: basically, yes, to build a catalog to find out who's there and are there patterns. The nice thing about heading samples from so many different disparate environments is that you can see, well does this particular microorganism occur across different kinds of environments or is it really endemic only to one kind of habitat? And if you tweak the environment, [00:16:30] for example, with climate change to have increases or losses of certain members of the community that are predictive, one of the aims is to have something like a Google map and then you can highlight all of this sort of organism type in pink. If you click on a button and see where they are localized around the globe. But then if the climate increases by five degrees, then you can click another button and see what happens. Does that organism increase or decrease there? Does another microbial typing [00:17:00] green become more abundant? Speaker 3: The methods you use that you apply to your research. So often we're results oriented with science or at least to the public, you know, what did you find out? It becomes more important than how did you find it out? Can you give us some sense of your methods to doing the research that you do? Speaker 4: I think that the methods, as I mentioned earlier, that's been a limitation to my particular field, but that [00:17:30] also makes it kind of fun because we're always trying to develop better methods and new methods to be able to investigate these systems. And so it's quite challenging, which is something I like. So the method in my own lab that we're developing are different kinds of what I call omix quoting. Oh, mixed methods. So that's everything from sequencing everything, which would be metogenomic x to extracting RNA and [00:18:00] sequencing that. That would be looking at express genes. That's Meta transcriptomics or extracting all the proteins and looking at that. That would be metaproteomics. You can even do the metabolites metabolomics. So these are the current methods that are stated. The art right now for looking at these kinds of complex communities. Speaker 6: [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 5: this is k [00:18:30] a l x Berkeley. The show is spectrum. I'm Brad swift. Our guest is professor Janet Jansen, microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley lab and UC Berkeley. Speaker 3: In your experience working on these large projects and also then working in small projects, I'm curious about the, the idea of big science versus small science. You know, the individual scientists toiling [00:19:00] away versus the big group that gets together and decides what they'll do and [inaudible]. Speaker 4: So personally I, I'm a big science kind of person. I definitely appreciate the value of a small science than I do have some smaller targeted projects. I moved to Berkeley lab about five years ago. I was a professor in Sweden before that and my funding was more individual, smaller projects in Sweden. But uh, one of the reasons I came to Berkeley lab was because of the big team science. I really [00:19:30] like that I'm a super collaborator and I can see the value of having people with different skills working together to tackle some really big problems. [inaudible] Speaker 3: and I suppose the culture then becomes really important to the group, the dynamics, the sharing, the openness. And how does that happen, do you think? Have you seen it work well and work badly? Speaker 4: Oh, it's very important. So you had to choose your collaborations as well and sometimes if they, the dynamics [00:20:00] aren't working, then it might be time to rethink the collaborations and revise it in a certain way. But ideally you have people that are so motivated that they are, I know that start delisting, but in the best case situation you have people that are so motivated towards a specific goal that it works quite well. There is an example of one project that is ongoing right now at the lab. It's called the next generation ecosystem [00:20:30] experiment in the Arctic, which is looking at the impact of climate change on permafrost communities. And that's the big doe funded project that involves probably hundreds of researchers at different laboratories, different doe laboratories and universities that are all focusing on one location in Barrow, Alaska, using all of the different tools available at the national labs and expertise at universities as well. Speaker 3: [00:21:00] And how long has that been going on? Speaker 4: It's been about a year and a half. It's a new project, but I'd like it because it has the necessary funding. Of course, when you spread it out, you know, everybody gets a little chunk of it, but it enables incredible things to be done at that site. It's just so much fun to go to these meetings and hear about the lidar sensing team and the modeling team and the hydrology team with their sleds and the geochemists go [00:21:30] in and my part is the microbial ecology. We get deep cores and we extract DNA and sequence them. It's just really a lot of fun Speaker 3: and there's a lot of emphasis on trying to encourage young people to get into science, technology, math. Is there really an opportunity in this field for, for people? Speaker 4: I have to say that right now it's a huge opportunity and there aren't enough persons educated in this field [00:22:00] to be able to fill these growing companies that are starting up. I'm getting several calls from companies that are asking for postdocs from my lab if they're interested in joining and if I were starting right now as a biologist, I would definitely look into bioinformatics and also the metagenome mix fields because these are the sorts of persons that there aren't that many yet. It's not that widespread yet [00:22:30] and there are companies that really need that expertise. Speaker 3: Would you characterize both of those briefly? Speaker 4: The bioinformatics would be more of generation of software algorithms, ways to look at these big data that are generated from different kinds of biological samplesSpeaker 3: and that might include visualization as well as other normal text output kind of a thing. Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. Everything from the database [00:23:00] management to the visualization of the data and things in between. The statistical analysis, that's a huge growth area and I predict this is going to continue because the data is just getting bigger. It's not going away from that a genomics and these other kinds of omix areas. I think that that would also involve some computing skills, but in addition to differentiate it from bioinformatics, more of the combination with lab skill. Speaker 3: [00:23:30] Janet Johnson. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Speaker 4: Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Speaker 3: Well, we'd like to mention a few of the science and technology events locally over the Speaker 7: next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky joins me for the calendar. The Saturday the science of cow lecture will be given by Dr Nadir Mirabal Fathi. The lecture is entitled, connecting infant decimal to infinity, the search for dark matter. [00:24:00] He will speak about a new class of elementary particles known as weakly interacting massive particles or Wimps to resolve inconsistencies in our understanding of the nature at both extreme, large and small scales and how they are connected together. He will also explore the experimental efforts to detect these particles. Interest real laboratories. Nadir r Mirabal Fathi earned Phd in elementary particle physics and cosmology at the University of Paris. He did his postdoctoral [00:24:30] studies at UC Berkeley and has been an associate research physicist at UC Berkeley since 2008 the lecture is Saturday, May 18th at 11:00 AM in room 100 of the genetics and plant biology building. Makerfair. The self-proclaimed greatest show and tell on earth is this weekend, May 18th and 19th at San Mateo fairgrounds. Speaker 7: We talked last year with Tony to rose and Michelle, who? Bianca. Two of the founders of young makers about [00:25:00] the maker fair. Find our interview with them@itunesuortinyurl.com slash calix spectrum one day prices range from $15 to $30. Highlights of this year's maker fair include KQ [inaudible] kitchen sisters with their new radio series, the making of what people make in the bay area and why NASA makers with astronauts, John Grunsfeld, Dennis Bartell's discussing building the new exploratorium, [00:25:30] how to tie a perfect neck tie with Nobel prize physicist Arno Penzias, DIY research with Tekla labs and amazing science. Tornadoes, smoke rings and more. For more information, visit makerfair.com that's maker F A I r e.com the long nose Stuart brand. It's presenting on reviving extinct species on Tuesday, May 21st [00:26:00] at the San Francisco Jazz Center, two Oh one Franklin Street at 7:30 PM tickets are $15 he'll summarize the progress of current de extinction projects including the Europe's Oryx Australia is gastric brooding frog and America's passenger pigeon. Speaker 7: He'll also discuss some of the ancient ecosystem revival projects such as Pleistocene Park in Siberia. New Genomic technology can reassemble the genomes of extinct species [00:26:30] whose DNA is still recoverable from museum specimens and some fossils. Sorry. Jurassic Park fans. No dinosaurs. It is hoped that the jeans unique to the extinct animals can brought back to life in the framework of the genome of the closest living relative. For more information, visit long now.org now Rick Karnofsky and I present to news stories. Alberto Saul from Brown University and colleagues [00:27:00] published an article in science on May 9th that suggests the water that is on the moon came from Earth. The team measured the relative abundance of deuterium that is heavy hydrogen that contains an extra neutron to hydrogen in the water, found in small bubbles of volcanic glass and Melt inclusions in moon rocks. They found the ratio was very similar to the ratio found on earth and from carbonaceous chondrites meteorites that are thought to have supplied [00:27:30] the earth with water. Speaker 7: Higher. Deuterium levels were expected by some who had hypothesized the comments from the Kuyper belt in Oort cloud could have been the source of the Moon's water. If the moon's water did come from Earth, it is likely the earth already had this water when the moon was formed. Some four and a half billion years ago when the earth and another Mars sized planet collided. However, such a collusion may have been hot enough to vaporize the lunar water. There is sir now [00:28:00] debating whether it may have been retained because of the earth's gravity or because the moon shared some of the earth's high temperature atmosphere when it formed pregnant mothers exposure to the flu was associated with a nearly four fold increased risk that their child would develop bipolar disorder in adulthood. In a study funded by the National Institutes of health. The findings add to mounting evidence of possible shared underlying causes and illness processes [00:28:30] with schizophrenia, which some studies have also linked to prenatal exposure to influenza, principal investigator Allen Brown and MD mph of Columbia University says prospective mothers should take common sense preventative measures such as getting flu shots prior to and in early stages of pregnancy and avoiding contact with people who are symptomatic in spite of public health recommendations, only a relatively small fraction of such women [00:29:00] get immunized. Speaker 7: The weight of evidence now suggests that benefits of the vaccine likely outweigh any possible risk to the mother or the newborn. Brown and colleagues reported their findings online. May 8th, 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry Speaker 2: [inaudible]. The music heard during the show is written and produced by Alex Simon. [00:29:30] Thank you for listening to spectrum. Had comments about the show, please send them to us via email or email address is spectrum dot k a l s@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Paul Piff, social psychologist and post-doc scholar in the Psychology Dept at UC Berkeley, studies how social hierarchy, inequality, and emotion shape relations between individuals and groups. Paul Piff received PhD in Psychology from UCB May 2012.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k [00:00:30] a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm your house today. In today's interview, Renee Rao and I talk with Paul Piff, a social psychologist and postdoctoral scholar in the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley. Paul's studies house, social [00:01:00] hierarchy, inequality and emotion shape relations between individuals and groups. Paul piff received his phd in psychology from UC Berkeley in May, 2012 onto the interview. Paul Piff, welcome to spectrum. Thanks so much for having me on. It's a pleasure. I wanted to have you talk about your research. Psychology is such a big field. How does your research fit into that? Speaker 4: Psychology is a big field. Lot of people are psychologists center interested in a lot [00:01:30] of different questions as they relate to people and organisms and why different kinds of organisms do the things that they do. The brand of psychology that I'm really interested in is called social psychology. So what I do is as opposed to having people lay on a couch and talk to me about their problems, I study what people do around others in the reasons for what they do. So I study emotion. That's one of the focuses of my work. I've also recently gotten really interested in [00:02:00] the effects of inequality and specifically how a person's levels of wealth and status in society shapes the ways that they see the world and behave toward other people. As a social psychologist, you take a question that's of interest to you, like how do the rich behave compared to those that are poor. And then you think about how you would design experiments in different kinds of studies to look at that using a very quantitative approach. So as a social psychologist, I design a lot of studies where people literally [00:02:30] come into the lab. There's something happening where I can observe what they do without their necessarily knowing, and I use that to infer basic motivations behind people's behavior. Speaker 3: Can you explain then some of your methods, maybe an example of how you're set up Speaker 4: study, study. So a lot of the work that I've been doing relates to this basic question of how money shapes behavior. So how do people who have a lot of money behave differently toward others from those who don't have [00:03:00] as much money? One of the things that I was interested in studying for example, is how does the amount of money that you have shaped how generous and helping you are toward other people. In social psychology, we call that general category of behavior, pro social behavior or altruism. What makes people behave in ways that help another person out, even if that means they have to do something kind of costly. So let's say I'm interested in looking at levels of generosity, a lot of different ways in which people can be generous toward one another in everyday life. [00:03:30] But I want to study this in the lab. Speaker 4: And so one of the ways that we can do that is using a standard task where we can have someone engage in it and see how generous they are. And one of the tasks that I'll use is called the dictator task. And for instance, in one study in this dictator task, I give someone literally $10 and I say, you can keep all these $10 10 single dollar bills or you can decide how many of these dollar bills you want to give away, if any, [00:04:00] to another person who's totally anonymous that you've been paired with in this study. And I tell them they'll never meet this other person, the other person will never meet them. And I just measure how many of those dollars they're willing to give away. Another thing I do before they come into the lab is measure what their income is. So I can look at how generous they are, how many of these single dollar bills they're willing to give away as a function of how much money they have. Speaker 4: And that's one of the assessments that I used in one area of study to look at levels [00:04:30] of giving levels of generosity in the simple task as a function of how much money people have. So there's rational economic models that would say that if you have a lot of money, that the utility of those $10 is somewhat diminished because you have more money in the first place. So you would predict that as a rational actor, a person who has more money is going to give more money away cause $10 means less. That's the opposite of what we find. In fact, people who make under $15,000 [00:05:00] a year give significantly more on average six to $7 away then to someone who makes 150,000 to $200,000 a year. So we found incredible differences. And so a lot of my work over the last five or six years, and this is in collaboration with other people in my lab, is to try to document why it is that these really notable differences emerge between the haves and the have nots and what the psychological underpinnings of those differences are. But that's an example of a kind of study that will run Speaker 2: [00:05:30] [inaudible]. Our guest today is Paul Piff, a social psychologist. Paul is talking about how he designs his research studies. This is k a l X. Berkeley. Speaker 5: I have a question about the dictator test. Do you find any sort of other correlating variables in between just wealth and lack of [00:06:00] wealth? Do you find education has difference or how people made the wealth? Can you draw a sort of a causal line between saying this person has more and this makes them less empathetic or this person being less empathetic maybe has led to them being wealthier? Speaker 4: The dictator task has been used a lot and there are a lot of correlating variables that we know about already. Age correlates, religion correlates, ethnicity correlates, and so if I'm interested in the specific effects of wealth, I have to [00:06:30] account for those other things and I do so controlling for a lot of other variables. Wealth above and beyond a person's race, their age, what religion they are, how religious they are in the first place. Wealth has a specific effect, but the question that you're getting at I think is a even bigger one, which is how do I know whether it's wealth that causes someone to do something or is it people that are say a little more selfish with their money, who become wealthy in the first place? [00:07:00] And that is a really important question. And I think one of the insights that we've had from a lot of the experimental work that we've done, I can literally take someone whose quote unquote poor, make them feel rich and show you that making them feel wealthy temporarily in the lab actually makes them behave more unethically, which suggests that there's at least in part a causal direction between having money, feeling like you have money and that subjective experience. Speaker 4: It's psychological [00:07:30] experience causing you to behave in some ways that are a little more entitled, a little more self-serving. Now there's an another important question, which is if these differences do exist between those that have and those that don't, are they fixed? Are they rooted? Is that just a fact of life that we have to accept and sort of move on from, or are they sensitive to changes and if they are, what are the kinds of things that you can do to move people's behavior around or to make certain people in society a little more empathetic [00:08:00] without necessarily getting into the details? There are a lot of things that can be done in a lot of my work looks at specific variables that you can manipulate, even through subtle interventions that get people who had a lot more money to behave in ways that are a lot more compassionate and a lot more empathetic. And one of the lessons that I've learned from this work is that it's not that difficult. So it's not that people who have money or necessarily corrupt in any way, but that there's a specific psychological experience associated with privilege [00:08:30] that gets you to become a little more disconnected from others. A little more insular from others in that certain patterns of behavior flow as a result, but those patterns can easily changed. Speaker 5: Can we talk about some of the tweaks that you use to sort of bring about those changes? Speaker 4: Sure. One of the things that I'm really interested in right now is if it's the case that upper status individuals are more likely to behave unethically, then what are some subtle interventions that could be [00:09:00] done? Like a little ethics reminder course at the beginning that, so I've run this where I basically had people do sort of a 10 minutes ethics training program where I remind them about some of the benefits of the rules and how cooperating with others can ultimately bring about gains for the whole group, including yourself. And I see how that basic values intervention changes their patterns of unethical, the downstream. But now in one of the studies that I ran, I just wanted to look at helping behavior. [00:09:30] What makes a person want to help out another? So in this study, the way that I designed my test was I had one group of participants sitting in the lab and about 15 minutes into the study, it's the room bursts. Speaker 4: Another person. Now this is appearing visibly distressed. They're worried, they're sweating, they're anxious, they apologize for being late, and they introduce themselves as their partner in the study. Now there is an experimenter standing there who says, it's so great that you're late. Why don't you go ahead and see yourself in this other room? [00:10:00] And they turn to the participant and ask the participant if they'd be willing to give up some of their own time to help out this other person who would otherwise have to stay on for a lot of extra time to complete all of the tasks that they need to complete. And so that's our measure of helping behavior. How many minutes people are willing to volunteer to help out this other person who's actually a confederate. There's someone we've trained to be late to appear distressed, et cetera. They're an actor. All right. Speaker 4: So in one condition we find that Richard people give [00:10:30] way fewer minutes than poor people paralleling all the other results. But we had this other condition that I think is really revealing in that condition. Before they received in the lab about 15 minutes earlier, they watched a 46 second long video. And in that video, it was just a quick little reminder of the problems of childhood poverty. And it was a video that we'd designed to elicit increased feelings of compassion. Now, in that group, 15 minutes later, when [00:11:00] the people who had seen that video were sitting in a lab and we're introduced to that confederate and asked if they'd be willing to help them out, there were no differences between the rich and the poor in our study. So essentially that quick little reminder of the needs of others made wealthier people just as generous of their time to help out this other person as poor people suggesting that simple reminders of the needs of other people can go a long way toward restoring that empathy gap. And so the interesting question [00:11:30] to me is what are the ways in which in everyday life we can remind even those in the upper echelons of society, of the needs of other people in the small benefits that can be incurred through small and even sometimes trivial acts of kindness toward another person. Speaker 4: You are listening to the on k Speaker 2: a l x Berkeley. Our guest today is Paul. Pissed in the next second [00:12:00] he talks about his collaboration with Facebook. [inaudible] Speaker 5: try not to talk about how psychology seems to be a field that's accessible, not only in terms of mechanics and just finding the work, but also more understandable for a layman or for everyday people. Then most sciences, I think it's one of the most popular majors in colleges across the u s and can you sort of talk about the broad appeal that psychology has and why you think that might [00:12:30] be? I think Speaker 4: that observation rings true. I think psychology is something that's accessible and that that accessibility and the understandable illness of the content is what makes it kind of relatable and popular in the kind of work that we do. It's a positive and a negative. So what I mean by that is everyone who's engaged with others or interacted with others who are, has a sense of how people behave is a, an intuitive psychologist. We're all psychologists. [00:13:00] We all make decisions based on what we think is gonna make us happy. What's gonna make others happy? What's the kind of relationship that's meaningful to me? We all run these kinds of experiments. In fact, the life is sort of like a psychological experiment to run on a single person, 5 billion people at a time or whatever the population of the earth is. So we're all intuitive psychologists. But what that means is for the work that we do, if we find something or generate a finding, it's either obvious. Speaker 4: So someone could say, Oh yeah, you had to run a study [00:13:30] to do that. I've known that all along. Or if it doesn't conform to your worldview, you're wrong. You've run the study incorrectly. So the question is, are we actually convincing people or revealing new insights about how the mind works to others such that our awareness and understanding of psychology is increasing? Or are we simply just telling people what they knew all along or telling them things that they feel like is just flat out wrong? And that's something that I've wondered about myself. To what extent our findings are convincing people or informing people of things that they don't [00:14:00] intuitively experience in their everyday lives. Speaker 5: Do you want to talk about what you're doing with Facebook? I know you're, yeah, we can talk about Facebook in an ongoing collaboration with Facebook. So maybe you should tell us a little bit more about that Speaker 4: with Facebook. Dacher Keltner, who's a psychology faculty member here at Berkeley and Amelianna, Simon Thomas, who's the science director of the greater good science center, also at Berkeley, and I have been working with a team of engineers [00:14:30] at Facebook to put very, very simply make Facebook a more compassionate place. Now, when we started working with Facebook about 12 months ago, that was what was post to us. Help us make Facebook a more compassionate place. What does that mean? How do you do that? Well, what's become clear to me is that there are a lot of opportunities on Facebook and elsewhere to build little tools to make interactions between people and online. A little more sympathetic and a little more empathetic. [00:15:00] So here's an example. A lot of people on Facebook post photos. What that means when photos are getting posted is that there's the possibility that you're going to encounter a photo that you don't like. Speaker 4: And what Facebook found was that people were encountering these photos and just submitting reports to Facebook saying, hey, there's something seriously wrong with this photo. Facebook needs to take it down. And more often than not, people were reporting photos that had been posted by a friend of theirs. Very rarely do these reported photos actually violate [00:15:30] Facebook's terms of services. So Facebook can't do anything about it. And what we thought and what we've done is in the context of a photo being posted that you don't like, maybe this is a photo of your child that you think shouldn't be up at violates your privacy. Maybe it's a photo of you at a party in a some kind of revealing pose that you think is embarrassing. It doesn't really matter. But what we've done is tried to, for instance, give people tools to express why that photo is problematic, not to Facebook but to the person who posted [00:16:00] it. Speaker 4: And so now there's a series of things that pop up on the site. If you're having a problem with something that someone's posted that basically gets you to think about your experience, be a little bit mindful about the feelings that you're experiencing and be a little more mindful in how you express those feelings to the other person. That puts the photo up and when we just looked at the data recently, what we found is that by identifying the particular reason why you're finding that photo problematic and expressing that to the other person gets [00:16:30] them to be a lot more empathetic, a lot more sympathetic and really importantly a lot more likely to take the photo down. So we're actually trying to resolve disputes and conflicts on Facebook and there are a lot of other directions that this work is taken. We're dealing with bullying with the team at Yale, we're doing all sorts of other things that basically relate to what makes people get along or not get along in an online context. Speaker 5: I think the other question that I was trying to get at but didn't quite get to is how you think interactions [00:17:00] on platforms like the Internet, if they are fundamentally different than people interacting face to face or in a laboratory and why you think that might be the case? Speaker 4: Yes. What I mean by that is there's no single answer to the question and I think it's too early to tell. I think that online interactions are expressions of fundamental psychological tendencies, much like real world interactions are. So I don't think that things unfolds [00:17:30] online that wouldn't unfold in the real world, but does that mean that certain things are going to be accentuated or emphasized or magnified in an online setting? I think that's true as well. So I think online interactions are a certain kind of context where dynamics and fold that aren't fundamentally different from other kinds contexts in everyday life, but in which you might see certain kinds of patterns emphasized or magnified. Speaker 2: [00:18:00] This is k a l x Berkeley. The show is spectrum. Our guest is Paul Piff, a social psychologist. Speaker 4: Do you see a future in collaboration between brain studies and psychology? Absolutely. So that that future is now, I think a lot of psychologists who [00:18:30] incorporate brain imaging and brain data, FMR data into their papers, into their studies. This is the direction that even my work is beginning to move into. So I feel like the opportunities for collaboration are definitely there and in fact they're unfolding now. There's a lot of neuroscience that's less interested in quote unquote psychology and more interested in say biology, but there's a lot of social neuroscience, a lot of brain research that's done that's specifically motivated and [00:19:00] oriented around understanding why people feel the things that they do. What does emotion look like in the brain? What drives basic behavior patterns? So absolutely, I think that those opportunities are there, and this is a, an incredibly exciting developing area of the science. Speaker 4: One of the things in the fifties and sixties when BF Skinner and behaviorism was all the rage, is that behaviorism and the quantification of behavior gained traction [00:19:30] because it was argued that you can't look inside the black box. And if you can't look inside the black box, which is people's brains, people's minds, then the only thing you can study is behavior. And if we're interested in a science of behavior, then the only thing we can measure is what a person does or what a rat does or what a pigeon pecks at. But what neuroscience has allowed us to do is take a look at what is happening in that so-called black box. And if you put someone's brain in [00:20:00] a magnet in, scan it and see what's happening in the brain when you're showing them, say, images of another person's suffering, well then you're getting a sense of what compassion looks like neuro anatomically. Speaker 4: And that's a really exciting and incredible opportunity for understanding how basic psychological experiences are rooted in the brain and how basic anatomical structures in the brain can illuminate how psychology works. So I think the [00:20:30] opportunities are bi-directional. If I might, let me just add one more thing, which is one more insight that I think is interesting to me that social psychology seems to have been moving in the direction of, or psychology and there are about 80 or 90 years of research documenting the extent to which people stick to their groups. People are antagonistic potentially toward other groups. There's a history of violence in the human tradition or the history of humanity as sort of a history [00:21:00] of violence and that's given a lot of psychologists the perspective that people are in a way born to be sort of self-serving, especially if you look at behavior from an evolutionary framework, then it makes sense that people would do anything they could to get themselves ahead of the pack and get their groups ahead of the pack of other groups. Speaker 4: And what I think is a really important insight, and this is in part a movement that's been inspired by people like my advisor in graduate [00:21:30] school, Dacher Keltner, toward understanding that people are a lot more complicated than that in that a lot of the driving motivation to behavior is not just what gets you ahead, but also how you can help other people. So in a way, compassion and altruism we're learning is hardwired into the brain and that's a really puzzling thing because it's hard to fit that specifically into an evolutionary framework. But put generally [00:22:00] what I think we're learning about what motivates people is not just that people are motivated to get ahead, but the people are really driven to make others around them happy and to serve other people in ways that benefit others. And that insight has inspired 30 years of the most hard-hitting social psychology that I know of and it's also given rise to just a different kind of conceptualization of what makes people do the things that they do. Paul Piff, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. [00:22:30] That was a lot of fun. Thanks again for having me. On and I'd be happy to come on any other time. Great. Speaker 2: [inaudible] spectrum is archived on iTunes university. To find the archives, do a search in your favorite browser for iTunes Dash and view space k a l x space spectrum. The feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find [00:23:00] interesting and a coolio and Renee route present the news. Speaker 6: A National Institute of Health funded team of researchers at Stanford University have created an entirely transparent mouse brain. This new process known as clarity by its inventors will allow scientists to explore the neural networks and their natural 3d arrangement without having to slice the brain or severing any neural connections. Additionally, the process preserves the delicate biochemistry of the brain, which will allow researchers to test [00:23:30] chemicals affecting specific structures as well as to examine past brain activity. While the breakthrough is not part of the Obama Administration's recent brain exploration initiative, the senior author on the paper, Dr Karl Deisseroth, was involved in the planning of the initiative. Speaker 1: Well, some moderations do need to be made for the more complex human brain. The Stanford lab has already produced transparent human livers, hearts and lungs. You see Berkeley researchers and the integrative Biology Department just came out [00:24:00] with a study showing the positive effects of stress in studies on rats. They found that brief stressful events caused stem cells to branch into new nerve cells that improved the rats. Mental performance. It is important to differentiate acute stress and chronic stress. Chronic stress elevates levels of stress hormones that suppress the production of new neurons, which impairs mental performance. Associate Professor Coffer Characterizes [00:24:30] the overall message of this study as stress can be something that makes you better, but it is a question of how much, how long and how you interpret or perceive it. We'd like to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky, Julian and Renee arou present the calendar. NASA astrobiology researcher and Lawrence Berkeley fellow in residence, Felisa Wolf Simon is delivering tonight. Future Friday's [00:25:00] lecture at the Chabot Space and science center at 10,000 Skyline Boulevard in Oakland. She'll be discussing the chemical elements that can support microbial life on earth. Drawing from molecular biology, biochemistry and physiology. Admission is $23 in advance. Visit shabbos space.org for more info this Saturday come to the UC Berkeley campus for the [inaudible] Speaker 6: bears annual kal day. Over 300 lectures, workshops [00:25:30] and presentations will be available with topics ranging from how the interplay of light with the atmosphere can create rainbows to a demonstration from the first laundry folding robot. Rosie Cal Day's tomorrow April 20th held on the UC Berkeley campus and open to the public events. Begin at 8:00 AM go to [inaudible] dot berkeley.edu Speaker 1: false schedule of events April 22nd through April 26th is national parks week. During this week, [00:26:00] admission to all US national parks is free. Put on your hiking boots and visit the nearest national park to you. Speaker 6: On April 27th Berkeley High School will host the day long Alameda County apps challenge contestants are asked to create apps that will address community needs. Using Alameda county open datasets apprise of $3,000 will be awarded to the most inventive and user friendly app. Well, second, third and honorable mentions will also be meted out. Alameda county [00:26:30] invites participation from residents of all skill levels and age groups. The apps challenge is part of a nationwide movement to increase transparency and implement open data policies in governmental organizations. The event be held at Berkeley High School Speaker 1: in downtown Berkeley from 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM on Saturday, April 27th it costs $15 to participate with discounts for students and seniors. There has been a rapid spread of sudden oak death pathogen [00:27:00] referred to Assad over the East Bay hills, specifically in north Berkeley and Montclair. Professor Matteo Garber, Loto, head of the UC Berkeley forest pathology and my collegey lab has been tracking the spread through annual area surveys. Garber Lotos team is looking for volunteers to help conduct annual spring surveys to find diseased trees. There will be several training sessions for volunteers in the bay area. The Berkeley session is on Saturday, April 27th at 1:00 PM [00:27:30] on the Berkeley campus in one 59 Mulford Hall. For other training sessions in the bay area. Searched the web for sod blitz project, but first after dark at the new exploratorium in San Francisco. [inaudible] on Thursday May 2nd after dark is the exploratorium monthly evening program for adults 18 and over. Admission for non-members is $15 in addition to the museums regular exhibits, there will be live music films and [00:28:00] the lectures. The theme this month is home and you can hear about how an empty warehouse on pier 15 was transformed into the explore Torrens new home. Karen [inaudible]. We'll discuss the human microbiome and Ron Hitchman. We'll talk about what makes earth and other goldilocks planets just right for sustaining life. For more information, visit the exploratorium.edu Speaker 6: on Friday May 3rd the San Francisco ASCA scientists lecture series [00:28:30] will host a workshop on crafting the perfect science story. Editors of the science writer handbook will share personal stories of working in the field and address questions about building sustainable science writing careers. The May 3rd event will begin at 7:00 PM in San Francisco's bizarre cafe. More details can be found online at ask a scientist, s f.com Speaker 2: [inaudible] [00:29:00] a character in the show is by lost on a David from his album, folk acoustic and available by it. We have Commons license 3.0 and attribution editing assistance provided by renew route 90 spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us. [00:29:30] Our email address is spectrum lx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks. Same time [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Piff, social psychologist and post-doc scholar in the Psychology Dept at UC Berkeley, studies how social hierarchy, inequality, and emotion shape relations between individuals and groups. Paul Piff received PhD in Psychology from UCB May 2012.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k [00:00:30] a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm your house today. In today's interview, Renee Rao and I talk with Paul Piff, a social psychologist and postdoctoral scholar in the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley. Paul's studies house, social [00:01:00] hierarchy, inequality and emotion shape relations between individuals and groups. Paul piff received his phd in psychology from UC Berkeley in May, 2012 onto the interview. Paul Piff, welcome to spectrum. Thanks so much for having me on. It's a pleasure. I wanted to have you talk about your research. Psychology is such a big field. How does your research fit into that? Speaker 4: Psychology is a big field. Lot of people are psychologists center interested in a lot [00:01:30] of different questions as they relate to people and organisms and why different kinds of organisms do the things that they do. The brand of psychology that I'm really interested in is called social psychology. So what I do is as opposed to having people lay on a couch and talk to me about their problems, I study what people do around others in the reasons for what they do. So I study emotion. That's one of the focuses of my work. I've also recently gotten really interested in [00:02:00] the effects of inequality and specifically how a person's levels of wealth and status in society shapes the ways that they see the world and behave toward other people. As a social psychologist, you take a question that's of interest to you, like how do the rich behave compared to those that are poor. And then you think about how you would design experiments in different kinds of studies to look at that using a very quantitative approach. So as a social psychologist, I design a lot of studies where people literally [00:02:30] come into the lab. There's something happening where I can observe what they do without their necessarily knowing, and I use that to infer basic motivations behind people's behavior. Speaker 3: Can you explain then some of your methods, maybe an example of how you're set up Speaker 4: study, study. So a lot of the work that I've been doing relates to this basic question of how money shapes behavior. So how do people who have a lot of money behave differently toward others from those who don't have [00:03:00] as much money? One of the things that I was interested in studying for example, is how does the amount of money that you have shaped how generous and helping you are toward other people. In social psychology, we call that general category of behavior, pro social behavior or altruism. What makes people behave in ways that help another person out, even if that means they have to do something kind of costly. So let's say I'm interested in looking at levels of generosity, a lot of different ways in which people can be generous toward one another in everyday life. [00:03:30] But I want to study this in the lab. Speaker 4: And so one of the ways that we can do that is using a standard task where we can have someone engage in it and see how generous they are. And one of the tasks that I'll use is called the dictator task. And for instance, in one study in this dictator task, I give someone literally $10 and I say, you can keep all these $10 10 single dollar bills or you can decide how many of these dollar bills you want to give away, if any, [00:04:00] to another person who's totally anonymous that you've been paired with in this study. And I tell them they'll never meet this other person, the other person will never meet them. And I just measure how many of those dollars they're willing to give away. Another thing I do before they come into the lab is measure what their income is. So I can look at how generous they are, how many of these single dollar bills they're willing to give away as a function of how much money they have. Speaker 4: And that's one of the assessments that I used in one area of study to look at levels [00:04:30] of giving levels of generosity in the simple task as a function of how much money people have. So there's rational economic models that would say that if you have a lot of money, that the utility of those $10 is somewhat diminished because you have more money in the first place. So you would predict that as a rational actor, a person who has more money is going to give more money away cause $10 means less. That's the opposite of what we find. In fact, people who make under $15,000 [00:05:00] a year give significantly more on average six to $7 away then to someone who makes 150,000 to $200,000 a year. So we found incredible differences. And so a lot of my work over the last five or six years, and this is in collaboration with other people in my lab, is to try to document why it is that these really notable differences emerge between the haves and the have nots and what the psychological underpinnings of those differences are. But that's an example of a kind of study that will run Speaker 2: [00:05:30] [inaudible]. Our guest today is Paul Piff, a social psychologist. Paul is talking about how he designs his research studies. This is k a l X. Berkeley. Speaker 5: I have a question about the dictator test. Do you find any sort of other correlating variables in between just wealth and lack of [00:06:00] wealth? Do you find education has difference or how people made the wealth? Can you draw a sort of a causal line between saying this person has more and this makes them less empathetic or this person being less empathetic maybe has led to them being wealthier? Speaker 4: The dictator task has been used a lot and there are a lot of correlating variables that we know about already. Age correlates, religion correlates, ethnicity correlates, and so if I'm interested in the specific effects of wealth, I have to [00:06:30] account for those other things and I do so controlling for a lot of other variables. Wealth above and beyond a person's race, their age, what religion they are, how religious they are in the first place. Wealth has a specific effect, but the question that you're getting at I think is a even bigger one, which is how do I know whether it's wealth that causes someone to do something or is it people that are say a little more selfish with their money, who become wealthy in the first place? [00:07:00] And that is a really important question. And I think one of the insights that we've had from a lot of the experimental work that we've done, I can literally take someone whose quote unquote poor, make them feel rich and show you that making them feel wealthy temporarily in the lab actually makes them behave more unethically, which suggests that there's at least in part a causal direction between having money, feeling like you have money and that subjective experience. Speaker 4: It's psychological [00:07:30] experience causing you to behave in some ways that are a little more entitled, a little more self-serving. Now there's an another important question, which is if these differences do exist between those that have and those that don't, are they fixed? Are they rooted? Is that just a fact of life that we have to accept and sort of move on from, or are they sensitive to changes and if they are, what are the kinds of things that you can do to move people's behavior around or to make certain people in society a little more empathetic [00:08:00] without necessarily getting into the details? There are a lot of things that can be done in a lot of my work looks at specific variables that you can manipulate, even through subtle interventions that get people who had a lot more money to behave in ways that are a lot more compassionate and a lot more empathetic. And one of the lessons that I've learned from this work is that it's not that difficult. So it's not that people who have money or necessarily corrupt in any way, but that there's a specific psychological experience associated with privilege [00:08:30] that gets you to become a little more disconnected from others. A little more insular from others in that certain patterns of behavior flow as a result, but those patterns can easily changed. Speaker 5: Can we talk about some of the tweaks that you use to sort of bring about those changes? Speaker 4: Sure. One of the things that I'm really interested in right now is if it's the case that upper status individuals are more likely to behave unethically, then what are some subtle interventions that could be [00:09:00] done? Like a little ethics reminder course at the beginning that, so I've run this where I basically had people do sort of a 10 minutes ethics training program where I remind them about some of the benefits of the rules and how cooperating with others can ultimately bring about gains for the whole group, including yourself. And I see how that basic values intervention changes their patterns of unethical, the downstream. But now in one of the studies that I ran, I just wanted to look at helping behavior. [00:09:30] What makes a person want to help out another? So in this study, the way that I designed my test was I had one group of participants sitting in the lab and about 15 minutes into the study, it's the room bursts. Speaker 4: Another person. Now this is appearing visibly distressed. They're worried, they're sweating, they're anxious, they apologize for being late, and they introduce themselves as their partner in the study. Now there is an experimenter standing there who says, it's so great that you're late. Why don't you go ahead and see yourself in this other room? [00:10:00] And they turn to the participant and ask the participant if they'd be willing to give up some of their own time to help out this other person who would otherwise have to stay on for a lot of extra time to complete all of the tasks that they need to complete. And so that's our measure of helping behavior. How many minutes people are willing to volunteer to help out this other person who's actually a confederate. There's someone we've trained to be late to appear distressed, et cetera. They're an actor. All right. Speaker 4: So in one condition we find that Richard people give [00:10:30] way fewer minutes than poor people paralleling all the other results. But we had this other condition that I think is really revealing in that condition. Before they received in the lab about 15 minutes earlier, they watched a 46 second long video. And in that video, it was just a quick little reminder of the problems of childhood poverty. And it was a video that we'd designed to elicit increased feelings of compassion. Now, in that group, 15 minutes later, when [00:11:00] the people who had seen that video were sitting in a lab and we're introduced to that confederate and asked if they'd be willing to help them out, there were no differences between the rich and the poor in our study. So essentially that quick little reminder of the needs of others made wealthier people just as generous of their time to help out this other person as poor people suggesting that simple reminders of the needs of other people can go a long way toward restoring that empathy gap. And so the interesting question [00:11:30] to me is what are the ways in which in everyday life we can remind even those in the upper echelons of society, of the needs of other people in the small benefits that can be incurred through small and even sometimes trivial acts of kindness toward another person. Speaker 4: You are listening to the on k Speaker 2: a l x Berkeley. Our guest today is Paul. Pissed in the next second [00:12:00] he talks about his collaboration with Facebook. [inaudible] Speaker 5: try not to talk about how psychology seems to be a field that's accessible, not only in terms of mechanics and just finding the work, but also more understandable for a layman or for everyday people. Then most sciences, I think it's one of the most popular majors in colleges across the u s and can you sort of talk about the broad appeal that psychology has and why you think that might [00:12:30] be? I think Speaker 4: that observation rings true. I think psychology is something that's accessible and that that accessibility and the understandable illness of the content is what makes it kind of relatable and popular in the kind of work that we do. It's a positive and a negative. So what I mean by that is everyone who's engaged with others or interacted with others who are, has a sense of how people behave is a, an intuitive psychologist. We're all psychologists. [00:13:00] We all make decisions based on what we think is gonna make us happy. What's gonna make others happy? What's the kind of relationship that's meaningful to me? We all run these kinds of experiments. In fact, the life is sort of like a psychological experiment to run on a single person, 5 billion people at a time or whatever the population of the earth is. So we're all intuitive psychologists. But what that means is for the work that we do, if we find something or generate a finding, it's either obvious. Speaker 4: So someone could say, Oh yeah, you had to run a study [00:13:30] to do that. I've known that all along. Or if it doesn't conform to your worldview, you're wrong. You've run the study incorrectly. So the question is, are we actually convincing people or revealing new insights about how the mind works to others such that our awareness and understanding of psychology is increasing? Or are we simply just telling people what they knew all along or telling them things that they feel like is just flat out wrong? And that's something that I've wondered about myself. To what extent our findings are convincing people or informing people of things that they don't [00:14:00] intuitively experience in their everyday lives. Speaker 5: Do you want to talk about what you're doing with Facebook? I know you're, yeah, we can talk about Facebook in an ongoing collaboration with Facebook. So maybe you should tell us a little bit more about that Speaker 4: with Facebook. Dacher Keltner, who's a psychology faculty member here at Berkeley and Amelianna, Simon Thomas, who's the science director of the greater good science center, also at Berkeley, and I have been working with a team of engineers [00:14:30] at Facebook to put very, very simply make Facebook a more compassionate place. Now, when we started working with Facebook about 12 months ago, that was what was post to us. Help us make Facebook a more compassionate place. What does that mean? How do you do that? Well, what's become clear to me is that there are a lot of opportunities on Facebook and elsewhere to build little tools to make interactions between people and online. A little more sympathetic and a little more empathetic. [00:15:00] So here's an example. A lot of people on Facebook post photos. What that means when photos are getting posted is that there's the possibility that you're going to encounter a photo that you don't like. Speaker 4: And what Facebook found was that people were encountering these photos and just submitting reports to Facebook saying, hey, there's something seriously wrong with this photo. Facebook needs to take it down. And more often than not, people were reporting photos that had been posted by a friend of theirs. Very rarely do these reported photos actually violate [00:15:30] Facebook's terms of services. So Facebook can't do anything about it. And what we thought and what we've done is in the context of a photo being posted that you don't like, maybe this is a photo of your child that you think shouldn't be up at violates your privacy. Maybe it's a photo of you at a party in a some kind of revealing pose that you think is embarrassing. It doesn't really matter. But what we've done is tried to, for instance, give people tools to express why that photo is problematic, not to Facebook but to the person who posted [00:16:00] it. Speaker 4: And so now there's a series of things that pop up on the site. If you're having a problem with something that someone's posted that basically gets you to think about your experience, be a little bit mindful about the feelings that you're experiencing and be a little more mindful in how you express those feelings to the other person. That puts the photo up and when we just looked at the data recently, what we found is that by identifying the particular reason why you're finding that photo problematic and expressing that to the other person gets [00:16:30] them to be a lot more empathetic, a lot more sympathetic and really importantly a lot more likely to take the photo down. So we're actually trying to resolve disputes and conflicts on Facebook and there are a lot of other directions that this work is taken. We're dealing with bullying with the team at Yale, we're doing all sorts of other things that basically relate to what makes people get along or not get along in an online context. Speaker 5: I think the other question that I was trying to get at but didn't quite get to is how you think interactions [00:17:00] on platforms like the Internet, if they are fundamentally different than people interacting face to face or in a laboratory and why you think that might be the case? Speaker 4: Yes. What I mean by that is there's no single answer to the question and I think it's too early to tell. I think that online interactions are expressions of fundamental psychological tendencies, much like real world interactions are. So I don't think that things unfolds [00:17:30] online that wouldn't unfold in the real world, but does that mean that certain things are going to be accentuated or emphasized or magnified in an online setting? I think that's true as well. So I think online interactions are a certain kind of context where dynamics and fold that aren't fundamentally different from other kinds contexts in everyday life, but in which you might see certain kinds of patterns emphasized or magnified. Speaker 2: [00:18:00] This is k a l x Berkeley. The show is spectrum. Our guest is Paul Piff, a social psychologist. Speaker 4: Do you see a future in collaboration between brain studies and psychology? Absolutely. So that that future is now, I think a lot of psychologists who [00:18:30] incorporate brain imaging and brain data, FMR data into their papers, into their studies. This is the direction that even my work is beginning to move into. So I feel like the opportunities for collaboration are definitely there and in fact they're unfolding now. There's a lot of neuroscience that's less interested in quote unquote psychology and more interested in say biology, but there's a lot of social neuroscience, a lot of brain research that's done that's specifically motivated and [00:19:00] oriented around understanding why people feel the things that they do. What does emotion look like in the brain? What drives basic behavior patterns? So absolutely, I think that those opportunities are there, and this is a, an incredibly exciting developing area of the science. Speaker 4: One of the things in the fifties and sixties when BF Skinner and behaviorism was all the rage, is that behaviorism and the quantification of behavior gained traction [00:19:30] because it was argued that you can't look inside the black box. And if you can't look inside the black box, which is people's brains, people's minds, then the only thing you can study is behavior. And if we're interested in a science of behavior, then the only thing we can measure is what a person does or what a rat does or what a pigeon pecks at. But what neuroscience has allowed us to do is take a look at what is happening in that so-called black box. And if you put someone's brain in [00:20:00] a magnet in, scan it and see what's happening in the brain when you're showing them, say, images of another person's suffering, well then you're getting a sense of what compassion looks like neuro anatomically. Speaker 4: And that's a really exciting and incredible opportunity for understanding how basic psychological experiences are rooted in the brain and how basic anatomical structures in the brain can illuminate how psychology works. So I think the [00:20:30] opportunities are bi-directional. If I might, let me just add one more thing, which is one more insight that I think is interesting to me that social psychology seems to have been moving in the direction of, or psychology and there are about 80 or 90 years of research documenting the extent to which people stick to their groups. People are antagonistic potentially toward other groups. There's a history of violence in the human tradition or the history of humanity as sort of a history [00:21:00] of violence and that's given a lot of psychologists the perspective that people are in a way born to be sort of self-serving, especially if you look at behavior from an evolutionary framework, then it makes sense that people would do anything they could to get themselves ahead of the pack and get their groups ahead of the pack of other groups. Speaker 4: And what I think is a really important insight, and this is in part a movement that's been inspired by people like my advisor in graduate [00:21:30] school, Dacher Keltner, toward understanding that people are a lot more complicated than that in that a lot of the driving motivation to behavior is not just what gets you ahead, but also how you can help other people. So in a way, compassion and altruism we're learning is hardwired into the brain and that's a really puzzling thing because it's hard to fit that specifically into an evolutionary framework. But put generally [00:22:00] what I think we're learning about what motivates people is not just that people are motivated to get ahead, but the people are really driven to make others around them happy and to serve other people in ways that benefit others. And that insight has inspired 30 years of the most hard-hitting social psychology that I know of and it's also given rise to just a different kind of conceptualization of what makes people do the things that they do. Paul Piff, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. [00:22:30] That was a lot of fun. Thanks again for having me. On and I'd be happy to come on any other time. Great. Speaker 2: [inaudible] spectrum is archived on iTunes university. To find the archives, do a search in your favorite browser for iTunes Dash and view space k a l x space spectrum. The feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find [00:23:00] interesting and a coolio and Renee route present the news. Speaker 6: A National Institute of Health funded team of researchers at Stanford University have created an entirely transparent mouse brain. This new process known as clarity by its inventors will allow scientists to explore the neural networks and their natural 3d arrangement without having to slice the brain or severing any neural connections. Additionally, the process preserves the delicate biochemistry of the brain, which will allow researchers to test [00:23:30] chemicals affecting specific structures as well as to examine past brain activity. While the breakthrough is not part of the Obama Administration's recent brain exploration initiative, the senior author on the paper, Dr Karl Deisseroth, was involved in the planning of the initiative. Speaker 1: Well, some moderations do need to be made for the more complex human brain. The Stanford lab has already produced transparent human livers, hearts and lungs. You see Berkeley researchers and the integrative Biology Department just came out [00:24:00] with a study showing the positive effects of stress in studies on rats. They found that brief stressful events caused stem cells to branch into new nerve cells that improved the rats. Mental performance. It is important to differentiate acute stress and chronic stress. Chronic stress elevates levels of stress hormones that suppress the production of new neurons, which impairs mental performance. Associate Professor Coffer Characterizes [00:24:30] the overall message of this study as stress can be something that makes you better, but it is a question of how much, how long and how you interpret or perceive it. We'd like to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky, Julian and Renee arou present the calendar. NASA astrobiology researcher and Lawrence Berkeley fellow in residence, Felisa Wolf Simon is delivering tonight. Future Friday's [00:25:00] lecture at the Chabot Space and science center at 10,000 Skyline Boulevard in Oakland. She'll be discussing the chemical elements that can support microbial life on earth. Drawing from molecular biology, biochemistry and physiology. Admission is $23 in advance. Visit shabbos space.org for more info this Saturday come to the UC Berkeley campus for the [inaudible] Speaker 6: bears annual kal day. Over 300 lectures, workshops [00:25:30] and presentations will be available with topics ranging from how the interplay of light with the atmosphere can create rainbows to a demonstration from the first laundry folding robot. Rosie Cal Day's tomorrow April 20th held on the UC Berkeley campus and open to the public events. Begin at 8:00 AM go to [inaudible] dot berkeley.edu Speaker 1: false schedule of events April 22nd through April 26th is national parks week. During this week, [00:26:00] admission to all US national parks is free. Put on your hiking boots and visit the nearest national park to you. Speaker 6: On April 27th Berkeley High School will host the day long Alameda County apps challenge contestants are asked to create apps that will address community needs. Using Alameda county open datasets apprise of $3,000 will be awarded to the most inventive and user friendly app. Well, second, third and honorable mentions will also be meted out. Alameda county [00:26:30] invites participation from residents of all skill levels and age groups. The apps challenge is part of a nationwide movement to increase transparency and implement open data policies in governmental organizations. The event be held at Berkeley High School Speaker 1: in downtown Berkeley from 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM on Saturday, April 27th it costs $15 to participate with discounts for students and seniors. There has been a rapid spread of sudden oak death pathogen [00:27:00] referred to Assad over the East Bay hills, specifically in north Berkeley and Montclair. Professor Matteo Garber, Loto, head of the UC Berkeley forest pathology and my collegey lab has been tracking the spread through annual area surveys. Garber Lotos team is looking for volunteers to help conduct annual spring surveys to find diseased trees. There will be several training sessions for volunteers in the bay area. The Berkeley session is on Saturday, April 27th at 1:00 PM [00:27:30] on the Berkeley campus in one 59 Mulford Hall. For other training sessions in the bay area. Searched the web for sod blitz project, but first after dark at the new exploratorium in San Francisco. [inaudible] on Thursday May 2nd after dark is the exploratorium monthly evening program for adults 18 and over. Admission for non-members is $15 in addition to the museums regular exhibits, there will be live music films and [00:28:00] the lectures. The theme this month is home and you can hear about how an empty warehouse on pier 15 was transformed into the explore Torrens new home. Karen [inaudible]. We'll discuss the human microbiome and Ron Hitchman. We'll talk about what makes earth and other goldilocks planets just right for sustaining life. For more information, visit the exploratorium.edu Speaker 6: on Friday May 3rd the San Francisco ASCA scientists lecture series [00:28:30] will host a workshop on crafting the perfect science story. Editors of the science writer handbook will share personal stories of working in the field and address questions about building sustainable science writing careers. The May 3rd event will begin at 7:00 PM in San Francisco's bizarre cafe. More details can be found online at ask a scientist, s f.com Speaker 2: [inaudible] [00:29:00] a character in the show is by lost on a David from his album, folk acoustic and available by it. We have Commons license 3.0 and attribution editing assistance provided by renew route 90 spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us. [00:29:30] Our email address is spectrum lx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks. Same time [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In part 2, Michael Eisen discusses the Public Library of Science, his position on GMOs and a labeling strategy. Eisen is Associate Professor of Genetics, Genomics, and Development in UC Berkeley's Dept. of Molecular Biology and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program [00:00:30] bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of spectrum. Today we are presenting part two of our two part interview with Michael Isen and associate professor of genetics genomics in development in UC Berkeley's department of molecular biology. In part one Michael talked about his research of gene regulation this week. Michael explains [00:01:00] the Public Library of science, his feelings on labeling of GMOs in food as well as intellectual property science outreach and science funding. Enjoy the interview. I wanted to talk about the Public Library of science if you were a cofounder of. Yeah, and are you still involved with that? Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm on the board. I've still very actively involved in trying to shape its future and in general in the future of science publishing. Speaker 3: And so can you talk about its business model and how it's changing publishing? Speaker 4: [00:01:30] Sure. The basic idea is that science publishing, it's been around for as long as science has been an endeavor from the 17th century. Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, all these guys were sort of inventing science as we currently know it. And Science as a enterprise obviously requires that scientists communicate with each other and since time immemorial in science, we've had journaled, Francis Bacon, other scientists that 17th century started at seedings of the Royal Society. Right? And for 330 [00:02:00] years or so after they started these journals, they were using the only technology available to them at the time, which was print publishing and a lot of things that follow from the way scientific publishing was structured follow intrinsically from the limitations and features of that printed journal. And as an economic model, the only model that makes sense is for the end users to pay for the first subscription. And you know, there's problems with that. Speaker 4: Only people who [00:02:30] can afford the subscriptions can get access to the scientific literature and so forth. They follow from an intrinsic limitation of a medium. Now in the nineties 1990s that all changed, right? The Internet came along and science was amongst the first groups of people to embrace the Internet, and by the sort of mid to late 1990s basically every scientific journal that existed was online and publishing and electronic edition and increasingly going into their archives and digitizing their, their archives, so forth, so that [00:03:00] by 2000 you now could have had access to a large fraction of the tire published record of scientists. Such an amazing thing to be able to do that, but insanely the business model behind scientific publishing didn't change at all. So publishers who had all these subscriptions, now we're no longer selling print journals or decreasingly selling printed journals. They were just selling access to published material in a database and yet they didn't know innovation and the business [00:03:30] model at all. Speaker 4: They just simply charged people for accessing their database just like they'd been charging people to mail them copies. There was no longer any technical or economic reason why the whole universe couldn't have had immediate free access to the published scientific literature. The only reason that you or anybody else in the world didn't have immediate access to anything published in medicine or science or whatever was that the publishers then let them, so plus and the whole industry of open access publishing around [00:04:00] it. The basic idea is publishers do and have provided an important service and they should be paid for the service they provide, but that as soon as they're done, as soon as the publisher's hands are off the paper, it's freely available to everybody, not just to read, but to use and do with whatever to basically place the scientific literature into the public domain. Speaker 4: Where it belong. Science is a public venture, not exclusively, but for the most part funded by either the federal government, state governments or by public minded foundations. And the idea that [00:04:30] the end product of that investment is the property of publishers is insane and it's a huge impediment to the way science works and to the ability of the public to benefit from scientific information. And so plus has been trying to pull the rug out from underneath this subscription based business model by creating journals that use this alternative business model that are now quite successful plus as a journal plus one which is now the biggest biomedical research journal on the planet. Still only publishes a couple percent [00:05:00] of the total because there's a ton of journals out there, but it's big, it's successful, it's growing. Lots of other publishers are starting to switch not just because of it's a successful business, but because of the pressure from the public pressure from the government. Speaker 4: The NIH now requires that people make papers that are funded by NIH research freely available within a year after publication. Things are moving in the right direction and I think the insanity of a world in which the output of publicly funded publicly minded science is privately owned by people who had nothing to do with [00:05:30] a generation of the science in the first place is, it's not quite over, but it is. The writing's on the wall today. Let's go ahead and there was a bit of pushback on that in the, in the congress. What's the state of that? Is that so it's all a lot of pushback because the publishers, it's an incredibly lucrative business that profit margins for Elsevier and other big commercial publishers exceed those of apple and other sort of paragons of highly profitable businesses. When you have a company that's making $1 billion profit off of the public back [00:06:00] and they see a simple legislative solution to avoiding the problem, I think it's a natural instinct on their part to just try to write a law and you know, basically what happened was someone from their district who has a company in their district who gives them lots of money, writes a bill, gives it to them and says, Hey, could you introduce this?Speaker 4: We have a huge problem. These, you know, radical crazies from Berkeley are trying to undermine our entire business model and to lose jobs, blah, blah, blah. They get this bill introduced and there's non-trivial risk that this kind of things would pass [00:06:30] because they've managed to align themselves with a stronger force in Congress. The pro copyright lobby, they've managed to basically convinced them that this issue with scientific publishing is scientists want to steal publishers content. Just like college kids want to steal music from, you know, musicians the, and so there was a nontrivial risk that this was gonna pass and this is the second time it's been introduced. So fortunately it's very easy to say, look, the taxpayers paid for this stuff. You really think it's right for, you know, somebody who just got diagnosed [00:07:00] with some terrible disease to not have access to information that they paid for. Speaker 4: The publishers lose this every time this becomes a public fight, they're not in a winning path. And so I expect it to happen again, but just like this last time, I don't think they're gonna win. More people in Congress are on our side and paying attention than there are on Elsevier side or those publishers mostly private? Or are they publicly, I mean, they're corporations. I mean, yeah, they're mostly public corporations. So Elsevier is a big publicly traded corporation, but they're mostly from the Netherlands and [00:07:30] London. There's a bunch of big companies, but interestingly we've had as much problem historically with nonprofits, scientific societies, the societies themselves and make a lot of money on their journals. A lot of them do and it's put them in a kind of compromise position where their revenues from their journals are so important to their overall financial stability that they behave like commercial publishers. Speaker 4: It's not just big companies, any established publisher who makes a lot of money on publishing. This is sort of intrinsically compromised I think in this endeavor. [00:08:00] So the next sorta thing Blas is trying to do is to switch to a world in which publishing becomes almost instantaneous, still takes nine months or so on average for most works to go from when an author's ready to share it with the public to when it's actually publicly available, even if the journal is freely accessible. And so there's still a lot wrong with the waste. Scientists communicate with each other and with the public that this is not a close up shop. Once we win this open access battle, it's just the beginning. And this doesn't really conflict with intellectual property rights and things like that. [00:08:30] The idea of open science is really just sharing the information. The intellectual property is independent of how openly accessible the publication is. Speaker 4: On the other hand, I also think that the intellectual property stuff is bad. I've always believed that if you're getting money from the federal government, that the intellectual property you develop should not belong to you. It should be in the public domain, and I think that there's a lot of corruption of the way people behave in science that stems from the personal pressure as well as the pressure from the institutions to turn every idea, every little thing [00:09:00] they generate in the lab into a commodity, and I think it's makes science work poorly, but this is happening and so it doesn't benefit society to have academic, publicly funded research turn into privately held intellectual property. It inhibits the commercialization of those ideas that inhibits the broader use of ideas. Plenty of studies have shown this is generally cost more money to manage this whole intellectual property thing than the system benefits. Speaker 4: At the end of the day, very few universities profit from their intellectual property effort. [00:09:30] Mostly they spend a lot of money on lawyers and systems and they don't have the, you know, cloning patent or whatever it is. But if your interest is in the broader functioning of science and in the broader exposure to the public to the benefits of scientific research, you have to think that this stuff should just go right into the public domain where people want to commercialize it. They can, they just don't own any exclusive right to use it. And I think making it all pre competitive is by far the best thing to do. So while publishing itself to answer the question directly is not a [00:10:00] threatened virtual property. If I could figure out a way to make it so I would do stuff cause I think it's a very, very bad thing that publicly funded scientists, people at University of California that their stuff doesn't just belong to the public. Speaker 5: This is spectrum on KALX Berkeley today. Michael Isen, an associate professor at UC Berkeley reflects on the prop 37 campaign and GMO labeling on food. Speaker 3: Another issue [00:10:30] that involves the public a lot is the interest in GMOs in food. How would you like to see that debate transformed? Having just been through the the election cycle here in California where we had that propositionSpeaker 4: right. As you know, I was very, very much opposed to prop 37 and I think mostly because the campaign against genetically modified organisms was predicated on an ignorance of how the technology works and I felt a fear sort [00:11:00] of of science that the problem for most people was that science was involved in food and there's so many problems with that point of view that it's hard to know where to start. First of all, the reasons why I was particularly opposed to this initiative was that the backers were willfully distorting the science spreading the idea that GMOs were intrinsically dangerous, basically, that the public would benefit from having the wrong knowledge about GMOs, which is what I really felt like they were pushing some. Most scientists look at this and think what GMOs are doing [00:11:30] is so different than what we've done for thousands of years and selective breeding of crop. Speaker 4: The idea that the food we eat is in some natural state is a fallacy. Compare corn to its ancestor teosinte. You compare the tomato you buy in the supermarket to the wild slant islands, the person come. None of these things we eat. Look anything remotely like what you found in the wild. They were transformed by centuries of selective breeding and crossing and all sorts of other genetic techniques. Those are the tools of genetics that genetics has just gotten [00:12:00] better and we can do these things in a different way and yes, genetic modification is not identical, but there's nothing intrinsically weird or intrinsically dangerous about moving genes from one species to another. Putting synthetic genes into a plan. It could be, it's not intrinsically safe either, but the attitude that people seem to take is one of the food we have now is in a natural, untainted state and that the second scientist put their hands on it. Speaker 4: All of a sudden it becomes a dangerous threat, but I also think the industry has been stupid in my [00:12:30] mind and has caused a lot of this problem by basically being secret about it. For me it was sort of a lose lose situation in that neither side of that fight was actually interested in the public understanding the science. So you had a ballot measure from my mind in which more or less everybody involved was trying to promote public ignorance about an issue and it's a struggle. I don't know what the right exact solution is to achieve what I think we really need to do, which is to have the public have a, an understanding of the technology, not a detailed understanding [00:13:00] about what enzymes are used to move plans to do you know, why it exists, how it exists, how it works, what people are doing, why it will benefit them or why could benefit them in the long run and so that they understand it and can weigh the benefits and costs in a rational way. Speaker 4: Not in a rational way. I would love to see the food producers label their food, not with a huge thing on the front that says caution contain genetically modified ingredients, but with a label on back that says, here's where the seeds, the crops that went into this food come [00:13:30] from. Maybe there's not enough room on the label of every plant to give a comprehensive thing, but we know everybody's got a cell phone and a QR reader. Now. It's not impossible to imagine that every food had a little QR code on the back that you could scan and would say, here are the varieties that were used in the food. Some of them are genetically modified and here's why they were genetically modified and here's what benefit accrues from that genetic modification. Here's why you shouldn't be worried about it. I just think somehow we need to get the public more engaged in the, an understanding [00:14:00] of where food comes from, how it's grown, and what the rationale behind this process is so that they're rational actors in the process. Speaker 4: I mean, that's all. I mean, most scientists really want out of this. It's not so much to dictate that the public make particular decisions about science so that we all have our own biases about these things, but that that lack of understanding of the public about these issues and even very simple things like the simple fact that the food we eat has been subjected to genetics and that better education about simple [00:14:30] scientific things like that would make these debates focus on things that actually should be in the public debate, like part of the companies that are using genetically modified crops, exploiting intellectual property in ways that's bad for the public. It certainly seems like in many cases they do. Should we be developing genetically modified crop who basically resulted in increased herbicide use. Those are issues that are worth discussing, but they have to be discussed in a context where people understand what you're talking about and they don't think, oh my God, there's an insecticide [00:15:00] in my corn and everybody's going to die. Speaker 4: And so if I had an easy solution to that problem, we would implement it, but I can recognize when something is not going to achieve it. And I think scaring everybody into thinking that genetic modification is a horrible, dangerous technology that needs to be regulated by the government and some kind of special way was not going to achieve that. Isn't that sort of a difficulty with science in general that oftentimes it gets out in front of the population and presents it with quandaries that it can't grasp and it boils down to fear? [00:15:30] Yeah, I think this is true. This is a lot of this happening with human genetics and things like that. There's plenty of examples of where the way people are used to thinking about things is threatened in some ways or challenged by new science, and I think it's a constant challenge to the scientific community to try to make sure that it doesn't, not so much to make sure that it doesn't get ahead of the public. Speaker 4: That's fine. That's what we're paid to do. Right. But that in doing so, we grapple with the challenge of educating the public [00:16:00] about what we're doing and why and how it's going to benefit them, and it's never going to be completely successful. But I do think that the scientific community is as much to blame as anybody for not having engaged in these issues repeatedly and not having spent it's capital to some extent earning the trust of the public and things like this. You see it with human genetics and probably more acutely than anything with global warming where at some deep level the problem is would an insufficient number of people in the public trust scientists to convey. So what's important [00:16:30] about their understanding of the universe and say they trust them when you do surveys, but it's clear that that trust can be easily undermined with the right kind of PR, right? Speaker 4: It was easy to undermine it from the yes on 37 crowd was easy to undermine scientists as all being self interested somehow all we're all involved in making GMOs and therefore were just shells from Monsanto at some deep level. And though it's absurd and it's easy from the right to say, well scientists, you know, there are a bunch of crazy lefties who just [00:17:00] want us all to be environmentalist's and don't have any care about business. Say these, the public support science. But it's a thin support and it's a thin support because the scientific community hasn't really engaged the public in trying to understand what we're doing and you know, sure, there's plenty of good scientists who are trying to do that, but it certainly have to look at it as a general failure. You know, in terms of scientific literacy in this country. And it bites us all the times in small ways like prop 37 and in big ways like global warming Speaker 5: spectrum is on k a l x Berkeley alternating Fridays. [00:17:30] Michael Eisen is our guest and in this next section Michael Talks about sciences, failure in public outreach and new trends in science funding. Speaker 4: Scientific outreach is a difficult endeavor for a lot of scientists. It doesn't really have a lot of cachet or status within the, and it's tough to fund. Yeah. All that's true. I think it's not without its rewards if fun. I mean, I like talking to the public about science, not because I get anything particular from [00:18:00] it, but just because I like what I do. I like talking about what excites me about the world. I mean, it's fun. A lot of scientists don't feel that way. They don't know they'd rather be in the lab than talking in public. But it's like a lot of things. I think that partly it's just our expectation. We don't expect as a university, as a federal government funding science, it's not considered to be part of what we expect people to do to try to get engaged in communicating. The scientists sort of viewed that there's a another layer of people who are going to be involved in communicating science who are gonna know how to talk to the scientists [00:18:30] and know how to talk to the public. Speaker 4: And there's certainly are fantastic people who do that. But I think ultimately it has to come back to scientists recognizing that it's important. Like if we can't convince the public that what we're doing is important, they're not going to keep giving us money to do it. And so it's a threat to science in every way, not just in its application, but in some practical day to day existence that the public doesn't, when they don't understand us, the scientific community should expect [00:19:00] the people who are doing research or benefiting from the system to do a better job and to take seriously the challenge of communicating it to the public. That's not to say I'm in. Lots of people do it. It's just because it's not organized because it's not expected of people because there's no systematic method for doing it. It peaks me on and he's not as effective I think as it could be if this were a big part of what scientists did and just to tie all these things together. Speaker 4: I'll point out that one of the things I would hope in the long run would happen [00:19:30] as a consequence of the public having hacks as to the scientific literature is that people would start writing papers with the public at least partially in mind when they wrote them. The stuff we do isn't that complicated. I can explain what I do. I could write papers that explained sort of what I'm doing and why and it would be a huge benefit. One of the things we've really, really failed to do is we're good at explaining facts. Here's what we know, here's what we've learned, here's the truth of the system. We're really bad at explaining the scientific method to people and I think people [00:20:00] don't know why. We know things. We know why we believe them. And I think if we were better at writing our papers, I don't expect tons of people to break down the doors and read my papers. Speaker 4: But you know, I think they're interesting and well-written and certainly there are papers that plots publishes that get a lot of public attention to anything involving dinosaurs or anything involving weird sexual practices of animals, right? So when those things are good, really good, strong science, people are looking and paying attention. And if the papers were written in a way [00:20:30] that actually engages the public and thought, well, I'm going to try to explain what I did here to the public that this would probably be the most effective thing we could do, would be to educate the public, educate our students, educate everybody about what scientists do and how we do it. Not just what we discovered, which is I think one of the major problems is focus on facts and discoveries to problem in our public communication. It's a problem in education as a problem just in general for science that we don't talk very much about how we know things, what we're doing [00:21:00] and why. Speaker 4: We just talk about what we've learned. Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you want to hold forth on? Um, you asking some questions about science funding and about amount of money available for sciences getting tighter and tighter arts, more and more scientists. And I think we're facing a kind of big question about like what does the public want to fund in science? Part of the downside of this big data move in science has been a sort of loss [00:21:30] of appreciation for the importance of individual scientists. And I think that there's all this big science and it's true in biology. People think, well, let's just get a hundred scientists from across the country and we'll all get together and we'll do the most important experiments to do. And these are increasing tendencies for the sort of science by committee kind of way of doing things. Speaker 4: And sometimes that worked, it worked for the human genome project and so forth. But probably one of the things I worry about most in sciences with that, that we're moving away from [00:22:00] a world in which individual scientists get to pursue their own ideas. And you know, which is ultimately where the most interesting stuff usually comes from. You know, genome projects don't win Nobel prizes because their infrastructure, they're not ultimately about discoveries. And so I do worry that seduction of big science is such that funding agencies and other people think that this is a great way for them to control what happens. They're going to put tons of money into these big projects and get everybody to sign on to whatever agenda is coming from the NIH rather than from individual scientists. [00:22:30] And I think it's a struggle we're about to see reach a real head in science as less and less money is available. It's harder and harder to get individual research grants and I think we're just starting to see push back against that in the scientific community. But I don't know who will prevail. I would not like being a scientist if what I did with my days was go to committee meetings with 30 other scientists where we discussed what one experiment we were going to do, which is pieces where things are headed at least at the moment. But Michael lies and thanks very much for coming on [00:23:00] spectrum. Absolute pleasure. Speaker 5: [inaudible] now our calendar of science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Kaneski and Renee arou present the calendar. Speaker 4: Charles Darwin may have been born on February 12th but the fellowship of humanity is celebrating his birthday with the Darwin Day on Sunday, February 24th at 1:30 PM David Seaborg of the world [00:23:30] rainforest fund and a leading expert on evolutionary theory presents the keynote evolution today. Current state of knowledge and controversies, Nobel prize physicist George Smoot and leading expert on Darwin, Peter Hess of the national for science Speaker 6: education. We'll also talk afterwards, enjoy a potluck dinner party with the Speakers. I anticipate primordial soup. The event is at Humanist Hall Three Nine Zero 27th Street in Oakland. Visit Humanist [00:24:00] hall.net for more Info every month. Speaker 7: Nerd night holds an event that can only be described as a gratifying mixture of the discovery channel and beer. This Monday, East Bay's own February nerd night will be held at the new parkway theater. Jessica Richmond will speak about the plethora of microbial cells we play host to within our bodies and what they do there. She will explore the latest research on how our microbes correlate with obesity, anxiety, heart disease, and tooth [00:24:30] decay. We'll Fischer. We'll discuss the history, physics and some modern advances of the processes of creating machines. Finally, Guy Pyre. Zack will speak about his experience as a science planner for the curiosity rover. Nerd night will begin at 7:00 PM on February 25th as the new Parkway Theater in Oakland. The HR tickets can be purchased online at Eastbourne or night, spelled n I t e.com this February 26th the life [00:25:00] sciences divisions at the Lawrence lab in Berkeley will hold a seminar on the subject of life and death at the cellular level. Speaker 7: Denise Montell, a professor of molecular and developmental biology at UC Santa Barbara. We'll discuss her research in the area. Her lab has recently discovered a surprising reversibility of the cell suicide process known as a pop ptosis. She is now testing the hypothesis that the ability of cells to return from the brink of death, so it's to salvage cells that are difficult [00:25:30] to replace such as heart muscles or neurons in the adult brain. The seminars open to the public, although non UC Berkeley students are asked to RSVP by phone or through the lab website. The event will be held in room one for one of the Lawrence Berkeley lab building at seven one seven potter street in West Berkeley. It will begin at 4:00 PM on February 26th this Wednesday at the herps leader in San Francisco. You can learn more about your nightly slumbers. [00:26:00] Professor Matt Walker in the sleep and neuroimaging laboratory at UC Berkeley has found compelling evidence that our light dreamless stage of sleep can solidify short term memories by rewiring the architecture of the brain, burst of electrical impulses known as sleep spindles, maybe networking between the brain's hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex is storage area. His team has also found evidence that sleep can associate and integrate new memories together. Dr. Walker will be in conversation with k a [00:26:30] l w reporter Amy Standen. Tickets for the February 27th event can be found online@calacademy.org Speaker 6: Berkeley Professor Alex Philip Pinko is speaking at the Commonwealth about dark energy and the runaway universe. We expected that the attractive force of gravity would slow down the rate at which the university is expanding, but observations of very distant exploding stars known as Supernova show that the expansion rate is actually speeding up the universe seems [00:27:00] to be dominated by a repulsive dark energy. An Idea Albert Einstein had suggested in 1917 the renounced in 1929 as his biggest blender. The physical origin and nature of dark energy is probably the most important unsolved problem in all of physics. This event will be Thursday, February 28th at five 30 there will be a networking reception followed by the program at six the cost is $20 $8 for Commonwealth members [00:27:30] or $7 for students with valid id. Visit Commonwealth club.org for more info now to news stories presented by Renee and Rick, Speaker 7: a UC Berkeley student team has made it into the final rounds of the Disney sponsored design competition known as imaginations. The competition challenges students to design a Disney experience for the residents of their chosen city. The student team, Tiffany, you on, Catherine Moore and Andrew Linn designed a green robot [00:28:00] food truck called Sammy the students do on Berkeley's reputation as an environmentally friendly city to create Sammy who comes equipped with solar panels and a self cultivating garden. Disney has praised the projects collaborative nature, which incorporates design aspects from each student's major. The students are now presenting their project at Disney headquarters along with five other teams from across the country. Speaker 6: Last Friday, February 16th you may have seen a large fireball in the night sky [00:28:30] over the bay area. Jonathan Bregman of the Chabot Space and science center in Oakland told The Washington Post that meteors that streak through the sky are a very common occurrence. What is uncommon is that it's so close to where people are living. Bregman also noted that 15,000 tons of debris from asteroids enter the earth's atmosphere every year. Usually these things break up into small pieces and are difficult to find. This event was ours. After the 200 foot asteroid named 2012 [00:29:00] d a 14 came within 18,000 miles of earth and after the Valentine's Day, media exploded over Russia and drain more than a thousand people. That media was the largest to hit the earth in more than a century streaking through the atmosphere at supersonic speeds, it created a loud shockwave that broke glass. Scientists estimate that it was about 15 meters across and 7,000 metric tons. Despite this massive size it was undetected until it hit the atmosphere. [00:29:30] Music heard during the show is by Scott and David from his album folk and acoustic released under a creative Commons license 3.0 attributional. Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In part 2, Michael Eisen discusses the Public Library of Science, his position on GMOs and a labeling strategy. Eisen is Associate Professor of Genetics, Genomics, and Development in UC Berkeley's Dept. of Molecular Biology and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program [00:00:30] bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of spectrum. Today we are presenting part two of our two part interview with Michael Isen and associate professor of genetics genomics in development in UC Berkeley's department of molecular biology. In part one Michael talked about his research of gene regulation this week. Michael explains [00:01:00] the Public Library of science, his feelings on labeling of GMOs in food as well as intellectual property science outreach and science funding. Enjoy the interview. I wanted to talk about the Public Library of science if you were a cofounder of. Yeah, and are you still involved with that? Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm on the board. I've still very actively involved in trying to shape its future and in general in the future of science publishing. Speaker 3: And so can you talk about its business model and how it's changing publishing? Speaker 4: [00:01:30] Sure. The basic idea is that science publishing, it's been around for as long as science has been an endeavor from the 17th century. Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, all these guys were sort of inventing science as we currently know it. And Science as a enterprise obviously requires that scientists communicate with each other and since time immemorial in science, we've had journaled, Francis Bacon, other scientists that 17th century started at seedings of the Royal Society. Right? And for 330 [00:02:00] years or so after they started these journals, they were using the only technology available to them at the time, which was print publishing and a lot of things that follow from the way scientific publishing was structured follow intrinsically from the limitations and features of that printed journal. And as an economic model, the only model that makes sense is for the end users to pay for the first subscription. And you know, there's problems with that. Speaker 4: Only people who [00:02:30] can afford the subscriptions can get access to the scientific literature and so forth. They follow from an intrinsic limitation of a medium. Now in the nineties 1990s that all changed, right? The Internet came along and science was amongst the first groups of people to embrace the Internet, and by the sort of mid to late 1990s basically every scientific journal that existed was online and publishing and electronic edition and increasingly going into their archives and digitizing their, their archives, so forth, so that [00:03:00] by 2000 you now could have had access to a large fraction of the tire published record of scientists. Such an amazing thing to be able to do that, but insanely the business model behind scientific publishing didn't change at all. So publishers who had all these subscriptions, now we're no longer selling print journals or decreasingly selling printed journals. They were just selling access to published material in a database and yet they didn't know innovation and the business [00:03:30] model at all. Speaker 4: They just simply charged people for accessing their database just like they'd been charging people to mail them copies. There was no longer any technical or economic reason why the whole universe couldn't have had immediate free access to the published scientific literature. The only reason that you or anybody else in the world didn't have immediate access to anything published in medicine or science or whatever was that the publishers then let them, so plus and the whole industry of open access publishing around [00:04:00] it. The basic idea is publishers do and have provided an important service and they should be paid for the service they provide, but that as soon as they're done, as soon as the publisher's hands are off the paper, it's freely available to everybody, not just to read, but to use and do with whatever to basically place the scientific literature into the public domain. Speaker 4: Where it belong. Science is a public venture, not exclusively, but for the most part funded by either the federal government, state governments or by public minded foundations. And the idea that [00:04:30] the end product of that investment is the property of publishers is insane and it's a huge impediment to the way science works and to the ability of the public to benefit from scientific information. And so plus has been trying to pull the rug out from underneath this subscription based business model by creating journals that use this alternative business model that are now quite successful plus as a journal plus one which is now the biggest biomedical research journal on the planet. Still only publishes a couple percent [00:05:00] of the total because there's a ton of journals out there, but it's big, it's successful, it's growing. Lots of other publishers are starting to switch not just because of it's a successful business, but because of the pressure from the public pressure from the government. Speaker 4: The NIH now requires that people make papers that are funded by NIH research freely available within a year after publication. Things are moving in the right direction and I think the insanity of a world in which the output of publicly funded publicly minded science is privately owned by people who had nothing to do with [00:05:30] a generation of the science in the first place is, it's not quite over, but it is. The writing's on the wall today. Let's go ahead and there was a bit of pushback on that in the, in the congress. What's the state of that? Is that so it's all a lot of pushback because the publishers, it's an incredibly lucrative business that profit margins for Elsevier and other big commercial publishers exceed those of apple and other sort of paragons of highly profitable businesses. When you have a company that's making $1 billion profit off of the public back [00:06:00] and they see a simple legislative solution to avoiding the problem, I think it's a natural instinct on their part to just try to write a law and you know, basically what happened was someone from their district who has a company in their district who gives them lots of money, writes a bill, gives it to them and says, Hey, could you introduce this?Speaker 4: We have a huge problem. These, you know, radical crazies from Berkeley are trying to undermine our entire business model and to lose jobs, blah, blah, blah. They get this bill introduced and there's non-trivial risk that this kind of things would pass [00:06:30] because they've managed to align themselves with a stronger force in Congress. The pro copyright lobby, they've managed to basically convinced them that this issue with scientific publishing is scientists want to steal publishers content. Just like college kids want to steal music from, you know, musicians the, and so there was a nontrivial risk that this was gonna pass and this is the second time it's been introduced. So fortunately it's very easy to say, look, the taxpayers paid for this stuff. You really think it's right for, you know, somebody who just got diagnosed [00:07:00] with some terrible disease to not have access to information that they paid for. Speaker 4: The publishers lose this every time this becomes a public fight, they're not in a winning path. And so I expect it to happen again, but just like this last time, I don't think they're gonna win. More people in Congress are on our side and paying attention than there are on Elsevier side or those publishers mostly private? Or are they publicly, I mean, they're corporations. I mean, yeah, they're mostly public corporations. So Elsevier is a big publicly traded corporation, but they're mostly from the Netherlands and [00:07:30] London. There's a bunch of big companies, but interestingly we've had as much problem historically with nonprofits, scientific societies, the societies themselves and make a lot of money on their journals. A lot of them do and it's put them in a kind of compromise position where their revenues from their journals are so important to their overall financial stability that they behave like commercial publishers. Speaker 4: It's not just big companies, any established publisher who makes a lot of money on publishing. This is sort of intrinsically compromised I think in this endeavor. [00:08:00] So the next sorta thing Blas is trying to do is to switch to a world in which publishing becomes almost instantaneous, still takes nine months or so on average for most works to go from when an author's ready to share it with the public to when it's actually publicly available, even if the journal is freely accessible. And so there's still a lot wrong with the waste. Scientists communicate with each other and with the public that this is not a close up shop. Once we win this open access battle, it's just the beginning. And this doesn't really conflict with intellectual property rights and things like that. [00:08:30] The idea of open science is really just sharing the information. The intellectual property is independent of how openly accessible the publication is. Speaker 4: On the other hand, I also think that the intellectual property stuff is bad. I've always believed that if you're getting money from the federal government, that the intellectual property you develop should not belong to you. It should be in the public domain, and I think that there's a lot of corruption of the way people behave in science that stems from the personal pressure as well as the pressure from the institutions to turn every idea, every little thing [00:09:00] they generate in the lab into a commodity, and I think it's makes science work poorly, but this is happening and so it doesn't benefit society to have academic, publicly funded research turn into privately held intellectual property. It inhibits the commercialization of those ideas that inhibits the broader use of ideas. Plenty of studies have shown this is generally cost more money to manage this whole intellectual property thing than the system benefits. Speaker 4: At the end of the day, very few universities profit from their intellectual property effort. [00:09:30] Mostly they spend a lot of money on lawyers and systems and they don't have the, you know, cloning patent or whatever it is. But if your interest is in the broader functioning of science and in the broader exposure to the public to the benefits of scientific research, you have to think that this stuff should just go right into the public domain where people want to commercialize it. They can, they just don't own any exclusive right to use it. And I think making it all pre competitive is by far the best thing to do. So while publishing itself to answer the question directly is not a [00:10:00] threatened virtual property. If I could figure out a way to make it so I would do stuff cause I think it's a very, very bad thing that publicly funded scientists, people at University of California that their stuff doesn't just belong to the public. Speaker 5: This is spectrum on KALX Berkeley today. Michael Isen, an associate professor at UC Berkeley reflects on the prop 37 campaign and GMO labeling on food. Speaker 3: Another issue [00:10:30] that involves the public a lot is the interest in GMOs in food. How would you like to see that debate transformed? Having just been through the the election cycle here in California where we had that propositionSpeaker 4: right. As you know, I was very, very much opposed to prop 37 and I think mostly because the campaign against genetically modified organisms was predicated on an ignorance of how the technology works and I felt a fear sort [00:11:00] of of science that the problem for most people was that science was involved in food and there's so many problems with that point of view that it's hard to know where to start. First of all, the reasons why I was particularly opposed to this initiative was that the backers were willfully distorting the science spreading the idea that GMOs were intrinsically dangerous, basically, that the public would benefit from having the wrong knowledge about GMOs, which is what I really felt like they were pushing some. Most scientists look at this and think what GMOs are doing [00:11:30] is so different than what we've done for thousands of years and selective breeding of crop. Speaker 4: The idea that the food we eat is in some natural state is a fallacy. Compare corn to its ancestor teosinte. You compare the tomato you buy in the supermarket to the wild slant islands, the person come. None of these things we eat. Look anything remotely like what you found in the wild. They were transformed by centuries of selective breeding and crossing and all sorts of other genetic techniques. Those are the tools of genetics that genetics has just gotten [00:12:00] better and we can do these things in a different way and yes, genetic modification is not identical, but there's nothing intrinsically weird or intrinsically dangerous about moving genes from one species to another. Putting synthetic genes into a plan. It could be, it's not intrinsically safe either, but the attitude that people seem to take is one of the food we have now is in a natural, untainted state and that the second scientist put their hands on it. Speaker 4: All of a sudden it becomes a dangerous threat, but I also think the industry has been stupid in my [00:12:30] mind and has caused a lot of this problem by basically being secret about it. For me it was sort of a lose lose situation in that neither side of that fight was actually interested in the public understanding the science. So you had a ballot measure from my mind in which more or less everybody involved was trying to promote public ignorance about an issue and it's a struggle. I don't know what the right exact solution is to achieve what I think we really need to do, which is to have the public have a, an understanding of the technology, not a detailed understanding [00:13:00] about what enzymes are used to move plans to do you know, why it exists, how it exists, how it works, what people are doing, why it will benefit them or why could benefit them in the long run and so that they understand it and can weigh the benefits and costs in a rational way. Speaker 4: Not in a rational way. I would love to see the food producers label their food, not with a huge thing on the front that says caution contain genetically modified ingredients, but with a label on back that says, here's where the seeds, the crops that went into this food come [00:13:30] from. Maybe there's not enough room on the label of every plant to give a comprehensive thing, but we know everybody's got a cell phone and a QR reader. Now. It's not impossible to imagine that every food had a little QR code on the back that you could scan and would say, here are the varieties that were used in the food. Some of them are genetically modified and here's why they were genetically modified and here's what benefit accrues from that genetic modification. Here's why you shouldn't be worried about it. I just think somehow we need to get the public more engaged in the, an understanding [00:14:00] of where food comes from, how it's grown, and what the rationale behind this process is so that they're rational actors in the process. Speaker 4: I mean, that's all. I mean, most scientists really want out of this. It's not so much to dictate that the public make particular decisions about science so that we all have our own biases about these things, but that that lack of understanding of the public about these issues and even very simple things like the simple fact that the food we eat has been subjected to genetics and that better education about simple [00:14:30] scientific things like that would make these debates focus on things that actually should be in the public debate, like part of the companies that are using genetically modified crops, exploiting intellectual property in ways that's bad for the public. It certainly seems like in many cases they do. Should we be developing genetically modified crop who basically resulted in increased herbicide use. Those are issues that are worth discussing, but they have to be discussed in a context where people understand what you're talking about and they don't think, oh my God, there's an insecticide [00:15:00] in my corn and everybody's going to die. Speaker 4: And so if I had an easy solution to that problem, we would implement it, but I can recognize when something is not going to achieve it. And I think scaring everybody into thinking that genetic modification is a horrible, dangerous technology that needs to be regulated by the government and some kind of special way was not going to achieve that. Isn't that sort of a difficulty with science in general that oftentimes it gets out in front of the population and presents it with quandaries that it can't grasp and it boils down to fear? [00:15:30] Yeah, I think this is true. This is a lot of this happening with human genetics and things like that. There's plenty of examples of where the way people are used to thinking about things is threatened in some ways or challenged by new science, and I think it's a constant challenge to the scientific community to try to make sure that it doesn't, not so much to make sure that it doesn't get ahead of the public. Speaker 4: That's fine. That's what we're paid to do. Right. But that in doing so, we grapple with the challenge of educating the public [00:16:00] about what we're doing and why and how it's going to benefit them, and it's never going to be completely successful. But I do think that the scientific community is as much to blame as anybody for not having engaged in these issues repeatedly and not having spent it's capital to some extent earning the trust of the public and things like this. You see it with human genetics and probably more acutely than anything with global warming where at some deep level the problem is would an insufficient number of people in the public trust scientists to convey. So what's important [00:16:30] about their understanding of the universe and say they trust them when you do surveys, but it's clear that that trust can be easily undermined with the right kind of PR, right? Speaker 4: It was easy to undermine it from the yes on 37 crowd was easy to undermine scientists as all being self interested somehow all we're all involved in making GMOs and therefore were just shells from Monsanto at some deep level. And though it's absurd and it's easy from the right to say, well scientists, you know, there are a bunch of crazy lefties who just [00:17:00] want us all to be environmentalist's and don't have any care about business. Say these, the public support science. But it's a thin support and it's a thin support because the scientific community hasn't really engaged the public in trying to understand what we're doing and you know, sure, there's plenty of good scientists who are trying to do that, but it certainly have to look at it as a general failure. You know, in terms of scientific literacy in this country. And it bites us all the times in small ways like prop 37 and in big ways like global warming Speaker 5: spectrum is on k a l x Berkeley alternating Fridays. [00:17:30] Michael Eisen is our guest and in this next section Michael Talks about sciences, failure in public outreach and new trends in science funding. Speaker 4: Scientific outreach is a difficult endeavor for a lot of scientists. It doesn't really have a lot of cachet or status within the, and it's tough to fund. Yeah. All that's true. I think it's not without its rewards if fun. I mean, I like talking to the public about science, not because I get anything particular from [00:18:00] it, but just because I like what I do. I like talking about what excites me about the world. I mean, it's fun. A lot of scientists don't feel that way. They don't know they'd rather be in the lab than talking in public. But it's like a lot of things. I think that partly it's just our expectation. We don't expect as a university, as a federal government funding science, it's not considered to be part of what we expect people to do to try to get engaged in communicating. The scientists sort of viewed that there's a another layer of people who are going to be involved in communicating science who are gonna know how to talk to the scientists [00:18:30] and know how to talk to the public. Speaker 4: And there's certainly are fantastic people who do that. But I think ultimately it has to come back to scientists recognizing that it's important. Like if we can't convince the public that what we're doing is important, they're not going to keep giving us money to do it. And so it's a threat to science in every way, not just in its application, but in some practical day to day existence that the public doesn't, when they don't understand us, the scientific community should expect [00:19:00] the people who are doing research or benefiting from the system to do a better job and to take seriously the challenge of communicating it to the public. That's not to say I'm in. Lots of people do it. It's just because it's not organized because it's not expected of people because there's no systematic method for doing it. It peaks me on and he's not as effective I think as it could be if this were a big part of what scientists did and just to tie all these things together. Speaker 4: I'll point out that one of the things I would hope in the long run would happen [00:19:30] as a consequence of the public having hacks as to the scientific literature is that people would start writing papers with the public at least partially in mind when they wrote them. The stuff we do isn't that complicated. I can explain what I do. I could write papers that explained sort of what I'm doing and why and it would be a huge benefit. One of the things we've really, really failed to do is we're good at explaining facts. Here's what we know, here's what we've learned, here's the truth of the system. We're really bad at explaining the scientific method to people and I think people [00:20:00] don't know why. We know things. We know why we believe them. And I think if we were better at writing our papers, I don't expect tons of people to break down the doors and read my papers. Speaker 4: But you know, I think they're interesting and well-written and certainly there are papers that plots publishes that get a lot of public attention to anything involving dinosaurs or anything involving weird sexual practices of animals, right? So when those things are good, really good, strong science, people are looking and paying attention. And if the papers were written in a way [00:20:30] that actually engages the public and thought, well, I'm going to try to explain what I did here to the public that this would probably be the most effective thing we could do, would be to educate the public, educate our students, educate everybody about what scientists do and how we do it. Not just what we discovered, which is I think one of the major problems is focus on facts and discoveries to problem in our public communication. It's a problem in education as a problem just in general for science that we don't talk very much about how we know things, what we're doing [00:21:00] and why. Speaker 4: We just talk about what we've learned. Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you want to hold forth on? Um, you asking some questions about science funding and about amount of money available for sciences getting tighter and tighter arts, more and more scientists. And I think we're facing a kind of big question about like what does the public want to fund in science? Part of the downside of this big data move in science has been a sort of loss [00:21:30] of appreciation for the importance of individual scientists. And I think that there's all this big science and it's true in biology. People think, well, let's just get a hundred scientists from across the country and we'll all get together and we'll do the most important experiments to do. And these are increasing tendencies for the sort of science by committee kind of way of doing things. Speaker 4: And sometimes that worked, it worked for the human genome project and so forth. But probably one of the things I worry about most in sciences with that, that we're moving away from [00:22:00] a world in which individual scientists get to pursue their own ideas. And you know, which is ultimately where the most interesting stuff usually comes from. You know, genome projects don't win Nobel prizes because their infrastructure, they're not ultimately about discoveries. And so I do worry that seduction of big science is such that funding agencies and other people think that this is a great way for them to control what happens. They're going to put tons of money into these big projects and get everybody to sign on to whatever agenda is coming from the NIH rather than from individual scientists. [00:22:30] And I think it's a struggle we're about to see reach a real head in science as less and less money is available. It's harder and harder to get individual research grants and I think we're just starting to see push back against that in the scientific community. But I don't know who will prevail. I would not like being a scientist if what I did with my days was go to committee meetings with 30 other scientists where we discussed what one experiment we were going to do, which is pieces where things are headed at least at the moment. But Michael lies and thanks very much for coming on [00:23:00] spectrum. Absolute pleasure. Speaker 5: [inaudible] now our calendar of science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Kaneski and Renee arou present the calendar. Speaker 4: Charles Darwin may have been born on February 12th but the fellowship of humanity is celebrating his birthday with the Darwin Day on Sunday, February 24th at 1:30 PM David Seaborg of the world [00:23:30] rainforest fund and a leading expert on evolutionary theory presents the keynote evolution today. Current state of knowledge and controversies, Nobel prize physicist George Smoot and leading expert on Darwin, Peter Hess of the national for science Speaker 6: education. We'll also talk afterwards, enjoy a potluck dinner party with the Speakers. I anticipate primordial soup. The event is at Humanist Hall Three Nine Zero 27th Street in Oakland. Visit Humanist [00:24:00] hall.net for more Info every month. Speaker 7: Nerd night holds an event that can only be described as a gratifying mixture of the discovery channel and beer. This Monday, East Bay's own February nerd night will be held at the new parkway theater. Jessica Richmond will speak about the plethora of microbial cells we play host to within our bodies and what they do there. She will explore the latest research on how our microbes correlate with obesity, anxiety, heart disease, and tooth [00:24:30] decay. We'll Fischer. We'll discuss the history, physics and some modern advances of the processes of creating machines. Finally, Guy Pyre. Zack will speak about his experience as a science planner for the curiosity rover. Nerd night will begin at 7:00 PM on February 25th as the new Parkway Theater in Oakland. The HR tickets can be purchased online at Eastbourne or night, spelled n I t e.com this February 26th the life [00:25:00] sciences divisions at the Lawrence lab in Berkeley will hold a seminar on the subject of life and death at the cellular level. Speaker 7: Denise Montell, a professor of molecular and developmental biology at UC Santa Barbara. We'll discuss her research in the area. Her lab has recently discovered a surprising reversibility of the cell suicide process known as a pop ptosis. She is now testing the hypothesis that the ability of cells to return from the brink of death, so it's to salvage cells that are difficult [00:25:30] to replace such as heart muscles or neurons in the adult brain. The seminars open to the public, although non UC Berkeley students are asked to RSVP by phone or through the lab website. The event will be held in room one for one of the Lawrence Berkeley lab building at seven one seven potter street in West Berkeley. It will begin at 4:00 PM on February 26th this Wednesday at the herps leader in San Francisco. You can learn more about your nightly slumbers. [00:26:00] Professor Matt Walker in the sleep and neuroimaging laboratory at UC Berkeley has found compelling evidence that our light dreamless stage of sleep can solidify short term memories by rewiring the architecture of the brain, burst of electrical impulses known as sleep spindles, maybe networking between the brain's hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex is storage area. His team has also found evidence that sleep can associate and integrate new memories together. Dr. Walker will be in conversation with k a [00:26:30] l w reporter Amy Standen. Tickets for the February 27th event can be found online@calacademy.org Speaker 6: Berkeley Professor Alex Philip Pinko is speaking at the Commonwealth about dark energy and the runaway universe. We expected that the attractive force of gravity would slow down the rate at which the university is expanding, but observations of very distant exploding stars known as Supernova show that the expansion rate is actually speeding up the universe seems [00:27:00] to be dominated by a repulsive dark energy. An Idea Albert Einstein had suggested in 1917 the renounced in 1929 as his biggest blender. The physical origin and nature of dark energy is probably the most important unsolved problem in all of physics. This event will be Thursday, February 28th at five 30 there will be a networking reception followed by the program at six the cost is $20 $8 for Commonwealth members [00:27:30] or $7 for students with valid id. Visit Commonwealth club.org for more info now to news stories presented by Renee and Rick, Speaker 7: a UC Berkeley student team has made it into the final rounds of the Disney sponsored design competition known as imaginations. The competition challenges students to design a Disney experience for the residents of their chosen city. The student team, Tiffany, you on, Catherine Moore and Andrew Linn designed a green robot [00:28:00] food truck called Sammy the students do on Berkeley's reputation as an environmentally friendly city to create Sammy who comes equipped with solar panels and a self cultivating garden. Disney has praised the projects collaborative nature, which incorporates design aspects from each student's major. The students are now presenting their project at Disney headquarters along with five other teams from across the country. Speaker 6: Last Friday, February 16th you may have seen a large fireball in the night sky [00:28:30] over the bay area. Jonathan Bregman of the Chabot Space and science center in Oakland told The Washington Post that meteors that streak through the sky are a very common occurrence. What is uncommon is that it's so close to where people are living. Bregman also noted that 15,000 tons of debris from asteroids enter the earth's atmosphere every year. Usually these things break up into small pieces and are difficult to find. This event was ours. After the 200 foot asteroid named 2012 [00:29:00] d a 14 came within 18,000 miles of earth and after the Valentine's Day, media exploded over Russia and drain more than a thousand people. That media was the largest to hit the earth in more than a century streaking through the atmosphere at supersonic speeds, it created a loud shockwave that broke glass. Scientists estimate that it was about 15 meters across and 7,000 metric tons. Despite this massive size it was undetected until it hit the atmosphere. [00:29:30] Music heard during the show is by Scott and David from his album folk and acoustic released under a creative Commons license 3.0 attributional. Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jarvis Sulcer, Allison Scott, Hailey Shavers, Ruby Alcazar, join us from the Level Playing Field Institute to discuss the year round STEM program in Bay Area High Schools for minority women. We discuss the program, how to apply, and get an idea of what it is like from Hailey and Ruby. lpfi.orgTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome [00:00:30] to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm Rick Karnofsky. Brad swift and I are the hosts of today's show stay. We're talking about science education of underrepresented minorities with the level playing field institute who run the smash. Some are math and science honors Academy that happens here [00:01:00] at Cau and at Stanford, UCLA and USC. We have the executive director, Jarvis saucer, the director of research and evaluation, Alison Scott and scholars, Ruby Alcazar and Haley Shavers. Jarvis, why don't you tell me a little bit about LPI? Speaker 4: It's a level playing philosophy to them. Our mission is to remove barriers for students of color who are pursuing degrees in stem and stem being science, technology, engineering and math, and to untapped their potential for the advancement [00:01:30] of our nation and the organism. We're founded in 2001 by Freada Kapor Klein focused on issues in the workplace around diversity and we started off Smash Academy at Berkeley in 2004 and we've continued to run the program and they've expanded to UCLA, USC and Stanford for the last couple of years.Speaker 5: Can someone summarize what Smash Academy is? So Speaker 4: smash you. They three year five week residential program for low income students with color who have we interested in pursuing stem degrees [00:02:00] in college and so we support these students through our five week residential program starting in the summer after ninth grade year and they stay with it for three years. Then we brought in additional support in the first two years of college and one of our strategic partners. Speaker 5: And can you tell me how scholars get involved in the program? Speaker 4: Most scholars come from the nine payer counties and they are first nominated by their teachers think they have to get a math and science recommendation and they go through a rigorous application process similar to what a senior in high school [00:02:30] with experience going to college. And then there's a application, they complete math assessment group interviews with staff and even current scholars than a program. And then we make a selection of the students who are about a 30% acceptance rate of students who apply. Speaker 5: How did you do find out about the program? I was friends with Rachel seems nice and she told me about the program and she said, Haley, I know you math [00:03:00] and I know you really like this so you should apply. And I was kind of skeptical. I was like, that's my summer. I'm trying to go places. She's like, just do it. And I did. I got in and it's best. It's the best. I like it. I like it a lot. Yeah.Speaker 6: Well my sister was actually a scholar before I was and so I found it from her. She's four years older than I am. The way she found out was through her guidance counselor at a high school. What kind of activities do take place over that five weeks? Speaker 7: [00:03:30] I think scholarships speak to that because they live and breathe it, breathe it. Speaker 6: It's been different almost every summer. Our schedules. We have classes five days a week, sometimes even on Sundays. So those classes include the core class like math and science and our science writing class. But we also take like tech media, engineering electronics, and then we also have guest Speakers, we call them Speakerseries. We listen to different than people that come from like stem fields and what they're doing with their lives and their careers. And [00:04:00] we also go on a lot of field trips. What's your favorite activity? Speaker 5: I think my favorite activity would have to be a field trip we took to Pixar, we got to tour the place in Emeryville and we also got to sit in on a presentation by one of the programmers who worked on brave. It was, it was really fun to see the inside of Pixar and just to see how they've created all the great movies that I've watched since I was little. Speaker 2: Yeah. [inaudible] Speaker 8: [00:04:30] you are listening to spectrum on k a l LX Berkeley. We're talking to the level playing field institute about science education of underrepresented minorities.Speaker 7: So a lot of research shows that our students come to us from schools. [00:05:00] Those are typically under-resourced, which means that they lack oftentimes access to high quality teachers, advanced placement courses that would prepare them for success in college. Um, in addition to extracurricular activities such as the ones that the scholars described that they participate in smash though, including things like computer science or robotics, which they might not have it there, high schools. And so that's a really great way smash is found to remove some of the barriers that face these students. Speaker 6: [00:05:30] Awesome. Can you talk to us a little bit more about the specific audience of underrepresented students of color that smash hopes to educate? How are their needs different? How are what they already have access to different? Speaker 7: One of the things that we find or that research demonstrates is that if you look at the science and engineering workforce, African American and Latinos make up only 7% of the entire science and engineering workforce, which is really concerning number considering that those populations [00:06:00] are rapidly growing and that the needs of our, our economy and our nation are trending towards stem occupations. And so, um, just that statistic alone speaks to the fact that, that we are leaving behind this significant person of our population and not preparing them for the skills that they'll need in the future. Speaker 4: And another interesting stat is that only being willing or harder to come to valley with copies of found almost every day that company founded by two individual colors, that's [00:06:30] the 1% and so the half and mostly who found, who found comfortable, who start companies in the bay or in the valley, people with typically with stem backgrounds. And so we have a, as Allison mentioned, a [inaudible] amount of potential in students who could be founders of their own company and really transform not only their lives but the lives of many in their community and beyond. Speaker 6: Is there something special about the bay area that would inspire programs like this to start here? Speaker 4: [00:07:00] I think that the diversity of the type of students we have in the barrier and the fact we have multiple cities represented. I mean there are students in our program say from the East Bay who we never set foot on Berkeley campus, even though it's a boat ride away. Or you have students who live in, I don't know, Penis Lou, who we never stepped foot on Stanford's campus. So that opportunity to have two world class universities in our backyard, so to speak, in our scholars, have an opportunity to experience those campuses in terms of the labs [00:07:30] and access to graduate students. And even faculty, I think makes the very unique place. Speaker 7: And in addition, there's the, obviously we have silicon valley in our backyard, so we have access to a lot of companies and employees of those companies who are very willing to come and speak to our scholars and provide [inaudible] Speaker 6: role models and back to the scholars. Um, do you participate in science and math events outside of both smash and, and the school year? Um, I actually just [00:08:00] got an internship for um, building like a teen website and my like hometown Palo Alto. I also do this thing at my school called college pathways. It's um, run by my guidance counselor and is specifically also for minorities and people of color. We go visit different campuses and uh, kind of similar to Speaker series, we have guest Speakers that we listened to. Um, a lot of them have been like engineers and entrepreneurs. Speaker 5: Um, so for me, other than smash casts, which introduced me to a lot of new programs, [00:08:30] I tend to just experiment. If I see something that I like, I'll research it and find out what's behind it and how can I learn. And that's, that's been my whole mindset since I guess my sophomore year of high school and it hasn't stopped. You have examples I have made to three mobile apps. They're very like simple. [00:09:00] I made them, so I felt like I feel really accomplished. I show like a bunch of my friends and they kind of just look at me like, this doesn't do anything. It just, you know, moves from like, you know, this is a lot of work. I've made these, I spend countless hours, you know, fixing it, make sure it doesn't have any errors. And it's, it's been good. I, my parents, they support me and even though I'm like the techie of the house, they don't really understand what I'm talking about, but [00:09:30] I explain it and they get it after a while and they're like, oh, this makes so much sense. Speaker 5: And then they start bragging to all their friends, but, but it's been good. Yeah. So you've mentioned smash cast a few times, but I don't think we've actually talked about what that is. So did you want to give a summary of smash? I think I can. Um, so smash cast is almost like the extension of our taking media class that we take over the summer and the cast stands for communications [00:10:00] and social technology. I want to say we also experiment and like get exposed to different programs. So right now we're diving into corona, which is a mobile app programming and we've learned some of the terminology and we've had a few mobile app companies come and visit us and they've talked about how they've created some of their games and we got to like test their games and uh, give them feedback. Speaker 2: [00:10:30] [inaudible] Speaker 8: you are listening to spectrum on k Alex Berkeley. We're talking with Jarvis, Alison Rubian, Hayley about smash the summer math and science honors academy. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: and what's it like [00:11:00] returning back to your regular high school after the end of the summer? He was kind of weird. How was so used to seeing the same faces? Six, six 30 but like seven ish in the morning until, you know, lights out at 11 o'clock. I guess it, I mean it's nice to go back to high school at the same time. I would always really miss smash. Smash is always what I'd look for too during the entire year. I guess it's kind of me going back to my classes also because I was the only like person of [00:11:30] color and a lot of my classes especially then like my science classes. Um, for me it was, it was kind of disappointing because my high school is, it's really small and I, I like the small atmosphere yet again. I like being surrounded by people who are driven to do better. Um, and my high school I attend, I have a small group of friends and at times they kind of have a lack of motivation to do better. Speaker 5: So I'm always there to push them. I'm like, come on you guys, [00:12:00] let's do this work, let's get it done. Um, but that smash, it was kind of vice versa. We pushed each other to a point where we did our best and we got the work done and we still had fun. And also the classes at my escort are kind of disappointing being that I have a computer science class yet there's only like five people and maybe two out of the five are really interested in the class. And then also for my math class it's [00:12:30] me and what other one other junior, because we take a higher level and we're kind of more advanced than the seniors, which is kind of disappointing being that they're kind of kind of our role models, but they're, they lack that motivation to apply for the colleges and they procrastinate a bunch and it's not good. But I think my junior class will be a really good senior class because I'm a part of it. So [00:13:00] there's LPF I help students after they go on to college. Speaker 4: Yes, we do. We have a strategic partner called beyond 12 and their primary focus is to provide support to first generation college students. I mean, effort to get to college because the city show that if a student can make it through their first two years of college, there is the chance of graduating from college significantly increases. Speaker 6: Hailey Hailey, how did you get started in stem? Speaker 5: It would have [00:13:30] to be my big cousin. He makes like custom computers for different people and I would always go over his house and just be interested in what he was building that day and he would make them look really interesting and show me all the parts. And from there I joined this weekend program that was held at a college and we just got to experience different forms of science and engineering and math and we got to take apart a computer and put it back together. [00:14:00] And I think from there I've always wanted to know how a computer works from the inside and see what I can make for other people to use. I like game design and game programming being that you play game and there may be some errors, but for the most part it's smooth and I want to be that person behind that game, writing that code so you can play. Speaker 6: How about Ruby? What got it going for you? Well, I had a really, [00:14:30] really good math teacher my eighth grade year, so middle school and I grew really close with her. It was just like a friendship that we had beyond like student teacher. I'd go to her when I have issues and we just talk like I just sit in a classroom and talk with her during lunch or something. I sweat. That initially kind of started thinking like, well she's so cool. She does too. Like I can do that. And then is that, so my math interest specifically like math has always been one of my favorite subjects. My mom actually forced me [00:15:00] to take a computer class my eighth grade year. Oh Web design class. I actually ended up enjoying it a lot. I was actually grateful for that. And so that kind of snowballed and and then my sister during my middle school years, she kinda accepted into smash and then she'd come back like every weekend telling me all these stories. And so I was like, oh well my sister basically my biggest role model and so I wanted to experience that too. Speaker 8: You are listening to spectrum on k a l x [00:15:30] Berkeley. We're talking with representatives from LPF by the liberal clean field institute. Speaker 9: Jarvis. I was, I was really intrigued with your mentioning of steam by adding the a for art into stem. And do you feel that that's maybe the next wave of creativity coming into stem now? It'll become steam? Speaker 4: I think so. I mean there's been local religion [00:16:00] around that and um, there's definitely a lot of value because of the, again, the creativity piece I think just look at, you know, iPhone, you know Steve Jobs that was inspired by the calligraphy classmate that he had at one point that led to a lot of what, you know, did some design, right? So you couldn't have that class. Who knows what may have with the rest. She may have taken it. So I think there's this one example of how it was the art that inspired and even some of the designs of other types of devices. It's not coming [00:16:30] naturally from engineers per se, but those who had this art sort of angle ass, another flavor and 11 other level of creativity. I finish. And use my creative. But I mean you look at the creativity, you mean even for engineer who's in a, you know, hardcore class they have in that part they can add another level of dimension to their own repertoire so to speak. I think design, no different types of devices and things of that nature. Speaker 9: How about Hayley? Do you think art is something you'd be interested in including in your [00:17:00] stem, getting some studio work somehow, you know, something design oriented? Speaker 5: Uh, definitely. I think if I have a piece of art included with my programming, I could create a lot of things. Like Games are some visual. