Podcast appearances and mentions of Lawrence Hall

This conversation explores the significance of brain synchrony in education, emphasizing the importance of diverse teaching methods, social connections among students, and the role of teachers in facilitating engagement. The discussion highlights research findings that link student engagement to academic success and offers practical strategies for teachers to enhance learning environments. Follow on Twitter: @SuzanneDikker @mrs_frommert @YoukiTerada @jonHarper70bd @bamradionetwork Suzanne Dikker's work merges neuroscience, digital art, and education to bring human brain and behavior research out of the lab, into real-world, everyday contexts. As a Research Associate Professor affiliated with New York University and the University of Amsterdam and founding member of the art/science Harmonic Dissonance Collective, Suzanne leads various projects, including MindHive, a community science platform that supports student-teacher-scientist and community-scientist partnerships. Her projects are funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the European Research Council, among others. Youki Terada is the Research Editor at Edutopia, a division of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. He leads the research beat, covering a broad range of topics from the science of learning to effective classroom management and assessment strategies. Prior to Edutopia, Youki was an educational technology, STEM, and informal science learning researcher at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Hall of Science. Crystal Frommert, M.Ed, brings over two decades of diverse educational experience, spanning from elementary to post-secondary levels. She currently holds the positions of middle school math teacher and deputy head of secondary at Awty International School in Houston. Crystal is also a published author of the 2023 book When Calling Parents Isn't Your Calling: A Teacher's Guide to Communicating With Parents.

Kristy Graver, Food Editor at Pittsburgh Magazine joins Larry and Marty for her weekly segment. They discuss new food & rides at Kennywood, a new food hall in Lawrenceville, and this week in Pittsburgh History -  Pittsburgh is Named a Top 100 ‘Unexpected' World Destination. 

It's February and it's time for a new episode of Good, but not the best... a Dancing Gnome podcast. We start by talking about making it to 50 episodes, taking a Look Back and a Look Ahead, and then we discuss a few industry articles. Next, we are joined by Adam Harvey from the soon to be open Lawrence Hall. Adam tells us about the concept behind Lawrence Hall, the history of the building, some of the vendors we will see there, and much more! We close out the show with another round of Watch, Listen, Learn.Intro & Outro music by: Kabbalistic VillageBreak music by: Joseph McDade

A 2022 study from the University of Essex and the University of Reading found that tone shifts significantly impact classroom health and student behavior. In this session, we discuss how to cultivate a warm, confident, firm tone that can minimize student misbehavior and create a conducive climate for learning. Follow Twitter: @YoukiTerada @parrishlearning @AnnettePonnock @Jonharper70bd @bamradionetwork Youki Terada is the Research Editor at Edutopia, a division of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. He leads the research beat, covering a broad range of topics from the science of learning to effective classroom management and assessment strategies. Prior to Edutopia, Youki was an educational technology, STEM, and informal science learning researcher at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Hall of Science. Annette Ponnock, PhD is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Yale Center Emotional Intelligence. Dr. Ponnock's research focuses on teacher motivation and well-being, with an emphasis on urban schools. She received her PhD in Educational Psychology from Temple University and her MA in Psychology from the University of Santa Monica. Nina Parrish has 20 years of experience in the field of education, where she has worked as a special education teacher, education center director, speaker, and educational consultant. Nina is the co-founder and chief academic officer of Parrish Learning Zone in Virginia and the author of The Independent Learner: Metacognitive Exercises to Help K-12 Students Focus, Self-Regulate, and Persevere. Nina holds a Bachelor's Degree in psychology from the University of Mary Washington, a teaching certification in special education from North Carolina A &T, and a Master's Degree in education for school counseling from Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. James L. Floman is an Associate Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. He received his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia, where he studied the effects of mindfulness and compassion meditation on teacher emotion regulation and prosocial behavior with Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl. Dr. Floman has three core research streams: 1) The assessment of dynamic social-affective processes (i.e., developing and validating EI and well-being measurement tools); 2) EI, mindfulness, and well-being training (i.e., developing, optimizing, and scaling EI and well-being-enhancement interventions for real-world applications); and 3) Affective neuroscience (studying mental training-induced changes in ‘emotional brain' function and structure).

A 2022 study from the University of Essex and the University of Reading found that tone shifts significantly impact classroom health and student behavior. In this session, we discuss how to cultivate a warm, confident, firm tone that can minimize student misbehavior and create a conducive climate for learning. Follow Twitter: @YoukiTerada @parrishlearning @AnnettePonnock @Jonharper70bd @bamradionetwork Youki Terada is the Research Editor at Edutopia, a division of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. He leads the research beat, covering a broad range of topics from the science of learning to effective classroom management and assessment strategies. Prior to Edutopia, Youki was an educational technology, STEM, and informal science learning researcher at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Hall of Science. Annette Ponnock, PhD is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Yale Center Emotional Intelligence. Dr. Ponnock's research focuses on teacher motivation and well-being, with an emphasis on urban schools. She received her PhD in Educational Psychology from Temple University and her MA in Psychology from the University of Santa Monica. Nina Parrish has 20 years of experience in the field of education, where she has worked as a special education teacher, education center director, speaker, and educational consultant. Nina is the co-founder and chief academic officer of Parrish Learning Zone in Virginia and the author of The Independent Learner: Metacognitive Exercises to Help K-12 Students Focus, Self-Regulate, and Persevere. Nina holds a Bachelor's Degree in psychology from the University of Mary Washington, a teaching certification in special education from North Carolina A &T, and a Master's Degree in education for school counseling from Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. James L. Floman is an Associate Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. He received his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia, where he studied the effects of mindfulness and compassion meditation on teacher emotion regulation and prosocial behavior with Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl. Dr. Floman has three core research streams: 1) The assessment of dynamic social-affective processes (i.e., developing and validating EI and well-being measurement tools); 2) EI, mindfulness, and well-being training (i.e., developing, optimizing, and scaling EI and well-being-enhancement interventions for real-world applications); and 3) Affective neuroscience (studying mental training-induced changes in ‘emotional brain' function and structure).

This week we take a turn down a dark alley and into a dark romance novel, something that we have yet to venture into. Crimson Mourning is the prequel to The Games of the Underworld series that brings us into a dystopia full of powerful vampires, lustful humans, sex, and violence. In this world, the vampire councils make the rules, including the shunning of vampire-human marriages, but there are always those who will defy their orders to make this life their own. Cassie, a human turned vampire, wants more than what this new life has given to her. This story sets the pace for the many stories taking place in this shared universe. Join us in something new and exciting, and enter this world where even we don't know who we are supposed to love and who we're supposed to run from. ***We would love and appreciate it if you could Subscribe then Rate & Review us on iTunes! Follow us @ShhhDirtyBooks on FB, IG, Twitter as well as on our website at ShhhDirtyBooks.com. Thank you for joining us!*** Music by Jim Townsend

Rich Cook from PGH Magazine joins for his weekly segment. He talks about Lawrence Hall, the new Museum of Illusions coming to Pittsburgh, and this week in Pittsburgh history. 

Joel Rosenberg is part of the Special Projects team at Rewiring America. He is an educator and entrepreneur focused on helping solve the climate crisis for his elementary-age daughter, his amazing partner, and the future of everyone on the planet. He has worked on science and engineering education — especially how to teach about energy systems — at the Museum of Science, Boston; the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany; the Lawrence Hall of Science at U.C. Berkeley; Maker Media; and Otherlab. He is also the co-founder of 3D Fab Light, an industrial laser cutter company. Joel has a mechanical engineering degree from MIT, and a master's from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.    Website: rewiringamerica.org Twitter: @learngineer   TOOLS: 0:00 - Intro  1:02 - Portable inverter-driven heat pump: https://geni.us/q93npBK 10:45 - Portable induction cooktop: https://geni.us/PfMedBB 17:12 - Community solar: https://neighborhoodsun.solar/ 22:53 - Bookfinder: https://www.bookfinder.com/ 29:52 - Electrify Everything in Your Home: https://www.rewiringamerica.org/electrify-home-guide   For show notes and transcript visit: https://kk.org/cooltools/joel-rosenberg-rewiring-america/

Psychologist Emlen Metz discusses her research on Actively Open-minded Thinking and her current work at the Lawrence Hall of Science at U.C. Berkeley developing curricula on scientific-critical-thinking for high school and undergraduate classrooms and her work on a project called Public Editor, described as: “a massive effort to clean up the news.”

In this episode of the Hodge Pack, Hodge Josh and Misti discuss Aaron Judge betting on himself and winning, Colorado betting on Prime Time, and Misti is a speedster and can't talk her way out of a ticket. Plus Hodge and Misti look at week 13 of the NFL, and they were right and wrong about. Westbrook Head Football Coach Homer Matlock, talks about heading back to Jerry World to defend their state championship. Gary Grubbs from Lawrence Hall is our guest picker. 

Karen Cowe, CEO of Ten Strands, and Craig Strang, Associate Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science, share how the Covid 19 Outdoor Learning Initiative was created, and how they are pivoting from a Covid response to a climate response.   Resources:  Connect to the Institute for Humane Education Connect to the Covid 19 Outdoor Learning Initiative The Lawrence Hall of Science Ten Strands: Connecting Education, Environment, and Community Sustainable & Climate Ready Schools Admin Fellowship   Equity and Justice in Outdoor Learning:  Racial Equity in Outdoor Science and Environmental Education: Re-Establishing the Field with Intention Examining Equitable and Inclusive Work Environments in Environmental Education Building Towards an Inclusive Organizational Culture: Insights and Lessons Learned from YES Nature to Neighborhoods Intentional Hiring and Recruitment through the Lens of Equity and Inclusion        Article: Environmental Literacy & Classrooms That Can Save the World Curriculum: Solutionary Units of Study Curriculum: The Resource Center for Sustainable and Climate Resilient Schools The California Environmental Literacy Initiative   EdCuration's Certified EdTrustees Micro Professional Learning ExPLorations EdCuration's Blog: Learning in Action EdCuration's upcoming Online Events

Jacquey Barber, director emerita of The Learning Design Group at UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science , joins the podcast to discuss her research on the symbiotic relationship between literacy and science, as well as what educators should be looking for in high-quality, literacy-rich science curricula. She also goes into strategies for engaging students, including the do, talk, read, write model, then ends the episode by highlighting the many ways science supports reading.Show notes:UCLA CRESSTThe Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System—and How to Fix It by Natalie WexlerNo More Science Kits or Texts in Isolation by Jacqueline Barber and Gina Cervetti.Podcast Discussion GuideQuotes:“Literacy is a domain in search of content; science is a domain in need of communication.” —Jacquey Barber“Develop opportunities for students to learn to read, write, and talk like scientists do.”—Jacquey Barber

Hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains is a beautiful and iconic way to experience the area, as well as a unique way to connect with nature and find tranquility. Today, our guest will discuss some of his amazing hiking adventures and the social media impact he has had on so many individuals.Creating Memorable Hiking and Outdoor Adventures in the Great Smoky Mountains Our host, Joseph Franklyn McElroy, is joined by our special guest, Johnny Osborne, an acclaimed long-distance hiker, adventurer, rock climber, and mountain biker, also renowned for his social media skills. With well over a million followers on various forms of social media platforms, Johnny is a master at creating memorable online hiking experiences in the Great Smoky Mountains –and throughout the United States –while documenting his accomplishments as a hiker. Johnny is especially passionate about promoting, protecting, and perpetuating the legacy of the Great Smokies Mountain National Park. When not enjoying various outdoor pursuits, Osborne resides in Alcoa Tennessee, where he manages his social media platforms and works with clients such as Blackberry Farm and Blackberry Mountain Resort.Tune in for this fun conversation at TalkRadio.nyc or watch the Facebook Livestream by clicking here.Show NotesSegment 1Joseph starts off tonight's show with of course his sponsor which is his own, the Meadowlark Motel! He mentions several upcoming events that you can find at meadowlarkmotel.com. Joseph also reads a poem by Lawrence Hall called “New Hiking Shoes for the Trail Ahead.” He transitions into introducing his guest, Johnny Osborne, an acclaimed long-distance hiker, adventurer, rock climber, and mountain biker, also renowned for his social media skills, with well over a million followers on various forms of social media platforms. He lives in Tennessee and is 20 minutes away from the Smokies National Park. He became passionate about outdoor lifestyles due to his fond memories with his family like going to the Smokies and bonding. Osborne became serious about hiking after being invited by his sister numerous times to go hiking with her. He used to run rather than hike while in college but once he went hiking with his sister again, it “ignited a fire” that made him fall in love with it again. He talks with Joseph about some intriguing memories hiking.Segment 2Joseph mentions Johnny's social media channels and how he talks about the leave no trace principles of hiking in many of his videos. This topic is about cleaning our environment, educating, advocating, and more when it comes to recreating responsibly. Johnny also mentions a nonprofit organization, Save Our Smokies, who are having an event on the weekend of Earth Day to clean the entire Smokies National Park. He also talks about the positive impacts of being a part of the hiking community like being the voice of information to provide knowledge about being safe. Joseph talks with Johnny about his impressive social media skills and having a big following. He wants to grow and create more educational content for his youtube channel. Johnny talks about doing challenges and taking on the South Beyond 6,000 challenge which he read about in an article. This challenge encourages hikers to climb forty 6000 foot peaks in the Southern Appalachian Mountains.Segment 3Johnny speaks with Joseph about his experience hiking in the Black Mountain Crest Trail. He also did the Great Smoky Mountains National Park nine hundred mile hike which includes going through all of the trails in the area. Johnny also speaks about doing the Foothills Trail Hike in the Appalachian Mountains. He talks about a funny moment of how on his first day on this hike, a huge storm came along. When this happened, he found a spot to camp and the next morning he realized that he was about only 2 miles from where he wanted to be. Johnny has hiked in many states and countries. He reminisces about the beautiful atmosphere when he hiked in the Rocky Mountains. When it comes to his social media, he refers to himself as someone who is encouraging and not an influencer. He differentiates these two terms as someone who is selling something (influencer) and someone who is coaching (encouraging). He says that it's about supporting and motivating others when educating people about hiking. Johnny also gives some of his thoughts about how other people on social media can grow their platforms and build a community. He speaks about being consistent in delivering relatable content.Segment 4In the final segment, Johnny speaks about being involved with the Blackberry Farm and Mountain Resort in Tennessee. He has been with them for 7 years and is an information technology manager at Blackberry Mountain. He says that they are opening up a restaurant at the brewery they have in the location. Johnny speaks about his passion about the Great Smoky Mountains and advocating for being responsible while enjoying recreation and memorable experiences. Other things Johnny also enjoys besides hiking is to go mountain biking or even kayaking. He talks more with Joseph about places he enjoys visiting in Tennessee and the Smokies. His favorite rock climbing spot for example is Ijams in Knox County. You can reach out to Johnny on Instagram at johnny onthetrail, as well as Facebook and Youtube with the same username. Johnny also shares with us that he has merch and the proceeds will go to nonprofit organizations and park charities. Joseph thanks Johnny Osborne for being on the show and looks forward to hiking with him some time soon!

Want to electrify your life and not sure where to start? Then tune in to a special two-part series of Electrify This! to find out how you can cut pollution and save money by making the switch to clean, efficient electric alternatives. Host Sara Baldwin speaks with Joel Rosenberg, the author of the new e-book called Electrify Everything in Your Home: A Guide to Comfy, Healthy, Carbon-Free Living, and Panama Bartholomy of the Building Decarbonization Coalition about the steps homeowners and renters can take to transition to a clean, electrified life. We'll also discuss the big electrification wins of 2021 and the new The Switch is On campaign aimed at helping households and contractors plug in to the electrification movement. Guests:Joel Rosenberg is an educator and entrepreneur focused on helping solve the climate crisis and is the Author of a new e-book, just released, called Electrify Everything in Your Home (which is a Rewiring America publication). Joel has worked on science and engineering education at the Museum of Science, Boston; the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany; the Lawrence Hall of Science at U.C. Berkeley; Maker Media; and Otherlab. He is also the co-founder of 3D Fab Light, an industrial laser cutter company. Joel has a mechanical engineering degree from MIT, and a master's from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Panama Bartholomy is the Director of the Building Decarbonization Coalition, which is a multi-sector forum advocating for and creating solutions for our pollution-intensive building stock. Previously, Panama has served as the European Director of the Investor Confidence Project, an Advisor on Energy and Natural Resources to California Assembly Speaker John A. Perez, the Deputy Director of the California Energy Commission's Efficiency and Renewables Division, and an advisor for Chairwomen Douglas and Pfannenstiel.  He is also a former board member on the U.S. Green Building Council and past president of the Northern California Chapter.  To Dig in Deeper, Check out these Must-Read Resources:Electrify Everything in Your Home: A Guide to Comfy, Healthy, Carbon-Free Living, by Joel Rosenberg – A Rewiring America PublicationThe Switch Is OnBuilding Decarbonization CoalitionEnergy SageDatabase for State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency (DSIREUSA.org)

After driving down the hill from Lawrence Hall of science in Berkeley I turned on my radio and this is part of what I heard excuse the background noise cuz I'm mobile and I don't pave the Berkeley streets LOL --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/j-w54/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/j-w54/support

In this interview Nick sits down with Youki Terada to talk about the importance of embracing student generated questions in the work we do with all our learners.  Youki has worked at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley, where he studied the connections between informal and formal science learning for elementary school students. He has also been a researcher for STEM digital libraries and other educational technology programs at UC Berkeley. He brings a wealth of knowledge and will help shine light on why student generated questions will make for a richer learning environment with all your students. 

If environmental education organizations do not open by the end of 2020, it is estimated that 11 million children will miss out on outdoor learning opportunities. This statement comes from the policy brief created by the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. This policy brief is titled "A Field at Risk: The Impact of COVID-19 on Environmental and Outdoor Science Education." This policy brief is the result of a survey that the Lawrence Hall of Science and its partners conducted in April of last year.Nine hundred ninety-five organizations responded to this survey. These organizations included science centers, museums, nature centers, school districts, aquaria parks, government agencies, colleges, universities, and some Botanic gardens too.The information in this brief is not encouraging. The research group estimated that in addition to the 11 million children who would be missing out on outdoor learning opportunities, the 995 participating organizations may lose $600 million in revenue. The research group also estimated that approximately 30,000 employees would be furloughed or laid off. And that 37% of the organizations surveyed would not reopen.And if this wasn't bad enough, it was estimated that more than one-third of the field may disappear. The survey conducted by the Lawrence Hall of Science took into consideration the fate of organizations, their employees, and the people they serve. It did not look at how the pandemic was affecting independent professionals in the field.In early summer, I began to look at this specific aspect myself. LINKSTalaterraThe TrailheadThe Freelance Project in "Legacy" magazineA Field at Risk: The Impact of COVID-19 on Environmental and Outdoor Science Education

Black Male Romance Author?! What!!! I know you're curious. That's right. He is a Black male #Romance #writer, and he's not embarrassed to tell you. #Blackmaleauthors #Blackmaleauthorsfiction #maleromanceauthors #maleromancenovelsDon't forget to follow me on your favorite social media: https://linktr.ee/angelakayaustinIn his best Muhammed Ali impersonation, #LawrenceHall is not shy and will tell you that the "Lawrence Hall experience" when it comes to #maleromancenovels is like none other. My conversation with Lawrence fascinated me, and now I must interview his wife! Who is the woman behind this man? I've asked Lawrence to get me an interview. I'm convinced that after you watch this interview you will be curious as well. Because according to Lawrence, he #writes #Romance because of his wife. Check out my discussion with #LawrenceHall on my #YouTube channel.Here's more about Lawrence.What do you get when you mix Spartacus with Spaceballs? We’re not sure either, but somewhere in there is Lawrence Hall. A man of few words until he begins speaking, you can often find him with a smile on his face, until he takes a picture. Then he tries to put on his best 1990s hardcore hip hop persona, which would be a mix of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Unless MC Hammer is on the radio.Hailing from the capital city of the USA, he has over 10 years of teaching experience. This means Lawrence has mastered the art of daydreaming and not listening, but pretending he hears and sees everything. He’s the perfect chameleon.An avid film buff, and lover of HEA, he’s too much of an optimist to want anything else. His motto: I may fall like Autumn but I’ll rise a new season.SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawrencehallauthor/· Twitter: https://twitter.com/lhall5819· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lhall5819/· Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/lawrence-hall· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14627599.Lawrence_Hall· Amazon: amazon.com/author/lawrencehallMAILING LISThttps://bit.ly/31Plrur FACEBOOK READERS GROUPhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/hallsofromance/Stick Ups, the Pick Up Sticks YouTube Channelhttps://bit.ly/3me3OvvOnline Store:https://www.redbubble.com/people/lhall5819/shop?asc=u&ref=account-nav-dropdown

Dr. Darrell Porcello holds a PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University, but he decided to embark on a different career pathway in STEM education after completing his degree. He currently leads a national NASA STEM education project at the Children's Creativity Museum in San Francisco and has also worked at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California - Berkeley. Dr. Porcello will share some key points of his career that many would consider "unconventional" and share his role in science museums and STEM education as a person with a science degree.

NSFWThis conversation was a lot of fun.  Lawrence Hall  a Man Writing Women and his target audience is women who love romance.  But he also brings the adventure, the comedy, and the fearless willingness to do something different.  He read from his romantic comedy: The Frog and the Lady - https://books2read.com/u/bQK6AeYou can find him here: Facebook.com/groups/hallsofromanceSOCIAL MEDIA LINKS· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawrencehallauthor/ · Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lhall5819/·Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/lawrence-hall· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14627599.Lawrence_Hall· Amazon: amazon.com/author/lawrencehallMAILING LIST mailchi.mp/55564ef8364c/lawrenceshallpass   

When you don't have the power of a #publisher behind your writing, how do you get momentum behind your books? How do you not spend all day on social media promoting your work, after you spent so many nights writing and producing it?Don't forget to follow me on your favorite social media: https://linktr.ee/angelakayaustinMahogany SilverRain is an #indie published author who has worked collaboratively since her first book was released. Through her network, she's made new friends and met many readers without having to do it by herself.One of her joint ventures is B.A.R.R, Black Authors and Readers of Romance, a #Facebook group that focuses on sharing knowledge about the #writing and #publishing. Together with Lawrence Hall and Moni Boyce, they have created a group that is filled with authors and readers who are passionate about Black #Romance!Curious? I hope so! To view this interview with Mahogany SilverRain visit my #YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/BuC88R4FN1wTo learn more about Mahogany SilverRain, visit her website: https://www.mahoganysilverrain.net/

When Lieutenant Detective Ashlyn runs into the town Vigilante at a bank robbery turned hostage situation the attraction she feels is palpable.  And the sexual tension between Ashlyn and Cain continues to build throughout this book, giving us all kinds of squishy feelings.  Imbued with super powers following a chemical accident, Cain seeks to make this city a better place and keep an eye on Ashlyn as she makes her way through the dangerous waters of being a police detective.  This book is another unique one for us with the world of enhanced humans giving us super good guys and bad guys alike.  The story moves quickly and keeps us in suspense as the different histories of the main players unfold while they converge in the present in an epic fight scene.  As fast as we are hooked by the writing the book ends, leaving us wanting more both of the building tension between Ash and Cain and the growing fight between the bad guys, the police, and the vigilante.  Since this is the first in a trilogy, we know there is so much more to tantalize and entertain in the books to come. ***We would love and appreciate it if you could Subscribe then Rate & Review us on iTunes! Follow us @ShhhDirtyBooks on FB, IG, Twitter as well as on our website at ShhhDirtyBooks.com. Thank you for joining us!*** Music by Jim Townsend

Join us as Brooke Gillespie-Trout and I review three different romance books. A hockey second chance romance, ON ICE by Trisha Harley McCarthy, a sensual erotic short, CLASS IS IN SESSION: ANA'S SEX EDUCATION: LESSON ONE by D.E. Love, and a reverse harem romance, BONNIE'S GAME; A REVERSE ROMANCE NOVEL by Lawrence Hall. All three are definitely worth the read! Five Hearts from me! On Ice, A Hockey Romance Zoe Simmons receives a text on her wedding day. Her fiancé called off the wedding. No explanation and he is soon traded to another hockey team, the Detroit Steels. She is devastated and has an emotional breakdown. After a few months she returns to her lonely life. Numb and withdrawn, she throws herself into her work as an assistant to general manager of the NHL team The San Jose Otters. Fast forward three years, The Otters are contenders for the Stanley Cup that include a shocking trade, Killian "Ki" Connery. The man who left her at the altar in humiliation and shame. Another blow comes when her father, Jed Simmons, negotiated the trade of her former fiancé without telling her. How will she be able to endure being around the man her heart yearns for but her mind rebels against? Not to mention the scandal that is about to break opening up her private life to further scrutiny by the media? Killian "Ki" Connery The woman he loves jilted him at the altar and he is banished to Detroit to play for The Steels. The former star and captain of The Otters is crushed by the betrayal of his love he's never gotten over. He survives through sheer will power and playing hockey while fighting the underlying demons plaguing him. Jesse Ward comes into his life and they become America's Sweethearts of the media. Little does Ki know the part Jesse played in his breakup with his true love Zoe. Class Is In Session: Ana's Sex Education: Lesson One Rodrigo worked hard to get straight A's, but now he needs to ace the one class he's been dreading. Will Anabella be able to help him with Sex Education? At eighteen, in his senior year, the nerdy Rodrigo must face his greatest fear, girls. It should be easy. Most students take sex education as freshmen, surely he could figure it out. There was just one problem. He must write a paper to get an A. The books he needs are missing from the school library. Anabella, the librarian, is young, vivacious, and sexy beyond words. Her rich New York executive boyfriend travels too much. She's lonely and her needs aren't being met. The confused student who stands before her, struggling to make eye contact as he stammers on about the missing books, will do nicely. She has a plan. Rodrigo is about to get a dream education. Bonnie's Game (The Bonnie Series Book 1) It's hard enough being a hardworking teacher, coach, and professional cheerleader. But when Bonnie Russell comes home after a long day and finds her boyfriend's face buried in that videogame, the one that takes up all his time and leaves none of it for her, with his hot friends watching him, she's had enough. Bonnie does what any woman would do. She unplugs it, thinking that would be the end of things. And it would be if the game didn't suck her and everyone in the room into it. Now, to return to the real world, Bonnie will have to go on the most dangerous adventure of her life, deal with the strong sexual charge that she has with the men that accompany her, and pass the test of a supernatural being - or stay locked in the game forever. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mahogany-says/support

Jacquey Barber, director of design & development at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science, examines her research on the symbiotic relationship between literacy and science and what educators should be looking for in high-quality, literacy-rich science curricula.Quotes: “Literacy is a domain in search of content; science is a domain in need of communication.”“Develop opportunities for students to learn to read, write, and talk like scientists do.”Resources:UCLA CRESSTThe Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System—and How to Fix It by Natalie WexlerNo More Science Kits or Texts in Isolation by Jacqueline Barber and Gina Cervetti. Want to discuss the episode? Join our Facebook group Science of Reading: The Community.

Dr. Weisser has taught a professional editing course at UC Berkeley and has edited more than 100 books for academic and commercial publishers, including University of California Press, Stanford University Press, Oxford University Press, Cornell University Press, Sierra Club Books, HarperCollins Publishers, Warner Books, North Atlantic Books, Wadsworth Publishing Company, Lawrence Hall of Science, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California Art Museum, and others. He also helps individuals with nonfiction books, novels, short stories, children’s stories, screenplays, stage plays, TV scripts and concepts, dramatic coaching, speeches, doctoral dissertations, master’s theses, grant applications, articles, criticism, reviews, papers, proposals, brochures, newsletters, flyers, resumés, tutorial instruction, poetry..., and even an occasional love letter! In addition to editorial and writing assistance, he can provide desktop publishing services, guide you through every step of self-publishing, or refer you to an appropriate publisher, producer, or literary agent. Two of his own creative credits include: (1) he was a co-author of "GREAT," which won the Academy Award for Short Animated Film; and (2) his stage adaptation of "THE CLOWN," a novel by Heinrich Böll, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972, will be published and produced in London during the coming year. Specialties: Creative, academic, business, and personal writing, editing, and publishing. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/evinweiss/support

Let's party on the last day of the decade with authors Lawrence Hall and Larry Yoke! We will talk about their new releases and the secrets to their success! We will close out this decade with some laughs, memories, new releases and New Year resolutions! Happy New Year's EVE! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mahogany-says/support

       We listened to the track "Psychotic Episode" from Royal Headache (R.I.P.) while drinking in the woods of VT. That's what we've come to these days. We were joined by cinematographer Rob and Sound Engineer Jim to talk about this song from the Australian band. Is it Punk? Soul? We have no answers, just turn down the lights, have a cocktail and join us in the middle of the night to talk about music. Twitter - @welisten21 Instagram - welisten2records Leave a message on the Welisten hotline - 978-707-9899 

Through our partnership with the Coalition of Black Excellence founded by Angela J. we have the pleasure of sitting down with 500 Startups venture partner Clayton Bryan. He sits down with us to discuss his career journey up to this point and to share valuable advice for young leaders and founders, particularly in the VC space. We also promote CBE Week, an event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement.Learn more about CBE Week here! https://www.cbeweek.com/Learn more about Transparent Collective: https://www.transparentcollective.com/Learn more about HBCUvc: http://www.hbcu.vc/Check out the Dorm Room Fund: https://www.dormroomfund.com/Check out 500 Startups' VC Unlocked: https://education.500.com/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach, and listen, y'all. Living Corporate is partnering with the Coalition of Black Excellence, CBE, a non-profit organization based in California, in bringing a Special Speaker series to promote CBE Week, an annual week-long event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement that will positively transform the black community. This is a special series where we will spotlight movers and shakers who will be speakers during CBE Week. Today we are blessed to have Clayton Bryan. Clayton has over 12 years of experience in the tech space, initially working as a marketer. He transitioned into business development and over the past 3 years has worked in venture capital. Currently, as a venture partner at 500 Startups in San Francisco, Clayton is focused on the media, e-commerce, and frontier tech. Clayton is also one of the co-founders of Transparent Collective, a non-profit launched to help founders of color connect with investors and mentors. Prior to returning to the Bay Area, as a member of the Dorm Room Fund team in New York, Clayton worked with and invested in some of the best and brightest student-funded startups on the East Coast. With that being said, welcome to the show, Clay. How you doin', man?Clayton: Zach, I'm doing great, and to all the listeners out there, good evening, good morning, good afternoon, whenever you might be listening to this. Happy to be here, and looking forward to, you know, having a good conversation.Zach: Absolutely. So look, man. Of course I read your profile in the introduction, but for those of us who might be wanting to know a little bit more--I know I'm one of those people--would you mind talking a little bit more about yourself and your journey?Clayton: Sure, happy to hit on some of the high notes and the milestones. So I'm originally from the Bay. Big shout-out to Oakland. And, you know, growing up I always felt this gravitational pull towards technology. I was fortunate to be able to have an Apple II back in the day and played, you know, some games on that, everything from, you know, Oregon Trail to Mavis Teaches Typing, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Yeah, those are some of the OG titles.Zach: Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me ask you this real fast about those games though. Did you ever played this game called Gizmos and Gadgets?Clayton: I don't recall that one. That one--Zach: 'Cause man, it was really dope. Okay, okay, but you said Oregon Trail. Did you ever play that Mario typing game? Where you type and then Mario moves?Clayton: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was a classic too, you know? So for everyone from that era, you know, those were great, and I think that they did a good job of really kind of getting a lot of folks into technology and just, you know, bringing up that awareness. And so once I saw the application of that--and then I also was able to go to, you know, great places as a kid growing up in this area. Places like the Lawrence Hall of Science up in the Berkeley Hills, and, you know, really getting to see all of these cool things happen with science. And so when I got to high school I started to code a little bit, and I took CS in high school. When I got to college, I thought that was gonna be my track as well, but I happened to go to a school where there's a really tough computer science program, and I was like, "Actually," you know, "I think I'm a little more creative than this." So I wanted to touch technology, but not necessarily from the coding perspective, and so I became actually--I was a poli-sci and economics major, and then when I graduated I joined Yahoo as a content marketer, and I was there for a couple years. Then I decided I wanted to go do the startup thing, so I worked at a couple different startups, and that's when I first got--started to really hear the term "venture capital," and back in the 2000s it was a very different time and place within Silicon Valley and the way that we think of things. Investors weren't blogging, they weren't tweeting. It was very obscure as to what investors actually did. Now it's different. Now, you know, you see--it's kind of a who's who on Twitter. Twitter has a VC category you can follow. There's Medium. It's just very easy to kind of stay plugged into that scene if you really want to learn how different investors are thinking. There's a lot of information out there. Back in the 2000s that was not the case, but I was very fortunate at the time--one of the companies I was working with, we had done a Series A and a Series B--and also the check sizes were much different than a Series A and a Series B were today--but I was the seventh hire, and I got to really see, you know, what these meetings with investors look like, and I was exposed to that, and I was like, "This is kind of cool. This is interesting," and that's really, you know, kind of planted the seed for me to want to be on that side of the table. And so fast-forward a couple years. My first--my first kind of role where I was in an investor-like seat was running an accelerator program that focused on underrepresented founders, and so through that program I got to know a lot of folks who I'm gonna shout-out later on in, you know, our conversation. But I got to see--I was even closer, but the problem with that program was that we were not writing checks, and I wanted to actually deploy capital. In order for me to feel comfortable doing that I decided, "Okay. Well, I want to go back to school," which was kind of a controversial decision at the time, because I still think MBAs are not necessarily all that welcome within the space, but I think it's changing now. But for me it leads--the decision was to go back, learn more about finance, build up that skill set, and then finally venture out as a venture capitalist, and so that's what I've been doing since 2015, and I've been incredibly blessed to join a great team at 500 and incredibly blessed to be a part of something called the Dorm Room Fund. And yeah, that's my journey in 3 minutes or less.Zach: Man, that's incredible. And, you know, it's interesting--you know, to your point about some of your decisions being a little non-conventional, still--you talked about yes, there's definitely more information to learn about venture capitalism and being a venture partner. However, Clayton, I have to be honest, man, I'm still really kind of confused when I think about the role of a venture partner. So, like, would you mind sharing a little bit more and kind of breaking it down, what it is your role entails? On, like, what you actually do on a day-to-day basis?Clayton: Sure. And, you know, I think--before I answer that I'll answer a question that I think is a good kind of intro or good for just context in terms of, you know, "Well, how did I get here?" And "Is there a certain path?" Right? I think a lot of folks that want to get into venture are like, "Well, how can I also get into venture?" And I think, you know, a couple years ago there were maybe two different pathways in, where, you know, being a founder that had success. So exited a company, sold a company, right? That was a path. Another path would be, you know, becoming an executive at a top internet company, a big brand that, you know, everyone in the States would know, and then really develop a skill set in sales or marketing or even people ops, and then market yourself to one of these firms as being able to add value. But today, you know, there are so many different firms that are popping up, and I think that if you talk to the folks that are at these firms, they all have different pathways in. And so I think the primary thing is just to have that interest and really network, and be beneficial to founders. Be beneficial to folks that work at these firms. Do the job before you have the job, and I think that's a great way to do it. And there's great programs out there, like HBCUvc, Dorm Room Fund. There's a lot of different programs out there, depending on where you are in your stage of life. We have one at 500 that's called Venture Capital Unlocked. First Round Capital has one called the Angel Track. So there's a lot of programs out there that will help you, you know, kind of get the right skills, because things change so frequently within this space. So I would say that was a little bit of a prelude to the next thing, which is "What do I do on a day-to-day basis?" Well, you know, no two days look alike. I would say the core of my duties, really I'm out here trying to help founders, and so I'm meeting with founders all of the time. If you look at my calendar at any given point in time, there's a lot of meetings with some of the current investments that I have, some of the investments that are a little bit more mature, meaning that, you know, I'm not working with them on a day-to-day, because we have an accelerator program, and so we're--it's essentially like a boot camp for entrepreneurs. So we're helping them with their marketing, their sales. We're helping them really craft the way they're thinking about their investor strategy, and then also with the execution, because a lot of the folks that come through our program, you know, they might be really good at their core competency, whether that's, you know, data science or agriculture tech or spinning up something--you know, some kind of hardware play, but when it comes to the nuances around going out and fundraising and selling your business to the investor audience, it's a little bit of a different type of game. So just understanding and acquainting yourself with the language and the types of models and terms that are being used at this stage. I'm talking about things, you know, as far down as, like, customer acquisition costs, but just understanding things like, you know, your revenue, your different growth rates, right, and how to present that in a way that's meaningful, impactful, but translates well into the minds of investors. So a lot of what I do is coaching. I'm always looking for the next best--the next greatest thing, right, that I can invest in, but even if I can't invest in it right now, I still need to be able to talk to with those founders, help them as much as I can, because I'm always looking for potential, and that means a couple--that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I'm out there always looking for potential. So a lot of what I do I categorize kind of as just, like, helping founders. That would be one big category, and then other things that I do is meeting with other investors and really trying to assess how they're looking at the market or markets right now, what's interesting to them, because as someone that's at the seed stage, I--at the end of the day, I need to have confidence that I can help my companies raise money, and if the later-stage players are not as actively looking for deals in that category, it might be--it might not be the right time. Timing is so big in what we do, right? It's a huge--I would say timing and [seeds?] are so important. So you really have to get an understanding, if you're a founder, "Is this the right time for me to go and fundraise for this business? Should I try to hunker down, just focus on product right now, and come out in 6 months when things might be a little bit different?" Right? So again, going back to that fundraising strategy piece, but a big part of what I do also is just networking with investors, networking with other stakeholders in the States, folks that might be doing products at Slack or Pinterest or wherever and just asking them, "What are you seeing that's interesting within your category," right? Because that's helping me make more informed decisions when I'm looking--when I'm crafting my theses, my investment theses, and when I'm starting to go out and I'm meeting with different founders trying to see "Can I find founders that think similarly about the way the future's going to be, and then can I back those founders?" And that's--at the core of my job, as someone that's thinking actively about my fiduciary to my [inaudible] partners, I'm constantly thinking about that, right? Constantly trying to think about the trends that not everyone else is seeing just yet, right? Especially at the early stage. That's what we have to do. We have to be able to look across--look around not the next corner but two corners, because we're investing at such an early stage.Zach: Man, that's just--that's incredible, and there's--you know, I have--I have a couple questions about that role and how you show up. Before I ask that question, you know, all of the things you're talking about and the brands that you're mentioning and the conversations that you're having, I'm curious, how many--how rare is it to see black men moving in this space? And I'll say--I'll just say people of color. I'll just say non-white folks to start, but then how--but how rare is it? It seems like it would be rare.Clayton: Yeah. I mean, like, it's rare to see women. It's rare to see Latinx. It's rare to see black men. It's rare to see anyone that doesn't fit a certain profile of what you're already named, right? And so it is rare, but I think it's starting to get better, and, you know, I can't quantify that growth rate, but I think that more and more investors are starting to realize that there's a need to have multiple perspectives, right? We can't all think the same when we're doing an investment. We can't all, you know, have been trained at the same academic institution and travel in the same social groups, because we're gonna miss out on big movements. And even on a geographical note as well. There's big things that are happening across the continent of Africa, right? And there's big things that are happening all across the world, and we can't just think in that tunnel vision of "What's the next greatest thing that's gonna come out of Northern California?" We have to think--we have to think beyond that, right? And so there are things that are helping. There are things that are getting us where we need to be, but I think that the pace can pick up. And I mentioned, you know, groups like HBCU VC, which I think are great, but we need more of that. We need more of that, and we need more funds like what, you know, Chris Lyons is doing with the Cultural Leadership Fund. We need a lot of that. We need to amplify that times 10 at least, because I'm not seeing enough folks that look like me and have similar backgrounds when I go to these different conferences, different networking events, and I think that's problematic when we start to really see, you know, what's getting invested in, who's getting invested in, right? There's steps out there that talk a lot about that, you know? Talk about the amount of fundraising going to folks of color compared to, you know, folks that are coming from, you know, I'd say more common backgrounds within tech, and it's staggering in terms of the disparity.Zach: You're absolutely right, and we actually had an--we actually had an episode about that last season where we talked about--where we talked about being in venture capital while black, being in venture capital while other, and we discussed the disparity and fund allocation to the point where--they were talking about certain demographics, it was, like--to represent it in dollars would've been, like, basically zero, right? So it's nuts, and that--to your point though about the role, you know, it seems as if your role requires, like, a cocktail of being able to kind of influence without direct authority, a lot of emotional and social intelligence, and then also all of that still being backed up by significant business competence. Can you talk a little bit about how you show up being, you know, one of the few, and what is it that you're doing in these spaces that are--that are majority white? And what challenges, if you have any, have come with that?Clayton: Yeah. I mean, I think it's just, like, being able to paint pictures. Like, for one, I mean, you definitely need to have your facts, right? You need to have your facts and your stats down, and you need to be able to help those around you, and I'm talking about other investors, see what these trends are telling me. I need to translate that over to them, right? And I need to translate it over to them in language that they will be able to understand, because at the end of the day, like, we're all here to try to, at minimum, 3X our money, if not greater, right? 5X, 10X, and sometimes, you know, if these other investors lack that background, they might not be able to understand things in the same manner, right? And this is why I think every board room--and you're starting to see this within big tech companies, like the Twitters and the Salesforces and the Googles of the world, where they're realizing that they're building products for the entire world, so they need to have a team that reflects that, right? And so--but in the venture scene, we're not seeing that as--you know, we're not seeing it develop as quickly. So for me, in order to go in, you know, I need to be able to pound the table, have the facts, but really build these theses in a way in which can align with what my firm wants to do, right? And so I think a lot of it is just, like, you have to go the extra mile, right? You have to really put in that extra work, and it's making me a much better investor, but part of me is like, "It shouldn't have to be this hard," at the same time, right? Like, if I want to do a deal that's founded by a person of color and I think that--and I'm able to show the data, the trends, all of this is really supporting going in this direction, right? And it's funny, sometimes even money that's coming from outside of the United States sees it better than money that resides within the United States, because it's--like, they understand how emerging markets work, and sometimes, you know, if you put it in that lens, like--I mean, we're not emerging, but we have the same capability of an emerging market in terms of the growth potential. Then a lot of the dollars from overseas are like, "Oh, I want in on that," right? And so sometimes it's just you have to be creative, but, like, you just have to--you have to persevere. I think that's the biggest thing, is really, like, you just have to keep willing to push through, and that's the same note that I want to give out to the founders listening, which is, you know, you have to knock on--especially the seed level. You're gonna have to knock on a lot of different doors. I have founders that come in and tell me, like, "Look, I heard "no" 91 times, and I heard "yes" 9 times, but that's all I needed to close my seed." So don't get--you know, don't get, you know, depressed. Don't have anyone try to knock you off your hustle. You're gonna just have to find the folks that your message resonates with the most, and so that's the message I want to give to the founders that's out there.Zach: No, that's incredible, and you're absolutely right. You know, my father--you know, he's a bit of entrepreneur, financial background, sales background, and what he would--he always tells me is he's like, "Son, you know, you don't need but one yes." Like, often times you just need that one. Like, people keep on--like you just said, you know, the majority said no, but you really just needed, like, a scant few to say "yes" for you to continue forward. And I think it's hard though when--you know, when you continue to present and you present and you present, and, you know, who knows what those no's look like, right? 'Cause a no is a no, but, like, you know, the way that they--sometimes the way people tell you, you know, can hurt. Like, maybe you were told no like, 10 times, even though you were just told no once. You know, so those types of experiences. It's tough, so that's great advice. Before we--before we let you go, do you have any other parting words, shout-outs, or special projects that you're working on?Clayton: Yeah. So I just want to, you know, give a shout-out to Transparent Collective. You know, it's a great initiative that we're trying to, you know, continue, and we're actually looking for sponsors for that. So that's a--it's a great initiative. It's a labor of love, and I want to see that continue in the future. So folks out there that might be interested in sponsoring, hit me up. Big shout-out to--you know, this is gonna be a little bit of a long list, and there's people that definitely if I--it could be a lot longer, but, you know, I want to keep time in mind. So big shout-out to Monique Woodard. She's done a lot to help me out professionally. Big fan of hers. Chris Lyons, Marlon Nichols, Connie LaPuebla, Richard Kirby, Eric Moore, Austin Clements, just to name a few. And then also I love what initiatives like Black VC are doing and also HBCUvc, which I mentioned a few times in this podcast. So that's it. And also one last shout-out to all the founders out there, all the hustlers, all the innovators that are grinding right now. You know, keep building. Keep moving forward. Keep persevering. I know it might be tough. I know that, you know, it might be disheartening when you hear "no" here and there, but you really gotta keep grinding, and you will find your path. And, you know, to the best extent that I can, I'm always willing to make myself available for folks that have questions on the businesses that they're building or the careers they're trying to build, because I believe that you really have to pay it forward in this world. So on that note, that's all I have, and signing off. Thank you, everybody. It's been a great pleasure to have this conversation.Zach: Clayton, man, first of all, the pleasure has definitely been ours. Wonderful feedback, thoughts, and points of advice here. We're gonna make sure that we list all of the organizations that you listed, that you named off, that you shouted out, in the show notes, and then we'll also make sure to have your LinkedIn information in the show notes as well so that people can reach out to you as they're able. Now, I think that's gonna do it for us, folks. Thank you for joining the Living Corporate podcast, a Special Series sponsored by the Coalition of Black Excellence. To learn more about the Coalition of Black Excellence check out their website CBEWeek.com, and make sure that you actually sign up for CBE Week, which is gonna be happening February 18th to the 24th of 2019--that's this year, come on, y'all--in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you go to their website, you'll be able to learn more, get your tickets, and all that kind of stuff right there. Now, make sure you follow us on Instagram though, okay? @LivingCorporate, and make sure you follow CBE at @ExperienceCBE. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. Check out our website, living-corporate.com. This has been Zach, and you've been speaking with Clayton Bryan. Peace.