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And if it's art that I like and that I've made, then I can say I've made a whole entire game about myself or at least with a whole team and [inaudible]. [00:17:30] Yeah, that'd be really, yeah, art is very important. Speaker 9: What sort of tools and discipline has smash provided for you as you know, as individuals kind of personal tools to help you succeed? Speaker 5: It definitely time management because of all of our classes we have homework and almost each class and we will always have to manage our time because we do have free time, but if you're not going to do your homework then you're procrastinating and then that's not good. But [00:18:00] then also teamwork because we work in groups and almost every class and you have to push your group members so we can all get the project done in a timely manner. So time management ties back into that too. Speaker 6: Any advice for people who are considering joining us? Yes. For any prospective applicants are scholars, definitely time management because those things come up really quick. Getting your teacher recs in on time, getting you essays done on time [00:18:30] I guess to the future scholars or they just keep an open mind. There's a lot of different people that come and go through the program and just to take all that you can from all these different people because you're not always going to get this chance if you got accepted, like there's a reason why you're there and so take as much as you can from it. Speaker 9: He is his level playing field on Facebook and Twitter. Speaker 4: Yes, I can go to a website. Um, that'd be the LPL [inaudible] [00:19:00] dot org and you received the links there too. They connected. Speaker 6: And Are you trying to recruit either new scholars or new volunteers or anything like that? Speaker 4: Yes, we're trying to recruit new donors, so anyone who, who like what they've heard today and want to impact more scholars Kotaku website and donate. Also looking for volunteers, those who want to get connected and volunteer their time, their resources Speaker 6: and we're obviously always looking for more talented scholars like Ruby and [00:19:30] Haley, everyone from LTF Jarvis and Ellison and Ruby and Hayley, thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 8: students wishing to apply to the Smash Academy can visit www dot [inaudible] dot org slash smash online registration closes Friday, February 15th at midnight. Online applications are due Friday, March 1st [00:20:00] I had been dating potential donors can also visit the LPI website to learn more. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 8: Brad Swift joins me for some science news headlines. Speaker 9: UC Berkeley News Center reports the publication of a study by University of Texas. At Austin and University of California Berkeley researchers, Shalani Sha and Claire Kremen in the Journal, p a n a s shows landscapes with large amounts of paved roads and impervious construction [00:20:30] have lower numbers of ground nesting bumblebees, which are important native pollinators. The study suggests that increasing the number of species rich flowering patches in suburban and urban gardens, farms and restored habitats could provide pathways for bees to forage and improve pollination services over large areas. The findings have major applications for global pollinator conservation on a rapidly urbanizing planet. Though it may seem obvious that pavement and ground nesting [00:21:00] don't mix. Joss said our understanding of the effects of pavement and urban growth on native bees has been largely anecdotal, bumblebees nest in the ground and each colony contains a queen and a force of workers. Unlike honeybees, which are not native, bumblebees, do not make harvestable honey. They do, however, provide important pollination services to plants to study the bumblebees. Joe Did not scour the landscape for a nest in the ground, which has proved in the past to be very difficult, especially over large [00:21:30] areas. Instead, she analyzed the genetic relatedness of bees foraging in the landscape GI use this information plus the B's location to estimate the number of bee colonies in an area and determine how far a field the individual bees were foraging. Speaker 8: The UC Berkeley News Center reports on findings presented on Monday, December 17th at the American Society for Cell Biology's annual meeting in San Francisco. Researchers from cal and Lawrence Berkeley showed [00:22:00] that mechanical forces can revert and stop out of control. Growth of cancer cells, professor of bioengineering, Dan Fletcher, said that Tissue Organization is sensitive to mechanical input from the environment at the beginning. Stages of growth and develop the team grew Milligan breast epithelial cells in a gelatin lake substance that had been injected into flexible silicone chambers. The flexible chambers allowed the researchers to apply a compressive force [00:22:30] in the first stages of cell development. Over time, the compress malignant cells grew into more organized healthy looking structures. The researchers used time lapse microscopy over several days to show that early compression also induced coherent rotation in the malignant cells. The characteristic feature of normal development. The new center added that it should be noted that the researchers are not proposing the development of compression bras as a treatment for breast cancer. Compression in and [00:23:00] of itself is not likely to be a therapy said flusher, but this does give us new clues to track down the molecules and structures that could eventually be targeted for therapies. Speaker 9: Here's another UC Berkeley News Center report I simple, precise and inexpensive method for cutting DNA to insert genes into human cells could transform genetic medicine making routine. What now are expensive, complicated and rare procedures for replacing defective genes [00:23:30] in order to fix genetic disease or battle diseases like aids. Discovered last year by Jennifer Doudna and Martin genic of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of California Berkeley and the manual Carpentier of the laboratory molecular infection medicine in Sweden and published in science. The new technique was proven to work cutting bacterial DNA. Two new papers published last week in the journal. Science Express demonstrated that the technique also works [00:24:00] in human cells. A third new paper by Doudna and her team reporting. Similarly successful results in human cells has been accepted for publication by the new open access journal Elife. The key to the new technique involves an enzyme called CAS. Nine Doudna discovered the cas nine enzyme while working on the immune system of bacteria with evolved enzymes that cut DNA to defend themselves against viruses. Speaker 9: These bacteria [00:24:30] cut up viral DNA and stick pieces of it into their own DNA from which they make RNA that binds and inactivates the virus. This is a poster child for the role of basic science in making fundamental discoveries that affect human health. Doudna said irregular feature of spectrum is a calendar of some of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area over the next two weeks. Here's Brad Swift [00:25:00] on selected Saturdays from 9:30 AM to 1:30 PM experienced the beauty and rich natural history of Audubon Canyon ranches. 535 Acre Bovary preserve. Participants are divided into small groups and paired with a trained bovie air volunteer to explore the mixed evergreen forest flower, carpeted oak, woodland and rugged chaparral guided natural walks range from two to five miles. Visitors of all ages are welcome. [00:25:30] There is no charge, but donations are appreciated. See the website for reservation information go to ygritte.org the next three hikes are on Saturday, January 12th March 9th and March 20 third@websiteagainygritte.org here's a presentation on over-confidence in the frailty of knowledge. Speaker 9: While self confidence is a prized human attribute, too much confidence can be obnoxious, pernicious, and even deadly. This audience participation [00:26:00] skeptic will present a simple 10 question quiz to measure an important aspect of individual self confidence. With analysis and discussion of these measurements, audience members will be better able to calibrate properly their personal levels of self confidence. The ultimate goal will be a healthier skepticism towards one's own depth of knowledge about the world. This event is a joint production of the bay area skeptics and wonder fest. The Bay area beacon of science. The Speakers are Dr [00:26:30] Maryland Cologne, California State University, East Bay lecturer in psychology and Tucker Hyatt, Stanford visiting scholar and wonder fest. Founding executive director. This will be held Wednesday, January 16th at 7:30 PM until approximately 9:30 PM the location is La Pena Lounge 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley, Speaker 3: the American Association of University Whitman Presents. Do Girls Love Science. You Bet Ya. Come here. Stanford's Dr [00:27:00] Siegrid close. Explain why Dr [inaudible] close is the cohost of the 2011 series known universe which aired on the National Geographic Channel. She is an assistant professor at Stanford's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics where she heads up the space environment and satellite systems lab. This event happens Thursday, January 17th at the Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum five 70 Remington drive in Sunnyvale, California. The doors open at seven [00:27:30] announcements at seven 15 Speaker at seven 30 for more information on this free event, visit www.auw-sv-cupt.org. Speaker 9: The next science at cal lecture will be on January 19th the talk will be given by Dr Mark less girl art and is entitled the shape of our thoughts, visual perception of geometric shape. Most people think that seeing is something that happens [00:28:00] in the eyes, but many aspects of our perception of the world are determined by neural computations that occur in the brain. The visual Cortex, the part of the brain that processes vision takes up nearly a third of our cerebral real estate. Different regions of the visual cortex respond to different aspects or features of visual stimuli, less crow art. We'll discuss his work which shows how intermediate visual processing areas in the visual cortex respond to variation and object silhouettes [00:28:30] and 3D surface orientations. This lecture will happen at 11:00 AM on January 19th in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 on the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 2: [inaudible]. The music you [00:29:00] heard during say show was [inaudible] and David from his album book and acoustic is released under a creative Commons license version 3.0 spectrum was recorded and edited by me, Rick Karnofsky and by Brad Swift. Thank you for listening to spectrum. You're happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email, right. Email address is spectrum [00:29:30] dot klx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jarvis Sulcer, Allison Scott, Hailey Shavers, Ruby Alcazar, join us from the Level Playing Field Institute to discuss the year round STEM program in Bay Area High Schools for minority women. We discuss the program, how to apply, and get an idea of what it is like from Hailey and Ruby. lpfi.orgTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome [00:00:30] to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm Rick Karnofsky. Brad swift and I are the hosts of today's show stay. We're talking about science education of underrepresented minorities with the level playing field institute who run the smash. Some are math and science honors Academy that happens here [00:01:00] at Cau and at Stanford, UCLA and USC. We have the executive director, Jarvis saucer, the director of research and evaluation, Alison Scott and scholars, Ruby Alcazar and Haley Shavers. Jarvis, why don't you tell me a little bit about LPI? Speaker 4: It's a level playing philosophy to them. Our mission is to remove barriers for students of color who are pursuing degrees in stem and stem being science, technology, engineering and math, and to untapped their potential for the advancement [00:01:30] of our nation and the organism. We're founded in 2001 by Freada Kapor Klein focused on issues in the workplace around diversity and we started off Smash Academy at Berkeley in 2004 and we've continued to run the program and they've expanded to UCLA, USC and Stanford for the last couple of years.Speaker 5: Can someone summarize what Smash Academy is? So Speaker 4: smash you. They three year five week residential program for low income students with color who have we interested in pursuing stem degrees [00:02:00] in college and so we support these students through our five week residential program starting in the summer after ninth grade year and they stay with it for three years. Then we brought in additional support in the first two years of college and one of our strategic partners. Speaker 5: And can you tell me how scholars get involved in the program? Speaker 4: Most scholars come from the nine payer counties and they are first nominated by their teachers think they have to get a math and science recommendation and they go through a rigorous application process similar to what a senior in high school [00:02:30] with experience going to college. And then there's a application, they complete math assessment group interviews with staff and even current scholars than a program. And then we make a selection of the students who are about a 30% acceptance rate of students who apply. Speaker 5: How did you do find out about the program? I was friends with Rachel seems nice and she told me about the program and she said, Haley, I know you math [00:03:00] and I know you really like this so you should apply. And I was kind of skeptical. I was like, that's my summer. I'm trying to go places. She's like, just do it. And I did. I got in and it's best. It's the best. I like it. I like it a lot. Yeah.Speaker 6: Well my sister was actually a scholar before I was and so I found it from her. She's four years older than I am. The way she found out was through her guidance counselor at a high school. What kind of activities do take place over that five weeks? Speaker 7: [00:03:30] I think scholarships speak to that because they live and breathe it, breathe it. Speaker 6: It's been different almost every summer. Our schedules. We have classes five days a week, sometimes even on Sundays. So those classes include the core class like math and science and our science writing class. But we also take like tech media, engineering electronics, and then we also have guest Speakers, we call them Speakerseries. We listen to different than people that come from like stem fields and what they're doing with their lives and their careers. And [00:04:00] we also go on a lot of field trips. What's your favorite activity? Speaker 5: I think my favorite activity would have to be a field trip we took to Pixar, we got to tour the place in Emeryville and we also got to sit in on a presentation by one of the programmers who worked on brave. It was, it was really fun to see the inside of Pixar and just to see how they've created all the great movies that I've watched since I was little. Speaker 2: Yeah. [inaudible] Speaker 8: [00:04:30] you are listening to spectrum on k a l LX Berkeley. We're talking to the level playing field institute about science education of underrepresented minorities.Speaker 7: So a lot of research shows that our students come to us from schools. [00:05:00] Those are typically under-resourced, which means that they lack oftentimes access to high quality teachers, advanced placement courses that would prepare them for success in college. Um, in addition to extracurricular activities such as the ones that the scholars described that they participate in smash though, including things like computer science or robotics, which they might not have it there, high schools. And so that's a really great way smash is found to remove some of the barriers that face these students. Speaker 6: [00:05:30] Awesome. Can you talk to us a little bit more about the specific audience of underrepresented students of color that smash hopes to educate? How are their needs different? How are what they already have access to different? Speaker 7: One of the things that we find or that research demonstrates is that if you look at the science and engineering workforce, African American and Latinos make up only 7% of the entire science and engineering workforce, which is really concerning number considering that those populations [00:06:00] are rapidly growing and that the needs of our, our economy and our nation are trending towards stem occupations. And so, um, just that statistic alone speaks to the fact that, that we are leaving behind this significant person of our population and not preparing them for the skills that they'll need in the future. Speaker 4: And another interesting stat is that only being willing or harder to come to valley with copies of found almost every day that company founded by two individual colors, that's [00:06:30] the 1% and so the half and mostly who found, who found comfortable, who start companies in the bay or in the valley, people with typically with stem backgrounds. And so we have a, as Allison mentioned, a [inaudible] amount of potential in students who could be founders of their own company and really transform not only their lives but the lives of many in their community and beyond. Speaker 6: Is there something special about the bay area that would inspire programs like this to start here? Speaker 4: [00:07:00] I think that the diversity of the type of students we have in the barrier and the fact we have multiple cities represented. I mean there are students in our program say from the East Bay who we never set foot on Berkeley campus, even though it's a boat ride away. Or you have students who live in, I don't know, Penis Lou, who we never stepped foot on Stanford's campus. So that opportunity to have two world class universities in our backyard, so to speak, in our scholars, have an opportunity to experience those campuses in terms of the labs [00:07:30] and access to graduate students. And even faculty, I think makes the very unique place. Speaker 7: And in addition, there's the, obviously we have silicon valley in our backyard, so we have access to a lot of companies and employees of those companies who are very willing to come and speak to our scholars and provide [inaudible] Speaker 6: role models and back to the scholars. Um, do you participate in science and math events outside of both smash and, and the school year? Um, I actually just [00:08:00] got an internship for um, building like a teen website and my like hometown Palo Alto. I also do this thing at my school called college pathways. It's um, run by my guidance counselor and is specifically also for minorities and people of color. We go visit different campuses and uh, kind of similar to Speaker series, we have guest Speakers that we listened to. Um, a lot of them have been like engineers and entrepreneurs. Speaker 5: Um, so for me, other than smash casts, which introduced me to a lot of new programs, [00:08:30] I tend to just experiment. If I see something that I like, I'll research it and find out what's behind it and how can I learn. And that's, that's been my whole mindset since I guess my sophomore year of high school and it hasn't stopped. You have examples I have made to three mobile apps. They're very like simple. [00:09:00] I made them, so I felt like I feel really accomplished. I show like a bunch of my friends and they kind of just look at me like, this doesn't do anything. It just, you know, moves from like, you know, this is a lot of work. I've made these, I spend countless hours, you know, fixing it, make sure it doesn't have any errors. And it's, it's been good. I, my parents, they support me and even though I'm like the techie of the house, they don't really understand what I'm talking about, but [00:09:30] I explain it and they get it after a while and they're like, oh, this makes so much sense. Speaker 5: And then they start bragging to all their friends, but, but it's been good. Yeah. So you've mentioned smash cast a few times, but I don't think we've actually talked about what that is. So did you want to give a summary of smash? I think I can. Um, so smash cast is almost like the extension of our taking media class that we take over the summer and the cast stands for communications [00:10:00] and social technology. I want to say we also experiment and like get exposed to different programs. So right now we're diving into corona, which is a mobile app programming and we've learned some of the terminology and we've had a few mobile app companies come and visit us and they've talked about how they've created some of their games and we got to like test their games and uh, give them feedback. Speaker 2: [00:10:30] [inaudible] Speaker 8: you are listening to spectrum on k Alex Berkeley. We're talking with Jarvis, Alison Rubian, Hayley about smash the summer math and science honors academy. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: and what's it like [00:11:00] returning back to your regular high school after the end of the summer? He was kind of weird. How was so used to seeing the same faces? Six, six 30 but like seven ish in the morning until, you know, lights out at 11 o'clock. I guess it, I mean it's nice to go back to high school at the same time. I would always really miss smash. Smash is always what I'd look for too during the entire year. I guess it's kind of me going back to my classes also because I was the only like person of [00:11:30] color and a lot of my classes especially then like my science classes. Um, for me it was, it was kind of disappointing because my high school is, it's really small and I, I like the small atmosphere yet again. I like being surrounded by people who are driven to do better. Um, and my high school I attend, I have a small group of friends and at times they kind of have a lack of motivation to do better. Speaker 5: So I'm always there to push them. I'm like, come on you guys, [00:12:00] let's do this work, let's get it done. Um, but that smash, it was kind of vice versa. We pushed each other to a point where we did our best and we got the work done and we still had fun. And also the classes at my escort are kind of disappointing being that I have a computer science class yet there's only like five people and maybe two out of the five are really interested in the class. And then also for my math class it's [00:12:30] me and what other one other junior, because we take a higher level and we're kind of more advanced than the seniors, which is kind of disappointing being that they're kind of kind of our role models, but they're, they lack that motivation to apply for the colleges and they procrastinate a bunch and it's not good. But I think my junior class will be a really good senior class because I'm a part of it. So [00:13:00] there's LPF I help students after they go on to college. Speaker 4: Yes, we do. We have a strategic partner called beyond 12 and their primary focus is to provide support to first generation college students. I mean, effort to get to college because the city show that if a student can make it through their first two years of college, there is the chance of graduating from college significantly increases. Speaker 6: Hailey Hailey, how did you get started in stem? Speaker 5: It would have [00:13:30] to be my big cousin. He makes like custom computers for different people and I would always go over his house and just be interested in what he was building that day and he would make them look really interesting and show me all the parts. And from there I joined this weekend program that was held at a college and we just got to experience different forms of science and engineering and math and we got to take apart a computer and put it back together. [00:14:00] And I think from there I've always wanted to know how a computer works from the inside and see what I can make for other people to use. I like game design and game programming being that you play game and there may be some errors, but for the most part it's smooth and I want to be that person behind that game, writing that code so you can play. Speaker 6: How about Ruby? What got it going for you? Well, I had a really, [00:14:30] really good math teacher my eighth grade year, so middle school and I grew really close with her. It was just like a friendship that we had beyond like student teacher. I'd go to her when I have issues and we just talk like I just sit in a classroom and talk with her during lunch or something. I sweat. That initially kind of started thinking like, well she's so cool. She does too. Like I can do that. And then is that, so my math interest specifically like math has always been one of my favorite subjects. My mom actually forced me [00:15:00] to take a computer class my eighth grade year. Oh Web design class. I actually ended up enjoying it a lot. I was actually grateful for that. And so that kind of snowballed and and then my sister during my middle school years, she kinda accepted into smash and then she'd come back like every weekend telling me all these stories. And so I was like, oh well my sister basically my biggest role model and so I wanted to experience that too. Speaker 8: You are listening to spectrum on k a l x [00:15:30] Berkeley. We're talking with representatives from LPF by the liberal clean field institute. Speaker 9: Jarvis. I was, I was really intrigued with your mentioning of steam by adding the a for art into stem. And do you feel that that's maybe the next wave of creativity coming into stem now? It'll become steam? Speaker 4: I think so. I mean there's been local religion [00:16:00] around that and um, there's definitely a lot of value because of the, again, the creativity piece I think just look at, you know, iPhone, you know Steve Jobs that was inspired by the calligraphy classmate that he had at one point that led to a lot of what, you know, did some design, right? So you couldn't have that class. Who knows what may have with the rest. She may have taken it. So I think there's this one example of how it was the art that inspired and even some of the designs of other types of devices. It's not coming [00:16:30] naturally from engineers per se, but those who had this art sort of angle ass, another flavor and 11 other level of creativity. I finish. And use my creative. But I mean you look at the creativity, you mean even for engineer who's in a, you know, hardcore class they have in that part they can add another level of dimension to their own repertoire so to speak. I think design, no different types of devices and things of that nature. Speaker 9: How about Hayley? Do you think art is something you'd be interested in including in your [00:17:00] stem, getting some studio work somehow, you know, something design oriented? Speaker 5: Uh, definitely. I think if I have a piece of art included with my programming, I could create a lot of things. Like Games are some visual. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And if it's art that I like and that I've made, then I can say I've made a whole entire game about myself or at least with a whole team and [inaudible]. [00:17:30] Yeah, that'd be really, yeah, art is very important. Speaker 9: What sort of tools and discipline has smash provided for you as you know, as individuals kind of personal tools to help you succeed? Speaker 5: It definitely time management because of all of our classes we have homework and almost each class and we will always have to manage our time because we do have free time, but if you're not going to do your homework then you're procrastinating and then that's not good. But [00:18:00] then also teamwork because we work in groups and almost every class and you have to push your group members so we can all get the project done in a timely manner. So time management ties back into that too. Speaker 6: Any advice for people who are considering joining us? Yes. For any prospective applicants are scholars, definitely time management because those things come up really quick. Getting your teacher recs in on time, getting you essays done on time [00:18:30] I guess to the future scholars or they just keep an open mind. There's a lot of different people that come and go through the program and just to take all that you can from all these different people because you're not always going to get this chance if you got accepted, like there's a reason why you're there and so take as much as you can from it. Speaker 9: He is his level playing field on Facebook and Twitter. Speaker 4: Yes, I can go to a website. Um, that'd be the LPL [inaudible] [00:19:00] dot org and you received the links there too. They connected. Speaker 6: And Are you trying to recruit either new scholars or new volunteers or anything like that? Speaker 4: Yes, we're trying to recruit new donors, so anyone who, who like what they've heard today and want to impact more scholars Kotaku website and donate. Also looking for volunteers, those who want to get connected and volunteer their time, their resources Speaker 6: and we're obviously always looking for more talented scholars like Ruby and [00:19:30] Haley, everyone from LTF Jarvis and Ellison and Ruby and Hayley, thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 8: students wishing to apply to the Smash Academy can visit www dot [inaudible] dot org slash smash online registration closes Friday, February 15th at midnight. Online applications are due Friday, March 1st [00:20:00] I had been dating potential donors can also visit the LPI website to learn more. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 8: Brad Swift joins me for some science news headlines. Speaker 9: UC Berkeley News Center reports the publication of a study by University of Texas. At Austin and University of California Berkeley researchers, Shalani Sha and Claire Kremen in the Journal, p a n a s shows landscapes with large amounts of paved roads and impervious construction [00:20:30] have lower numbers of ground nesting bumblebees, which are important native pollinators. The study suggests that increasing the number of species rich flowering patches in suburban and urban gardens, farms and restored habitats could provide pathways for bees to forage and improve pollination services over large areas. The findings have major applications for global pollinator conservation on a rapidly urbanizing planet. Though it may seem obvious that pavement and ground nesting [00:21:00] don't mix. Joss said our understanding of the effects of pavement and urban growth on native bees has been largely anecdotal, bumblebees nest in the ground and each colony contains a queen and a force of workers. Unlike honeybees, which are not native, bumblebees, do not make harvestable honey. They do, however, provide important pollination services to plants to study the bumblebees. Joe Did not scour the landscape for a nest in the ground, which has proved in the past to be very difficult, especially over large [00:21:30] areas. Instead, she analyzed the genetic relatedness of bees foraging in the landscape GI use this information plus the B's location to estimate the number of bee colonies in an area and determine how far a field the individual bees were foraging. Speaker 8: The UC Berkeley News Center reports on findings presented on Monday, December 17th at the American Society for Cell Biology's annual meeting in San Francisco. Researchers from cal and Lawrence Berkeley showed [00:22:00] that mechanical forces can revert and stop out of control. Growth of cancer cells, professor of bioengineering, Dan Fletcher, said that Tissue Organization is sensitive to mechanical input from the environment at the beginning. Stages of growth and develop the team grew Milligan breast epithelial cells in a gelatin lake substance that had been injected into flexible silicone chambers. The flexible chambers allowed the researchers to apply a compressive force [00:22:30] in the first stages of cell development. Over time, the compress malignant cells grew into more organized healthy looking structures. The researchers used time lapse microscopy over several days to show that early compression also induced coherent rotation in the malignant cells. The characteristic feature of normal development. The new center added that it should be noted that the researchers are not proposing the development of compression bras as a treatment for breast cancer. Compression in and [00:23:00] of itself is not likely to be a therapy said flusher, but this does give us new clues to track down the molecules and structures that could eventually be targeted for therapies. Speaker 9: Here's another UC Berkeley News Center report I simple, precise and inexpensive method for cutting DNA to insert genes into human cells could transform genetic medicine making routine. What now are expensive, complicated and rare procedures for replacing defective genes [00:23:30] in order to fix genetic disease or battle diseases like aids. Discovered last year by Jennifer Doudna and Martin genic of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of California Berkeley and the manual Carpentier of the laboratory molecular infection medicine in Sweden and published in science. The new technique was proven to work cutting bacterial DNA. Two new papers published last week in the journal. Science Express demonstrated that the technique also works [00:24:00] in human cells. A third new paper by Doudna and her team reporting. Similarly successful results in human cells has been accepted for publication by the new open access journal Elife. The key to the new technique involves an enzyme called CAS. Nine Doudna discovered the cas nine enzyme while working on the immune system of bacteria with evolved enzymes that cut DNA to defend themselves against viruses. Speaker 9: These bacteria [00:24:30] cut up viral DNA and stick pieces of it into their own DNA from which they make RNA that binds and inactivates the virus. This is a poster child for the role of basic science in making fundamental discoveries that affect human health. Doudna said irregular feature of spectrum is a calendar of some of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area over the next two weeks. Here's Brad Swift [00:25:00] on selected Saturdays from 9:30 AM to 1:30 PM experienced the beauty and rich natural history of Audubon Canyon ranches. 535 Acre Bovary preserve. Participants are divided into small groups and paired with a trained bovie air volunteer to explore the mixed evergreen forest flower, carpeted oak, woodland and rugged chaparral guided natural walks range from two to five miles. Visitors of all ages are welcome. [00:25:30] There is no charge, but donations are appreciated. See the website for reservation information go to ygritte.org the next three hikes are on Saturday, January 12th March 9th and March 20 third@websiteagainygritte.org here's a presentation on over-confidence in the frailty of knowledge. Speaker 9: While self confidence is a prized human attribute, too much confidence can be obnoxious, pernicious, and even deadly. This audience participation [00:26:00] skeptic will present a simple 10 question quiz to measure an important aspect of individual self confidence. With analysis and discussion of these measurements, audience members will be better able to calibrate properly their personal levels of self confidence. The ultimate goal will be a healthier skepticism towards one's own depth of knowledge about the world. This event is a joint production of the bay area skeptics and wonder fest. The Bay area beacon of science. The Speakers are Dr [00:26:30] Maryland Cologne, California State University, East Bay lecturer in psychology and Tucker Hyatt, Stanford visiting scholar and wonder fest. Founding executive director. This will be held Wednesday, January 16th at 7:30 PM until approximately 9:30 PM the location is La Pena Lounge 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley, Speaker 3: the American Association of University Whitman Presents. Do Girls Love Science. You Bet Ya. Come here. Stanford's Dr [00:27:00] Siegrid close. Explain why Dr [inaudible] close is the cohost of the 2011 series known universe which aired on the National Geographic Channel. She is an assistant professor at Stanford's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics where she heads up the space environment and satellite systems lab. This event happens Thursday, January 17th at the Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum five 70 Remington drive in Sunnyvale, California. The doors open at seven [00:27:30] announcements at seven 15 Speaker at seven 30 for more information on this free event, visit www.auw-sv-cupt.org. Speaker 9: The next science at cal lecture will be on January 19th the talk will be given by Dr Mark less girl art and is entitled the shape of our thoughts, visual perception of geometric shape. Most people think that seeing is something that happens [00:28:00] in the eyes, but many aspects of our perception of the world are determined by neural computations that occur in the brain. The visual Cortex, the part of the brain that processes vision takes up nearly a third of our cerebral real estate. Different regions of the visual cortex respond to different aspects or features of visual stimuli, less crow art. We'll discuss his work which shows how intermediate visual processing areas in the visual cortex respond to variation and object silhouettes [00:28:30] and 3D surface orientations. This lecture will happen at 11:00 AM on January 19th in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 on the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 2: [inaudible]. The music you [00:29:00] heard during say show was [inaudible] and David from his album book and acoustic is released under a creative Commons license version 3.0 spectrum was recorded and edited by me, Rick Karnofsky and by Brad Swift. Thank you for listening to spectrum. You're happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email, right. Email address is spectrum [00:29:30] dot klx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Princeton and UC Berkeley trained chemist Delia Milliron is the Deputy Director of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In part two, Delia talks about her interests, the Molecular Foundry and its unique environment. foundry.lbl.govTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible] [inaudible]. [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews, featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today we present part two of our two part interview with Delia Mill Iron, [00:01:00] the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry, Delia mill iron. Received her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Princeton and her phd in physical chemistry from UC Berkeley. Delia leads a research group at the molecular foundry, which has spun off a startup named heliotrope technologies. Her group is a partner in the newly announced Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a [00:01:30] multistate department of energy research hub focused on developing transformative new battery technologies. Delia's group was recently awarded a $3 million grant by the Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects, agency energy, ARPA e for her work on smart window technologies. Now the final part two of our interview. Uh, even though nano science is a relatively new pursuit, how have the tools to execute [00:02:00] your research and development? How have they advanced? Speaker 3: The tools have progressed remarkably and many would say that our ability to see material on the nataline scale and by c I mean more than just get a picture, but also to see the specifics of the chemistry, the electronic structure and so on that these advances in tools and characterization tools have [00:02:30] been the catalyst for every other development and nanoscience because it's very difficult to move quickly forward in making new materials. For example, if you can't actually see what you're making. So starting with electron microscopy, which used the fact that electrons moving very quickly, you have a wavelength far shorter than that of light and therefore they have the ability to resolve features on the nano meter and in fact on the atomic lane scale. [00:03:00] That's tremendous, right? That's an incredible enabling capability for nanoscience. But electrons are limited in the chemical information, the electronic structure information, they can probe some of this, but light is still king. Speaker 3: So spectroscopy which is using light to probe chemical bonds and composition and so forth is still king of understanding richness, rich detail about materials. So some of the most exciting events is to me [00:03:30] in the tools for nanoscience are bringing optical spectroscopy spectroscopy using light to smaller and smaller and smaller lane scales. The state of the art, if you use conventional optics, just nice, beautifully made lenses and so on is that you can use light to look at things down to about half the wavelength of light. So for visible light that means things on the order of a few hundred nanometers. If you're doing things very, very [00:04:00] well by manipulating the light further leveraging nanoscale phenomena like the plasmonics I mentioned earlier, you can now squeeze light into extremely small volumes and do optical spectroscopy down to lane scales, tens of nanometers across, so doing full rich optical characterization and materials. Speaker 3: Basically using light microscopy at 40 nanometer lanes scales is now [00:04:30] a reality and the kind of information we can get about materials, their properties and how those are related is just going to benefit tremendously from those kinds of new advances. Are there tools that you crave? Unrealized tools? Yes, sure. I love to be able to resolve rich chemical, detailed dental. The Lane scale of Adams, you know, tens of nanometers is nice, but uh, most of our nanocrystals are smaller than this. They're five [00:05:00] nanometers. There are 10 nanometers, they're not 40 or 50 nanometers. So we still haven't quite brought light in a useful way down to the dimensions of the materials that give us the most interesting properties. The other major thing many of us crave is to bring detailed characterization into three dimensions and really four dimensions. So how they're arranged in three dimensional space definitely affects their properties, but it's difficult [00:05:30] to image. Speaker 3: So microscopic tools still often look at the surface of material and so you get a two dimensional map at high resolution. It's much more difficult to get high resolution images and information in three dimensions. And then the fourth dimension is of course time. So being able to follow a structure and the flow of energy and electrons in three dimensional space as it progresses in time, pushing time resolution shorter and shorter and shorter. Can [00:06:00] we track those processes? So that we can understand how function emerges. Because function is very often dynamic in nature. It's not just a static moment in time. It's the way that chemistry and electrons and so forth progress over time. Explain the user program at the foundry. How do people get involved in that? Sure. So the, the user program provides free access to scientists from all over the world [00:06:30] who have an interest in leveraging expertise, materials, capabilities, techniques and so on that we developed at the foundry to advance their science or technology. Speaker 3: And the mode that people use, the foundry takes all different forms. Uh, one of our favorites is for scientists to send a student or postdoc or a young researcher or in fact visit themselves, for example, for a sabbatical and then actually work with us. I buy side in our lab [00:07:00] can best learn the INS and outs of working with synthesizing, measuring whatever it is, the materials and techniques of interest to them. Um, we found that this is a very powerful way to expose young scholars to the potential for interdisciplinary research as we exercise it at the foundry for this new mode of doing science where people from all different disciplines are talking every day about problems to advance a state [00:07:30] of the art. That's been very productive and I think those students and postdocs go home really changed in their outlook on how they approach science and they bring some of that perspective back to their home labs. Speaker 3: They also, by the way, bring some perspective on our safety approach back to their home labs. And we really enjoy the success stories of having companies even and also academic research lab to use our approach to safety in particular [00:08:00] nanomaterial safety but safety in general as a blueprint for setting up their own labs or for reinvigorating the safety culture and so on if their own institution. So this mode of people coming and working with us and engaging in all with a whole variety of scientists and techniques in our labs and then going back home is then tremendously effective. We also spend time, you know, shipping samples back and forth, doing some characterization on other people's materials or vice versa, shipping our materials [00:08:30] out to people who have specialized characterization, approaches that compliment what we do well and this is in the spirit, I would say of good scientific collaboration in general. But the most exciting thing by far is to bring people together and mix up their ideas and their concepts and see new things emerge. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: you are listening to spectrum [00:09:00] on KALX Berkeley, our guest Delia mill iron of Lawrence Berkeley national lab is talking about her work in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: can you talk about the safety guidelines that are in place at the molecular foundry and in working with nanomaterials? Speaker 3: Yeah, so nanomaterials because it's a relatively new science to deliberately craft them, [00:09:30] we still don't know in many cases, the ways in which their toxicology and the risk of exposure may differ from the same material found in bulk form. And because we have this uncertainty, we owe it to ourselves and to the environment to treat them with an elevated level of care. And so the Department of Energy was actually the first agency in the u s to create specific guidelines for handling [00:10:00] nanoscale materials in laboratory environments. I was actually part of that process several years ago and that policy is updated every year and it forms the basis for what we implement on the ground in the lab terms of safety procedures. For example, we're particularly concerned about any nanomaterials that are not firmly bound within a matrix or firmly bound to a substrate because these have the potential to become airborne [00:10:30] or volatilized or something like this. Speaker 3: So that we most focus on these, which we call it quote unquote unbound engineered nanoparticles, engineered meaning deliberately created and these are always handled in enclosed ventilated environments. So for us, things like glove boxes and fume hoods and then we validate that those kinds of environments do indeed protect workers from exposure by doing low background tests for particle counts during agitated [00:11:00] procedures. So we exaggerate the potential risk. We reduce the background particle count in the lab with a portable clean room and we use a very sensitive particle counter to see if any countable particles are generated in the workspace of the actual scientists working in the lab. Um, and this helps us form systematic approaches to handling materials in ways that don't cause any exposure. Speaker 2: Is the toxicology of nanomaterials [00:11:30] a growing area of study? And what about the interaction of nanomaterials outside of the lab in the environment? Speaker 3: Yes, definitely toxicology is a growing area of study, but you raise an important point, which is even before a nano material that's out in the world can interact with a biological organism. It experiences the environment. And so the first thing that's maybe preliminary in a way, but it is now taking place at the same time as [00:12:00] to understand the fate of nano materials in the environment. So how do they move through different kinds of soil and medium because surface effects are so important. How do molecules that are just found very commonly around us adhere to the surfaces and change the properties of the nanomaterials before they ever encounter the biological organisms because that will have a big effect then on their toxicology. So the fate of Nano materials in the environment is definitely a growing [00:12:30] area of study and we've had scientists at the foundry who have collaborated with geologists for example, to understand how soil conditions and ph and so forth can affect the transport of nanomaterials that are under consideration for solar energy applications. Should they end up released, how would they respond in different kinds of soil environments and be transported or or not. In some cases they are not readily transported and that's equally important to understand Speaker 2: [inaudible] so it becomes [00:13:00] a life cycle study. Yes, materials and those things can take a long time to really get a grasp of what the impact is. How then do we gauge the extent to which nanomaterials get leveraged in the short term and monitor the longterm impacts [inaudible] Speaker 3: I think monitoring is an important point, right? It will take even longer if we're not paying attention to learn how things interact with the environment and what their fate ultimately is. So the [00:13:30] science in the lab is important, but the science as technologies begin to be released is, is equally important to track what's happening in the real world. Um, in the meantime, it's important to be thoughtful about the expected life cycle of technologies, incorporating Nana materials. So recycling programs, encapsulation recovery, assessment of likelihood of release from a completed say [00:14:00] device, like a solar cell solar cells are completely encapsulated in glass, right? So the initial thought would be, well, if this, if everything's going right, there will be no nanomaterials released. But now what if that panel breaks? What's the likelihood of that? So asking these questions upfront and taking, you know, a responsible role in the life cycle of the technology, I think is essential, particularly given the uncertainties. Speaker 4: [inaudible] [00:14:30] our guest is Delia Mil iron, the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry. She was a chemist working at the Nano scale. You are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Speaker 3: How much time do you spend paying attention [00:15:00] to other areas of science and technology? As much as I possibly can. I think inspiration in science comes from broad perspective and so I am as far as I could get from being a biologist as a physical scientist, but the concepts of how biological systems work are quite intricate and inspiring though new discoveries in biomechanical [00:15:30] processes and so on can become the seed. That gives me a new idea of how to put nanocrystals together in a way that generates totally new phenomena, for example. It's also just fascinating, honestly. I mean I've always been fascinated with science, so paying attention to the uh, developments and the exploration of Mars or in astrophysics. There's a tremendous fundamental physics community at the lab and I love to listen to them talk about the [00:16:00] discoveries they're making through telescope observations of distant supernovas and these sorts of things. Speaker 3: I won't say that I can point to any direct impact that's had on my work. But I think expanding your general perspective on the way the world works at all these different length scales and timescales and so on, it forms your context as a scientist and you know, maybe as a person as well. Are there collaborations in other fields you'd like to see grow? [00:16:30] So this idea of connecting biology more deliberately are the concepts of biology more deliberately to materials research, which is my area of investigation I think is quite powerful and under exploited at this stage. It's amazing what molecular biologists now understand about the mechanisms that underlie life and how molecules [00:17:00] interact in elaborate ways to synthesize DNA, to create proteins to, you know, at completely mild conditions, fold proteins up and do catalytic activity. Things that in the engineering world, you know, have traditionally been approached by brute force, you know, thousands of degrees c and so on. And so if we can take some of these concepts from biology and see [00:17:30] how they can affect the way we approach synthetic materials to a greater extent, I think this will be a very important opportunity. Of course there are some people doing this. I don't want to suggest that that's a totally new idea, but I think that connection could be a much broader avenue than what it has been so far. Do you feel there's an element of art in what you do? Speaker 3: I think so. I definitely enjoy art, although not highly skilled. [00:18:00] My Adventures and creating sculpture, you know, clay wood and so on in my mind are in harmony with what we do on the atomic length scale in the way we try to craft nanoscale materials or madams and then craft macro scale materials from those nanoscale materials, putting them together as these building blocks and it has a sculptural aspect to it. And definitely there's beauty in the images generated when we use all these amazing [00:18:30] cutting edge techniques to visualize our structures. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you wanted to mention? I think the other comment I'd like to make going back to the molecular foundry and I lit up when you asked me, you know, what's the foundry about? Because I really think that the research environment do, the approach to scientific research being carried out at the molecular foundry is [00:19:00] a beautiful example for the way forward for science that science can be greatly accelerated in discovery of new terrain, new subject areas entirely through this mode of intense dynamic collaboration across fields. Speaker 3: I think it was somewhat deliberate and at the same time a bit of an accident that this emerged from the creation of the molecular foundry. What the [00:19:30] founders of the foundry did that was very smart was to hire a group of very young scientists who had an approach to science where they would clearly appreciate being involved in many different projects coming from many different perspectives. This was essential to make the user program work on your scientists must be enthusiastic about collaborating with all these different scientists who have different objectives, [00:20:00] different contexts and so on, but as a consequence of hiring that group of people and putting them together in one building, what naturally happened is we all started to interact in the same way with each other and the result is that you have a coupled series of dynamic feedback loops that greatly accelerate innovation. Speaker 3: One of them being between our science and that of our users and one of them being between the scientists internal to the building and [00:20:30] the results of that experiment really in scientific structure that's represented by the foundry are just starting to appear because we're still quite a young institution and I think that the impact of this sort of model is going to felt for a long time and is going to be replicated and mapped onto other research centers. We've already seen a lot of interests in understanding the way we do our science as research centers are being set up around the [00:21:00] world and that doesn't happen very often. That's an exciting deviation from the traditional department structure, single principal investigator directed research, as brilliant as one scientists and the research group may be. It lacks that dynamism that we have. So it's sort of a high of mentality to science, if you will, and that's really interesting and gonna yield a lot of fruit, I think. Speaker 2: Delia mill iron. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank [00:21:30] you. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: tours of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab are available monthly. The molecular foundry is on that tour. Just sign up for a tour, go to the Lawrence Berkeley [00:22:00] national lab website, which is lbl.gov Speaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: A regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening over the next two weeks. It's quiet time of the year, not a whole lot going on, but the Lawrence Hall of Science 3d Theater has daily screenings [00:22:30] of two films, space junk, and the last reef space junk is a visually explosive journey of discovery that ways the solutions aimed at restoring our planets. Orbits Space Junk runs through January 6th, 2013 the last reef was made with new macro underwater cinematography. The last reef reveals and astonishing world rarely seen at this scale. The film presents an unprecedented vision of the intriguing creatures that participate [00:23:00] in altering the geology of our planet. The last reef runs through May 5th, 2013 the exploratorium is leaving its only home at the Palace of fine arts and moving to piers 15 and 17 on the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco. The new exploratorium will open in the spring of 2013 this coming January 2nd is the last day to experience the exploratorium as it is currently installed at the Palace of fine arts opened in 1969 [00:23:30] the exploratorium has evolved in this unwieldy space for 43 years. Catch one final glimpse. Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013 check the exploratorium website for special events on that final day. The website is exploratorium.edu Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: for the new segment. I want to do something a little different. As the year [00:24:00] draws to a close. I want to offer a short update on salient, national and commercial space launch ventures. Starting with the u s NASA reports that the Orien spacecraft is coming together for its 2014 test flight. Orianna is a new capsule that will take human exploration beyond earth orbit for the first time in 40 years. The first unmanned flight test of Orien will be launched a top a Delta for rocket from Cape Kennedy. The capsule [00:24:30] will be flown 3,600 miles above the earth and then return to the earth at 5,000 miles per hour for re-entry. The reentry will test the heat yields the landing at sea and the u s navy's recovery of the capsule. The longer term plans are to test the same capsule launched on NASA's next heavy lift rocket dubbed the space launch system. Speaker 2: SLS in 2017 SLS will launch NASA's Orient Spacecraft and other [00:25:00] payloads beyond lower earth orbit providing an entirely new capability for human exploration. Space x, the U S Commercial Space Company has completed the first of a contracted 12 supply missions to the international space station. Space X is also working with NASA to develop and test the dragon capsule to allow it to transport humans to and from the international space station. On that point. In August, NASA announced the winners [00:25:30] of the commercial crew integrated capability funded space act agreements. This program is designed to supply NASA with a domestic commercial capability to transport humans into low earth orbit, specifically to the International Space Station and back. The winning companies are Boeing with a $460 million contract space x at $440 million and Sierra Nevada corporation receiving 212.5 million. [00:26:00] In June, 2012 China launched this shungite in nine spacecraft, a top a long march rocket. The spacecraft carried three crew members on a mission to dock with the Chinese space station. The mission was successful and is widely regarded as a major accomplishment for the Chinese based program. The mission will be repeated. In 2013 India marked its 101st space mission. October 1st of 2012 [00:26:30] with the launch of its heaviest communications. Satellite Gee sat 10 from French Guyana. The Indian Space Research Organization has 10 mission scheduled for 2013 the tentative capper is a plan in November, 2013 Mars orbiter to be done without any international help. Speaker 2: The Russian space program continues to struggle after a series of embarrassing failures in spacecraft launches and flight operations that have cast [00:27:00] the future of the entire program. In doubt, observers fear that the rise of cheaper, more modern and reliable commercial space companies in the United States will peel off Russia's spaced services customers who currently infuse $1 billion annually into the Russian space. Industry. Insiders say consolidation, innovation, and modernization are required to save the industry. Leadership and funding for such a revival program are missing. At this point. The European space [00:27:30] agency successfully launched seven Ariane five rockets from their space port in French, Guyana during 2012 the Arianne five has had 53 successful launches in a row since December, 2002 Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 2: an interesting space, junk liability arose for the European Space Agency. When a large lower earth orbit satellite nearing the end of its fuel supply suddenly went silent. The satellite is now stuck in a prime orbit corridor [00:28:00] that will take 100 years to degrade and fall to earth during the next 100 years. This satellite may collide with other satellites. If it does, the European Space Agency is thought to be liable for the damage done. No removal method of space. Junk currently exists. That's it. Happy New Year. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: [00:28:30] the music heard on the show is by Los [inaudible]. David from his album folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license. 3.0 Speaker 1: attribution. [inaudible] thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to my severe eating and address is spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com [00:29:00] chumminess in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:29:30] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Princeton and UC Berkeley trained chemist Delia Milliron is the Deputy Director of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In part two, Delia talks about her interests, the Molecular Foundry and its unique environment. foundry.lbl.govTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible] [inaudible]. [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews, featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today we present part two of our two part interview with Delia Mill Iron, [00:01:00] the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry, Delia mill iron. Received her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Princeton and her phd in physical chemistry from UC Berkeley. Delia leads a research group at the molecular foundry, which has spun off a startup named heliotrope technologies. Her group is a partner in the newly announced Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a [00:01:30] multistate department of energy research hub focused on developing transformative new battery technologies. Delia's group was recently awarded a $3 million grant by the Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects, agency energy, ARPA e for her work on smart window technologies. Now the final part two of our interview. Uh, even though nano science is a relatively new pursuit, how have the tools to execute [00:02:00] your research and development? How have they advanced? Speaker 3: The tools have progressed remarkably and many would say that our ability to see material on the nataline scale and by c I mean more than just get a picture, but also to see the specifics of the chemistry, the electronic structure and so on that these advances in tools and characterization tools have [00:02:30] been the catalyst for every other development and nanoscience because it's very difficult to move quickly forward in making new materials. For example, if you can't actually see what you're making. So starting with electron microscopy, which used the fact that electrons moving very quickly, you have a wavelength far shorter than that of light and therefore they have the ability to resolve features on the nano meter and in fact on the atomic lane scale. [00:03:00] That's tremendous, right? That's an incredible enabling capability for nanoscience. But electrons are limited in the chemical information, the electronic structure information, they can probe some of this, but light is still king. Speaker 3: So spectroscopy which is using light to probe chemical bonds and composition and so forth is still king of understanding richness, rich detail about materials. So some of the most exciting events is to me [00:03:30] in the tools for nanoscience are bringing optical spectroscopy spectroscopy using light to smaller and smaller and smaller lane scales. The state of the art, if you use conventional optics, just nice, beautifully made lenses and so on is that you can use light to look at things down to about half the wavelength of light. So for visible light that means things on the order of a few hundred nanometers. If you're doing things very, very [00:04:00] well by manipulating the light further leveraging nanoscale phenomena like the plasmonics I mentioned earlier, you can now squeeze light into extremely small volumes and do optical spectroscopy down to lane scales, tens of nanometers across, so doing full rich optical characterization and materials. Speaker 3: Basically using light microscopy at 40 nanometer lanes scales is now [00:04:30] a reality and the kind of information we can get about materials, their properties and how those are related is just going to benefit tremendously from those kinds of new advances. Are there tools that you crave? Unrealized tools? Yes, sure. I love to be able to resolve rich chemical, detailed dental. The Lane scale of Adams, you know, tens of nanometers is nice, but uh, most of our nanocrystals are smaller than this. They're five [00:05:00] nanometers. There are 10 nanometers, they're not 40 or 50 nanometers. So we still haven't quite brought light in a useful way down to the dimensions of the materials that give us the most interesting properties. The other major thing many of us crave is to bring detailed characterization into three dimensions and really four dimensions. So how they're arranged in three dimensional space definitely affects their properties, but it's difficult [00:05:30] to image. Speaker 3: So microscopic tools still often look at the surface of material and so you get a two dimensional map at high resolution. It's much more difficult to get high resolution images and information in three dimensions. And then the fourth dimension is of course time. So being able to follow a structure and the flow of energy and electrons in three dimensional space as it progresses in time, pushing time resolution shorter and shorter and shorter. Can [00:06:00] we track those processes? So that we can understand how function emerges. Because function is very often dynamic in nature. It's not just a static moment in time. It's the way that chemistry and electrons and so forth progress over time. Explain the user program at the foundry. How do people get involved in that? Sure. So the, the user program provides free access to scientists from all over the world [00:06:30] who have an interest in leveraging expertise, materials, capabilities, techniques and so on that we developed at the foundry to advance their science or technology. Speaker 3: And the mode that people use, the foundry takes all different forms. Uh, one of our favorites is for scientists to send a student or postdoc or a young researcher or in fact visit themselves, for example, for a sabbatical and then actually work with us. I buy side in our lab [00:07:00] can best learn the INS and outs of working with synthesizing, measuring whatever it is, the materials and techniques of interest to them. Um, we found that this is a very powerful way to expose young scholars to the potential for interdisciplinary research as we exercise it at the foundry for this new mode of doing science where people from all different disciplines are talking every day about problems to advance a state [00:07:30] of the art. That's been very productive and I think those students and postdocs go home really changed in their outlook on how they approach science and they bring some of that perspective back to their home labs. Speaker 3: They also, by the way, bring some perspective on our safety approach back to their home labs. And we really enjoy the success stories of having companies even and also academic research lab to use our approach to safety in particular [00:08:00] nanomaterial safety but safety in general as a blueprint for setting up their own labs or for reinvigorating the safety culture and so on if their own institution. So this mode of people coming and working with us and engaging in all with a whole variety of scientists and techniques in our labs and then going back home is then tremendously effective. We also spend time, you know, shipping samples back and forth, doing some characterization on other people's materials or vice versa, shipping our materials [00:08:30] out to people who have specialized characterization, approaches that compliment what we do well and this is in the spirit, I would say of good scientific collaboration in general. But the most exciting thing by far is to bring people together and mix up their ideas and their concepts and see new things emerge. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: you are listening to spectrum [00:09:00] on KALX Berkeley, our guest Delia mill iron of Lawrence Berkeley national lab is talking about her work in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: can you talk about the safety guidelines that are in place at the molecular foundry and in working with nanomaterials? Speaker 3: Yeah, so nanomaterials because it's a relatively new science to deliberately craft them, [00:09:30] we still don't know in many cases, the ways in which their toxicology and the risk of exposure may differ from the same material found in bulk form. And because we have this uncertainty, we owe it to ourselves and to the environment to treat them with an elevated level of care. And so the Department of Energy was actually the first agency in the u s to create specific guidelines for handling [00:10:00] nanoscale materials in laboratory environments. I was actually part of that process several years ago and that policy is updated every year and it forms the basis for what we implement on the ground in the lab terms of safety procedures. For example, we're particularly concerned about any nanomaterials that are not firmly bound within a matrix or firmly bound to a substrate because these have the potential to become airborne [00:10:30] or volatilized or something like this. Speaker 3: So that we most focus on these, which we call it quote unquote unbound engineered nanoparticles, engineered meaning deliberately created and these are always handled in enclosed ventilated environments. So for us, things like glove boxes and fume hoods and then we validate that those kinds of environments do indeed protect workers from exposure by doing low background tests for particle counts during agitated [00:11:00] procedures. So we exaggerate the potential risk. We reduce the background particle count in the lab with a portable clean room and we use a very sensitive particle counter to see if any countable particles are generated in the workspace of the actual scientists working in the lab. Um, and this helps us form systematic approaches to handling materials in ways that don't cause any exposure. Speaker 2: Is the toxicology of nanomaterials [00:11:30] a growing area of study? And what about the interaction of nanomaterials outside of the lab in the environment? Speaker 3: Yes, definitely toxicology is a growing area of study, but you raise an important point, which is even before a nano material that's out in the world can interact with a biological organism. It experiences the environment. And so the first thing that's maybe preliminary in a way, but it is now taking place at the same time as [00:12:00] to understand the fate of nano materials in the environment. So how do they move through different kinds of soil and medium because surface effects are so important. How do molecules that are just found very commonly around us adhere to the surfaces and change the properties of the nanomaterials before they ever encounter the biological organisms because that will have a big effect then on their toxicology. So the fate of Nano materials in the environment is definitely a growing [00:12:30] area of study and we've had scientists at the foundry who have collaborated with geologists for example, to understand how soil conditions and ph and so forth can affect the transport of nanomaterials that are under consideration for solar energy applications. Should they end up released, how would they respond in different kinds of soil environments and be transported or or not. In some cases they are not readily transported and that's equally important to understand Speaker 2: [inaudible] so it becomes [00:13:00] a life cycle study. Yes, materials and those things can take a long time to really get a grasp of what the impact is. How then do we gauge the extent to which nanomaterials get leveraged in the short term and monitor the longterm impacts [inaudible] Speaker 3: I think monitoring is an important point, right? It will take even longer if we're not paying attention to learn how things interact with the environment and what their fate ultimately is. So the [00:13:30] science in the lab is important, but the science as technologies begin to be released is, is equally important to track what's happening in the real world. Um, in the meantime, it's important to be thoughtful about the expected life cycle of technologies, incorporating Nana materials. So recycling programs, encapsulation recovery, assessment of likelihood of release from a completed say [00:14:00] device, like a solar cell solar cells are completely encapsulated in glass, right? So the initial thought would be, well, if this, if everything's going right, there will be no nanomaterials released. But now what if that panel breaks? What's the likelihood of that? So asking these questions upfront and taking, you know, a responsible role in the life cycle of the technology, I think is essential, particularly given the uncertainties. Speaker 4: [inaudible] [00:14:30] our guest is Delia Mil iron, the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry. She was a chemist working at the Nano scale. You are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Speaker 3: How much time do you spend paying attention [00:15:00] to other areas of science and technology? As much as I possibly can. I think inspiration in science comes from broad perspective and so I am as far as I could get from being a biologist as a physical scientist, but the concepts of how biological systems work are quite intricate and inspiring though new discoveries in biomechanical [00:15:30] processes and so on can become the seed. That gives me a new idea of how to put nanocrystals together in a way that generates totally new phenomena, for example. It's also just fascinating, honestly. I mean I've always been fascinated with science, so paying attention to the uh, developments and the exploration of Mars or in astrophysics. There's a tremendous fundamental physics community at the lab and I love to listen to them talk about the [00:16:00] discoveries they're making through telescope observations of distant supernovas and these sorts of things. Speaker 3: I won't say that I can point to any direct impact that's had on my work. But I think expanding your general perspective on the way the world works at all these different length scales and timescales and so on, it forms your context as a scientist and you know, maybe as a person as well. Are there collaborations in other fields you'd like to see grow? [00:16:30] So this idea of connecting biology more deliberately are the concepts of biology more deliberately to materials research, which is my area of investigation I think is quite powerful and under exploited at this stage. It's amazing what molecular biologists now understand about the mechanisms that underlie life and how molecules [00:17:00] interact in elaborate ways to synthesize DNA, to create proteins to, you know, at completely mild conditions, fold proteins up and do catalytic activity. Things that in the engineering world, you know, have traditionally been approached by brute force, you know, thousands of degrees c and so on. And so if we can take some of these concepts from biology and see [00:17:30] how they can affect the way we approach synthetic materials to a greater extent, I think this will be a very important opportunity. Of course there are some people doing this. I don't want to suggest that that's a totally new idea, but I think that connection could be a much broader avenue than what it has been so far. Do you feel there's an element of art in what you do? Speaker 3: I think so. I definitely enjoy art, although not highly skilled. [00:18:00] My Adventures and creating sculpture, you know, clay wood and so on in my mind are in harmony with what we do on the atomic length scale in the way we try to craft nanoscale materials or madams and then craft macro scale materials from those nanoscale materials, putting them together as these building blocks and it has a sculptural aspect to it. And definitely there's beauty in the images generated when we use all these amazing [00:18:30] cutting edge techniques to visualize our structures. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you wanted to mention? I think the other comment I'd like to make going back to the molecular foundry and I lit up when you asked me, you know, what's the foundry about? Because I really think that the research environment do, the approach to scientific research being carried out at the molecular foundry is [00:19:00] a beautiful example for the way forward for science that science can be greatly accelerated in discovery of new terrain, new subject areas entirely through this mode of intense dynamic collaboration across fields. Speaker 3: I think it was somewhat deliberate and at the same time a bit of an accident that this emerged from the creation of the molecular foundry. What the [00:19:30] founders of the foundry did that was very smart was to hire a group of very young scientists who had an approach to science where they would clearly appreciate being involved in many different projects coming from many different perspectives. This was essential to make the user program work on your scientists must be enthusiastic about collaborating with all these different scientists who have different objectives, [00:20:00] different contexts and so on, but as a consequence of hiring that group of people and putting them together in one building, what naturally happened is we all started to interact in the same way with each other and the result is that you have a coupled series of dynamic feedback loops that greatly accelerate innovation. Speaker 3: One of them being between our science and that of our users and one of them being between the scientists internal to the building and [00:20:30] the results of that experiment really in scientific structure that's represented by the foundry are just starting to appear because we're still quite a young institution and I think that the impact of this sort of model is going to felt for a long time and is going to be replicated and mapped onto other research centers. We've already seen a lot of interests in understanding the way we do our science as research centers are being set up around the [00:21:00] world and that doesn't happen very often. That's an exciting deviation from the traditional department structure, single principal investigator directed research, as brilliant as one scientists and the research group may be. It lacks that dynamism that we have. So it's sort of a high of mentality to science, if you will, and that's really interesting and gonna yield a lot of fruit, I think. Speaker 2: Delia mill iron. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank [00:21:30] you. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: tours of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab are available monthly. The molecular foundry is on that tour. Just sign up for a tour, go to the Lawrence Berkeley [00:22:00] national lab website, which is lbl.gov Speaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: A regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening over the next two weeks. It's quiet time of the year, not a whole lot going on, but the Lawrence Hall of Science 3d Theater has daily screenings [00:22:30] of two films, space junk, and the last reef space junk is a visually explosive journey of discovery that ways the solutions aimed at restoring our planets. Orbits Space Junk runs through January 6th, 2013 the last reef was made with new macro underwater cinematography. The last reef reveals and astonishing world rarely seen at this scale. The film presents an unprecedented vision of the intriguing creatures that participate [00:23:00] in altering the geology of our planet. The last reef runs through May 5th, 2013 the exploratorium is leaving its only home at the Palace of fine arts and moving to piers 15 and 17 on the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco. The new exploratorium will open in the spring of 2013 this coming January 2nd is the last day to experience the exploratorium as it is currently installed at the Palace of fine arts opened in 1969 [00:23:30] the exploratorium has evolved in this unwieldy space for 43 years. Catch one final glimpse. Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013 check the exploratorium website for special events on that final day. The website is exploratorium.edu Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: for the new segment. I want to do something a little different. As the year [00:24:00] draws to a close. I want to offer a short update on salient, national and commercial space launch ventures. Starting with the u s NASA reports that the Orien spacecraft is coming together for its 2014 test flight. Orianna is a new capsule that will take human exploration beyond earth orbit for the first time in 40 years. The first unmanned flight test of Orien will be launched a top a Delta for rocket from Cape Kennedy. The capsule [00:24:30] will be flown 3,600 miles above the earth and then return to the earth at 5,000 miles per hour for re-entry. The reentry will test the heat yields the landing at sea and the u s navy's recovery of the capsule. The longer term plans are to test the same capsule launched on NASA's next heavy lift rocket dubbed the space launch system. Speaker 2: SLS in 2017 SLS will launch NASA's Orient Spacecraft and other [00:25:00] payloads beyond lower earth orbit providing an entirely new capability for human exploration. Space x, the U S Commercial Space Company has completed the first of a contracted 12 supply missions to the international space station. Space X is also working with NASA to develop and test the dragon capsule to allow it to transport humans to and from the international space station. On that point. In August, NASA announced the winners [00:25:30] of the commercial crew integrated capability funded space act agreements. This program is designed to supply NASA with a domestic commercial capability to transport humans into low earth orbit, specifically to the International Space Station and back. The winning companies are Boeing with a $460 million contract space x at $440 million and Sierra Nevada corporation receiving 212.5 million. [00:26:00] In June, 2012 China launched this shungite in nine spacecraft, a top a long march rocket. The spacecraft carried three crew members on a mission to dock with the Chinese space station. The mission was successful and is widely regarded as a major accomplishment for the Chinese based program. The mission will be repeated. In 2013 India marked its 101st space mission. October 1st of 2012 [00:26:30] with the launch of its heaviest communications. Satellite Gee sat 10 from French Guyana. The Indian Space Research Organization has 10 mission scheduled for 2013 the tentative capper is a plan in November, 2013 Mars orbiter to be done without any international help. Speaker 2: The Russian space program continues to struggle after a series of embarrassing failures in spacecraft launches and flight operations that have cast [00:27:00] the future of the entire program. In doubt, observers fear that the rise of cheaper, more modern and reliable commercial space companies in the United States will peel off Russia's spaced services customers who currently infuse $1 billion annually into the Russian space. Industry. Insiders say consolidation, innovation, and modernization are required to save the industry. Leadership and funding for such a revival program are missing. At this point. The European space [00:27:30] agency successfully launched seven Ariane five rockets from their space port in French, Guyana during 2012 the Arianne five has had 53 successful launches in a row since December, 2002 Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 2: an interesting space, junk liability arose for the European Space Agency. When a large lower earth orbit satellite nearing the end of its fuel supply suddenly went silent. The satellite is now stuck in a prime orbit corridor [00:28:00] that will take 100 years to degrade and fall to earth during the next 100 years. This satellite may collide with other satellites. If it does, the European Space Agency is thought to be liable for the damage done. No removal method of space. Junk currently exists. That's it. Happy New Year. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: [00:28:30] the music heard on the show is by Los [inaudible]. David from his album folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license. 3.0 Speaker 1: attribution. [inaudible] thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to my severe eating and address is spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com [00:29:00] chumminess in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:29:30] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Princeton and UC Berkeley trained chemist Delia Milliron is the Deputy Director of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In part one, Delia explains Nano Science and Technology. She talks about her research with nanocrystals to make thin films. foundry.lbl.govTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm Speaker 3: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome [00:00:30] to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 4: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today is part one of a two part interview with Delia Mil Iron, the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry, [00:01:00] Delia mill iron is a chemist. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton and her phd from UC Berkeley. Delia leads a research group at the molecular foundry which has recently spun off a startup named heliotrope technologies for group is a partner in the newly announced Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a multistate department of energy research hub focused on developing transformative new battery technology. Delios group was recently awarded a $3 million grant [00:01:30] by the Department of Energy Advanced Research projects, agency dash energy by e for her work on smart window technologies onto the interview. Delia mill iron. Welcome to spectrum. Speaker 5: Thank you.Speaker 4: I suspect that most of our listeners have heard of nanoscience but don't have a lot of perspective on the detail. Would you explain what makes nanoscience and nanotechnology unique? Speaker 5: Sure, [00:02:00] so nano science is about investigating how the properties of matter change sometimes quite dramatically when we structure them on the nanometers scale, which is really the molecular scale. So in a sense it's quite related to chemistry, but it's about materials and matter and how their behavior is very different than what you'd expect from macroscopic pieces of material. Would you like some examples? [00:02:30] Sure. An example would be great. Okay. A classic example is to look at the optical properties or just the visible appearance of gold and everyone knows, of course, when gold is macroscopic, it's shiny and it's yellowish and we're very used to that form of gold. When you make gold in the form of nanoparticles, the things that are, let's say between five and 50 nanometers across [00:03:00] or containing a few thousand atoms per particle, then the gold no longer looks either yellow or shiny. In fact, you can make stable dispersion or solution of gold at that scale in water. And it appears translucent and red in color. And this effect of Nano scaling and gold has been used to color artistic objects for centuries, but we've only recently become to systematically [00:03:30] understand the science of how these sorts of properties can change so dramatically when we make materials in the nanoscale. Speaker 4: So the actual doing of it has been done for a long time, but the understanding is what's more recent and then the ability to recreate Speaker 5: and the ability to control and deliberately manipulate. Yes. So there are plenty of instances of incidental or almost accidental creation of nanoscale materials and [00:04:00] utilization of these nanoscale effects on properties. But the science of it is about systematically correlating the structure and composition and materials to their properties. And then the nanotechnology or the engineering of of nanoscale materials is about deliberately controlling those properties to create new functional things, objects, devices and so on that we can use for useful things all around us. Speaker 4: And what are some of the common things [00:04:30] that we find nano technology in in our daily lives? Speaker 5: As with any new technology. The first applications are fairly pedestrian in some sense and don't require the most exquisite control over the materials. So one that's quite common is to use metal oxide nanocrystals. Typically things like zinc oxide or titanium oxide in sunblock. These materials absorb UV radiation to [00:05:00] protect our skin from damage from UV. But because they're at the nano scale, instead of looking white, it can be clear. And so it's just that ugly, much more pleasing to put on some block that then appears clear, but still does the job of blocking UV radiation. So this doesn't require a very fine control over the details of the structure or the size of the material. It's only important that the scale of the oxide particles be well below the wavelength [00:05:30] of light, and that's what makes it clear. So it's a very simple use, but nonetheless, very practical and helpful. Speaker 4: What are you finding are the challenges of working with nanoscale material? Speaker 5: It's all about taking that control to the next level. Chemists have learned for a long time how to manipulate atoms and create bonds and put them together into small molecules. Now we're working with structures of [00:06:00] a somewhat larger length scale and wanting to control different aspects of the composition and structure. So there are no ready solutions for deliberately arranging the atoms into let's say a five nanometer crystal with precision, um, in order to generate the properties that you'd like or again, just understand them frankly. So both the creation of materials with precise control and detailed understanding of what their structure is are still very [00:06:30] big challenges. Of course conventional microscopy methods don't extend very well to these small length scales. So there's a need for new characterization approaches. And then as I said, the chemical methods for making molecules and small molecular systems likewise don't necessarily translate to the slightly bigger scale that is nanometer length scale of these materials. Speaker 5: So we need a innovations on all sides, making new materials, new ways to look at them and characterize [00:07:00] them. And then finally the third piece is the theory that helps understand their properties and predict new properties. Again, it's sort of an awkward in between lanes scale where atomic detail matters, but larger scale aspects of how the materials come together matters as well. And that's very difficult to approach with computational methods, so we're seeing the frontier of nanoscience is pushing scientists from all different disciplines to advance their tools and their techniques [00:07:30] in order to really take advantage of what can be done at that landscape. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 6: Delia mill iron is our guest. She is the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory molecular foundry. She is a chemist working at the nanoscale. You are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Speaker 4: You've talked about the meter. Yes. Is that a new form of measurement and how does it relate to anything [00:08:00] else? How do we reflect on an nanometre? Sure, Speaker 5: so it's not a new measure. It's simply a meter times 10 to the minus ninth that's what what Nano means and a more conventional measure on that lane scale might be an Angstrom, which is a traditional measure. It's one order of magnitude smaller than an animator, but to put it in more practical terms, I like to think of the Nano crystals that I work with, for example, which are about five nanometers across, [00:08:30] are about a million times smaller than an ant. So that for me gives me a sort of practical reference point as a chemist. It also makes sense to me to think of a five nanometer crystal as containing about a thousand atoms, but atoms are not necessarily a easy to understand lane skill for everybody. So the the ant is maybe a more common reference point, what natural materials have been created and what about them makes them [00:09:00] more promising than another depending on the realm of properties that you examine. Speaker 5: Promising has all sorts of different meanings, right? So things like semiconductor nano wires or perhaps graphene or carbon nanotubes may be considered promising for new electronic materials because the transport of electrons through these structures can proceed quite unimpeded and move very [00:09:30] readily so that we could have fast electronics or very conductive transparent thin films to replace the things we use today in our flat panel displays and so on. Other nano materials are very promising for diagnostics of different kinds of diseases or even for therapy of different kinds of health issues. So there are biological probes being developed that can be directed into specific areas [00:10:00] of your body. For example, where a tumor site is located using a nanoscale magnet and then they also carry a payload of drugs that can then be released specifically at that site. So you could have targeted therapies. So these sort of multifunctional nano constructs are very interesting. Speaker 5: I would say promising in the long run for for new targeted therapies, I have many fewer side effects than these broad spectrum drugs that we commonly use today. In terms of coming up [00:10:30] with new nanomaterials, is it as often the case that you are trying to create something for a specific purpose or that you accidentally find something that has a characteristic that can be applied pretty widely or to a specific use? I think that much of Nano materials research is motivated by the investigation and discovery of new phenomenon. And I distinguish that from targeted application [00:11:00] focused development because it's often unclear what a new material or it's phenomenological characteristics will actually be useful for. In my lab. Uh, we do tend to think of practical connections, but then the ones that we ultimately realize could be very different from the one that motivated us at the outset of the project. So I think as a scientist it's important to be attuned [00:11:30] for surprising opportunities to apply materials in ways you didn't anticipate. And so you have to be aware of the needs that are out there, the big needs in society, basically paying attention for how the phenomena you're discovering might map onto these societal needs. You probably as a scientist, not going to able to take Speaker 5: a new discovery all the way through to a practical application. But if you don't at [00:12:00] least identify those connections, it will be difficult for engineers and industry to take your discoveries and turn them into practical applications. So there's a role on both sides to make that connection. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are the deputy director of the molecular foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Tell us about the foundry and the work going on there. Speaker 5: So the molecular foundry is a very special place. It's one of five department of energy funded [00:12:30] nanoscale science research centers, which are located around the country. And we have the mission of pushing the forefront of nanoscience broadly defined, so nanoscience in all different aspects while at the same time acting as a user facility to help others in the scientific community, be they academic researchers, industry, others at national labs move the science in their areas forward by leveraging the tools of nanoscience. [00:13:00] So it in effect, it becomes this amazing hub of activity and nanoscience where people from really all around the world are coming to us to leverage capabilities that we are continuously advancing and developing in different kinds of nanoscience be it inorganic nanocrystals, which is my focus theoretical methods for treating nanoscience completely out of this world. In my mind, I'm spectroscopic techniques [00:13:30] for looking at nanostructures.Speaker 5: All these things are being developed at the foundry, at the absolute bleeding edge of nanoscience, and these can have impact in all different areas. And so our users come, they work with us, they learn these state of the art techniques, generate new materials that they can take home with them to their own laboratories, integrate into their materials and processes and devices and so on or do their a specialized characterization on and the amount of science that results by [00:14:00] that multiplication and leveraging is really very exciting to watch. Oh, it's a hub. It's an intersection of ideas in one place of problem, motivations from different perspectives and then it branches right on back out to impact science and in all different ways. Speaker 4: What sort of a funding horizon are you on? Speaker 5: Uh, so we have very stable funding from the Department of Energy. These centers are quite new. They were only established [00:14:30] over the last 10 years. The foundry has been in full operations for about six years and they are very much the flagship capabilities of the office of science within the Department of Energy and will be for quite some time to come. So they're making a very stable and continued investment in this area and continue to see the value and opportunity for really in the end, American economy, taxpayers and industrial [00:15:00] innovation that's generated by all of this scientific activity. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: you were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley, Delia mill, iron of Lawrence Berkeley national lab is talking about her work in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: what's the focus of your research? Speaker 5: So my research involves the [00:15:30] innovation of Inorganic nanocrystals, which are a few nanometers diameter crystal and arrangements of atoms. And they're using these as building blocks to construct materials. So we put them together with each other and two, for example, porous architectures, or you put them together with polymers or we put them together, uh, with glassy components to construct macroscopic materials often than films. And we're interested [00:16:00] in these primarily for their electrochemical functions. So electric chemical devices are useful for things like batteries, supercapacitors a storing energy also for converting energy. And in our case, we've most recently been focused on electrochromic window applications. So these are function like batteries, but instead of storing charge, they have the effect of changing the tint on a window dynamically as a function [00:16:30] of voltage. But everything starts with the nanocrystals and new ways to put them together with other components to construct materials. Speaker 4: And is the crystal material something unusual or is it real commonplace? Speaker 5: It varies actually. Most of the materials that we craft into nanocrystals are well known and have been studied for a long time in their bulk form. So just as in the example of gold being very different in both and obviously useful for [00:17:00] all sorts of things like currency now having very different function on the Nano scale. We work with materials that maybe are not quite as common places goal, but nonetheless fairly common. So one material we've been working with a lot lately is called indium tin oxide. And whether you know it or not, you probably use it every day. It's the material that provides conductivity in flat panel displays, touch screens, all of these sorts of things. And so in it's normal thin [00:17:30] film form, it's obviously very well established and used around the world for all different applications. It was only synthesized in a well controlled way as Netto crystals in the last few years. Speaker 5: And in the Neto crystal form, it has all of these wonderful properties relating to electric chromic windows. And beyond that it has, I guess I should say more fundamentally, the phenomenology underlying those windows applications is that this [00:18:00] material is plasmonic, which means that it can effectively condense a near infrared light to a very small scale, can amplify the electric field from the light, basically manipulate light in a new way. And people have been doing this with metals like gold as one example. Silver is another for a while, and a whole new field of plasmonics has emerged. Um, now with Ito on the nanoscale, we're bringing [00:18:30] plasmonics into the infrared region of the spectrum, which is going to give us whole news opportunities for manipulation of light of that sword, channeling light and so on. So the, as I was saying earlier, the phenomenology is where we spend the most time and discovery of these plasmonic characteristics of Ito is going to lead to many, many applications. The one we've been focusing on is this electric chromic window idea. Speaker 4: Oh, is this one of the real opportunities [00:19:00] within nano science that when you take a material to the Nano scale, you get all this new behavior [inaudible] Speaker 5: that's the fundamental concept underlying the investigation of nanoscale materials. And so the NNI, the national nanoscience initiative or national nanotechnology initiative, which was started, you know, over a decade ago now had as its founding principle, basically that idea that we would investigate the properties that emerge [00:19:30] when materials are made on the nanoscale that are very distinct from what we see on the macro scale. And from this, uh, we would have a whole new playbook for creating functional materials and devices. Speaker 4: There's been talk about the idea of transparent failure being a good thing in science. So you can learn from what goes wrong. Speaker 5: Yeah, science is full of failure. Most things don't work, especially when you first try them. [00:20:00] So I like to say that in order to be a scientist, you have to be unrelentingly optimistic because you're great idea that you're incredibly excited about, probably won't work or at least it won't work initially. And then you have to try again and try again and try again. And often it won't work even after you've tried again many, many times and you still have to have the same passion for your next great idea that you wake up the next morning [00:20:30] and you're excited to go try something new. That belief in possibility I think is fundamental to science, but at the same point. Yeah, I think you're right. The failures are not merely something to be discarded along the way to, and they do teach us a lot and frankly they suggest the next great idea more often than not. Speaker 5: So we have in mind something we're trying to do and a complete failure to [00:21:00] accomplish that. Whether it's a bond we're trying to make or a way we're trying to control a shape of a material or to create a specific optical property we get something we didn't expect and that should and when science is functioning well does cause you to stop and think about why that's happening. In fact, maybe the challenge, some of the challenge in doing science is not becoming too distracted by all of the [00:21:30] possibilities that emerge. When you do that. It's a mistake of course to be too single minded and focused on an end goal too early because you'll, you'll miss really all the new phenomenon, the things that you least expected are often the most important and innovative, so you have to pay attention to these things and perhaps redefine them as not being failures but rather being a new success or a new seed of a success that can take you in a new direction. Speaker 5: That said, there probably are things that [00:22:00] even in that from that perspective can be viewed as a negative result or a failure and there's an important role. I mean the scientific literature is, is full of every scholarly article has to include a transparent reporting of the conditions that led to what's being defined as success or specific results and a recording of what happens elsewise basically because that allows you to understand much more [00:22:30] deeply where that successful result emerges if you understand the conditions that lead to failure and different types of failure. So definitely for understanding sake, this is essential. Speaker 3: This is the end part. One of our interview with Delia [inaudible] finale, part two will air December 28th at noon. Don't miss it. The molecular foundry website [00:23:00] is foundries.lbl.gov Speaker 1: now the calendar with Lisa [inaudible] and Rick Karnofsky on Saturday, December 15th science at Cow Lecture series. We'll present a free public talk by Rosemary, a Joyce or UC Berkeley anthropology professor on everyday life and science in the Pre-colombian Mayan world. Joyce. We'll discuss how the Maya developed and use their calendar, which spans almost 1200 [00:23:30] years ending around December 21st, 2012 the end of the world, she will explore the observational astronomy made possible through the use of written records, employing one of the only two scripts in the world to develop a sign for zero. The lecture which is free and open to the public, will be held on December 15th from 11 to 12:00 AM in room 100 of the genetics and plant biology building on the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 7: Tomorrow, December 15th Wild Oakland. [00:24:00] We'll have a free one hour walk from noon to one defined an identifying mushrooms around lake merit. Meet at the Rotary Science Center on the corner of Perkins in Bellevue. The walk will be around the grassy areas, so rattling the boat house and the Lake Merritt Gardens. Learn to read the landscape and find where the mushrooms hide and their role and the local ecology. Bring guidebooks. Have you have them as well as a small pocket knife, a paintbrush [inaudible] jacket. Visit a wild oakland.org for more [00:24:30] info. Speaker 1: On Saturday, December 15th the American Society for Cell Biology welcomes the public to its 2012 keynote lecture. The event will feature Steven Chu Nobel laureate and US Secretary of energy and Arthur Levinson, chair of Genentech and apple here about the future of science and innovation and view an art exhibit by scientists, artists, Graham Johnson and Janet, a Wasa. Attend the art exhibit and reception [00:25:00] from five to five 45 and then stay and listen to the Speakers from six to 7:30 PM free. Preregistration is required at ASC B. Dot. O. R. G, the event takes place at Moscone center west seven 47 Howard street in San Francisco. Saturday, December 15th Speaker 7: the regional parks botanical garden at the intersection of Wildcat Canyon Road and South Park drive and Tilden regional park in the Berkeley hills. [00:25:30] Host the Wayne Rodrick lecture series. These free lectures are on Saturday mornings at 10:30 AM and are on a variety of topics related to plants and natural history. Free Tours of the garden. Begin at 2:00 PM tomorrow's tuck features Dick O'Donnell, who will discuss the floristic surprises and the drought stricken southwest and next Saturday the 22nd of December. Steve Edwards. We'll talk about the botany and GLG of the Lassen region. More information on the series is available@nativeplants.org Speaker 1: [00:26:00] beginning on December 26 the Lawrence Hall of science will begin screening and interactive program in their planetarium called constellations. Tonight. A simple star map will be provided to help participants learn to identify the most prominent constellations of the season in the planetarium. Sky. Questions and activities will be part of the program. The presentation will continue until January 4th and will be held every weekday from two to 2:45 PM [00:26:30] tickets are $4 at the Lawrence Hall of science after the price of admission. Remember that's beginning on December 26th [inaudible] Speaker 7: with two news stories. Here is Rick Karnofsky and Lisa kind of itch. Nature News reported on December 11th Speaker 1: that the u s national ignition facility or Nif at Lawrence Livermore national laboratory is changing directions. Nip uses a 192 ultraviolet laser beams that interact with the gold capsule, creating x-rays. These x-rays [00:27:00] crush a two millimeter target pellet of deuterium and tritium causing fusion. Nif has not yet achieved ignition where it may deliver more energy than it consumes I triple e spectrum criticized the project for being $5 billion over budget and years behind. Schedule in the revised plans [inaudible] scale back to focus on ignition and would devote three years for deciding whether it would be possible. It would increase focus on research, a fusion for the nuclear weapons [00:27:30] stockpile stewardship program and basic science. It would also devote resources to other ignition concepts. Namely polar direct drive on Omega at the University of Rochester and magnetically driven implosions on the San Diego z machine. The Journal. Nature reports that rows matter a natural plant die once price throughout the old world to make fiery red textiles has found a second life as the basis for a new green [00:28:00] battery chemist from the City College of New York teamed with researchers from Rice University and the U S army research lab to develop a nontoxic and sustainable lithium ion battery powered by Perper in a dye extracted from the roots of the matter plant 3,500 years ago. Speaker 1: Civilizations in Asia and the Middle East first boiled matter roots to color fabrics in vivid oranges, reds, and pinks. In its latest incarnation, [00:28:30] the climbing herb could lay the foundation for an ecofriendly alternative to traditional lithium ion batteries. These batteries charge everything from your mobile phone to electric vehicles, but carry with them risks to the environment during production, recycling and disposal. They also pumped 72 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every kilowatt hour of energy in a lithium ion battery. These grim facts have fed a surging demand to develop green batteries [00:29:00] growing matter or other biomass crops to make batteries which soak up carbon dioxide and eliminate the disposal problem. Speaker 3: The news occurred during the show with his bylaw Astana David from his album folk and acoustic made available through creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via [00:29:30] our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Princeton and UC Berkeley trained chemist Delia Milliron is the Deputy Director of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In part one, Delia explains Nano Science and Technology. She talks about her research with nanocrystals to make thin films. foundry.lbl.govTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm Speaker 3: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome [00:00:30] to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 4: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today is part one of a two part interview with Delia Mil Iron, the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry, [00:01:00] Delia mill iron is a chemist. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton and her phd from UC Berkeley. Delia leads a research group at the molecular foundry which has recently spun off a startup named heliotrope technologies for group is a partner in the newly announced Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a multistate department of energy research hub focused on developing transformative new battery technology. Delios group was recently awarded a $3 million grant [00:01:30] by the Department of Energy Advanced Research projects, agency dash energy by e for her work on smart window technologies onto the interview. Delia mill iron. Welcome to spectrum. Speaker 5: Thank you.Speaker 4: I suspect that most of our listeners have heard of nanoscience but don't have a lot of perspective on the detail. Would you explain what makes nanoscience and nanotechnology unique? Speaker 5: Sure, [00:02:00] so nano science is about investigating how the properties of matter change sometimes quite dramatically when we structure them on the nanometers scale, which is really the molecular scale. So in a sense it's quite related to chemistry, but it's about materials and matter and how their behavior is very different than what you'd expect from macroscopic pieces of material. Would you like some examples? [00:02:30] Sure. An example would be great. Okay. A classic example is to look at the optical properties or just the visible appearance of gold and everyone knows, of course, when gold is macroscopic, it's shiny and it's yellowish and we're very used to that form of gold. When you make gold in the form of nanoparticles, the things that are, let's say between five and 50 nanometers across [00:03:00] or containing a few thousand atoms per particle, then the gold no longer looks either yellow or shiny. In fact, you can make stable dispersion or solution of gold at that scale in water. And it appears translucent and red in color. And this effect of Nano scaling and gold has been used to color artistic objects for centuries, but we've only recently become to systematically [00:03:30] understand the science of how these sorts of properties can change so dramatically when we make materials in the nanoscale. Speaker 4: So the actual doing of it has been done for a long time, but the understanding is what's more recent and then the ability to recreate Speaker 5: and the ability to control and deliberately manipulate. Yes. So there are plenty of instances of incidental or almost accidental creation of nanoscale materials and [00:04:00] utilization of these nanoscale effects on properties. But the science of it is about systematically correlating the structure and composition and materials to their properties. And then the nanotechnology or the engineering of of nanoscale materials is about deliberately controlling those properties to create new functional things, objects, devices and so on that we can use for useful things all around us. Speaker 4: And what are some of the common things [00:04:30] that we find nano technology in in our daily lives? Speaker 5: As with any new technology. The first applications are fairly pedestrian in some sense and don't require the most exquisite control over the materials. So one that's quite common is to use metal oxide nanocrystals. Typically things like zinc oxide or titanium oxide in sunblock. These materials absorb UV radiation to [00:05:00] protect our skin from damage from UV. But because they're at the nano scale, instead of looking white, it can be clear. And so it's just that ugly, much more pleasing to put on some block that then appears clear, but still does the job of blocking UV radiation. So this doesn't require a very fine control over the details of the structure or the size of the material. It's only important that the scale of the oxide particles be well below the wavelength [00:05:30] of light, and that's what makes it clear. So it's a very simple use, but nonetheless, very practical and helpful. Speaker 4: What are you finding are the challenges of working with nanoscale material? Speaker 5: It's all about taking that control to the next level. Chemists have learned for a long time how to manipulate atoms and create bonds and put them together into small molecules. Now we're working with structures of [00:06:00] a somewhat larger length scale and wanting to control different aspects of the composition and structure. So there are no ready solutions for deliberately arranging the atoms into let's say a five nanometer crystal with precision, um, in order to generate the properties that you'd like or again, just understand them frankly. So both the creation of materials with precise control and detailed understanding of what their structure is are still very [00:06:30] big challenges. Of course conventional microscopy methods don't extend very well to these small length scales. So there's a need for new characterization approaches. And then as I said, the chemical methods for making molecules and small molecular systems likewise don't necessarily translate to the slightly bigger scale that is nanometer length scale of these materials. Speaker 5: So we need a innovations on all sides, making new materials, new ways to look at them and characterize [00:07:00] them. And then finally the third piece is the theory that helps understand their properties and predict new properties. Again, it's sort of an awkward in between lanes scale where atomic detail matters, but larger scale aspects of how the materials come together matters as well. And that's very difficult to approach with computational methods, so we're seeing the frontier of nanoscience is pushing scientists from all different disciplines to advance their tools and their techniques [00:07:30] in order to really take advantage of what can be done at that landscape. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 6: Delia mill iron is our guest. She is the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory molecular foundry. She is a chemist working at the nanoscale. You are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Speaker 4: You've talked about the meter. Yes. Is that a new form of measurement and how does it relate to anything [00:08:00] else? How do we reflect on an nanometre? Sure, Speaker 5: so it's not a new measure. It's simply a meter times 10 to the minus ninth that's what what Nano means and a more conventional measure on that lane scale might be an Angstrom, which is a traditional measure. It's one order of magnitude smaller than an animator, but to put it in more practical terms, I like to think of the Nano crystals that I work with, for example, which are about five nanometers across, [00:08:30] are about a million times smaller than an ant. So that for me gives me a sort of practical reference point as a chemist. It also makes sense to me to think of a five nanometer crystal as containing about a thousand atoms, but atoms are not necessarily a easy to understand lane skill for everybody. So the the ant is maybe a more common reference point, what natural materials have been created and what about them makes them [00:09:00] more promising than another depending on the realm of properties that you examine. Speaker 5: Promising has all sorts of different meanings, right? So things like semiconductor nano wires or perhaps graphene or carbon nanotubes may be considered promising for new electronic materials because the transport of electrons through these structures can proceed quite unimpeded and move very [00:09:30] readily so that we could have fast electronics or very conductive transparent thin films to replace the things we use today in our flat panel displays and so on. Other nano materials are very promising for diagnostics of different kinds of diseases or even for therapy of different kinds of health issues. So there are biological probes being developed that can be directed into specific areas [00:10:00] of your body. For example, where a tumor site is located using a nanoscale magnet and then they also carry a payload of drugs that can then be released specifically at that site. So you could have targeted therapies. So these sort of multifunctional nano constructs are very interesting. Speaker 5: I would say promising in the long run for for new targeted therapies, I have many fewer side effects than these broad spectrum drugs that we commonly use today. In terms of coming up [00:10:30] with new nanomaterials, is it as often the case that you are trying to create something for a specific purpose or that you accidentally find something that has a characteristic that can be applied pretty widely or to a specific use? I think that much of Nano materials research is motivated by the investigation and discovery of new phenomenon. And I distinguish that from targeted application [00:11:00] focused development because it's often unclear what a new material or it's phenomenological characteristics will actually be useful for. In my lab. Uh, we do tend to think of practical connections, but then the ones that we ultimately realize could be very different from the one that motivated us at the outset of the project. So I think as a scientist it's important to be attuned [00:11:30] for surprising opportunities to apply materials in ways you didn't anticipate. And so you have to be aware of the needs that are out there, the big needs in society, basically paying attention for how the phenomena you're discovering might map onto these societal needs. You probably as a scientist, not going to able to take Speaker 5: a new discovery all the way through to a practical application. But if you don't at [00:12:00] least identify those connections, it will be difficult for engineers and industry to take your discoveries and turn them into practical applications. So there's a role on both sides to make that connection. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are the deputy director of the molecular foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Tell us about the foundry and the work going on there. Speaker 5: So the molecular foundry is a very special place. It's one of five department of energy funded [00:12:30] nanoscale science research centers, which are located around the country. And we have the mission of pushing the forefront of nanoscience broadly defined, so nanoscience in all different aspects while at the same time acting as a user facility to help others in the scientific community, be they academic researchers, industry, others at national labs move the science in their areas forward by leveraging the tools of nanoscience. [00:13:00] So it in effect, it becomes this amazing hub of activity and nanoscience where people from really all around the world are coming to us to leverage capabilities that we are continuously advancing and developing in different kinds of nanoscience be it inorganic nanocrystals, which is my focus theoretical methods for treating nanoscience completely out of this world. In my mind, I'm spectroscopic techniques [00:13:30] for looking at nanostructures.Speaker 5: All these things are being developed at the foundry, at the absolute bleeding edge of nanoscience, and these can have impact in all different areas. And so our users come, they work with us, they learn these state of the art techniques, generate new materials that they can take home with them to their own laboratories, integrate into their materials and processes and devices and so on or do their a specialized characterization on and the amount of science that results by [00:14:00] that multiplication and leveraging is really very exciting to watch. Oh, it's a hub. It's an intersection of ideas in one place of problem, motivations from different perspectives and then it branches right on back out to impact science and in all different ways. Speaker 4: What sort of a funding horizon are you on? Speaker 5: Uh, so we have very stable funding from the Department of Energy. These centers are quite new. They were only established [00:14:30] over the last 10 years. The foundry has been in full operations for about six years and they are very much the flagship capabilities of the office of science within the Department of Energy and will be for quite some time to come. So they're making a very stable and continued investment in this area and continue to see the value and opportunity for really in the end, American economy, taxpayers and industrial [00:15:00] innovation that's generated by all of this scientific activity. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: you were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley, Delia mill, iron of Lawrence Berkeley national lab is talking about her work in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: what's the focus of your research? Speaker 5: So my research involves the [00:15:30] innovation of Inorganic nanocrystals, which are a few nanometers diameter crystal and arrangements of atoms. And they're using these as building blocks to construct materials. So we put them together with each other and two, for example, porous architectures, or you put them together with polymers or we put them together, uh, with glassy components to construct macroscopic materials often than films. And we're interested [00:16:00] in these primarily for their electrochemical functions. So electric chemical devices are useful for things like batteries, supercapacitors a storing energy also for converting energy. And in our case, we've most recently been focused on electrochromic window applications. So these are function like batteries, but instead of storing charge, they have the effect of changing the tint on a window dynamically as a function [00:16:30] of voltage. But everything starts with the nanocrystals and new ways to put them together with other components to construct materials. Speaker 4: And is the crystal material something unusual or is it real commonplace? Speaker 5: It varies actually. Most of the materials that we craft into nanocrystals are well known and have been studied for a long time in their bulk form. So just as in the example of gold being very different in both and obviously useful for [00:17:00] all sorts of things like currency now having very different function on the Nano scale. We work with materials that maybe are not quite as common places goal, but nonetheless fairly common. So one material we've been working with a lot lately is called indium tin oxide. And whether you know it or not, you probably use it every day. It's the material that provides conductivity in flat panel displays, touch screens, all of these sorts of things. And so in it's normal thin [00:17:30] film form, it's obviously very well established and used around the world for all different applications. It was only synthesized in a well controlled way as Netto crystals in the last few years. Speaker 5: And in the Neto crystal form, it has all of these wonderful properties relating to electric chromic windows. And beyond that it has, I guess I should say more fundamentally, the phenomenology underlying those windows applications is that this [00:18:00] material is plasmonic, which means that it can effectively condense a near infrared light to a very small scale, can amplify the electric field from the light, basically manipulate light in a new way. And people have been doing this with metals like gold as one example. Silver is another for a while, and a whole new field of plasmonics has emerged. Um, now with Ito on the nanoscale, we're bringing [00:18:30] plasmonics into the infrared region of the spectrum, which is going to give us whole news opportunities for manipulation of light of that sword, channeling light and so on. So the, as I was saying earlier, the phenomenology is where we spend the most time and discovery of these plasmonic characteristics of Ito is going to lead to many, many applications. The one we've been focusing on is this electric chromic window idea. Speaker 4: Oh, is this one of the real opportunities [00:19:00] within nano science that when you take a material to the Nano scale, you get all this new behavior [inaudible] Speaker 5: that's the fundamental concept underlying the investigation of nanoscale materials. And so the NNI, the national nanoscience initiative or national nanotechnology initiative, which was started, you know, over a decade ago now had as its founding principle, basically that idea that we would investigate the properties that emerge [00:19:30] when materials are made on the nanoscale that are very distinct from what we see on the macro scale. And from this, uh, we would have a whole new playbook for creating functional materials and devices. Speaker 4: There's been talk about the idea of transparent failure being a good thing in science. So you can learn from what goes wrong. Speaker 5: Yeah, science is full of failure. Most things don't work, especially when you first try them. [00:20:00] So I like to say that in order to be a scientist, you have to be unrelentingly optimistic because you're great idea that you're incredibly excited about, probably won't work or at least it won't work initially. And then you have to try again and try again and try again. And often it won't work even after you've tried again many, many times and you still have to have the same passion for your next great idea that you wake up the next morning [00:20:30] and you're excited to go try something new. That belief in possibility I think is fundamental to science, but at the same point. Yeah, I think you're right. The failures are not merely something to be discarded along the way to, and they do teach us a lot and frankly they suggest the next great idea more often than not. Speaker 5: So we have in mind something we're trying to do and a complete failure to [00:21:00] accomplish that. Whether it's a bond we're trying to make or a way we're trying to control a shape of a material or to create a specific optical property we get something we didn't expect and that should and when science is functioning well does cause you to stop and think about why that's happening. In fact, maybe the challenge, some of the challenge in doing science is not becoming too distracted by all of the [00:21:30] possibilities that emerge. When you do that. It's a mistake of course to be too single minded and focused on an end goal too early because you'll, you'll miss really all the new phenomenon, the things that you least expected are often the most important and innovative, so you have to pay attention to these things and perhaps redefine them as not being failures but rather being a new success or a new seed of a success that can take you in a new direction. Speaker 5: That said, there probably are things that [00:22:00] even in that from that perspective can be viewed as a negative result or a failure and there's an important role. I mean the scientific literature is, is full of every scholarly article has to include a transparent reporting of the conditions that led to what's being defined as success or specific results and a recording of what happens elsewise basically because that allows you to understand much more [00:22:30] deeply where that successful result emerges if you understand the conditions that lead to failure and different types of failure. So definitely for understanding sake, this is essential. Speaker 3: This is the end part. One of our interview with Delia [inaudible] finale, part two will air December 28th at noon. Don't miss it. The molecular foundry website [00:23:00] is foundries.lbl.gov Speaker 1: now the calendar with Lisa [inaudible] and Rick Karnofsky on Saturday, December 15th science at Cow Lecture series. We'll present a free public talk by Rosemary, a Joyce or UC Berkeley anthropology professor on everyday life and science in the Pre-colombian Mayan world. Joyce. We'll discuss how the Maya developed and use their calendar, which spans almost 1200 [00:23:30] years ending around December 21st, 2012 the end of the world, she will explore the observational astronomy made possible through the use of written records, employing one of the only two scripts in the world to develop a sign for zero. The lecture which is free and open to the public, will be held on December 15th from 11 to 12:00 AM in room 100 of the genetics and plant biology building on the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 7: Tomorrow, December 15th Wild Oakland. [00:24:00] We'll have a free one hour walk from noon to one defined an identifying mushrooms around lake merit. Meet at the Rotary Science Center on the corner of Perkins in Bellevue. The walk will be around the grassy areas, so rattling the boat house and the Lake Merritt Gardens. Learn to read the landscape and find where the mushrooms hide and their role and the local ecology. Bring guidebooks. Have you have them as well as a small pocket knife, a paintbrush [inaudible] jacket. Visit a wild oakland.org for more [00:24:30] info. Speaker 1: On Saturday, December 15th the American Society for Cell Biology welcomes the public to its 2012 keynote lecture. The event will feature Steven Chu Nobel laureate and US Secretary of energy and Arthur Levinson, chair of Genentech and apple here about the future of science and innovation and view an art exhibit by scientists, artists, Graham Johnson and Janet, a Wasa. Attend the art exhibit and reception [00:25:00] from five to five 45 and then stay and listen to the Speakers from six to 7:30 PM free. Preregistration is required at ASC B. Dot. O. R. G, the event takes place at Moscone center west seven 47 Howard street in San Francisco. Saturday, December 15th Speaker 7: the regional parks botanical garden at the intersection of Wildcat Canyon Road and South Park drive and Tilden regional park in the Berkeley hills. [00:25:30] Host the Wayne Rodrick lecture series. These free lectures are on Saturday mornings at 10:30 AM and are on a variety of topics related to plants and natural history. Free Tours of the garden. Begin at 2:00 PM tomorrow's tuck features Dick O'Donnell, who will discuss the floristic surprises and the drought stricken southwest and next Saturday the 22nd of December. Steve Edwards. We'll talk about the botany and GLG of the Lassen region. More information on the series is available@nativeplants.org Speaker 1: [00:26:00] beginning on December 26 the Lawrence Hall of science will begin screening and interactive program in their planetarium called constellations. Tonight. A simple star map will be provided to help participants learn to identify the most prominent constellations of the season in the planetarium. Sky. Questions and activities will be part of the program. The presentation will continue until January 4th and will be held every weekday from two to 2:45 PM [00:26:30] tickets are $4 at the Lawrence Hall of science after the price of admission. Remember that's beginning on December 26th [inaudible] Speaker 7: with two news stories. Here is Rick Karnofsky and Lisa kind of itch. Nature News reported on December 11th Speaker 1: that the u s national ignition facility or Nif at Lawrence Livermore national laboratory is changing directions. Nip uses a 192 ultraviolet laser beams that interact with the gold capsule, creating x-rays. These x-rays [00:27:00] crush a two millimeter target pellet of deuterium and tritium causing fusion. Nif has not yet achieved ignition where it may deliver more energy than it consumes I triple e spectrum criticized the project for being $5 billion over budget and years behind. Schedule in the revised plans [inaudible] scale back to focus on ignition and would devote three years for deciding whether it would be possible. It would increase focus on research, a fusion for the nuclear weapons [00:27:30] stockpile stewardship program and basic science. It would also devote resources to other ignition concepts. Namely polar direct drive on Omega at the University of Rochester and magnetically driven implosions on the San Diego z machine. The Journal. Nature reports that rows matter a natural plant die once price throughout the old world to make fiery red textiles has found a second life as the basis for a new green [00:28:00] battery chemist from the City College of New York teamed with researchers from Rice University and the U S army research lab to develop a nontoxic and sustainable lithium ion battery powered by Perper in a dye extracted from the roots of the matter plant 3,500 years ago. Speaker 1: Civilizations in Asia and the Middle East first boiled matter roots to color fabrics in vivid oranges, reds, and pinks. In its latest incarnation, [00:28:30] the climbing herb could lay the foundation for an ecofriendly alternative to traditional lithium ion batteries. These batteries charge everything from your mobile phone to electric vehicles, but carry with them risks to the environment during production, recycling and disposal. They also pumped 72 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every kilowatt hour of energy in a lithium ion battery. These grim facts have fed a surging demand to develop green batteries [00:29:00] growing matter or other biomass crops to make batteries which soak up carbon dioxide and eliminate the disposal problem. Speaker 3: The news occurred during the show with his bylaw Astana David from his album folk and acoustic made available through creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via [00:29:30] our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Physicist Spencer Klein and Electrics Engineer Thorsten Stezelberger, both at Lawrenc Berkeley National Lab, describe the Neutrino Astronomical project IceCube, which was recently completed in Antarctica. They also go on to discuss proposed project Arianna.TranscriptsSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum [00:00:30] the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. I'm Brad Swift, the host of today's show, Rick Karnofsky and I interview Spencer Klein and Torsten Stessel Berger about the neutrino astronomy project. Ice Cube. Spencer Klein is a senior scientist and group leader at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. [00:01:00] He's a member of the ice cube research team and the Ariana planning group. Thorsten Stetso Berger is an electronics engineer at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He too is part of the ice cube project and the Ariana team. They join us today to talk about the ice cube project and how it is helping to better define neutrinos. Spencer Klein and Thorsten setser Berger. Welcome to spectrum. Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. Can you talk to us a little bit about neutrinos? [00:01:30] Well, neutrinos are subatomic particles which are notable because they barely interact at all. In fact, most of them can go through the earth without interacting. This makes them an interesting subject for astrophysics because you can use them to probe places like the interior of stars where otherwise nothing else can get out and are most of them neutrinos from those sources. There's a wide range of neutrino energies that are studied. Some of the lowest energy neutrinos are solar neutrinos which [00:02:00] come from the interior of our sun. As you move up to higher energies, they come from different sources. We think a lot of the more energetic ones come from supernovas, which is when stars explode, they will produce an initial burst of neutrinos of moderate energy and then over the next thousand years or so, they will produce higher energy neutrinos as ejected spans, producing a cloud filled with shock fronts and you're particularly interested in those high energy. Speaker 3: Yes, ice cube is designed to study those neutrinos and also [00:02:30] neutrinos from even more energetic neutrinos where we don't really know where they come from. There are two theories. One is that they come from objects called active Galactic Nuclei. These are galaxies which have a super massive black hole at their center and they're rejecting a jet of particles perpendicular, more along their axis. And this jet is believed to also be a site to accelerate protons and other cosmic rays to very high energies. The other possible source of ultra energy neutrinos [00:03:00] are gamma ray bursts, which are when two black holes collide or a black hole collides with a neutron star. And if the neutrinos don't interact or interact so rarely and weekly with matter, how do we actually detect them? Well, the simple answer is you need a very large detector. Ice Cube is one cubic kilometer in volume and that's big enough that we think we should be able to detect neutrinos from these astrophysical sources. Speaker 3: The other project we work on, Ariana is even bigger. It's [00:03:30] proposed, but it's proposed to have about a hundred cubic kilometers of volume. And so you have an enormous detector to detect a few events and once you detect them, how can you tell where they came from? Well, with ice cube we can get the incoming direction of the neutrinos to within about a degree. So what we do is we look for neutrinos. Most of what we see out of these background atmospheric neutrinos which are produced when cosmic rays interact in the earth's atmosphere. But on top [00:04:00] of that we look for a cluster of neutrinos coming from a specific direction. That would be a clear sign of a neutrino source, which would be, you know, and then we can look in that direction and see what interesting sources lie. That way we can also look for extremely energetic neutrinos which are unlikely to be these atmospheric neutrinos. Speaker 3: And how is it that you measure that energy? What happens is a neutrino will come in and occasionally interact in the Antarctic. Ice should mention that ice cube is located at the South Pole where [00:04:30] there's 28 hundreds of meters of ice on top of the rock below. Occasionally in Neutrino will come in and interact in the ice and if it's something called a type of neutrino called the [inaudible] Neutrino, most of its energy will go into a subatomic particle called the Meuron. Meuron is interesting because it's electrically charged. As it goes through the ice, it will give off light, something we call Toronto radiation. So we've instrumented this cubic kilometer of ice with over 5,000 optical [00:05:00] modules, which are basically optical sensors. And so we record the amount and arrival times of the light at these optical sensors. And from that we can determine the neutrino direction to about within a degree. Speaker 3: And we can also get an estimate of the energy. Um, essentially is the on is more energetic. It will also produce other electrically charged particles as it travels. Those will give off more light. And so the light output is proportional to the neutrino energy. So you're taking an advantage of the fact that there's [00:05:30] a lot of ice in Antarctica and also that it's very big. Are there other reasons to do it at the South Pole? Well, the other critical component about the ice is that it has to be very clear, shouldn't scatter light and it shouldn't absorb light. And in fact the light can travel up to 200 meters through the ice before being absorbed. This is important because that means we can have a relatively sparse array. You know, we have only 5,000 sensors spread over a cubic kilometer. That's only if the light can travel long distances through the ice. [00:06:00] And do you have to take into account that the ice in the Antarctic is not perfectly clean? Yes. When we reconstruct the neutrino directions, we use this sophisticated maximum likelihood fitter. Essentially we try all sorts of different Milan directions and see which one is the most likely. And that takes into account the optical properties of the ace and includes how they vary with depth. There are some dust layers in the ice where the absorption length is much shorter and some places, [00:06:30] well most of the ice where it's much better. Speaker 4: Our guests on spectrum today are Spencer Klein and Thorsten Stetson Burger from Lawrence Berkeley national lab. They are part of a physics project named Ice Cube. In the next segment they talk about working at the South Pole. This is KALX Berkeley. Speaker 3: Can you compare the two experiments, both ice Cuban on a little bit? Well, ice cube is designed [00:07:00] for sort of moderate energy neutrinos, but for the really energetic neutrinos are, they are rare enough so that a one cubic kilometer detector just isn't big enough. And so for that you need something bigger and it's hard to imagine how you could scale the optical techniques that ice cube uses to larger detectors. So that's why we looked for a new technique in it. Here I should say we, the royal, we either many people, many places in the world looking at different versions. And so what we've chosen is looking [00:07:30] for radio [inaudible] off the mission. You know, we have this interaction in the ice. Some of the time. If it's an electron Neutrino, it produces a compact shower of particles. That shower will have more negatively charged particles than positively charged. Speaker 3: And so it will emit radio waves, you know, at frequencies up to about a Gigahertz coherently, which means that the radio emission strength depends on the square of the neutrino energies. So when you go to very high neutrino energies, this is a preferred technique. Radio waves can [00:08:00] travel between 300 meters and a kilometer in the ice, which means you can get by with a much sparser array. So you can instrument a hundred cubic kilometers with a reasonable number of detectors. When Ariane is developed, it will get to access higher energies. Will it still didn't detect some of the moderately high energies that ice cube is currently reaching? No, and there's no overlap because of the coherence and just not sensitive. I mean, ice cube will occasionally see these much higher energy neutrinos, [00:08:30] but it's just not big enough to see very many of them. Uh, you commented on, or you mentioned the size of the collaboration. Speaker 3: Can you sort of speak about how big these projects are? Sure. Ice Cube has got about 250 scientists in it from the u s Europe, Barbados, Japan, and New Zealand. Oh yeah. And plus one person from Australia now. And that's a well established, you know, it's a large experiment. Arianna is just getting going. It's got, I'll say less than a dozen [00:09:00] people in it. Mostly from UC Irvine and some involvement from LDL. How many years have you had experience with your sensors in the field then? That's kind of a complicated question and that the idea of doing neutrino astronomy in the Antarctic ice has been around for more than 20 years. The first efforts to actually put sensors in the ice, we're in the early 1990s these used very simple sensors. We just had a photo multiplier tube, essentially a very sensitive [00:09:30] optical detector, and they sent their signals to the surface. There are no complicated electronics in the ice. Speaker 3: The first Amanda effort in fact failed because the sensors were near the surface where the light was scattering very rapidly. Turns out the upper kilometer of ice is filled with little air bubbles, but then as you get down in depth, there's enough pressure to squeeze these bubbles out of existence. And so you go from very cloudy ice like what you see if you look in the center of an ice cube and then you go deeper [00:10:00] and you end up with this incredibly clear ice. So the first efforts were in this cloudy ice. Then in the second half of the 1990s Amanda was deployed in the deep highs. This is much smaller than ice cube in many respects. The predecessor, of course, the problem with Amanda was this transmission to the surface. It worked but it was very, very touchy and it wasn't something you could scale to the ice cube size. So one where people got together and came up with these digital optical modules where all of the digitizing electronics [00:10:30] is actually in the module. We also made a lot of other changes and improvements to come up with a detector that would be really robust and then we deployed the first ice cube string in 2005 and continued and then the last string was deployed at the end of 2010 Speaker 5: so basically from the scientific point or engineering point of view, we're learning about the detector. We got data from the first strain. It was not very useful for take neutrino science but you can learn to understand [00:11:00] the detector, learn how the electronics behaves, if there is a problem, change code to get different data. Speaker 3: When we did see some new is in that run and there's this one beautiful event where we saw this [inaudible] from a neutrino just moving straight up the string. I think it hit 51 out of the 60 optical sensors. So we're basically tracking it for 800 meters. It was just a beautiful that Speaker 5: what is the lifelight down there? The food, the day to day, [00:11:30] we've never been there in the winter time, so I can only talk about a summer and in the summer you're there for something specific like drilling or deploying a, so to summertime keeps you pretty busy and you do your stuff and then afterwards you hang out a little bit to wind down. And sometimes with some folks playing pool or ping pong or watching movies or just reading something and then time [00:12:00] again for the sleep or sleeping. And the next day for drawing for example, we had three shifts. And so that kept you pretty, pretty busy. One season when I was thrilling there I was on what we call the graveyard shift. Starting from 11 to I think eight in the morning. I saw and yeah, it was daylight. You don't notice it except you always get dinner for breakfast and scrambled eggs and potatoes for dinner. Speaker 3: The new station at the South Pole is really very nice and I would [00:12:30] say quite comfortable, good recreational facilities. I mean, and I would say the food was excellent, really quite impressive and you get to hang out with a bunch of international scientists that are down there. How collegial isn't, it Speaker 5: depends a little bit on the work. Like when I was rolling on night shift, we mostly got to hang out with people running the station. That was fairly collegial. Speaker 3: There's actually not very many scientists at the South Pole. In the summer there were about 250 [00:13:00] people there and maybe 20 of them were scientists. Most of them were people dealing with logistics. These are people, you know, heavy equipment operators. Fuel Lees would get the fuel off of the plane, cooks people, and even then can building the station wasn't quite done yet. The drillers will lodge wide variety of occupations but not all that many scientists. How close are the experiments to the station? Speaker 5: They are quite a few experiments [00:13:30] based in the station. Ice Cube is a kilometer away about probably Speaker 3: Lamotta and a half to the, to the ice cube lab, which is where the surface electronics is located. Speaker 5: So it's pretty close walking distance called walk. But it depends. I mean I don't mind the calls or it was a nice walk but they have like ice cube, uh, drilling. We are like lunch break also. It's [00:14:00] a little bit far to walk kilometer out or even throughout depending where you drill. So we had a car to drive back and forth to the station to eat lunch. Otherwise you are out for too long. Speaker 3: Yeah, they give you a really good equipment and so it's amazing how plaza you can be about walking around when it's 40 below, outside. Speaker 5: Especially if you do physical work outside as part of drilling also. It's amazing how much of that cold weather Ikea you actually take off because you just [00:14:30] do staff and you warm up. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley coming up, our guests, Spencer Klein and Torsten Stotzel Burger detail, the ice cube data analysis process, Speaker 3: the ongoing maintenance of Ice Cube Sarah Plan for its lifetime Speaker 5: for the stuff [00:15:00] in the eyes, it's really hard to replace that. You cannot easily drill down and take them out. They are plans, uh, to keep the surface electronics, especially the computers update them as lower power hardware becomes available. Otherwise I'm not aware of preventive maintenance. You could do with like on a car. Yeah. Speaker 3: I have to say the engineers did a great job on ice cube. About 98% of the optical modules are working. Most of the failures were infant [00:15:30] mortality. They did not survive the deployment when we've only had a handful of optical modules fail after deployment and all the evidence is we'll be able to keep running it as long as it's interesting. And is there a point in which it's no longer interesting in terms of how many sensors are still active? I think we'll reach the point where the data is less interesting before we run out of sensors now. Okay. You know, we might be losing one or two sensors a year. In fact, we're still at the point where [00:16:00] due to various software improvements, including in the firmware and the optical modules, each year's run has more sensors than the previous years. Even if we only had 90% of them working, that would be plenty. Speaker 3: And you know, that's probably a hundred years from now. What do we have guests on to speak about the LHC at certain they were talking about the gigantic amounts of data that they generate and how surprisingly long it takes for scientists to analyze that data to actually get a hold [00:16:30] of data from the detector. And you're generating very large amounts of data. And furthermore, it's in Antarctica. So how much turnaround time is there? Well, the Antarctica doesn't add very much time. We typically get data in the north within a few days or a week after it's taken. There is a bit of a lag and try and take this time to understand how to analyze the data. For example, now we're working on, for the most part, the data that was taken in 2010 and [00:17:00] you know, hope to have that out soon probably for summer conferences. But understanding how to best analyze the data is not trivial. For example, this measurement of the mule on energies, very dependent on a lot of assumptions about the ice and so we have ways to do it now, but we're far from the optimal method Speaker 5: and keep in mind that detector built, it's just finished. So before you always added in a little bit more. So each year the data looked different because you've got more sensors in the data. Speaker 3: [00:17:30] Let's say for things where turnaround is important. For example, dimension, these gamma ray bursts, there's where this happens when a bunch of satellites see a burst of x-rays or gamma rays coming from somewhere in the sky. They can tell us when it happened and give us an estimate of the direction. We can have an and I would say not quite real time, but you know that we could have turned around if a couple of weeks. We also measure the rates in each of the detectors. This is the way to look for low energy neutrinos from a [00:18:00] supernova that is essentially done in real time. If the detector sees an increase, then somebody will get an email alert essentially immediately. If we got one that looked like a Supernova, we could turn that around very quickly. So are the algorithms that you're using for this longer term analysis improving? Speaker 3: Yes. They're much more sophisticated than they were two years ago. I'd say we're gradually approaching and I'm ask some Todrick set of algorithm, but we're still quite a ways [00:18:30] to go. We're still learning a lot of things. You know, this is very different from any other experiment that's been done. Normally experiments if the LHC, if they are tracking a charged particle, they measure points along the track. In our case, the light is admitted at the trend off angle. About 41 degrees. So the data points we see are anywhere from a few meters to a hundred meters from the track. And because of the scattering of light, it's a not so obvious how to find [00:19:00] the optimum track and it's, you know, it's very dependent on a lot of assumptions and we're still working on that. And we have methods that work well. As I said, you know, we can get an angular resolution of better than a degree in some cases, but there's still probably some room to be gotten there. Speaker 5: And then also, I mean I'm not involved in the science, but I hear people have new ideas how to look at a data. So that's still evolving too. Speaker 3: Yeah. Like you know, one analysis that people are working on, but we don't have yet would [00:19:30] be a speculative search where you're looking for a pair of event, a pair of neo-cons going upward through the detector in the same direction at the same time, which would quite possibly be a signal of some sort of new physics. And it's certainly an interesting typology to look for, but we're not there yet. And are there different teams looking at the same data to try to find different results and broaden the search so to speak? Uh, yes. We have seven or eight different physics working [00:20:00] groups in each of those groups is concentrating on a different type of physics or a different class of physics. For example, one group is looking for point sources, you know, hotspots in the sky. Second Group is looking at atmospheric and diffuse neutrinos trying to measure the energy spectrum of the neutrinos. Speaker 3: We do see both the atmospheric and also looking for an additional component. There's a group doing cosmic ray physics. There's a group looking for exotic physics. These are things like these pairs [00:20:30] of upward going particles. Also looking for other oddities such as magnetic monopoles. There's a group that's looking for neutrinos that might be produced from weakly interacting. Massive particles, IAA, dark matter, but there's a group that's monitoring the rates of the detector. This scalers looking for Supernova and oh, there's also a group looking for talented Trinos, which is the this very distinctive topology town. Neutrinos are sort of the third flavor of neutrinos and those are [00:21:00] mostly only produced by extraterrestrial sources and they look very distinctively. You would look for case where you see two clusters of energy and the detector separated by a few hundred meters. Speaker 5: Looking at what's next, what would be the sort of ideal laboratory? If you want something that's very big, obviously Antarctica is a great challenge. Can you do neutrino detection in space for instance? [inaudible] Speaker 3: hmm, that's an interesting question. There are people who [00:21:30] are talking about that and the main application is trying to look for these cosmic gray air showers. The best experiments to study high energy, cosmic gray air showers are these things called air shower arrays, which are an array of detectors. Um, the largest one is something called the OJ Observatory in Argentina. It covers about 3000 square kilometers with an array of detectors on kind of a one and a half kilometer grid. And that's about as largest surface detector as you could imagine. Building the alternative [00:22:00] technology is look for something called air fluorescents. When the showers go through the air, they light it up. Particularly the nitrogen is excited and in that kind of like a fluorescent tube. So you see this burst of light as the shower travels through the atmosphere. O J in addition to the surface detectors has these cameras called flies eyes that look for this fluorescence, but it's limited in scale. And people have proposed building experiments that would sit on satellites or a space station [00:22:30] and look down and look at these showers from above. They could cover a much larger area. They could also look for showers from upward going particles, I. E. Neutrino interactions. But at this point that's all pretty speculative. Speaker 5: And when's your next trip to Antarctica? Uh, that's all depending on funding. I would like to go again and hopefully soon. I think I'm cautiously optimistic. We'll be able to go again this year. Hmm. Spencer in Thorsten. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 4: [00:23:00] [inaudible] regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events that are happening locally over the next few weeks. Lisa Katovich joins me for that Speaker 6: calendar. The August general meeting of the East Bay Astronomical Society is Saturday, July 14th at the Chabot space and science centers, Dellums [00:23:30] building 10,000 Skyline Boulevard in Oakland. Ezra Bahrani is the evening Speaker. The title of his talk is UFOs, the proof, the physics and why they're here. The meeting starts at 7:30 PM Speaker 2: join Nobel laureates and social and environmental justice advocates at the towns and Tay Gore third annual seminar for Science and technology on behalf of the peoples of Bengali and the Himalayan basins, the subject, the global water crisis [00:24:00] prevention and solution. Saturday, July 21st 1:30 PM to 7:30 PM the event is jointly sponsored by UC Berkeley's department of Public Health and the international institute of the Bengali and Himalayan basins. Guest Speakers include three Nobel laureates, Charles h towns, Burton Richter and Douglas Ashur off. Also presenting our Francis towns advocate for social justice, Dr. Rush, Gosh [00:24:30] and Sterling Brunel. The event will be held in one 45 Dwinelle hall on the UC Berkeley campus. That's Saturday, July 21st 1:30 PM to 7:30 PM for more details, contact the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Speaker 6: the next science at cal lectures on July 21st the talk will be given by Dr Jeffrey Silverman and it's entitled exploding stars, Dark Energy, and the runaway universe. Dr Silverman has been a guest [00:25:00] on spectrum. His research has been in the study of Super Novi. His lecture will focus on how the study of supernovae led to the recent discovery that the universe is expanding, likely due to a repulsive and mysterious dark energy. It was these observations that were recently awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics. The lecture is July 21st at 11:00 AM and the genetics and plant biology building room 100 Speaker 2: next to news stories. Speaker 6: 3000 species [00:25:30] of mosquitoes are responsible for malaria, dengue, a fever, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and cephalitis and many more diseases. In Burkina Faso alone, residents can expect 200 bytes a day. Rapid resistance to pesticides on the part of malaria mosquitoes has prompted researchers all over the globe to deploy novel strategies against this and other diseases. Targeting Dengue. A fever has an advantage over malaria as only one species. Eighties [00:26:00] Egypt die is responsible for spreading it versus the 20 species responsible for spreading malaria. A British biotechnology company called Oxitec has developed a method to modify the genetic structure of the male eighties Aegypti mosquito transforming it into a mutant capable of destroying its own species. In 2010 they announced impressive preliminary results of the first known test of 3 million free flying transgenic mosquitoes engineered [00:26:30] to start a population crash after infiltrating wild disease spreading eighties a Gyp dye swarms on Cayman Island. Speaker 6: Oxitec has recently applied to the FDA for approval of its mosquito in the u s with Key West under consideration as a future test site in 2009 key west suffered its first dengate outbreak in 73 years. Australian researchers are testing and mosquito intended to fight dengue, a fever bypassing the disruptive Wolbachia bacteria to other mosquitoes, a very [00:27:00] different approach than transgenic genes funded largely by the bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The project has shown that the Wolbachia strain not only shortens the life of a mosquito, but also reduces the amount of virus it develops. Releases in Queensland, Australia last year showed that Wolbachia could spread through a wild population quickly and future test sites are under consideration. In Vietnam. Speaker 2: The UC Berkeley News Center reports a prototype network being installed by chemists at the University of California. Berkeley [00:27:30] will employ 40 sensors spread over a 27 square mile grid. The information the network will provide could be used to monitor local carbon dioxide emissions to check on the effectiveness of carbon reduction strategies now mandated by the state, but hard to verify built and installed by project leader Professor Ron Cohen and graduate student Virginia Tighe and their lab colleagues. The shoe box size sensors will continuously measure carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, [00:28:00] nitrogen dioxide, and ozone levels as well as temperature, pressure and humidity streaming. The information live to the web through the site. beacon.berkeley.edu the sensor network dubbed Beacon stretches from the East Bay regional parks on the east to interstate eight 80 on the west from El Surrito on the north nearly to San Leandro on the south encompassing open space as well as heavily traffic areas. [00:28:30] Most of the sensors are being mounted on the roofs of local schools in order to get students interested in the connection between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. The UC Berkeley researchers work with Oakland's Chabot space and science center to create middle school and high school activities using live sensor data stream through the web as part of the students energy and climate science curriculum. The beacon network is a pilot program funded by the National Science Foundation to determine what information can be learned [00:29:00] from a densely spaced network Speaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: The music heard during the show is from most done at David's album, folk and acoustics made available through a creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address [00:29:30] is spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Physicist Spencer Klein and Electrics Engineer Thorsten Stezelberger, both at Lawrenc Berkeley National Lab, describe the Neutrino Astronomical project IceCube, which was recently completed in Antarctica. They also go on to discuss proposed project Arianna.TranscriptsSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum [00:00:30] the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. I'm Brad Swift, the host of today's show, Rick Karnofsky and I interview Spencer Klein and Torsten Stessel Berger about the neutrino astronomy project. Ice Cube. Spencer Klein is a senior scientist and group leader at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. [00:01:00] He's a member of the ice cube research team and the Ariana planning group. Thorsten Stetso Berger is an electronics engineer at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He too is part of the ice cube project and the Ariana team. They join us today to talk about the ice cube project and how it is helping to better define neutrinos. Spencer Klein and Thorsten setser Berger. Welcome to spectrum. Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. Can you talk to us a little bit about neutrinos? [00:01:30] Well, neutrinos are subatomic particles which are notable because they barely interact at all. In fact, most of them can go through the earth without interacting. This makes them an interesting subject for astrophysics because you can use them to probe places like the interior of stars where otherwise nothing else can get out and are most of them neutrinos from those sources. There's a wide range of neutrino energies that are studied. Some of the lowest energy neutrinos are solar neutrinos which [00:02:00] come from the interior of our sun. As you move up to higher energies, they come from different sources. We think a lot of the more energetic ones come from supernovas, which is when stars explode, they will produce an initial burst of neutrinos of moderate energy and then over the next thousand years or so, they will produce higher energy neutrinos as ejected spans, producing a cloud filled with shock fronts and you're particularly interested in those high energy. Speaker 3: Yes, ice cube is designed to study those neutrinos and also [00:02:30] neutrinos from even more energetic neutrinos where we don't really know where they come from. There are two theories. One is that they come from objects called active Galactic Nuclei. These are galaxies which have a super massive black hole at their center and they're rejecting a jet of particles perpendicular, more along their axis. And this jet is believed to also be a site to accelerate protons and other cosmic rays to very high energies. The other possible source of ultra energy neutrinos [00:03:00] are gamma ray bursts, which are when two black holes collide or a black hole collides with a neutron star. And if the neutrinos don't interact or interact so rarely and weekly with matter, how do we actually detect them? Well, the simple answer is you need a very large detector. Ice Cube is one cubic kilometer in volume and that's big enough that we think we should be able to detect neutrinos from these astrophysical sources. Speaker 3: The other project we work on, Ariana is even bigger. It's [00:03:30] proposed, but it's proposed to have about a hundred cubic kilometers of volume. And so you have an enormous detector to detect a few events and once you detect them, how can you tell where they came from? Well, with ice cube we can get the incoming direction of the neutrinos to within about a degree. So what we do is we look for neutrinos. Most of what we see out of these background atmospheric neutrinos which are produced when cosmic rays interact in the earth's atmosphere. But on top [00:04:00] of that we look for a cluster of neutrinos coming from a specific direction. That would be a clear sign of a neutrino source, which would be, you know, and then we can look in that direction and see what interesting sources lie. That way we can also look for extremely energetic neutrinos which are unlikely to be these atmospheric neutrinos. Speaker 3: And how is it that you measure that energy? What happens is a neutrino will come in and occasionally interact in the Antarctic. Ice should mention that ice cube is located at the South Pole where [00:04:30] there's 28 hundreds of meters of ice on top of the rock below. Occasionally in Neutrino will come in and interact in the ice and if it's something called a type of neutrino called the [inaudible] Neutrino, most of its energy will go into a subatomic particle called the Meuron. Meuron is interesting because it's electrically charged. As it goes through the ice, it will give off light, something we call Toronto radiation. So we've instrumented this cubic kilometer of ice with over 5,000 optical [00:05:00] modules, which are basically optical sensors. And so we record the amount and arrival times of the light at these optical sensors. And from that we can determine the neutrino direction to about within a degree. Speaker 3: And we can also get an estimate of the energy. Um, essentially is the on is more energetic. It will also produce other electrically charged particles as it travels. Those will give off more light. And so the light output is proportional to the neutrino energy. So you're taking an advantage of the fact that there's [00:05:30] a lot of ice in Antarctica and also that it's very big. Are there other reasons to do it at the South Pole? Well, the other critical component about the ice is that it has to be very clear, shouldn't scatter light and it shouldn't absorb light. And in fact the light can travel up to 200 meters through the ice before being absorbed. This is important because that means we can have a relatively sparse array. You know, we have only 5,000 sensors spread over a cubic kilometer. That's only if the light can travel long distances through the ice. [00:06:00] And do you have to take into account that the ice in the Antarctic is not perfectly clean? Yes. When we reconstruct the neutrino directions, we use this sophisticated maximum likelihood fitter. Essentially we try all sorts of different Milan directions and see which one is the most likely. And that takes into account the optical properties of the ace and includes how they vary with depth. There are some dust layers in the ice where the absorption length is much shorter and some places, [00:06:30] well most of the ice where it's much better. Speaker 4: Our guests on spectrum today are Spencer Klein and Thorsten Stetson Burger from Lawrence Berkeley national lab. They are part of a physics project named Ice Cube. In the next segment they talk about working at the South Pole. This is KALX Berkeley. Speaker 3: Can you compare the two experiments, both ice Cuban on a little bit? Well, ice cube is designed [00:07:00] for sort of moderate energy neutrinos, but for the really energetic neutrinos are, they are rare enough so that a one cubic kilometer detector just isn't big enough. And so for that you need something bigger and it's hard to imagine how you could scale the optical techniques that ice cube uses to larger detectors. So that's why we looked for a new technique in it. Here I should say we, the royal, we either many people, many places in the world looking at different versions. And so what we've chosen is looking [00:07:30] for radio [inaudible] off the mission. You know, we have this interaction in the ice. Some of the time. If it's an electron Neutrino, it produces a compact shower of particles. That shower will have more negatively charged particles than positively charged. Speaker 3: And so it will emit radio waves, you know, at frequencies up to about a Gigahertz coherently, which means that the radio emission strength depends on the square of the neutrino energies. So when you go to very high neutrino energies, this is a preferred technique. Radio waves can [00:08:00] travel between 300 meters and a kilometer in the ice, which means you can get by with a much sparser array. So you can instrument a hundred cubic kilometers with a reasonable number of detectors. When Ariane is developed, it will get to access higher energies. Will it still didn't detect some of the moderately high energies that ice cube is currently reaching? No, and there's no overlap because of the coherence and just not sensitive. I mean, ice cube will occasionally see these much higher energy neutrinos, [00:08:30] but it's just not big enough to see very many of them. Uh, you commented on, or you mentioned the size of the collaboration. Speaker 3: Can you sort of speak about how big these projects are? Sure. Ice Cube has got about 250 scientists in it from the u s Europe, Barbados, Japan, and New Zealand. Oh yeah. And plus one person from Australia now. And that's a well established, you know, it's a large experiment. Arianna is just getting going. It's got, I'll say less than a dozen [00:09:00] people in it. Mostly from UC Irvine and some involvement from LDL. How many years have you had experience with your sensors in the field then? That's kind of a complicated question and that the idea of doing neutrino astronomy in the Antarctic ice has been around for more than 20 years. The first efforts to actually put sensors in the ice, we're in the early 1990s these used very simple sensors. We just had a photo multiplier tube, essentially a very sensitive [00:09:30] optical detector, and they sent their signals to the surface. There are no complicated electronics in the ice. Speaker 3: The first Amanda effort in fact failed because the sensors were near the surface where the light was scattering very rapidly. Turns out the upper kilometer of ice is filled with little air bubbles, but then as you get down in depth, there's enough pressure to squeeze these bubbles out of existence. And so you go from very cloudy ice like what you see if you look in the center of an ice cube and then you go deeper [00:10:00] and you end up with this incredibly clear ice. So the first efforts were in this cloudy ice. Then in the second half of the 1990s Amanda was deployed in the deep highs. This is much smaller than ice cube in many respects. The predecessor, of course, the problem with Amanda was this transmission to the surface. It worked but it was very, very touchy and it wasn't something you could scale to the ice cube size. So one where people got together and came up with these digital optical modules where all of the digitizing electronics [00:10:30] is actually in the module. We also made a lot of other changes and improvements to come up with a detector that would be really robust and then we deployed the first ice cube string in 2005 and continued and then the last string was deployed at the end of 2010 Speaker 5: so basically from the scientific point or engineering point of view, we're learning about the detector. We got data from the first strain. It was not very useful for take neutrino science but you can learn to understand [00:11:00] the detector, learn how the electronics behaves, if there is a problem, change code to get different data. Speaker 3: When we did see some new is in that run and there's this one beautiful event where we saw this [inaudible] from a neutrino just moving straight up the string. I think it hit 51 out of the 60 optical sensors. So we're basically tracking it for 800 meters. It was just a beautiful that Speaker 5: what is the lifelight down there? The food, the day to day, [00:11:30] we've never been there in the winter time, so I can only talk about a summer and in the summer you're there for something specific like drilling or deploying a, so to summertime keeps you pretty busy and you do your stuff and then afterwards you hang out a little bit to wind down. And sometimes with some folks playing pool or ping pong or watching movies or just reading something and then time [00:12:00] again for the sleep or sleeping. And the next day for drawing for example, we had three shifts. And so that kept you pretty, pretty busy. One season when I was thrilling there I was on what we call the graveyard shift. Starting from 11 to I think eight in the morning. I saw and yeah, it was daylight. You don't notice it except you always get dinner for breakfast and scrambled eggs and potatoes for dinner. Speaker 3: The new station at the South Pole is really very nice and I would [00:12:30] say quite comfortable, good recreational facilities. I mean, and I would say the food was excellent, really quite impressive and you get to hang out with a bunch of international scientists that are down there. How collegial isn't, it Speaker 5: depends a little bit on the work. Like when I was rolling on night shift, we mostly got to hang out with people running the station. That was fairly collegial. Speaker 3: There's actually not very many scientists at the South Pole. In the summer there were about 250 [00:13:00] people there and maybe 20 of them were scientists. Most of them were people dealing with logistics. These are people, you know, heavy equipment operators. Fuel Lees would get the fuel off of the plane, cooks people, and even then can building the station wasn't quite done yet. The drillers will lodge wide variety of occupations but not all that many scientists. How close are the experiments to the station? Speaker 5: They are quite a few experiments [00:13:30] based in the station. Ice Cube is a kilometer away about probably Speaker 3: Lamotta and a half to the, to the ice cube lab, which is where the surface electronics is located. Speaker 5: So it's pretty close walking distance called walk. But it depends. I mean I don't mind the calls or it was a nice walk but they have like ice cube, uh, drilling. We are like lunch break also. It's [00:14:00] a little bit far to walk kilometer out or even throughout depending where you drill. So we had a car to drive back and forth to the station to eat lunch. Otherwise you are out for too long. Speaker 3: Yeah, they give you a really good equipment and so it's amazing how plaza you can be about walking around when it's 40 below, outside. Speaker 5: Especially if you do physical work outside as part of drilling also. It's amazing how much of that cold weather Ikea you actually take off because you just [00:14:30] do staff and you warm up. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley coming up, our guests, Spencer Klein and Torsten Stotzel Burger detail, the ice cube data analysis process, Speaker 3: the ongoing maintenance of Ice Cube Sarah Plan for its lifetime Speaker 5: for the stuff [00:15:00] in the eyes, it's really hard to replace that. You cannot easily drill down and take them out. They are plans, uh, to keep the surface electronics, especially the computers update them as lower power hardware becomes available. Otherwise I'm not aware of preventive maintenance. You could do with like on a car. Yeah. Speaker 3: I have to say the engineers did a great job on ice cube. About 98% of the optical modules are working. Most of the failures were infant [00:15:30] mortality. They did not survive the deployment when we've only had a handful of optical modules fail after deployment and all the evidence is we'll be able to keep running it as long as it's interesting. And is there a point in which it's no longer interesting in terms of how many sensors are still active? I think we'll reach the point where the data is less interesting before we run out of sensors now. Okay. You know, we might be losing one or two sensors a year. In fact, we're still at the point where [00:16:00] due to various software improvements, including in the firmware and the optical modules, each year's run has more sensors than the previous years. Even if we only had 90% of them working, that would be plenty. Speaker 3: And you know, that's probably a hundred years from now. What do we have guests on to speak about the LHC at certain they were talking about the gigantic amounts of data that they generate and how surprisingly long it takes for scientists to analyze that data to actually get a hold [00:16:30] of data from the detector. And you're generating very large amounts of data. And furthermore, it's in Antarctica. So how much turnaround time is there? Well, the Antarctica doesn't add very much time. We typically get data in the north within a few days or a week after it's taken. There is a bit of a lag and try and take this time to understand how to analyze the data. For example, now we're working on, for the most part, the data that was taken in 2010 and [00:17:00] you know, hope to have that out soon probably for summer conferences. But understanding how to best analyze the data is not trivial. For example, this measurement of the mule on energies, very dependent on a lot of assumptions about the ice and so we have ways to do it now, but we're far from the optimal method Speaker 5: and keep in mind that detector built, it's just finished. So before you always added in a little bit more. So each year the data looked different because you've got more sensors in the data. Speaker 3: [00:17:30] Let's say for things where turnaround is important. For example, dimension, these gamma ray bursts, there's where this happens when a bunch of satellites see a burst of x-rays or gamma rays coming from somewhere in the sky. They can tell us when it happened and give us an estimate of the direction. We can have an and I would say not quite real time, but you know that we could have turned around if a couple of weeks. We also measure the rates in each of the detectors. This is the way to look for low energy neutrinos from a [00:18:00] supernova that is essentially done in real time. If the detector sees an increase, then somebody will get an email alert essentially immediately. If we got one that looked like a Supernova, we could turn that around very quickly. So are the algorithms that you're using for this longer term analysis improving? Speaker 3: Yes. They're much more sophisticated than they were two years ago. I'd say we're gradually approaching and I'm ask some Todrick set of algorithm, but we're still quite a ways [00:18:30] to go. We're still learning a lot of things. You know, this is very different from any other experiment that's been done. Normally experiments if the LHC, if they are tracking a charged particle, they measure points along the track. In our case, the light is admitted at the trend off angle. About 41 degrees. So the data points we see are anywhere from a few meters to a hundred meters from the track. And because of the scattering of light, it's a not so obvious how to find [00:19:00] the optimum track and it's, you know, it's very dependent on a lot of assumptions and we're still working on that. And we have methods that work well. As I said, you know, we can get an angular resolution of better than a degree in some cases, but there's still probably some room to be gotten there. Speaker 5: And then also, I mean I'm not involved in the science, but I hear people have new ideas how to look at a data. So that's still evolving too. Speaker 3: Yeah. Like you know, one analysis that people are working on, but we don't have yet would [00:19:30] be a speculative search where you're looking for a pair of event, a pair of neo-cons going upward through the detector in the same direction at the same time, which would quite possibly be a signal of some sort of new physics. And it's certainly an interesting typology to look for, but we're not there yet. And are there different teams looking at the same data to try to find different results and broaden the search so to speak? Uh, yes. We have seven or eight different physics working [00:20:00] groups in each of those groups is concentrating on a different type of physics or a different class of physics. For example, one group is looking for point sources, you know, hotspots in the sky. Second Group is looking at atmospheric and diffuse neutrinos trying to measure the energy spectrum of the neutrinos. Speaker 3: We do see both the atmospheric and also looking for an additional component. There's a group doing cosmic ray physics. There's a group looking for exotic physics. These are things like these pairs [00:20:30] of upward going particles. Also looking for other oddities such as magnetic monopoles. There's a group that's looking for neutrinos that might be produced from weakly interacting. Massive particles, IAA, dark matter, but there's a group that's monitoring the rates of the detector. This scalers looking for Supernova and oh, there's also a group looking for talented Trinos, which is the this very distinctive topology town. Neutrinos are sort of the third flavor of neutrinos and those are [00:21:00] mostly only produced by extraterrestrial sources and they look very distinctively. You would look for case where you see two clusters of energy and the detector separated by a few hundred meters. Speaker 5: Looking at what's next, what would be the sort of ideal laboratory? If you want something that's very big, obviously Antarctica is a great challenge. Can you do neutrino detection in space for instance? [inaudible] Speaker 3: hmm, that's an interesting question. There are people who [00:21:30] are talking about that and the main application is trying to look for these cosmic gray air showers. The best experiments to study high energy, cosmic gray air showers are these things called air shower arrays, which are an array of detectors. Um, the largest one is something called the OJ Observatory in Argentina. It covers about 3000 square kilometers with an array of detectors on kind of a one and a half kilometer grid. And that's about as largest surface detector as you could imagine. Building the alternative [00:22:00] technology is look for something called air fluorescents. When the showers go through the air, they light it up. Particularly the nitrogen is excited and in that kind of like a fluorescent tube. So you see this burst of light as the shower travels through the atmosphere. O J in addition to the surface detectors has these cameras called flies eyes that look for this fluorescence, but it's limited in scale. And people have proposed building experiments that would sit on satellites or a space station [00:22:30] and look down and look at these showers from above. They could cover a much larger area. They could also look for showers from upward going particles, I. E. Neutrino interactions. But at this point that's all pretty speculative. Speaker 5: And when's your next trip to Antarctica? Uh, that's all depending on funding. I would like to go again and hopefully soon. I think I'm cautiously optimistic. We'll be able to go again this year. Hmm. Spencer in Thorsten. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 4: [00:23:00] [inaudible] regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events that are happening locally over the next few weeks. Lisa Katovich joins me for that Speaker 6: calendar. The August general meeting of the East Bay Astronomical Society is Saturday, July 14th at the Chabot space and science centers, Dellums [00:23:30] building 10,000 Skyline Boulevard in Oakland. Ezra Bahrani is the evening Speaker. The title of his talk is UFOs, the proof, the physics and why they're here. The meeting starts at 7:30 PM Speaker 2: join Nobel laureates and social and environmental justice advocates at the towns and Tay Gore third annual seminar for Science and technology on behalf of the peoples of Bengali and the Himalayan basins, the subject, the global water crisis [00:24:00] prevention and solution. Saturday, July 21st 1:30 PM to 7:30 PM the event is jointly sponsored by UC Berkeley's department of Public Health and the international institute of the Bengali and Himalayan basins. Guest Speakers include three Nobel laureates, Charles h towns, Burton Richter and Douglas Ashur off. Also presenting our Francis towns advocate for social justice, Dr. Rush, Gosh [00:24:30] and Sterling Brunel. The event will be held in one 45 Dwinelle hall on the UC Berkeley campus. That's Saturday, July 21st 1:30 PM to 7:30 PM for more details, contact the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Speaker 6: the next science at cal lectures on July 21st the talk will be given by Dr Jeffrey Silverman and it's entitled exploding stars, Dark Energy, and the runaway universe. Dr Silverman has been a guest [00:25:00] on spectrum. His research has been in the study of Super Novi. His lecture will focus on how the study of supernovae led to the recent discovery that the universe is expanding, likely due to a repulsive and mysterious dark energy. It was these observations that were recently awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics. The lecture is July 21st at 11:00 AM and the genetics and plant biology building room 100 Speaker 2: next to news stories. Speaker 6: 3000 species [00:25:30] of mosquitoes are responsible for malaria, dengue, a fever, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and cephalitis and many more diseases. In Burkina Faso alone, residents can expect 200 bytes a day. Rapid resistance to pesticides on the part of malaria mosquitoes has prompted researchers all over the globe to deploy novel strategies against this and other diseases. Targeting Dengue. A fever has an advantage over malaria as only one species. Eighties [00:26:00] Egypt die is responsible for spreading it versus the 20 species responsible for spreading malaria. A British biotechnology company called Oxitec has developed a method to modify the genetic structure of the male eighties Aegypti mosquito transforming it into a mutant capable of destroying its own species. In 2010 they announced impressive preliminary results of the first known test of 3 million free flying transgenic mosquitoes engineered [00:26:30] to start a population crash after infiltrating wild disease spreading eighties a Gyp dye swarms on Cayman Island. Speaker 6: Oxitec has recently applied to the FDA for approval of its mosquito in the u s with Key West under consideration as a future test site in 2009 key west suffered its first dengate outbreak in 73 years. Australian researchers are testing and mosquito intended to fight dengue, a fever bypassing the disruptive Wolbachia bacteria to other mosquitoes, a very [00:27:00] different approach than transgenic genes funded largely by the bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The project has shown that the Wolbachia strain not only shortens the life of a mosquito, but also reduces the amount of virus it develops. Releases in Queensland, Australia last year showed that Wolbachia could spread through a wild population quickly and future test sites are under consideration. In Vietnam. Speaker 2: The UC Berkeley News Center reports a prototype network being installed by chemists at the University of California. Berkeley [00:27:30] will employ 40 sensors spread over a 27 square mile grid. The information the network will provide could be used to monitor local carbon dioxide emissions to check on the effectiveness of carbon reduction strategies now mandated by the state, but hard to verify built and installed by project leader Professor Ron Cohen and graduate student Virginia Tighe and their lab colleagues. The shoe box size sensors will continuously measure carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, [00:28:00] nitrogen dioxide, and ozone levels as well as temperature, pressure and humidity streaming. The information live to the web through the site. beacon.berkeley.edu the sensor network dubbed Beacon stretches from the East Bay regional parks on the east to interstate eight 80 on the west from El Surrito on the north nearly to San Leandro on the south encompassing open space as well as heavily traffic areas. [00:28:30] Most of the sensors are being mounted on the roofs of local schools in order to get students interested in the connection between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. The UC Berkeley researchers work with Oakland's Chabot space and science center to create middle school and high school activities using live sensor data stream through the web as part of the students energy and climate science curriculum. The beacon network is a pilot program funded by the National Science Foundation to determine what information can be learned [00:29:00] from a densely spaced network Speaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: The music heard during the show is from most done at David's album, folk and acoustics made available through a creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address [00:29:30] is spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeff Silverman and Nicholas McConnell helped Spectrum present a three part Astronomy survey explaining the ideas, experiments, and observation technology that are transforming Astronomy. This is part three of three. We discuss Dark matter and dark energy.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly [00:00:30] 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Hello and good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm joined today by spectrum contributors, Rick Karnofsky and Lisa [inaudible]. Our interview is with Dr Jeff Silverman, a recent phd in astrophysics from UC Berkeley and Nicholas McConnell, a phd candidate, unscheduled to be awarded a phd in astrophysics by UC Berkeley this summer. [00:01:00] Jeff and Nicholas have been helping spectrum present a three part astronomy survey, explaining the big ideas, recent experiments, collaborations and improvements in observation technology that are transforming astronomy. This is part three of three and we discuss dark matter, also known as dark energy. Before we talk about dark energy, let me ask you, how do you Speaker 4: relate to time, the human lifetime and then universe lifetime as a scientist [00:01:30] and as a human being, how do you do that? How do you make that stretch? I can't say that I necessarily have an intuitive sense for just how much time has elapsed between the dawn of the universe and me. But I think you can extend it a little bit. You can think of your parents and your parents' parents. And the idea of having ancestry and lineage as a person is a fairly familiar concept. And so I'm the product of generations of people who have done things. And similarly our planet and the conditions that we have and experience every day [00:02:00] are the product of generations and generations of stars being formed and galaxies being formed throughout the universe. And so I think this idea of generations where one thing spawns another and conditions change slightly and gradually over time, but some of the same processes like new stars forming happen over and over and over again is one way to sort of access the, the notion of time throughout the universe. Speaker 5: I think one of the hardest issues for astronomers in astronomy research in general [00:02:30] is the further away we look, the further back in time we look. As Nicholas mentioned, it takes light time to get to us. So if you look at something very far away, it looks like it did much younger in the past, but we can't just watch two galaxies collide and merge. We can't watch a cloud of gas collapse on itself and form a new star and then evolve and then explode as a supernova. We can't wash those processes. We get a snapshot in time, affectively a still of all these processes [00:03:00] all over the universe at different stages. And then the astronomers have to put these pictures in the right order of what's going on, which picture corresponds to which age and how you go from one to the other. And I think that's something that I've had trouble with trying to think about it. Speaker 5: You know, I want to sit down as a scientist and just watch a star evolve and watch it grow up and then die. And then you take your notes and figure it out. Then you're lucky you do get to actually watch them die. I do watch the dying part and you know, with Supernova, with certain kinds of astronomy of phenomena, we [00:03:30] can watch things change on a reasonable basis, on a daily, monthly, yearly basis. But that's the very last bit of a star that has maybe lived for 10 million years or 4 billion years. And one of the things we tried to do is by looking at the death in for a lot about the life, but it is only that small part portion. And there's lots of astronomy where it is basically static and you just see the same thing without any kind of change. There are certain parts of astronomy that do change a little bit with time and we can learn from that. [00:04:00] But the bulk of the star's life, we don't see any change or we just see that tiny bit at the end. Speaker 6: This is spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking with Dr Jeff Silverman and Nicholas McConnell, astrophysicists from UC Berkeley talking about dark energy. [00:04:30] Let's talk about dark Speaker 4: dark matter. And in so doing, talk about how dark energy or dark matter have become important to astronomy. So one of the interesting things that's happened over the past say half century is that we've profoundly changed our perspective of what the universe contains and what it's fundamentally made of. And so Jeff mentioned through the Supernova in the late nineties we discovered that the universe was expanding faster [00:05:00] and faster and faster. And we think that is due to something that we refer to as dark energy, which we believe makes up about 70 75 5% of the overall mass and energy in the universe. And then when we look at things that we think are sort of more classically as matters stuff that admits gravity and causes things to orbit around it, we've also learned that a very large percentage of gravitational stuff in the universe is made up of this mysterious stuff called dark matter that we know is there [00:05:30] in very large quantities. Speaker 4: It dominates the gravity of how galaxies, for instance, interact with one another. However, we don't know what it's made of. Unlike other kinds of matter, it doesn't emit any light whatsoever. So using telescopes we can learn very little about its actual composition. But on the other side of physics and astronomy, particle physicists have been coming up with theoretical models of the various subatomic particles that constitute universe. And there are certainly space in those [00:06:00] particle models to have particles that are responsible for creating the dark matter. But even though there are a bunch of theories that describe what this dark matter particle might be, it's still not constrained by experiment. We haven't detected definitively any dark matter particle yet, but there are experiments ongoing that are trying to determine what some of these very fundamental particles are. And one that I'll mention because it's led at Berkeley and had an interesting, although definitely not definitive result a couple of years ago is called the cryogenic [00:06:30] dark matter search or cdms. Speaker 4: Uh, and this is an interesting experiment that takes tablets of pure Germanium and buries them, deepen a mine in Minnesota with a lot of equipment and the Germanium is cooled to almost absolute zero as close to absolute zero as we're technologically able to get it. And just sits there waiting for a dark matter particle to come along and collide with one of the atomic nuclei in one of these tablets and the thing about these theorize dark matter particles is that they're extremely noninteractive [00:07:00] to a certain degree. The earth and the galaxy are swimming in a sea of dark matter particles, but they pass through us and never have any noticeable effect on us almost entirely all of the time, but on very, very, very rare occasions you actually do get an interaction in principle between a dark matter particle in something else and so we have these tablets just sitting there waiting for one of these collisions to happen so that we can detect it. Speaker 4: Now there are a bunch of other things that cause collisions in Germanium, things like cosmic rays, which you kind [00:07:30] of get out of the way of by bearing a deep underground electrons and light from other sources, radioactive decay, all of these can set off signals that with a lot of processing and principle, you can distinguish from the ones you expect from having a dark matter particle. Anyway, in 2009 CMS released a statement that they'd been collecting data on collisions inside these tablets for roughly a year's time period and what they found was that based on the best efforts they could do between weeding out [00:08:00] all of the background sources that they're not interested in, they estimated that they would have one false detection that on average statistically they would have missed one background source and classified as a real source. I mean in that same year time period they had found two detections. Speaker 4: So in a very, very, very non-statistical sense, you say, well we found two and we think that one of them statistically is probably false. Maybe we found a dark matter particle. Of course, this is far below the standards of rigor that science requires [00:08:30] for actually saying, yes, we found dark matter, but it's an interesting start and there are certainly ongoing experiments to try to detect these very, very rare interactions between the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the gravitational stuff in the universe and the ordinary matter that we do know about that. For the large part, it never actually does get to experience it. Are Neutrinos part of dark man or is that another issue entirely? Neutrinos. So I think that some of these particle models suggest that the dark [00:09:00] matter particle is what's called a super symmetric version of a neutrino. So something that has a lot of similar properties to a neutrino but is much, much, much more massive than neutrinos that we do know about have almost no mass whatsoever similar to the dark matter. They also almost never interact with ordinary particles, but there were models run basically saying how would the universe evolve and what would it look like today if dark matter were made up of these neutrinos that we do know about. And those models predict the [00:09:30] overall structure of the universe being very different from what we observe. So we're pretty sure that neutrinos are at most a very small fraction of this dark matter. Speaker 5: Yeah, getting talking a little bit more about the neutrinos. As Nicholas said, they probably are not a huge component of what classically we're referring to as dark matter and that these big experiments are looking for, but they are very interesting weird particles that don't interact very much. They're very hard to detect. They're going through our bodies all the time. The Sun produces them a supernovae produce them [00:10:00] in large amounts as well and even though they're not rigorously really much of this dark matter, they are very interesting and large experiments around the world have been conducted over the past few years to try and detect more of them, to try and classify them and learn more about these neutrino particles. One that Berkeley is very heavily involved in in the, in the Lawrence Berkeley lab is called ice cube down in Antarctica actually. So if you're a poor Grad student in that group, you get to a winter over for six months in Antarctica with lots and lots of DVDs is what I've been told. Speaker 5: [00:10:30] But basically what they do down there is they drill huge vertical holes into the ice shelves and drop down detectors, a photo multiplier tube type devices, things that should light up if they get hit by a neutrino or something like that. And they do a ton of these at various depths and make a greed under the ice. A three dimensional cube under the ice of these detectors could imagine a cubic ice cube and you poke one laser beam through [00:11:00] it. You'll light up a bunch of these detectors in the line and you can connect all of those points with a straight line and sort of see where it's coming from in the sky. And so connecting back a little bit to supernovae. If the Supernova goes off very, very close by, we could possibly detect neutrinos from some of these supernovae and perhaps little deviations from where it goes through and which detectors that lights up could be telling us some interesting information about the neutrinos that are produced in the supernova about our detectors. Speaker 5: So it's a very nice, uh, play back and forth. [00:11:30] Ice Cube has not found neutrinos from a supernova yet. Hopefully we'll have even closer supernovae in the near future and ice cube and other types of neutrino experiments. We'll see possibly some of these and so another great example of big international collaborations even from different types of physics and astronomy getting together the supernova hunters and Supernova Observer, astronomers talking to these neutrino detector particle and trying to come together and answer these questions about the universe from two different sides. Basically two different kinds of science [00:12:00] almost, but coming together with similar observations or related observations is a very interesting prospect. Speaker 6: The show is spectrum. The station is KALX Berkeley. We're talking with Dr Jeff Silverman and Nicholas McConnell there explaining dark matter, dark energy, Speaker 7: dark matter and dark energy as [00:12:30] you called it. Are there other experiments and avenues of research for uncovering this phenomenon or particle, however you want to refer to it? Speaker 8: The direct particle detection experiments that are on earth and we mentioned one of them led by Berkeley are probably the main avenues we have right now for discovering what particle is responsible for the dark matter. There are other ways that we can still collect additional evidence, [00:13:00] although we already have quite a bit for the fact that some strange particle and not ordinary protons and neutrons and electrons are responsible for a lot of the gravitational forces that we see in the universe. One other avenue that might be interesting is the idea that if dark matter is made of subatomic particles, there could be cases where two of those particles interact with one another and Gamma Ray radiation by annihilating them and in that case we have [00:13:30] gamma ray telescopes set up in space that spend a lot of their time detecting more prosaic Cammeray sources. Things like exploding stars, but it's possible perhaps in the near future that these telescopes can also detect gamma ray signatures from the centers of galaxies that we would be able to analyze in such a way that we determined was more likely to be from dark matter particles annihilating one another than from these other astrophysical sources that we already know about. Speaker 8: I'm not sure if that would reveal the identity [00:14:00] of what the dark matter particle is, but it would be more evidence that they do exist. Speaker 7: Dark matter has been hypothesized so that the theory of relativity works or is it devised to prop up the standard model, Speaker 5: the strongest pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter and sort of the reason that we added it into our pictures of the cosmos is there's not enough stars and gas in galaxies. If you [00:14:30] add up all of the gravity, it's not enough gravity force to hold all those stars and gas together in a galaxy and so we need some other matter that exists that exerts the gravitational force to hold everything together, but it doesn't glow. It's not bright. We can't see it with our normal telescopes at any wavelengths in space or on the ground. And so we've sort of given it this name, dark matter, these dark particles that exert a gravity force but don't give off light in any sense of that word. [00:15:00] We found some candidates over the years. Those have been interesting but they don't add up to enough matter out there and so we hypothesize that there is some other particles, something we haven't figured out yet in particle physics since that is out there and we're not detecting it with our telescopes, we're not detecting it with these other experiments that find subatomic particles and I can see very rare subatomic particles, but I personally think in the next decade we will directly detect one of these particles or a handful of these [00:15:30] particles. Speaker 5: If we don't with these experiments that are online and coming online. If we don't detect these dark matter particles then we're going to have to really rethink how these galaxies, our own galaxy included can exist in their current form with all their stars and gas that we can observe. There'll be some serious issues in our understanding of galaxies and the study of the universe in general, but I think we will find dark matter particles. I think it will match to at least some of the models and theories we have and I like to think that everything is nice and [00:16:00] ordered in. That gives me comfort when I go to sleep at night. Speaker 7: So on that personal level and trying to understand the standard model and your confidence in all that, is there a part of you that's open to the idea that it may not really be as you've as has been imagined for the past 30 years? Speaker 8: I think that at one level of detail or another it's actually very likely that the models we've constructed over the last century, in the case of particle physics in the last 30 years, in [00:16:30] the case of adding dark matter as an ingredient to the universe that we see as astronomers, I think it's very likely that some of those details are going to fall by the wayside and be replaced by a different and more accurate description that people aren't thinking of yet. I think if the history of science teaches us anything, it's that as soon as we get over confident that we've put all the pieces together. If something comes in really forces us to rethink how the universe works as far as dark matter goes. I'd like to point out that there's sort of two [00:17:00] different theories in play and that either one of them I think could be revised in order to explain observations if we do fail to detect dark matter particles soon. Speaker 8: And one of them is Einstein's theory of relativity saying that if we know how much stuff there is that we actually understand the literal force of gravity well enough to determine how mass interacts with one another and how the force of gravity works. And then the other one is different particle physics theories that say that if you have stuff coming and gravity like a dark [00:17:30] matter particle, what are the, the limiting things for what that particle could actually be. And I'm not well versed enough to know whether there's a lot of room for dark matter particles to exist that we wouldn't be able to detect with this generation or the next generation of experiments. But one possible way to fail to detect matter particles now and not have to revise general relativity as if particle physics can come up with a particle that is responsible for dark matter but is well beyond our capacity to detect [00:18:00] at this point. Speaker 3: Nicholas and Jeffrey, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Speaker 6: For people who are interested in getting involved in amateur astronomy, let me mention a few avenues to pursue. The astronomy connection has a website that will lead you to a wide range of observing individuals and groups in the bay area. Their website is observers.org [00:18:30] for those who want to get involved in a crowdsource astronomy project, go to the website, Galaxy zoo.org the University of California observatories have a website that has a great deal of information, particularly under the links heading. Their website is used, c o lik.org or [00:19:00] regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening in the bay area. Over the next few weeks. I'm joined by Rick Kaneski and Lisa Katovich for the calendar. Speaker 9: The science of art is the spring open house at the crucible. This event we'll highlight the scientific principles, inquiry and exploration behind the fine and industrial arts processes taught there. This event will bring together crucible faculty, guest artists, and a curated gallery of exhibits and demonstrations. Also projects from local schools [00:19:30] as well as special performances, food and the participation of a number of other local art and science related organizations and university programs. This event will happen on Saturday, April 7th from 12 to 4:00 PM and the crucibles located at 1260 seventh street in Oakland. Speaker 3: The Oppenheimer Lecture, the Higgs particle pivot of symmetry and mass. The Speaker is [inaudible] to [inaudible] professor of theoretical physics [00:20:00] at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Professor to Hoeft was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1999 in this lecture, professor to Hoeft will reflect on the importance of the as yet undetected Higgs particle and speculate on the Subatomic world once the particle is observed in detail. The lecture is April 9th at 5:00 PM in the Chevron Auditorium at International House [00:20:30] on the UC Berkeley campus. On Monday, April 9th the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco at five nine five market street is hosting Barb Stuckey, the author of taste, what you're missing. The passionate eaters guy too. I good food. Tastes good. Some reviewers say that this book bring science to the of taste. In the same Speaker 10: way that Harold McGee's book on food and cooking popularized food science. She will talk about understanding the science and senses of what you eat. You'll better understand both the psychology and physiology of taste [00:21:00] and learn how to develop and improve your tasting pellet by discerning flavors and detecting and ingredients. A five-thirty checkin proceeds. The 6:00 PM program, which is then followed by a book signing at seven the event is free for members, $20 standard admission and a $7 for students. Visit www.commonwealthclub.org for more info Speaker 9: pioneers in engineering. A nonprofit high school robotics competition organized by UC Berkeley students is holding its fourth annual robotics competition. [00:21:30] The Big Day is Saturday, April 14th at the Lawrence Hall of science in Berkeley. The competition begins at 10:00 AM and continues all day until five. This year's challenge is titled Ballistic Blitz for the seven weeks leading up to the final event. 