Tee Malinaaa brings you another exciting episode for Season 2 of "The After Hours with Tee". Every week she talks some of the random topics fueled from her social media supporters, and interviews people from all professional walks of life. Tee welcomes Fitness Coach, Lawrence Hall IV of Hallism Fitness (http://hallismfitness.com) to the show.

[Adult content & language] Dr. Sybil Lockhart is no "Masters and Johnson" - she’s so much more! With OMGyes.com, Dr. Lockhart is taking men and women to the next level of pleasure with a website dedicated to the education of women’s sexual pleasure with unique videos, vocabulary, and even interactive tools to practice techniques. Sybil says when we’re open up to giving ourselves pleasure (even if struggling with body image), we are more open up to all the other good things in the world. She says “any starting point is a good starting point, even if you never had an orgasm.” I had the pleasure of testing out the website and I have to say, it’s very cool, very comforting, and very fun. Plus, Emma Watson has a subscription so it must be good. JK. I hope you like this episode and all the other sex-themed Body Kindness podcasts this month. --- Get to know Sybil Sybil Lockhart studied psychology at UC Berkeley and neuroscience at Brandeis university. She has taught high school English and French, done post-doctoral research on nervous system development, authored a memoir packed with brain science, served as science writer for a biotech firm, and developed science curriculum at the Lawrence Hall of Science. She has the unique privilege of researching women's sexual pleasure and recruiting participants for the first ever research-based website on women's sexual pleasure, OMGyes.com. Discover OMGYes Website: https://www.omgyes.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/omgyes Facebook: https://facebook.com/omgyesdotcom Links mentioned Emma Watson talks about OMGYes - http://www.glamour.com/story/emma-watson-sex-website --- You can subscribe to Body Kindness on iTunes and Stitcher. Enjoy the show? Please rate it on iTunes! - http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1073275062 Are you ready for Body Kindness? Get started today with my free e-course and on-demand digital training. Learn more - http://bit.ly/2k23nbT The New York Times Book Review calls Body Kindness “simple and true”. Publisher’s Weekly says it’s “a rousing guide to better health.” http://bit.ly/2k228t9 Watch my videos about why we need Body Kindness on YouTube. https://youtu.be/W7rATQpv5y8?list=PLQPvfnaYpPCUT9MOwHByVwN1f-bL2rn1V Did you enjoy the podcast? Please subscribe and rate it. Have a show idea or guest recommendation (even yourself!) E-mail podcast@bodykindnessbook.com to get in touch. Nothing in this podcast is meant to provide medical diagnosis, treatment, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. Individuals should consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.  

With the help of UC Berkeley mentors, Bay Area high school students gather at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science to pit the robots they had built against one another. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Education] [Show ID: 31639]

With the help of UC Berkeley mentors, Bay Area high school students gather at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science to pit the robots they had built against one another. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Education] [Show ID: 31639]

With the help of UC Berkeley mentors, Bay Area high school students gather at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science to pit the robots they had built against one another. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Education] [Show ID: 31639]

With the help of UC Berkeley mentors, Bay Area high school students gather at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science to pit the robots they had built against one another. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Education] [Show ID: 31639]

With the help of UC Berkeley mentors, Bay Area high school students gather at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science to pit the robots they had built against one another. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Education] [Show ID: 31639]

With the help of UC Berkeley mentors, Bay Area high school students gather at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science to pit the robots they had built against one another. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Education] [Show ID: 31639]

With the help of UC Berkeley mentors, Bay Area high school students gather at UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science to pit the robots they had built against one another. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Education] [Show ID: 31639]

Joanna Snyder of Lawrence Hall of Science at UC-Berkeley, joins us to talk about the importance of connecting children with nature, and she also provides tips on how your family can get started. Twitter: @preschoolbeyond Facebook: facebook.com/preschoolandbeyond Show Notes: http:/www.discoverychilddevelopmentcenter.com/podcast

Joanna Snyder of Lawrence Hall of Science at UC-Berkeley, joins us to talk about the importance of connecting children with nature, and she also provides tips on how your family can get started. Twitter: @preschoolbeyond Facebook: facebook.com/preschoolandbeyond Show Notes: http:/www.discoverychilddevelopmentcenter.com/podcast

Assigned to salvage a lifeless wreckage of botched discovery, the Blackstronauts make a revelation that will change Station 713 forever... Join David Gborie, OJ Patterson and newly appointed Blackstronaut Richard Toomer as they immerse and reeducate themselves with a youthful exploration. Engineered by A.S.H. Clayton. 

Cathryn Carson is an Assoc Prof of History, and the Ops Lead of the Social Sciences D- Lab at UC Berkeley. Fernando Perez is a research scientist at the Henry H. Wheeler Jr. Brain Imaging Center at U.C. Berkeley. Berkeley Institute for Data Science.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science [00:00:30] 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: Hi, good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show this week on spectrum we present part one of our two part series on big data at cal. The Berkeley Institute for Data Science or bids is only [00:01:00] four months old. Two people involved with shaping the institute are Catherine Carson and Fernando Perez and they are our guests. Catherine Carson is an associate professor of history and associate dean of social sciences and the operational lead of the social sciences data lab at UC Berkeley. Fernando Perez is a research scientist at the Henry H. Wheeler Jr Brain imaging center at UC Berkeley. He created the ipython project while a graduate student in 2001 [00:01:30] and continues to lead the project here is part one, Catherine Carson and Fernando Perez. Welcome to spectrum. Thanks for having us and I wanted to get from both of you a little bit of a short summary about the work you're doing now that you just sort of your activity that predates your interest in data science. Speaker 4: Data Science is kind of an Ale defined term I think and it's still an open question precisely what it is, but in a certain sense all of my research has been probably under the umbrella [00:02:00] of what we call today data science since the start. I did my phd in particle physics but it was computational in particle physics and I was doing data analysis in that case of models that were competitionally created. So I've sort of been doing this really since I was a graduate student. What has changed over time is the breadth of disciplines that are interested in these kinds of problems in these kinds of tools and that have these kinds of questions. In physics. This has been kind of a common way of working on writing for a long time. Sort of the deep intersection [00:02:30] between computational tools and large data sets, whether they were created by models or collected experimentally is something that has a long history in physics. Speaker 4: How long the first computers were created to solve differential equations, to plot the trajectories of ballistic missiles. I was one of the very first tasks that's computers were created for so almost since the dawn of coats and so it's really only recently though that the size of the data sets has really jumped. Yes, the size has grown very, [00:03:00] very large in the last couple of decades, especially in the last decade, but I think it's important to not get too hung up on the issue of size because I think when we talk about data science, I like to define it rather in the context of data that is large for the traditional framework tools and conceptual kind of structure of a given discipline rather than it's raw absolute size because yes, in physics for example, we have some of the largest data sets in existence, things like what the LHC creates [00:03:30] for the Higgs Boson. Those data sets are just absolute, absurdly large, but in a given discipline, five megabytes of data might be a lot depending on what it is that you're trying to ask. And so I think it's more, it's much, much more important to think of data that has grown larger than a given discipline was used in manipulating and that therefore poses interesting challenges for that given domain rather than being completely focused on the raw size of the data. Speaker 1: I approached this from an angle that's actually complimentary to Fernando in part because [00:04:00] my job as the interim director of the social sciences data laboratory is not to do data science but to provide the infrastructure, the setting for researchers across the social sciences here who are doing that for themselves. And exactly in the social sciences you see a nice exemplification of the challenge of larger sizes of data than were previously used and new kinds of data as well. So the social sciences are starting to pick up say on [00:04:30] sensor data that has been placed in environmental settings in order to monitor human behavior. And social scientists can then use that in order to design tests around it or to develop ways of interpreting it to answer research questions that are not necessarily anticipated by the folks who put the sensors in place or accessing data that comes out of human interactions online, which is created for entirely different purposes [00:05:00] but makes it possible for social scientists to understand things about human social networks. Speaker 1: So the challenges of building capacity for disciplines to move into new scales of data sets and new kinds of data sets. So one of the ones that I've been seeing as I've been building up d lab and that we've jointly been seeing as we tried to help scope out what the task of the Berkeley Institute for data science is going to be. How about the emergence [00:05:30] of data science? Do you have a sense of the timeline when you started to take note of its feasibility for social sciences? Irrespective of physics, which has a longer history. One of the places that's been driving the conversations in social sciences, actually the funding regime in that the existing beautifully curated data sets that we have from the post World War Two period survey data, principally administrative data on top of that, [00:06:00] those are extremely expensive to produce and to curate and maintain. Speaker 1: And as the social sciences in the last only five to 10 years have been weighing the portfolio of data sources that are supported by funding agencies. We've been forced to confront the fact that the maintenance of the post World War Two regime of surveying may not be feasible into the future and that we're going to have to be shifting to other kinds of data that are generated [00:06:30] for other purposes and repurposing and reusing it, finding new ways to, to cut it and slice it in order to answer new kinds of questions that weren't also accessible to the old surveys. So one way to approach it is through the infrastructure that's needed to generate the data that we're looking at. Another way is simply to look at the infrastructure on campus. One of the launching impetuses for the social sciences data laboratory was in fact the budget cuts of 2009 [00:07:00] here on campus. When we acknowledged that if we were going to support cutting edge methodologically innovative social science on this campus, that we were going to need to find ways to repurpose existing assets and redirect them towards whatever this new frontier in social science is going to be. Speaker 5: You were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley, Catherine Carson and Fernando Perez, our guests. [00:07:30] They are part of the Berkeley Institute for data science known as big [inaudible]. Speaker 4: Fernando, you sort of gave us a generalized definition of data science. Do you want to give it another go just in case you evoke something else? Sure. I want to leave that question slightly on answer because I feel that to some extent, one of the challenges we have as an intellectual effort that we're trying to tackle at the Brooklyn [00:08:00] instead for data science is precisely working on what this field is. Right. I don't want to presuppose that we have a final answer on this question, but at least we, we do know that we have some elements to frame the question and I think it's mostly about an intersection. It's about an intersection of things that were being done already on their own, but that were being done often in isolation. So it's the intersection of methodological work whereby that, I mean things like statistical theory, applied mathematics, computer science, [00:08:30] algorithm development, all of the computational and theoretical mathematical machinery that has been done traditionally, the questions arising from domain disciplines that may have models that may have data sets, that may have sensors that may have a telescope or that may have a gene sequencing array and where are they have their own theoretical models of their organisms or galaxies or whatever it is and where that data can be inscribed and the fact that tools need to be built. Speaker 4: Does data doesn't get analyzed by blackboards? Those data gets analyzed by software, but this is software that is deeply woven [00:09:00] into the fabric of these other two spaces, right? It's software that has to be written with the knowledge of the questions and the discipline and the domain and also with the knowledge of the methodology, the theory. It's that intersection of this triad of things of concrete representation in computational machinery, abstract ideas and methodologies and domain questions that in many ways creates something new when the work has to be done simultaneously with enough depth and enough rigor on all [00:09:30] of these three directions and precisely that intersection is where now the bottleneck is proving to be because you can have the ideas, you can have the questions, you can have the data, you can have the the fear m's, but if you can't put it all together into working concrete tools that you can use efficiently and with a reasonably rapid turnaround, you will not be able to move forward. You will not be able to answer the questions you want to answer about your given discipline and so that embodiment of that intersection is I think where the challenge is opposed. Maybe there is something new called [00:10:00] data science. I'd actually like to suggest that Speaker 1: the indefinable character of data science is actually not a negative because it's an intersection in a way that we're all still very much struggling. How to define it. I won't underplay that exactly in that it's an intersection. It points to the fact that it's not an intellectual thing that we're trying to get our heads around. It's a platform for activity for doing kinds of research that are either enabled or hindered by the [00:10:30] existing institutional and social structures that the research is getting done in, and so if you think of it less as a kind of concept or an intellectual construct and more of a space where people come together, either a physical space or a methodological sharing space, you realize that the indefinable ness is a way of inviting people in rather than drawing clear boundaries around it and saying, we know what this is. It is x and not Speaker 4: why [00:11:00] Berkeley Institute for data science is that where it comes in this invitation, this collection of people and the intersection. That's sort of the goal of it. Speaker 1: That's what we've been asked to build it as not as uh, an institute in the traditional sense of there are folks inside and outside, but in the sense of a meeting point and a crossing site for folks across campus. That's [00:11:30] something that's been put in front of us by the two foundations who have invested in a significant sum of money in us. That's the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred p Sloan Foundation. And it's also become an inspiring vision for those of us who have been engaged in the process over the last year and a half of envisioning what it might be. It's an attempt to address the doing of data science as an intersectional area within a research university that has existing structures [00:12:00] and silos and boundaries within it. Speaker 4: And to some extent you try to deconstruct the silos and leverage the work done by one group, share it with another, you know, the concrete mechanisms are things that we're still very much working on it and we will see how it unfolds. There's even a physical element that reflects this idea of being at a crossroads, which is that the university was willing to commit to [inaudible] the physical space of one room in the main doe library, which is not only physically [00:12:30] at the center of the university and that is very important because it does mean that it is quite literally at the crossroads. It is one central point where many of us walk by frequently, so it's a space that is inviting in that sense too to encounters, to stopping by to having easy collaboration rather than being in some far edge corner of the campus. Speaker 4: But also intellectually the library is traditionally the store of the cultural and scientific memory of an institution. And so building this space in the library is a way of signaling [00:13:00] to our community that it is meant to be a point of encounter and how specifically those encounters will be embodied and what concrete mechanisms of sharing tools, sharing coach, showing data, having lecture series, having joint projects. We're in the process of imagining all of that and we're absolutely certain that we'll make some mistakes along the way, but that is very much the intent is to have something which is by design about as openly and as explicitly collaborative as we can make it and I think [00:13:30] in that sense we are picking up on many of the lessons that Catherine and her team at the d lab have already learned because the d lab has been in operation here in Barrows Hall for about a year and has already done many things in that direction and that at least I personally see them as things in the spirit of what bids is attempting to do at the scale of the entire institution. D Lab has been kind of blazing that trail already for the last year in the context of the social sciences and to the point where their impact has actually spread beyond the social sciences because so many of the things that they were doing or were [00:14:00] found to have very thirsty customers for the particular brand of lemonade that they were selling here at the lab. And their impact has already spread beyond the social sciences. But we hope to take a lot of these lessons and build them with a broader scope. Speaker 1: And in the same way BYD sits at the center of other existing organizations, entities, programs on campus, which are also deeply engaged in data science. And some of them are research centers, others of them are the data science masters program in the School of information where [00:14:30] there is a strong and deliberate attempt to think through how in a intelligent way to train people for outside the university doing data science. So all of these centers of excellence on campus have the potential to get networked in, in a much more synergistic way with the existence of bids with is not encompassing by any means. All of the great work that's getting done in teaching research around data science on this campus Speaker 6: [00:15:00] spectrum is a public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley. Our guests are Cathryn Carson and Fernando Perez. In the next segment they talk about challenges in Berkeley Institute for Data Science Phase Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 3: and it seems that that eScience does happen best in teams and multidisciplinary [00:15:30] teams or is that not really the case? Speaker 1: I think we've been working on that assumption in part because it seems too much to ask of any individual to do all the things at once. At the same time, we do have many specimens of individuals who cross the boundaries of the three areas that Fernando was sketching out as domain area expertise, hacking skills and methodological competence. [00:16:00] And it's interesting to think through the intersectional individuals as well. But that said, the default assumption I think is going to have to be that teamwork collaboration and actually all of the social engineering to make that possible is going to be necessary for data science to flourish. And again, that's one of the challenges of working in a research university setting where teamwork is sometimes prized and sometimes deprecated. Speaker 4: That goes back to the incentive people building tools don't necessarily get much attention, [00:16:30] prestige from that. How do you defeat that on an institutional level within the institute or just the community? Ask us in five years if we had any success. That's one of the central challenges that we have and it's not only here at Berkeley, this is actually, there's kind of an ongoing worldwide conversation happening about this every few days. There's another article where this issue keeps being brought up again and again and it's raising in volume. The business of creating tools is becoming actually an increasing [00:17:00] part of the job of people doing science. And so for example, even young faculty who are on the tenure track are finding themselves kind of pushed against the wall because they're finding themselves writing a lot of tools and building a lot of software and having to do it collaboratively and having to engage others and picking up all of these skills and this being an important central part of their work. Speaker 4: But they feel that if their tenure committee is only going to look at their publication record and [00:17:30] 80% of their actual time went into building these things, they are effectively being shortchanged for their effort. And this is a difficult conversation. What are we going to do about it? We have a bunch of ideas. We are going to try many things. I think it's a conversation that has to happen at many levels. Some agencies are beginning, the NSF recently changed the terms of its biosketch requirements for example. And now the section that used to be called relevant publications is called relevant publications and other research outcomes. And in parentheses they explained such as software [00:18:00] projects, et cetera. So this is beginning to change the community that cure rates. For example, large data sets. That's a community that has very similar concerns. It turns out that working on a rich and complex data set may be a Labor that requires years of intensive work and that'd be maybe for a full time endeavor for someone. Speaker 4: And yet those people may end up actually getting little credit for it because maybe they weren't the ones who did use that data set to answer a specific question. But if they're left in the dust, no one will do that job. Right. And so [00:18:30] we need to acknowledge that these tasks are actually becoming a central part of the intellectual effort of research. And maybe one point that is worth mentioning in this context of incentives and careers is that we as the institution of academic science in a broad sense, are facing the challenge today that these career paths and these kinds of intersectional problems and data science are right now extremely highly valued by industry. [00:19:00] What we're seeing today with this problem is genuinely of a different scale and different enough to merit attention and consideration in its own right. Because what's happening is the people who have this intersection of skills and talents and competencies are extraordinarily well regarded by the industry right now, especially here in the bay area. Speaker 4: I know the companies that are trying to hire and I know that people were going there and the good ones can effectively name their price if they can name their price to go into contexts that are not [00:19:30] boring. A lot of the problems that industry has right now with data are actually genuinely interesting problems and they often have datasets that we in academia actually have no access to because it turns out that these days the amount of data that is being generated by web activity, by Apps, by personal devices that create an upload data is actually spectacular. And some of those data sets are really rich and complex and material for interesting work. And Industry also has the resources, the computational resources, the backend, the engineering expertise [00:20:00] to do interesting work on those problems. And so we as an academic institution are facing the challenge that we are making it very difficult for these people to find a space at the university. Yet they are critical to the success of modern data driven research and discovery and yet across the street they are being courted by an industry that isn't just offering them money to do boring work. It's actually offering them respect, yes, compensation, but also respect and intellectual space and a community that values their work and that's something [00:20:30] that is genuinely an issue for us to consider. Speaker 4: Is there a way to cross pollinate between the academic side and industry and work together on building a toolkit? Absolutely. We've had great success in that regard in the last decade with the space that I'm most embedded in, which is the space of open source scientific computing tools in python. We have a licensing model for most of the tools in our space that [00:21:00] is open source but allows for a very easy industry we use and what we find is that that has enabled a very healthy two way dialogue between industry and academia in this context. Yes, industry users, our tools, and they often use them in a proprietary context, but they use them for their own problems and for building their own domain specific products and whatever, but when they want to contribute to the base tool, the base layer if you will, it's much [00:21:30] easier for them. Speaker 4: They simply make the improvements out in the open or they just donate resources. They donate money. Microsoft research last year made $100,000 donation to the python project, which was strictly a donation. This was not a grant to develop any specific feature. This was a blanket, hey, we use your tools and they help what we build and so we would like to support you and we've had a very productive relationship with them in the past, but it's by, not by no means the only one you're at Berkeley. The amp lab was two co-directors are actually part of the team [00:22:00] that is working on bids, a young story and Mike Franklin, the AMPLab has a very large set of tools for data analytics at scale that is now widely used at Twitter and Facebook and many other places. They have industry oriented conferences around their tools. Now they have an annual conference they run twice per year. Large bootcamps, large fractions of their attendees come from industry because industry is using all of these tools and the am Platt has currently more of its funding [00:22:30] comes from industry than it comes from sources like the NSF. And so I think there are, there are actually very, very clear and unambiguous examples of models where the open source work that is coming out of our research universities can have a highly productive and valuable dialogue with the industry. Speaker 3: It seems like long term he would have a real uphill battle to create enough competent people with data trained to [00:23:00] quench both industry and academia so that there would be a, a calming of the flow out of academia. Speaker 4: As we've said a couple of times in our discussions, this is a problem. Uh, it's a very, very challenging set of problems that we've signed up for it, but we feel that it's a problem worth failing on in the sense that we, we know the challenges is, is a steep one. But at the same time, the questions are important enough to be worth making the effort. Speaker 6: [inaudible] [00:23:30] don't miss part two of this interview in two weeks and on the next edition of spectrum spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We've created a simple link for the link is tiny url.com/kalx specter. Now, if you're the science and technology events happen, Speaker 3: I mean locally over the next two weeks, [00:24:00] enabling a sustainable energy infrastructure is the title of David Color's presentation. On Wednesday, April 9th David Color is the faculty director of [inaudible] for Energy and the chair of computer science at UC Berkeley. He was selected in scientific American top 50 researchers and technology review 10 technologies that will change the world. His research addresses networks of small embedded wireless devices, planetary scale Internet services, parallel computer architecture, [00:24:30] parallel programming languages, and high-performance communications. This event is free and will be held in Satara Dye Hall Beneteau Auditorium. Wednesday, April 9th at noon. Cal Day is April 12th 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM 357 events for details. Go to the website, cal day.berkeley.edu a lunar eclipse Monday April 14th at 11:00 PM [00:25:00] look through astronomical telescopes at the Lawrence Hall of science to observe the first total lunar eclipse for the bay area since 2011 this is for the night owls among us UC students, staff and faculty are admitted. Speaker 3: Free. General admissions is $10 drought and deluge how applied hydro informatics are becoming standard operating data for all Californians is the title of Joshua Vere's presentation. On Wednesday, [00:25:30] April 16th Joshua veers joined the citrus leadership as the director at UC Merced said in August, 2013 prior to this, Dr Veers has been serving in a research capacity at UC Davis for 10 years since receiving his phd in ecology. This event is free and will be held in Soutar Dye Hall and Beneteau Auditorium Wednesday, April 16th at noon. A feature of spectrum is to present news stories we find interesting here are to. [00:26:00] This story relates to today's interview on big data. On Tuesday, April 1st a workshop titled Big Data Values and governance was held at UC Berkeley. The workshop was hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the UC Berkeley School of Information and the Berkeley Center for law and technology. The day long workshop examined policy and governance questions raised by the use of large and complex data sets and sophisticated analytics to [00:26:30] fuel decision making across all sectors of the economy, academia and government for panels. Speaker 3: Each an hour and a half long framed the issues of values and governance. A webcast. This workshop will be available from the ice school webpage by today or early next week. That's ice school.berkeley.edu vast gene expression map yields neurological and environmental stress insights. Dan Kraits [00:27:00] writing for the Lawrence Berkeley Lab News Center reports a consortium of scientists led by Susan Cell Knicker of Berkeley's labs. Life Sciences Division has conducted the largest survey yet of how information and code it in an animal genome is processed in different organs, stages of development and environmental conditions. Their findings paint a new picture of how genes function in the nervous system and in response to environmental stress. The scientists [00:27:30] studied the fruit fly, an important model organism in genetics research in all organisms. The information encoded in genomes is transcribed into RNA molecules that are either translated into proteins or utilized to perform functions in the cell. The collection of RNA molecules expressed in a cell is known as its transcriptome, which can be thought of as the readout of the genome. Speaker 3: While the genome is essentially [00:28:00] the same in every cell in our bodies, the transcriptome is different in each cell type and consistently changing cells in cardiac tissue are radically different from those in the gut or the brain. For example, Ben Brown of Berkeley Labs said, our study indicates that the total information output of an animal transcriptome is heavily weighted by the needs of the developing nervous system. The scientists also discovered a much broader [00:28:30] response to stress than previously recognized exposure to heavy metals like cadmium resulted in the activation of known stress response pathways that prevent damage to DNA and proteins. It also revealed several new genes of completely unknown function. Speaker 7: You can [inaudible]. Hmm. Speaker 3: The music or during the show [00:29:00] was [inaudible] Speaker 5: produced by Alex Simon. Today's interview with [inaudible] Rao about the show. Please send them to us spectrum [00:29:30] dot kalx@yahoo.com same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cathryn Carson is an Assoc Prof of History, and the Ops Lead of the Social Sciences D- Lab at UC Berkeley. Fernando Perez is a research scientist at the Henry H. Wheeler Jr. Brain Imaging Center at U.C. Berkeley. Berkeley Institute for Data Science.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science [00:00:30] 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: Hi, good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show this week on spectrum we present part one of our two part series on big data at cal. The Berkeley Institute for Data Science or bids is only [00:01:00] four months old. Two people involved with shaping the institute are Catherine Carson and Fernando Perez and they are our guests. Catherine Carson is an associate professor of history and associate dean of social sciences and the operational lead of the social sciences data lab at UC Berkeley. Fernando Perez is a research scientist at the Henry H. Wheeler Jr Brain imaging center at UC Berkeley. He created the ipython project while a graduate student in 2001 [00:01:30] and continues to lead the project here is part one, Catherine Carson and Fernando Perez. Welcome to spectrum. Thanks for having us and I wanted to get from both of you a little bit of a short summary about the work you're doing now that you just sort of your activity that predates your interest in data science. Speaker 4: Data Science is kind of an Ale defined term I think and it's still an open question precisely what it is, but in a certain sense all of my research has been probably under the umbrella [00:02:00] of what we call today data science since the start. I did my phd in particle physics but it was computational in particle physics and I was doing data analysis in that case of models that were competitionally created. So I've sort of been doing this really since I was a graduate student. What has changed over time is the breadth of disciplines that are interested in these kinds of problems in these kinds of tools and that have these kinds of questions. In physics. This has been kind of a common way of working on writing for a long time. Sort of the deep intersection [00:02:30] between computational tools and large data sets, whether they were created by models or collected experimentally is something that has a long history in physics. Speaker 4: How long the first computers were created to solve differential equations, to plot the trajectories of ballistic missiles. I was one of the very first tasks that's computers were created for so almost since the dawn of coats and so it's really only recently though that the size of the data sets has really jumped. Yes, the size has grown very, [00:03:00] very large in the last couple of decades, especially in the last decade, but I think it's important to not get too hung up on the issue of size because I think when we talk about data science, I like to define it rather in the context of data that is large for the traditional framework tools and conceptual kind of structure of a given discipline rather than it's raw absolute size because yes, in physics for example, we have some of the largest data sets in existence, things like what the LHC creates [00:03:30] for the Higgs Boson. Those data sets are just absolute, absurdly large, but in a given discipline, five megabytes of data might be a lot depending on what it is that you're trying to ask. And so I think it's more, it's much, much more important to think of data that has grown larger than a given discipline was used in manipulating and that therefore poses interesting challenges for that given domain rather than being completely focused on the raw size of the data. Speaker 1: I approached this from an angle that's actually complimentary to Fernando in part because [00:04:00] my job as the interim director of the social sciences data laboratory is not to do data science but to provide the infrastructure, the setting for researchers across the social sciences here who are doing that for themselves. And exactly in the social sciences you see a nice exemplification of the challenge of larger sizes of data than were previously used and new kinds of data as well. So the social sciences are starting to pick up say on [00:04:30] sensor data that has been placed in environmental settings in order to monitor human behavior. And social scientists can then use that in order to design tests around it or to develop ways of interpreting it to answer research questions that are not necessarily anticipated by the folks who put the sensors in place or accessing data that comes out of human interactions online, which is created for entirely different purposes [00:05:00] but makes it possible for social scientists to understand things about human social networks. Speaker 1: So the challenges of building capacity for disciplines to move into new scales of data sets and new kinds of data sets. So one of the ones that I've been seeing as I've been building up d lab and that we've jointly been seeing as we tried to help scope out what the task of the Berkeley Institute for data science is going to be. How about the emergence [00:05:30] of data science? Do you have a sense of the timeline when you started to take note of its feasibility for social sciences? Irrespective of physics, which has a longer history. One of the places that's been driving the conversations in social sciences, actually the funding regime in that the existing beautifully curated data sets that we have from the post World War Two period survey data, principally administrative data on top of that, [00:06:00] those are extremely expensive to produce and to curate and maintain. Speaker 1: And as the social sciences in the last only five to 10 years have been weighing the portfolio of data sources that are supported by funding agencies. We've been forced to confront the fact that the maintenance of the post World War Two regime of surveying may not be feasible into the future and that we're going to have to be shifting to other kinds of data that are generated [00:06:30] for other purposes and repurposing and reusing it, finding new ways to, to cut it and slice it in order to answer new kinds of questions that weren't also accessible to the old surveys. So one way to approach it is through the infrastructure that's needed to generate the data that we're looking at. Another way is simply to look at the infrastructure on campus. One of the launching impetuses for the social sciences data laboratory was in fact the budget cuts of 2009 [00:07:00] here on campus. When we acknowledged that if we were going to support cutting edge methodologically innovative social science on this campus, that we were going to need to find ways to repurpose existing assets and redirect them towards whatever this new frontier in social science is going to be. Speaker 5: You were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley, Catherine Carson and Fernando Perez, our guests. [00:07:30] They are part of the Berkeley Institute for data science known as big [inaudible]. Speaker 4: Fernando, you sort of gave us a generalized definition of data science. Do you want to give it another go just in case you evoke something else? Sure. I want to leave that question slightly on answer because I feel that to some extent, one of the challenges we have as an intellectual effort that we're trying to tackle at the Brooklyn [00:08:00] instead for data science is precisely working on what this field is. Right. I don't want to presuppose that we have a final answer on this question, but at least we, we do know that we have some elements to frame the question and I think it's mostly about an intersection. It's about an intersection of things that were being done already on their own, but that were being done often in isolation. So it's the intersection of methodological work whereby that, I mean things like statistical theory, applied mathematics, computer science, [00:08:30] algorithm development, all of the computational and theoretical mathematical machinery that has been done traditionally, the questions arising from domain disciplines that may have models that may have data sets, that may have sensors that may have a telescope or that may have a gene sequencing array and where are they have their own theoretical models of their organisms or galaxies or whatever it is and where that data can be inscribed and the fact that tools need to be built. Speaker 4: Does data doesn't get analyzed by blackboards? Those data gets analyzed by software, but this is software that is deeply woven [00:09:00] into the fabric of these other two spaces, right? It's software that has to be written with the knowledge of the questions and the discipline and the domain and also with the knowledge of the methodology, the theory. It's that intersection of this triad of things of concrete representation in computational machinery, abstract ideas and methodologies and domain questions that in many ways creates something new when the work has to be done simultaneously with enough depth and enough rigor on all [00:09:30] of these three directions and precisely that intersection is where now the bottleneck is proving to be because you can have the ideas, you can have the questions, you can have the data, you can have the the fear m's, but if you can't put it all together into working concrete tools that you can use efficiently and with a reasonably rapid turnaround, you will not be able to move forward. You will not be able to answer the questions you want to answer about your given discipline and so that embodiment of that intersection is I think where the challenge is opposed. Maybe there is something new called [00:10:00] data science. I'd actually like to suggest that Speaker 1: the indefinable character of data science is actually not a negative because it's an intersection in a way that we're all still very much struggling. How to define it. I won't underplay that exactly in that it's an intersection. It points to the fact that it's not an intellectual thing that we're trying to get our heads around. It's a platform for activity for doing kinds of research that are either enabled or hindered by the [00:10:30] existing institutional and social structures that the research is getting done in, and so if you think of it less as a kind of concept or an intellectual construct and more of a space where people come together, either a physical space or a methodological sharing space, you realize that the indefinable ness is a way of inviting people in rather than drawing clear boundaries around it and saying, we know what this is. It is x and not Speaker 4: why [00:11:00] Berkeley Institute for data science is that where it comes in this invitation, this collection of people and the intersection. That's sort of the goal of it. Speaker 1: That's what we've been asked to build it as not as uh, an institute in the traditional sense of there are folks inside and outside, but in the sense of a meeting point and a crossing site for folks across campus. That's [00:11:30] something that's been put in front of us by the two foundations who have invested in a significant sum of money in us. That's the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred p Sloan Foundation. And it's also become an inspiring vision for those of us who have been engaged in the process over the last year and a half of envisioning what it might be. It's an attempt to address the doing of data science as an intersectional area within a research university that has existing structures [00:12:00] and silos and boundaries within it. Speaker 4: And to some extent you try to deconstruct the silos and leverage the work done by one group, share it with another, you know, the concrete mechanisms are things that we're still very much working on it and we will see how it unfolds. There's even a physical element that reflects this idea of being at a crossroads, which is that the university was willing to commit to [inaudible] the physical space of one room in the main doe library, which is not only physically [00:12:30] at the center of the university and that is very important because it does mean that it is quite literally at the crossroads. It is one central point where many of us walk by frequently, so it's a space that is inviting in that sense too to encounters, to stopping by to having easy collaboration rather than being in some far edge corner of the campus. Speaker 4: But also intellectually the library is traditionally the store of the cultural and scientific memory of an institution. And so building this space in the library is a way of signaling [00:13:00] to our community that it is meant to be a point of encounter and how specifically those encounters will be embodied and what concrete mechanisms of sharing tools, sharing coach, showing data, having lecture series, having joint projects. We're in the process of imagining all of that and we're absolutely certain that we'll make some mistakes along the way, but that is very much the intent is to have something which is by design about as openly and as explicitly collaborative as we can make it and I think [00:13:30] in that sense we are picking up on many of the lessons that Catherine and her team at the d lab have already learned because the d lab has been in operation here in Barrows Hall for about a year and has already done many things in that direction and that at least I personally see them as things in the spirit of what bids is attempting to do at the scale of the entire institution. D Lab has been kind of blazing that trail already for the last year in the context of the social sciences and to the point where their impact has actually spread beyond the social sciences because so many of the things that they were doing or were [00:14:00] found to have very thirsty customers for the particular brand of lemonade that they were selling here at the lab. And their impact has already spread beyond the social sciences. But we hope to take a lot of these lessons and build them with a broader scope. Speaker 1: And in the same way BYD sits at the center of other existing organizations, entities, programs on campus, which are also deeply engaged in data science. And some of them are research centers, others of them are the data science masters program in the School of information where [00:14:30] there is a strong and deliberate attempt to think through how in a intelligent way to train people for outside the university doing data science. So all of these centers of excellence on campus have the potential to get networked in, in a much more synergistic way with the existence of bids with is not encompassing by any means. All of the great work that's getting done in teaching research around data science on this campus Speaker 6: [00:15:00] spectrum is a public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley. Our guests are Cathryn Carson and Fernando Perez. In the next segment they talk about challenges in Berkeley Institute for Data Science Phase Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 3: and it seems that that eScience does happen best in teams and multidisciplinary [00:15:30] teams or is that not really the case? Speaker 1: I think we've been working on that assumption in part because it seems too much to ask of any individual to do all the things at once. At the same time, we do have many specimens of individuals who cross the boundaries of the three areas that Fernando was sketching out as domain area expertise, hacking skills and methodological competence. [00:16:00] And it's interesting to think through the intersectional individuals as well. But that said, the default assumption I think is going to have to be that teamwork collaboration and actually all of the social engineering to make that possible is going to be necessary for data science to flourish. And again, that's one of the challenges of working in a research university setting where teamwork is sometimes prized and sometimes deprecated. Speaker 4: That goes back to the incentive people building tools don't necessarily get much attention, [00:16:30] prestige from that. How do you defeat that on an institutional level within the institute or just the community? Ask us in five years if we had any success. That's one of the central challenges that we have and it's not only here at Berkeley, this is actually, there's kind of an ongoing worldwide conversation happening about this every few days. There's another article where this issue keeps being brought up again and again and it's raising in volume. The business of creating tools is becoming actually an increasing [00:17:00] part of the job of people doing science. And so for example, even young faculty who are on the tenure track are finding themselves kind of pushed against the wall because they're finding themselves writing a lot of tools and building a lot of software and having to do it collaboratively and having to engage others and picking up all of these skills and this being an important central part of their work. Speaker 4: But they feel that if their tenure committee is only going to look at their publication record and [00:17:30] 80% of their actual time went into building these things, they are effectively being shortchanged for their effort. And this is a difficult conversation. What are we going to do about it? We have a bunch of ideas. We are going to try many things. I think it's a conversation that has to happen at many levels. Some agencies are beginning, the NSF recently changed the terms of its biosketch requirements for example. And now the section that used to be called relevant publications is called relevant publications and other research outcomes. And in parentheses they explained such as software [00:18:00] projects, et cetera. So this is beginning to change the community that cure rates. For example, large data sets. That's a community that has very similar concerns. It turns out that working on a rich and complex data set may be a Labor that requires years of intensive work and that'd be maybe for a full time endeavor for someone. Speaker 4: And yet those people may end up actually getting little credit for it because maybe they weren't the ones who did use that data set to answer a specific question. But if they're left in the dust, no one will do that job. Right. And so [00:18:30] we need to acknowledge that these tasks are actually becoming a central part of the intellectual effort of research. And maybe one point that is worth mentioning in this context of incentives and careers is that we as the institution of academic science in a broad sense, are facing the challenge today that these career paths and these kinds of intersectional problems and data science are right now extremely highly valued by industry. [00:19:00] What we're seeing today with this problem is genuinely of a different scale and different enough to merit attention and consideration in its own right. Because what's happening is the people who have this intersection of skills and talents and competencies are extraordinarily well regarded by the industry right now, especially here in the bay area. Speaker 4: I know the companies that are trying to hire and I know that people were going there and the good ones can effectively name their price if they can name their price to go into contexts that are not [00:19:30] boring. A lot of the problems that industry has right now with data are actually genuinely interesting problems and they often have datasets that we in academia actually have no access to because it turns out that these days the amount of data that is being generated by web activity, by Apps, by personal devices that create an upload data is actually spectacular. And some of those data sets are really rich and complex and material for interesting work. And Industry also has the resources, the computational resources, the backend, the engineering expertise [00:20:00] to do interesting work on those problems. And so we as an academic institution are facing the challenge that we are making it very difficult for these people to find a space at the university. Yet they are critical to the success of modern data driven research and discovery and yet across the street they are being courted by an industry that isn't just offering them money to do boring work. It's actually offering them respect, yes, compensation, but also respect and intellectual space and a community that values their work and that's something [00:20:30] that is genuinely an issue for us to consider. Speaker 4: Is there a way to cross pollinate between the academic side and industry and work together on building a toolkit? Absolutely. We've had great success in that regard in the last decade with the space that I'm most embedded in, which is the space of open source scientific computing tools in python. We have a licensing model for most of the tools in our space that [00:21:00] is open source but allows for a very easy industry we use and what we find is that that has enabled a very healthy two way dialogue between industry and academia in this context. Yes, industry users, our tools, and they often use them in a proprietary context, but they use them for their own problems and for building their own domain specific products and whatever, but when they want to contribute to the base tool, the base layer if you will, it's much [00:21:30] easier for them. Speaker 4: They simply make the improvements out in the open or they just donate resources. They donate money. Microsoft research last year made $100,000 donation to the python project, which was strictly a donation. This was not a grant to develop any specific feature. This was a blanket, hey, we use your tools and they help what we build and so we would like to support you and we've had a very productive relationship with them in the past, but it's by, not by no means the only one you're at Berkeley. The amp lab was two co-directors are actually part of the team [00:22:00] that is working on bids, a young story and Mike Franklin, the AMPLab has a very large set of tools for data analytics at scale that is now widely used at Twitter and Facebook and many other places. They have industry oriented conferences around their tools. Now they have an annual conference they run twice per year. Large bootcamps, large fractions of their attendees come from industry because industry is using all of these tools and the am Platt has currently more of its funding [00:22:30] comes from industry than it comes from sources like the NSF. And so I think there are, there are actually very, very clear and unambiguous examples of models where the open source work that is coming out of our research universities can have a highly productive and valuable dialogue with the industry. Speaker 3: It seems like long term he would have a real uphill battle to create enough competent people with data trained to [00:23:00] quench both industry and academia so that there would be a, a calming of the flow out of academia. Speaker 4: As we've said a couple of times in our discussions, this is a problem. Uh, it's a very, very challenging set of problems that we've signed up for it, but we feel that it's a problem worth failing on in the sense that we, we know the challenges is, is a steep one. But at the same time, the questions are important enough to be worth making the effort. Speaker 6: [inaudible] [00:23:30] don't miss part two of this interview in two weeks and on the next edition of spectrum spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We've created a simple link for the link is tiny url.com/kalx specter. Now, if you're the science and technology events happen, Speaker 3: I mean locally over the next two weeks, [00:24:00] enabling a sustainable energy infrastructure is the title of David Color's presentation. On Wednesday, April 9th David Color is the faculty director of [inaudible] for Energy and the chair of computer science at UC Berkeley. He was selected in scientific American top 50 researchers and technology review 10 technologies that will change the world. His research addresses networks of small embedded wireless devices, planetary scale Internet services, parallel computer architecture, [00:24:30] parallel programming languages, and high-performance communications. This event is free and will be held in Satara Dye Hall Beneteau Auditorium. Wednesday, April 9th at noon. Cal Day is April 12th 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM 357 events for details. Go to the website, cal day.berkeley.edu a lunar eclipse Monday April 14th at 11:00 PM [00:25:00] look through astronomical telescopes at the Lawrence Hall of science to observe the first total lunar eclipse for the bay area since 2011 this is for the night owls among us UC students, staff and faculty are admitted. Speaker 3: Free. General admissions is $10 drought and deluge how applied hydro informatics are becoming standard operating data for all Californians is the title of Joshua Vere's presentation. On Wednesday, [00:25:30] April 16th Joshua veers joined the citrus leadership as the director at UC Merced said in August, 2013 prior to this, Dr Veers has been serving in a research capacity at UC Davis for 10 years since receiving his phd in ecology. This event is free and will be held in Soutar Dye Hall and Beneteau Auditorium Wednesday, April 16th at noon. A feature of spectrum is to present news stories we find interesting here are to. [00:26:00] This story relates to today's interview on big data. On Tuesday, April 1st a workshop titled Big Data Values and governance was held at UC Berkeley. The workshop was hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the UC Berkeley School of Information and the Berkeley Center for law and technology. The day long workshop examined policy and governance questions raised by the use of large and complex data sets and sophisticated analytics to [00:26:30] fuel decision making across all sectors of the economy, academia and government for panels. Speaker 3: Each an hour and a half long framed the issues of values and governance. A webcast. This workshop will be available from the ice school webpage by today or early next week. That's ice school.berkeley.edu vast gene expression map yields neurological and environmental stress insights. Dan Kraits [00:27:00] writing for the Lawrence Berkeley Lab News Center reports a consortium of scientists led by Susan Cell Knicker of Berkeley's labs. Life Sciences Division has conducted the largest survey yet of how information and code it in an animal genome is processed in different organs, stages of development and environmental conditions. Their findings paint a new picture of how genes function in the nervous system and in response to environmental stress. The scientists [00:27:30] studied the fruit fly, an important model organism in genetics research in all organisms. The information encoded in genomes is transcribed into RNA molecules that are either translated into proteins or utilized to perform functions in the cell. The collection of RNA molecules expressed in a cell is known as its transcriptome, which can be thought of as the readout of the genome. Speaker 3: While the genome is essentially [00:28:00] the same in every cell in our bodies, the transcriptome is different in each cell type and consistently changing cells in cardiac tissue are radically different from those in the gut or the brain. For example, Ben Brown of Berkeley Labs said, our study indicates that the total information output of an animal transcriptome is heavily weighted by the needs of the developing nervous system. The scientists also discovered a much broader [00:28:30] response to stress than previously recognized exposure to heavy metals like cadmium resulted in the activation of known stress response pathways that prevent damage to DNA and proteins. It also revealed several new genes of completely unknown function. Speaker 7: You can [inaudible]. Hmm. Speaker 3: The music or during the show [00:29:00] was [inaudible] Speaker 5: produced by Alex Simon. Today's interview with [inaudible] Rao about the show. Please send them to us spectrum [00:29:30] dot kalx@yahoo.com same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This episode was recorded 16 May 2013 live and in person at Omni's offices overlooking Lake Union in Seattle. You can download the m4a file or subscribe in iTunes. (Or subscribe to the podcast feed.) Greg Robbins is Graphing Calculator co-author (a story you should already know about, that we don't go over again) and has done such diverse things as bringing translucency to the Mac OS Drag Manager (way back in the '90s), and writing an open source Objective-C library for Google Data APIs. You can follow Greg on Twitter. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Easily create beautiful websites via drag-and-drop. Get help any time from their 24/7 technical support. Create responsive websites — ready for phones and tablets — without any extra effort: Squarespace's designers have already handled it for you. Get 10% off by going to http://squarespace.com/therecord. And, if you want to get under the hood, check out their APIs at developers.squarespace.com. This episode is also sponsored by Microsoft Azure Mobile Services. Mobile Services is a great way to provide backend services — syncing and other things — for your iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps. If you've been to the website already, you've seen the tutorials where you input code into a browser window. And that's an easy way to get started. But don't be fooled: Mobile Services is deep. You can write in your favorite text editor and deploy via Git. Regular-old Git, not Git#++. Git. Things we mention, in order of appearance (pretty much): Real Networks Graphing Calculator Google Ira Glass on Graphing Calculator Drag Manager Translucency Mac OS 7.5.3 Drag Manager Alpha channels Quartz CopyBits Black and white displays 68K computers PowerPC Blitting Desktop Pictures 1995 NeXT Omni Assembly language DTS Newton Teletypes Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science Apple II 1979 Mainframe Concentration Busboy Nolo Press ComputerLand Beagle Bros. Integer BASIC 80-column cards Apple II Plus Apple II Technical Manual Homebrew computers RF Interference Apple II GS Non-Apple Machines 6502 Assembly Missile Command 1992 NASA Neural networks Robert Hecht-Nielsen 1980s Voice recognition Earth Observing System Goddard Space Flight Center comp.sys.mac Pascal C Macintosh Progammers Workshop (MPW) Lightspeed C / THINK C Lightspeed Pascal CodeWarrior PowerPC transition Toolbox Inside Mac Macintosh Programmers Toolbox Assistant QuickView Hypercard How to Write Macintosh software by Scott Knaster 1990s eMate Apple QuickTake Secret About Box Easter eggs Breakout in 7.5 Herman the Iguana Pointers Ron Avitzur Airplay Front Row Windows Vista Microsoft Office Adobe Photoshop Seattle RealPlayer 1998 Rob Glaser Macworld Conference Marching extensions Casady & Greene's Conflict Catcher Carbon Cocoa 2002 WinAmp Appearance Manager Kaleidoscope Copland InternetWorld 1997 OpenDoc Dave Winer Quickdraw GX Apple Open Collaborative Environment (AOCE) iCloud LLVM Instruments Microsoft Visual Studio ARC C# Xcode Eclipse QuickTime Project Builder Google Desktop Spotlight Google Maps for iOS 2005 Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) RSS Google Reader Google Keep Self-driving cars Google Glass Big data Google Data APIs for Objective-C XML OAuth

Pioneers in Engineering is a UC Berkeley student-run project that provides STEM outreach in local high schools. PIE sponsors and supports a Spring semester robot competition. Guests include Vivek Nedyavila, Andrew Vanderburg, and David Huang. pioneers.berkeley.eduTranscriptsSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [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: Hi and good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with representatives of Pioneers and engineering, also known as Pi, [00:01:00] a UC Berkeley student run project. Since 2008 Pi has been doing stem outreach in bay area high schools, Pi sponsors and supports and annual spring semester robot competition, high school teams design, build and operate robots over seven weeks culminating in a thrilling final competition at the Lawrence Hall of Science Pineys UC Berkeley students to be mentors during this year as robot competition. Each [00:01:30] team gets a set of mentors to encourage and guide the team, helping them to realize their potential, explaining Pi, the stem outreach they do and why you may want to join our Vivek Nay Diallo Vala, Andrew Vanderburg and David Hawaiian onto the interview. I want to welcome you all to spectrum. And would you introduce yourselves and tell us what your major is? Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Vivek. I'm a UX major, electrical engineering and [00:02:00] computer sciences. I'm a junior. Speaker 4: I'm Andrew. I'm a senior physics and astronomy major. Speaker 3: Hi, my name is David. I'm a fourth year apply math and computer science major. Andrew, can you explain the history and goals of Pioneers and engineering? Speaker 4: Sure, so pioneer's engineering was founded in 2008 by Berkeley engineers. The general idea is that while there are a lot of good robotics competitions that provide science outreach to high school students, [00:02:30] a lot of them aren't very good at providing outreach to the students who need it. Most. The ones in the underprivileged schools. So pioneers in engineering or pie as we like to call it, is focusing on trying to provide that outreach. So we try to make it more sustainable so that they don't have to pay as much money every year and they don't have to have corporate sponsors. And we also try to make it more friendly so that they don't have to go out and search for their own mentors. They get their own mentors from UC Berkeley and we provide [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:03:00] And how did you decide on robots as the focus of your engineering challenge? Speaker 4: I think that robots are kind of a gimmick. They're cool, they're exciting and they have a lot of pop culture and references. But the lessons that we teach them could be applied to engineering, all sorts of different things. Perhaps we could do a science competition and get the same teaching out of it. Robots just provide something exciting. They provide a hook and they provide a climactic final competition where they can [00:03:30] have their robots, you know, compete head to head. [inaudible] Speaker 1: there is a certain kit aspect to what you're doing with the robots in terms of a known entity. A constraint. Speaker 4: Yeah. So we um, give them a very well-defined kit of parts which they can use so they don't have to start from scratch because building a robot from basic electronic components and pieces of metal or plywood is really hard. So we give them a good start. We give [00:04:00] them a kit which they can build upon. They don't have to do all of the electronics. They don't have to do a lot of the tedious work, but they can do something really cool with them in the end. Speaker 1: What's the funding source that you use for this competition? Speaker 4: We see corporate sponsorships. We go to companies like Google, Qualcomm, Boeing, and we ask them if they can support us, if they can. We advertise for them. We put their logos on our banners and our tee shirts [00:04:30] and they also get deductions for supporting charitable causes. [inaudible] Speaker 1: and are you a club? What is your organizational status? Speaker 4: We are technically a project of Tau Beta Pi, which is the engineering honor society and our finances and our organization go through them. Many of our members have or no, not affiliated with Beta Pi. They are recruited by us Speaker 1: beside the robot competition. Are there other projects within Pi [00:05:00] that you're working on? We have a team that actually goes to a high school called Ralph Bunche High School in West Oakland and this team does a program called Pie prep for these kids in which they have 13 or 14 modules of stem outreach kind of and they basically teach them cool things about science and technology and a little bit about robotics and physics and stuff like that and it's, it's once a week. It's intended to be fun and just spark their interest and also give them [00:05:30] a little bit of theoretical knowledge. This has been going very well this semester and from the results in the surveys that we've been taking, we're most likely gonna ramp it up next fall to even more schools. The exact number, we're not sure, but it's going to continue ramping up in the next few years and hopefully touch in the realm of 1314 schools in the area. We're hoping that this is going to be a very successful program and also inspire more interest in our robotics competition for the so we can have something good going on in the fall. It's [00:06:00] something in interest spring so it's like a year round kind of thing. Speaker 3: This is spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Today's topic is pioneers in engineering. Three representatives from Pi join us. They are Vivek, Andrew and David. Andrew. How is it that high school's become involved in the [00:06:30] competition? Speaker 4: We do a lot of recruiting into high schools who fit our core mission, the ones who probably wouldn't be able to compete sustainably and the other robotics competitions that are out there. So we contact teachers and the sciences and we ask them if they're interested and if their students are interested in putting together a team and then they apply for a team and if we have room we'll take them. Speaker 3: What is the limit on teams? You have a capacity issue. Speaker 4: Yeah. We have a limit of about 20 teams could be up as many as 24 this year and the limitations [00:07:00] are put in place by our ability to produce kits and to provide mentors for them. We would rather have a good competition with 25 teams than one that stretched too thin with 35 Speaker 3: and do schools stick with it. Speaker 4: There is a core group of schools who seem to be building up somewhat of a legacy. They'll come back year after year. We actually just had our first student who is a four year high school participant in Pi Join Pi as a staff member [00:07:30] in college. Speaker 3: Great. That's the goal, right? In a way that's sort of the ideal. Andrew, when the teams are picked, they're picked by the teachers at the high schools. Speaker 4: The teams are I guess collected by the teachers at the high school, but they're based on interest. We've in the past tried to limit the number of people on the team, but we're moving away from that because um, we have a lot more mentors than we have in the past. Speaker 3: How do you try to keep the parody of the experience within [00:08:00] the teams and the resources that they have access to the equipment, the time spent? How do you, how do you try to balance all that? Keep everybody kind of on the same level. Speaker 4: So there are teams who have access to a machine shop in their high school and we can't provide that to everyone. But we do provide as a basic set of tools to anyone who wants them. We loan them out if they want to go to the high school and work with their team. And sometimes the high schools come to UC Berkeley and they can use our tools and our workspace in O'Brian Hall [00:08:30] in north side, we also try to ration the experience level of the mentors. We tried to provide the more experienced mentors to the less experienced teams. As a general rule, we try to provide equal experience and different types of engineering to each school. So each school should hope to have a mechanical engineer or someone who's mechanically inclined and someone who is electrically inclined or programming inclined. Speaker 1: And the number of mentors per team. Last year it ranged between four to six [00:09:00] of AVEC. Talk about your experience as a mentor on the robot competition. My experience at Ralph Bunche high school mentoring and was a series of ups and downs. But in the end it kind of culminated in something special. So started off with a few weeks of mentorship prep by um, Andrew and his mentorship team. They prepped us for what we would encounter a little bit of the social aspect of the kids, but mostly about the uh, technical mentorship. Ralph [00:09:30] onto high is a rather underprivileged high school in West Oakland. There were only three of them in the team and we had to struggle with people dropping out, people coming in because of the small size of the team, small quarrels that were involved, a lot of social issues that we were not as equipped for as mentors coming from UC Berkeley. Speaker 1: Um, not to mention the social barrier itself of where we have all come from in our lives compared to where these kids have come from. And [00:10:00] it was a really interesting experience for me because I actually have had a little bit of experience with kids from underprivileged backgrounds and the experience that I had in pulling my mentorship team into it with me trying to get everyone on the same page with these kids to not get frustrated with them, to not unequivocally say something and like have it mar the rest of our mentorship semesters. So it was a journey and it ended up being very rewarding, um, in the sense that [00:10:30] we got second place in the robotics competition and this team of three kids who were definitely the underdogs and it was just, you know, one of those quintessential underdog stories. They ended up getting second place and I was super proud of them. Speaker 1: So very rewarding experience. David, tell us about your experience last year as a mentor. I think the biggest and rather pleasant surprise, uh, during the tournament was at discrimination the week before and during the actual [00:11:00] tournament at the end of the season. The atmosphere was just absolutely incredible. We had, um, PAC has of spectators. We had epic music classing in the background and in both hers mining hardware. We had the scrimmage and the Lawrence Hom signs where we had to file tournament. The stage was very well prepared and when each team sent up their team members send their robot on the stage to compete. It gives you the feeling that you're these [00:11:30] stars on stage, sort of like maybe no gladiators in ancient Roman stadiums where you're the center of the attention of everyone around you and really at some level I feel like that's where colleges should be about is motivating students, motivating students, intellectual growth and also highlighting their achievements and I think in that sense Speaker 5: the Pi robotic competition has totally exceeded my expectation. I remember seeing a couple up the high school students [00:12:00] who ended up winning the competition, just crying on the stage and joy. I have no doubt that it had been a parade and really life changing experience for them. Speaker 3: Spectrum is on KALX Berkeley alternating Fridays. Today, we are talking with Vivec, Andrew and David about pioneers in engineering Speaker 1: as your involvement [00:12:30] in Pi giving you some insights into where you might want to go with your major. Speaker 4: My involvement in Pi has really been my first major experience in teaching and it turns out that teaching is a lot harder than you would think, especially teaching some of the difficult concepts that we have to do so quickly in our decal. It turns out that trying to break down the concepts into logical chunks and presenting them in a logical way is almost as hard, if not harder than learning them yourself. [00:13:00] So I found that teaching and learning to teach was a really good experience for me and it will help me presumably as I graduate and go to Grad school [inaudible] Speaker 1: because are you thinking of being a teacher? Speaker 4: I'm thinking of being hopefully a professor in the future. I hope that my experience in Pi will give me a leg up from working on that and hopefully make it easier for my students to learn in the future. Speaker 3: [inaudible] David, anything. Yeah. Speaker 5: So I try and Pi as a part of my effort to explore [00:13:30] more in computer science, which I started taking classes last year and I have to say during the course of last semesters tournament, I really enjoy working with the staff member, other fellow UC Berkeley students and Pi. And I also really enjoy working with the high school students on my team to the extent that, uh, I'm starting to look more and more into the idea of working at a technology startup. And I'm also fairly sure I'm going to do computer science as a second major along with math. [00:14:00] And so in that sense, I think it's really solidify my interests in this field. Speaker 1: VEC, how has pi affected your plans for the future? I've actually had, I guess in the last few weeks to think about this very seriously. And through talking with a number of people in Pie, I'm very, very inclined to do something kind of like this as a job in the future. Like being scientific outreach. Yeah, exactly. Scientific kind [00:14:30] of stem education. Stem outreach. Yeah. So there's um, a company called sparkfun that we have grown closer to over the last year and this is kind of exactly what they do. They have a sparkfun kit circuit skit and it's a solderless circuit skit where they can bring it to elementary, middle school classrooms and have these kids play around with circuits. They want to fund a trip across the nation teaching stuff like this to little kid. Just seeing things like this happen in the world makes me really rethink, do [00:15:00] I just want to become a fabrications engineer or something or like do I want to be a programmer or do I need something like this without there the risks are higher, but the reward, the potential reward is greater. Yeah, that's, that's how it's changed my outlook. What sort of a time commitment is there to being a Pi staffer or a mentor? Speaker 4: So being a mentor, we ask that you attend a two hour day call once a week. We ask that you mentor your teams [00:15:30] for at least two hours a week. And we also ask that you do a five minute progress report so that we know how your teams are doing. So if you add in transportation time, it's probably adds up to about six to eight hours a week of time commitment. That won't be distributed evenly necessarily because there'll be weeks where you have weekend events, which lasts all day. But I think that most peer mentors have found that the time commitment really isn't a problem because by the time that the time coming and gets large, [00:16:00] you really want to be there and it's a lot of fun. Speaker 1: And then for staff, so I know this isn't the time for staff to get involved or are you always looking for staff or is it really just at the fall? Speaker 4: So we're always looking for staff. We do need mentors more than staff at this moment, but as a staff member, the time commitment is probably larger, probably order of 10 hours a week for the seven or eight weeks around the competition. At other times it's less, more [00:16:30] of a year long job than this intense seven week period as it would be for a mentor. Speaker 1: Andrew, if you want to become a mentor, what's the process? Okay. Speaker 4: For people who are interested in being mentors to the high school students, we are going to have a mentoring decal which starts in early February. On February 4th that decal will run from six to 8:00 PM on Mondays and Thursdays. And it's once a week. You choose one of those two times and uh, you come to that, you learn [00:17:00] about robotics and then we scheduled for a seven week period starting in March time for you to go to your high schools every week. That's flexible, depends on your schedule, on the high school schedule. The final competition will wrap up around April 28th Speaker 1: and the kind of people you're looking for talk about who can be a mentor, Speaker 4: right? So we accept mentors from every background. We believe that our decal will teach them the basics that can get them [00:17:30] to help their high school students out. And we also believe that learning about engineering is not the only purpose of Pi. We think that other students from other backgrounds can contribute just as much as engineers can because in the end it's not just about teaching them to be engineers, it's about teaching them to go to college, what it's like to be in college, what it's like, enjoy learning and some of our best mentors in the past have not been engineers. Speaker 6: [inaudible]Speaker 3: [00:18:00] pioneers in engineering on spectrum detailing their stem outreach. This is k a l X. Speaker 6: [inaudible].Speaker 3: Do you all find Pi to be a real supportive community for your own personal interests as well as the collective interest of doing the competition and start with the Vac, right. [00:18:30] Then we'll go around. Speaker 1: For me it's the spirit of kind of like self-expression. You're doing something very special for these kids. It's a form of giving someone else what I had when I was a kid in the form of my dad or in the form of other people in my life who influenced me towards engineering and to motivate kids or like allow them to have that confidence in themselves. To go towards stem and at least higher education, one of the main goals of Pie. [00:19:00] Don't be afraid to apply to college and stuff like that. That form of self expression and just kind of helping these kids and self fulfillment through that, that the perk that I get, Speaker 4: I feel as if Pi is a really supportive community because even though the going is often tough as a staff member, there's a lot of pressure because he wants to deliver a good competition to the students. Everyone's willing to help each other out. And I think that it's a really good community to have around you because [00:19:30] even though we're all doing a lot of work and sometimes we can get stressed, we remember that we have each other and that we're all working towards a common goal, which is to give these students a good educational experience. And that's something that a lot of them don't get in school. Speaker 5: So coming from the perspective of surf a semi insider outsider, uh, as a pass mentor, um, I think Pi has given me the opportunity to meet a lot of other people who are similarly interested in science and engineering [00:20:00] from the perspective that these are wonderful things to learn about and to see happen in everyday life instead of just something that you learned together job. And going along that perspective, having met all these really interesting people, empire has given me more social avenues to while to hang out, for instance, for Thanksgiving or just took walk around campus and to know that there are all these people around me who are also likewise striving for a similar goal. And that's comforting to know. Speaker 3: [00:20:30] Vivek, Andrew and David, thanks very much for being on spectrum. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Speaker 2: [inaudible] now our calendar of local science and technology events over the next two weeks, Renee Rao and Ricardo [inaudible] present the calendar. Speaker 7: [00:21:00] Okay. Dr. Shannon Bennett, associate curator of microbiology at the California Academy of Sciences. We'll be hosting a lecture by HIV expert, Dr Leo Weinberger, who will discuss the engineering of a retro virus to cure HIV. While progress has been made in controlling the virus with heavy cocktails or combinations of drugs, more virulent and resistant varieties continue to arise, Weinberger will explore his idea of using the same virus that causes the disease to deliver [00:21:30] the cure. The event will be held at 12:00 PM on Saturday, January 26 tickets will be on sale at the California Academy of Sciences website, $15 for adults and seven for students or seniors. Martin Hellman, Speaker 8: the co-inventor of public key cryptography is presenting the free Stanford engineering hero lecture at the Long Engineering Center at Stanford on Tuesday, January 29th from seven to 9:00 PM [00:22:00] with reception after his talk on the wisdom of foolishness, explorers, how tilting at windmills can turn out. Well in the 1970s Homan was competing with the national security agency who had a much larger budgets than he had, and it was warned that the NSA may classify any accomplishments he made. Despite this with help from Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle, Hellman spearheaded systems that are still used to secure Chileans of dollars of financial [00:22:30] transactions a day. Visit www. That's certain.com for more info Speaker 7: east based first nerd night of 2013 we'll feature three Speakers, Daniel Cohen, a phd candidate in the joint UC Berkeley UCLA program. We'll speak about the theme of collective behavior, discussing the mechanism for everything from hurting sheep to sell your cooperation. Andrew Pike, a u Penn geologist by trade has also been [00:23:00] a contender in the competitive rock paper, Scissors League of Philadelphia. He will discuss some of the surprisingly complex strategies to the game. Lena Nielsen, the Innovation Director at the Bluhm center for developing economies at UC Berkeley. We'll explore technological solutions to extreme global problems that are also financially feasible. The event will start at eight but doors open at seven the event is held on January 28th at the new parkway located at four seven four [00:23:30] 24th street in Oakland. Science fans of all ages are welcome and can purchase the $8 tickets online. Speaker 8: On Tuesday, February 5th at 6:00 PM the Felix Block, a professor in theoretical physics at and the director of the Stanford Institute for theoretical physicist, Leonard Susskind is talking to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco located at five nine five market street. The presentation is entitled the theoretical minimum, [00:24:00] what you need to know to start doing physics Susskind. We'll discuss how to learn more about physics and how to think more like a scientist. He will provide a toolkit to help people advance at their own pace. The cost is $20 to the public, $8 to members and $7 to students. Visit www that commonwealth club.org four tickets. Speaker 7: UC Berkeley's center for emerging and neglected diseases will hold its fifth annual [00:24:30] symposium this year. A variety of Speakers will present their work in various areas of infection and host response. The theme of the symposium, the keynote Speaker, dawn Ghanem will explore new developments in malaria drugs across the world. Sarah Sawyer, another Speaker. We'll discuss what typically keeps animal viruses from infecting humans. Other topics will include emerging African biomedical research on HIV AIDS, mycobacterium [00:25:00] tuberculosis, and new testing protocols for infectious diseases in developing countries. The symposium will be held in Stanley Hall on the UC Berkeley campus on February 11th from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM it's open to anyone who registers@www.global health.berkeley.edu Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 8: [00:25:30] the two news items [inaudible] that can Renee, university of Cambridge researchers published an article in Nature Chemistry on January 20th that indicates DNA conform not only the classic double stranded Helix, but also structures that are made from four strands. It's been thought that these square shaped g quadroplex structures may form in the DNA of cells, but this paper is one of the first to provide evidence that they do exist [00:26:00] in human cells. They forum when four Guanines make a special type of hydrogen bond. Speaker 8: The telomeres that protect Chromosomal DNA are Irish and Guanine and research points to quadroplex formation. And there is evidence that suggests quadruplex formation could damage these Tila mirrors and may play a role in how certain genes contribute to cancer. The team created a simple antibody that stabilizes these g quadroplex structures and showed how the structures are [00:26:30] formed and trapped in human DNA. When describing the long term goals of the research, the team told science daily that many current cancer treatments attack DNA, but it's not clear what the rules are. We don't aware in the genome some of them react. It can be a scattergun approach. The possibility that particular cancer cells harboring genes with these motifs can now be targets and appear to be more vulnerable to interference than normal cells is that thrilling prospect. Speaker 7: Okay. A joint [00:27:00] UC Berkeley Duke University Study of couches across the nation reveals a disturbingly high percentage of our sofas contained noticeable levels of toxins. 102 couches in 27 states were examined in this study. Of these 41% were found to contain the chemical chlorinated Tris, a known carcinogen. 17% of the couches also contain Penta BDE, which can cause hormonal disruptions. While chlorinated Tris was banned [00:27:30] from use in children's clothing in the 1970s it continues to be routinely used by companies seeking to make foam furniture more fire resistant. Currently, California State Law requires a certain degree of flame retardancy, but does not require that the types or amount of chemicals used to achieve this be disclosed. Well, most cotton will or down catches are naturally flame resistant. Any foam catches will almost certainly require added chemicals to meet current standards. Last June, [00:28:00] Governor Jerry Brown advised the state legislature to reform flammability standards for furniture. Once the new regulations are adopted, the chemical free couches should be available. Speaker 2: [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. The music art during the show is by on a David from his album folk and acoustic released under [00:28:30] a creative Commons license 3.0 attributes. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. [00:29:00] Yeah. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have common staff to show, please send them to us via email. All right, email address is spectrum dot klx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks. This same time. Speaker 9: [inaudible] [00:29:30] [inaudible] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Pioneers in Engineering is a UC Berkeley student-run project that provides STEM outreach in local high schools. PIE sponsors and supports a Spring semester robot competition. Guests include Vivek Nedyavila, Andrew Vanderburg, and David Huang. pioneers.berkeley.eduTranscriptsSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [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: Hi and good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with representatives of Pioneers and engineering, also known as Pi, [00:01:00] a UC Berkeley student run project. Since 2008 Pi has been doing stem outreach in bay area high schools, Pi sponsors and supports and annual spring semester robot competition, high school teams design, build and operate robots over seven weeks culminating in a thrilling final competition at the Lawrence Hall of Science Pineys UC Berkeley students to be mentors during this year as robot competition. Each [00:01:30] team gets a set of mentors to encourage and guide the team, helping them to realize their potential, explaining Pi, the stem outreach they do and why you may want to join our Vivek Nay Diallo Vala, Andrew Vanderburg and David Hawaiian onto the interview. I want to welcome you all to spectrum. And would you introduce yourselves and tell us what your major is? Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Vivek. I'm a UX major, electrical engineering and [00:02:00] computer sciences. I'm a junior. Speaker 4: I'm Andrew. I'm a senior physics and astronomy major. Speaker 3: Hi, my name is David. I'm a fourth year apply math and computer science major. Andrew, can you explain the history and goals of Pioneers and engineering? Speaker 4: Sure, so pioneer's engineering was founded in 2008 by Berkeley engineers. The general idea is that while there are a lot of good robotics competitions that provide science outreach to high school students, [00:02:30] a lot of them aren't very good at providing outreach to the students who need it. Most. The ones in the underprivileged schools. So pioneers in engineering or pie as we like to call it, is focusing on trying to provide that outreach. So we try to make it more sustainable so that they don't have to pay as much money every year and they don't have to have corporate sponsors. And we also try to make it more friendly so that they don't have to go out and search for their own mentors. They get their own mentors from UC Berkeley and we provide [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:03:00] And how did you decide on robots as the focus of your engineering challenge? Speaker 4: I think that robots are kind of a gimmick. They're cool, they're exciting and they have a lot of pop culture and references. But the lessons that we teach them could be applied to engineering, all sorts of different things. Perhaps we could do a science competition and get the same teaching out of it. Robots just provide something exciting. They provide a hook and they provide a climactic final competition where they can [00:03:30] have their robots, you know, compete head to head. [inaudible] Speaker 1: there is a certain kit aspect to what you're doing with the robots in terms of a known entity. A constraint. Speaker 4: Yeah. So we um, give them a very well-defined kit of parts which they can use so they don't have to start from scratch because building a robot from basic electronic components and pieces of metal or plywood is really hard. So we give them a good start. We give [00:04:00] them a kit which they can build upon. They don't have to do all of the electronics. They don't have to do a lot of the tedious work, but they can do something really cool with them in the end. Speaker 1: What's the funding source that you use for this competition? Speaker 4: We see corporate sponsorships. We go to companies like Google, Qualcomm, Boeing, and we ask them if they can support us, if they can. We advertise for them. We put their logos on our banners and our tee shirts [00:04:30] and they also get deductions for supporting charitable causes. [inaudible] Speaker 1: and are you a club? What is your organizational status? Speaker 4: We are technically a project of Tau Beta Pi, which is the engineering honor society and our finances and our organization go through them. Many of our members have or no, not affiliated with Beta Pi. They are recruited by us Speaker 1: beside the robot competition. Are there other projects within Pi [00:05:00] that you're working on? We have a team that actually goes to a high school called Ralph Bunche High School in West Oakland and this team does a program called Pie prep for these kids in which they have 13 or 14 modules of stem outreach kind of and they basically teach them cool things about science and technology and a little bit about robotics and physics and stuff like that and it's, it's once a week. It's intended to be fun and just spark their interest and also give them [00:05:30] a little bit of theoretical knowledge. This has been going very well this semester and from the results in the surveys that we've been taking, we're most likely gonna ramp it up next fall to even more schools. The exact number, we're not sure, but it's going to continue ramping up in the next few years and hopefully touch in the realm of 1314 schools in the area. We're hoping that this is going to be a very successful program and also inspire more interest in our robotics competition for the so we can have something good going on in the fall. It's [00:06:00] something in interest spring so it's like a year round kind of thing. Speaker 3: This is spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Today's topic is pioneers in engineering. Three representatives from Pi join us. They are Vivek, Andrew and David. Andrew. How is it that high school's become involved in the [00:06:30] competition? Speaker 4: We do a lot of recruiting into high schools who fit our core mission, the ones who probably wouldn't be able to compete sustainably and the other robotics competitions that are out there. So we contact teachers and the sciences and we ask them if they're interested and if their students are interested in putting together a team and then they apply for a team and if we have room we'll take them. Speaker 3: What is the limit on teams? You have a capacity issue. Speaker 4: Yeah. We have a limit of about 20 teams could be up as many as 24 this year and the limitations [00:07:00] are put in place by our ability to produce kits and to provide mentors for them. We would rather have a good competition with 25 teams than one that stretched too thin with 35 Speaker 3: and do schools stick with it. Speaker 4: There is a core group of schools who seem to be building up somewhat of a legacy. They'll come back year after year. We actually just had our first student who is a four year high school participant in Pi Join Pi as a staff member [00:07:30] in college. Speaker 3: Great. That's the goal, right? In a way that's sort of the ideal. Andrew, when the teams are picked, they're picked by the teachers at the high schools. Speaker 4: The teams are I guess collected by the teachers at the high school, but they're based on interest. We've in the past tried to limit the number of people on the team, but we're moving away from that because um, we have a lot more mentors than we have in the past. Speaker 3: How do you try to keep the parody of the experience within [00:08:00] the teams and the resources that they have access to the equipment, the time spent? How do you, how do you try to balance all that? Keep everybody kind of on the same level. Speaker 4: So there are teams who have access to a machine shop in their high school and we can't provide that to everyone. But we do provide as a basic set of tools to anyone who wants them. We loan them out if they want to go to the high school and work with their team. And sometimes the high schools come to UC Berkeley and they can use our tools and our workspace in O'Brian Hall [00:08:30] in north side, we also try to ration the experience level of the mentors. We tried to provide the more experienced mentors to the less experienced teams. As a general rule, we try to provide equal experience and different types of engineering to each school. So each school should hope to have a mechanical engineer or someone who's mechanically inclined and someone who is electrically inclined or programming inclined. Speaker 1: And the number of mentors per team. Last year it ranged between four to six [00:09:00] of AVEC. Talk about your experience as a mentor on the robot competition. My experience at Ralph Bunche high school mentoring and was a series of ups and downs. But in the end it kind of culminated in something special. So started off with a few weeks of mentorship prep by um, Andrew and his mentorship team. They prepped us for what we would encounter a little bit of the social aspect of the kids, but mostly about the uh, technical mentorship. Ralph [00:09:30] onto high is a rather underprivileged high school in West Oakland. There were only three of them in the team and we had to struggle with people dropping out, people coming in because of the small size of the team, small quarrels that were involved, a lot of social issues that we were not as equipped for as mentors coming from UC Berkeley. Speaker 1: Um, not to mention the social barrier itself of where we have all come from in our lives compared to where these kids have come from. And [00:10:00] it was a really interesting experience for me because I actually have had a little bit of experience with kids from underprivileged backgrounds and the experience that I had in pulling my mentorship team into it with me trying to get everyone on the same page with these kids to not get frustrated with them, to not unequivocally say something and like have it mar the rest of our mentorship semesters. So it was a journey and it ended up being very rewarding, um, in the sense that [00:10:30] we got second place in the robotics competition and this team of three kids who were definitely the underdogs and it was just, you know, one of those quintessential underdog stories. They ended up getting second place and I was super proud of them. Speaker 1: So very rewarding experience. David, tell us about your experience last year as a mentor. I think the biggest and rather pleasant surprise, uh, during the tournament was at discrimination the week before and during the actual [00:11:00] tournament at the end of the season. The atmosphere was just absolutely incredible. We had, um, PAC has of spectators. We had epic music classing in the background and in both hers mining hardware. We had the scrimmage and the Lawrence Hom signs where we had to file tournament. The stage was very well prepared and when each team sent up their team members send their robot on the stage to compete. It gives you the feeling that you're these [00:11:30] stars on stage, sort of like maybe no gladiators in ancient Roman stadiums where you're the center of the attention of everyone around you and really at some level I feel like that's where colleges should be about is motivating students, motivating students, intellectual growth and also highlighting their achievements and I think in that sense Speaker 5: the Pi robotic competition has totally exceeded my expectation. I remember seeing a couple up the high school students [00:12:00] who ended up winning the competition, just crying on the stage and joy. I have no doubt that it had been a parade and really life changing experience for them. Speaker 3: Spectrum is on KALX Berkeley alternating Fridays. Today, we are talking with Vivec, Andrew and David about pioneers in engineering Speaker 1: as your involvement [00:12:30] in Pi giving you some insights into where you might want to go with your major. Speaker 4: My involvement in Pi has really been my first major experience in teaching and it turns out that teaching is a lot harder than you would think, especially teaching some of the difficult concepts that we have to do so quickly in our decal. It turns out that trying to break down the concepts into logical chunks and presenting them in a logical way is almost as hard, if not harder than learning them yourself. [00:13:00] So I found that teaching and learning to teach was a really good experience for me and it will help me presumably as I graduate and go to Grad school [inaudible] Speaker 1: because are you thinking of being a teacher? Speaker 4: I'm thinking of being hopefully a professor in the future. I hope that my experience in Pi will give me a leg up from working on that and hopefully make it easier for my students to learn in the future. Speaker 3: [inaudible] David, anything. Yeah. Speaker 5: So I try and Pi as a part of my effort to explore [00:13:30] more in computer science, which I started taking classes last year and I have to say during the course of last semesters tournament, I really enjoy working with the staff member, other fellow UC Berkeley students and Pi. And I also really enjoy working with the high school students on my team to the extent that, uh, I'm starting to look more and more into the idea of working at a technology startup. And I'm also fairly sure I'm going to do computer science as a second major along with math. [00:14:00] And so in that sense, I think it's really solidify my interests in this field. Speaker 1: VEC, how has pi affected your plans for the future? I've actually had, I guess in the last few weeks to think about this very seriously. And through talking with a number of people in Pie, I'm very, very inclined to do something kind of like this as a job in the future. Like being scientific outreach. Yeah, exactly. Scientific kind [00:14:30] of stem education. Stem outreach. Yeah. So there's um, a company called sparkfun that we have grown closer to over the last year and this is kind of exactly what they do. They have a sparkfun kit circuit skit and it's a solderless circuit skit where they can bring it to elementary, middle school classrooms and have these kids play around with circuits. They want to fund a trip across the nation teaching stuff like this to little kid. Just seeing things like this happen in the world makes me really rethink, do [00:15:00] I just want to become a fabrications engineer or something or like do I want to be a programmer or do I need something like this without there the risks are higher, but the reward, the potential reward is greater. Yeah, that's, that's how it's changed my outlook. What sort of a time commitment is there to being a Pi staffer or a mentor? Speaker 4: So being a mentor, we ask that you attend a two hour day call once a week. We ask that you mentor your teams [00:15:30] for at least two hours a week. And we also ask that you do a five minute progress report so that we know how your teams are doing. So if you add in transportation time, it's probably adds up to about six to eight hours a week of time commitment. That won't be distributed evenly necessarily because there'll be weeks where you have weekend events, which lasts all day. But I think that most peer mentors have found that the time commitment really isn't a problem because by the time that the time coming and gets large, [00:16:00] you really want to be there and it's a lot of fun. Speaker 1: And then for staff, so I know this isn't the time for staff to get involved or are you always looking for staff or is it really just at the fall? Speaker 4: So we're always looking for staff. We do need mentors more than staff at this moment, but as a staff member, the time commitment is probably larger, probably order of 10 hours a week for the seven or eight weeks around the competition. At other times it's less, more [00:16:30] of a year long job than this intense seven week period as it would be for a mentor. Speaker 1: Andrew, if you want to become a mentor, what's the process? Okay. Speaker 4: For people who are interested in being mentors to the high school students, we are going to have a mentoring decal which starts in early February. On February 4th that decal will run from six to 8:00 PM on Mondays and Thursdays. And it's once a week. You choose one of those two times and uh, you come to that, you learn [00:17:00] about robotics and then we scheduled for a seven week period starting in March time for you to go to your high schools every week. That's flexible, depends on your schedule, on the high school schedule. The final competition will wrap up around April 28th Speaker 1: and the kind of people you're looking for talk about who can be a mentor, Speaker 4: right? So we accept mentors from every background. We believe that our decal will teach them the basics that can get them [00:17:30] to help their high school students out. And we also believe that learning about engineering is not the only purpose of Pi. We think that other students from other backgrounds can contribute just as much as engineers can because in the end it's not just about teaching them to be engineers, it's about teaching them to go to college, what it's like to be in college, what it's like, enjoy learning and some of our best mentors in the past have not been engineers. Speaker 6: [inaudible]Speaker 3: [00:18:00] pioneers in engineering on spectrum detailing their stem outreach. This is k a l X. Speaker 6: [inaudible].Speaker 3: Do you all find Pi to be a real supportive community for your own personal interests as well as the collective interest of doing the competition and start with the Vac, right. [00:18:30] Then we'll go around. Speaker 1: For me it's the spirit of kind of like self-expression. You're doing something very special for these kids. It's a form of giving someone else what I had when I was a kid in the form of my dad or in the form of other people in my life who influenced me towards engineering and to motivate kids or like allow them to have that confidence in themselves. To go towards stem and at least higher education, one of the main goals of Pie. [00:19:00] Don't be afraid to apply to college and stuff like that. That form of self expression and just kind of helping these kids and self fulfillment through that, that the perk that I get, Speaker 4: I feel as if Pi is a really supportive community because even though the going is often tough as a staff member, there's a lot of pressure because he wants to deliver a good competition to the students. Everyone's willing to help each other out. And I think that it's a really good community to have around you because [00:19:30] even though we're all doing a lot of work and sometimes we can get stressed, we remember that we have each other and that we're all working towards a common goal, which is to give these students a good educational experience. And that's something that a lot of them don't get in school. Speaker 5: So coming from the perspective of surf a semi insider outsider, uh, as a pass mentor, um, I think Pi has given me the opportunity to meet a lot of other people who are similarly interested in science and engineering [00:20:00] from the perspective that these are wonderful things to learn about and to see happen in everyday life instead of just something that you learned together job. And going along that perspective, having met all these really interesting people, empire has given me more social avenues to while to hang out, for instance, for Thanksgiving or just took walk around campus and to know that there are all these people around me who are also likewise striving for a similar goal. And that's comforting to know. Speaker 3: [00:20:30] Vivek, Andrew and David, thanks very much for being on spectrum. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Speaker 2: [inaudible] now our calendar of local science and technology events over the next two weeks, Renee Rao and Ricardo [inaudible] present the calendar. Speaker 7: [00:21:00] Okay. Dr. Shannon Bennett, associate curator of microbiology at the California Academy of Sciences. We'll be hosting a lecture by HIV expert, Dr Leo Weinberger, who will discuss the engineering of a retro virus to cure HIV. While progress has been made in controlling the virus with heavy cocktails or combinations of drugs, more virulent and resistant varieties continue to arise, Weinberger will explore his idea of using the same virus that causes the disease to deliver [00:21:30] the cure. The event will be held at 12:00 PM on Saturday, January 26 tickets will be on sale at the California Academy of Sciences website, $15 for adults and seven for students or seniors. Martin Hellman, Speaker 8: the co-inventor of public key cryptography is presenting the free Stanford engineering hero lecture at the Long Engineering Center at Stanford on Tuesday, January 29th from seven to 9:00 PM [00:22:00] with reception after his talk on the wisdom of foolishness, explorers, how tilting at windmills can turn out. Well in the 1970s Homan was competing with the national security agency who had a much larger budgets than he had, and it was warned that the NSA may classify any accomplishments he made. Despite this with help from Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle, Hellman spearheaded systems that are still used to secure Chileans of dollars of financial [00:22:30] transactions a day. Visit www. That's certain.com for more info Speaker 7: east based first nerd night of 2013 we'll feature three Speakers, Daniel Cohen, a phd candidate in the joint UC Berkeley UCLA program. We'll speak about the theme of collective behavior, discussing the mechanism for everything from hurting sheep to sell your cooperation. Andrew Pike, a u Penn geologist by trade has also been [00:23:00] a contender in the competitive rock paper, Scissors League of Philadelphia. He will discuss some of the surprisingly complex strategies to the game. Lena Nielsen, the Innovation Director at the Bluhm center for developing economies at UC Berkeley. We'll explore technological solutions to extreme global problems that are also financially feasible. The event will start at eight but doors open at seven the event is held on January 28th at the new parkway located at four seven four [00:23:30] 24th street in Oakland. Science fans of all ages are welcome and can purchase the $8 tickets online. Speaker 8: On Tuesday, February 5th at 6:00 PM the Felix Block, a professor in theoretical physics at and the director of the Stanford Institute for theoretical physicist, Leonard Susskind is talking to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco located at five nine five market street. The presentation is entitled the theoretical minimum, [00:24:00] what you need to know to start doing physics Susskind. We'll discuss how to learn more about physics and how to think more like a scientist. He will provide a toolkit to help people advance at their own pace. The cost is $20 to the public, $8 to members and $7 to students. Visit www that commonwealth club.org four tickets. Speaker 7: UC Berkeley's center for emerging and neglected diseases will hold its fifth annual [00:24:30] symposium this year. A variety of Speakers will present their work in various areas of infection and host response. The theme of the symposium, the keynote Speaker, dawn Ghanem will explore new developments in malaria drugs across the world. Sarah Sawyer, another Speaker. We'll discuss what typically keeps animal viruses from infecting humans. Other topics will include emerging African biomedical research on HIV AIDS, mycobacterium [00:25:00] tuberculosis, and new testing protocols for infectious diseases in developing countries. The symposium will be held in Stanley Hall on the UC Berkeley campus on February 11th from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM it's open to anyone who registers@www.global health.berkeley.edu Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 8: [00:25:30] the two news items [inaudible] that can Renee, university of Cambridge researchers published an article in Nature Chemistry on January 20th that indicates DNA conform not only the classic double stranded Helix, but also structures that are made from four strands. It's been thought that these square shaped g quadroplex structures may form in the DNA of cells, but this paper is one of the first to provide evidence that they do exist [00:26:00] in human cells. They forum when four Guanines make a special type of hydrogen bond. Speaker 8: The telomeres that protect Chromosomal DNA are Irish and Guanine and research points to quadroplex formation. And there is evidence that suggests quadruplex formation could damage these Tila mirrors and may play a role in how certain genes contribute to cancer. The team created a simple antibody that stabilizes these g quadroplex structures and showed how the structures are [00:26:30] formed and trapped in human DNA. When describing the long term goals of the research, the team told science daily that many current cancer treatments attack DNA, but it's not clear what the rules are. We don't aware in the genome some of them react. It can be a scattergun approach. The possibility that particular cancer cells harboring genes with these motifs can now be targets and appear to be more vulnerable to interference than normal cells is that thrilling prospect. Speaker 7: Okay. A joint [00:27:00] UC Berkeley Duke University Study of couches across the nation reveals a disturbingly high percentage of our sofas contained noticeable levels of toxins. 102 couches in 27 states were examined in this study. Of these 41% were found to contain the chemical chlorinated Tris, a known carcinogen. 17% of the couches also contain Penta BDE, which can cause hormonal disruptions. While chlorinated Tris was banned [00:27:30] from use in children's clothing in the 1970s it continues to be routinely used by companies seeking to make foam furniture more fire resistant. Currently, California State Law requires a certain degree of flame retardancy, but does not require that the types or amount of chemicals used to achieve this be disclosed. Well, most cotton will or down catches are naturally flame resistant. Any foam catches will almost certainly require added chemicals to meet current standards. Last June, [00:28:00] Governor Jerry Brown advised the state legislature to reform flammability standards for furniture. Once the new regulations are adopted, the chemical free couches should be available. Speaker 2: [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. The music art during the show is by on a David from his album folk and acoustic released under [00:28:30] a creative Commons license 3.0 attributes. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. [00:29:00] Yeah. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have common staff to show, please send them to us via email. All right, email address is spectrum dot klx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks. This same time. Speaker 9: [inaudible] [00:29:30] [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 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 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 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.