200 high school students in teams from 21 East Bay high schools each work to design and build a robot. Come see the dramatic culmination of their hard work. This event is included in the price of admission. Admission is [00:22:00] free for UC Berkeley students and staff. For more information, go to the Lawrence Hall of Science website and Click on events. Mount Diablo Astronomical Society presents member planets, our solar system, neighbors, Venus and Mars through telescopes and find out why earth has abundant life but not Mars and Venus. Saturday, April 14th 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM the rendezvous is at Mount Diablo lower summit parking lot [00:22:30] summit road. Speaker 9: Clayton. For more details and contact information, go to the website, m d a s. Dot. Mitt. On Wednesday, April 18th ask a scientist. A monthly lecture series will be co launching the wonder Fest Book Club with USI Professor, biological anthropology and neuroscience, Terrence Deacon's book, incomplete nature, how mind emerged from matter. Professor Deacon's presentation will focus on the idea that key elements of consciousness, [00:23:00] values, meanings, feelings, etc. Emerge from specific constraints on the physical processes of a nervous system. The lecture will be located at the California Institute of Integral Studies at Namaz Day Hall, 1453 Mission Street in San Francisco. It will start at 7:00 PM and it's free. Speaker 10: Cal Day, UC Berkeley's free annual open house will be on Saturday, April 21st 9:00 AM until 4:00 PM there'll be a ton of science related events this year, including [00:23:30] tours of the labs and shops used for molecular and cell biology, synthetic biology, mechanical engineering, Quantum Nano Electronics, space sciences, star dust, nuclear engineering, automation, science, and more. There'll be lectures on diverse topics such as environmental design, geology, and the art and science of prehistoric life, as well as tables for various science and engineering majors and student groups. For more information. Visit [inaudible] dot berkeley.edu [00:24:00] now on to the news, Speaker 9: a February NASA study reports that climatic changes in the polar regions are occurring at a magnitude far greater than the rest of the planet. The oldest and thickest Arctic Sea ice is disappearing at a faster rate than the younger and thinner eyes at the edges of the Arctic oceans floating ice cap, the thicker ice known as multi-year ice survived through the cyclical summer melt season when young ice that has formed over winter. Just as quickly melt again, [00:24:30] Joey Comiso, senior scientists at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and author of a study recently published in the Journal of climate says the rapid disappearance of older ice makes Arctic Sea ice even more vulnerable to further decline in the summer. The surface temperature in the Arctic is going up, which results in a shorter ice forming season. It would take a persistent cold spell for most multi-year CIS and other ice types to grow thick enough in the winter to survive the summer melt season and reverse the trend. [00:25:00] This warming in the Arctic is the warmest 12 month on record. For the region. This means that the region is moving closer to, if not already, breaching climatic tipping points which could see the Arctic's current ecological state being shifted to an entirely new one, having severe ramifications, not only for the biodiversity and ecosystems of the region but also for the rest of the planet. Speaker 10: The April 2nd issue of the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has an article by Francesco Burma of Boston University [00:25:30] and others that reports evidence that humans acquired fire at least 200,000 years earlier than previously believed. The evidence is in the form of sediments from the wonderware cave in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. They were studied by micro morphological and foray transform infrared micro spectroscopy and data to be 1 million years old. The sediment contained burn, sharp bone fragments and plant ashes. The bone seems to have been exposed to temperature is found by a small cooking fires under about [00:26:00] 700 degrees Celsius. Previous to this finding, there was consensus that the earliest fires dated to only 790,000 years ago, and so these reporting older fires tended to be controversial as it is difficult to demonstrate that fires were small and intentional and use for cooking rather than acts of nature. Speaker 9: More than half of all cancer is preventable. Experts say science daily reports that in a review article published in Science Translational Medicine on March 28th the investigators outlined obstacles. [00:26:30] They say stand in the way of making a huge dent in the cancer burden in the u s and around the world. Epidemiologists, Graham Colditz, MD professor at the Washington University School of Medicine and associate director of prevention and control. The Siteman cancer center says, we actually have an enormous amount of data about the causes and preventability of cancer. It's time we made an investment in implementing what we know. According to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 1,600,000 new cancer cases will be diagnosed this year in the u s [00:27:00] also this year, approximately 577,000 Americans are expected to die of cancer according to Kolditz and his co authors individual habits and the structure of society itself from medical research, funding to building design and food subsidies influences the extent of the cancer burden and can be changed to reduce it. Speaker 10: Science news reports on a paper presented at the cognitive neuroscience society by Andrew met her, Ellie, Mika, and CN Beilock. [00:27:30] Both of the University of Chicago. The team use brain scans to find areas in a person's brain whose activity you will predict how well that person functions under pressure. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the team gave both low and high stakes math problems to volunteers. Stakes were determined by both the size of financial reward and a social pressure via a financial penalty imposed upon teammates. In the case of failure, well, easy questions could be answered regardless of the stakes in the study. More difficult [00:28:00] questions led to a 10% average decrease in performance for volunteers who had decreased performance. There is greater activity in the enterprise [inaudible] circus and the inferior frontal junction of the brain area is linked to working memory. Furthermore, the more the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and area linked with emotions work to keep these two areas in sync, the more likely the volunteer was to choke under pressure. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [00:28:30] a special thanks to Dr Jeffers Silverman and Nicholas McConnell for spending the time with us. Degenerate three shows on astronomy. Thanks to Rick Karnofsky who helps produce the show and Lisa Katovich for her health Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: the music heard during the show is by Los Donna David and album titled Folk and Acoustic [00:29:00] made available by a creative comments 3.0 attributional license. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same [00:29:30] time. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 11: [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeff Silverman and Nicholas McConnell helped Spectrum present a three part Astronomy survey explaining the ideas, experiments, and observation technology that are transforming Astronomy. This is part three of three. We discuss Dark matter and dark energy.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly [00:00:30] 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Hello and good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm joined today by spectrum contributors, Rick Karnofsky and Lisa [inaudible]. Our interview is with Dr Jeff Silverman, a recent phd in astrophysics from UC Berkeley and Nicholas McConnell, a phd candidate, unscheduled to be awarded a phd in astrophysics by UC Berkeley this summer. [00:01:00] Jeff and Nicholas have been helping spectrum present a three part astronomy survey, explaining the big ideas, recent experiments, collaborations and improvements in observation technology that are transforming astronomy. This is part three of three and we discuss dark matter, also known as dark energy. Before we talk about dark energy, let me ask you, how do you Speaker 4: relate to time, the human lifetime and then universe lifetime as a scientist [00:01:30] and as a human being, how do you do that? How do you make that stretch? I can't say that I necessarily have an intuitive sense for just how much time has elapsed between the dawn of the universe and me. But I think you can extend it a little bit. You can think of your parents and your parents' parents. And the idea of having ancestry and lineage as a person is a fairly familiar concept. And so I'm the product of generations of people who have done things. And similarly our planet and the conditions that we have and experience every day [00:02:00] are the product of generations and generations of stars being formed and galaxies being formed throughout the universe. And so I think this idea of generations where one thing spawns another and conditions change slightly and gradually over time, but some of the same processes like new stars forming happen over and over and over again is one way to sort of access the, the notion of time throughout the universe. Speaker 5: I think one of the hardest issues for astronomers in astronomy research in general [00:02:30] is the further away we look, the further back in time we look. As Nicholas mentioned, it takes light time to get to us. So if you look at something very far away, it looks like it did much younger in the past, but we can't just watch two galaxies collide and merge. We can't watch a cloud of gas collapse on itself and form a new star and then evolve and then explode as a supernova. We can't wash those processes. We get a snapshot in time, affectively a still of all these processes [00:03:00] all over the universe at different stages. And then the astronomers have to put these pictures in the right order of what's going on, which picture corresponds to which age and how you go from one to the other. And I think that's something that I've had trouble with trying to think about it. Speaker 5: You know, I want to sit down as a scientist and just watch a star evolve and watch it grow up and then die. And then you take your notes and figure it out. Then you're lucky you do get to actually watch them die. I do watch the dying part and you know, with Supernova, with certain kinds of astronomy of phenomena, we [00:03:30] can watch things change on a reasonable basis, on a daily, monthly, yearly basis. But that's the very last bit of a star that has maybe lived for 10 million years or 4 billion years. And one of the things we tried to do is by looking at the death in for a lot about the life, but it is only that small part portion. And there's lots of astronomy where it is basically static and you just see the same thing without any kind of change. There are certain parts of astronomy that do change a little bit with time and we can learn from that. [00:04:00] But the bulk of the star's life, we don't see any change or we just see that tiny bit at the end. Speaker 6: This is spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking with Dr Jeff Silverman and Nicholas McConnell, astrophysicists from UC Berkeley talking about dark energy. [00:04:30] Let's talk about dark Speaker 4: dark matter. And in so doing, talk about how dark energy or dark matter have become important to astronomy. So one of the interesting things that's happened over the past say half century is that we've profoundly changed our perspective of what the universe contains and what it's fundamentally made of. And so Jeff mentioned through the Supernova in the late nineties we discovered that the universe was expanding faster [00:05:00] and faster and faster. And we think that is due to something that we refer to as dark energy, which we believe makes up about 70 75 5% of the overall mass and energy in the universe. And then when we look at things that we think are sort of more classically as matters stuff that admits gravity and causes things to orbit around it, we've also learned that a very large percentage of gravitational stuff in the universe is made up of this mysterious stuff called dark matter that we know is there [00:05:30] in very large quantities. Speaker 4: It dominates the gravity of how galaxies, for instance, interact with one another. However, we don't know what it's made of. Unlike other kinds of matter, it doesn't emit any light whatsoever. So using telescopes we can learn very little about its actual composition. But on the other side of physics and astronomy, particle physicists have been coming up with theoretical models of the various subatomic particles that constitute universe. And there are certainly space in those [00:06:00] particle models to have particles that are responsible for creating the dark matter. But even though there are a bunch of theories that describe what this dark matter particle might be, it's still not constrained by experiment. We haven't detected definitively any dark matter particle yet, but there are experiments ongoing that are trying to determine what some of these very fundamental particles are. And one that I'll mention because it's led at Berkeley and had an interesting, although definitely not definitive result a couple of years ago is called the cryogenic [00:06:30] dark matter search or cdms. Speaker 4: Uh, and this is an interesting experiment that takes tablets of pure Germanium and buries them, deepen a mine in Minnesota with a lot of equipment and the Germanium is cooled to almost absolute zero as close to absolute zero as we're technologically able to get it. And just sits there waiting for a dark matter particle to come along and collide with one of the atomic nuclei in one of these tablets and the thing about these theorize dark matter particles is that they're extremely noninteractive [00:07:00] to a certain degree. The earth and the galaxy are swimming in a sea of dark matter particles, but they pass through us and never have any noticeable effect on us almost entirely all of the time, but on very, very, very rare occasions you actually do get an interaction in principle between a dark matter particle in something else and so we have these tablets just sitting there waiting for one of these collisions to happen so that we can detect it. Speaker 4: Now there are a bunch of other things that cause collisions in Germanium, things like cosmic rays, which you kind [00:07:30] of get out of the way of by bearing a deep underground electrons and light from other sources, radioactive decay, all of these can set off signals that with a lot of processing and principle, you can distinguish from the ones you expect from having a dark matter particle. Anyway, in 2009 CMS released a statement that they'd been collecting data on collisions inside these tablets for roughly a year's time period and what they found was that based on the best efforts they could do between weeding out [00:08:00] all of the background sources that they're not interested in, they estimated that they would have one false detection that on average statistically they would have missed one background source and classified as a real source. I mean in that same year time period they had found two detections. Speaker 4: So in a very, very, very non-statistical sense, you say, well we found two and we think that one of them statistically is probably false. Maybe we found a dark matter particle. Of course, this is far below the standards of rigor that science requires [00:08:30] for actually saying, yes, we found dark matter, but it's an interesting start and there are certainly ongoing experiments to try to detect these very, very rare interactions between the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the gravitational stuff in the universe and the ordinary matter that we do know about that. For the large part, it never actually does get to experience it. Are Neutrinos part of dark man or is that another issue entirely? Neutrinos. So I think that some of these particle models suggest that the dark [00:09:00] matter particle is what's called a super symmetric version of a neutrino. So something that has a lot of similar properties to a neutrino but is much, much, much more massive than neutrinos that we do know about have almost no mass whatsoever similar to the dark matter. They also almost never interact with ordinary particles, but there were models run basically saying how would the universe evolve and what would it look like today if dark matter were made up of these neutrinos that we do know about. And those models predict the [00:09:30] overall structure of the universe being very different from what we observe. So we're pretty sure that neutrinos are at most a very small fraction of this dark matter. Speaker 5: Yeah, getting talking a little bit more about the neutrinos. As Nicholas said, they probably are not a huge component of what classically we're referring to as dark matter and that these big experiments are looking for, but they are very interesting weird particles that don't interact very much. They're very hard to detect. They're going through our bodies all the time. The Sun produces them a supernovae produce them [00:10:00] in large amounts as well and even though they're not rigorously really much of this dark matter, they are very interesting and large experiments around the world have been conducted over the past few years to try and detect more of them, to try and classify them and learn more about these neutrino particles. One that Berkeley is very heavily involved in in the, in the Lawrence Berkeley lab is called ice cube down in Antarctica actually. So if you're a poor Grad student in that group, you get to a winter over for six months in Antarctica with lots and lots of DVDs is what I've been told. Speaker 5: [00:10:30] But basically what they do down there is they drill huge vertical holes into the ice shelves and drop down detectors, a photo multiplier tube type devices, things that should light up if they get hit by a neutrino or something like that. And they do a ton of these at various depths and make a greed under the ice. A three dimensional cube under the ice of these detectors could imagine a cubic ice cube and you poke one laser beam through [00:11:00] it. You'll light up a bunch of these detectors in the line and you can connect all of those points with a straight line and sort of see where it's coming from in the sky. And so connecting back a little bit to supernovae. If the Supernova goes off very, very close by, we could possibly detect neutrinos from some of these supernovae and perhaps little deviations from where it goes through and which detectors that lights up could be telling us some interesting information about the neutrinos that are produced in the supernova about our detectors. Speaker 5: So it's a very nice, uh, play back and forth. [00:11:30] Ice Cube has not found neutrinos from a supernova yet. Hopefully we'll have even closer supernovae in the near future and ice cube and other types of neutrino experiments. We'll see possibly some of these and so another great example of big international collaborations even from different types of physics and astronomy getting together the supernova hunters and Supernova Observer, astronomers talking to these neutrino detector particle and trying to come together and answer these questions about the universe from two different sides. Basically two different kinds of science [00:12:00] almost, but coming together with similar observations or related observations is a very interesting prospect. Speaker 6: The show is spectrum. The station is KALX Berkeley. We're talking with Dr Jeff Silverman and Nicholas McConnell there explaining dark matter, dark energy, Speaker 7: dark matter and dark energy as [00:12:30] you called it. Are there other experiments and avenues of research for uncovering this phenomenon or particle, however you want to refer to it? Speaker 8: The direct particle detection experiments that are on earth and we mentioned one of them led by Berkeley are probably the main avenues we have right now for discovering what particle is responsible for the dark matter. There are other ways that we can still collect additional evidence, [00:13:00] although we already have quite a bit for the fact that some strange particle and not ordinary protons and neutrons and electrons are responsible for a lot of the gravitational forces that we see in the universe. One other avenue that might be interesting is the idea that if dark matter is made of subatomic particles, there could be cases where two of those particles interact with one another and Gamma Ray radiation by annihilating them and in that case we have [00:13:30] gamma ray telescopes set up in space that spend a lot of their time detecting more prosaic Cammeray sources. Things like exploding stars, but it's possible perhaps in the near future that these telescopes can also detect gamma ray signatures from the centers of galaxies that we would be able to analyze in such a way that we determined was more likely to be from dark matter particles annihilating one another than from these other astrophysical sources that we already know about. Speaker 8: I'm not sure if that would reveal the identity [00:14:00] of what the dark matter particle is, but it would be more evidence that they do exist. Speaker 7: Dark matter has been hypothesized so that the theory of relativity works or is it devised to prop up the standard model, Speaker 5: the strongest pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter and sort of the reason that we added it into our pictures of the cosmos is there's not enough stars and gas in galaxies. If you [00:14:30] add up all of the gravity, it's not enough gravity force to hold all those stars and gas together in a galaxy and so we need some other matter that exists that exerts the gravitational force to hold everything together, but it doesn't glow. It's not bright. We can't see it with our normal telescopes at any wavelengths in space or on the ground. And so we've sort of given it this name, dark matter, these dark particles that exert a gravity force but don't give off light in any sense of that word. [00:15:00] We found some candidates over the years. Those have been interesting but they don't add up to enough matter out there and so we hypothesize that there is some other particles, something we haven't figured out yet in particle physics since that is out there and we're not detecting it with our telescopes, we're not detecting it with these other experiments that find subatomic particles and I can see very rare subatomic particles, but I personally think in the next decade we will directly detect one of these particles or a handful of these [00:15:30] particles. Speaker 5: If we don't with these experiments that are online and coming online. If we don't detect these dark matter particles then we're going to have to really rethink how these galaxies, our own galaxy included can exist in their current form with all their stars and gas that we can observe. There'll be some serious issues in our understanding of galaxies and the study of the universe in general, but I think we will find dark matter particles. I think it will match to at least some of the models and theories we have and I like to think that everything is nice and [00:16:00] ordered in. That gives me comfort when I go to sleep at night. Speaker 7: So on that personal level and trying to understand the standard model and your confidence in all that, is there a part of you that's open to the idea that it may not really be as you've as has been imagined for the past 30 years? Speaker 8: I think that at one level of detail or another it's actually very likely that the models we've constructed over the last century, in the case of particle physics in the last 30 years, in [00:16:30] the case of adding dark matter as an ingredient to the universe that we see as astronomers, I think it's very likely that some of those details are going to fall by the wayside and be replaced by a different and more accurate description that people aren't thinking of yet. I think if the history of science teaches us anything, it's that as soon as we get over confident that we've put all the pieces together. If something comes in really forces us to rethink how the universe works as far as dark matter goes. I'd like to point out that there's sort of two [00:17:00] different theories in play and that either one of them I think could be revised in order to explain observations if we do fail to detect dark matter particles soon. Speaker 8: And one of them is Einstein's theory of relativity saying that if we know how much stuff there is that we actually understand the literal force of gravity well enough to determine how mass interacts with one another and how the force of gravity works. And then the other one is different particle physics theories that say that if you have stuff coming and gravity like a dark [00:17:30] matter particle, what are the, the limiting things for what that particle could actually be. And I'm not well versed enough to know whether there's a lot of room for dark matter particles to exist that we wouldn't be able to detect with this generation or the next generation of experiments. But one possible way to fail to detect matter particles now and not have to revise general relativity as if particle physics can come up with a particle that is responsible for dark matter but is well beyond our capacity to detect [00:18:00] at this point. Speaker 3: Nicholas and Jeffrey, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Speaker 6: For people who are interested in getting involved in amateur astronomy, let me mention a few avenues to pursue. The astronomy connection has a website that will lead you to a wide range of observing individuals and groups in the bay area. Their website is observers.org [00:18:30] for those who want to get involved in a crowdsource astronomy project, go to the website, Galaxy zoo.org the University of California observatories have a website that has a great deal of information, particularly under the links heading. Their website is used, c o lik.org or [00:19:00] regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening in the bay area. Over the next few weeks. I'm joined by Rick Kaneski and Lisa Katovich for the calendar. Speaker 9: The science of art is the spring open house at the crucible. This event we'll highlight the scientific principles, inquiry and exploration behind the fine and industrial arts processes taught there. This event will bring together crucible faculty, guest artists, and a curated gallery of exhibits and demonstrations. Also projects from local schools [00:19:30] as well as special performances, food and the participation of a number of other local art and science related organizations and university programs. This event will happen on Saturday, April 7th from 12 to 4:00 PM and the crucibles located at 1260 seventh street in Oakland. Speaker 3: The Oppenheimer Lecture, the Higgs particle pivot of symmetry and mass. The Speaker is [inaudible] to [inaudible] professor of theoretical physics [00:20:00] at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Professor to Hoeft was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1999 in this lecture, professor to Hoeft will reflect on the importance of the as yet undetected Higgs particle and speculate on the Subatomic world once the particle is observed in detail. The lecture is April 9th at 5:00 PM in the Chevron Auditorium at International House [00:20:30] on the UC Berkeley campus. On Monday, April 9th the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco at five nine five market street is hosting Barb Stuckey, the author of taste, what you're missing. The passionate eaters guy too. I good food. Tastes good. Some reviewers say that this book bring science to the of taste. In the same Speaker 10: way that Harold McGee's book on food and cooking popularized food science. She will talk about understanding the science and senses of what you eat. You'll better understand both the psychology and physiology of taste [00:21:00] and learn how to develop and improve your tasting pellet by discerning flavors and detecting and ingredients. A five-thirty checkin proceeds. The 6:00 PM program, which is then followed by a book signing at seven the event is free for members, $20 standard admission and a $7 for students. Visit www.commonwealthclub.org for more info Speaker 9: pioneers in engineering. A nonprofit high school robotics competition organized by UC Berkeley students is holding its fourth annual robotics competition. [00:21:30] The Big Day is Saturday, April 14th at the Lawrence Hall of science in Berkeley. The competition begins at 10:00 AM and continues all day until five. This year's challenge is titled Ballistic Blitz for the seven weeks leading up to the final event. 200 high school students in teams from 21 East Bay high schools each work to design and build a robot. Come see the dramatic culmination of their hard work. This event is included in the price of admission. Admission is [00:22:00] free for UC Berkeley students and staff. For more information, go to the Lawrence Hall of Science website and Click on events. Mount Diablo Astronomical Society presents member planets, our solar system, neighbors, Venus and Mars through telescopes and find out why earth has abundant life but not Mars and Venus. Saturday, April 14th 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM the rendezvous is at Mount Diablo lower summit parking lot [00:22:30] summit road. Speaker 9: Clayton. For more details and contact information, go to the website, m d a s. Dot. Mitt. On Wednesday, April 18th ask a scientist. A monthly lecture series will be co launching the wonder Fest Book Club with USI Professor, biological anthropology and neuroscience, Terrence Deacon's book, incomplete nature, how mind emerged from matter. Professor Deacon's presentation will focus on the idea that key elements of consciousness, [00:23:00] values, meanings, feelings, etc. Emerge from specific constraints on the physical processes of a nervous system. The lecture will be located at the California Institute of Integral Studies at Namaz Day Hall, 1453 Mission Street in San Francisco. It will start at 7:00 PM and it's free. Speaker 10: Cal Day, UC Berkeley's free annual open house will be on Saturday, April 21st 9:00 AM until 4:00 PM there'll be a ton of science related events this year, including [00:23:30] tours of the labs and shops used for molecular and cell biology, synthetic biology, mechanical engineering, Quantum Nano Electronics, space sciences, star dust, nuclear engineering, automation, science, and more. There'll be lectures on diverse topics such as environmental design, geology, and the art and science of prehistoric life, as well as tables for various science and engineering majors and student groups. For more information. Visit [inaudible] dot berkeley.edu [00:24:00] now on to the news, Speaker 9: a February NASA study reports that climatic changes in the polar regions are occurring at a magnitude far greater than the rest of the planet. The oldest and thickest Arctic Sea ice is disappearing at a faster rate than the younger and thinner eyes at the edges of the Arctic oceans floating ice cap, the thicker ice known as multi-year ice survived through the cyclical summer melt season when young ice that has formed over winter. Just as quickly melt again, [00:24:30] Joey Comiso, senior scientists at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and author of a study recently published in the Journal of climate says the rapid disappearance of older ice makes Arctic Sea ice even more vulnerable to further decline in the summer. The surface temperature in the Arctic is going up, which results in a shorter ice forming season. It would take a persistent cold spell for most multi-year CIS and other ice types to grow thick enough in the winter to survive the summer melt season and reverse the trend. [00:25:00] This warming in the Arctic is the warmest 12 month on record. For the region. This means that the region is moving closer to, if not already, breaching climatic tipping points which could see the Arctic's current ecological state being shifted to an entirely new one, having severe ramifications, not only for the biodiversity and ecosystems of the region but also for the rest of the planet. Speaker 10: The April 2nd issue of the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has an article by Francesco Burma of Boston University [00:25:30] and others that reports evidence that humans acquired fire at least 200,000 years earlier than previously believed. The evidence is in the form of sediments from the wonderware cave in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. They were studied by micro morphological and foray transform infrared micro spectroscopy and data to be 1 million years old. The sediment contained burn, sharp bone fragments and plant ashes. The bone seems to have been exposed to temperature is found by a small cooking fires under about [00:26:00] 700 degrees Celsius. Previous to this finding, there was consensus that the earliest fires dated to only 790,000 years ago, and so these reporting older fires tended to be controversial as it is difficult to demonstrate that fires were small and intentional and use for cooking rather than acts of nature. Speaker 9: More than half of all cancer is preventable. Experts say science daily reports that in a review article published in Science Translational Medicine on March 28th the investigators outlined obstacles. [00:26:30] They say stand in the way of making a huge dent in the cancer burden in the u s and around the world. Epidemiologists, Graham Colditz, MD professor at the Washington University School of Medicine and associate director of prevention and control. The Siteman cancer center says, we actually have an enormous amount of data about the causes and preventability of cancer. It's time we made an investment in implementing what we know. According to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 1,600,000 new cancer cases will be diagnosed this year in the u s [00:27:00] also this year, approximately 577,000 Americans are expected to die of cancer according to Kolditz and his co authors individual habits and the structure of society itself from medical research, funding to building design and food subsidies influences the extent of the cancer burden and can be changed to reduce it. Speaker 10: Science news reports on a paper presented at the cognitive neuroscience society by Andrew met her, Ellie, Mika, and CN Beilock. [00:27:30] Both of the University of Chicago. The team use brain scans to find areas in a person's brain whose activity you will predict how well that person functions under pressure. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the team gave both low and high stakes math problems to volunteers. Stakes were determined by both the size of financial reward and a social pressure via a financial penalty imposed upon teammates. In the case of failure, well, easy questions could be answered regardless of the stakes in the study. More difficult [00:28:00] questions led to a 10% average decrease in performance for volunteers who had decreased performance. There is greater activity in the enterprise [inaudible] circus and the inferior frontal junction of the brain area is linked to working memory. Furthermore, the more the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and area linked with emotions work to keep these two areas in sync, the more likely the volunteer was to choke under pressure. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [00:28:30] a special thanks to Dr Jeffers Silverman and Nicholas McConnell for spending the time with us. Degenerate three shows on astronomy. Thanks to Rick Karnofsky who helps produce the show and Lisa Katovich for her health Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: the music heard during the show is by Los Donna David and album titled Folk and Acoustic [00:29:00] made available by a creative comments 3.0 attributional license. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same [00:29:30] time. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 11: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Human Power Generation in Fitness Facilities research project will create a human power generation center at the UC Berkeley Recreational Sports Facilities to develop new technologies and methods for energy conservation and power generation.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 [00:00:30] minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with [inaudible], a fifth year mechanical engineering and Applied Mathematics major at UC Berkeley, who along with Kimberly Lau, launched the human power gym project. After conducting a feasibility study, they are attempting to design and prototype [00:01:00] an elliptical exercise machine for the UC Berkeley recreational sports facility that will generate electricity. Rather than consume it, the generated electricity will be put back into the electrical grid. The project began in the summer of 2009 Maha g talks about her enthusiasm for the project and the challenges to make it a reality. Maha and I are joined by Rick [inaudible] for the interview. This interview is prerecorded and edited. [00:01:30] Maha, could you please explain the project you're working on currently? Speaker 4: Okay, so I'm working on a project titled The Human Pirate Gym Project. It's part of the Berkeley Energy and Sustainability Laboratory in the mechanical engineering department. And the goal of our project is to harness human power from exercise machines currently in the recreational sports facility or the RSF at UC Berkeley. And we're hoping to retrofit and 28 elliptical machines to harness human power and send it back to the electric grid and also work an energy education [00:02:00] campaign to improve energy literacy among the members of the RSF and people who frequent the facility to give them a better idea of sustainability and energy. Speaker 3: How did that idea bubble up for you and the group you're working on this with? Speaker 4: So I'm working on this with a graduate student named Kimberly Lough in the Mechanical Engineering Department under professor at Gugino. We came across it separately. She came across the idea when she's working out in the RSF, seeing all these people burning calories and you know, exercising so much, they must be expending a lot of energy and there must [00:02:30] be a way to harness that. And then I came across the idea because I was reading up about, um, there's a project harnessing children's power to pump water up out of the wells. And in African villages they create like a, a carousel where kids can play on and when they spin around the carousel they're actually pumping water up into a tank. And so I thought, well if kids run around and harness all this energy, why can't we do something like this and the gyms across the u s Speaker 3: and much power do you Speaker 5: expect [00:03:00] to be able to generate from all this? Speaker 4: So unfortunately it's not a lot of power. Um, the RSF uses on the order of 1.5 million kilowatt hours a year and energy consumption and by other things like air conditioning or where's all that go? So actually it's not air conditioning cause we live in a bay area. We don't actually have air conditioning and the RSF cause it stays relatively cool. It's definitely for heating and air circulation and ventilation. And then a good chunk of it goes to lights and actually [00:03:30] powering treadmills, believe it or not. So if we haven't retrofitted 28 elliptical machines, it would harness about 10,000 kilowatt hours a year, which is enough to power a small house but only 1% of what the RSF needs to run its daily use. The treadmill is actually account for about 12% of the energy use at the RSF and not a lot of people know that. So part of our project, we're trying to encourage people to use elliptical machines or other self powered machines that use less power that but give comparable workouts [00:04:00] according to fitness trainers and the hopes that maybe they'll switch over to more ellipticals and the treadmills can be replaced in the RSF cause they actually acquire. I think running on a treadmill for about an hour requires as much energy as doing a load of laundry, washing and drying. Speaker 5: How did the project come together in terms of getting an off the ground funding, all those things. Speaker 4: So two years ago I am part of the UC leads program, which is, I forgot what it stands for, but it's some type of scholarship program at Berkeley that encourages summer research. [00:04:30] So I was funded by them to do a summer research project two years ago and I contacted fresher ag Gino with this idea saying, hey, I'm funded, can I work in your lab with Kimberley? She's really awesome. Wants to work in this project. So the UC leads program funded me for that summer and they've also funded me to continue researching in the fall and of that year, fall 2009 so we researched the feasibility of this and tried to come up with some energy estimates on how much energy we could harness, how much that would cost, what sort of things would need to be in place [00:05:00] to continue actually with the retrofits. And we actually published a paper in a conference and a spring of 2010 with the American Society of mechanical engineers. And after that we started applying for funds through the Green Initiative Fund, the Sigmas I m research honors society and the Chancellors Green, the chancellor's Green Fund cacs, I believe it's called the Chancellor's Advisory Committee for sustainability. And so with all those three funding resources, we have about a little over $17,000 [00:05:30] currently to actually go ahead and build these prototypes and get going with the retrofits at the gym. Speaker 4: Can you talk about your, a conference paper anymore. So what does it, what was it about? So our conference paper was published in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Conference on Energy Sustainability in May of 2010 and it just talked about our feasibility study on the RSF detailing how much power could be harnessed from the RSF, what [00:06:00] percentage of power consumption that accounted for. And it also detailed sort of how long it would take to payback such a system. And it also looked at the light life cycle assessment of the system and life cycle assessment basically means you take into account all the energy required to make the components that you'll be adding to the system and then take a look at how long it would take to payback the co two emissions related to that energy that was put in. So I think we estimated that unfortunately it's relates [00:06:30] to at savings of only a thousand dollars a year in energy consumption because energy is so cheap out here. But if we made CO2 emissions, the metric instead of dollars, the system would pay itself off in like two to three years of CO2 savings. If we assume that the energy generated at the RSF no longer needs to be generated by say PGNE and then taking into account how much CO2 is required for those few components that we have to add to each elliptical. So that was a much less bleak outlook. Speaker 5: [00:07:00] Did you draw on previous attempts to do the same thing? Speaker 4: So we redid a lot of research and a couple other gyms across the nation have retrofitted elliptical machines specifically to harness human power. And we talked to them and we talked to, there's a company called rewrap that actually does commercial retrofits and they approached the RSF also saying that they could do the retrofits before I came onto the project and we talked to those jams and I actually had a chance to visit one of them in [inaudible] at Oregon state. And [00:07:30] for some reason they didn't seem to be completely happy with the setup. For one reason or another, they didn't think it was producing as much energy as they thought. And so based on those interviews I had done with gyms across the nation, we decided to try and come up with our own retrofit. Also, cal poly has done a retrofit of their gym facility and are harnessing power from ellipticals in their own method. Speaker 4: And the gym users there are really, really excited about it and really enjoy it a lot more than people at Oregon State for instance. So that's kind of why we're trying to go [00:08:00] ahead with doing it ourselves. Um, based on interviews and research from other gyms, definitely. And are only the ellipticals being used to generate power. Currently they're the easiest to tap into because they have an onboard generator that will convert your human power movement into resistance, electrical resistance that you feel when you're working out. So it's really easy to tap into them, just remove the resistance mechanism and instead put in something like an inverter to convert the DC power [00:08:30] you're generating to AC power. That can be used and sent back to the grid. Speaker 5: When the cal poly success, was there any attempt to collaborate with them? Speaker 4: We did approach them and ask them for collaboration, but I believe they are, have, they have some sort of patents on their devices now and it's very proprietary and so they're not, they're various hesitant to work with us and so if we create our own solution we're hoping to be much more open about it and sort of spread it around to any universities who want to do this on their own. Jim, [00:09:00] because we've had such a hard time contacting other people for help that we want to make sure it's easier for others. Speaker 6: You are listening to spectrum on the KALX Berkeley, we are talking with Mar Haji, but the human power gym project of which she is a founding member. Speaker 5: What's been the most challenging aspect [00:09:30] of the project? Speaker 4: I think definitely recruiting people for the project because we've seen so many people come and go last year in our teams that has been really hard to get anything done. Um, we really need people who are skilled in electronics and mechanical engineering and unfortunately I don't have a very big electronics background myself and since I'm graduating in December, I have a lot of requirements that I need to meet and I can't give my all to the project as I could two years ago. So it's been really hard to find people who are as motivated or as determined about the [00:10:00] project to go ahead and finish it up and follow it through and hand it off and I, so that's been a big, big challenge I think. Speaker 5: Is that something that you want to do? Do you want to recruit people what he was attempting to do in that vein? Speaker 4: Yeah, we definitely want to recruit people because it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of minds to prototype one elliptical and then expand it to the entire gym. And like I said, since I'm graduating in December, I definitely want to hand off the project to other people to sort of conduct follow up [00:10:30] research. Like okay, if we put these ellipticals and generate power, do people actually learn from this? Do the energy literacy rates go up, do treadmills get useless. There's a whole host of followup research that could be done and hasn't been done yet and definitely has a potential of being published and presented around the nation I think. Speaker 5: So are you mostly interested in recruiting other engineers and how would they sign up? Speaker 4: So I'm interested in [inaudible] definitely recruiting um, upperclassmen engineers but also [00:11:00] people who have experience in signage and education. Cause I know, I don't know how best to reach people or get the knowledge disseminated about all the energy sustainability going on in the RSF. And that would definitely be helpful. And if anyone's interested they can just email RSF energy@gmail.com we'd be happy to have them on board. Speaker 5: All right. Any of your current efforts documented anywhere of Wiki or mainly list or anything like that? Speaker 4: So we have a webpage, hpg.berkeley.edu [00:11:30] needs to be updated for the past couple months. But generally a lot of our documents are there and we also have a [inaudible] website for all the members of the project. And that's how we communicate for papers that need to be read or budgets they need to be updated and that kind of thing. Speaker 5: Do you know if, uh, there are sort of commercial efforts in this too, like commercial? Uh, Speaker 4: so besides outside, outside universities, I guess so universities are really unique in that their gym [00:12:00] facilities are open for so many hours and frequent, so many users. So unfortunately Jim is like 24 hour fitness even though they're open 24 hours, don't see as much throughput of people or patrons that, um, university of do. So there hasn't been a huge push and they're at that direction. I believe there's a handful of them that use at least the re-roof technology. And there's a couple of gyms that are like, I think there's one gym in Hong Kong that's created some type of something called like a human dynamo where four people will bike on [00:12:30] the sort of combined system and move their hands at the same time and that will generate a whole lot of power for the gym. But aside from that, then not much that I know, it seems like a natural for a gym setting is to make it competitive somehow. I know both Oregon State and University of Oregon did retrofits and they sort of had a competition like who can create the most energy. Um, and we hope when we actually retrofit the gym to involve some sort of LCD panel that reads out which elliptical is [00:13:00] generating the most energy, you know, compare it across the gym and everyone can see, oh no like I gotta be 12 like my friends over there or something. Yeah. Speaker 4: What's been the most unexpected thing that's happened in the project? So finding an elliptical machine was really hard. We originally thought that it was this elliptical machine floating around and so to haul on the sixth floor that no one really had, no one really knew who it belonged to. So we thought we'd use that for our project. We had [00:13:30] took a while to track down who the professor was who had it laying around and he gladly donated it to our project. And then when we took it apart, we found out that its internal mechanism was completely different than those used at the gym. It was using less electrical resistance like modern, most ellipticals use in was using more mechanical resistance, um, something much more like a recumbent bicycle. So we were like, well if we prototype on this system it's really not going to be compatible with anything in the gym. Speaker 4: So then we had to contact the gym and try [00:14:00] and track down elliptical that way. And luckily they were after a couple of weeks or months, like everything fell together when we finally got it transported. And transporting those big things is also huge hassle from the RSF all the way down to attra very hall on North side on the social outreach part of it, the behavioral aspect of the project. What's been the challenge there to get that up and running? Um, so we conducted a survey of all the members of [00:14:30] the RSF and I believe something like five or 600 responded, which was great. And they, we post questions such as how much energy do you think x, Y and z machines use? Um, to get an idea of how energy literate people are about the machines at the RSF. And so we have a good base of where we think people could have their education, energy education improved. It's just a matter of figuring out the best way to actually do that. So as a mechanical engineering major, unfortunately I haven't [00:15:00] had to deal very much with energy education or engineering education and we could definitely use people on our project who know perhaps more like the psychology of a situation. Like definitely some sort of analysis on where people move in the RSF and where's the best place to place these things and how can we make them as interactive as possible to increase awareness, stuff like that. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: you are listening [00:15:30] to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Maharaji but the human powered gym project of which he is a founding member. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: are there any key things that you're learning in doing this that you might not have learned if you hadn't been involved in this project? Speaker 4: Definitely like in Berkeley engineering for the first three, three and a half years [00:16:00] of your educational career. It's very theoretical and this project has given me the advantage of doing something on the side that's much more hands on and applications of my learning at Berkeley. So that's been really awesome. And then working with other people on a project and just knowing how to work in a team is not something that people teach you in class either until you get to the higher level project-based classes and engineering. So that's been really great. And uh, working and collaborating with people, not only in the mechanical engineering department but the directors of the RSF to [00:16:30] TGF and other funding agencies and Co working together to get all that going is like intense. I can only imagine what professors have to go through to get grants written and proposals and then get the actually get that money and use it for their projects. That's been kind of like a mini Speaker 5: many experience with that. How much time do you estimate you spent working on a project? Speaker 4: Well, I've been working on it since summer of 2009 and I work anywhere [00:17:00] from five to 10 hours a week on it. I think pretty consistently with the exception of last summer and this summer because I've been away doing other internships and research projects. But every time I come back to Berkeley it's like, all right, got to get on. I gotta get going again. Speaker 5: And have your summer internships where you haven't been working on the Human Powergen bin and sort of related fields? Speaker 4: Yeah. Last summer I got the chance to go to Oregon State University and do, uh, an inner and study on the interaction [00:17:30] between wave energy devices in the environment, studying what types of organisms might colonize the environment. Cause I hadn't really, really been looked at. And then this summer I got the chance to go to MIT and study, um, fluid dynamics in the ocean engineering lab there. So starting to get a feel for the field and both on the west and the east coast and getting ideas of what professors doing what. So that's been really great. Yeah. Speaker 5: So for this project, you're probably not going to get completed by the time you graduate and if you're able to hand it off, [00:18:00] would you be involved in trying to get additional funding to make that transition happen? Speaker 4: I think at the moment we haven't used much of our funding because we've had a lot of setbacks and getting ellipticals and getting team members. So depending on the stance of the project in December, we would definitely, depending on if we've used a lot of our funds for prototyping or we're still waiting to get people on board to start prototyping, that would probably influence whether or not we apply for more funding. But I mean [00:18:30] more money's always great cause right now the funding we have budgeted, we'll only retrofit 14 of the 28 ellipticals. So if we are to consider doing all 28 we definitely need to look for more funding. I'm just sort of hesitant to do it right now because we don't actually have anything prototyped at the moment and no real product to show before we apply for more funding. Speaker 5: What is it that you like about engineering? What drew you to engineering? Speaker 4: So actually one thought I wanted to be a film major for a really long time [00:19:00] and then I went to a summer program just for like fun. I was like, okay, I'll get out of the house for a month, uh, in mechanical engineering. And they had us like take apart part printer, take apart a blender and like build these little like out of the box robots. You're just like screw a few things in the other and put a battery. And I think just the whole idea of like building things and taking things apart sort of amazed me. And I was always like really good at puzzles and math and so it was like, oh this is like way more fun than making movies. [00:19:30] So that's sort of what drawn me to it. Speaker 5: Has Your work on this project given you a better sense of how what you want to do going forward? Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. It has encouraged me to look more into alternative forms of energy. That's definitely what I want to do in the future. Unfortunately, it's made me disheartened about human power cause going into the project I thought, Oh yeah, we can just retrofit all the ellipticals and then power the entire gym. We use so much power on a daily basis that that's not [00:20:00] feasible so definitely opens your eyes onto how much power we consume every day and I think this project has been a great stepping stone into the world of alternative energy and I hope to study something like ocean energy and ocean energy extraction for graduate studies in school. Speaker 5: Thanks very much Maha for coming on the show and sharing your experience with us. Speaker 4: No problem. This was awesome. Thanks Speaker 2: [inaudible] [00:20:30] [inaudible] Speaker 5: irregular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Speaker 7: I am joined for this by Rick Karnofsky every Thursday night at 6:00 PM the California Academy of Sciences. In San Francisco's Golden Gate Park host nightlife at 21 and over event featuring [00:21:00] music, cocktails and learning and mission is $12 or $10 for members. In addition to the regular exhibits and planetarium shows, the cal academy offers theme related special events. The theme for October 13th Nightlife is designed from nature. The biomimicry institute will show off real products inspired by natural forums such as green shield, a low chemical water repellent fabric finish inspired by the microscopic texture of leaves and Formaldehyde free plywood inspired by the adhesive chemistry of intertidal muscles. [00:21:30] Current design soons will show how they incorporate biomimicry into their projects. Also enjoy stilt walking and juggling inspired by Cirque decile a his latest nature theme show totem and catch a screening of the biomimicry documentary. Second Nature. The theme for October 20th Nightlife is the science of voting, a lively roundtable moderated by the bay citizens political writer, Gary Xi, and featuring political aficionados, Alex Clemens from SF usual suspects and [00:22:00] San Francisco state universities, political science professor and outspoken tweeter. Speaker 7: Jason McDaniel. We'll discuss topics such as rank choice voting and how it affects the strategies of San Francisco's May oral candidates, University of San Francisco, professor of American politics, Corey Cook will discuss the science of voting for more information on nightlife and other events at the California Academy of Sciences. Visit their website@www.cal academy.org the October Science at Kow lecture will be given by Dr Peggy Helwig [00:22:30] and is entitled tectonic timebombs earthquakes near and far. She will talk about the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, New Zealand, Japan, and Virginia as well as the earthquake hazard from faults in our own backyard. Dr Helwig is the operations manager of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. The lecture is at 11:00 AM on Saturday, October 15th in the genetics and plant biology. Building room 100 [00:23:00] for more details, visit the website science@caldotberkeley.edu Lawrence Berkeley national lab is having a free open house on Saturday, October 15th you could attend from either 10:00 AM to 1230 or from 1230 until 3:00 PM the theme of the show is Cirque de Sciences and the open house will feature exhibits, tours of the advanced light source and guest house performances, hands on science, investigations for children [00:23:30] and lectures on Supernovas, biofuels computing, ancient sounds, plasma beams, indoor air pollution and scientific visualization. There'll be food available for purchase. For more information and to register for this event, visit Speaker 3: www.lbl.gov/open house. The Biosafety Alliance presents a global citizens report on the state of genetically modified organisms. False promises, [00:24:00] failed technologies. These reports highlight scientific research and empirical evidence from around the globe demonstrating how genetically modified seeds and crops have failed to deliver the advertised promises. The Speakers will be Dr Yvan Donnas, Shiva philosopher, environmental activist and ECO feminist. Debbie Barker International Program Director Center for food safety. Miguel LTA Ari, associate professor of agroecology at UC Berkeley. [00:24:30] This event will happen October 13th, 2011 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center four zero one Venice Avenue, San Francisco. The event is free and donations are accepted. If you would like to RSVP, go to the website, global state of gmos.eventbrite.com there will also be a press conference [00:25:00] for the reports at the San Francisco City Hall at noon October 13th featuring Dr Vandana, Shiva elected officials and other Speakers Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 3: Now three news stories that caught our attention. Genetically engineered canola growing outside of established cultivation [00:25:30] regions across North Dakota. A study published by the online journal plus one reports the genetically engineered canola endowed with herbicide resistance have been found growing outside of established cultivation regions along road sides across North Dakota. These escaped plants were found statewide and account for 45% of the total roadside plants sampled. Furthermore, populations were found to persist [00:26:00] from year to year and reached thousands of individuals. The authors found that the escaped plants could hybridize with each other to create novel combinations of transgenic traits, and the authors argue that their result more than 10 years after the initial release of genetically engineered canola raises questions of whether adequate oversight and monitoring protocols are in place in the u s to track the environmental impact of biotech products. Berkeley's [00:26:30] own cell Perlmutter is sharing the Nobel Prize in physics with Adam G. Reese of the John Hopkins University and Brian Schmidt of Australian national universities, Mt. Strom Lowe and siding spring observatories pro mudder led the Supernova Speaker 7: cosmology project that in 1998 became one of the two scientific efforts that are credited with discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe and Schmidt led the competing supernova search team. Pearl mudder is UC Berkeley's 22nd Nobel Medal [00:27:00] winner and the ninth winner of the Physics Prize. The discovery of the accelerating expansion has formed theories of the distant future of an ever expanding universe and has alleged the speculation of dark energy that theoretically makes up almost three quarters of the matter and energy of the universe, but it has proven elusive to observe. Perlmutter has recently been working with NASA and the u s department of Energy to build and launch the first space-based observatory designed specifically to understand the nature of dark energy. Speaker 3: [00:27:30] This news item is also a job opening NASA to seek applicants for next astronaut candidate class. In early November, NASA will seek applicants for its next class of astronaut candidates who will support long-duration missions to the International Space Station and future deep space exploration activities. For more information, visit the website, astronauts.nasa.gov a bachelor's degree in engineering, science, or math [00:28:00] and three years of relevant professional experience are required in order to be considered. Typically, successful applicants have significant qualifications in engineering or science or extensive experience flying high performance jet aircraft. After applicant interviews and evaluations, NASA expects to announce the final selections in 2013 and training to begin that August. Additional information about the astronaut candidate program [00:28:30] is available by calling the astronaut selection office at area code (281) 483-5907 Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 6: The music played during the show is written and performed by David lost honor from his album titled Folk and Acoustic Speaker 2: [00:29:00] [inaudible]. Speaker 6: Thank you for listening to spectrum. We're happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to SVA meal. Our email address is spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. Speaker 2: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Human Power Generation in Fitness Facilities research project will create a human power generation center at the UC Berkeley Recreational Sports Facilities to develop new technologies and methods for energy conservation and power generation.