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.

Past Engineers of KALX talk about the development of the station and its challenges. Features Sam Wood, Ron Quan, David Josephson, and Susan Calico. Also, past Music Director and Station Manager Doc Pelzel provides his insights.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley. We have a special show this week to highlight the [00:00:30] 50th anniversary of calyx and the kick off of the fundraiser. We look back over the 50 years by talking with past engineers of Calyx, those key people who made it possible for radio to happen. Our guests, our previous engineers, Sam Wood, Ron Kwon, David Josephson, Susan Calico, and to pass station manager Dr Pell Cell. We wanted to give you an idea of how Calex struggled and evolved into its current form through the eyes of the engineers that made it happen on with the show. Rick and I [00:01:00] are here with doc pell, Zelle and doc. What was it like early on in the 60s here at Calex? Yeah, I started it. Yeah. Speaker 3: [inaudible] about six months after it became an FM station and about um, oh six and a half years after it was an am station as usually a case with a college radio station. A bunch of engineers get together and decide, hey, let's do a radio station. And they put Patti page records in the library and they want you to play [00:01:30] music to study by. Okay. And then they go and fiddle with the wires, everything and get the stuff going. And then the, uh, then the firies come in and uh, and radicalize everything musically and, and make the engineers all nervous and depressed and then start building an audience. So Speaker 1: we have a phone interview with one of those early engineers from Calex Sam wood, let's go do that. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 5: Sam Wood, thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking to us about the early days of Calex. Speaker 4: Well thank you for having me. Speaker 5: And [00:02:00] what years were you at cal? Speaker 4: I was actually there from the fall of 1963 through the spring of 1968. Speaker 5: And how did you get interested in radio at cal? Speaker 4: Well, actually I lived in the unit one residence hall, which was actually called Putnam Hall. Down the hall from me were two double e's who basically a hung out with for a while. And they took me over and introduced me to the founders of radio cow. Speaker 5: [00:02:30] And what did you find there? You know, what was on the ground engineering wise?Speaker 4: Well, at that point the station actually had a small studio and a little control room and a shop area. This was all in the basement of unit two residence hall. The actual original work that was done by Marshall and Jim started in 1961 everyone talks about 62 well that's about the time that they finally got some of the equipment working, [00:03:00] but they actually put this together in 1961 Speaker 5: and what were the engineering challenges for you back then? Speaker 4: Well, the challenges were that we had no time and very little money, so we ended up having to build much of what we had. We got some surplus gear from some of the commercial stations and we'd modify some of that, but we ended up building most of the stuff on our own. In fact, the transmitters that we [00:03:30] had for the carrier current station were actually built out of food service trays for the chassis. And then surplus scrap wood for the frame. The transformers came out of the physics department and the tubes came out of, I think it was the chem department, so really this is literally built up from scraps. We spent a lot of time and very little money Speaker 5: and that carrier system that you talked about, describe that a bit. Speaker 4: That was basically an a m transmitter. [00:04:00] It operated in the am radio band and it coupled into the power lines of the residence halls and it started out in unit two and then they expanded it to unit one and eventually into unit three and students who wanted to listen to the station could tune it in on an am radio. Speaker 5: And who were some of the key people that were in the engineering group back then? You've mentioned a few names. Do you want to sorta run down? Who was who? Speaker 4: Sure. John grilly worked with me. [00:04:30] He became chief engineer a later on, another guy, Bob Tasjan, who was an engineer and he helped out also Lee fells and Stein who later became one of the homebrew computer network people. John Connors, Scott Loftus, us, mark Tendus, Charlie Bedard. These were all engineering people who helped out in various ways. Speaker 5: How much time and impact did this have on your studies? Speaker 4: Oh, it was, it was interesting shoehorning [00:05:00] everything together because it, I spent far more time than I probably should have down there. I did all right, but mainly because once I got into upper division, the double e part of it, I had a natural ability to be able to work through the problems. And I think some of my experience at radio cow actually helped me in some of my w classes. Speaker 5: Do you want to tell some stories about uh, pulling cables? Speaker 4: Oh, the cables? Yes. We were in a very interesting situation with the university. [00:05:30] We got friendly with some of the top people at the university and were able to therefore have a general attitude toward us of, we don't care how the cable gets into the conduit, but once it's there, you can use it. So we ended up having little wire pulling campaigns, typically about two or three in the morning where we'd pull cable and we called it midnight wire and cable. And we wired up. Much of the, one of our biggest accomplishments was [00:06:00] the studios in the basement of Dwinelle Hall that we built up. Didn't have any real connection with the telephone network or any of the other university cable networks that we needed to be connected to. So we, uh, ended up pulling approximately 200 feet of 75 pair cable all the way from the grounds and buildings part of Darnell all the way to the studios. Speaker 4: And we figured out a really neat little trick using a vacuum cleaner [00:06:30] and a sponge and some fishing line so we could get a pole wire into a conduit that normally you couldn't. So we pulled this cable in that gave us our connectivity into the network at one l hall. One of the things also, I hadn't mentioned, we needed a lot of wire and cable to build the station. So the way we got that was, Marshall talked his way into getting access to the Republican convention at the Cow Palace. This is a 1964 [00:07:00] Republican convention, so we went over as the convention was winding up and we sqround miles and miles of cable off the ground that people didn't want. So we were able to get enough cable to wire much of our requirements for the station. So some of these outside activities were really quite exciting. Speaker 5: What sort of impacted all your work at cal radio and then Cadillacs have on your personal and professional life? Speaker 4: Well, [00:07:30] it gave me a different dimension because I had pretty much just focused on engineering and I like building things and that's why I went into engineering. The radio cow experience gave me a taste of what else you have to be able to do. You know, not that I have a good aptitude for it, but at least I have an appreciation for issues regarding organization and how to be able to put something together and get it through the system. [00:08:00] We really had to have an organization that we've built from the ground up to make this viable to do something like this in an environment where there's basically nothing available to you unless you know how to go and get it. It taught me how to go and get it, which was really useful. I consider that the experience that I got at radio cow far more important than the courses that I took. I mean I took a lot of interest in courses but the station gave me experience. You can't [00:08:30] get any other way. And that helped me and startups and it helped me in understanding how to make things work, not just from the technical end but from the other end too. Speaker 5: Any reflections on uh, what the station meant to the university community? Speaker 4: When we actually built the station, people really liked it and got involved and things were going unfortunately later, uh, into the 70s, there turned out to [00:09:00] be a number of problems. The station basically it shifted from being run by the engineering people to being run by others in the university who had different agendas. The stations really had its ups and downs and it's come back really well and with a lot more community efforts now than it had originally. So it is really important that you have a continuing set of goals and a continuing purpose and someone to build the structure into [00:09:30] running the station. Initially when it was starting from scratch, it was ad hoc, so clearly by definition there was no embedded structure that was suitable. Now that the station especially has got structuring, it's important to maintain the functionality and maintain that the way it operates and everything from one class to the next. Because by definition students come and students go and that doesn't lend itself for the kind of structure you need for an ongoing activity. The station [00:10:00] has had a long growth cycle here and I'm glad to see it's still around. Speaker 1: Sam would, thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking with us about the early days of Calex. Speaker 4: Well, thank you for having me. Speaker 1: You're listening to the spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Our topic this week is the 50th anniversary of Kelex. We're talking to engineers about how Calex got started. It's also fundraiser week. Call us in the five and dime. That's six, four, two five, two five, nine. We're back now with [00:10:30] duck pell sal and doc. Next up is Ron Kwan. What are your insights into him? Speaker 3: Uh, Ron Kwan came in later on and he, he really did a, an amazing job with nothing. I mean we were still in a s ASU c funded club, which was a budget of few blue chip stamps was how much they gave us each year. And uh, so the fact that we were even able to, to function at all was truly amazing. But yeah, to Ron, Ron knew his stuff. In fact, he's, um, he's even still doing that macgyver kind of thing [00:11:00] of building like a lie detector with a, with an old cigarette butt and a rubber band. Speaker 1: Ron Quan, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you. How did you get interested in radio? Speaker 6: Well, in radio I build crystal radios when I was like nine or 10 years old through my brother. Getting into broadcast was actually kind of a fluke. What had happened was one of my friends got his FCC license, he had his third class license [00:11:30] and he was trying to get a second class license. Back in those days you would have your third, your second and your first class. And nowadays I think it's only like third class in general. So what happens is he's kind of like almost daring me to do it as well. And he had taken the test, the second class [inaudible] about two or three and had failed. And how he would do is he would take these questions and answer booklets and just try to memorize [00:12:00] the answers. So I did it the hard way. I, I got this book called Electronic Communication by, by Robert Schrader, who, who taught at Laney College back here in the East Bay. Speaker 6: And it's a thick book. It's almost like half of a telephone book. So I spent 150 hours and six weeks studying it. Between the time I enter cow and after I just graduated from high school and I passed the tests, but just barely I thing. But I got [00:12:30] it. And then when I entered cau back in 72 I heard that there was a radio station here. And so I said, where is this place in this as well? It's a, I think 500 Eshleman hall. So I went there I think during my second quarter. So that would be like the winter of, yeah, 73 and ran into a few people and one of them was Henry Chu who was the station manager and they said, yeah, we [00:13:00] have somebody outside getting the transmitter, a room ready to work, but we, we always can need help in the studio and elsewhere. Speaker 6: So for about three or four months I worked with this outside engineer and then I think by the time I had finished my first year, then I became the chief engineer, which then I found out was a very strange job in itself because you get called a lot [00:13:30] sometimes I'd 11 o'clock in the evening like, Hey, a, the photo preempt went out. And I say, well, what did you do? Uh, well everything was working just fine. Instead, I picked you, kicked the switch underneath it based back in those days we were so poor, we didn't even mount the damn thing. We stuck this funnel pre-amp deer off to the corner, but it was on the floor. Instead of this jockey would be moving his or her feet around it and kicked the switch off. And so I would have to come back [00:14:00] and deal with that. Speaker 6: So it was a very good job though. I lasted for about roughly a year. Uh, some of the crazy things that, that we did were that we did remote broadcasts and one of them was the famous UCLA cow game. Uh, when Bill Walton and John Wooden came to town, Dick was broadcast at the Oakland Coliseum or someplace like that. And so I had to whip up some kind of like a conso and a backup [00:14:30] in case of, you know, everything else failed in. Fortunately all that worked. And the backup amplifier was this heath kit Hi-fi amplifier that I found at a, I think in Norton Hall where the, all the equipment was, was being stashed at the time. And so, so it worked out fine. And I was, you know, actually sitting on top of instrument hall that night, uh, listening to the game, making sure everything was okay. So the radio part was sort of like, I just kind of fell into this thing. I didn't really [00:15:00] intend to work in radio, but it turned out to be a very good experience. So, so I took a nosedive in my grades and then I came back during my junior and senior year. Speaker 3: Did you learn anything from [inaudible] that helped you with your career? Speaker 6: The coolest thing about working at cow ax and also in broadcast, I got to see how people actually work the equipment and people don't always read the manual. People will use whatever [00:15:30] they have to get the job done and nobody really cares, you know? Well we have to use specific headphone or a specific something to this. You know, you have to design a thing to be idiot proof. And so that was the biggest lesson. I learned a work in broadcasting. And it was actually a great advantage because, uh, most people who work for an Ampex or a Sony when they get out of college, they have absolutely no practical knowledge of how [00:16:00] the users use their equipment and, and how they might configure it. So, so that, that, that part was good. Great. Ryan Quan, thanks very much for coming on. Spectrum. Thank you. Speaker 3: It's fundraiser week call (510) 642-5259 to pledge. We are back with doc pell cell and doc the 70s were a turbulent time. What was it like here at Cadillacs during that upheaval there was a lot of different factions at the stations that were sort of vying [00:16:30] for either control of it. And as a result, whoever won didn't really do anything except their own particular little fiefdom of area they wanted to work in and everything else sort of fell apart. So the station fell off the air a few times in the 73 74 period. Uh, there was a time in the early seventies when, um, the station studio equipment was stolen. There was no chief engineer. Our license was up for renewal. [00:17:00] The student government had had a war with the politics of the station, so we had no budget, so we had literally like nothing left. We were off the air for a period of time. Speaker 3: It looked pretty bleak. Then it's about in the 73 and four period tell a person named Andy Reimer who was, had been a student at UC Irvine, transferred up here for his last few years and he showed the university that their lack of oversight might cause them to lose their license and he outlined a program for [00:17:30] how he would build a station in a management team and have some accountability, but how the university would have to pump some money and some oversight into it. He pretty much pull the station out of the ashes and sort of Phoenix like it was resurrected and came back and began what is probably on its current path to where it is. David Josephson Speaker 7: was the chief engineer at that time and we just happened to have David Josephson in here. Excellent. Thanks for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to come back and visit Berkeley. [00:18:00] How did you get started in radio? Well, I had the good fortune of landing in Berkeley at age, about nine or 10 when, uh, all sorts of experiments were happening. My mother was involved with KPFA and I was an electronic tinkerer experiment or I had a pirate radio station and the under the stairs in our house and she was doing some promotion work for KPFA. And I said, well, Gee, maybe I can get involved with a real radio here. They were very, uh, open [00:18:30] to that idea. So I started immediately then learning about production recording program, uh, editing and so on. So I got my, uh, third class license when I was 10 and read board shifts at Kpmj, but we moved away from Berkeley, uh, right after some of the worst of the people's park riots up to more rural northern California. Speaker 7: And, uh, finished high school there and decided that I really wanted [00:19:00] to stay involved in radio and electronics and audio broadcasting, uh, design and stuff like that. So came back to Berkeley and uh, was intent on being an engineering student when there was a, a note on the chalkboard of the Amateur Radio Club that the radio station was looking for an engineer as far as I knew the station was off the air and gone, which it was at that point, but I was part of the crew then that, uh, resurrected it. What was the time period? You were a chief engineer? [00:19:30] I was chief engineer from 75 through 79 I was here the four years. What were the main technical issues at the time? Just the resurrecting of cal. Yeah, building the station from scratch. The challenge was to build something that we could put on the air, making it work, making it illegal. Speaker 7: I started in the spring quarter of 75 and I think we started working on it toward the end of spring. I think we [00:20:00] were working on it for most of the summer. I was here all summer and I think we went on the air before school started again in the fall. What's important is that there was a crew of people who came together at that time who most of whom had a background in radio. The general manager, Andy Reimer, uh, had been manager of the UC Irvine Station when he was there for a couple of years. The other cluster of people were mostly involved in a record business. [00:20:30] You know Tim divine who went on to be out of an art at a and m I guess doc Pelz l of course. It was kind of keeping the continuity of things from the older time and running the music department. So we had a couple of months to figure out what could be patched together. A of my friends from KPFA helped staff and technicians from the w department provided test equipment, parts access to bits and pieces. So we just kind of pulled it together from that. [00:21:00] The next step was to be some thing a little bit more accessible and reliable than this closet up on the the roof of Dwinelle and that's when Andy got to doing the political thing and got us space in Lawrence Hall of Science. We moved the studios up there first Speaker 1: and you moved the transmitter up on the hill? That was next? That was stage two. So the first two, yeah. I think first phase was to get the studio to Lawrence Hall because we were being booted out of to know [00:21:30] and then the transmitter followed. How long after that? That was a year, more than a year after that because there was a lot of construction that was secondary to the studio operations. Back in the early days of Calex, a lot of the engineers were students at the time. Speaker 7: All of the engineers were students or former students or part time students. That was actually fairly common in college radio around [00:22:00] the country. There were more radio engineers out there because of the small radio stations around everywhere needed more engineers. The equipment was less reliable, transmitters needed work all the time. There were a lot more people who, as teenagers were working in radio and so they were a lot more engineers and there were a lot more people who were familiar with the technical requirements of, of an audio chain and a transmitter and studio transmitter, [00:22:30] links and antennas and things like that. So, uh, yeah, I was a student part time during that time. I, I think I got it about two years during my four years here, I said I graduated from colleagues. Most of the other engineers were also students or community people. There weren't any staff engineers while I was there except me. I mean, if they finally got a kind of a stipend salary for the chief engineer. Speaker 1: How did your time at Calyx influence your career? Speaker 7: [00:23:00] Most of the people I know who had solid college radio experiences when they were in school refer to them throughout their lives as a defining experience in enabling experience. That was, I mean, I don't know how many of them consider that they learned more from the radio station than they did from classes like I do, but I'm sure it's a significant fraction. The real challenge that drove what I was able to [00:23:30] feel confident in doing in later years was dealing with something that had to work all the time with limited resources and patching together things to make a system work and that that whole discipline of able to see a system come together and allocating limited resources to fitting that all together. That's the engineering challenge of doing the engineering of a radio station. At least it was then when things were not reliable, not stable, [00:24:00] not dependable, and things were being fixed all the time. And that applies to any technology that's in kind of development, I think. [inaudible] Speaker 1: David Josephson, thanks very much for coming on spectrum talking with us. Very welcome. Thanks for inviting me. K, a l ex Berkeley doc pell sal. Thanks very much for your help getting the context of the sixties and seventies squared away and it's fundraiser week here at Calyx fundraiser. So give us a call. [00:24:30] We need your donations. (510) 642-5259 back to spectrum. We're going to talk with Susan Calico, who took over in the 80s as chief engineer. Susan Kaliko. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking to us about Calex. Speaker 8: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. It's nice to be back at the station and see how nice it looks. Speaker 1: I wanted to find out from you how you got interested in radio in the first place. Speaker 8: Well, I have to go back much further than my time at Calex. I [00:25:00] got out of school and I was very interested in writing and got involved at the daily cow. So I was a journalist for a little while and then I became a copy editor and somehow that wasn't enough. So I went down to KPFA, which is also in Berkeley and volunteered there. I got involved in first in women's news and then during that time, which was in the mid to late seventies, there were almost no women who knew anything technical at that station. So, [00:25:30] um, when I was at KPFA, I took advantage of the fact that you could do pretty much anything kind of like here I got my third class license, which was required to actually run the board on the air and learned how to do that. And again, was always teaching people. And I was there for probably about 10 years, everything overlapped with everything else and I had just studied for and gotten my first class radio license, which was in those days required to be the responsible [00:26:00] engineer at a station and the job of Calyx came up. So I applied for that and got in and well the work began. Speaker 1: What were the years you were a chief engineer at Calex? Speaker 8: Oh, I was engineer at Calex starting in 1981, I believe in the late, late in the year through uh, early 1995. So it was about 13 years altogether. Speaker 1: While you were the engineer, there [00:26:30] was a move from Lawrence Hall of science down to bondage. What was that like? Speaker 8: As I recall, we managed to get the honors studio down and settled and on the air and the newsroom was about to move from over in the student union and I got pneumonia, so I was at home in bed for two weeks with a fever. Well, the engineering volunteers basically put in the new studio. So it's, you know, as usual there's, there's never enough money to [00:27:00] do what you need to do, so you just have to do what you can with what you've got. And we were lucky enough to have some good volunteers who could really take care of business. Speaker 1: The next big technical challenge you had was increasing the power from 10 watts to 500 watts. How did that go? Speaker 8: We had to get a new transmitter, which was huge compared to our one that we had. And so we had to sort of rearrange things up at the transmitter shad and I'll patch all the leaks because I mean, when you get new [00:27:30] equipment, you want it to be good. Uh, we had to have a new cable running up the transmitter tower, which I think it's, it's not quite a hundred feet. I think it's something like 80 or 85 or something like that. I do remember, um, being up on the tower with the surveyors down below, because in such a crowded market, as Calex is in, in the bay area here, there are many FM stations. You have to be careful not to step on anybody else's frequency. So we had to have a very directional [00:28:00] and oddly shaped signal, the antennas crafted so that it directs the signal in the way that you want. Speaker 8: But if your antenna isn't pointed exactly where you want it, you're going to not be, you know, I mean, the FCC is not gonna like you being out of line there. So I went up on the tower, loosen the bolts on the, uh, on the antenna and the surveyors down below, going all over this way, you know, and I'm like whackwhackwhack no, no, no, a little, little bit back. But those [00:28:30] were expenses we couldn't avoid because it had to be certified. But eventually it all got done and in our case it was 500 watts, which isn't a whole lot. That transmitter could have done a lot more, but that was what we were allowed to do, so we had to keep it pretty close. Speaker 1: What was the culture like at Calex during your years? Speaker 8: I learned that no matter how weird people looked, most of them or really good people, they were sweet people. They, you know, a lot of our djs [00:29:00] were just really nice people. They were pretty easy to work with. They were considerate and I wouldn't always be able to tell by looking at them Speaker 1: Cadillacs. How did it affect you professionally? Speaker 8: I spent 13 years here and I really, really learned a lot more electronics and a lot more transmitter information and so I really understood why everything worked. Speaker 1: [00:29:30] Susan Calico, thanks very much for coming in and talking with us. Speaker 8: Well, it's been a pleasure to see that the station is still here and that the equipment still works. Speaker 1: The card during the show. It was by law, Stan and David for these help on folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license. 3.0 attribution. Please do donate to the calyx fundraiser and we'll see you in two weeks with another edition of spectrum at the same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Past Engineers of KALX talk about the development of the station and its challenges. Features Sam Wood, Ron Quan, David Josephson, and Susan Calico. Also, past Music Director and Station Manager Doc Pelzel provides his insights.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley. We have a special show this week to highlight the [00:00:30] 50th anniversary of calyx and the kick off of the fundraiser. We look back over the 50 years by talking with past engineers of Calyx, those key people who made it possible for radio to happen. Our guests, our previous engineers, Sam Wood, Ron Kwon, David Josephson, Susan Calico, and to pass station manager Dr Pell Cell. We wanted to give you an idea of how Calex struggled and evolved into its current form through the eyes of the engineers that made it happen on with the show. Rick and I [00:01:00] are here with doc pell, Zelle and doc. What was it like early on in the 60s here at Calex? Yeah, I started it. Yeah. Speaker 3: [inaudible] about six months after it became an FM station and about um, oh six and a half years after it was an am station as usually a case with a college radio station. A bunch of engineers get together and decide, hey, let's do a radio station. And they put Patti page records in the library and they want you to play [00:01:30] music to study by. Okay. And then they go and fiddle with the wires, everything and get the stuff going. And then the, uh, then the firies come in and uh, and radicalize everything musically and, and make the engineers all nervous and depressed and then start building an audience. So Speaker 1: we have a phone interview with one of those early engineers from Calex Sam wood, let's go do that. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 5: Sam Wood, thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking to us about the early days of Calex. Speaker 4: Well thank you for having me. Speaker 5: And [00:02:00] what years were you at cal? Speaker 4: I was actually there from the fall of 1963 through the spring of 1968. Speaker 5: And how did you get interested in radio at cal? Speaker 4: Well, actually I lived in the unit one residence hall, which was actually called Putnam Hall. Down the hall from me were two double e's who basically a hung out with for a while. And they took me over and introduced me to the founders of radio cow. Speaker 5: [00:02:30] And what did you find there? You know, what was on the ground engineering wise?Speaker 4: Well, at that point the station actually had a small studio and a little control room and a shop area. This was all in the basement of unit two residence hall. The actual original work that was done by Marshall and Jim started in 1961 everyone talks about 62 well that's about the time that they finally got some of the equipment working, [00:03:00] but they actually put this together in 1961 Speaker 5: and what were the engineering challenges for you back then? Speaker 4: Well, the challenges were that we had no time and very little money, so we ended up having to build much of what we had. We got some surplus gear from some of the commercial stations and we'd modify some of that, but we ended up building most of the stuff on our own. In fact, the transmitters that we [00:03:30] had for the carrier current station were actually built out of food service trays for the chassis. And then surplus scrap wood for the frame. The transformers came out of the physics department and the tubes came out of, I think it was the chem department, so really this is literally built up from scraps. We spent a lot of time and very little money Speaker 5: and that carrier system that you talked about, describe that a bit. Speaker 4: That was basically an a m transmitter. [00:04:00] It operated in the am radio band and it coupled into the power lines of the residence halls and it started out in unit two and then they expanded it to unit one and eventually into unit three and students who wanted to listen to the station could tune it in on an am radio. Speaker 5: And who were some of the key people that were in the engineering group back then? You've mentioned a few names. Do you want to sorta run down? Who was who? Speaker 4: Sure. John grilly worked with me. [00:04:30] He became chief engineer a later on, another guy, Bob Tasjan, who was an engineer and he helped out also Lee fells and Stein who later became one of the homebrew computer network people. John Connors, Scott Loftus, us, mark Tendus, Charlie Bedard. These were all engineering people who helped out in various ways. Speaker 5: How much time and impact did this have on your studies? Speaker 4: Oh, it was, it was interesting shoehorning [00:05:00] everything together because it, I spent far more time than I probably should have down there. I did all right, but mainly because once I got into upper division, the double e part of it, I had a natural ability to be able to work through the problems. And I think some of my experience at radio cow actually helped me in some of my w classes. Speaker 5: Do you want to tell some stories about uh, pulling cables? Speaker 4: Oh, the cables? Yes. We were in a very interesting situation with the university. [00:05:30] We got friendly with some of the top people at the university and were able to therefore have a general attitude toward us of, we don't care how the cable gets into the conduit, but once it's there, you can use it. So we ended up having little wire pulling campaigns, typically about two or three in the morning where we'd pull cable and we called it midnight wire and cable. And we wired up. Much of the, one of our biggest accomplishments was [00:06:00] the studios in the basement of Dwinelle Hall that we built up. Didn't have any real connection with the telephone network or any of the other university cable networks that we needed to be connected to. So we, uh, ended up pulling approximately 200 feet of 75 pair cable all the way from the grounds and buildings part of Darnell all the way to the studios. Speaker 4: And we figured out a really neat little trick using a vacuum cleaner [00:06:30] and a sponge and some fishing line so we could get a pole wire into a conduit that normally you couldn't. So we pulled this cable in that gave us our connectivity into the network at one l hall. One of the things also, I hadn't mentioned, we needed a lot of wire and cable to build the station. So the way we got that was, Marshall talked his way into getting access to the Republican convention at the Cow Palace. This is a 1964 [00:07:00] Republican convention, so we went over as the convention was winding up and we sqround miles and miles of cable off the ground that people didn't want. So we were able to get enough cable to wire much of our requirements for the station. So some of these outside activities were really quite exciting. Speaker 5: What sort of impacted all your work at cal radio and then Cadillacs have on your personal and professional life? Speaker 4: Well, [00:07:30] it gave me a different dimension because I had pretty much just focused on engineering and I like building things and that's why I went into engineering. The radio cow experience gave me a taste of what else you have to be able to do. You know, not that I have a good aptitude for it, but at least I have an appreciation for issues regarding organization and how to be able to put something together and get it through the system. [00:08:00] We really had to have an organization that we've built from the ground up to make this viable to do something like this in an environment where there's basically nothing available to you unless you know how to go and get it. It taught me how to go and get it, which was really useful. I consider that the experience that I got at radio cow far more important than the courses that I took. I mean I took a lot of interest in courses but the station gave me experience. You can't [00:08:30] get any other way. And that helped me and startups and it helped me in understanding how to make things work, not just from the technical end but from the other end too. Speaker 5: Any reflections on uh, what the station meant to the university community? Speaker 4: When we actually built the station, people really liked it and got involved and things were going unfortunately later, uh, into the 70s, there turned out to [00:09:00] be a number of problems. The station basically it shifted from being run by the engineering people to being run by others in the university who had different agendas. The stations really had its ups and downs and it's come back really well and with a lot more community efforts now than it had originally. So it is really important that you have a continuing set of goals and a continuing purpose and someone to build the structure into [00:09:30] running the station. Initially when it was starting from scratch, it was ad hoc, so clearly by definition there was no embedded structure that was suitable. Now that the station especially has got structuring, it's important to maintain the functionality and maintain that the way it operates and everything from one class to the next. Because by definition students come and students go and that doesn't lend itself for the kind of structure you need for an ongoing activity. The station [00:10:00] has had a long growth cycle here and I'm glad to see it's still around. Speaker 1: Sam would, thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking with us about the early days of Calex. Speaker 4: Well, thank you for having me. Speaker 1: You're listening to the spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Our topic this week is the 50th anniversary of Kelex. We're talking to engineers about how Calex got started. It's also fundraiser week. Call us in the five and dime. That's six, four, two five, two five, nine. We're back now with [00:10:30] duck pell sal and doc. Next up is Ron Kwan. What are your insights into him? Speaker 3: Uh, Ron Kwan came in later on and he, he really did a, an amazing job with nothing. I mean we were still in a s ASU c funded club, which was a budget of few blue chip stamps was how much they gave us each year. And uh, so the fact that we were even able to, to function at all was truly amazing. But yeah, to Ron, Ron knew his stuff. In fact, he's, um, he's even still doing that macgyver kind of thing [00:11:00] of building like a lie detector with a, with an old cigarette butt and a rubber band. Speaker 1: Ron Quan, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you. How did you get interested in radio? Speaker 6: Well, in radio I build crystal radios when I was like nine or 10 years old through my brother. Getting into broadcast was actually kind of a fluke. What had happened was one of my friends got his FCC license, he had his third class license [00:11:30] and he was trying to get a second class license. Back in those days you would have your third, your second and your first class. And nowadays I think it's only like third class in general. So what happens is he's kind of like almost daring me to do it as well. And he had taken the test, the second class [inaudible] about two or three and had failed. And how he would do is he would take these questions and answer booklets and just try to memorize [00:12:00] the answers. So I did it the hard way. I, I got this book called Electronic Communication by, by Robert Schrader, who, who taught at Laney College back here in the East Bay. Speaker 6: And it's a thick book. It's almost like half of a telephone book. So I spent 150 hours and six weeks studying it. Between the time I enter cow and after I just graduated from high school and I passed the tests, but just barely I thing. But I got [00:12:30] it. And then when I entered cau back in 72 I heard that there was a radio station here. And so I said, where is this place in this as well? It's a, I think 500 Eshleman hall. So I went there I think during my second quarter. So that would be like the winter of, yeah, 73 and ran into a few people and one of them was Henry Chu who was the station manager and they said, yeah, we [00:13:00] have somebody outside getting the transmitter, a room ready to work, but we, we always can need help in the studio and elsewhere. Speaker 6: So for about three or four months I worked with this outside engineer and then I think by the time I had finished my first year, then I became the chief engineer, which then I found out was a very strange job in itself because you get called a lot [00:13:30] sometimes I'd 11 o'clock in the evening like, Hey, a, the photo preempt went out. And I say, well, what did you do? Uh, well everything was working just fine. Instead, I picked you, kicked the switch underneath it based back in those days we were so poor, we didn't even mount the damn thing. We stuck this funnel pre-amp deer off to the corner, but it was on the floor. Instead of this jockey would be moving his or her feet around it and kicked the switch off. And so I would have to come back [00:14:00] and deal with that. Speaker 6: So it was a very good job though. I lasted for about roughly a year. Uh, some of the crazy things that, that we did were that we did remote broadcasts and one of them was the famous UCLA cow game. Uh, when Bill Walton and John Wooden came to town, Dick was broadcast at the Oakland Coliseum or someplace like that. And so I had to whip up some kind of like a conso and a backup [00:14:30] in case of, you know, everything else failed in. Fortunately all that worked. And the backup amplifier was this heath kit Hi-fi amplifier that I found at a, I think in Norton Hall where the, all the equipment was, was being stashed at the time. And so, so it worked out fine. And I was, you know, actually sitting on top of instrument hall that night, uh, listening to the game, making sure everything was okay. So the radio part was sort of like, I just kind of fell into this thing. I didn't really [00:15:00] intend to work in radio, but it turned out to be a very good experience. So, so I took a nosedive in my grades and then I came back during my junior and senior year. Speaker 3: Did you learn anything from [inaudible] that helped you with your career? Speaker 6: The coolest thing about working at cow ax and also in broadcast, I got to see how people actually work the equipment and people don't always read the manual. People will use whatever [00:15:30] they have to get the job done and nobody really cares, you know? Well we have to use specific headphone or a specific something to this. You know, you have to design a thing to be idiot proof. And so that was the biggest lesson. I learned a work in broadcasting. And it was actually a great advantage because, uh, most people who work for an Ampex or a Sony when they get out of college, they have absolutely no practical knowledge of how [00:16:00] the users use their equipment and, and how they might configure it. So, so that, that, that part was good. Great. Ryan Quan, thanks very much for coming on. Spectrum. Thank you. Speaker 3: It's fundraiser week call (510) 642-5259 to pledge. We are back with doc pell cell and doc the 70s were a turbulent time. What was it like here at Cadillacs during that upheaval there was a lot of different factions at the stations that were sort of vying [00:16:30] for either control of it. And as a result, whoever won didn't really do anything except their own particular little fiefdom of area they wanted to work in and everything else sort of fell apart. So the station fell off the air a few times in the 73 74 period. Uh, there was a time in the early seventies when, um, the station studio equipment was stolen. There was no chief engineer. Our license was up for renewal. [00:17:00] The student government had had a war with the politics of the station, so we had no budget, so we had literally like nothing left. We were off the air for a period of time. Speaker 3: It looked pretty bleak. Then it's about in the 73 and four period tell a person named Andy Reimer who was, had been a student at UC Irvine, transferred up here for his last few years and he showed the university that their lack of oversight might cause them to lose their license and he outlined a program for [00:17:30] how he would build a station in a management team and have some accountability, but how the university would have to pump some money and some oversight into it. He pretty much pull the station out of the ashes and sort of Phoenix like it was resurrected and came back and began what is probably on its current path to where it is. David Josephson Speaker 7: was the chief engineer at that time and we just happened to have David Josephson in here. Excellent. Thanks for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to come back and visit Berkeley. [00:18:00] How did you get started in radio? Well, I had the good fortune of landing in Berkeley at age, about nine or 10 when, uh, all sorts of experiments were happening. My mother was involved with KPFA and I was an electronic tinkerer experiment or I had a pirate radio station and the under the stairs in our house and she was doing some promotion work for KPFA. And I said, well, Gee, maybe I can get involved with a real radio here. They were very, uh, open [00:18:30] to that idea. So I started immediately then learning about production recording program, uh, editing and so on. So I got my, uh, third class license when I was 10 and read board shifts at Kpmj, but we moved away from Berkeley, uh, right after some of the worst of the people's park riots up to more rural northern California. Speaker 7: And, uh, finished high school there and decided that I really wanted [00:19:00] to stay involved in radio and electronics and audio broadcasting, uh, design and stuff like that. So came back to Berkeley and uh, was intent on being an engineering student when there was a, a note on the chalkboard of the Amateur Radio Club that the radio station was looking for an engineer as far as I knew the station was off the air and gone, which it was at that point, but I was part of the crew then that, uh, resurrected it. What was the time period? You were a chief engineer? [00:19:30] I was chief engineer from 75 through 79 I was here the four years. What were the main technical issues at the time? Just the resurrecting of cal. Yeah, building the station from scratch. The challenge was to build something that we could put on the air, making it work, making it illegal. Speaker 7: I started in the spring quarter of 75 and I think we started working on it toward the end of spring. I think we [00:20:00] were working on it for most of the summer. I was here all summer and I think we went on the air before school started again in the fall. What's important is that there was a crew of people who came together at that time who most of whom had a background in radio. The general manager, Andy Reimer, uh, had been manager of the UC Irvine Station when he was there for a couple of years. The other cluster of people were mostly involved in a record business. [00:20:30] You know Tim divine who went on to be out of an art at a and m I guess doc Pelz l of course. It was kind of keeping the continuity of things from the older time and running the music department. So we had a couple of months to figure out what could be patched together. A of my friends from KPFA helped staff and technicians from the w department provided test equipment, parts access to bits and pieces. So we just kind of pulled it together from that. [00:21:00] The next step was to be some thing a little bit more accessible and reliable than this closet up on the the roof of Dwinelle and that's when Andy got to doing the political thing and got us space in Lawrence Hall of Science. We moved the studios up there first Speaker 1: and you moved the transmitter up on the hill? That was next? That was stage two. So the first two, yeah. I think first phase was to get the studio to Lawrence Hall because we were being booted out of to know [00:21:30] and then the transmitter followed. How long after that? That was a year, more than a year after that because there was a lot of construction that was secondary to the studio operations. Back in the early days of Calex, a lot of the engineers were students at the time. Speaker 7: All of the engineers were students or former students or part time students. That was actually fairly common in college radio around [00:22:00] the country. There were more radio engineers out there because of the small radio stations around everywhere needed more engineers. The equipment was less reliable, transmitters needed work all the time. There were a lot more people who, as teenagers were working in radio and so they were a lot more engineers and there were a lot more people who were familiar with the technical requirements of, of an audio chain and a transmitter and studio transmitter, [00:22:30] links and antennas and things like that. So, uh, yeah, I was a student part time during that time. I, I think I got it about two years during my four years here, I said I graduated from colleagues. Most of the other engineers were also students or community people. There weren't any staff engineers while I was there except me. I mean, if they finally got a kind of a stipend salary for the chief engineer. Speaker 1: How did your time at Calyx influence your career? Speaker 7: [00:23:00] Most of the people I know who had solid college radio experiences when they were in school refer to them throughout their lives as a defining experience in enabling experience. That was, I mean, I don't know how many of them consider that they learned more from the radio station than they did from classes like I do, but I'm sure it's a significant fraction. The real challenge that drove what I was able to [00:23:30] feel confident in doing in later years was dealing with something that had to work all the time with limited resources and patching together things to make a system work and that that whole discipline of able to see a system come together and allocating limited resources to fitting that all together. That's the engineering challenge of doing the engineering of a radio station. At least it was then when things were not reliable, not stable, [00:24:00] not dependable, and things were being fixed all the time. And that applies to any technology that's in kind of development, I think. [inaudible] Speaker 1: David Josephson, thanks very much for coming on spectrum talking with us. Very welcome. Thanks for inviting me. K, a l ex Berkeley doc pell sal. Thanks very much for your help getting the context of the sixties and seventies squared away and it's fundraiser week here at Calyx fundraiser. So give us a call. [00:24:30] We need your donations. (510) 642-5259 back to spectrum. We're going to talk with Susan Calico, who took over in the 80s as chief engineer. Susan Kaliko. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking to us about Calex. Speaker 8: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. It's nice to be back at the station and see how nice it looks. Speaker 1: I wanted to find out from you how you got interested in radio in the first place. Speaker 8: Well, I have to go back much further than my time at Calex. I [00:25:00] got out of school and I was very interested in writing and got involved at the daily cow. So I was a journalist for a little while and then I became a copy editor and somehow that wasn't enough. So I went down to KPFA, which is also in Berkeley and volunteered there. I got involved in first in women's news and then during that time, which was in the mid to late seventies, there were almost no women who knew anything technical at that station. So, [00:25:30] um, when I was at KPFA, I took advantage of the fact that you could do pretty much anything kind of like here I got my third class license, which was required to actually run the board on the air and learned how to do that. And again, was always teaching people. And I was there for probably about 10 years, everything overlapped with everything else and I had just studied for and gotten my first class radio license, which was in those days required to be the responsible [00:26:00] engineer at a station and the job of Calyx came up. So I applied for that and got in and well the work began. Speaker 1: What were the years you were a chief engineer at Calex? Speaker 8: Oh, I was engineer at Calex starting in 1981, I believe in the late, late in the year through uh, early 1995. So it was about 13 years altogether. Speaker 1: While you were the engineer, there [00:26:30] was a move from Lawrence Hall of science down to bondage. What was that like? Speaker 8: As I recall, we managed to get the honors studio down and settled and on the air and the newsroom was about to move from over in the student union and I got pneumonia, so I was at home in bed for two weeks with a fever. Well, the engineering volunteers basically put in the new studio. So it's, you know, as usual there's, there's never enough money to [00:27:00] do what you need to do, so you just have to do what you can with what you've got. And we were lucky enough to have some good volunteers who could really take care of business. Speaker 1: The next big technical challenge you had was increasing the power from 10 watts to 500 watts. How did that go? Speaker 8: We had to get a new transmitter, which was huge compared to our one that we had. And so we had to sort of rearrange things up at the transmitter shad and I'll patch all the leaks because I mean, when you get new [00:27:30] equipment, you want it to be good. Uh, we had to have a new cable running up the transmitter tower, which I think it's, it's not quite a hundred feet. I think it's something like 80 or 85 or something like that. I do remember, um, being up on the tower with the surveyors down below, because in such a crowded market, as Calex is in, in the bay area here, there are many FM stations. You have to be careful not to step on anybody else's frequency. So we had to have a very directional [00:28:00] and oddly shaped signal, the antennas crafted so that it directs the signal in the way that you want. Speaker 8: But if your antenna isn't pointed exactly where you want it, you're going to not be, you know, I mean, the FCC is not gonna like you being out of line there. So I went up on the tower, loosen the bolts on the, uh, on the antenna and the surveyors down below, going all over this way, you know, and I'm like whackwhackwhack no, no, no, a little, little bit back. But those [00:28:30] were expenses we couldn't avoid because it had to be certified. But eventually it all got done and in our case it was 500 watts, which isn't a whole lot. That transmitter could have done a lot more, but that was what we were allowed to do, so we had to keep it pretty close. Speaker 1: What was the culture like at Calex during your years? Speaker 8: I learned that no matter how weird people looked, most of them or really good people, they were sweet people. They, you know, a lot of our djs [00:29:00] were just really nice people. They were pretty easy to work with. They were considerate and I wouldn't always be able to tell by looking at them Speaker 1: Cadillacs. How did it affect you professionally? Speaker 8: I spent 13 years here and I really, really learned a lot more electronics and a lot more transmitter information and so I really understood why everything worked. Speaker 1: [00:29:30] Susan Calico, thanks very much for coming in and talking with us. Speaker 8: Well, it's been a pleasure to see that the station is still here and that the equipment still works. Speaker 1: The card during the show. It was by law, Stan and David for these help on folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license. 3.0 attribution. Please do donate to the calyx fundraiser and we'll see you in two weeks with another edition of spectrum at the same time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prof. Garrison Sposito, soil scientist at UC Berkeley, talks about water and soil, the inputs organic and chemical that are often added to soil, soil stewardship, agriculture and food security.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum the science [00:00:30] and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program, bringing new interviews featuring bay in scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news.Speaker 1: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Today we continue our interview with Professor Garrison [inaudible], the Betty and Isaac Barsha, chair of Soil Science in the College of natural resources at UC Berkeley. [00:01:00] Professor [inaudible] is an active teacher and researcher at Berkeley. This is part two of two professors. Pacino talks about the interaction of water with soil and the various inputs, organic and chemical that are often added to soil. He addresses soil stewardship and the challenges ahead for agriculture and food security. Speaker 3: You talked a little bit about the interaction of water and soil. It seems very crucial. So the study of [00:01:30] soil is very tied up in water then? Speaker 4: Yes, and I think the, uh, because of being in California, we may not, not understand that as well as we should because California has very large irrigation systems. One of the things, one of the very first things that Hilgard did when he came to this state to work was to go see a man named Kearney who lived around Fresno. And Kearney had the idea that if water were applied to the soils of the San Joaquin Valley, they might be used to grow crops [00:02:00] because the rainfall was very limited. I mean, you could grow crops that way, but not very many. And Hilgard actually assessed those soils and told him what the problems would be in doing that. And Kearney then began to irrigate the first one to do so and made a fortune doing this. So we have a lot of irrigated land in California for agriculture. And as a result, it doesn't seem as obvious to us that most of the world doesn't irrigate. Speaker 4: 80% of the agriculture in the world is rain fed. Two thirds of the food in the world [00:02:30] is produced by rain fed agriculture. So when you start looking around at places that are less high tech than California, it's actually rainwater that's making the world go around. So the question then is how does rainwater move through soil? How can we optimize its management in use and so forth, and not surprisingly relatively little is known about that because the places where the knowhow exists to study water and soil are the places where irrigation often gets done. And so typically all it has been studied in [00:03:00] the past is how much water do you have to have in the soil at the start of the growing season to make sure you get through it with a decent crop. And you'll hear things about this in the news where they'll say assessment of the water content in the Midwest is such that the corn crop will be less this year or more or whatever. Speaker 4: And the same is true anywhere else. So now a number of people are beginning to realize that we have to learn a lot more about how water behaves in soil before we can really truly expect to do very much about agriculture in that use. [00:03:30] Now this is important because the rain is falling on the soil. It has two places to go. One is maybe three, let's say three at one place is it can just evaporate right back up in the air, which isn't going to help anything unless it goes through a plant. If you could make it go through a plant first before evaporating, then of course you're doing agriculture. Another thing it will do is percolate downward and way down into what we call groundwater into the water that's stored way deep in the earth and so that's a loss. A third thing it can do is move over the land [00:04:00] surface or just underneath the land surface laterally towards some creek or river or whatever. Speaker 4: So that's it. Now obviously then what you want to manage is keeping the water in place long enough to get it through the plants you want so that they will grow and produce whatever it is you're interested in. So that turns out to be a really important deal about which we don't know as anywhere near as much as we should. With irrigation, you're applying huge amounts of water. In fact, they're, the problem usually is what to do with the wall. Excess water that [00:04:30] comes off afterward, often full of salts and various other things you don't want. So it's a totally different problem. We're here. It's taking something that's very erratic. First of all, rain doesn't come like irrigation where you can order it up and get it applied. So you've got to worry about the fact that it comes sporadically and they're dry years in wet years and all of that. And then you've got to know how it's stored in soil on which kinds of quote choices this soil is going to make in terms of whether it will evaporate runoff or percolate downward and so [00:05:00] on. So it's a big deal. But I would say that given the global situation in agriculture, we really haven't begun to study what we should Speaker 5: [inaudible]. This is spectrum on k a l X. Today's guest is Gary [inaudible] Ceto, the soil scientists that you see Berkeley. This next segment covers inputs to soil. Speaker 4: [00:05:30] This gets into the idea of how do you judge soil? What's what's considered productive, nonproductive. A lot of it comes down to these characteristics you were just describing with the water. The ability to hold water. Yes. However, I want to say that the phrase good soil, which is strictly an agricultural phrase or bad soil for that matter, people talk about good soil and what they mean is something they can grow crops on the they want to grow at the rate they want to grow them, et cetera. [00:06:00] Here's a very insightful essay by Gary Snyder, the poet and ecologist who's a local figure called good, wild, sacred and it's about soil and he talks about agricultural soils being called good and wild soils, soils that are under the forest or soils out in the desert, and then sacred soils have to do with native Americans and others who regarded certain areas of soil as as sacred sacred sites. Speaker 4: Well, from the point of view of nature, there is no bad soil because nature simply [00:06:30] adapts to whatever is there. The water supply, the nutrients, everything else and what grows is what you see and it's fine. It's an equilibrium with whatever is provided and nature doesn't mind. Problem comes and the value judgment comes in that humans do say what they want from a soil. We're talking about domesticating that soil. So it'll do what we want in the same way that you break a horse, so to speak, to do what you want. But that wild soil is actually just as good as soil is. The soil is domesticated [00:07:00] and in many ways it may be better because it's an equilibrium where the global environment has to be. Whereas we may, by virtue of doing things to soil to make it, you know, to harness it, you might say make it into a soil that is not in equilibrium with the global environment, could be harming the global environment in some ways. Speaker 4: So a good soil, well, what most people mean is it's a soil that behaves the way we want it to for some particular use. And that use may be as simple as dumping some waste onto it. And of course a good soil could be [00:07:30] one that you can build on if you take everything off and build a house on it. And that's good too. Mostly they mean agriculture or some kind of thing. They want to grow in the soils and trees or whatever, or yard, whatever. And in which case they mean I want to domesticate this soil. I don't want it to be wild. Such ends up involving a lot of inputs. It does energy inputs as well as material inputs. And of course a lot of ways, and I think this is something which people should keep in mind because the use of fertilizer [00:08:00] is certainly an example of this in the water too. Speaker 4: These are examples of technologies. After all, there's a fertilizer technology and that's where it comes from. And there's a water technology that delivers a water that we need to water in excess of what rain might provide. So here's a way to say that so-called second law of thermodynamics for every technology there is a pollution for every technology there is a pollution. Science. People know what I'm talking about and they say the second law would means that there is no such thing as truly [00:08:30] free energy. It always costs you some losses. Heat. That's really what I'm saying here. So if people would keep that in mind, every time they adapt a technology to what they want to do, there's going to be a pollution. And they ought to think about that. In the case of fertilizer, it's the runoff of the excess fertilizer into the waterways or somewhere where it's gonna cause a problem. Speaker 4: They might apply chemicals to kill things. They want to kill weeds with chemicals. So all of these technologies are problems and they're inputs. You're quite [00:09:00] right now with nitrogen, which is essential to any kind of plant we can think of and certainly to agricultural plants. Nitrogen is used to make protein and that's absolutely essential in the, in the time of the first world war for a totally other reason, because they wanted to make something for munitions. Humans learned how to convert the nitrogen in the air to an active form, a reactive form of nitrogen that could be used for any, any reaction and a fertilizer is one kind of reaction. [00:09:30] So we can make nitrogen fertilizers now out of the air. It's called the Harvard process. Michael Pollan's called that the single biggest revolution in modern agriculture and it probably is now. Okay, fine. You can do that. Speaker 4: It doesn't stop the pollution problem, but it says effectively you've got this huge, huge reservoir of nitrogen that you can eventually with enough energy fueled by oil, no doubt convert into reactive nitrate. And we're doing this and we're actually producing a huge amount of reactive nitrated NXS. [00:10:00] It's running into the world's waterways and causing all sorts of problems because a fertilizer in one place as a fertilizer somewhere else. If it's not fertilizing the corn in the Midwest, it's fertilizing the plankton in the Gulf of Mexico and causing them to bloom and cause all sorts of problems there. The same is not true of phosphorus and potassium. They're the other big three. The big three are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium that plants, all plants need to grow well. Those two have to be mined and there are limited supplies [00:10:30] and they're not being recycled. We have a huge amount of phosphorus running off with erosion. Speaker 4: Phosphorus tends to attach itself to particles and it goes with the particles when they erode and there's huge amounts going into the bottom of the ocean. Now, potassium is somewhat like that. So what we've got our limited supplies. I've heard estimates that the u s phosphorus minds will run out by the middle of this century. In fact, that the next period of time between now and 2050 is the biggest deal for us. All right now [00:11:00] in terms of thinking through these issues of where are we going to get future phosphorus, if our minds run out? Obviously once you start thinking about recycling or not wasting so much a potassiums the same way. Right now, countries are battling over putout so called potash mines. They're battling over this because they can see it's running out. You can't make it out of the air. There's no way to do that. It's gotta be mined out of the rocks. Speaker 4: And that's a huge problem because nobody has thought of a way to grow plants without the p and the K [00:11:30] as they call it, potassium, phosphorus, and potassium. So yeah, those are big inputs. Fossil fuels are an, are a big input too, but actually there's more of them around than these others and we're not, well, we are wasting them, but, but we're not wasting them in the same scale. And this is partly because people don't really think about these things very much. They just think about maximizing yield. So their tendency is to put as much as possible on the ground figuring that if the plant doesn't use it well, it'll go away soon. Speaker 2: [00:12:00] [inaudible] you are listening to part two of a two part interview with Gary [inaudible], a soil scientist at UC Berkeley. The show is spectrum and the station is k a l ex Berkeley. Speaker 3: [00:12:30] Well in terms of the ongoing viability of large scale agriculture, is there a way to maintain a status of that or is there always going to be at some point in need for input? Speaker 4: Well, the way these systems are managed, they are high input systems typically. Now, uh, that's true in this country and that's true in places like Brazil where they have these large scale farms. A lot of the world is much smaller scale. A lot of the world, [00:13:00] it depends on rain fed. Agriculture to live is much smaller scale, but these big systems do produce an awful lot of product corn and soybeans. Actually I think about three quarters of the agriculture. In the world is used to raise animals. So that means a quarter of it's actually growing food that people eat right from the plant and the rest is used either as grass that they're growing cause agriculture means past year or crop. Right now we have about 12% of the earth [00:13:30] surface. It isn't ice covered in cropland and that's often very intensively farmed people who are experts estimate we can go another quarter of that to 15% and if we go beyond that we'll have so messed up the global system that we won't be able to sustain it at all. Speaker 4: So we're pretty close to a tipping point. Crop Land is 12% the rest that's in agriculture, which I think is nearly 40% of the land is in grasses and the grasses are were used to grow animals. [00:14:00] So right there that you can raise a question, well maybe there's too much being expended on growing animals. How much do we really want or need of this right away. Then you're going to cut down on the large scale stuff just to kind of think this through a little bit. Cause if only a quarter is being used to grow food from the plants and it seemed like a huge amount, maybe that is sustainable. So in other words, moving from animal protein to plant protein could be a good way to go to it. Think about this, [00:14:30] people say, well yeah, but you know, animal protein is really balanced. His and the world wants it. Speaker 4: I mean it's not, it's not going the other way. It's not going down. It's going up. There are more countries that one animal protein and they have more and more the means to get it one way or the other. So there's a thing to think about right there. If you want to point a finger then you can say, well animal raising is probably doing the most harm right now to the agricultural use of land. And maybe that needs to be thought through in a different way. So that's an important consideration. But [00:15:00] I, I know no one who's thought seriously about this that thinks that large scale agriculture, the way it's done now could just be expanded to the rest of the world and would be sustainable. It's probably not sustainable even in the United States. Speaker 5: [inaudible] you were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley professor Gary [inaudible] is our guest. This is part two of a two part interview. [00:15:30] Professor Ceto is discussing how to be a good steward of the soil Speaker 4: or a way to be a good steward of soils for people who are in forestry or in agriculture, people who are managing watersheds. Sure there is, and thinking again about it as an ecosystem, it's really the same story. If you want a person can think of his own yard, [00:16:00] where his home is as this ecosystem to manage to think about and there are ways of being a good steward. Let's take for just soil. First of all is to respect the soil for what it is. So yeah, there is a way to be a good steward and I think most people, they're interested in a good soil, not a wild soil. To them wild means uncontrollable. It means it doesn't do what I want when I want it to do. I want it to produce a grass. It looks unhealthily green. For example, a blue grass, which would never be grown here anyway, instead of some grass that could be adapted [00:16:30] to the area. Speaker 4: Or I want to grow ornamentals that probably shouldn't be grown either and on and on. And the basic idea is respect the soil for what it is. Don't think of a bad soil as a wild soil fact. That's the natural state. And thirdly, soil health is correlated with a humus. Do everything you can to keep the humans, which means a healthy biology. It means inputs of organic matter if you're using it in some fashion to grow things or whatever you do. It's common sense kinds of things at all. Really good farmers [00:17:00] know people who are small scale farmers and who live from the land that they have. They understand these things so they, they get this, but it doesn't have to be a farm. It can be your own yard that you're the steward of and keeping it well. And if you've got kids teaching your kids about what's in that yard, but it's very basic. It isn't complicated. As long as the poisons from your neighbors don't get into your yard in any, on the run off from their fertilizer and all. That's an issue. If you live close together, then let's, it's [00:17:30] true with any ecosystem that anyone has to manage their ways to look after it. Speaker 4: Now the UN is going to meet in Rio, does summer, well in June actually it's the real plus 20th summit to talk about sustainability. Yeah. Nations and there will be presented there some guidelines for what are called planetary boundaries. It means, for example, don't let the global crop land get above 15% of the total land areas, so we don't go over tipping point, don't [00:18:00] let the nitrogen levels in the ocean and all the other places we're putting nitrogen in. It shouldn't be get above certain levels, don't let the CO2 grow any more than this, et Cetera, et cetera. They're going to try to get the UN to adopt these worldwide as guidelines for countries to think about. So the first step toward this being a, you can find it online, it's called planetary boundaries, and if it's a document which they're going to present. So people are thinking about this all over the world who have good minds and are concerned. Speaker 4: So what's happening and soil [00:18:30] is part of this because of course soil conservation is what's going to keep the agriculture going and anything that's being done to degrade that soil or just lose it, lose it by erosion. And we have so much of that going on, you know, just going out in the ocean. It's just unfortunate because that's, you know, it takes so long to replace that. It is not going to be like five years. It's going to be thousands of years to replace it. So we have to wake up to these things. I don't want to, I want you to think I'm an alarmist or anything. There's time, [00:19:00] but we would be foolish not to think about these things carefully. Everybody has a stake in this. They need to get educated on it and think about it. Is there anything about soil that you wanted to, uh, to bring up that I haven't quizzed you about? Speaker 4: You know, I, one thing I was talking about this to my department head who happens to be a soil scientist and pathologist and uh, he's working with others now to bring up the point that soil is a national security issue. It isn't obvious [00:19:30] that that's true at first and except when you start thinking about food now, when could it raise the question of the farm bill? The farm bill actually isn't called the farm bill when it gets passed as a law. It's called the Food Security Act because food is seen as a matter of national security and it is, well, soil is necessary to reduce food. And so the ability for the United States, for example, to take advantage of these incredibly rich soils that I hope we don't ruin is [00:20:00] a security issue. Our ability to do that enhances our security if we're going to import a huge amount of food because we can't grow it ourselves, that's a security issue just like it is for oil. Speaker 4: We would say oil is a security issue. We have a certain amount of coal which is a lot. We have a certain amount of oil but not a lot and some natural gas. We wouldn't hesitate to say that that's a national security issue. We're, we're well endowed way better than many countries, especially with coal. Likewise with rich soils, we are well endowed. We we're so fortunate [00:20:30] in that respect. We tend to use them as if they're gonna last forever and so in that sense I would say that soil is a national security issue at least for the preservation of the food supply and people need to think of it that way. Thanks very much professor supposed to, you know for coming on spectrum, Speaker 6: you're welcome. Speaker 5: If you missed the broadcast of part one of our two part interview with Professor Gary [00:21:00] [inaudible] or any other spectrum show. They are now available as podcasts at iTunes university and easy link to the podcast is on the calyx website under programming in the spectrum description, the regular teacher of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology that's happening locally over the next few weeks. Lisa [inaudible] joins me for the calendar. Speaker 6: Physics relates to everything that we do. A new exhibition opening this Saturday, [00:21:30] June 2nd at 1:00 PM at the Lawrence Hall of science shows how a visit to a local skate park can demonstrate important physics principals. Learn the science behind extreme sports at Tony Hawk, read science and see how skateboard legend Tony Hawk joins forces with physics to make 900 degree revolutions admit air right up vertical walls and even fly over rails. Tony Hawk along with fellow professional skateboarders will perform an exciting demonstration [00:22:00] on a specially designed vertical skate ramp set up just outside the hall and visitors can explore over 25 interactive experiences. Spaces Limited and tickets are required. The Lawrence Hall of Science is located at one centennial drive in Berkeley. For more information, go to their website, www.lawrencehallofscience.org Speaker 1: Two unusual planetary events will happen on consecutive days, a partial lunar eclipse, June 4th and the transit of Venus on June 5th [00:22:30] on Monday, June 4th view the partial lunar eclipse in the wee hours of Monday morning from the observatory deck of the Chabot Space and science center at 10,000 Skyline Boulevard in Oakland. The eclipse will be most visible from 2:59 AM to 4:03 AM engage in a conversation with astronomers and knowledgeable volunteers. As you witnessed the moon's passing behind the earth. For more information, go to their website. Shabbos space.org Speaker 6: East Bay Science cafe [00:23:00] presents inside dinosaur bones. What bone tissues reveal about the life of fossil animals. For hundreds of years, scientists have examined fossil bones to learn about the life of the past. Recently, a wealth of new information about the lives of dinosaurs and other extinct animals has come from an unexpected source. Fossilized bone tissues. Come explore the insides of fossils and learn what that tells us about the evolutionary history of animals still alive today. The Speaker is Sarah Werning, a [00:23:30] phd candidate in the Department of integrative biology at the University of California Berkeley. Her research explores how changes in bone tissues in the fossil record reflect the evolution of growth and metabolic rates in reptiles, birds, mammals, and their ancestors. This takes place Wednesday, June 6th from seven to 9:00 PM at Cafe Valparaiso, part of the La Pena Cultural Center at 31 oh five Shaddock avenue. Berkeley Nightlife Speaker 1: [00:24:00] is the California Academy of Sciences Weekly Adult Program where they feature music, cocktails and themes, special exhibits for guests 21 and over. It happens every Thursday. The theme for the June 7th nightlife is sustainable catch in honor of world ocean's Day. There will be sustainable seafood cooking demos by local restaurant tours, talks on white sharks, Galapagos fishes, deep sea diving, and coral reef fish. Robert Murray's film. The end of the line [00:24:30] from the SF ocean film festival will be screened and DJ CEP, founder of one of the longest running dubstep parties. In the U s dub mission. We'll be making music. June 14th night. Life theme will be turtle power play teenage mutant Ninja Turtles. Find out how to help the sea turtle restoration project talk with sea turtle researcher Jay Nichols and visit ray bones Bandar and his display of sea turtle skulls. There will be a special dive [00:25:00] show in the Philippine Coral Reef and the film sea turtle spotlight in the planetarium at six 30 music by DJ Jay Sonic. Visit www.cal academy.org/events/nightlife now, the news Speaker 6: alarmed at the sudden losses of between 30 and 90% of honeybee colonies since 2006 scientists, policymakers, farmers, and beekeepers have posted many theories as to the cause of bee colony [00:25:30] collapse disorder such as pest disease, pesticides, migratory beekeeping, or some combination of these factors. A study from the Harvard School of Public Health that will appear in the June issue of the Bolton of insect tology indicates that the likely culprit in sharp worldwide declines in honeybee colony since 2006 is Imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides. It's the second report to link that pesticide to the mysterious bee. Die-Offs. Imidacloprid [00:26:00] is a member of a family of pesticides known as neonicotinoids introduced in the early 1990s bees can be exposed in two ways through nectar from plant or through high fructose corn syrup that beekeepers use to feed their bees. Since most us grown corn has been treated with imidacloprid. Speaker 6: It's also found in corn syrup. Members of the Harvard Group led by biologist Alex Lu, a specialist in environmental exposure said they found convincing evidence [00:26:30] of the link. Lou and his researchers conducted a field study in Massachusetts over a 23 week period after which 15 out of 16 treated hives died. His experiment included pesticides amounts below what is normally present in the environment. Those exposed to the highest levels of the pesticides died. First, the hives were empty except for food stores. Some pollen and young bees with few dead bees nearby. When other conditions cause hive collapse such as disease or past, many [00:27:00] dead bees are typically found inside and outside the effected hives. These beyond producing honey are prime pollinators of roughly one third of the crop species in the United States including fruits, vegetables, nuts and livestock feed such as Alfalfa and clover. Massive loss of honeybees could result in billions of dollars in agricultural losses. California's almond crop is one of the most vulnerable Speaker 1: well science daily reports that the results of a new US Geological Survey study conclude [00:27:30] that faults west of Lake Tahoe referred to as the Tahoe Sierra frontal fault zone pose, a substantial increase in the seismic hazard assessment for the Lake Tahoe region of California and Nevada and could potentially generate earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 6.3 to 6.9 a close association of landslide deposits and active faults also suggests that there is an earthquake induced landslide hazard along the steep fault formed range front [00:28:00] west of Lake Tahoe using a new high resolution imaging technology known as bare Earth Airborne Lidar, which stands for light detection and ranging combined with field observations and the modern geochronology lidar imagery allows scientists to see through dense forest cover and recognize earthquake faults that are not detectable with conventional aerial photography. USDS scientist and lead author James Howl says that although the Tahoe Sierra [00:28:30] frontal falls zone has long been recognized as forming the tectonic boundary between the Sierra Nevada to the west and the basin and range province to the east, it's level of activity and seismic hazard was not fully recognized because dense vegetation obscured the surface expressions of the faults using the new lidar technology has improved and clarified. Speaker 1: Previous field mapping has provided visualization of the surface expressions of the faults and has allowed for accurate [00:29:00] measurement of the amount of motion that has occurred on the phone. Fox Speaker 5: [inaudible] music character new show is Bible stone, a David from his album folk and acoustic. It's made available through a creative Commons attributions license 3.0 production assistance by Rick Karnofsky and Lisa catechins. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send [00:29:30] them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l s@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. Speaker 2: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Prof. Garrison Sposito, soil scientist at UC Berkeley, talks about water and soil, the inputs organic and chemical that are often added to soil, soil stewardship, agriculture and food security.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum the science [00:00:30] and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program, bringing new interviews featuring bay in scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news.Speaker 1: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Today we continue our interview with Professor Garrison [inaudible], the Betty and Isaac Barsha, chair of Soil Science in the College of natural resources at UC Berkeley. [00:01:00] Professor [inaudible] is an active teacher and researcher at Berkeley. This is part two of two professors. Pacino talks about the interaction of water with soil and the various inputs, organic and chemical that are often added to soil. He addresses soil stewardship and the challenges ahead for agriculture and food security. Speaker 3: You talked a little bit about the interaction of water and soil. It seems very crucial. So the study of [00:01:30] soil is very tied up in water then? Speaker 4: Yes, and I think the, uh, because of being in California, we may not, not understand that as well as we should because California has very large irrigation systems. One of the things, one of the very first things that Hilgard did when he came to this state to work was to go see a man named Kearney who lived around Fresno. And Kearney had the idea that if water were applied to the soils of the San Joaquin Valley, they might be used to grow crops [00:02:00] because the rainfall was very limited. I mean, you could grow crops that way, but not very many. And Hilgard actually assessed those soils and told him what the problems would be in doing that. And Kearney then began to irrigate the first one to do so and made a fortune doing this. So we have a lot of irrigated land in California for agriculture. And as a result, it doesn't seem as obvious to us that most of the world doesn't irrigate. Speaker 4: 80% of the agriculture in the world is rain fed. Two thirds of the food in the world [00:02:30] is produced by rain fed agriculture. So when you start looking around at places that are less high tech than California, it's actually rainwater that's making the world go around. So the question then is how does rainwater move through soil? How can we optimize its management in use and so forth, and not surprisingly relatively little is known about that because the places where the knowhow exists to study water and soil are the places where irrigation often gets done. And so typically all it has been studied in [00:03:00] the past is how much water do you have to have in the soil at the start of the growing season to make sure you get through it with a decent crop. And you'll hear things about this in the news where they'll say assessment of the water content in the Midwest is such that the corn crop will be less this year or more or whatever. Speaker 4: And the same is true anywhere else. So now a number of people are beginning to realize that we have to learn a lot more about how water behaves in soil before we can really truly expect to do very much about agriculture in that use. [00:03:30] Now this is important because the rain is falling on the soil. It has two places to go. One is maybe three, let's say three at one place is it can just evaporate right back up in the air, which isn't going to help anything unless it goes through a plant. If you could make it go through a plant first before evaporating, then of course you're doing agriculture. Another thing it will do is percolate downward and way down into what we call groundwater into the water that's stored way deep in the earth and so that's a loss. A third thing it can do is move over the land [00:04:00] surface or just underneath the land surface laterally towards some creek or river or whatever. Speaker 4: So that's it. Now obviously then what you want to manage is keeping the water in place long enough to get it through the plants you want so that they will grow and produce whatever it is you're interested in. So that turns out to be a really important deal about which we don't know as anywhere near as much as we should. With irrigation, you're applying huge amounts of water. In fact, they're, the problem usually is what to do with the wall. Excess water that [00:04:30] comes off afterward, often full of salts and various other things you don't want. So it's a totally different problem. We're here. It's taking something that's very erratic. First of all, rain doesn't come like irrigation where you can order it up and get it applied. So you've got to worry about the fact that it comes sporadically and they're dry years in wet years and all of that. And then you've got to know how it's stored in soil on which kinds of quote choices this soil is going to make in terms of whether it will evaporate runoff or percolate downward and so [00:05:00] on. So it's a big deal. But I would say that given the global situation in agriculture, we really haven't begun to study what we should Speaker 5: [inaudible]. This is spectrum on k a l X. Today's guest is Gary [inaudible] Ceto, the soil scientists that you see Berkeley. This next segment covers inputs to soil. Speaker 4: [00:05:30] This gets into the idea of how do you judge soil? What's what's considered productive, nonproductive. A lot of it comes down to these characteristics you were just describing with the water. The ability to hold water. Yes. However, I want to say that the phrase good soil, which is strictly an agricultural phrase or bad soil for that matter, people talk about good soil and what they mean is something they can grow crops on the they want to grow at the rate they want to grow them, et cetera. [00:06:00] Here's a very insightful essay by Gary Snyder, the poet and ecologist who's a local figure called good, wild, sacred and it's about soil and he talks about agricultural soils being called good and wild soils, soils that are under the forest or soils out in the desert, and then sacred soils have to do with native Americans and others who regarded certain areas of soil as as sacred sacred sites. Speaker 4: Well, from the point of view of nature, there is no bad soil because nature simply [00:06:30] adapts to whatever is there. The water supply, the nutrients, everything else and what grows is what you see and it's fine. It's an equilibrium with whatever is provided and nature doesn't mind. Problem comes and the value judgment comes in that humans do say what they want from a soil. We're talking about domesticating that soil. So it'll do what we want in the same way that you break a horse, so to speak, to do what you want. But that wild soil is actually just as good as soil is. The soil is domesticated [00:07:00] and in many ways it may be better because it's an equilibrium where the global environment has to be. Whereas we may, by virtue of doing things to soil to make it, you know, to harness it, you might say make it into a soil that is not in equilibrium with the global environment, could be harming the global environment in some ways. Speaker 4: So a good soil, well, what most people mean is it's a soil that behaves the way we want it to for some particular use. And