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 [00:00:30] minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with [inaudible], a fifth year mechanical engineering and Applied Mathematics major at UC Berkeley, who along with Kimberly Lau, launched the human power gym project. After conducting a feasibility study, they are attempting to design and prototype [00:01:00] an elliptical exercise machine for the UC Berkeley recreational sports facility that will generate electricity. Rather than consume it, the generated electricity will be put back into the electrical grid. The project began in the summer of 2009 Maha g talks about her enthusiasm for the project and the challenges to make it a reality. Maha and I are joined by Rick [inaudible] for the interview. This interview is prerecorded and edited. [00:01:30] Maha, could you please explain the project you're working on currently? Speaker 4: Okay, so I'm working on a project titled The Human Pirate Gym Project. It's part of the Berkeley Energy and Sustainability Laboratory in the mechanical engineering department. And the goal of our project is to harness human power from exercise machines currently in the recreational sports facility or the RSF at UC Berkeley. And we're hoping to retrofit and 28 elliptical machines to harness human power and send it back to the electric grid and also work an energy education [00:02:00] campaign to improve energy literacy among the members of the RSF and people who frequent the facility to give them a better idea of sustainability and energy. Speaker 3: How did that idea bubble up for you and the group you're working on this with? Speaker 4: So I'm working on this with a graduate student named Kimberly Lough in the Mechanical Engineering Department under professor at Gugino. We came across it separately. She came across the idea when she's working out in the RSF, seeing all these people burning calories and you know, exercising so much, they must be expending a lot of energy and there must [00:02:30] be a way to harness that. And then I came across the idea because I was reading up about, um, there's a project harnessing children's power to pump water up out of the wells. And in African villages they create like a, a carousel where kids can play on and when they spin around the carousel they're actually pumping water up into a tank. And so I thought, well if kids run around and harness all this energy, why can't we do something like this and the gyms across the u s Speaker 3: and much power do you Speaker 5: expect [00:03:00] to be able to generate from all this? Speaker 4: So unfortunately it's not a lot of power. Um, the RSF uses on the order of 1.5 million kilowatt hours a year and energy consumption and by other things like air conditioning or where's all that go? So actually it's not air conditioning cause we live in a bay area. We don't actually have air conditioning and the RSF cause it stays relatively cool. It's definitely for heating and air circulation and ventilation. And then a good chunk of it goes to lights and actually [00:03:30] powering treadmills, believe it or not. So if we haven't retrofitted 28 elliptical machines, it would harness about 10,000 kilowatt hours a year, which is enough to power a small house but only 1% of what the RSF needs to run its daily use. The treadmill is actually account for about 12% of the energy use at the RSF and not a lot of people know that. So part of our project, we're trying to encourage people to use elliptical machines or other self powered machines that use less power that but give comparable workouts [00:04:00] according to fitness trainers and the hopes that maybe they'll switch over to more ellipticals and the treadmills can be replaced in the RSF cause they actually acquire. I think running on a treadmill for about an hour requires as much energy as doing a load of laundry, washing and drying. Speaker 5: How did the project come together in terms of getting an off the ground funding, all those things. Speaker 4: So two years ago I am part of the UC leads program, which is, I forgot what it stands for, but it's some type of scholarship program at Berkeley that encourages summer research. [00:04:30] So I was funded by them to do a summer research project two years ago and I contacted fresher ag Gino with this idea saying, hey, I'm funded, can I work in your lab with Kimberley? She's really awesome. Wants to work in this project. So the UC leads program funded me for that summer and they've also funded me to continue researching in the fall and of that year, fall 2009 so we researched the feasibility of this and tried to come up with some energy estimates on how much energy we could harness, how much that would cost, what sort of things would need to be in place [00:05:00] to continue actually with the retrofits. And we actually published a paper in a conference and a spring of 2010 with the American Society of mechanical engineers. And after that we started applying for funds through the Green Initiative Fund, the Sigmas I m research honors society and the Chancellors Green, the chancellor's Green Fund cacs, I believe it's called the Chancellor's Advisory Committee for sustainability. And so with all those three funding resources, we have about a little over $17,000 [00:05:30] currently to actually go ahead and build these prototypes and get going with the retrofits at the gym. Speaker 4: Can you talk about your, a conference paper anymore. So what does it, what was it about? So our conference paper was published in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Conference on Energy Sustainability in May of 2010 and it just talked about our feasibility study on the RSF detailing how much power could be harnessed from the RSF, what [00:06:00] percentage of power consumption that accounted for. And it also detailed sort of how long it would take to payback such a system. And it also looked at the light life cycle assessment of the system and life cycle assessment basically means you take into account all the energy required to make the components that you'll be adding to the system and then take a look at how long it would take to payback the co two emissions related to that energy that was put in. So I think we estimated that unfortunately it's relates [00:06:30] to at savings of only a thousand dollars a year in energy consumption because energy is so cheap out here. But if we made CO2 emissions, the metric instead of dollars, the system would pay itself off in like two to three years of CO2 savings. If we assume that the energy generated at the RSF no longer needs to be generated by say PGNE and then taking into account how much CO2 is required for those few components that we have to add to each elliptical. So that was a much less bleak outlook. Speaker 5: [00:07:00] Did you draw on previous attempts to do the same thing? Speaker 4: So we redid a lot of research and a couple other gyms across the nation have retrofitted elliptical machines specifically to harness human power. And we talked to them and we talked to, there's a company called rewrap that actually does commercial retrofits and they approached the RSF also saying that they could do the retrofits before I came onto the project and we talked to those jams and I actually had a chance to visit one of them in [inaudible] at Oregon state. And [00:07:30] for some reason they didn't seem to be completely happy with the setup. For one reason or another, they didn't think it was producing as much energy as they thought. And so based on those interviews I had done with gyms across the nation, we decided to try and come up with our own retrofit. Also, cal poly has done a retrofit of their gym facility and are harnessing power from ellipticals in their own method. Speaker 4: And the gym users there are really, really excited about it and really enjoy it a lot more than people at Oregon State for instance. So that's kind of why we're trying to go [00:08:00] ahead with doing it ourselves. Um, based on interviews and research from other gyms, definitely. And are only the ellipticals being used to generate power. Currently they're the easiest to tap into because they have an onboard generator that will convert your human power movement into resistance, electrical resistance that you feel when you're working out. So it's really easy to tap into them, just remove the resistance mechanism and instead put in something like an inverter to convert the DC power [00:08:30] you're generating to AC power. That can be used and sent back to the grid. Speaker 5: When the cal poly success, was there any attempt to collaborate with them? Speaker 4: We did approach them and ask them for collaboration, but I believe they are, have, they have some sort of patents on their devices now and it's very proprietary and so they're not, they're various hesitant to work with us and so if we create our own solution we're hoping to be much more open about it and sort of spread it around to any universities who want to do this on their own. Jim, [00:09:00] because we've had such a hard time contacting other people for help that we want to make sure it's easier for others. Speaker 6: You are listening to spectrum on the KALX Berkeley, we are talking with Mar Haji, but the human power gym project of which she is a founding member. Speaker 5: What's been the most challenging aspect [00:09:30] of the project? Speaker 4: I think definitely recruiting people for the project because we've seen so many people come and go last year in our teams that has been really hard to get anything done. Um, we really need people who are skilled in electronics and mechanical engineering and unfortunately I don't have a very big electronics background myself and since I'm graduating in December, I have a lot of requirements that I need to meet and I can't give my all to the project as I could two years ago. So it's been really hard to find people who are as motivated or as determined about the [00:10:00] project to go ahead and finish it up and follow it through and hand it off and I, so that's been a big, big challenge I think. Speaker 5: Is that something that you want to do? Do you want to recruit people what he was attempting to do in that vein? Speaker 4: Yeah, we definitely want to recruit people because it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of minds to prototype one elliptical and then expand it to the entire gym. And like I said, since I'm graduating in December, I definitely want to hand off the project to other people to sort of conduct follow up [00:10:30] research. Like okay, if we put these ellipticals and generate power, do people actually learn from this? Do the energy literacy rates go up, do treadmills get useless. There's a whole host of followup research that could be done and hasn't been done yet and definitely has a potential of being published and presented around the nation I think. Speaker 5: So are you mostly interested in recruiting other engineers and how would they sign up? Speaker 4: So I'm interested in [inaudible] definitely recruiting um, upperclassmen engineers but also [00:11:00] people who have experience in signage and education. Cause I know, I don't know how best to reach people or get the knowledge disseminated about all the energy sustainability going on in the RSF. And that would definitely be helpful. And if anyone's interested they can just email RSF energy@gmail.com we'd be happy to have them on board. Speaker 5: All right. Any of your current efforts documented anywhere of Wiki or mainly list or anything like that? Speaker 4: So we have a webpage, hpg.berkeley.edu [00:11:30] needs to be updated for the past couple months. But generally a lot of our documents are there and we also have a [inaudible] website for all the members of the project. And that's how we communicate for papers that need to be read or budgets they need to be updated and that kind of thing. Speaker 5: Do you know if, uh, there are sort of commercial efforts in this too, like commercial? Uh, Speaker 4: so besides outside, outside universities, I guess so universities are really unique in that their gym [00:12:00] facilities are open for so many hours and frequent, so many users. So unfortunately Jim is like 24 hour fitness even though they're open 24 hours, don't see as much throughput of people or patrons that, um, university of do. So there hasn't been a huge push and they're at that direction. I believe there's a handful of them that use at least the re-roof technology. And there's a couple of gyms that are like, I think there's one gym in Hong Kong that's created some type of something called like a human dynamo where four people will bike on [00:12:30] the sort of combined system and move their hands at the same time and that will generate a whole lot of power for the gym. But aside from that, then not much that I know, it seems like a natural for a gym setting is to make it competitive somehow. I know both Oregon State and University of Oregon did retrofits and they sort of had a competition like who can create the most energy. Um, and we hope when we actually retrofit the gym to involve some sort of LCD panel that reads out which elliptical is [00:13:00] generating the most energy, you know, compare it across the gym and everyone can see, oh no like I gotta be 12 like my friends over there or something. Yeah. Speaker 4: What's been the most unexpected thing that's happened in the project? So finding an elliptical machine was really hard. We originally thought that it was this elliptical machine floating around and so to haul on the sixth floor that no one really had, no one really knew who it belonged to. So we thought we'd use that for our project. We had [00:13:30] took a while to track down who the professor was who had it laying around and he gladly donated it to our project. And then when we took it apart, we found out that its internal mechanism was completely different than those used at the gym. It was using less electrical resistance like modern, most ellipticals use in was using more mechanical resistance, um, something much more like a recumbent bicycle. So we were like, well if we prototype on this system it's really not going to be compatible with anything in the gym. Speaker 4: So then we had to contact the gym and try [00:14:00] and track down elliptical that way. And luckily they were after a couple of weeks or months, like everything fell together when we finally got it transported. And transporting those big things is also huge hassle from the RSF all the way down to attra very hall on North side on the social outreach part of it, the behavioral aspect of the project. What's been the challenge there to get that up and running? Um, so we conducted a survey of all the members of [00:14:30] the RSF and I believe something like five or 600 responded, which was great. And they, we post questions such as how much energy do you think x, Y and z machines use? Um, to get an idea of how energy literate people are about the machines at the RSF. And so we have a good base of where we think people could have their education, energy education improved. It's just a matter of figuring out the best way to actually do that. So as a mechanical engineering major, unfortunately I haven't [00:15:00] had to deal very much with energy education or engineering education and we could definitely use people on our project who know perhaps more like the psychology of a situation. Like definitely some sort of analysis on where people move in the RSF and where's the best place to place these things and how can we make them as interactive as possible to increase awareness, stuff like that. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: you are listening [00:15:30] to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Maharaji but the human powered gym project of which he is a founding member. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: are there any key things that you're learning in doing this that you might not have learned if you hadn't been involved in this project? Speaker 4: Definitely like in Berkeley engineering for the first three, three and a half years [00:16:00] of your educational career. It's very theoretical and this project has given me the advantage of doing something on the side that's much more hands on and applications of my learning at Berkeley. So that's been really awesome. And then working with other people on a project and just knowing how to work in a team is not something that people teach you in class either until you get to the higher level project-based classes and engineering. So that's been really great. And uh, working and collaborating with people, not only in the mechanical engineering department but the directors of the RSF to [00:16:30] TGF and other funding agencies and Co working together to get all that going is like intense. I can only imagine what professors have to go through to get grants written and proposals and then get the actually get that money and use it for their projects. That's been kind of like a mini Speaker 5: many experience with that. How much time do you estimate you spent working on a project? Speaker 4: Well, I've been working on it since summer of 2009 and I work anywhere [00:17:00] from five to 10 hours a week on it. I think pretty consistently with the exception of last summer and this summer because I've been away doing other internships and research projects. But every time I come back to Berkeley it's like, all right, got to get on. I gotta get going again. Speaker 5: And have your summer internships where you haven't been working on the Human Powergen bin and sort of related fields? Speaker 4: Yeah. Last summer I got the chance to go to Oregon State University and do, uh, an inner and study on the interaction [00:17:30] between wave energy devices in the environment, studying what types of organisms might colonize the environment. Cause I hadn't really, really been looked at. And then this summer I got the chance to go to MIT and study, um, fluid dynamics in the ocean engineering lab there. So starting to get a feel for the field and both on the west and the east coast and getting ideas of what professors doing what. So that's been really great. Yeah. Speaker 5: So for this project, you're probably not going to get completed by the time you graduate and if you're able to hand it off, [00:18:00] would you be involved in trying to get additional funding to make that transition happen? Speaker 4: I think at the moment we haven't used much of our funding because we've had a lot of setbacks and getting ellipticals and getting team members. So depending on the stance of the project in December, we would definitely, depending on if we've used a lot of our funds for prototyping or we're still waiting to get people on board to start prototyping, that would probably influence whether or not we apply for more funding. But I mean [00:18:30] more money's always great cause right now the funding we have budgeted, we'll only retrofit 14 of the 28 ellipticals. So if we are to consider doing all 28 we definitely need to look for more funding. I'm just sort of hesitant to do it right now because we don't actually have anything prototyped at the moment and no real product to show before we apply for more funding. Speaker 5: What is it that you like about engineering? What drew you to engineering? Speaker 4: So actually one thought I wanted to be a film major for a really long time [00:19:00] and then I went to a summer program just for like fun. I was like, okay, I'll get out of the house for a month, uh, in mechanical engineering. And they had us like take apart part printer, take apart a blender and like build these little like out of the box robots. You're just like screw a few things in the other and put a battery. And I think just the whole idea of like building things and taking things apart sort of amazed me. And I was always like really good at puzzles and math and so it was like, oh this is like way more fun than making movies. [00:19:30] So that's sort of what drawn me to it. Speaker 5: Has Your work on this project given you a better sense of how what you want to do going forward? Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. It has encouraged me to look more into alternative forms of energy. That's definitely what I want to do in the future. Unfortunately, it's made me disheartened about human power cause going into the project I thought, Oh yeah, we can just retrofit all the ellipticals and then power the entire gym. We use so much power on a daily basis that that's not [00:20:00] feasible so definitely opens your eyes onto how much power we consume every day and I think this project has been a great stepping stone into the world of alternative energy and I hope to study something like ocean energy and ocean energy extraction for graduate studies in school. Speaker 5: Thanks very much Maha for coming on the show and sharing your experience with us. Speaker 4: No problem. This was awesome. Thanks Speaker 2: [inaudible] [00:20:30] [inaudible] Speaker 5: irregular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Speaker 7: I am joined for this by Rick Karnofsky every Thursday night at 6:00 PM the California Academy of Sciences. In San Francisco's Golden Gate Park host nightlife at 21 and over event featuring [00:21:00] music, cocktails and learning and mission is $12 or $10 for members. In addition to the regular exhibits and planetarium shows, the cal academy offers theme related special events. The theme for October 13th Nightlife is designed from nature. The biomimicry institute will show off real products inspired by natural forums such as green shield, a low chemical water repellent fabric finish inspired by the microscopic texture of leaves and Formaldehyde free plywood inspired by the adhesive chemistry of intertidal muscles. [00:21:30] Current design soons will show how they incorporate biomimicry into their projects. Also enjoy stilt walking and juggling inspired by Cirque decile a his latest nature theme show totem and catch a screening of the biomimicry documentary. Second Nature. The theme for October 20th Nightlife is the science of voting, a lively roundtable moderated by the bay citizens political writer, Gary Xi, and featuring political aficionados, Alex Clemens from SF usual suspects and [00:22:00] San Francisco state universities, political science professor and outspoken tweeter. Speaker 7: Jason McDaniel. We'll discuss topics such as rank choice voting and how it affects the strategies of San Francisco's May oral candidates, University of San Francisco, professor of American politics, Corey Cook will discuss the science of voting for more information on nightlife and other events at the California Academy of Sciences. Visit their website@www.cal academy.org the October Science at Kow lecture will be given by Dr Peggy Helwig [00:22:30] and is entitled tectonic timebombs earthquakes near and far. She will talk about the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, New Zealand, Japan, and Virginia as well as the earthquake hazard from faults in our own backyard. Dr Helwig is the operations manager of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. The lecture is at 11:00 AM on Saturday, October 15th in the genetics and plant biology. Building room 100 [00:23:00] for more details, visit the website science@caldotberkeley.edu Lawrence Berkeley national lab is having a free open house on Saturday, October 15th you could attend from either 10:00 AM to 1230 or from 1230 until 3:00 PM the theme of the show is Cirque de Sciences and the open house will feature exhibits, tours of the advanced light source and guest house performances, hands on science, investigations for children [00:23:30] and lectures on Supernovas, biofuels computing, ancient sounds, plasma beams, indoor air pollution and scientific visualization. There'll be food available for purchase. For more information and to register for this event, visit Speaker 3: www.lbl.gov/open house. The Biosafety Alliance presents a global citizens report on the state of genetically modified organisms. False promises, [00:24:00] failed technologies. These reports highlight scientific research and empirical evidence from around the globe demonstrating how genetically modified seeds and crops have failed to deliver the advertised promises. The Speakers will be Dr Yvan Donnas, Shiva philosopher, environmental activist and ECO feminist. Debbie Barker International Program Director Center for food safety. Miguel LTA Ari, associate professor of agroecology at UC Berkeley. [00:24:30] This event will happen October 13th, 2011 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center four zero one Venice Avenue, San Francisco. The event is free and donations are accepted. If you would like to RSVP, go to the website, global state of gmos.eventbrite.com there will also be a press conference [00:25:00] for the reports at the San Francisco City Hall at noon October 13th featuring Dr Vandana, Shiva elected officials and other Speakers Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 3: Now three news stories that caught our attention. Genetically engineered canola growing outside of established cultivation [00:25:30] regions across North Dakota. A study published by the online journal plus one reports the genetically engineered canola endowed with herbicide resistance have been found growing outside of established cultivation regions along road sides across North Dakota. These escaped plants were found statewide and account for 45% of the total roadside plants sampled. Furthermore, populations were found to persist [00:26:00] from year to year and reached thousands of individuals. The authors found that the escaped plants could hybridize with each other to create novel combinations of transgenic traits, and the authors argue that their result more than 10 years after the initial release of genetically engineered canola raises questions of whether adequate oversight and monitoring protocols are in place in the u s to track the environmental impact of biotech products. Berkeley's [00:26:30] own cell Perlmutter is sharing the Nobel Prize in physics with Adam G. Reese of the John Hopkins University and Brian Schmidt of Australian national universities, Mt. Strom Lowe and siding spring observatories pro mudder led the Supernova Speaker 7: cosmology project that in 1998 became one of the two scientific efforts that are credited with discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe and Schmidt led the competing supernova search team. Pearl mudder is UC Berkeley's 22nd Nobel Medal [00:27:00] winner and the ninth winner of the Physics Prize. The discovery of the accelerating expansion has formed theories of the distant future of an ever expanding universe and has alleged the speculation of dark energy that theoretically makes up almost three quarters of the matter and energy of the universe, but it has proven elusive to observe. Perlmutter has recently been working with NASA and the u s department of Energy to build and launch the first space-based observatory designed specifically to understand the nature of dark energy. Speaker 3: [00:27:30] This news item is also a job opening NASA to seek applicants for next astronaut candidate class. In early November, NASA will seek applicants for its next class of astronaut candidates who will support long-duration missions to the International Space Station and future deep space exploration activities. For more information, visit the website, astronauts.nasa.gov a bachelor's degree in engineering, science, or math [00:28:00] and three years of relevant professional experience are required in order to be considered. Typically, successful applicants have significant qualifications in engineering or science or extensive experience flying high performance jet aircraft. After applicant interviews and evaluations, NASA expects to announce the final selections in 2013 and training to begin that August. Additional information about the astronaut candidate program [00:28:30] is available by calling the astronaut selection office at area code (281) 483-5907 Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 6: The music played during the show is written and performed by David lost honor from his album titled Folk and Acoustic Speaker 2: [00:29:00] [inaudible]. Speaker 6: Thank you for listening to spectrum. We're happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to SVA meal. Our email address is spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. Speaker 2: [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Simone Pagan-Griso, Postdoc Chamberlain Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, works on the ATLAS team at CERN.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Rick Karnofsky. Brad swift and I are the hosts of today's show. We are speaking with Dr Simone Simona, pic Ingreso of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. [00:01:00] Simona is a physicist who is searching for the Higgs bows on which has also been called the God particle because it is the theoretical establish or have mass in the standard model of physics. This recording has been prerecorded and edited to Monet. Can you please tell us a little bit about what you do Speaker 3: that an experimental physicist? I basically work on understanding fundamental laws of nature in day, a smallest scale as possible and to understand which are the fundamental [00:01:30] constituents of matter and which laws, governor, these are the forces between them. And currently I work on an experimented, which is, uh, in um, Geneva, Switzerland, um, in the seminal laboratory and this experiment is called Atlas. And, uh, one of its purposes is actually to us, Mesh Protons are together to uh, investigate the nature of the fundamental Christy trends [00:02:00] of uh, the metal that we see around including to find the Higgs Boson. Is Macanese Alto almost widely accepted as never been proved experimentally. So it's really just a theory of this. Well, yes, very well motivated by just the theory and in doing this mechanism, what happens is that you introduce one more piece in these theory, we call them fields and this field basically [00:02:30] breaks down and give mass to these first careers. Speaker 3: But in doing this thing, one single piece remains the left. Okay. And uh, this small piece is suppose is what we are looking for is what is called the Higgs Boson. So if we see these, these expos on will be a very, very good indication that this mechanism is actually the one the natural have chosen and make things work as we see we some indications [00:03:00] or how it should behave. And which are the property of this particular in particular [inaudible] the key characteristic of this particular mass. We don't know in this theory it's mass is a free parameter if you want. We don't know what what you should AV. It could span in different ranges. However, we have both experimental constraints and a theoretical motivation to think that it's masses [00:03:30] in a well-defined range and this is the best way we can account for what we see in the end. Speaker 3: This was initially a quite wide range. It was initially searched the at cern and experiment, which was colliding electrons and anti electrons to search up to [inaudible] 2000 and increasing the energy because it was not fun and pushing it to harden harder. And what does increasing the energy do? Increase? That's [00:04:00] a very good question. The point is that in the end, energy and mass are back as Einstein teacher does are basically the same thing. So colliding them in electron anti electron at higher energy. We can procreate particle with higher masses basically. And the idea was try to create two collided higher energy because we didn't find any trees of the production of the heat. So they give an energy. So in mass it, it me, it meant that it was at higher masses that we couldn't [00:04:30] reach. So increasing the energy was the way to produce in a laboratory. Speaker 3: This particle after the year 2000 where this in this patio was not found, the collider was shut down because our new collider was under project to be built, which is still a large other collider that is now operating. And the search pastor to another laboratory which is located a r near Chicago. The fair made up that was still r a machine [00:05:00] which was basically colliding particle to create in laboratory heavy. Particular usually in nature are not easy to find. This was a little different. Particle was not colliding, electrons was colliding, protons and antiprotons. So cause the trends of the tones, this was done because in this way we could achieve higher energies in the collision. And the reason for that is just the protein mass is higher than the electron to collide is particularly to accelerate them [00:05:30] and to accelerate. And we use circular rings so we need to ban them and accelerate them. Speaker 3: But if they throw it too fast, you don't have enough bending power to to keep them in the ring. Right? So you need bigger and bigger drinks. Now with the protons you could with our relatively feasible ring, which is around the six kilometers in circumference, you could actually increased the energy by a lot. Can you please walk us through [00:06:00] what the standard model is? It basically has its really nice thing is that we, one equation, we can described how all the metrics that we see around behaves. I interact with other matters with all these forces at certain they sell tee shirts with this equation. Okay. Written down on the tee shirt and it's very compact form. And from there in principle you, you can know whatever happens or how matter's interacting, whatever different situation, [00:06:30] it turns out that we cannot solve that equation and if one can do it that we get a fixed price right away. Speaker 3: And if Nobel prize two probably, but we can try to find approximate solutions that and now the nice thing of the standard model is that the only thing you need to do to build this and our model is to write down in these equations the content of metal that you see around. So I say I just say I want [00:07:00] other recent electron. It doesn't tell me because why there is an electron, but I say I want to be at an electron. I'm human and Tau want to be quirks. Okay. But I don't specify that electrons can interact through light with other particles. So or I don't specify any force. I just write down the content of matters and then just applying and just requiring the, these equations are the same for [00:07:30] some symmetries. For different observers or around that. The easy example of like, I want the equation to be the same if I'm here or for me the other room. Speaker 3: Okay. So there are other symmetries that we can impose to this equation and just imposing this, the symmetry to start that is a question itself, does not satisfy these cemeteries. And the only way to satisfy these symmetries that pretty simple is that there are forces between these things that you've put in the theory. So it must be the electromagnetics, it must be [00:08:00] there or there was the theory wouldn't be symmetric in this transformation. This one, not one really nice thing. We didn't do steering, we didn't put by hand the forces that the full, all the forces that we see in nature, they come out just requiring asymmetry of this equation. Pretty nitrous symmetries and it comes out that if you do that, it's told it must exist. All the forces that we see. So this is one of the very beautiful things are of the standard one that why we believe [00:08:30] so much in this theory and why it worked. Speaker 3: So well. Many prediction of the standard model we're actually did, uh, from a theoretical point of view and then confirmed experimentally and did this also got the Nobel prize and gives them examples. Yeah. The WNC Boson started one of beautiful examples. We saw the worst there were, is trying to explain the objective of the case and why they happen. How did that happen [00:09:00] by the has several problem is doing based on their model, kind of unified all these treatments and a offered an explanation. But in order to that he had to introduce these forced carters that Dublin CBOs, which were as the photons bring light and bring electromagnetic force between two charged particles. These established the balls and chemigate this weak force between particles and can give rise to the case for the activity case. In order to do that, [00:09:30] they need to be, to act in a very short range. Speaker 3: And to do that the WNC both need to have a mass on the contrast of the Photon, which is masters and that's why it can travel as much as it wants. There was a kind of breaking ground prediction and uh, turns out that from nowhere energy experiments, which couldn't achieve that mass, they could any way measure other things, which made a very precise prediction of what [00:10:00] at the mess of the Dublin sibilance would have been. It's still at seven. They actually built an experiment to look for this particular, this keep an energy and they found it and that was noble price directly and yeah, that that was a beautiful example of how theory can go had experiments and, and you have example, on the other hand went for example in dark matter experiments found evidence of dark matter. While [00:10:30] no theoretical model was really seriously considering it as a possibility and we still don't know exactly what it is, right? So it's a very nice usually interplay between theoretical and experimental physicist in, in advancing the knowledge in this Speaker 4: [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum on l this week we are talking to Simona pink and zone about the search for the Higgs Bose on Speaker 3: [00:11:00] right now we know that the heeks particle must have a mass which is above 114 times 10 so the Proton and this bound comes from the lab experiment. We know that those who it's not in between what is kind of 155 to 180 times 70 times the muscle [inaudible] proud. We think that is unlikely to be heavier than [00:11:30] that because can measure other quantities, which can depend on the Higgs mass without directly producing it. This is kind of amazing. This is a pure quantum mechanical phenomenon, so that even if you don't produce actually a particle that can influence other phenomena, depending on the master analysis techniques to adopt are different because the properties of the particles change how much statistical, certain, Hey, do you need before you can exclude a mass [00:12:00] range or say, Hey, we, uh, we found the expose on. Yeah, that's a good question. Speaker 3: In the end, we count the number of coalition that we should be [inaudible] we think that he should, but we have other processes that are known and behaves in a similar way for claiming the discovery of the he expose on. We basically ask that the probability to be, uh, less than a 10 to the minus seven. So that means that even repeating, if, [00:12:30] if we repeated the experiment 10 millions times, only one of these times it would happen that the known processes we give rise to the number of events to explain what we see. We are getting very close in in starting refining, having enough data collected and enough knowledge of the data that we collect to be able to see if among the all the coalition that we record the Hicks person is produced or not. And how much data [00:13:00] are we talking about here? Speaker 3: Yeah, so the data in a larger than collider, we have 20 millions collision per second. However, in every collision of two protons, it doesn't always happen. The same thing. Different things can happen and what we look for is the result of this coalition. We have this theory, the standard model, which not only unifies all these forces but give really a precise prediction of what actually happens. [00:13:30] Even when you collide. For example, two protons, the heat exposed in is predicted to be produced only like a one over 10 billions, billion, billions. Yes. Of these conditions. And I'm the one and 10 yes. One in 10 billion. So valuable. Yeah. It's what we are looking for. All the data that we record from one coalition is about one megabyte and we cannot write that [00:14:00] much of 20 millions coalition per second on a disk. We just don't have the technology to do that and it will require an enormous disk space. Speaker 3: So one very active and difficult part of the experiment is try to decide in real time which of these collisions may be potentially interesting for what you're looking for or not. And we reduce them and write basically two, 300 of damage each second. How long does dates [00:14:30] to the text for you to get the data from? The experiments are happening in Geneva, so this is a very amazing thing and this is something that is only possible for the work of a lot of people, but usually data are get recorded. I send this a huge amount of data. There are people checking that every day. I mean while data is taking, everything is working properly. So all of them, they need to meet every day and decide what is was working, what was not, what had problems [00:15:00] and mark the data saying, okay, during these data I've had this problem during this, I had this one so that every one who analyzed can say, oh, I need this competent the detector. Speaker 3: So give me only the data. Which was working in which that you collected while this piece was working that that needs to be distributed worldwide when we analyzed and we'd be full doing that. It's not like you collect data, you analyze it itself. You also need some, some kind of processing [00:15:30] pre processing of this data and all this process usually takes are, are just few days really one week I would say I can brand my analysis based on data. Yeah. One thing that is maybe not, not obvious is why I need to process this data and this goes a bit in how these huge detector that right now, which are a black box for you. I mean I haven't explained anything about it, how it works and I mentioned [00:16:00] that it has many systems just to give you a feeling. I can tell you that a date, the systems that are closer to the interaction are the one that um, basically when the particle passed through them, they basically try to disturb the particle in the less possible. Speaker 3: So they are very thin part of material and they basically just just try to say, uh, to the electronic yet the particles pass through this point. So what you have [00:16:30] is kind of it creed all around several layers of grades, which will tell you a particular past here and other here. Sometimes they fail, they don't tell you that he passed. Sometimes they tell you that he's passed even if nothing was going on for noise of course. And so what you actually see when you record any event is are this huge amount of greets with points. And from that you need to figure out what does he mean? We mean how many particles were there, which trajectory did they, [00:17:00] they went through. And this is an highly non trivial task and this needs to be done in these. And from there we can start and saying, okay, if I see these kinds of particles, then it means that they originate from these other particle here and they have these energies. So I can, I know that this is not this process and you can do all this kind of infer things. So this needs to be done before the is analyzed and usually, yeah. Speaker 4: [inaudible] [00:17:30] you're listening to spectrum on k l x this week we are talking to Somalia and pink Ingreso about the search for the Higgs Boson theoretical particle of mass in the standard bottle of physics. Speaker 3: These experiments are very huge collaboration of people worldwide at center right now. Each of these experiments, [inaudible] experiment [00:18:00] is a collaboration of three thousands of people, which was needed to build the experiment to make it work, to still make it working right now. And when that eyes, what we see. So I'm very interested in just the scope of the project and how, how many people are working on it for such a fundamental question. When thinks that if we have an answer that could be potentially worthy of winning a Nobel prize. So who actually gets surprised if that's a very [00:18:30] good question. I think that of course, uh, in ob price I think is very much worth in this case, after all these years of searches, all the theorist working on building this theory of this Hicks Mechanism and these gander prediction of this particular of course worth a, a very good price and a noble price can be sweetened to that. Speaker 3: And as well as that, I think all the experimental [00:19:00] effort would may need a w is definitely worth a very good price. So I like to think that, uh, this price will be shared among all the people that worked along all these years. But of course it will happen that probably a representative, uh, of those will actually take physically the price. But I'm sure that, uh, it will happen that it will be felt as shared among all the thousands of physicist working on this [00:19:30] project. And what's it like for you as an individual scientist on a big team? How do you sort of carve out your own niche and how is you cannot, uh, enforce a strict cerotic across structure, right? You basically have [inaudible] you cannot appoint coordinators which can try to focus on day the work of many people. But every people is basically free to pursue his own research as he feels that is the better way to go. Speaker 3: It's never work that you do alone. It's something [00:20:00] that requires the work of several people. I worked on a similar thing in Chicago during my Phd [inaudible] a lot of experience in that and I tried to use the experience now too to improve things to push harder, our organized technique and understanding of our data at LHC. So there is plenty of room in which every person is contributing. I personally work, I'm like to work a lot on the analysis techniques [00:20:30] that are used to analyze what we see and to distinguish known processes from process that we are looking for. That is an extremely interesting field. Um, the reason for that is that we have a huge amount of information after this collision. Um, one that you didn't mention is that these detectors are huge [inaudible] yet us detector itself is kind of 45 meters long and 25 meters high. Speaker 3: So [00:21:00] there are some huge, uh, instrumentations and uh, each of the, this detector is made of various sub system which are, which have the, uh, goal of measuring different protests, processes of the known particles that comes out from the interactions. And being in a, this is a huge amount of information. Okay. And it's not easy. Um, you don't, you don't know exactly what happens, but you try [00:21:30] to reconcile from what you see what happened. And this is something, ah, that I tried to work a lot on in really just analyzing what they see and try to classify if you want the values coalition and try to understand what happened. And this field are made a lot of progresses and, and it's using very, very, uh, advances techniques. And, uh, it seemed interesting how, uh, many concerts [00:22:00] that were born in other science fields that computer science are actually merging in what we are using right now. Speaker 3: One of the nicer example are what are called narrow networks. So we're born in computer science are used a lot. For example, in, uh, our vision for the, for, uh, automation for robotics. Uh, and uh, we actually can use them to ah, to process the whole information that we have and try to classify [00:22:30] these events and to see how they look. Like we can use simulation of these events. We have a lot of people working, trying to simulate what what we expect to see in our detector, which been such a huge piece of instrument is not easy. And uh, using this simulation we can actually uh, make, uh, make new art tools like neural networks, which are tried to see what happened really in our detector and to see [00:23:00] if it is what we expect from a known process or from money x production. I have to say we are pretty close. We should be able to say something in a very short amount of time. We also know that thanks for joining us. Thank you for inviting me. Speaker 4: [inaudible] the regular feature of spectrum is to mention some of the science and technology events happening in [00:23:30] the bay area over the next two weeks. I'm joined for this calendar by Brad Swift Speaker 5: to preserve our planet. Scientists tell us that we must reduce the amount of co two in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million to below 350 parts per million. The organization three fifty.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Moving planet is a worldwide rally to demand solutions to the climate [00:24:00] crisis. Moving planet is a global day of action scheduled for Saturday, September 24th, 2011 the San Francisco Rally begins with a parade from Justin Herman Plaza, which is at the intersection of market street and the Embarcadero. The parade will head up market street to the Civic Center at 12:30 PM once at the civic center. There will be Speakers, music, food workshops and exhibits for details on all the Saturday events including the San Francisco rally. Go [00:24:30] to the website, three fifty.org and click on moving planet Speaker 2: Berkeley Ameritas professor Frank Shu will deliver a lecture entitled Nuclear Energy After Fukushima on Tuesday, September 27th at 6:00 PM at the Commonwealth Club's San Francisco office located on the second floor of five nine five market street. The media and public's reaction to the recent nuclear accident threatened to cripple the nuclear renaissance that is humanity's best hope for mitigating climate disruption. She will review how [00:25:00] light water reactors and the once through fuel cycle came to dominate the landscape for generating nuclear power today and we'll assess options for the future. A standard ticket for this event is $20 but emission is $8 for members and $7 for students with a valid ID visit, www.commonwealthclub.org Speaker 5: more information. What's right with Kansas. Learn how Kansas is climate and energy project is capitalizing on heartland values to change behavior [00:25:30] and reduce carbon emissions. A panel of Nancy Jackson, executive director, Kansas climate and energy project and Marianne Fuller from the Lawrence Berkeley labs. Environmental Energy Technologies Division will present the Kansas project plus be the first to see lbls video Kansas, which shows how the climate and energy project has become a Kansas mainstay. This will be Monday, October 3rd 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM this is a free event at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, [00:26:00] 2025 Addison Street in Berkeley, Speaker 2: exploratorium is hosting after dark and evening series for adults 18 and over. That mix is science, art and cocktails and mission to the exploratorium is included. Tickets are $15 or $12 for seniors, students or persons with disabilities and are free for members. On Thursday, October 6th from six to 10:00 PM this months after dark theme is again and again explore the fascinating worlds of reminiscence and repetition [00:26:30] and then backwards skate through your own nostalgia on their temporary roller rink. UC Berkeley professor of psychology, Art CIM, and Maura will explain the mechanics of human memory. The website for this event is www.exploratorium.edu/after dark and now for a couple of recent science news events. Here's Brad Swift. Speaker 5: Gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade. [00:27:00] The gamers achieved their discovery by playing folded and online game that allows players to collaborate and compete in predicting the structure of protein molecules. This is the first instance that the researchers are aware of in which gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem. After scientists repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a protein cutting enzyme from an aids like virus they called in the folded players. The scientists challenged the gamers to produce an accurate model of the enzyme. The gamers did it and only three [00:27:30] weeks folded was created by computer scientists at the University of Washington Center for game science in collaboration with the Baker lab, a biochemistry lab at the university, figuring out the structure of proteins contributes to the research on the causes of and cures for cancer, Alzheimer's immune deficiencies, and a host of other disorders as well as work on biofuels. A paper describing the retrovirus enzyme structure was published September 18th [00:28:00] in the journal, nature, structural and molecular biology. The scientists and the gamers are listed as go authors Speaker 2: and in news related to this week's interview. Science reports that Israel has become an associate member of the European Physics Laboratory [inaudible]. They're the 21st member nation and the first new members since Bulgaria joined in 1999 this move is somewhat controversial. Sm Academics in the UK and South Africa. I wished to boycott collaboration due to Israeli Palestinian conflicts [00:28:30] but this ends a two year probationary membership and Israel will eventually contribute 1 billion Swiss francs to the project a year. Israeli representative to the certain Governing Council Eliezar revenue beachy states that he hopes this will inspire other Arab nations to join the effort. Speaker 4: [inaudible] music her during the show was attract [inaudible] Sean's divvy from David Lewis, Donna's self-published folk [00:29:00] and acoustic album. It is published under the creative Commons attribution license version 3.0 is available@wwwdotjamendo.com editing and production assistance for the show by Brad Swift. Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email [00:29:30] address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Simone Pagan-Griso, Postdoc Chamberlain Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, works on the ATLAS team at CERN.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Rick Karnofsky. Brad swift and I are the hosts of today's show. We are speaking with Dr Simone Simona, pic Ingreso of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. [00:01:00] Simona is a physicist who is searching for the Higgs bows on which has also been called the God particle because it is the theoretical establish or have mass in the standard model of physics. This recording has been prerecorded and edited to Monet. Can you please tell us a little bit about what you do Speaker 3: that an experimental physicist? I basically work on understanding fundamental laws of nature in day, a smallest scale as possible and to understand which are the fundamental [00:01:30] constituents of matter and which laws, governor, these are the forces between them. And currently I work on an experimented, which is, uh, in um, Geneva, Switzerland, um, in the seminal laboratory and this experiment is called Atlas. And, uh, one of its purposes is actually to us, Mesh Protons are together to uh, investigate the nature of the fundamental Christy trends [00:02:00] of uh, the metal that we see around including to find the Higgs Boson. Is Macanese Alto almost widely accepted as never been proved experimentally. So it's really just a theory of this. Well, yes, very well motivated by just the theory and in doing this mechanism, what happens is that you introduce one more piece in these theory, we call them fields and this field basically [00:02:30] breaks down and give mass to these first careers. Speaker 3: But in doing this thing, one single piece remains the left. Okay. And uh, this small piece is suppose is what we are looking for is what is called the Higgs Boson. So if we see these, these expos on will be a very, very good indication that this mechanism is actually the one the natural have chosen and make things work as we see we some indications [00:03:00] or how it should behave. And which are the property of this particular in particular [inaudible] the key characteristic of this particular mass. We don't know in this theory it's mass is a free parameter if you want. We don't know what what you should AV. It could span in different ranges. However, we have both experimental constraints and a theoretical motivation to think that it's masses [00:03:30] in a well-defined range and this is the best way we can account for what we see in the end. Speaker 3: This was initially a quite wide range. It was initially searched the at cern and experiment, which was colliding electrons and anti electrons to search up to [inaudible] 2000 and increasing the energy because it was not fun and pushing it to harden harder. And what does increasing the energy do? Increase? That's [00:04:00] a very good question. The point is that in the end, energy and mass are back as Einstein teacher does are basically the same thing. So colliding them in electron anti electron at higher energy. We can procreate particle with higher masses basically. And the idea was try to create two collided higher energy because we didn't find any trees of the production of the heat. So they give an energy. So in mass it, it me, it meant that it was at higher masses that we couldn't [00:04:30] reach. So increasing the energy was the way to produce in a laboratory. Speaker 3: This particle after the year 2000 where this in this patio was not found, the collider was shut down because our new collider was under project to be built, which is still a large other collider that is now operating. And the search pastor to another laboratory which is located a r near Chicago. The fair made up that was still r a machine [00:05:00] which was basically colliding particle to create in laboratory heavy. Particular usually in nature are not easy to find. This was a little different. Particle was not colliding, electrons was colliding, protons and antiprotons. So cause the trends of the tones, this was done because in this way we could achieve higher energies in the collision. And the reason for that is just the protein mass is higher than the electron to collide is particularly to accelerate them [00:05:30] and to accelerate. And we use circular rings so we need to ban them and accelerate them. Speaker 3: But if they throw it too fast, you don't have enough bending power to to keep them in the ring. Right? So you need bigger and bigger drinks. Now with the protons you could with our relatively feasible ring, which is around the six kilometers in circumference, you could actually increased the energy by a lot. Can you please walk us through [00:06:00] what the standard model is? It basically has its really nice thing is that we, one equation, we can described how all the metrics that we see around behaves. I interact with other matters with all these forces at certain they sell tee shirts with this equation. Okay. Written down on the tee shirt and it's very compact form. And from there in principle you, you can know whatever happens or how matter's interacting, whatever different situation, [00:06:30] it turns out that we cannot solve that equation and if one can do it that we get a fixed price right away. Speaker 3: And if Nobel prize two probably, but we can try to find approximate solutions that and now the nice thing of the standard model is that the only thing you need to do to build this and our model is to write down in these equations the content of metal that you see around. So I say I just say I want [00:07:00] other recent electron. It doesn't tell me because why there is an electron, but I say I want to be at an electron. I'm human and Tau want to be quirks. Okay. But I don't specify that electrons can interact through light with other particles. So or I don't specify any force. I just write down the content of matters and then just applying and just requiring the, these equations are the same for [00:07:30] some symmetries. For different observers or around that. The easy example of like, I want the equation to be the same if I'm here or for me the other room. Speaker 3: Okay. So there are other symmetries that we can impose to this equation and just imposing this, the symmetry to start that is a question itself, does not satisfy these cemeteries. And the only way to satisfy these symmetries that pretty simple is that there are forces between these things that you've put in the theory. So it must be the electromagnetics, it must be [00:08:00] there or there was the theory wouldn't be symmetric in this transformation. This one, not one really nice thing. We didn't do steering, we didn't put by hand the forces that the full, all the forces that we see in nature, they come out just requiring asymmetry of this equation. Pretty nitrous symmetries and it comes out that if you do that, it's told it must exist. All the forces that we see. So this is one of the very beautiful things are of the standard one that why we believe [00:08:30] so much in this theory and why it worked. Speaker 3: So well. Many prediction of the standard model we're actually did, uh, from a theoretical point of view and then confirmed experimentally and did this also got the Nobel prize and gives them examples. Yeah. The WNC Boson started one of beautiful examples. We saw the worst there were, is trying to explain the objective of the case and why they happen. How did that happen [00:09:00] by the has several problem is doing based on their model, kind of unified all these treatments and a offered an explanation. But in order to that he had to introduce these forced carters that Dublin CBOs, which were as the photons bring light and bring electromagnetic force between two charged particles. These established the balls and chemigate this weak force between particles and can give rise to the case for the activity case. In order to do that, [00:09:30] they need to be, to act in a very short range. Speaker 3: And to do that the WNC both need to have a mass on the contrast of the Photon, which is masters and that's why it can travel as much as it wants. There was a kind of breaking ground prediction and uh, turns out that from nowhere energy experiments, which couldn't achieve that mass, they could any way measure other things, which made a very precise prediction of what [00:10:00] at the mess of the Dublin sibilance would have been. It's still at seven. They actually built an experiment to look for this particular, this keep an energy and they found it and that was noble price directly and yeah, that that was a beautiful example of how theory can go had experiments and, and you have example, on the other hand went for example in dark matter experiments found evidence of dark matter. While [00:10:30] no theoretical model was really seriously considering it as a possibility and we still don't know exactly what it is, right? So it's a very nice usually interplay between theoretical and experimental physicist in, in advancing the knowledge in this Speaker 4: [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum on l this week we are talking to Simona pink and zone about the search for the Higgs Bose on Speaker 3: [00:11:00] right now we know that the heeks particle must have a mass which is above 114 times 10 so the Proton and this bound comes from the lab experiment. We know that those who it's not in between what is kind of 155 to 180 times 70 times the muscle [inaudible] proud. We think that is unlikely to be heavier than [00:11:30] that because can measure other quantities, which can depend on the Higgs mass without directly producing it. This is kind of amazing. This is a pure quantum mechanical phenomenon, so that even if you don't produce actually a particle that can influence other phenomena, depending on the master analysis techniques to adopt are different because the properties of the particles change how much statistical, certain, Hey, do you need before you can exclude a mass [00:12:00] range or say, Hey, we, uh, we found the expose on. Yeah, that's a good question. Speaker 3: In the end, we count the number of coalition that we should be [inaudible] we think that he should, but we have other processes that are known and behaves in a similar way for claiming the discovery of the he expose on. We basically ask that the probability to be, uh, less than a 10 to the minus seven. So that means that even repeating, if, [00:12:30] if we repeated the experiment 10 millions times, only one of these times it would happen that the known processes we give rise to the number of events to explain what we see. We are getting very close in in starting refining, having enough data collected and enough knowledge of the data that we collect to be able to see if among the all the coalition that we record the Hicks person is produced or not. And how much data [00:13:00] are we talking about here? Speaker 3: Yeah, so the data in a larger than collider, we have 20 millions collision per second. However, in every collision of two protons, it doesn't always happen. The same thing. Different things can happen and what we look for is the result of this coalition. We have this theory, the standard model, which not only unifies all these forces but give really a precise prediction of what actually happens. [00:13:30] Even when you collide. For example, two protons, the heat exposed in is predicted to be produced only like a one over 10 billions, billion, billions. Yes. Of these conditions. And I'm the one and 10 yes. One in 10 billion. So valuable. Yeah. It's what we are looking for. All the data that we record from one coalition is about one megabyte and we cannot write that [00:14:00] much of 20 millions coalition per second on a disk. We just don't have the technology to do that and it will require an enormous disk space. Speaker 3: So one very active and difficult part of the experiment is try to decide in real time which of these collisions may be potentially interesting for what you're looking for or not. And we reduce them and write basically two, 300 of damage each second. How long does dates [00:14:30] to the text for you to get the data from? The experiments are happening in Geneva, so this is a very amazing thing and this is something that is only possible for the work of a lot of people, but usually data are get recorded. I send this a huge amount of data. There are people checking that every day. I mean while data is taking, everything is working properly. So all of them, they need to meet every day and decide what is was working, what was not, what had problems [00:15:00] and mark the data saying, okay, during these data I've had this problem during this, I had this one so that every one who analyzed can say, oh, I need this competent the detector. Speaker 3: So give me only the data. Which was working in which that you collected while this piece was working that that needs to be distributed worldwide when we analyzed and we'd be full doing that. It's not like you collect data, you analyze it itself. You also need some, some kind of processing [00:15:30] pre processing of this data and all this process usually takes are, are just few days really one week I would say I can brand my analysis based on data. Yeah. One thing that is maybe not, not obvious is why I need to process this data and this goes a bit in how these huge detector that right now, which are a black box for you. I mean I haven't explained anything about it, how it works and I mentioned [00:16:00] that it has many systems just to give you a feeling. I can tell you that a date, the systems that are closer to the interaction are the one that um, basically when the particle passed through them, they basically try to disturb the particle in the less possible. Speaker 3: So they are very thin part of material and they basically just just try to say, uh, to the electronic yet the particles pass through this point. So what you have [00:16:30] is kind of it creed all around several layers of grades, which will tell you a particular past here and other here. Sometimes they fail, they don't tell you that he passed. Sometimes they tell you that he's passed even if nothing was going on for noise of course. And so what you actually see when you record any event is are this huge amount of greets with points. And from that you need to figure out what does he mean? We mean how many particles were there, which trajectory did they, [00:17:00] they went through. And this is an highly non trivial task and this needs to be done in these. And from there we can start and saying, okay, if I see these kinds of particles, then it means that they originate from these other particle here and they have these energies. So I can, I know that this is not this process and you can do all this kind of infer things. So this needs to be done before the is analyzed and usually, yeah. Speaker 4: [inaudible] [00:17:30] you're listening to spectrum on k l x this week we are talking to Somalia and pink Ingreso about the search for the Higgs Boson theoretical particle of mass in the standard bottle of physics. Speaker 3: These experiments are very huge collaboration of people worldwide at center right now. Each of these experiments, [inaudible] experiment [00:18:00] is a collaboration of three thousands of people, which was needed to build the experiment to make it work, to still make it working right now. And when that eyes, what we see. So I'm very interested in just the scope of the project and how, how many people are working on it for such a fundamental question. When thinks that if we have an answer that could be potentially worthy of winning a Nobel prize. So who actually gets surprised if that's a very [00:18:30] good question. I think that of course, uh, in ob price I think is very much worth in this case, after all these years of searches, all the theorist working on building this theory of this Hicks Mechanism and these gander prediction of this particular of course worth a, a very good price and a noble price can be sweetened to that. Speaker 3: And as well as that, I think all the experimental [00:19:00] effort would may need a w is definitely worth a very good price. So I like to think that, uh, this price will be shared among all the people that worked along all these years. But of course it will happen that probably a representative, uh, of those will actually take physically the price. But I'm sure that, uh, it will happen that it will be felt as shared among all the thousands of physicist working on this [00:19:30] project. And what's it like for you as an individual scientist on a big team? How do you sort of carve out your own niche and how is you cannot, uh, enforce a strict cerotic across structure, right? You basically have [inaudible] you cannot appoint coordinators which can try to focus on day the work of many people. But every people is basically free to pursue his own research as he feels that is the better way to go. Speaker 3: It's never work that you do alone. It's something [00:20:00] that requires the work of several people. I worked on a similar thing in Chicago during my Phd [inaudible] a lot of experience in that and I tried to use the experience now too to improve things to push harder, our organized technique and understanding of our data at LHC. So there is plenty of room in which every person is contributing. I personally work, I'm like to work a lot on the analysis techniques [00:20:30] that are used to analyze what we see and to distinguish known processes from process that we are looking for. That is an extremely interesting field. Um, the reason for that is that we have a huge amount of information after this collision. Um, one that you didn't mention is that these detectors are huge [inaudible] yet us detector itself is kind of 45 meters long and 25 meters high. Speaker 3: So [00:21:00] there are some huge, uh, instrumentations and uh, each of the, this detector is made of various sub system which are, which have the, uh, goal of measuring different protests, processes of the known particles that comes out from the interactions. And being in a, this is a huge amount of information. Okay. And it's not easy. Um, you don't, you don't know exactly what happens, but you try [00:21:30] to reconcile from what you see what happened. And this is something, ah, that I tried to work a lot on in really just analyzing what they see and try to classify if you want the values coalition and try to understand what happened. And this field are made a lot of progresses and, and it's using very, very, uh, advances techniques. And, uh, it seemed interesting how, uh, many concerts [00:22:00] that were born in other science fields that computer science are actually merging in what we are using right now. Speaker 3: One of the nicer example are what are called narrow networks. So we're born in computer science are used a lot. For example, in, uh, our vision for the, for, uh, automation for robotics. Uh, and uh, we actually can use them to ah, to process the whole information that we have and try to classify [00:22:30] these events and to see how they look. Like we can use simulation of these events. We have a lot of people working, trying to simulate what what we expect to see in our detector, which been such a huge piece of instrument is not easy. And uh, using this simulation we can actually uh, make, uh, make new art tools like neural networks, which are tried to see what happened really in our detector and to see [00:23:00] if it is what we expect from a known process or from money x production. I have to say we are pretty close. We should be able to say something in a very short amount of time. We also know that thanks for joining us. Thank you for inviting me. Speaker 4: [inaudible] the regular feature of spectrum is to mention some of the science and technology events happening in [00:23:30] the bay area over the next two weeks. I'm joined for this calendar by Brad Swift Speaker 5: to preserve our planet. Scientists tell us that we must reduce the amount of co two in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million to below 350 parts per million. The organization three fifty.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Moving planet is a worldwide rally to demand solutions to the climate [00:24:00] crisis. Moving planet is a global day of action scheduled for Saturday, September 24th, 2011 the San Francisco Rally begins with a parade from Justin Herman Plaza, which is at the intersection of market street and the Embarcadero. The parade will head up market street to the Civic Center at 12:30 PM once at the civic center. There will be Speakers, music, food workshops and exhibits for details on all the Saturday events including the San Francisco rally. Go [00:24:30] to the website, three fifty.org and click on moving planet Speaker 2: Berkeley Ameritas professor Frank Shu will deliver a lecture entitled Nuclear Energy After Fukushima on Tuesday, September 27th at 6:00 PM at the Commonwealth Club's San Francisco office located on the second floor of five nine five market street. The media and public's reaction to the recent nuclear accident threatened to cripple the nuclear renaissance that is humanity's best hope for mitigating climate disruption. She will review how [00:25:00] light water reactors and the once through fuel cycle came to dominate the landscape for generating nuclear power today and we'll assess options for the future. A standard ticket for this event is $20 but emission is $8 for members and $7 for students with a valid ID visit, www.commonwealthclub.org Speaker 5: more information. What's right with Kansas. Learn how Kansas is climate and energy project is capitalizing on heartland values to change behavior [00:25:30] and reduce carbon emissions. A panel of Nancy Jackson, executive director, Kansas climate and energy project and Marianne Fuller from the Lawrence Berkeley labs. Environmental Energy Technologies Division will present the Kansas project plus be the first to see lbls video Kansas, which shows how the climate and energy project has become a Kansas mainstay. This will be Monday, October 3rd 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM this is a free event at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, [00:26:00] 2025 Addison Street in Berkeley, Speaker 2: exploratorium is hosting after dark and evening series for adults 18 and over. That mix is science, art and cocktails and mission to the exploratorium is included. Tickets are $15 or $12 for seniors, students or persons with disabilities and are free for members. On Thursday, October 6th from six to 10:00 PM this months after dark theme is again and again explore the fascinating worlds of reminiscence and repetition [00:26:30] and then backwards skate through your own nostalgia on their temporary roller rink. UC Berkeley professor of psychology, Art CIM, and Maura will explain the mechanics of human memory. The website for this event is www.exploratorium.edu/after dark and now for a couple of recent science news events. Here's Brad Swift. Speaker 5: Gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade. [00:27:00] The gamers achieved their discovery by playing folded and online game that allows players to collaborate and compete in predicting the structure of protein molecules. This is the first instance that the researchers are aware of in which gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem. After scientists repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a protein cutting enzyme from an aids like virus they called in the folded players. The scientists challenged the gamers to produce an accurate model of the enzyme. The gamers did it and only three [00:27:30] weeks folded was created by computer scientists at the University of Washington Center for game science in collaboration with the Baker lab, a biochemistry lab at the university, figuring out the structure of proteins contributes to the research on the causes of and cures for cancer, Alzheimer's immune deficiencies, and a host of other disorders as well as work on biofuels. A paper describing the retrovirus enzyme structure was published September 18th [00:28:00] in the journal, nature, structural and molecular biology. The scientists and the gamers are listed as go authors Speaker 2: and in news related to this week's interview. Science reports that Israel has become an associate member of the European Physics Laboratory [inaudible]. They're the 21st member nation and the first new members since Bulgaria joined in 1999 this move is somewhat controversial. Sm Academics in the UK and South Africa. I wished to boycott collaboration due to Israeli Palestinian conflicts [00:28:30] but this ends a two year probationary membership and Israel will eventually contribute 1 billion Swiss francs to the project a year. Israeli representative to the certain Governing Council Eliezar revenue beachy states that he hopes this will inspire other Arab nations to join the effort. Speaker 4: [inaudible] music her during the show was attract [inaudible] Sean's divvy from David Lewis, Donna's self-published folk [00:29:00] and acoustic album. It is published under the creative Commons attribution license version 3.0 is available@wwwdotjamendo.com editing and production assistance for the show by Brad Swift. Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email [00:29:30] address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

EXPLOSIVE LIVE INTERVIEW WITH LEUREN MORET! Phone lines will be open starting at 10 pm! As an international expert on depleted uranium (DU), Moret works tirelessly to educate the public about the dangers of DU weaponry for both soldiers and civilians alike. Her biography includes a five-year stint at the Lawrence Berkeley nuclear weapons lab and two years at the Livermore nuclear weapons lab. Moret, a former Environmental Commissioner for the City of Berkeley, contributed to an expert report on depleted uranium for the United Nations regarding the illegality of DU munitions. The groundbreaking documentary film, Beyond Treason, features Moret in a bone chilling interview, calmly discussing what she believes is the foremost challenge of our times: the use of depleted uranium weapons and its consequences for every citizen around the globe. Leuren will explain the TRUTH about Japan's Nuke PLant Crisis and what it really means to us! They are NOT telling the people the truth.   Stick around for False Flag Radio starting at 11 pm.

Shalene Jha Postdoctoral Fellow and Hillary Sardinas College of Natural Resources grad student at UC Berkeley discuss their research in native bee populations, landscape genetics, foraging ecology, ecosystem services. They talk about research funding and collaboration.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Hmm Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology [00:00:30] show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with news events and interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Shalani Sha, UC president's, postdoctoral fellow and Hillary Sardinia graduate researcher. They're both members of the environmental science policy and Management Department of the College of natural resources at UC Berkeley. We talk about their research of native bumblebees and bee habitat [00:01:00] during the interview, colony collapse disorder as mentioned, but not explained. Colony collapse disorder is a still unsolved mystery that since 2006 has killed approximately 50% of kept European honeybees in North America. The disorder is characterized by the complete disappearance of all the bees in a colony. The kept European honeybees are essential pollinators of many commercial scale fruit and nut crops throughout the world. The suspected causes of colony collapse disorder include fungus, [00:01:30] viruses, pesticides, Mites, diet, antibiotics, and whether the breakthrough mentioned in the interview is not a solution, but possibly a forward step to a solution. This interview is prerecorded and edited. Speaker 3: My guests are Shalani jaw and Hillary seediness. They're both at the college of natural resources. And why don't you, shall any describe the research that you're currently doing together? Speaker 4: [00:02:00] Sure. So Maria and I are both in Claire Cremins lab and this particular lab group actually has very diverse interests, mostly related to conservation, biology and ecological interactions between people and animals. And our work is related to pollinators. So how do you conserve pollinators in agricultural habitats? That's sort of one of our research closed side and we worked and some of the farming communities [00:02:30] in northern California around Yolo, Solano in Sacramento County, looking at native bees and how agricultural landscapes and regions impact the way bees move and nest disperse across agriculture tools. Speaker 3: Is there also an element of working with, or at least understanding the, the beekeeping community in those, those very same areas or is there an overlap and interface that happens? Yeah, so a lot Speaker 4: [00:03:00] of the farms that we work in manage TVs as well that managed European honeybee colonies provide pollination services in addition to native bees. So, um, the other portion of our outreach has to do with working with land managers and farmers. We're interested in promoting native bee diversity. These are farmers that often have some incentive from the USDA or have some resources that they can use for restoration. So we kind of [00:03:30] provide some of the research based tools to inform restoration does this, if that's sort of where we hope our work is moving towards. No one in our lab right now is currently working on honeybees, but we do work with a number of labs at Davis that have at UC Davis [inaudible]. Speaker 5: However, previous work that Claire has done with a former student of her, Sarah Greenleaf did look at how native bees and honeybees interacted and was able to show that the presence of native bees actually [00:04:00] enhanced honeybee pollination of certain crops that where they did their study was in sunflowers. And I'm working in some flowers too, and one of the things we do, we do collect honey bees and our studies and are able to see how much they're utilizing hedgerows and whether or not they're actually hedgerows linear strips of native plants. These restorations that were moving entire cultural landscapes. If they're actually providing additional resources that are important to honeybees. And [00:04:30] by looking at their movement, we can see if the honeybees are going into the hedgerow and then into the crop or different distances to try and understand a bit about their biology as well. [inaudible] Speaker 4: some of these landscapes only have five, five or less percent of their natural habitat still maintained. So we've got places where restoration or nightmare would be necessary in order to bring back native communities and some of our other sites sort of as a comparison, we have more complex landscapes like [00:05:00] a in the k value where, um, some of these farmers are just surrounded by natural habitat. And we're also trying to get a sense of what landscape features are important for native bees for honeybees and sort of what does that mean in terms of pollination services that farmers receive from the fields. Speaker 3: Are there other pollinators besides visa, you're, you're studying as well. Speaker 4: Many of the people in the lab, um, have more expertise with these. But definitely, uh, in a lot of these [00:05:30] surveys they're looking at, you know, butterflies surf with flies, Wasp. So organisms that aren't primarily pollinators, maybe they serve other ecological functions, like some people are understanding pest predators. And how can these natural habitats not only support pollinators, but also support the organisms which control pests. Speaker 3: Hillary, tell me about when you wanted to become a scientist. Speaker 5: When I wanted to become a scientist, Speaker 1: or when did you [00:06:00] first start to think about it and say, this is interesting and I could see myself going this direction? I guess Speaker 5: when, what really sealed it for me? I went to the University of California at Santa Cruz, and within the first few weeks I found this garden called the Alan Chadwick Garden, which is very magical and has been there since the 60s. Um, and I started interning and then working there. And so that's what got me really interested in agriculture and native plant propagation and just in botany in [00:06:30] general. So after graduating from college, I decided to work in native plant nurseries and ecological restoration cause that seemed to be a place where you could kind of garden with nature. And in doing that, discovered that a lot of plants when I would go to collect their seeds and propagate them, there didn't seem to be a lot of seeds. And when we were doing these restoration projects, we weren't considering the pollinators at all. So after kind of digging more deeply, finding that there is this major disconnect in [00:07:00] that I found I really wanted to go study this for some reason. Um, and the university just the whole academic setting was fascinating. Speaker 4: Inshallah. Any hip hop for you. Right. So, um, my experience also started when I was an Undergrad. I was working on a project related to plant populations and understanding how weather and soil attributes, etc. Effectively as, [00:07:30] and then separately also working on blossoms. And so, uh, I was really interested in both of these systems and then started thinking about the really important connection between insects or animals that provide these pollination services, um, and the plants that require them in order to reproduce. And I just thought it was a really magical interaction that this, this, this, this interconnectedness between plant communities and pollinators. It's really fascinating. And [00:08:00] in order to have a really holistic understanding of plants or pollinators, you really have to understand both. But especially also like Hillary said, because of pollination is so important for our agricultural system, nuts and berries and all that, you know, all the wonderful things that we appreciate it on our kitchen table. I thought what better place to study pollination in an agricultural system? Speaker 6: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:08:30] a lot of clean water focus and interest in the agricultural realm is in creating spaces between rivers and farm lands, Speaker 3: which would be natural areas for your pollinators to live in. [00:09:00] Is their activity in trying to blend the research Speaker 4: [inaudible] that's one thing that many biologists complain about is that there are many of these projects taking place, but we need to work on communicating and making sure that multiple projects can potentially meet multiple needs. And so we do have members in our lab that are working in or plan on working in that right now are being conserved for the [00:09:30] Berman out. We'll actually Abram, UC Davis. So these are conservation areas that people have, have managed in order to promote the bird but potentially could also provide support for pollinators. So definitely what we're trying to look at restoration in many different of many different uh, ecological systems. So whether that's water systems or you know, mammalian systems or working at conserving birds and thinking about how we can do Lilly also conserve native [00:10:00] pollinators are pest creditors.Speaker 5: I would say that the term for this, it's often uses multi-functionality and it seems in a lot of ways in agricultural areas. Europe is very much with the vanguard kind of preserving their agricultural areas for biodiversity, for cultural heritage of the size as well as nutrients. Like lame, preventing, you know, water from entering waterways. And that's one of the things we need to talk to farmers about. The benefits of a hedgerow for example, you can say it has the advantage of being a wind break [00:10:30] and preventing, um, soil from moving across. And so there's all of these different benefits that it has, but there's also some, you know, this services, if we're talking about ecosystem services that has roads could potentially create, and so trying to show the entire spectrum of what they can and cannot do. And often a single lab doesn't look at every aspect, but when you try and present it to the public or even write it up in a p in a journal, you want to try and pull [00:11:00] from all of those bodies of knowledge on, on it to create a holistic picture. Speaker 3: So it's, it's somewhat difficult and problematic to try to add your level, bring all of this information together Speaker 4: in the sciences or you're talking just strictly about research. It is often necessary to kind of focus because there's just so much that, so many factors that play a role in understanding the communities or understanding water filtration systems or hydrology. [00:11:30] I think you're right. You know, we definitely need collaboration across institutes, but I think even within research people are trying to make connections between labs that work on range land, plant conservation and lots of work on these are our pollinator conservation. So there's those kind of within um, institute cross collaboration that's necessary and across as well with these. Who would be Sangiovese and some of these funding agencies? Speaker 5: No, it does seem like [00:12:00] at least here at Berkeley, there's this group that's arisen called the diversified farming round table round table and the diversified farming round table. And basically they're, they bridge a lot of these gaps. Do they bring a professor like Claire Who's really interested in conservation biology with somebody who's much more in touch with agro ecology like Miguel LTE, Arie and a lot of their Grad students and create this forum to talk about a lot of different issues and from [00:12:30] that can come review papers where we look at some factors say pesticide use in Agora ecosystems and how that would affect all of these different organisms, not just the one that we're focused on. And it also creates opportunities to build those research associations. Speaker 3: [inaudible] you mentioned applying for grants and so ongoing. Do you have things you're looking to a present? Speaker 4: Yeah, sure. I mean I think that's the [00:13:00] challenging and exciting thing about research is every question that you start to answer leads to more questions and, and so you know, with my work, so I focus on the native bumblebees. I'm looking at how these agricultural landscapes or whether they can actually support native bees or not and how these bumblebees are moving across agricultural landscapes. When I first began this work, the question was just, well, you know how many bees does a certain landscape support? And the more you dig into it and you realize [00:13:30] that, well not only is that important, but if you want these populations to be healthy and to persist in the landscape, they have to be able to reproduce and move and colonize new areas, etc. So now understanding their dispersal processes becomes the next big challenge. Okay, we know how many they are. We know we'd have 50 colonies in a particular landscape, but are they integrating I, they, um, are they moving across the landscape? Are they able to reproduce successfully? [00:14:00] So those are some of the next steps. And understanding how the landscape affects these ecological processes or these reproductive processes is very important if we want to conserve these native bees. Speaker 3: Did you, uh, see recently the, the information about the, or the breakthrough, I guess you could call it in the colony collapse research, that was kind of impressive. Did that surprise you that the, those two organizations got together to work on at the U s army, and [00:14:30] I guess it was the University of Montana. Speaker 5: The military is actually using honeybees for a lot of different purposes. There's a professor in the geography department, j Co sac, who's really looking at using them for looking at unexploded ordinances and how they can put honey bee colonies all over the world and their honey to see if there's radioactive material to see if there's, you know, nuclear testing going on. So for me, I was actually shocked when he had [00:15:00] spoken that there wasn't more looking at colony collapse disorder because if they're thinking about, you know, food security or threats, I would think, well this is a major threat to our, you know, national security. And so when I read that they'd been working out, I was like, oh, I'm so glad. Right. I mean, I think Speaker 4: it comes back to this question of if you have multiple agencies working on, whether it's persistence of 10 populations or ecosystem services or conservation of our natural [00:15:30] resources, having multiple agencies working on the same problems but not working together can be a big barrier. And so it would be great if there was more of these cross collaborations and yeah, the military apparently has been interested in a lot of social insects for a number of reasons. So there are entomologists that work very closely with the military, you know, to understand how insects communicate with each other and navigate unknown landscapes. And so [00:16:00] there's a lot of potential for core collaborative work just about stepping out of your comfort zone. Maybe, you know, talking to people in other agencies, Speaker 5: there are more and more grants offered through the Department of Defense and Department of Energy that I'm ecologists are becoming really interested in their offering them as fellowships to graduate students that I know a number of people in SPM have applied. And it's true, like in some ways you wonder kind of how this research will be [00:16:30] used and the knowledge. But at the same time it's creating this large pool of money to study all of these incredibly valuable things. And I think with this increasing interest in food security in all of these global crisis taking place right now, and there's really just such a great opportunity for collaboration across people who study food systems or study biological systems and government agencies who are really interested in conserving [00:17:00] and then making sure that people have access to good food and are not Melanie [inaudible] are not starving. So that's a really important overlap that we should be capitalizing. Speaker 6: [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum KALX Berkeley [inaudible] Speaker 3: [00:17:30] is there an international element to the research that you read? Are there good sources out there that you did you go to or Speaker 5: yeah, they, I think just the nature of the world right now is so global as therapy people, you know, say in Germany there's m k has sharky like in his lab looks at a lot of the same systems and so we kind of try and compare like our systems to [00:18:00] their systems. And that's not just in Germany but in [inaudible] Speaker 4: Zealand and all over. So every little bit that you learn from one place, you want to see if that's happening in your system. To be able to draw conclusions and just the nature of journals now and the quality of science. And there's a lot of these, I mean there should be more, but there was, for example, the national center for ecological analysis and synthesis as quad as NZ is. It was this federally funded institution [00:18:30] where basically they funded people to come from all over the world who were studying similar problems but just didn't have the chance to synthesize it information come up with a general model or general understanding of these processes. So in many of these systems you find that the rules are the same regardless of your, your bioregion or maybe the rules are totally subverted, but it's really essential to understand ecological systems or ecological and [00:19:00] human interactions at this global scale. So we definitely need more institutes like NCS or like these international synthesis groups. But it's happening a lot. And I think with, um, especially with connections like the Internet and international conferences, etc, you can really bridge across nations and get a better understanding of what's happening on a global scale Speaker 5: in a sense to challenge your assumptions. Yeah. Yeah. By seeing [00:19:30] other people's work. Absolutely. But also I think there are some efforts to try and frame your research within some of these larger international contexts. There's been the millennium ecosystem assessment, which was done by the UN or Speaker 4: red. So that was, yeah, it was done by the UN and I think there were a lot of people at Columbia also that are also working on that. But yeah, it was this international project where they had separate villages as millennium ecosystem villages [00:20:00] where they were monitoring ecosystem services, impacts ecological and the relationships between ecological systems and humans and in these different villages. And trying to come up with what the general governing principles are for how humans and ecological systems interact and sort of what ecosystem services humans can obtain from their ecological surrounding college or the system. So things like water infiltration and pollination service and um, [00:20:30] erosion control, etc. In order to come up with a general framework like this is these are the essential components of a sustainable society. Speaker 5: And I think just in terms of when you do your research, you want it to touch upon, you know, these touchstone theories in to be able to examine those or connect to these bigger global issues that people are constantly examining and considering is important to policymakers to just people's basic livelihoods on a day to day basis. [00:21:00] So knowing that even though you have your local system that you're looking at, it has wider implications that you want to be able to tie it into. So it doesn't just exist in a bubble. Speaker 3: Is your relationship to science changed as you've gone from high school to college to postgraduate work? Speaker 4: Well, I think, you know, definitely as you spend more time working on science and writing papers, you get [00:21:30] a better understanding of how much work it takes to come up with a particular understanding of a system. And you, you start to realize that a lot of times when a certain theory or a certain principle finally gets public understanding of public public acknowledgment, it's because hundreds of scientists have worked on it and have really put all their efforts together. It really just takes that last a hundred and first [00:22:00] study to really have a strong feeling. This is the pattern that we see. Um, so I think one of the things that you learn or you gather as a scientist is that it's really a multi year multi person, you know, Multi University or multi research institute effort to understand the processes and that it requires a lot of collaboration. Speaker 4: And I think the other thing is that you get a better understanding of uncertainty because in science there's always uncertainty. It's [00:22:30] never black and white. And so if you're looking for a true false answer to your question, you're just not going to get it because that's just not how nature works. There's always a gradient to things and there's always exceptions to the rule. And I think as a scientist you have to understand that there's always going to be a little bit of uncertainty, but you have to be okay with that. And you have to say that, well, there's a lot of power and there's a lot of value in saying that we are very sure about something. [00:23:00] You don't have to be 100% in order to take a certain management action or take a certain conservation or restoration action. Speaker 3: How about for you Hillary? What's, what's changed in your, your view of it? Speaker 5: I think a lot of people, like he said, they can, you see science is kind of this monolith that has the scientific process and it creates these results and that's what it is. But really it's this very iterative process that [00:23:30] is constantly reevaluating hypotheses. And in a lot of ways what you choose to focus on is based on what other people have seen. But it's also, I'm noticing a product of the social, political, economic Speaker 4: paradigms of whatever time you're in that helps you decide on what to study, what questions to ask, what features did incorporate. So not that it's subjective because they're, you know, these standards that you can kind of incorporate to try and find out. But that [00:24:00] I do think it's very much driven by probably a lot more processes than we kind of give it credit for it and that it's not as sometimes when I talked to other people who are not scientists, they see it as very divorced from the rest of our social ecosystem. And I think it's very much embedded in it. And I think it comes back to her whenever our first discussion topic. So where do we get our funding to do the science? And so when we are applying to these different agencies, [00:24:30] we really have to think about, well what is it that they're interested in? Are we, are we meeting their target objectives? And those agencies write up those objectives based on the public and based on what you know, the public thinks is important.Speaker 2: Woo. Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 1: thanks to Shalani Shai and Hillary Sar Danios for joining us today. Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:25:00] irregular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks in San Francisco. Tomorrow. There is a big splashy free Earth Day event being put on by a group named sustainable living road show. It is from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM they bill it as a carnival was [00:25:30] simultaneous events, a mixture of music, workshops, exhibits and speakers. The event is being held at the civic center and it is free. The website is Earth Day s f.com the art technology and culture colloquium presents a lecture titled Pure Engineering, decoupling technical innovation from utility and consumerism. The Speaker is Raphaelo deondrea professor of dynamic systems and control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [00:26:00] in Zurich. This event will take place at [inaudible] Hall on the UC Berkeley campus in the Beneteau Auditorium. April 25th, 2011 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale Is April 29th and 30th Friday the 29th is for members only and will run from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM the public sale is April 30th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM the garden is located at 200 centennial [00:26:30] drive that is in Strawberry Canyon, east of Memorial Stadium. Speaker 1: Steven squires and astronomer at Cornell University will present the Hitchcock lectures over two days. In May, the first lecture will be held at International House on the UC Berkeley campus in the Chevron Auditorium. May 2nd, 2011 at 2:00 PM Steven Squire's, his first lecture there. We'll describe his odyssey with NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. The second lecture [00:27:00] is the following day, May 3rd at the same location, international house, and the same time 2:00 PM the second lecture, we'll discuss the future of solar system exploration to news stories of interest. The Messenger spacecraft successfully entered the orbit of the planet Mercury March 17th, 2011 this is the first spacecraft to orbit mercury. It has taken six and a half years for messenger to reach mercury. It is now sending back images of [00:27:30] mercury than you can view on numerous websites. The home site for Messenger is Messenger Dot j h u a p l.edu. Those initials stand for Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. The Messenger mission is designed to answer six broad scientific questions. Speaker 1: Why is mercury so dense? What is the geologic history of mercury? What is the nature of Mercury's magnetic field? [00:28:00] What is the structure of Mercury's core? What are the unusual materials that Mercury's poles? What volatiles or vapors make up the thin outer layer of the atmosphere? Messenger will gather data to answer these questions over the next year. Then the spacecraft will eventually fall out of orbit several years later and crash on mercury. Surface Messenger is part of NASA's discovery program. The agencies low cost, scientifically focused planetary missions. [00:28:30] The New York Times blog, the sixth floor on March 31st, 2011 speculated as to who designed the radiation symbol that is now ubiquitous. The Times attributed the design to Nell's garden and the health chemistry group at UC Berkeley in 1946 on April 1st in a reader comment to the blog, PJ Patterson of Berkeley offered up Cyril Orally, a mechanical engineer at the Lawrence radiation lab as the symbol designer or least version of the symbol hand painted on wood [00:29:00] is said to be on display at the Lawrence Berkeley lab. Does anyone in the radio audience have more information to further clarify the origin and evolution of the radiation symbol? If you do let us know, send an email to spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com Speaker 2: Musa character shows by the stone of David from his album, folk in acoustic, made available through creative Commons license 3.0 attributes. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We're happy to hear [00:29:30] from our listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot Calex and yahoo.com and join us in two weeks at the same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Shalene Jha Postdoctoral Fellow and Hillary Sardinas College of Natural Resources grad student at UC Berkeley discuss their research in native bee populations, landscape genetics, foraging ecology, ecosystem services. They talk about research funding and collaboration.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Hmm Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology [00:00:30] show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with news events and interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Shalani Sha, UC president's, postdoctoral fellow and Hillary Sardinia graduate researcher. They're both members of the environmental science policy and Management Department of the College of natural resources at UC Berkeley. We talk about their research of native bumblebees and bee habitat [00:01:00] during the interview, colony collapse disorder as mentioned, but not explained. Colony collapse disorder is a still unsolved mystery that since 2006 has killed approximately 50% of kept European honeybees in North America. The disorder is characterized by the complete disappearance of all the bees in a colony. The kept European honeybees are essential pollinators of many commercial scale fruit and nut crops throughout the world. The suspected causes of colony collapse disorder include fungus, [00:01:30] viruses, pesticides, Mites, diet, antibiotics, and whether the breakthrough mentioned in the interview is not a solution, but possibly a forward step to a solution. This interview is prerecorded and edited. Speaker 3: My guests are Shalani jaw and Hillary seediness. They're both at the college of natural resources. And why don't you, shall any describe the research that you're currently doing together? Speaker 4: [00:02:00] Sure. So Maria and I are both in Claire Cremins lab and this particular lab group actually has very diverse interests, mostly related to conservation, biology and ecological interactions between people and animals. And our work is related to pollinators. So how do you conserve pollinators in agricultural habitats? That's sort of one of our research closed side and we worked and some of the farming communities [00:02:30] in northern California around Yolo, Solano in Sacramento County, looking at native bees and how agricultural landscapes and regions impact the way bees move and nest disperse across agriculture tools. Speaker 3: Is there also an element of working with, or at least understanding the, the beekeeping community in those, those very same areas or is there an overlap and interface that happens? Yeah, so a lot Speaker 4: [00:03:00] of the farms that we work in manage TVs as well that managed European honeybee colonies provide pollination services in addition to native bees. So, um, the other portion of our outreach has to do with working with land managers and farmers. We're interested in promoting native bee diversity. These are farmers that often have some incentive from the USDA or have some resources that they can use for restoration. So we kind of [00:03:30] provide some of the research based tools to inform restoration does this, if that's sort of where we hope our work is moving towards. No one in our lab right now is currently working on honeybees, but we do work with a number of labs at Davis that have at UC Davis [inaudible]. Speaker 5: However, previous work that Claire has done with a former student of her, Sarah Greenleaf did look at how native bees and honeybees interacted and was able to show that the presence of native bees actually [00:04:00] enhanced honeybee pollination of certain crops that where they did their study was in sunflowers. And I'm working in some flowers too, and one of the things we do, we do collect honey bees and our studies and are able to see how much they're utilizing hedgerows and whether or not they're actually hedgerows linear strips of native plants. These restorations that were moving entire cultural landscapes. If they're actually providing additional resources that are important to honeybees. And [00:04:30] by looking at their movement, we can see if the honeybees are going into the hedgerow and then into the crop or different distances to try and understand a bit about their biology as well. [inaudible] Speaker 4: some of these landscapes only have five, five or less percent of their natural habitat still maintained. So we've got places where restoration or nightmare would be necessary in order to bring back native communities and some of our other sites sort of as a comparison, we have more complex landscapes like [00:05:00] a in the k value where, um, some of these farmers are just surrounded by natural habitat. And we're also trying to get a sense of what landscape features are important for native bees for honeybees and sort of what does that mean in terms of pollination services that farmers receive from the fields. Speaker 3: Are there other pollinators besides visa, you're, you're studying as well. Speaker 4: Many of the people in the lab, um, have more expertise with these. But definitely, uh, in a lot of these [00:05:30] surveys they're looking at, you know, butterflies surf with flies, Wasp. So organisms that aren't primarily pollinators, maybe they serve other ecological functions, like some people are understanding pest predators. And how can these natural habitats not only support pollinators, but also support the organisms which control pests. Speaker 3: Hillary, tell me about when you wanted to become a scientist. Speaker 5: When I wanted to become a scientist, Speaker 1: or when did you [00:06:00] first start to think about it and say, this is interesting and I could see myself going this direction? I guess Speaker 5: when, what really sealed it for me? I went to the University of California at Santa Cruz, and within the first few weeks I found this garden called the Alan Chadwick Garden, which is very magical and has been there since the 60s. Um, and I started interning and then working there. And so that's what got me really interested in agriculture and native plant propagation and just in botany in [00:06:30] general. So after graduating from college, I decided to work in native plant nurseries and ecological restoration cause that seemed to be a place where you could kind of garden with nature. And in doing that, discovered that a lot of plants when I would go to collect their seeds and propagate them, there didn't seem to be a lot of seeds. And when we were doing these restoration projects, we weren't considering the pollinators at all. So after kind of digging more deeply, finding that there is this major disconnect in [00:07:00] that I found I really wanted to go study this for some reason. Um, and the university just the whole academic setting was fascinating. Speaker 4: Inshallah. Any hip hop for you. Right. So, um, my experience also started when I was an Undergrad. I was working on a project related to plant populations and understanding how weather and soil attributes, etc. Effectively as, [00:07:30] and then separately also working on blossoms. And so, uh, I was really interested in both of these systems and then started thinking about the really important connection between insects or animals that provide these pollination services, um, and the plants that require them in order to reproduce. And I just thought it was a really magical interaction that this, this, this, this interconnectedness between plant communities and pollinators. It's really fascinating. And [00:08:00] in order to have a really holistic understanding of plants or pollinators, you really have to understand both. But especially also like Hillary said, because of pollination is so important for our agricultural system, nuts and berries and all that, you know, all the wonderful things that we appreciate it on our kitchen table. I thought what better place to study pollination in an agricultural system? Speaker 6: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:08:30] a lot of clean water focus and interest in the agricultural realm is in creating spaces between rivers and farm lands, Speaker 3: which would be natural areas for your pollinators to live in. [00:09:00] Is their activity in trying to blend the research Speaker 4: [inaudible] that's one thing that many biologists complain about is that there are many of these projects taking place, but we need to work on communicating and making sure that multiple projects can potentially meet multiple needs. And so we do have members in our lab that are working in or plan on working in that right now are being conserved for the [00:09:30] Berman out. We'll actually Abram, UC Davis. So these are conservation areas that people have, have managed in order to promote the bird but potentially could also provide support for pollinators. So definitely what we're trying to look at restoration in many different of many different uh, ecological systems. So whether that's water systems or you know, mammalian systems or working at conserving birds and thinking about how we can do Lilly also conserve native [00:10:00] pollinators are pest creditors.Speaker 5: I would say that the term for this, it's often uses multi-functionality and it seems in a lot of ways in agricultural areas. Europe is very much with the vanguard kind of preserving their agricultural areas for biodiversity, for cultural heritage of the size as well as nutrients. Like lame, preventing, you know, water from entering waterways. And that's one of the things we need to talk to farmers about. The benefits of a hedgerow for example, you can say it has the advantage of being a wind break [00:10:30] and preventing, um, soil from moving across. And so there's all of these different benefits that it has, but there's also some, you know, this services, if we're talking about ecosystem services that has roads could potentially create, and so trying to show the entire spectrum of what they can and cannot do. And often a single lab doesn't look at every aspect, but when you try and present it to the public or even write it up in a p in a journal, you want to try and pull [00:11:00] from all of those bodies of knowledge on, on it to create a holistic picture. Speaker 3: So it's, it's somewhat difficult and problematic to try to add your level, bring all of this information together Speaker 4: in the sciences or you're talking just strictly about research. It is often necessary to kind of focus because there's just so much that, so many factors that play a role in understanding the communities or understanding water filtration systems or hydrology. [00:11:30] I think you're right. You know, we definitely need collaboration across institutes, but I think even within research people are trying to make connections between labs that work on range land, plant conservation and lots of work on these are our pollinator conservation. So there's those kind of within um, institute cross collaboration that's necessary and across as well with these. Who would be Sangiovese and some of these funding agencies? Speaker 5: No, it does seem like [00:12:00] at least here at Berkeley, there's this group that's arisen called the diversified farming round table round table and the diversified farming round table. And basically they're, they bridge a lot of these gaps. Do they bring a professor like Claire Who's really interested in conservation biology with somebody who's much more in touch with agro ecology like Miguel LTE, Arie and a lot of their Grad students and create this forum to talk about a lot of different issues and from [00:12:30] that can come review papers where we look at some factors say pesticide use in Agora ecosystems and how that would affect all of these different organisms, not just the one that we're focused on. And it also creates opportunities to build those research associations. Speaker 3: [inaudible] you mentioned applying for grants and so ongoing. Do you have things you're looking to a present? Speaker 4: Yeah, sure. I mean I think that's the [00:13:00] challenging and exciting thing about research is every question that you start to answer leads to more questions and, and so you know, with my work, so I focus on the native bumblebees. I'm looking at how these agricultural landscapes or whether they can actually support native bees or not and how these bumblebees are moving across agricultural landscapes. When I first began this work, the question was just, well, you know how many bees does a certain landscape support? And the more you dig into it and you realize [00:13:30] that, well not only is that important, but if you want these populations to be healthy and to persist in the landscape, they have to be able to reproduce and move and colonize new areas, etc. So now understanding their dispersal processes becomes the next big challenge. Okay, we know how many they are. We know we'd have 50 colonies in a particular landscape, but are they integrating I, they, um, are they moving across the landscape? Are they able to reproduce successfully? [00:14:00] So those are some of the next steps. And understanding how the landscape affects these ecological processes or these reproductive processes is very important if we want to conserve these native bees. Speaker 3: Did you, uh, see recently the, the information about the, or the breakthrough, I guess you could call it in the colony collapse research, that was kind of impressive. Did that surprise you that the, those two organizations got together to work on at the U s army, and [00:14:30] I guess it was the University of Montana. Speaker 5: The military is actually using honeybees for a lot of different purposes. There's a professor in the geography department, j Co sac, who's really looking at using them for looking at unexploded ordinances and how they can put honey bee colonies all over the world and their honey to see if there's radioactive material to see if there's, you know, nuclear testing going on. So for me, I was actually shocked when he had [00:15:00] spoken that there wasn't more looking at colony collapse disorder because if they're thinking about, you know, food security or threats, I would think, well this is a major threat to our, you know, national security. And so when I read that they'd been working out, I was like, oh, I'm so glad. Right. I mean, I think Speaker 4: it comes back to this question of if you have multiple agencies working on, whether it's persistence of 10 populations or ecosystem services or conservation of our natural [00:15:30] resources, having multiple agencies working on the same problems but not working together can be a big barrier. And so it would be great if there was more of these cross collaborations and yeah, the military apparently has been interested in a lot of social insects for a number of reasons. So there are entomologists that work very closely with the military, you know, to understand how insects communicate with each other and navigate unknown landscapes. And so [00:16:00] there's a lot of potential for core collaborative work just about stepping out of your comfort zone. Maybe, you know, talking to people in other agencies, Speaker 5: there are more and more grants offered through the Department of Defense and Department of Energy that I'm ecologists are becoming really interested in their offering them as fellowships to graduate students that I know a number of people in SPM have applied. And it's true, like in some ways you wonder kind of how this research will be [00:16:30] used and the knowledge. But at the same time it's creating this large pool of money to study all of these incredibly valuable things. And I think with this increasing interest in food security in all of these global crisis taking place right now, and there's really just such a great opportunity for collaboration across people who study food systems or study biological systems and government agencies who are really interested in conserving [00:17:00] and then making sure that people have access to good food and are not Melanie [inaudible] are not starving. So that's a really important overlap that we should be capitalizing. Speaker 6: [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum KALX Berkeley [inaudible] Speaker 3: [00:17:30] is there an international element to the research that you read? Are there good sources out there that you did you go to or Speaker 5: yeah, they, I think just the nature of the world right now is so global as therapy people, you know, say in Germany there's m k has sharky like in his lab looks at a lot of the same systems and so we kind of try and compare like our systems to [00:18:00] their systems. And that's not just in Germany but in [inaudible] Speaker 4: Zealand and all over. So every little bit that you learn from one place, you want to see if that's happening in your system. To be able to draw conclusions and just the nature of journals now and the quality of science. And there's a lot of these, I mean there should be more, but there was, for example, the national center for ecological analysis and synthesis as quad as NZ is. It was this federally funded institution [00:18:30] where basically they funded people to come from all over the world who were studying similar problems but just didn't have the chance to synthesize it information come up with a general model or general understanding of these processes. So in many of these systems you find that the rules are the same regardless of your, your bioregion or maybe the rules are totally subverted, but it's really essential to understand ecological systems or ecological and [00:19:00] human interactions at this global scale. So we definitely need more institutes like NCS or like these international synthesis groups. But it's happening a lot. And I think with, um, especially with connections like the Internet and international conferences, etc, you can really bridge across nations and get a better understanding of what's happening on a global scale Speaker 5: in a sense to challenge your assumptions. Yeah. Yeah. By seeing [00:19:30] other people's work. Absolutely. But also I think there are some efforts to try and frame your research within some of these larger international contexts. There's been the millennium ecosystem assessment, which was done by the UN or Speaker 4: red. So that was, yeah, it was done by the UN and I think there were a lot of people at Columbia also that are also working on that. But yeah, it was this international project where they had separate villages as millennium ecosystem villages [00:20:00] where they were monitoring ecosystem services, impacts ecological and the relationships between ecological systems and humans and in these different villages. And trying to come up with what the general governing principles are for how humans and ecological systems interact and sort of what ecosystem services humans can obtain from their ecological surrounding college or the system. So things like water infiltration and pollination service and um, [00:20:30] erosion control, etc. In order to come up with a general framework like this is these are the essential components of a sustainable society. Speaker 5: And I think just in terms of when you do your research, you want it to touch upon, you know, these touchstone theories in to be able to examine those or connect to these bigger global issues that people are constantly examining and considering is important to policymakers to just people's basic livelihoods on a day to day basis. [00:21:00] So knowing that even though you have your local system that you're looking at, it has wider implications that you want to be able to tie it into. So it doesn't just exist in a bubble. Speaker 3: Is your relationship to science changed as you've gone from high school to college to postgraduate work? Speaker 4: Well, I think, you know, definitely as you spend more time working on science and writing papers, you get [00:21:30] a better understanding of how much work it takes to come up with a particular understanding of a system. And you, you start to realize that a lot of times when a certain theory or a certain principle finally gets public understanding of public public acknowledgment, it's because hundreds of scientists have worked on it and have really put all their efforts together. It really just takes that last a hundred and first [00:22:00] study to really have a strong feeling. This is the pattern that we see. Um, so I think one of the things that you learn or you gather as a scientist is that it's really a multi year multi person, you know, Multi University or multi research institute effort to understand the processes and that it requires a lot of collaboration. Speaker 4: And I think the other thing is that you get a better understanding of uncertainty because in science there's always uncertainty. It's [00:22:30] never black and white. And so if you're looking for a true false answer to your question, you're just not going to get it because that's just not how nature works. There's always a gradient to things and there's always exceptions to the rule. And I think as a scientist you have to understand that there's always going to be a little bit of uncertainty, but you have to be okay with that. And you have to say that, well, there's a lot of power and there's a lot of value in saying that we are very sure about something. [00:23:00] You don't have to be 100% in order to take a certain management action or take a certain conservation or restoration action. Speaker 3: How about for you Hillary? What's, what's changed in your, your view of it? Speaker 5: I think a lot of people, like he said, they can, you see science is kind of this monolith that has the scientific process and it creates these results and that's what it is. But really it's this very iterative process that [00:23:30] is constantly reevaluating hypotheses. And in a lot of ways what you choose to focus on is based on what other people have seen. But it's also, I'm noticing a product of the social, political, economic Speaker 4: paradigms of whatever time you're in that helps you decide on what to study, what questions to ask, what features did incorporate. So not that it's subjective because they're, you know, these standards that you can kind of incorporate to try and find out. But that [00:24:00] I do think it's very much driven by probably a lot more processes than we kind of give it credit for it and that it's not as sometimes when I talked to other people who are not scientists, they see it as very divorced from the rest of our social ecosystem. And I think it's very much embedded in it. And I think it comes back to her whenever our first discussion topic. So where do we get our funding to do the science? And so when we are applying to these different agencies, [00:24:30] we really have to think about, well what is it that they're interested in? Are we, are we meeting their target objectives? And those agencies write up those objectives based on the public and based on what you know, the public thinks is important.Speaker 2: Woo. Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 1: thanks to Shalani Shai and Hillary Sar Danios for joining us today. Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:25:00] irregular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks in San Francisco. Tomorrow. There is a big splashy free Earth Day event being put on by a group named sustainable living road show. It is from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM they bill it as a carnival was [00:25:30] simultaneous events, a mixture of music, workshops, exhibits and speakers. The event is being held at the civic center and it is free. The website is Earth Day s f.com the art technology and culture colloquium presents a lecture titled Pure Engineering, decoupling technical innovation from utility and consumerism. The Speaker is Raphaelo deondrea professor of dynamic systems and control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [00:26:00] in Zurich. This event will take place at [inaudible] Hall on the UC Berkeley campus in the Beneteau Auditorium. April 25th, 2011 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale Is April 29th and 30th Friday the 29th is for members only and will run from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM the public sale is April 30th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM the garden is located at 200 centennial [00:26:30] drive that is in Strawberry Canyon, east of Memorial Stadium. Speaker 1: Steven squires and astronomer at Cornell University will present the Hitchcock lectures over two days. In May, the first lecture will be held at International House on the UC Berkeley campus in the Chevron Auditorium. May 2nd, 2011 at 2:00 PM Steven Squire's, his first lecture there. We'll describe his odyssey with NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. The second lecture [00:27:00] is the following day, May 3rd at the same location, international house, and the same time 2:00 PM the second lecture, we'll discuss the future of solar system exploration to news stories of interest. The Messenger spacecraft successfully entered the orbit of the planet Mercury March 17th, 2011 this is the first spacecraft to orbit mercury. It has taken six and a half years for messenger to reach mercury. It is now sending back images of [00:27:30] mercury than you can view on numerous websites. The home site for Messenger is Messenger Dot j h u a p l.edu. Those initials stand for Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. The Messenger mission is designed to answer six broad scientific questions. Speaker 1: Why is mercury so dense? What is the geologic history of mercury? What is the nature of Mercury's magnetic field? [00:28:00] What is the structure of Mercury's core? What are the unusual materials that Mercury's poles? What volatiles or vapors make up the thin outer layer of the atmosphere? Messenger will gather data to answer these questions over the next year. Then the spacecraft will eventually fall out of orbit several years later and crash on mercury. Surface Messenger is part of NASA's discovery program. The agencies low cost, scientifically focused planetary missions. [00:28:30] The New York Times blog, the sixth floor on March 31st, 2011 speculated as to who designed the radiation symbol that is now ubiquitous. The Times attributed the design to Nell's garden and the health chemistry group at UC Berkeley in 1946 on April 1st in a reader comment to the blog, PJ Patterson of Berkeley offered up Cyril Orally, a mechanical engineer at the Lawrence radiation lab as the symbol designer or least version of the symbol hand painted on wood [00:29:00] is said to be on display at the Lawrence Berkeley lab. Does anyone in the radio audience have more information to further clarify the origin and evolution of the radiation symbol? If you do let us know, send an email to spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com Speaker 2: Musa character shows by the stone of David from his album, folk in acoustic, made available through creative Commons license 3.0 attributes. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We're happy to hear [00:29:30] from our listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot Calex and yahoo.com and join us in two weeks at the same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientists Jeff Long of the Materials Sciences and Nancy Brown of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division discuss their efforts to fight climate change by capturing carbon from the flue gas of power plants, as well as directly from the air. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 19662]

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientists Jeff Long of the Materials Sciences and Nancy Brown of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division discuss their efforts to fight climate change by capturing carbon from the flue gas of power plants, as well as directly from the air. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 19662]

Juan Meza of the Computational Research Division reveals how scientists use computer visualizations to accelerate climate research and discuss the development of next-generation clean energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar cells. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 19665]

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientists Jeff Long of the Materials Sciences and Nancy Brown of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division discuss their efforts to fight climate change by capturing carbon from the flue gas of power plants, as well as directly from the air. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 19662]

Juan Meza of the Computational Research Division reveals how scientists use computer visualizations to accelerate climate research and discuss the development of next-generation clean energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar cells. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 19665]

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientists Jeff Long of the Materials Sciences and Nancy Brown of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division discuss their efforts to fight climate change by capturing carbon from the flue gas of power plants, as well as directly from the air. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 19662]

Berkeley Lab researchers Delia Milliron of the Materials Sciences Division and Stephen Selkowitz of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division talk about their work on energy-saving smart windows. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 19664]