that use may be as simple as dumping some waste onto it. And of course a good soil could be [00:07:30] one that you can build on if you take everything off and build a house on it. And that's good too. Mostly they mean agriculture or some kind of thing. They want to grow in the soils and trees or whatever, or yard, whatever. And in which case they mean I want to domesticate this soil. I don't want it to be wild. Such ends up involving a lot of inputs. It does energy inputs as well as material inputs. And of course a lot of ways, and I think this is something which people should keep in mind because the use of fertilizer [00:08:00] is certainly an example of this in the water too. Speaker 4: These are examples of technologies. After all, there's a fertilizer technology and that's where it comes from. And there's a water technology that delivers a water that we need to water in excess of what rain might provide. So here's a way to say that so-called second law of thermodynamics for every technology there is a pollution for every technology there is a pollution. Science. People know what I'm talking about and they say the second law would means that there is no such thing as truly [00:08:30] free energy. It always costs you some losses. Heat. That's really what I'm saying here. So if people would keep that in mind, every time they adapt a technology to what they want to do, there's going to be a pollution. And they ought to think about that. In the case of fertilizer, it's the runoff of the excess fertilizer into the waterways or somewhere where it's gonna cause a problem. Speaker 4: They might apply chemicals to kill things. They want to kill weeds with chemicals. So all of these technologies are problems and they're inputs. You're quite [00:09:00] right now with nitrogen, which is essential to any kind of plant we can think of and certainly to agricultural plants. Nitrogen is used to make protein and that's absolutely essential in the, in the time of the first world war for a totally other reason, because they wanted to make something for munitions. Humans learned how to convert the nitrogen in the air to an active form, a reactive form of nitrogen that could be used for any, any reaction and a fertilizer is one kind of reaction. [00:09:30] So we can make nitrogen fertilizers now out of the air. It's called the Harvard process. Michael Pollan's called that the single biggest revolution in modern agriculture and it probably is now. Okay, fine. You can do that. Speaker 4: It doesn't stop the pollution problem, but it says effectively you've got this huge, huge reservoir of nitrogen that you can eventually with enough energy fueled by oil, no doubt convert into reactive nitrate. And we're doing this and we're actually producing a huge amount of reactive nitrated NXS. [00:10:00] It's running into the world's waterways and causing all sorts of problems because a fertilizer in one place as a fertilizer somewhere else. If it's not fertilizing the corn in the Midwest, it's fertilizing the plankton in the Gulf of Mexico and causing them to bloom and cause all sorts of problems there. The same is not true of phosphorus and potassium. They're the other big three. The big three are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium that plants, all plants need to grow well. Those two have to be mined and there are limited supplies [00:10:30] and they're not being recycled. We have a huge amount of phosphorus running off with erosion. Speaker 4: Phosphorus tends to attach itself to particles and it goes with the particles when they erode and there's huge amounts going into the bottom of the ocean. Now, potassium is somewhat like that. So what we've got our limited supplies. I've heard estimates that the u s phosphorus minds will run out by the middle of this century. In fact, that the next period of time between now and 2050 is the biggest deal for us. All right now [00:11:00] in terms of thinking through these issues of where are we going to get future phosphorus, if our minds run out? Obviously once you start thinking about recycling or not wasting so much a potassiums the same way. Right now, countries are battling over putout so called potash mines. They're battling over this because they can see it's running out. You can't make it out of the air. There's no way to do that. It's gotta be mined out of the rocks. Speaker 4: And that's a huge problem because nobody has thought of a way to grow plants without the p and the K [00:11:30] as they call it, potassium, phosphorus, and potassium. So yeah, those are big inputs. Fossil fuels are an, are a big input too, but actually there's more of them around than these others and we're not, well, we are wasting them, but, but we're not wasting them in the same scale. And this is partly because people don't really think about these things very much. They just think about maximizing yield. So their tendency is to put as much as possible on the ground figuring that if the plant doesn't use it well, it'll go away soon. Speaker 2: [00:12:00] [inaudible] you are listening to part two of a two part interview with Gary [inaudible], a soil scientist at UC Berkeley. The show is spectrum and the station is k a l ex Berkeley. Speaker 3: [00:12:30] Well in terms of the ongoing viability of large scale agriculture, is there a way to maintain a status of that or is there always going to be at some point in need for input? Speaker 4: Well, the way these systems are managed, they are high input systems typically. Now, uh, that's true in this country and that's true in places like Brazil where they have these large scale farms. A lot of the world is much smaller scale. A lot of the world, [00:13:00] it depends on rain fed. Agriculture to live is much smaller scale, but these big systems do produce an awful lot of product corn and soybeans. Actually I think about three quarters of the agriculture. In the world is used to raise animals. So that means a quarter of it's actually growing food that people eat right from the plant and the rest is used either as grass that they're growing cause agriculture means past year or crop. Right now we have about 12% of the earth [00:13:30] surface. It isn't ice covered in cropland and that's often very intensively farmed people who are experts estimate we can go another quarter of that to 15% and if we go beyond that we'll have so messed up the global system that we won't be able to sustain it at all. Speaker 4: So we're pretty close to a tipping point. Crop Land is 12% the rest that's in agriculture, which I think is nearly 40% of the land is in grasses and the grasses are were used to grow animals. [00:14:00] So right there that you can raise a question, well maybe there's too much being expended on growing animals. How much do we really want or need of this right away. Then you're going to cut down on the large scale stuff just to kind of think this through a little bit. Cause if only a quarter is being used to grow food from the plants and it seemed like a huge amount, maybe that is sustainable. So in other words, moving from animal protein to plant protein could be a good way to go to it. Think about this, [00:14:30] people say, well yeah, but you know, animal protein is really balanced. His and the world wants it. Speaker 4: I mean it's not, it's not going the other way. It's not going down. It's going up. There are more countries that one animal protein and they have more and more the means to get it one way or the other. So there's a thing to think about right there. If you want to point a finger then you can say, well animal raising is probably doing the most harm right now to the agricultural use of land. And maybe that needs to be thought through in a different way. So that's an important consideration. But [00:15:00] I, I know no one who's thought seriously about this that thinks that large scale agriculture, the way it's done now could just be expanded to the rest of the world and would be sustainable. It's probably not sustainable even in the United States. Speaker 5: [inaudible] you were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley professor Gary [inaudible] is our guest. This is part two of a two part interview. [00:15:30] Professor Ceto is discussing how to be a good steward of the soil Speaker 4: or a way to be a good steward of soils for people who are in forestry or in agriculture, people who are managing watersheds. Sure there is, and thinking again about it as an ecosystem, it's really the same story. If you want a person can think of his own yard, [00:16:00] where his home is as this ecosystem to manage to think about and there are ways of being a good steward. Let's take for just soil. First of all is to respect the soil for what it is. So yeah, there is a way to be a good steward and I think most people, they're interested in a good soil, not a wild soil. To them wild means uncontrollable. It means it doesn't do what I want when I want it to do. I want it to produce a grass. It looks unhealthily green. For example, a blue grass, which would never be grown here anyway, instead of some grass that could be adapted [00:16:30] to the area. Speaker 4: Or I want to grow ornamentals that probably shouldn't be grown either and on and on. And the basic idea is respect the soil for what it is. Don't think of a bad soil as a wild soil fact. That's the natural state. And thirdly, soil health is correlated with a humus. Do everything you can to keep the humans, which means a healthy biology. It means inputs of organic matter if you're using it in some fashion to grow things or whatever you do. It's common sense kinds of things at all. Really good farmers [00:17:00] know people who are small scale farmers and who live from the land that they have. They understand these things so they, they get this, but it doesn't have to be a farm. It can be your own yard that you're the steward of and keeping it well. And if you've got kids teaching your kids about what's in that yard, but it's very basic. It isn't complicated. As long as the poisons from your neighbors don't get into your yard in any, on the run off from their fertilizer and all. That's an issue. If you live close together, then let's, it's [00:17:30] true with any ecosystem that anyone has to manage their ways to look after it. Speaker 4: Now the UN is going to meet in Rio, does summer, well in June actually it's the real plus 20th summit to talk about sustainability. Yeah. Nations and there will be presented there some guidelines for what are called planetary boundaries. It means, for example, don't let the global crop land get above 15% of the total land areas, so we don't go over tipping point, don't [00:18:00] let the nitrogen levels in the ocean and all the other places we're putting nitrogen in. It shouldn't be get above certain levels, don't let the CO2 grow any more than this, et Cetera, et cetera. They're going to try to get the UN to adopt these worldwide as guidelines for countries to think about. So the first step toward this being a, you can find it online, it's called planetary boundaries, and if it's a document which they're going to present. So people are thinking about this all over the world who have good minds and are concerned. Speaker 4: So what's happening and soil [00:18:30] is part of this because of course soil conservation is what's going to keep the agriculture going and anything that's being done to degrade that soil or just lose it, lose it by erosion. And we have so much of that going on, you know, just going out in the ocean. It's just unfortunate because that's, you know, it takes so long to replace that. It is not going to be like five years. It's going to be thousands of years to replace it. So we have to wake up to these things. I don't want to, I want you to think I'm an alarmist or anything. There's time, [00:19:00] but we would be foolish not to think about these things carefully. Everybody has a stake in this. They need to get educated on it and think about it. Is there anything about soil that you wanted to, uh, to bring up that I haven't quizzed you about? Speaker 4: You know, I, one thing I was talking about this to my department head who happens to be a soil scientist and pathologist and uh, he's working with others now to bring up the point that soil is a national security issue. It isn't obvious [00:19:30] that that's true at first and except when you start thinking about food now, when could it raise the question of the farm bill? The farm bill actually isn't called the farm bill when it gets passed as a law. It's called the Food Security Act because food is seen as a matter of national security and it is, well, soil is necessary to reduce food. And so the ability for the United States, for example, to take advantage of these incredibly rich soils that I hope we don't ruin is [00:20:00] a security issue. Our ability to do that enhances our security if we're going to import a huge amount of food because we can't grow it ourselves, that's a security issue just like it is for oil. Speaker 4: We would say oil is a security issue. We have a certain amount of coal which is a lot. We have a certain amount of oil but not a lot and some natural gas. We wouldn't hesitate to say that that's a national security issue. We're, we're well endowed way better than many countries, especially with coal. Likewise with rich soils, we are well endowed. We we're so fortunate [00:20:30] in that respect. We tend to use them as if they're gonna last forever and so in that sense I would say that soil is a national security issue at least for the preservation of the food supply and people need to think of it that way. Thanks very much professor supposed to, you know for coming on spectrum, Speaker 6: you're welcome. Speaker 5: If you missed the broadcast of part one of our two part interview with Professor Gary [00:21:00] [inaudible] or any other spectrum show. They are now available as podcasts at iTunes university and easy link to the podcast is on the calyx website under programming in the spectrum description, the regular teacher of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology that's happening locally over the next few weeks. Lisa [inaudible] joins me for the calendar. Speaker 6: Physics relates to everything that we do. A new exhibition opening this Saturday, [00:21:30] June 2nd at 1:00 PM at the Lawrence Hall of science shows how a visit to a local skate park can demonstrate important physics principals. Learn the science behind extreme sports at Tony Hawk, read science and see how skateboard legend Tony Hawk joins forces with physics to make 900 degree revolutions admit air right up vertical walls and even fly over rails. Tony Hawk along with fellow professional skateboarders will perform an exciting demonstration [00:22:00] on a specially designed vertical skate ramp set up just outside the hall and visitors can explore over 25 interactive experiences. Spaces Limited and tickets are required. The Lawrence Hall of Science is located at one centennial drive in Berkeley. For more information, go to their website, www.lawrencehallofscience.org Speaker 1: Two unusual planetary events will happen on consecutive days, a partial lunar eclipse, June 4th and the transit of Venus on June 5th [00:22:30] on Monday, June 4th view the partial lunar eclipse in the wee hours of Monday morning from the observatory deck of the Chabot Space and science center at 10,000 Skyline Boulevard in Oakland. The eclipse will be most visible from 2:59 AM to 4:03 AM engage in a conversation with astronomers and knowledgeable volunteers. As you witnessed the moon's passing behind the earth. For more information, go to their website. Shabbos space.org Speaker 6: East Bay Science cafe [00:23:00] presents inside dinosaur bones. What bone tissues reveal about the life of fossil animals. For hundreds of years, scientists have examined fossil bones to learn about the life of the past. Recently, a wealth of new information about the lives of dinosaurs and other extinct animals has come from an unexpected source. Fossilized bone tissues. Come explore the insides of fossils and learn what that tells us about the evolutionary history of animals still alive today. The Speaker is Sarah Werning, a [00:23:30] phd candidate in the Department of integrative biology at the University of California Berkeley. Her research explores how changes in bone tissues in the fossil record reflect the evolution of growth and metabolic rates in reptiles, birds, mammals, and their ancestors. This takes place Wednesday, June 6th from seven to 9:00 PM at Cafe Valparaiso, part of the La Pena Cultural Center at 31 oh five Shaddock avenue. Berkeley Nightlife Speaker 1: [00:24:00] is the California Academy of Sciences Weekly Adult Program where they feature music, cocktails and themes, special exhibits for guests 21 and over. It happens every Thursday. The theme for the June 7th nightlife is sustainable catch in honor of world ocean's Day. There will be sustainable seafood cooking demos by local restaurant tours, talks on white sharks, Galapagos fishes, deep sea diving, and coral reef fish. Robert Murray's film. The end of the line [00:24:30] from the SF ocean film festival will be screened and DJ CEP, founder of one of the longest running dubstep parties. In the U s dub mission. We'll be making music. June 14th night. Life theme will be turtle power play teenage mutant Ninja Turtles. Find out how to help the sea turtle restoration project talk with sea turtle researcher Jay Nichols and visit ray bones Bandar and his display of sea turtle skulls. There will be a special dive [00:25:00] show in the Philippine Coral Reef and the film sea turtle spotlight in the planetarium at six 30 music by DJ Jay Sonic. Visit www.cal academy.org/events/nightlife now, the news Speaker 6: alarmed at the sudden losses of between 30 and 90% of honeybee colonies since 2006 scientists, policymakers, farmers, and beekeepers have posted many theories as to the cause of bee colony [00:25:30] collapse disorder such as pest disease, pesticides, migratory beekeeping, or some combination of these factors. A study from the Harvard School of Public Health that will appear in the June issue of the Bolton of insect tology indicates that the likely culprit in sharp worldwide declines in honeybee colony since 2006 is Imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides. It's the second report to link that pesticide to the mysterious bee. Die-Offs. Imidacloprid [00:26:00] is a member of a family of pesticides known as neonicotinoids introduced in the early 1990s bees can be exposed in two ways through nectar from plant or through high fructose corn syrup that beekeepers use to feed their bees. Since most us grown corn has been treated with imidacloprid. Speaker 6: It's also found in corn syrup. Members of the Harvard Group led by biologist Alex Lu, a specialist in environmental exposure said they found convincing evidence [00:26:30] of the link. Lou and his researchers conducted a field study in Massachusetts over a 23 week period after which 15 out of 16 treated hives died. His experiment included pesticides amounts below what is normally present in the environment. Those exposed to the highest levels of the pesticides died. First, the hives were empty except for food stores. Some pollen and young bees with few dead bees nearby. When other conditions cause hive collapse such as disease or past, many [00:27:00] dead bees are typically found inside and outside the effected hives. These beyond producing honey are prime pollinators of roughly one third of the crop species in the United States including fruits, vegetables, nuts and livestock feed such as Alfalfa and clover. Massive loss of honeybees could result in billions of dollars in agricultural losses. California's almond crop is one of the most vulnerable Speaker 1: well science daily reports that the results of a new US Geological Survey study conclude [00:27:30] that faults west of Lake Tahoe referred to as the Tahoe Sierra frontal fault zone pose, a substantial increase in the seismic hazard assessment for the Lake Tahoe region of California and Nevada and could potentially generate earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 6.3 to 6.9 a close association of landslide deposits and active faults also suggests that there is an earthquake induced landslide hazard along the steep fault formed range front [00:28:00] west of Lake Tahoe using a new high resolution imaging technology known as bare Earth Airborne Lidar, which stands for light detection and ranging combined with field observations and the modern geochronology lidar imagery allows scientists to see through dense forest cover and recognize earthquake faults that are not detectable with conventional aerial photography. USDS scientist and lead author James Howl says that although the Tahoe Sierra [00:28:30] frontal falls zone has long been recognized as forming the tectonic boundary between the Sierra Nevada to the west and the basin and range province to the east, it's level of activity and seismic hazard was not fully recognized because dense vegetation obscured the surface expressions of the faults using the new lidar technology has improved and clarified. Speaker 1: Previous field mapping has provided visualization of the surface expressions of the faults and has allowed for accurate [00:29:00] measurement of the amount of motion that has occurred on the phone. Fox Speaker 5: [inaudible] music character new show is Bible stone, a David from his album folk and acoustic. It's made available through a creative Commons attributions license 3.0 production assistance by Rick Karnofsky and Lisa catechins. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send [00:29:30] them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l s@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. Speaker 2: [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prof. Garrison Sposito, soil scientist at UC Berkeley, is an active teacher and researcher. Prof. Sposito describes how soils form, how soil science has matured and talks about the influence of Hans Jenny on his work and life.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 3: [inaudible].Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 3: 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 1: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with Professor Garrison's Pasito, the Betty and Isaac Barsha, chair of Soil Science in the College of natural resources at UC Berkeley. Professor Sposato is an active teacher and researcher. This show is part [00:01:00] one of two parts today. Professor Saucito describes how soils form. He explains how soil science has matured and talks about the influence of Berkeley legend CNE on his work and life. Professor, Gary's Pasito Speaker 4: come to spectrum. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Speaker 1: To start, would you give us a brief overview of soil and how it forms Speaker 4: in the simplest way to say this soil is the [00:01:30] weathered earth material on the land, the surface of the land. It can extend to fairly great depths depending on how much weathering goes on because weathering is what creates soil. There are two main factors that are involved. One is the percolation of water from rainfall percolates downward and this causes weathering the other, which is critically important and that is the biology that goes on in soil. That is to say the the microbes, [00:02:00] the worms, all of the creatures that live in soil and the roots of plants, which in fact contribute greatly to what happens in the soil to make it soil. Ultimately what happens is that the, what's called the parent material, which is the material from which the soil starts, which could be anything from a cooling volcanic ash material to wind blown dust like it is in China or in the Midwest of the u s or rock material that has come in from somewhere else, from transport [00:02:30] by a river, whatever it is. Speaker 4: That's some geologic material. And at that point in time when it sits still long enough to have percolating water and creatures start to live in it, that starts it on the way to becoming a soil. What are the various timelines that can be involved in that process? They're long, they're long timelines relative to human standards. So for a soil to form in a way that one would be recognizably say, oh that's a soil. And I'll say in a moment here, [00:03:00] what tells us, oh that's the soil can easily be half a million years to really to see the development. Obviously there are soils that are younger than this, but in general it takes a long time. In California we have soils that are a million years old and we have soils that are 15,000 years old, but they formed slowly by our standards. Now the way that we tell them as soils and not simply some weathered rock or whatever is that they have layering, they're called horizons in the [00:03:30] discipline of soil science. Speaker 4: This layering is caused by the percolating water, which moves material downward and then deposits it at some point because the water stops percolating. And secondly, the biological creatures are involved in the dissolution and dissolving of the minerals that are in the rock material. So the layering is coming about from both loss of material and accumulation and that layering tells you it's a soil, but it happens slowly. It's a slow process. [00:04:00] How much variation is there worldwide and soils? Quite a lot. What one should know is that there are large classification units of soil which are based on climate and there are 12 of them. For example, a soils that are permanently frozen such as those in the Arctic zone. Those have a certain name, they're called Jelly sols from a French word. That means to freeze soils that are found in the human tropics that are very red [00:04:30] from the iron minerals in them and highly weathered and so forth. Speaker 4: They're called oxy Sauls and so on. Now within them are sub classifications and the one that corresponds to what a species would be in biology is called a series. There are about more than 20,000 soil series or species in the United States. There are probably upwards of several hundred thousand different soil series worldwide, so the soil series are [00:05:00] mapped so we know where they are and these maps are available online for California and for many parts of the world, it's probably the most important aspect of first getting to know soils is to prepare a map with the series in it. And for that reason, the gates foundation has given a friend of mine, Pedro Sanchez, $20 million to provide a digital soil map of Africa so that we have a, an understanding of all the African soils and this is in conjunction with improving agriculture. [00:05:30] You've got to know the soil characteristics before you can start to do anything with US soil. And this is the first step. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 1: this is spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. I'm talking with Gary's Pasito, a soil scientist at UC Berkeley Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 4: in the development of soil science. Have there been [00:06:00] dramatic epics where certain discoveries were made that changed the game, so to speak? Not so much as discoveries as in really large groups of people of a certain kind working towards similar goals. For example, the late 19th century is characterized at a time when earth scientists began to look at soil as useful for study in its own right. And the first things that they did was to try to understand how they formed [00:06:30] as weathered materials and secondly, to begin to try to classify them in some way. That period lasted until, well, it's still ongoing. I suppose, but it was really pushed forward around the turn of the century. And one of the largest names in that field at the time was Eugenie Hilgard for whom Hilgard Hall on the Berkeley campus is named. He was trained as a geologist. He was the state geologists from Mississippi and he was hired here at Berkeley as the second professor [00:07:00] of agriculture. Speaker 4: The first one, I think he was here only for a couple of years and a lot of people don't know this, but Berkeley began as an a and m campus, agricultural, mechanical, and that's what it was supposed to be. That was it. And the first agriculture professor thought that's what it ought to be. And the regions didn't agree. And so they fired him and they hired Hilgard and heel guard. They said, we want you to understand that you're part of a larger, more general campus than simply agriculture. But it's very important to the state of California [00:07:30] that you develop agricultural emphasis on your work with soil. And one of the first things he did was to go around the state and sampled the soils. And he prepared the first soil map of California, which you can see in Hilgard Hall. But he also helped classify and he also discussed something about how soils form. Speaker 4: So that was one great group. Then came another group of people who did a lot of their work in the 1930s and forties of the last century. These [00:08:00] people in soil science all came from other disciplines and to a large extent they did. So because of the depression. A good example of sterling Hendricks who was Linus Pauling's, first Grad student at cal tech, he worked on the structure of minerals with Pauling cause that's how Pauling made his first famous set of discoveries and couldn't find a job as a physical chemist. There just wasn't a demand. And at that time, and so he did find a job with a USDA US Department of Agriculture and he spent a whole career [00:08:30] there. He did work on minerals. He was the first one really just show that crystal and minerals existed in soils. People thought it was just sort of stuff. They didn't know what it was. Unfortunately, they developed the tools at cal tech among other places, and palling made great use of these train Hendricks to do this. And then Hendrix got a job with a USDA, began to study plants as well, and actually made a name studying plants. Another example, Albert van Zillow, Speaker 4: who took a phd under John Lewis here at Berkeley, who was [00:09:00] the Louis Hall's name for him, Fan Solo couldn't get a job except down at the citrus experiment station in Riverside. So he went down there as a chemist, if you know Lewis, his work, he was a great contributor to the branch of physical chemistry called thermodynamics. First thing vast law did was supply it to soils. And that's stood the test of time. It's been very, very useful. And finally I mentioned Han CNE who got his phd in physical chemistry in Zurich. Switzerland couldn't find work anywhere. [00:09:30] Left, immigrated to the u s first to the University of Missouri. And then in 1936, uh, he was able to secure a job up at Berkeley in a plant science unit, uh, teaching some things about souls, but all of these people were in there. Others I could name were quote, forced to come into soil science because it was opportunity. Speaker 4: Actually one of my own mentors, Royal Rose Street, uh, here at Berkeley, I was a grad student at Berkeley and soil science right in Hilgard Hall. In fact, uh, he was [00:10:00] a student of joke. There's a show called over in Chemistry and Nobel laureate. His thesis was on the properties of liquid hydrogen, and yet he was one of the great soil chemists after the 30s. So these people all turned their skills to, to soil because it was an unknown with respect to the application of exact sciences. And the discipline made huge bounds because of this, because they were so well trained. Actually the depression was one of the best things that ever happened to soil science because it got all these great minds [00:10:30] working. They couldn't find work elsewhere if there had been good times. Who knows? Now finally, there's another one that most people agree was very important and it also relates back to exact sciences. Speaker 4: And that is all the advances that took place in the latter part of the, of the last century in disciplines such as molecular biology or chemistry at the molecular scale. And to some extent physics. These disciplines were really producing very interesting results. And so for example, [00:11:00] methods of molecular biology were applied in microbiology of soil to characterize the organisms that were living there such as bacteria. And these methods are very important because most of the bacteria and the other tiny organisms in soil cannot be grown in culture, meaning you can't take them out of the soil and grow them in the lab. Probably less than 10% can be grown this way. They're just out there wild in the soil. But the new methods of molecular biology didn't require that they allowed you to fingerprint [00:11:30] literally through the DNA of these organisms who they were. And this was applied to soils and chemistry evolved, all these very fancy techniques for investigating minerals or any solid actually, but minerals in particular and so on. Speaker 4: So the people in soil science were aware of these things and they took all these methods in and they made great strides with these approaches. Not so much the people, but simply the methodologies made their way into the discipline. And that legacy has gone on for some time now. Right [00:12:00] now we're, we're sort of still taking advantage of it. What I see happening now is the soil scientists are beginning to join with other people in ecology and climate change so that they're part of a larger team, let's say, which is working toward trying to understand how the global system actually functions and what role soil plays in that. I would say that's the next thing that's going on, a kind of cross disciplinary interaction. But these other three epochs everyone recognizes as really important to the advancement of the discipline [00:12:30] and none of them really were created by the discipline itself. They came from happenstance, from circumstance and depression. I mean, you know, I suppose right now there may be, there'll be some very brilliant students who, who might've stayed in chemistry or physics or whatever who will come into soil science. In fact, I know this is true at Berkeley. I'm seeing it happen. Speaker 3: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Today's guest [00:13:00] is professor Gary [inaudible]. We are about to talk about his research. Speaker 4: How about your research? How has it evolved over your career and your studying soil? Actually, I'm an anomaly. It's true that I took a degree here in soil science under a professor named Ken Babcock and another name Roy Overstreet, whom I mentioned earlier in conjunction with joke. [00:13:30] Babcock was my main guiding professor and I did a thesis, uh, which had a very large amount of chemistry and physics in it because I thought that those disciplines should be applied to soil in a very fundamental way. And after I did that, Professor Babcock said, well this is good work, but don't expect to get a job because nobody's interested in this. And he was right and there wasn't any interest in it. People told me, for example, that chemistry doesn't apply to soil [00:14:00] is too complicated. It doesn't work. You can't talk about it this way. So I got a job in the cal state system teaching for nearly a decade. Speaker 4: And then my major prof told me about Pam Cock, that a professor at Riverside, by that time there was a campus at Riverside, uh, had suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack in his fifties, and they were looking for someone to replace him and they thought they should go in a fundamental direction more so than they had. And so I thought, well, maybe after [00:14:30] 10 years, my time has finally come. So I got a job down there and that worked out pretty well. And then I ultimately transferred up here because I wanted to work on forest is soils. And we have a forestry oriented, uh, unit up here. So I'm, I'm a little bit different from the usual because most people in my field would have come through a kind of agronomic background with let's say a little dash of chemistry and a little dash or biology and so forth. Speaker 4: And they're generalists or their pathologists. So they're trained in earth science and they look at cell formation. [00:15:00] But I came into it from a very fundamental point of view. So I kind of waited around for my opportunity to, to bring this to bear. And what I'm speaking of really is a molecular scale approach to understanding soil. That's what they thought didn't apply. That was so complicated. You could, and in fact, what has evolved is that actually works out pretty well for the same reason that molecular biology helps medicine. So does them like it or approach to soils help agriculture or any of the other applications [00:15:30] they might not have thought. So at first in either discipline, but in fact it's true. So now what I've seen it evolve is a recognition that is actually useful, uh, over time. And what I do with my work is to try to be ever more molecular using the latest methods from chemistry and physics in that direction to try to understand how soils function. Speaker 4: And it works out pretty well. And there are tools which, uh, have been developed in those disciplines that can be applied [00:16:00] with some care because we have very heterogeneous material. It's not to a pure substance. So that's where the art comes in and understanding how to use these techniques in ways that won't fool you, but it does work. And so that's it. So it's evolved simply, I get to be the person I want it to be when I was in Grad school by just simply waiting long enough, one of the former deans at the college of Natural Resources here defined a distinguished professor as someone who's outlived his enemies. I wouldn't say that I, that's [00:16:30] a little strong in a, in a bit cynical, but what I would say is that if you believe in what you're doing in your, you persevere, probably you will find that it gains some acceptance. And I'm living proof of the late bloomer theory of, of that sort of thing. And I think most of my colleagues would agree that finally now the world seems to understand that yeah, you can do molecular scale work on something as complicated as a soil. Speaker 3: You are listening to part one of [00:17:00] a two part interview with Gary [inaudible], a soil scientist at UC Berkeley. The show is spectrum and the station is k a l. X. Berkeley. Speaker 4: Describe what Hahn's Yannis impact has been on your thinking about soil and how has his work informed yours? Well first of all I mentioned he was trained as a physical chemist and then he found that he wasn't able to get work in Zurich [00:17:30] and so he wanted an academic career. So he came to the u s after he got here, especially in Missouri where he began to just learn the soil. He traveled around Missouri and I've seen the photographs that he's, that he took of the landscapes and began to learn about and think about soils. And Hilgard had already pioneered a little of this in of thinking about what things do come together to form a soil. Obviously you need some earth material to start with. You need organisms, you need time and so on. So Yeni [00:18:00] codified all of this in a book which he published 70 years ago, last year called factors of soil formation. Speaker 4: And if you look at it from my point of view, what you see is a book about soil, organizing the soil and thinking about the way it formed, the way a physical chemist, and I don't mean the chemistry, I mean the logic of it is like a physical chemist. Actually a person in thermodynamics in physical chemistry would think about it effectively. He was using chemistry as the metaphor in which to place soil science [00:18:30] and it was an astounding book and it's still today read very profitably. We all had benefited from this. That said, Hans [inaudible] was a personal friend of mine and I spoke at his 85th birthday, which was celebrated up here for example, and I traveled with him to field sites and so forth and listened to him talk about soils and so forth. So he clearly had a strong personal influence on me as well. Speaker 4: He was a very mild mannered person, very thoughtful, very strict in his beliefs. [00:19:00] He was also quite a good artist. He drew all the illustrations for his books himself, which he never mentioned in the book. You wouldn't know except they all look the same and it's, it's him. Art and agriculture were the two big loves of his life and he combined them as best he could in his own work. But he was trained as a physical chemist. So he had that really keen analytical mind and that was clear from his approach to the subject. So I would say he was an influence in the way he influenced every person and soil science through his work. But he also was an influence to me personally because [00:19:30] I could see how this person was living his life and initially doing a lot of hard work to do what would be called the normal science, meaning pushing the data points and doing the things that advanced the technique of the science. Speaker 4: And then as he got older, he began to think about soils as a resource and their conservation. And he realized that a lot was not being done that should be done. And so he began actively to work toward conservation, working with conservation groups and others [00:20:00] to to help in that. Even though that doesn't require a chemical background for sure to do, but he realized how important it was. So that's what I'm seeing with myself as well. Soil is a resource now is suddenly loomed again is a big deal because of agriculture and because of the world of the world we're living in. And so I see that that's something I should do as well. So he's a role model in that sense. Speaker 1: This concludes part one of our two part interview with Professor Gary [inaudible]. Tune in two weeks from [00:20:30] today for part two in part two professors placido talks about the interaction with water and soil, chemical and organic inputs that get applied to soil, good stewardship of soil and industrial agriculture. A regular feature Speaker 6: of spectrum is dimension. A few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Rick [inaudible] and Lisa [inaudible] joined me for the calendar. Our last episode of spectrum featured [00:21:00] Tony Rose and Michelle Houben guy who talked to us about the young makers program that teams up high-schoolers with adult mentors to make things for make affair. You can see their work at the seventh annual bay area maker fair on Saturday the 19th and Sunday the 20th at the San Mateo Event Center one three four six Saratoga drive in San Mateo is like Bernie Man Without the drugs sandstorms and nudity c creative and resourceful people involved with science and technology, engineering, food and arts and craft [00:21:30] one day. Tickets are 27 50 for adults, 1654 soons and $12 for children ages four to 12 check out makerfair.com for more info. That's maker F a I r e e.com Speaker 7: Saturday May 19th the science at Cau Lecture series presents Professor Ruth Tringham, founder and director of the UC Berkeley multimedia authoring center for teaching in anthropology. She is also the creative director and president [00:22:00] of the Center for digital archeology. Her lecture is titled Reconciling Science and the imagination in the construction of the deep prehistoric past. In the lecture. She will introduce some of the ways in which as an archeologist writer, she is exploring an alternative way of writing about prehistory in which the imagination that conjures up sentient prehistoric actors is entangled with the empirical scientific data of archeological excavations. That's tomorrow at the genetics and plant [00:22:30] biology building room 100 at 11:00 AM Speaker 6: there is a partial solar eclipse this weekend. You can learn about it and observe it for free at the Lawrence Hall of Science one centennial drive in Berkeley from one to 8:00 PM on Sunday the 20th or view it from Chabot at 10,000 skyline in Oakland for $5 between five and 8:00 PM with the maximum eclipse at 6:32 PM Susan Frankel is presenting in the long now seminar series on Tuesday May 22nd from seven 30 to [00:23:00] 9:00 PM at the cal theater in San Francisco's Fort Mason. Her talk on Eternal Plastic, a love story discusses how plastic now pervades civilization and why its cheapness has made it the basic material of the throwaway culture. One third of all plastic now goes into disposable packaging. It's durability means that any toxic events persist indefinitely in the environment. [inaudible] plastic presents a problem in temporal management of the very long term and the very short term. How do we get the benefits of plastics amazing durability [00:23:30] while reducing its harm from the convenient disposability. Visit [inaudible] dot org for tickets which are $10 now news with Rick and Lisa, Speaker 7: the May 8th New Scientist magazine reports that recent technological in neuroscience such as functional near infrared spectroscopy allows researchers to watch young baby's brain in their initial encounters with language. Using this technique, Laura and potato and her colleagues have Gallaudet university in Washington d C [00:24:00] discovered a profound difference between babies brought up speaking either one or two languages. Popular theory suggests that babies are born citizens of the world capable of discriminating between the sounds of any language by the time they are a year old. However, they are thought to have lost this ability homing in exclusively on the sounds of their mother tongue. That seemed to be the case with monolinguals, but potato study found that bilingual children still showed increased neural activity in response to completely unfamiliar languages. [00:24:30] At the end of their first year, she found that the bilingual experiences wedges opened the window for learning language. Speaker 7: Importantly, the children still reached the same linguistic milestones such as their first word at roughly the same time as monolingual babies. Supporting the idea that bilingualism can invigorate rather than hinder a child's development. Bilingualism improves the brains executive system, a broad suite of mental skills that center on the ability to block out irrelevant information [00:25:00] and concentrate on a task at hand. Two languages are constantly competing for attention in the bilingual brain. As a result, whenever bilingual speak, write or listen to the radio, the brain is busy choosing the right word while inhibiting the same term from the other language. It is a considerable test of executive control, just the kind of cognitive workout that is common in many commercial brain training programs, which often require you to ignore distracting information while tackling [00:25:30] a task. Speaker 6: Nature News reports on an article published on May 4th in science that blonde hair and people from the Solomon Islands in Melanesia evolves independently from Europeans, Stanford geneticists, Carlos Bustamante and his team compared the genomes of 43 blonde and 42 dark haired Solomon Islanders, and revealed that the islanders blonde hair was strongly associated with a single mutation in the t y r p one gene. That gene encodes an enzyme [00:26:00] that influences pigmentation in mice and humans. Several genes are known to contribute to blonde hair coloration in Europeans, but t y r p one is not involved. About one quarter of Solomon Islanders carry the recessive mutation for blonde hair and the mutation accounts for about 30% of blondes in the Solomon Islands. We used to Monte. I thinks that Melanesian mutation might have arisen between 5,000 and 30,000 years ago, but does not know why, nor does he know why. This mechanism differs from that of European blindness Speaker 7: research [00:26:30] published in April Steele Physical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union states that for the first time scientists have captured images of auroras above the giant Ice Planet Uranus. Finding further evidence of just how peculiar a world that distant planet is detected by means of carefully scheduled observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. The newly witnessed Uranian light show consistent of short-lived, faint glowing dots, a world [00:27:00] of difference from the colorful curtains of light that often ring Earth's poles. Auroras are produced in the atmosphere as charged solar wind particles as they accelerate and the magneto sphere and are guided by the magnetic field close to the magnetic poles. That's why the Earth Auroras are found around the high latitudes. While working as a research physicist in the space science lab at UC Berkeley in the early 1980s professor John T. Clark of the Boston University Center for Space Physics Observed [00:27:30] X-ray sources from ground-based telescopes and found the first evidence for an Aurora on Uranus. The voyager to fly by in 1986 confirmed that your readiness was indeed a strange beast. Dennis now a better understanding of your rain. Renesas magnetosphere could help scientists test their theories of how Earth's magnetosphere functions. A crucial question and the effort to develop fusion reactors. Speaker 6: Science insider reports this week that the newly proposed helium Stewardship Act [00:28:00] of 2012 Senate bill two three seven four would maintain a roughly 15 years supply of helium for federal users, including the holders of research scans. It would also give priority to federally funded researchers in times of shortage. If Congress fails to renew provisions of the 1996 law that is expiring next year, the u s will discontinue sales from the Federal Reserve, which is responsible for 30% of the world's helium. This would be a big problem for manufacturers of semiconductors and microchips as [00:28:30] well as users of magnetic resonance imaging and other cryogenic instruments. Penn State Physics Professor Moses Chan praises the bill testifying that liquid helium may account for up to 40% of the total budget of some grants is only criticism of the current bill is no provision to reward those who recapture helium used in research. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:29:00] spectrum podcasts are now available on iTunes university. Go to the calyx website. There's a link to the podcast list in the spectrum show description. The music hard during the show is by Astana David from his album folk and acoustic. It has made available through a creative Commons attribution license 3.0 Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 1: production assistance has been provided by Rick Karnofsky and Lisa kind of. Yeah. Thank you for listening [00:29:30] 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 2: join us in two weeks at this same time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prof. Garrison Sposito, soil scientist at UC Berkeley, is an active teacher and researcher. Prof. Sposito describes how soils form, how soil science has matured and talks about the influence of Hans Jenny on his work and life.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 3: [inaudible].Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 3: 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 1: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with Professor Garrison's Pasito, the Betty and Isaac Barsha, chair of Soil Science in the College of natural resources at UC Berkeley. Professor Sposato is an active teacher and researcher. This show is part [00:01:00] one of two parts today. Professor Saucito describes how soils form. He explains how soil science has matured and talks about the influence of Berkeley legend CNE on his work and life. Professor, Gary's Pasito Speaker 4: come to spectrum. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Speaker 1: To start, would you give us a brief overview of soil and how it forms Speaker 4: in the simplest way to say this soil is the [00:01:30] weathered earth material on the land, the surface of the land. It can extend to fairly great depths depending on how much weathering goes on because weathering is what creates soil. There are two main factors that are involved. One is the percolation of water from rainfall percolates downward and this causes weathering the other, which is critically important and that is the biology that goes on in soil. That is to say the the microbes, [00:02:00] the worms, all of the creatures that live in soil and the roots of plants, which in fact contribute greatly to what happens in the soil to make it soil. Ultimately what happens is that the, what's called the parent material, which is the material from which the soil starts, which could be anything from a cooling volcanic ash material to wind blown dust like it is in China or in the Midwest of the u s or rock material that has come in from somewhere else, from transport [00:02:30] by a river, whatever it is. Speaker 4: That's some geologic material. And at that point in time when it sits still long enough to have percolating water and creatures start to live in it, that starts it on the way to becoming a soil. What are the various timelines that can be involved in that process? They're long, they're long timelines relative to human standards. So for a soil to form in a way that one would be recognizably say, oh that's a soil. And I'll say in a moment here, [00:03:00] what tells us, oh that's the soil can easily be half a million years to really to see the development. Obviously there are soils that are younger than this, but in general it takes a long time. In California we have soils that are a million years old and we have soils that are 15,000 years old, but they formed slowly by our standards. Now the way that we tell them as soils and not simply some weathered rock or whatever is that they have layering, they're called horizons in the [00:03:30] discipline of soil science. Speaker 4: This layering is caused by the percolating water, which moves material downward and then deposits it at some point because the water stops percolating. And secondly, the biological creatures are involved in the dissolution and dissolving of the minerals that are in the rock material. So the layering is coming about from both loss of material and accumulation and that layering tells you it's a soil, but it happens slowly. It's a slow process. [00:04:00] How much variation is there worldwide and soils? Quite a lot. What one should know is that there are large classification units of soil which are based on climate and there are 12 of them. For example, a soils that are permanently frozen such as those in the Arctic zone. Those have a certain name, they're called Jelly sols from a French word. That means to freeze soils that are found in the human tropics that are very red [00:04:30] from the iron minerals in them and highly weathered and so forth. Speaker 4: They're called oxy Sauls and so on. Now within them are sub classifications and the one that corresponds to what a species would be in biology is called a series. There are about more than 20,000 soil series or species in the United States. There are probably upwards of several hundred thousand different soil series worldwide, so the soil series are [00:05:00] mapped so we know where they are and these maps are available online for California and for many parts of the world, it's probably the most important aspect of first getting to know soils is to prepare a map with the series in it. And for that reason, the gates foundation has given a friend of mine, Pedro Sanchez, $20 million to provide a digital soil map of Africa so that we have a, an understanding of all the African soils and this is in conjunction with improving agriculture. [00:05:30] You've got to know the soil characteristics before you can start to do anything with US soil. And this is the first step. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 1: this is spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. I'm talking with Gary's Pasito, a soil scientist at UC Berkeley Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 4: in the development of soil science. Have there been [00:06:00] dramatic epics where certain discoveries were made that changed the game, so to speak? Not so much as discoveries as in really large groups of people of a certain kind working towards similar goals. For example, the late 19th century is characterized at a time when earth scientists began to look at soil as useful for study in its own right. And the first things that they did was to try to understand how they formed [00:06:30] as weathered materials and secondly, to begin to try to classify them in some way. That period lasted until, well, it's still ongoing. I suppose, but it was really pushed forward around the turn of the century. And one of the largest names in that field at the time was Eugenie Hilgard for whom Hilgard Hall on the Berkeley campus is named. He was trained as a geologist. He was the state geologists from Mississippi and he was hired here at Berkeley as the second professor [00:07:00] of agriculture. Speaker 4: The first one, I think he was here only for a couple of years and a lot of people don't know this, but Berkeley began as an a and m campus, agricultural, mechanical, and that's what it was supposed to be. That was it. And the first agriculture professor thought that's what it ought to be. And the regions didn't agree. And so they fired him and they hired Hilgard and heel guard. They said, we want you to understand that you're part of a larger, more general campus than simply agriculture. But it's very important to the state of California [00:07:30] that you develop agricultural emphasis on your work with soil. And one of the first things he did was to go around the state and sampled the soils. And he prepared the first soil map of California, which you can see in Hilgard Hall. But he also helped classify and he also discussed something about how soils form. Speaker 4: So that was one great group. Then came another group of people who did a lot of their work in the 1930s and forties of the last century. These [00:08:00] people in soil science all came from other disciplines and to a large extent they did. So because of the depression. A good example of sterling Hendricks who was Linus Pauling's, first Grad student at cal tech, he worked on the structure of minerals with Pauling cause that's how Pauling made his first famous set of discoveries and couldn't find a job as a physical chemist. There just wasn't a demand. And at that time, and so he did find a job with a USDA US Department of Agriculture and he spent a whole career [00:08:30] there. He did work on minerals. He was the first one really just show that crystal and minerals existed in soils. People thought it was just sort of stuff. They didn't know what it was. Unfortunately, they developed the tools at cal tech among other places, and palling made great use of these train Hendricks to do this. And then Hendrix got a job with a USDA, began to study plants as well, and actually made a name studying plants. Another example, Albert van Zillow, Speaker 4: who took a phd under John Lewis here at Berkeley, who was [00:09:00] the Louis Hall's name for him, Fan Solo couldn't get a job except down at the citrus experiment station in Riverside. So he went down there as a chemist, if you know Lewis, his work, he was a great contributor to the branch of physical chemistry called thermodynamics. First thing vast law did was supply it to soils. And that's stood the test of time. It's been very, very useful. And finally I mentioned Han CNE who got his phd in physical chemistry in Zurich. Switzerland couldn't find work anywhere. [00:09:30] Left, immigrated to the u s first to the University of Missouri. And then in 1936, uh, he was able to secure a job up at Berkeley in a plant science unit, uh, teaching some things about souls, but all of these people were in there. Others I could name were quote, forced to come into soil science because it was opportunity. Speaker 4: Actually one of my own mentors, Royal Rose Street, uh, here at Berkeley, I was a grad student at Berkeley and soil science right in Hilgard Hall. In fact, uh, he was [00:10:00] a student of joke. There's a show called over in Chemistry and Nobel laureate. His thesis was on the properties of liquid hydrogen, and yet he was one of the great soil chemists after the 30s. So these people all turned their skills to, to soil because it was an unknown with respect to the application of exact sciences. And the discipline made huge bounds because of this, because they were so well trained. Actually the depression was one of the best things that ever happened to soil science because it got all these great minds [00:10:30] working. They couldn't find work elsewhere if there had been good times. Who knows? Now finally, there's another one that most people agree was very important and it also relates back to exact sciences. Speaker 4: And that is all the advances that took place in the latter part of the, of the last century in disciplines such as molecular biology or chemistry at the molecular scale. And to some extent physics. These disciplines were really producing very interesting results. And so for example, [00:11:00] methods of molecular biology were applied in microbiology of soil to characterize the organisms that were living there such as bacteria. And these methods are very important because most of the bacteria and the other tiny organisms in soil cannot be grown in culture, meaning you can't take them out of the soil and grow them in the lab. Probably less than 10% can be grown this way. They're just out there wild in the soil. But the new methods of molecular biology didn't require that they allowed you to fingerprint [00:11:30] literally through the DNA of these organisms who they were. And this was applied to soils and chemistry evolved, all these very fancy techniques for investigating minerals or any solid actually, but minerals in particular and so on. Speaker 4: So the people in soil science were aware of these things and they took all these methods in and they made great strides with these approaches. Not so much the people, but simply the methodologies made their way into the discipline. And that legacy has gone on for some time now. Right [00:12:00] now we're, we're sort of still taking advantage of it. What I see happening now is the soil scientists are beginning to join with other people in ecology and climate change so that they're part of a larger team, let's say, which is working toward trying to understand how the global system actually functions and what role soil plays in that. I would say that's the next thing that's going on, a kind of cross disciplinary interaction. But these other three epochs everyone recognizes as really important to the advancement of the discipline [00:12:30] and none of them really were created by the discipline itself. They came from happenstance, from circumstance and depression. I mean, you know, I suppose right now there may be, there'll be some very brilliant students who, who might've stayed in chemistry or physics or whatever who will come into soil science. In fact, I know this is true at Berkeley. I'm seeing it happen. Speaker 3: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Today's guest [00:13:00] is professor Gary [inaudible]. We are about to talk about his research. Speaker 4: How about your research? How has it evolved over your career and your studying soil? Actually, I'm an anomaly. It's true that I took a degree here in soil science under a professor named Ken Babcock and another name Roy Overstreet, whom I mentioned earlier in conjunction with joke. [00:13:30] Babcock was my main guiding professor and I did a thesis, uh, which had a very large amount of chemistry and physics in it because I thought that those disciplines should be applied to soil in a very fundamental way. And after I did that, Professor Babcock said, well this is good work, but don't expect to get a job because nobody's interested in this. And he was right and there wasn't any interest in it. People told me, for example, that chemistry doesn't apply to soil [00:14:00] is too complicated. It doesn't work. You can't talk about it this way. So I got a job in the cal state system teaching for nearly a decade. Speaker 4: And then my major prof told me about Pam Cock, that a professor at Riverside, by that time there was a campus at Riverside, uh, had suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack in his fifties, and they were looking for someone to replace him and they thought they should go in a fundamental direction more so than they had. And so I thought, well, maybe after [00:14:30] 10 years, my time has finally come. So I got a job down there and that worked out pretty well. And then I ultimately transferred up here because I wanted to work on forest is soils. And we have a forestry oriented, uh, unit up here. So I'm, I'm a little bit different from the usual because most people in my field would have come through a kind of agronomic background with let's say a little dash of chemistry and a little dash or biology and so forth. Speaker 4: And they're generalists or their pathologists. So they're trained in earth science and they look at cell formation. [00:15:00] But I came into it from a very fundamental point of view. So I kind of waited around for my opportunity to, to bring this to bear. And what I'm speaking of really is a molecular scale approach to understanding soil. That's what they thought didn't apply. That was so complicated. You could, and in fact, what has evolved is that actually works out pretty well for the same reason that molecular biology helps medicine. So does them like it or approach to soils help agriculture or any of the other applications [00:15:30] they might not have thought. So at first in either discipline, but in fact it's true. So now what I've seen it evolve is a recognition that is actually useful, uh, over time. And what I do with my work is to try to be ever more molecular using the latest methods from chemistry and physics in that direction to try to understand how soils function. Speaker 4: And it works out pretty well. And there are tools which, uh, have been developed in those disciplines that can be applied [00:16:00] with some care because we have very heterogeneous material. It's not to a pure substance. So that's where the art comes in and understanding how to use these techniques in ways that won't fool you, but it does work. And so that's it. So it's evolved simply, I get to be the person I want it to be when I was in Grad school by just simply waiting long enough, one of the former deans at the college of Natural Resources here defined a distinguished professor as someone who's outlived his enemies. I wouldn't say that I, that's [00:16:30] a little strong in a, in a bit cynical, but what I would say is that if you believe in what you're doing in your, you persevere, probably you will find that it gains some acceptance. And I'm living proof of the late bloomer theory of, of that sort of thing. And I think most of my colleagues would agree that finally now the world seems to understand that yeah, you can do molecular scale work on something as complicated as a soil. Speaker 3: You are listening to part one of [00:17:00] a two part interview with Gary [inaudible], a soil scientist at UC Berkeley. The show is spectrum and the station is k a l. X. Berkeley. Speaker 4: Describe what Hahn's Yannis impact has been on your thinking about soil and how has his work informed yours? Well first of all I mentioned he was trained as a physical chemist and then he found that he wasn't able to get work in Zurich [00:17:30] and so he wanted an academic career. So he came to the u s after he got here, especially in Missouri where he began to just learn the soil. He traveled around Missouri and I've seen the photographs that he's, that he took of the landscapes and began to learn about and think about soils. And Hilgard had already pioneered a little of this in of thinking about what things do come together to form a soil. Obviously you need some earth material to start with. You need organisms, you need time and so on. So Yeni [00:18:00] codified all of this in a book which he published 70 years ago, last year called factors of soil formation. Speaker 4: And if you look at it from my point of view, what you see is a book about soil, organizing the soil and thinking about the way it formed, the way a physical chemist, and I don't mean the chemistry, I mean the logic of it is like a physical chemist. Actually a person in thermodynamics in physical chemistry would think about it effectively. He was using chemistry as the metaphor in which to place soil science [00:18:30] and it was an astounding book and it's still today read very profitably. We all had benefited from this. That said, Hans [inaudible] was a personal friend of mine and I spoke at his 85th birthday, which was celebrated up here for example, and I traveled with him to field sites and so forth and listened to him talk about soils and so forth. So he clearly had a strong personal influence on me as well. Speaker 4: He was a very mild mannered person, very thoughtful, very strict in his beliefs. [00:19:00] He was also quite a good artist. He drew all the illustrations for his books himself, which he never mentioned in the book. You wouldn't know except they all look the same and it's, it's him. Art and agriculture were the two big loves of his life and he combined them as best he could in his own work. But he was trained as a physical chemist. So he had that really keen analytical mind and that was clear from his approach to the subject. So I would say he was an influence in the way he influenced every person and soil science through his work. But he also was an influence to me personally because [00:19:30] I could see how this person was living his life and initially doing a lot of hard work to do what would be called the normal science, meaning pushing the data points and doing the things that advanced the technique of the science. Speaker 4: And then as he got older, he began to think about soils as a resource and their conservation. And he realized that a lot was not being done that should be done. And so he began actively to work toward conservation, working with conservation groups and others [00:20:00] to to help in that. Even though that doesn't require a chemical background for sure to do, but he realized how important it was. So that's what I'm seeing with myself as well. Soil is a resource now is suddenly loomed again is a big deal because of agriculture and because of the world of the world we're living in. And so I see that that's something I should do as well. So he's a role model in that sense. Speaker 1: This concludes part one of our two part interview with Professor Gary [inaudible]. Tune in two weeks from [00:20:30] today for part two in part two professors placido talks about the interaction with water and soil, chemical and organic inputs that get applied to soil, good stewardship of soil and industrial agriculture. A regular feature Speaker 6: of spectrum is dimension. A few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Rick [inaudible] and Lisa [inaudible] joined me for the calendar. Our last episode of spectrum featured [00:21:00] Tony Rose and Michelle Houben guy who talked to us about the young makers program that teams up high-schoolers with adult mentors to make things for make affair. You can see their work at the seventh annual bay area maker fair on Saturday the 19th and Sunday the 20th at the San Mateo Event Center one three four six Saratoga drive in San Mateo is like Bernie Man Without the drugs sandstorms and nudity c creative and resourceful people involved with science and technology, engineering, food and arts and craft [00:21:30] one day. Tickets are 27 50 for adults, 1654 soons and $12 for children ages four to 12 check out makerfair.com for more info. That's maker F a I r e e.com Speaker 7: Saturday May 19th the science at Cau Lecture series presents Professor Ruth Tringham, founder and director of the UC Berkeley multimedia authoring center for teaching in anthropology. She is also the creative director and president [00:22:00] of the Center for digital archeology. Her lecture is titled Reconciling Science and the imagination in the construction of the deep prehistoric past. In the lecture. She will introduce some of the ways in which as an archeologist writer, she is exploring an alternative way of writing about prehistory in which the imagination that conjures up sentient prehistoric actors is entangled with the empirical scientific data of archeological excavations. That's tomorrow at the genetics and plant [00:22:30] biology building room 100 at 11:00 AM Speaker 6: there is a partial solar eclipse this weekend. You can learn about it and observe it for free at the Lawrence Hall of Science one centennial drive in Berkeley from one to 8:00 PM on Sunday the 20th or view it from Chabot at 10,000 skyline in Oakland for $5 between five and 8:00 PM with the maximum eclipse at 6:32 PM Susan Frankel is presenting in the long now seminar series on Tuesday May 22nd from seven 30 to [00:23:00] 9:00 PM at the cal theater in San Francisco's Fort Mason. Her talk on Eternal Plastic, a love story discusses how plastic now pervades civilization and why its cheapness has made it the basic material of the throwaway culture. One third of all plastic now goes into disposable packaging. It's durability means that any toxic events persist indefinitely in the environment. [inaudible] plastic presents a problem in temporal management of the very long term and the very short term. How do we get the benefits of plastics amazing durability [00:23:30] while reducing its harm from the convenient disposability. Visit [inaudible] dot org for tickets which are $10 now news with Rick and Lisa, Speaker 7: the May 8th New Scientist magazine reports that recent technological in neuroscience such as functional near infrared spectroscopy allows researchers to watch young baby's brain in their initial encounters with language. Using this technique, Laura and potato and her colleagues have Gallaudet university in Washington d C [00:24:00] discovered a profound difference between babies brought up speaking either one or two languages. Popular theory suggests that babies are born citizens of the world capable of discriminating between the sounds of any language by the time they are a year old. However, they are thought to have lost this ability homing in exclusively on the sounds of their mother tongue. That seemed to be the case with monolinguals, but potato study found that bilingual children still showed increased neural activity in response to completely unfamiliar languages. [00:24:30] At the end of their first year, she found that the bilingual experiences wedges opened the window for learning language. Speaker 7: Importantly, the children still reached the same linguistic milestones such as their first word at roughly the same time as monolingual babies. Supporting the idea that bilingualism can invigorate rather than hinder a child's development. Bilingualism improves the brains executive system, a broad suite of mental skills that center on the ability to block out irrelevant information [00:25:00] and concentrate on a task at hand. Two languages are constantly competing for attention in the bilingual brain. As a result, whenever bilingual speak, write or listen to the radio, the brain is busy choosing the right word while inhibiting the same term from the other language. It is a considerable test of executive control, just the kind of cognitive workout that is common in many commercial brain training programs, which often require you to ignore distracting information while tackling [00:25:30] a task. Speaker 6: Nature News reports on an article published on May 4th in science that blonde hair and people from the Solomon Islands in Melanesia evolves independently from Europeans, Stanford geneticists, Carlos Bustamante and his team compared the genomes of 43 blonde and 42 dark haired Solomon Islanders, and revealed that the islanders blonde hair was strongly associated with a single mutation in the t y r p one gene. That gene encodes an enzyme [00:26:00] that influences pigmentation in mice and humans. Several genes are known to contribute to blonde hair coloration in Europeans, but t y r p one is not involved. About one quarter of Solomon Islanders carry the recessive mutation for blonde hair and the mutation accounts for about 30% of blondes in the Solomon Islands. We used to Monte. I thinks that Melanesian mutation might have arisen between 5,000 and 30,000 years ago, but does not know why, nor does he know why. This mechanism differs from that of European blindness Speaker 7: research [00:26:30] published in April Steele Physical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union states that for the first time scientists have captured images of auroras above the giant Ice Planet Uranus. Finding further evidence of just how peculiar a world that distant planet is detected by means of carefully scheduled observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. The newly witnessed Uranian light show consistent of short-lived, faint glowing dots, a world [00:27:00] of difference from the colorful curtains of light that often ring Earth's poles. Auroras are produced in the atmosphere as charged solar wind particles as they accelerate and the magneto sphere and are guided by the magnetic field close to the magnetic poles. That's why the Earth Auroras are found around the high latitudes. While working as a research physicist in the space science lab at UC Berkeley in the early 1980s professor John T. Clark of the Boston University Center for Space Physics Observed [00:27:30] X-ray sources from ground-based telescopes and found the first evidence for an Aurora on Uranus. The voyager to fly by in 1986 confirmed that your readiness was indeed a strange beast. Dennis now a better understanding of your rain. Renesas magnetosphere could help scientists test their theories of how Earth's magnetosphere functions. A crucial question and the effort to develop fusion reactors. Speaker 6: Science insider reports this week that the newly proposed helium Stewardship Act [00:28:00] of 2012 Senate bill two three seven four would maintain a roughly 15 years supply of helium for federal users, including the holders of research scans. It would also give priority to federally funded researchers in times of shortage. If Congress fails to renew provisions of the 1996 law that is expiring next year, the u s will discontinue sales from the Federal Reserve, which is responsible for 30% of the world's helium. This would be a big problem for manufacturers of semiconductors and microchips as [00:28:30] well as users of magnetic resonance imaging and other cryogenic instruments. Penn State Physics Professor Moses Chan praises the bill testifying that liquid helium may account for up to 40% of the total budget of some grants is only criticism of the current bill is no provision to reward those who recapture helium used in research. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:29:00] spectrum podcasts are now available on iTunes university. Go to the calyx website. There's a link to the podcast list in the spectrum show description. The music hard during the show is by Astana David from his album folk and acoustic. It has made available through a creative Commons attribution license 3.0 Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 1: production assistance has been provided by Rick Karnofsky and Lisa kind of. Yeah. Thank you for listening [00:29:30] 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 2: join us in two weeks at this same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Joe Cordaro is a principle member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore. He is a research chemist who received his PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley. He talks with us about his work in concentrated solar power systems.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l [00:00:30] 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 [inaudible]. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm joined today by spectrum contributors. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa [inaudible]. Rick and I interviewed Joe Carderock, a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia national laboratories in Livermore. He is a research chemist. [00:01:00] Joe received his phd in chemistry from UC Berkeley. He talks with us about his work in concentrated solar power systems. Joe, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Rick. Can you explain to us a little bit about concerted solar power? Sure. I'd be happy to. People have looked at using mirrors to focus light to do exactly what we are now doing in the 21st century since the mid 17 and 18 hundreds. There's a few reports that people using mirrors to focus [00:01:30] sunlight to heat up water in a boiler to generate steam for creating a pump for irrigation. And there's also been a report of a printing press that was powered off of steam that was generated using mirrors to focus light to once again heat up a boiler. Speaker 3: Um, that all happened in the 19th early 20th century. But from about the early 1920s until the 1970s not a lot of work went into looking at concentrated solar power to make electricity. Primarily that was because at the same [00:02:00] time that research to make solar electricity from sunlight was taking off, oil was discovered and that became much cheaper and economical than it was to invest in technology to look at concentrated solar power. So concentrated solar power is a method by using in mirrors to focus the sun's rays onto a type of central receiver in order to boil water, to turn a turbine to generate electricity. So it's really a complicated way to boil water just to make electricity, but it works [00:02:30] and it only uses the sun. Is this sort of input for energy? Yeah, it's actually pretty amazing that we, that we don't use this more often because there is no emission from it. Speaker 3: There's no greenhouse gases, there's no radioactive material and it's mostly made using commodity parts that can almost 70% be made in the United States. So there's three main architectures for concentrated solar power. There's the sterling engine, there's parabolic trough systems and then a central receiver tower [00:03:00] vista. Then engines are maybe the most efficient type of concentrated solar power, but they also have the most moving parts and a reliability is somewhat low right now. Their module, so you can add one and then another and another and another and increase your field side to base on demand. You can also just stick one in your backyard if you had the money to buy it and uh, didn't mind the thumping noise at the sterling pump makes so they're a little loud. The most employed type of concentrated solar [00:03:30] power facility right now is a parabolic trough system. And in a parabolic trough system you have a field of mirrors that are focused on a central tube that runs through the parabolic trough. Speaker 3: And this tube is about three inches in diameter. And inside the tube is a working fluid and it's usually a silicon based oil. And the silicon based oil is used because the uh, operating temperature for that is around zero degrees Celsius up to 450. If you're in the desert, you typically have cold winter nights, [00:04:00] so you need to have a flu that doesn't solidify at nighttime in the wintertime. And so zeros are pretty good, that lower limit, but the a heat transfer fluid and based on silicon is slightly expensive. And how does that upper limit established? How hot can these things really go? So the upper limit would be the thermal stability of working fluid and the upper stability is just dependent on the chemical nature of the fluid. So the bond strengths of the actual carbon oxygen and silicon bonds within the heat transfer fluid. Speaker 3: But as far as the amount [00:04:30] of heat energy that can be sort of harvested, that's going to be dependent on the thermal heat capacity of the fluid times the actual density times the uh, flow rate. So the more heat you can store per volume per time will give you a more energy out at the end of the day. But all of that is gonna be dependent on factors like your thermal conductivity between the two betters holding the heat transfer fluid, and then also the heat exchangers that are down the line when you convert from a silicon [00:05:00] oil heat to steam heat. So there's a lot of limiting factors that control your efficiency of these things and a lot of losses. Also third type of concentrated solar power facility called the central receiver tower. And in those systems you have one tower that could maybe be 50 to a a hundred meters above the ground and that tower surrounded by field of mirrors and those mirrors are flat. Speaker 3: I also call them heliostats and those mirrors track the sun and then reflect the sun's rays onto the central receiver tower. And [00:05:30] the essential receiver tower has a molten salt inside of it and the temperature that usually goes up to about 550 degrees Celsius. And the reason why we're using molten salt is because you can get a higher operating temperature. Then you count the silicon fluid and this molten salt heats up to its operating temperature, which has been pumped only a short distance to a heat exchanger, which then boils water to turn a turbine to make electricity. Speaker 2: This is spectrum on k a l x [00:06:00] Berkeley. We are talking with Joe Cordaro of Sandia national laboratories about concentrated solar power. Speaker 3: And Are we limited at all about where we would deploy a concentrated solar power plants or are these all going to end up in the deserts of Arizona or so one of the main limitations for concentrated solar powers that you need to have good sunlight, you need to do need to have many, many days of sunlight [00:06:30] per year with a high intensity. So putting a concentrated solar power field up in northern Europe or the northeast of the United States doesn't always make sense economically. It's a much better to put it in the desert in California or Arizona or New Mexico or Utah or in Africa. So the key being cloud free, cloud free with a lower latitudes. And how prevalent are concentrated solar power plants right now? Well, [00:07:00] they're building them pretty rapidly, but I think the total percentage of the electricity we get in the United States, it's probably less than 1%, but they're building these plants in California and Arizona, especially essential receiver towers. Speaker 3: There's a big plant being built in Ivanpah, which is outside of Barstow. There's a couple of being built outside Las Vegas and Phoenix. They're building them in Morocco. They're building them in Italy. There's quite a few in Spain and there's some in France. Israel is building them. The amount of electricity [00:07:30] coming from these plants is uh, increasing, but it's still nothing compared to coal or natural gas. So essentially receiver towers are being explored a lot more because they have the potential for higher efficiency because you can go to higher temperature. So the carnow efficiency basically says that the higher difference in temperature between your hot and cold for doing work gives you the higher efficiency. So if you can increase your high operating temperature to five, six, seven, 800 degrees Celsius, but keep [00:08:00] your low operating temperature is still above the boiling point of water, you'll have a much more efficient cycle. Speaker 3: So if you're limited by our heat transfer fluid, thermal stability of 450 degrees, then you're uh, overall fishing in the plant will be limited. So a lot of the work that the Department of energy is doing to try to improve the efficiencies of these systems is to look at higher operating temperatures. But with higher operating temperatures comes also a materials compatibility issues. And then also higher losses. So as you go to higher temperature, you not only get better [00:08:30] efficiency for your carnow efficiency, but you also get higher radiative losses. So you actually start to lose more heat throughout your whole system. And your materials become more difficult to match. And Costco, Costco really high. And why is that? Well, materials are becoming a big issue. There's not a lot of industries that currently use high temperature materials that except the nuclear industry. So if you want to do large scale industrial power plants, you really [00:09:00] want to stick with commodity items that can be purchased cheaply. Speaker 3: Otherwise the costs are too expensive. So there's a lot of analysis that goes into try to decide if I increase my temperature by just 200 degrees or even a hundred degrees, is the efficiency gain worth the cost? So one of the big issues with these costs and material selection are the corrosion issues with your heat transfer fluid. So if you have a fluid that's operating at 700 or 800 degrees Celsius, you start to have incompatible [00:09:30] materials between your heat transfer fluid and the actual material of the pipe is made out of, I don't know, most of these salt baths, very simple sort of two ion component systems like this. Well the only actual molten salt used in the fields now are based off of sodium, potassium nitrate and nitrite mixture. So there are four components, two to four components, and they're pretty simple. But they do have reactive properties with a lot of alloys. Speaker 3: So there are still some [00:10:00] corrosion issues, especially when you get above 550 degrees. So there's the longterm stability of the molten salt bath or the molten salt storage tank, or the molten salt pipes that have to be considered because it's a 30 year plant that leave expected design. So most power plants are built with the idea that it's going to have a 30 year lifetime. So you have to figure out what's gonna happen over 30 years. And the rate of a simple chemical reaction usually doubles with every 10 degrees increase in temperature. So if you have a simple first order [00:10:30] reaction, like the decomposition of a Moan Salt, and you increase the temperature by 10 degrees, you can expect your rate to double. And so that starts to really matter. If you're looking at something that's going to be a 30 year lifetime, Speaker 2: you were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Brad swift and Rick Karnofsky are talking with Joe Cordura about concentrated solar power and [inaudible]. Speaker 3: [00:11:00] So how intense is the beam once all these mirrors reflected into the molten salts? The central receiver tower like I described, has a large receiving window that maybe 10 by 10 meters and it's a target area that's painted black in order to absorb as much sunlight as possible from maybe a hundred, maybe 200 or maybe a thousand mirrors in the field, and they're focusing the sun's energy onto the central target in order to [00:11:30] get a really, really high temperature so that you can heat up some working heat transfer fluid. There's a way that a lot of the engineer's describe the intensity is it by the number of sons that are being focused onto that area and you're focusing all of those mirrors on a central spot, but you can get up to 3000 suns mean focused onto a single spot. 3000 suns is quite a high amount of energy and also very high temperature and there have been reports of birds that have flown [00:12:00] in the path of the sun. It's hot enough that they've burst into a little ball of fire and then fallen down into a fiery death below. Fortunately, it's only a few birds every once in a while, but that's how hot it does get in front of those receivers. You get nowhere that high of intensity and a parabolic trough system because you only have one large curved, mere focusing the sunlight onto a tube rather than hundreds of mirrors all focusing onto a central receiver. Speaker 3: [00:12:30] Can you explain more about how you store the, is it the heat you're storing? Are you, what are you storing actually, so one of the biggest advantage of concentrated solar power is the ability to store thermal heat. When you use the sun to generate electricity, you're depending on the sun's sunlight to be consistent on the race to be consistent. And if a cloud goes in front of the sun and you're generate electricity using photovoltaics, your power drops to zero until the cloud moves [00:13:00] out of the sky. At nighttime, you can't generate any electricity either cause you don't have any sun. If you look at the peak demand time for electricity in the United States, it tracks with the date, time sun, which is good. But then it also continues into the evening until six seven eight o'clock at night when everyone comes home at night and turns on their washer and dryer turns on their television and it turns on their dishwasher. Speaker 3: If you don't have any electricity on the grid available, then you're going to have a big problem. Coal and nuclear power plants can just generate electricity 24 hours a day without any problem. So [00:13:30] concentrated solar power offers the ability to do that as well through what we call thermal storage. So if you have a huge field of parabolic troughs that are heating up a heat transfer fluid to a high temperature, you can then take this fluid and store it into a large tank. And this hot fluid is going to stay hot for eight 1220 hours to pay on how big you build that tank. So now if you have a hot tank that's storing all of this heat, you can draw heat from that tank rather than drawing it from the field. [00:14:00] So you can decouple the power generation cycle from the actual solar sunlight. Speaker 3: So the tank is kept at a high temperature and constantly being recharged by the sun. But if the sun disappears, you have a reserve of fluid that's still hot that you can use to generate electricity by boiling water. And the size of that tank is dependent on how many hours of storage you want. So people will make these tanks based off of an eight hour storage cycle or a 10 hour or 12 hour [00:14:30] storage time. So typically they're made up of an eight hour storage time because no one needs a lot of electricity at four, five in the morning, and then the sun comes back up again and you can start your whole plant back up. And that makes it much easier to tie into the grid and much easier to distribute electricity to the population. So what we call a dispatchable electricity generation. That's a big advantage for concentrated solar power compared to wind or photovoltaics and what [00:15:00] happens to the system if the outage is longer so you don't just have to worry about nights they have to worry about clouds or dust storms or, so there's a lot of potential backups that can be engineered into a system. Speaker 3: One of them being gas powered burners just put in line to boil water to power the system in reverse basically. So if there was a really big problem where you had no sunlight for a week, could potentially use natural [00:15:30] gas burners to boil water but cycle it in reverse and so then the water goes and operates as a heat transfer fluid actually warm up the salt again. Fortunately historical data I think shows that that just is not a big risk. I mean you wouldn't build a plant in the northeast where you actually could have a week of cloud cover and cold rainy weather. You'd build a plant in the desert and a week of no sun doesn't happen. There's been plants that have been in operation for 30 years [00:16:00] in the desert in California, and there's historical data that is available to kind of map out where in the world you would build these plants. Speaker 3: That goes back many, many, many years and the Department of Energy has collected this data, specifically the national renewable energy lab. Our enrol in Colorado has a lot of this data and industry and the national labs work strongly together to try to figure out where the best places to build these plants that have not only the highest solar [00:16:30] radiation, but also the lowest environmental impact when you build a plant because despite it being a zero emitter of greenhouse gases, there are environmental issues related to water usage and also endangered species and the Atlantan usage. Pretty big. Yeah, they can be quite large. So there are some land issues that are associated with building a system in the middle of the desert. There's also issues about how do you get the electricity to where consumers actually [00:17:00] live. If you build a power plant in the middle of the desert but everyone lives a couple hundred miles away or thousands of miles away, how do you actually get the electricity to more populated areas? And this is an issue Europe is dealing with because they want to build power plant in North Africa and then have electricity ship to continental Europe somehow. So it's another topic, but they're looking at ways to make high voltage DC transmission lines from northern Europe down into Africa. So you can actually distribute the electricity from where it's generated. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 3: [00:17:30] Joe Cornaro is our guest. The show is spectrum. The station is k a l x Berkeley. The topic is concentrated solar power. Speaker 3: And what are some of the other open research questions that are out there besides the materials compatibility issues that you, some of the other areas are looking at. How do you actually set up a field of mirrors that maybe [00:18:00] 50 acres big and then get everyone in those mirrors to actually align properly without making it an incredibly expensive task. So all of these mirrors have to track the sun at the same angle and you have to figure out how can you put all these mirrors on some type of mechanical platform that moves to track the sun and then direct the sunlight efficiently. Cause just a small error in one of the mirrors can really change your beam and decrease your efficiency quite significantly. [00:18:30] You also have to think about what happens when a big wind storm comes around in the desert and you have 70 mile an hour winds. Speaker 3: Now all the mirrors have to be stowed, turned pretty much horizontal so that they don't get blown away. Then you have to worry about the sand that comes by and and polishes. The mirrors are unpolished as them heres so there's a lot of technology goes into the coatings figuring out new pumps, valves and fittings when you're running at 800 degrees. So you can pump a fluid at 500 degrees. We have commercial equipment to do [00:19:00] that, but using that equipment at 700 or 800 degrees hasn't been tested. So manufacturers will make things that they say possibly will work at 800 but it's not actually been tested at 800 and then we don't even have sensors to measure things that 800 on a large scale like this to measure what kinds of things? A viscosity is a big one. So we want to know how fast a fluid is flowing through a pipe so we can calculate how much heat is coming out. Speaker 3: So we know how much steam we're going to generate and try [00:19:30] to measure viscosity at 800 degrees hasn't been done either. So we have active programs to look at making new sensors for viscosity. Some of the other issues, I'm trying to get more efficient steam cycles. Actually there are commercially available turbines to make steam for the uh, colon, natural gas industry that have been around for 50 75 years and they work really well up to a certain temperature. But if you can go higher with your heat transfer fluid, then you want to go higher with your turbine as well. And then [00:20:00] using steam no longer as efficient. And so people are looking at other types of cycles that don't use water anymore to make steam, but they're using super critical CO2 or helium or some other type of gas for what we call air brain cycles. Speaker 3: And those could operate up to 1200 degrees and Japan has actually looked at those for quite awhile, but America has been pretty scared of looking at a 1200 degree high pressure systems. As far as the risk. Yeah, as far as the risk goes, it is a little bit more dangerous [00:20:30] when you have 1200 degrees and high high pressure systems, but the efficiency could be a lot higher. So all of this is still open for optimization. All of it requires inputs from systems engineers to finance people to determine the cost, whether it's worth it down to scientists, to the Terman stability and compatibility of parts to the last thing you want to do is build a big field and then have to replace a huge [00:21:00] portion of it in three years because you have something break that'll make the entire project economically a nonstarter. So the risks have to be reduced to save as much as possible. Speaker 4: Joe, how was it? Did you became involved in concentrated solar power? Speaker 3: After I got to Sandia national labs, I began working in the concentrated solar power research project because I was a chemist in looking at materials, compatibility issues and also stability issues of heat transfer fluids and while it doesn't sound like the most sexy [00:21:30] area of chemistry to be in formulating new salts and looking at high temperature materials, I really, really enjoy it because it is actually being built is actually real science being turned into engineering projects that is actually being deployed throughout the world to solve our problems and to make us energy independent. So unlike a lot of academic research that I did in school, concentrated solar power is real. It's been done and it's been put to use and that makes me incredibly [00:22:00] excited about being part of that project. Joe Codero, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. Speaker 2: 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. Rick and Lisa, join me for the calendar. Speaker 5: UC Berkeley's Institute of East Asian Studies [00:22:30] will hold a symposium titled Towards Longterm Sustainability in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. It takes place today and tomorrow and it starts soon, one 30 to five 30 today, so you better hurry up and get over there, but if you can't make it today, tomorrow will feature three Speakers, all of whom have been actively involved in analyzing the Fukushima nuclear plant accident, its historical context, and the sociopolitical actions taken by the various stakeholders. The symposium [00:23:00] will situate the causes and the consequences of the disaster in the context of a longterm sustainable future. For more information, go to the website, I. E. A s@berkeley.edu Speaker 4: cal day is tomorrow, Saturday, April 21st the Berkeley campus, the museums, the botanical garden are open to the public. There are a wide variety of presentations and facilities you can tour for details, go to the website, cal day.berkeley.edu Speaker 5: [00:23:30] on June 5th, 2012 Venus will transit or pass directly in front of the sun. A transit like this is so rare. No human alive today. We'll witness it again. The next one will not be until 2117 get ready. This event by going to the transit of Venus Planetarium program at the Lawrence Hall of science this Saturday on cow day at 3:00 PM learn why transits are so rare, how studying transits taught us exactly how big our solar system is [00:24:00] and how they may be the key to discovering other earths and other star systems. Then come back on June 5th and observed the actual transit of Venus at the Lawrence Hall of Science. The hall will have several solar telescopes for viewing the eclipse safely on the main plaza. Most of us are aware of the obesity epidemic facing the United States, but is it simply a matter of calories in, calories out on Thursday, May 3rd from 1210 to 1:00 PM in the auditorium of the Berkeley Art Museum, [00:24:30] you CSF neuroendocrinologist Robert Lustig will present the lecture health, Darwin Diet disease and dollars. He will examine some of the more controversial dietary factors contributing to the obesity epidemic, the role that these obesogens potentially play in our evolution toward an unhealthy nation. And possible solutions for turning this trend around. You must register for this event. Go to u h S. Dot. berkeley.edu Speaker 6: [00:25:00] on Saturday April 28th at 1:30 PM the Commonwealth Club and the Youth Science Initiative. Host the research group lead for Pixar and our guest on spectrum two weeks from today, Tony rose. Senator, the admission is $20 Commonwealth Club members get in for 12 Speaker 6: and is $7 for students 18 and under. The talk will be at the Los Altos High School Eagle Theater, two zero one almond avenue in Los Altos. Tony will discuss how math [00:25:30] is central to Pixar film production process and also the young makers program. That's the topic of our interview. In the next episode of spectrum, students are teamed up with adult mentors to design and build ambitious projects for the maker fair for tickets and more information, visit www.commonwealthclub.org another feature is spectrum guest Maggie Court. Baker will also be giving a lecture soon. Maggie is the science editor of Boeing, boeing.net and we'll be discussing her recent book before the lights go [00:26:00] out, conquering the energy crisis before it conquers us. She'll put the fun back in the infrastructure and described the surprising ways our electric system evolved, what we can and can't do about the energy crisis now and what the future might hold. This is the spring seminar for the Berkeley Science Review and will take place in the lead caching building room. Three four five on Wednesday May 2nd at 6:00 PM yeah, RSVP At B e r c. Dot. berkeley.edu [00:26:30] pseudo room, a newly forming East Bay hackerspace is having a free kickoff and fundraiser on Friday May 4th at 7:00 PM at Tech Liminal two six eight 14th street in downtown Oakland. Okay. Pseudo room is a collaborative community of tech developers, citizen scientists, activists and artists. Mitch Altman, cofounder of Noisebridge. We'll discuss hackerspaces for more information, visit s u d o room.org [00:27:00] now the news Speaker 5: significant declines are expected in the number of emperor penguins over the next century due to earlier spring warming around Antarctica. A new study in the April 13th edition of Science Daily reports that an international team of scientists using satellite mapping technology reveals there are twice as many emperor penguins in Antarctica than previously thought. Using a technique known as pan sharpening to increase the resolution of the satellite imagery. They were able to differentiate between birds, [00:27:30] eye shadow and Penguin Guano. In the first comprehensive census of a species taken from space 595,000 birds were counted almost double the previous estimates. Speaker 6: The origin of cosmic grays has long been and remains a mystery. The ice cube collaboration in which Berkeley lab is a crucial contributor published in an article in the April 18th issue of nature on their exhaustive search for a high energy neutrinos that would likely be produced if the violent extra galactic [00:28:00] explosions known as Gamma Ray bursts are a source of ultra high energy cosmic rays. They I know events they have correspondents to these bursts when they would predict to see at least 8.4 events that correspond to some of the 215 gamma ray bursts detected from two periods in 2008 and 2009 there are other popular models for the origin of cosmic rays including active galactic nuclei. The Ice Cube Neutrino telescope encompasses a cubic kilometer of ice under [00:28:30] the South Pole and has over 5,000 digital optical modules that track the direction and energy of speeding yuan's which are created when you Trina is collide with Adam's in the ice. On a later episode of spectrum, you'll hear from Spencer Klein and Thorsten Settle Berger about this experiment. Visit ice cube dot [inaudible] w I s c.edu for more information, Speaker 2: thanks to Rick Kaneski [00:29:00] and Lisa cabbage for help producing show music heard during the show is by Lasagna David from his album, folk and acoustic made available through creative Commons attribution license 3.0 spectrum shows are now available online at iTunes university. Go to itunes.berkeley.edu thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send [inaudible] [00:29:30] email address is spectrum dot [inaudible] dot com join us in two weeks. Same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joe Cordaro is a principle member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore. He is a research chemist who received his PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley. He talks with us about his work in concentrated solar power systems.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l [00:00:30] 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 [inaudible]. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm joined today by spectrum contributors. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa [inaudible]. Rick and I interviewed Joe Carderock, a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia national laboratories in Livermore. He is a research chemist. [00:01:00] Joe received his phd in chemistry from UC Berkeley. He talks with us about his work in concentrated solar power systems. Joe, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Rick. Can you explain to us a little bit about concerted solar power? Sure. I'd be happy to. People have looked at using mirrors to focus light to do exactly what we are now doing in the 21st century since the mid 17 and 18 hundreds. There's a few reports that people using mirrors to focus [00:01:30] sunlight to heat up water in a boiler to generate steam for creating a pump for irrigation. And there's also been a report of a printing press that was powered off of steam that was generated using mirrors to focus light to once again heat up a boiler. Speaker 3: Um, that all happened in the 19th early 20th century. But from about the early 1920s until the 1970s not a lot of work went into looking at concentrated solar power to make electricity. Primarily that was because at the same [00:02:00] time that research to make solar electricity from sunlight was taking off, oil was discovered and that became much cheaper and economical than it was to invest in technology to look at concentrated solar power. So concentrated solar power is a method by using in mirrors to focus the sun's rays onto a type of central receiver in order to boil water, to turn a turbine to generate electricity. So it's really a complicated way to boil water just to make electricity, but it works [00:02:30] and it only uses the sun. Is this sort of input for energy? Yeah, it's actually pretty amazing that we, that we don't use this more often because there is no emission from it. Speaker 3: There's no greenhouse gases, there's no radioactive material and it's mostly made using commodity parts that can almost 70% be made in the United States. So there's three main architectures for concentrated solar power. There's the sterling engine, there's parabolic trough systems and then a central receiver tower [00:03:00] vista. Then engines are maybe the most efficient type of concentrated solar power, but they also have the most moving parts and a reliability is somewhat low right now. Their module, so you can add one and then another and another and another and increase your field side to base on demand. You can also just stick one in your backyard if you had the money to buy it and uh, didn't mind the thumping noise at the sterling pump makes so they're a little loud. The most employed type of concentrated solar [00:03:30] power facility right now is a parabolic trough system. And in a parabolic trough system you have a field of mirrors that are focused on a central tube that runs through the parabolic trough. Speaker 3: And this tube is about three inches in diameter. And inside the tube is a working fluid and it's usually a silicon based oil. And the silicon based oil is used because the uh, operating temperature for that is around zero degrees Celsius up to 450. If you're in the desert, you typically have cold winter nights, [00:04:00] so you need to have a flu that doesn't solidify at nighttime in the wintertime. And so zeros are pretty good, that lower limit, but the a heat transfer fluid and based on silicon is slightly expensive. And how does that upper limit established? How hot can these things really go? So the upper limit would be the thermal stability of working fluid and the upper stability is just dependent on the chemical nature of the fluid. So the bond strengths of the actual carbon oxygen and silicon bonds within the heat transfer fluid. Speaker 3: But as far as the amount [00:04:30] of heat energy that can be sort of harvested, that's going to be dependent on the thermal heat capacity of the fluid times the actual density times the uh, flow rate. So the more heat you can store per volume per time will give you a more energy out at the end of the day. But all of that is gonna be dependent on factors like your thermal conductivity between the two betters holding the heat transfer fluid, and then also the heat exchangers that are down the line when you convert from a silicon [00:05:00] oil heat to steam heat. So there's a lot of limiting factors that control your efficiency of these things and a lot of losses. Also third type of concentrated solar power facility called the central receiver tower. And in those systems you have one tower that could maybe be 50 to a a hundred meters above the ground and that tower surrounded by field of mirrors and those mirrors are flat. Speaker 3: I also call them heliostats and those mirrors track the sun and then reflect the sun's rays onto the central receiver tower. And [00:05:30] the essential receiver tower has a molten salt inside of it and the temperature that usually goes up to about 550 degrees Celsius. And the reason why we're using molten salt is because you can get a higher operating temperature. Then you count the silicon fluid and this molten salt heats up to its operating temperature, which has been pumped only a short distance to a heat exchanger, which then boils water to turn a turbine to make electricity. Speaker 2: This is spectrum on k a l x [00:06:00] Berkeley. We are talking with Joe Cordaro of Sandia national laboratories about concentrated solar power. Speaker 3: And Are we limited at all about where we would deploy a concentrated solar power plants or are these all going to end up in the deserts of Arizona or so one of the main limitations for concentrated solar powers that you need to have good sunlight, you need to do need to have many, many days of sunlight [00:06:30] per year with a high intensity. So putting a concentrated solar power field up in northern Europe or the northeast of the United States doesn't always make sense economically. It's a much better to put it in the desert in California or Arizona or New Mexico or Utah or in Africa. So the key being cloud free, cloud free with a lower latitudes. And how prevalent are concentrated solar power plants right now? Well, [00:07:00] they're building them pretty rapidly, but I think the total percentage of the electricity we get in the United States, it's probably less than 1%, but they're building these plants in California and Arizona, especially essential receiver towers. Speaker 3: There's a big plant being built in Ivanpah, which is outside of Barstow. There's a couple of being built outside Las Vegas and Phoenix. They're building them in Morocco. They're building them in Italy. There's quite a few in Spain and there's some in France. Israel is building them. The amount of electricity [00:07:30] coming from these plants is uh, increasing, but it's still nothing compared to coal or natural gas. So essentially receiver towers are being explored a lot more because they have the potential for higher efficiency because you can go to higher temperature. So the carnow efficiency basically says that the higher difference in temperature between your hot and cold for doing work gives you the higher efficiency. So if you can increase your high operating temperature to five, six, seven, 800 degrees Celsius, but keep [00:08:00] your low operating temperature is still above the boiling point of water, you'll have a much more efficient cycle. Speaker 3: So if you're limited by our heat transfer fluid, thermal stability of 450 degrees, then you're uh, overall fishing in the plant will be limited. So a lot of the work that the Department of energy is doing to try to improve the efficiencies of these systems is to look at higher operating temperatures. But with higher operating temperatures comes also a materials compatibility issues. And then also higher losses. So as you go to higher temperature, you not only get better [00:08:30] efficiency for your carnow efficiency, but you also get higher radiative losses. So you actually start to lose more heat throughout your whole system. And your materials become more difficult to match. And Costco, Costco really high. And why is that? Well, materials are becoming a big issue. There's not a lot of industries that currently use high temperature materials that except the nuclear industry. So if you want to do large scale industrial power plants, you really [00:09:00] want to stick with commodity items that can be purchased cheaply. Speaker 3: Otherwise the costs are too expensive. So there's a lot of analysis that goes into try to decide if I increase my temperature by just 200 degrees or even a hundred degrees, is the efficiency gain worth the cost? So one of the big issues with these costs and material selection are the corrosion issues with your heat transfer fluid. So if you have a fluid that's operating at 700 or 800 degrees Celsius, you start to have incompatible [00:09:30] materials between your heat transfer fluid and the actual material of the pipe is made out of, I don't know, most of these salt baths, very simple sort of two ion component systems like this. Well the only actual molten salt used in the fields now are based off of sodium, potassium nitrate and nitrite mixture. So there are four components, two to four components, and they're pretty simple. But they do have reactive properties with a lot of alloys. Speaker 3: So there are still some [00:10:00] corrosion issues, especially when you get above 550 degrees. So there's the longterm stability of the molten salt bath or the molten salt storage tank, or the molten salt pipes that have to be considered because it's a 30 year plant that leave expected design. So most power plants are built with the idea that it's going to have a 30 year lifetime. So you have to figure out what's gonna happen over 30 years. And the rate of a simple chemical reaction usually doubles with every 10 degrees increase in temperature. So if you have a simple first order [00:10:30] reaction, like the decomposition of a Moan Salt, and you increase the temperature by 10 degrees, you can expect your rate to double. And so that starts to really matter. If you're looking at something that's going to be a 30 year lifetime, Speaker 2: you were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Brad swift and Rick Karnofsky are talking with Joe Cordura about concentrated solar power and [inaudible]. Speaker 3: [00:11:00] So how intense is the beam once all these mirrors reflected into the molten salts? The central receiver tower like I described, has a large receiving window that maybe 10 by 10 meters and it's a target area that's painted black in order to absorb as much sunlight as possible from maybe a hundred, maybe 200 or maybe a thousand mirrors in the field, and they're focusing the sun's energy onto the central target in order to [00:11:30] get a really, really high temperature so that you can heat up some working heat transfer fluid. There's a way that a lot of the engineer's describe the intensity is it by the number of sons that are being focused onto that area and you're focusing all of those mirrors on a central spot, but you can get up to 3000 suns mean focused onto a single spot. 3000 suns is quite a high amount of energy and also very high temperature and there have been reports of birds that have flown [00:12:00] in the path of the sun. It's hot enough that they've burst into a little ball of fire and then fallen down into a fiery death below. Fortunately, it's only a few birds every once in a while, but that's how hot it does get in front of those receivers. You get nowhere that high of intensity and a parabolic trough system because you only have one large curved, mere focusing the sunlight onto a tube rather than hundreds of mirrors all focusing onto a central receiver. Speaker 3: [00:12:30] Can you explain more about how you store the, is it the heat you're storing? Are you, what are you storing actually, so one of the biggest advantage of concentrated solar power is the ability to store thermal heat. When you use the sun to generate electricity, you're depending on the sun's sunlight to be consistent on the race to be consistent. And if a cloud goes in front of the sun and you're generate electricity using photovoltaics, your power drops to zero until the cloud moves [00:13:00] out of the sky. At nighttime, you can't generate any electricity either cause you don't have any sun. If you look at the peak demand time for electricity in the United States, it tracks with the date, time sun, which is good. But then it also continues into the evening until six seven eight o'clock at night when everyone comes home at night and turns on their washer and dryer turns on their television and it turns on their dishwasher. Speaker 3: If you don't have any electricity on the grid available, then you're going to have a big problem. Coal and nuclear power plants can just generate electricity 24 hours a day without any problem. So [00:13:30] concentrated solar power offers the ability to do that as well through what we call thermal storage. So if you have a huge field of parabolic troughs that are heating up a heat transfer fluid to a high temperature, you can then take this fluid and store it into a large tank. And this hot fluid is going to stay hot for eight 1220 hours to pay on how big you build that tank. So now if you have a hot tank that's storing all of this heat, you can draw heat from that tank rather than drawing it from the field. [00:14:00] So you can decouple the power generation cycle from the actual solar sunlight. Speaker 3: So the tank is kept at a high temperature and constantly being recharged by the sun. But if the sun disappears, you have a reserve of fluid that's still hot that you can use to generate electricity by boiling water. And the size of that tank is dependent on how many hours of storage you want. So people will make these tanks based off of an eight hour storage cycle or a 10 hour or 12 hour [00:14:30] storage time. So typically they're made up of an eight hour storage time because no one needs a lot of electricity at four, five in the morning, and then the sun comes back up again and you can start your whole plant back up. And that makes it much easier to tie into the grid and much easier to distribute electricity to the population. So what we call a dispatchable electricity generation. That's a big advantage for concentrated solar power compared to wind or photovoltaics and what [00:15:00] happens to the system if the outage is longer so you don't just have to worry about nights they have to worry about clouds or dust storms or, so there's a lot of potential backups that can be engineered into a system. Speaker 3: One of them being gas powered burners just put in line to boil water to power the system in reverse basically. So if there was a really big problem where you had no sunlight for a week, could potentially use natural [00:15:30] gas burners to boil water but cycle it in reverse and so then the water goes and operates as a heat transfer fluid actually warm up the salt again. Fortunately historical data I think shows that that just is not a big risk. I mean you wouldn't build a plant in the northeast where you actually could have a week of cloud cover and cold rainy weather. You'd build a plant in the desert and a week of no sun doesn't happen. There's been plants that have been in operation for 30 years [00:16:00] in the desert in California, and there's historical data that is available to kind of map out where in the world you would build these plants. Speaker 3: That goes back many, many, many years and the Department of Energy has collected this data, specifically the national renewable energy lab. Our enrol in Colorado has a lot of this data and industry and the national labs work strongly together to try to figure out where the best places to build these plants that have not only the highest solar [00:16:30] radiation, but also the lowest environmental impact when you build a plant because despite it being a zero emitter of greenhouse gases, there are environmental issues related to water usage and also endangered species and the Atlantan usage. Pretty big. Yeah, they can be quite large. So there are some land issues that are associated with building a system in the middle of the desert. There's also issues about how do you get the electricity to where consumers actually [00:17:00] live. If you build a power plant in the middle of the desert but everyone lives a couple hundred miles away or thousands of miles away, how do you actually get the electricity to more populated areas? And this is an issue Europe is dealing with because they want to build power plant in North Africa and then have electricity ship to continental Europe somehow. So it's another topic, but they're looking at ways to make high voltage DC transmission lines from northern Europe down into Africa. So you can actually distribute the electricity from where it's generated. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 3: [00:17:30] Joe Cornaro is our guest. The show is spectrum. The station is k a l x Berkeley. The topic is concentrated solar power. Speaker 3: And what are some of the other open research questions that are out there besides the materials compatibility issues that you, some of the other areas are looking at. How do you actually set up a field of mirrors that maybe [00:18:00] 50 acres big and then get everyone in those mirrors to actually align properly without making it an incredibly expensive task. So all of these mirrors have to track the sun at the same angle and you have to figure out how can you put all these mirrors on some type of mechanical platform that moves to track the sun and then direct the sunlight efficiently. Cause just a small error in one of the mirrors can really change your beam and decrease your efficiency quite significantly. [00:18:30] You also have to think about what happens when a big wind storm comes around in the desert and you have 70 mile an hour winds. Speaker 3: Now all the mirrors have to be stowed, turned pretty much horizontal so that they don't get blown away. Then you have to worry about the sand that comes by and and polishes. The mirrors are unpolished as them heres so there's a lot of technology goes into the coatings figuring out new pumps, valves and fittings when you're running at 800 degrees. So you can pump a fluid at 500 degrees. We have commercial equipment to do [00:19:00] that, but using that equipment at 700 or 800 degrees hasn't been tested. So manufacturers will make things that they say possibly will work at 800 but it's not actually been tested at 800 and then we don't even have sensors to measure things that 800 on a large scale like this to measure what kinds of things? A viscosity is a big one. So we want to know how fast a fluid is flowing through a pipe so we can calculate how much heat is coming out. Speaker 3: So we know how much steam we're going to generate and try [00:19:30] to measure viscosity at 800 degrees hasn't been done either. So we have active programs to look at making new sensors for viscosity. Some of the other issues, I'm trying to get more efficient steam cycles. Actually there are commercially available turbines to make steam for the uh, colon, natural gas industry that have been around for 50 75 years and they work really well up to a certain temperature. But if you can go higher with your heat transfer fluid, then you want to go higher with your turbine as well. And then [00:20:00] using steam no longer as efficient. And so people are looking at other types of cycles that don't use water anymore to make steam, but they're using super critical CO2 or helium or some other type of gas for what we call air brain cycles. Speaker 3: And those could operate up to 1200 degrees and Japan has actually looked at those for quite awhile, but America has been pretty scared of looking at a 1200 degree high pressure systems. As far as the risk. Yeah, as far as the risk goes, it is a little bit more dangerous [00:20:30] when you have 1200 degrees and high high pressure systems, but the efficiency could be a lot higher. So all of this is still open for optimization. All of it requires inputs from systems engineers to finance people to determine the cost, whether it's worth it down to scientists, to the Terman stability and compatibility of parts to the last thing you want to do is build a big field and then have to replace a huge [00:21:00] portion of it in three years because you have something break that'll make the entire project economically a nonstarter. So the risks have to be reduced to save as much as possible. Speaker 4: Joe, how was it? Did you became involved in concentrated solar power? Speaker 3: After I got to Sandia national labs, I began working in the concentrated solar power research project because I was a chemist in looking at materials, compatibility issues and also stability issues of heat transfer fluids and while it doesn't sound like the most sexy [00:21:30] area of chemistry to be in formulating new salts and looking at high temperature materials, I really, really enjoy it because it is actually being built is actually real science being turned into engineering projects that is actually being deployed throughout the world to solve our problems and to make us energy independent. So unlike a lot of academic research that I did in school, concentrated solar power is real. It's been done and it's been put to use and that makes me incredibly [00:22:00] excited about being part of that project. Joe Codero, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. Speaker 2: 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. Rick and Lisa, join me for the calendar. Speaker 5: UC Berkeley's Institute of East Asian Studies [00:22:30] will hold a symposium titled Towards Longterm Sustainability in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. It takes place today and tomorrow and it starts soon, one 30 to five 30 today, so you better hurry up and get over there, but if you can't make it today, tomorrow will feature three Speakers, all of whom have been actively involved in analyzing the Fukushima nuclear plant accident, its historical context, and the sociopolitical actions taken by the various stakeholders. The symposium [00:23:00] will situate the causes and the consequences of the disaster in the context of a longterm sustainable future. For more information, go to the website, I. E. A s@berkeley.edu Speaker 4: cal day is tomorrow, Saturday, April 21st the Berkeley campus, the museums, the botanical garden are open to the public. There are a wide variety of presentations and facilities you can tour for details, go to the website, cal day.berkeley.edu Speaker 5: [00:23:30] on June 5th, 2012 Venus will transit or pass directly in front of the sun. A transit like this is so rare. No human alive today. We'll witness it again. The next one will not be until 2117 get ready. This event by going to the transit of Venus Planetarium program at the Lawrence Hall of science this Saturday on cow day at 3:00 PM learn why transits are so rare, how studying transits taught us exactly how big our solar system is [00:24:00] and how they may be the key to discovering other earths and other star systems. Then come back on June 5th and observed the actual transit of Venus at the Lawrence Hall of Science. The hall will have several solar telescopes for viewing the eclipse safely on the main plaza. Most of us are aware of the obesity epidemic facing the United States, but is it simply a matter of calories in, calories out on Thursday, May 3rd from 1210 to 1:00 PM in the auditorium of the Berkeley Art Museum, [00:24:30] you CSF neuroendocrinologist Robert Lustig will present the lecture health, Darwin Diet disease and dollars. He will examine some of the more controversial dietary factors contributing to the obesity epidemic, the role that these obesogens potentially play in our evolution toward an unhealthy nation. And possible solutions for turning this trend around. You must register for this event. Go to u h S. Dot. berkeley.edu Speaker 6: [00:25:00] on Saturday April 28th at 1:30 PM the Commonwealth Club and the Youth Science Initiative. Host the research group lead for Pixar and our guest on spectrum two weeks from today, Tony rose. Senator, the admission is $20 Commonwealth Club members get in for 12 Speaker 6: and is $7 for students 18 and under. The talk will be at the Los Altos High School Eagle Theater, two zero one almond avenue in Los Altos. Tony will discuss how math [00:25:30] is central to Pixar film production process and also the young makers program. That's the topic of our interview. In the next episode of spectrum, students are teamed up with adult mentors to design and build ambitious projects for the maker fair for tickets and more information, visit www.commonwealthclub.org another feature is spectrum guest Maggie Court. Baker will also be giving a lecture soon. Maggie is the science editor of Boeing, boeing.net and we'll be discussing her recent book before the lights go [00:26:00] out, conquering the energy crisis before it conquers us. She'll put the fun back in the infrastructure and described the surprising ways our electric system evolved, what we can and can't do about the energy crisis now and what the future might hold. This is the spring seminar for the Berkeley Science Review and will take place in the lead caching building room. Three four five on Wednesday May 2nd at 6:00 PM yeah, RSVP At B e r c. Dot. berkeley.edu [00:26:30] pseudo room, a newly forming East Bay hackerspace is having a free kickoff and fundraiser on Friday May 4th at 7:00 PM at Tech Liminal two six eight 14th street in downtown Oakland. Okay. Pseudo room is a collaborative community of tech developers, citizen scientists, activists and artists. Mitch Altman, cofounder of Noisebridge. We'll discuss hackerspaces for more information, visit s u d o room.org [00:27:00] now the news Speaker 5: significant declines are expected in the number of emperor penguins over the next century due to earlier spring warming around Antarctica. A new study in the April 13th edition of Science Daily reports that an international team of scientists using satellite mapping technology reveals there are twice as many emperor penguins in Antarctica than previously thought. Using a technique known as pan sharpening to increase the resolution of the satellite imagery. They were able to differentiate between birds, [00:27:30] eye shadow and Penguin Guano. In the first comprehensive census of a species taken from space 595,000 birds were counted almost double the previous estimates. Speaker 6: The origin of cosmic grays has long been and remains a mystery. The ice cube collaboration in which Berkeley lab is a crucial contributor published in an article in the April 18th issue of nature on their exhaustive search for a high energy neutrinos that would likely be produced if the violent extra galactic [00:28:00] explosions known as Gamma Ray bursts are a source of ultra high energy cosmic rays. They I know events they have correspondents to these bursts when they would predict to see at least 8.4 events that correspond to some of the 215 gamma ray bursts detected from two periods in 2008 and 2009 there are other popular models for the origin of cosmic rays including active galactic nuclei. The Ice Cube Neutrino telescope encompasses a cubic kilometer of ice under [00:28:30] the South Pole and has over 5,000 digital optical modules that track the direction and energy of speeding yuan's which are created when you Trina is collide with Adam's in the ice. On a later episode of spectrum, you'll hear from Spencer Klein and Thorsten Settle Berger about this experiment. Visit ice cube dot [inaudible] w I s c.edu for more information, Speaker 2: thanks to Rick Kaneski [00:29:00] and Lisa cabbage for help producing show music heard during the show is by Lasagna David from his album, folk and acoustic made available through creative Commons attribution license 3.0 spectrum shows are now available online at iTunes university. Go to itunes.berkeley.edu thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send [inaudible] [00:29:30] email address is spectrum dot [inaudible] dot com join us in two weeks. Same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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.

Nicholas McConnell, PhD candidate in Astrophysics at UCB summer 2012, and Jeff Silverman, PhD of Astrophysics from UCB in 2011, part one of three, talk about their work with supernovae and black holes. To help analyze astronomy data go to www.galaxyzoo.org or www.planethunters.orgTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next 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 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 joined today by a spectrum of contributors, Rick Karnofsky and Lisa Katovich. Our interview is with Jeff Silverman, a recent phd in astrophysics from UC Berkeley and Nicholas McConnell, a phd [00:01:00] candidate unscheduled to be awarded a phd in astrophysics by UC Berkeley this summer. Jeff and Nicholas have generously agreed to help 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 two of three and in it we discussed Super Novi and black holes. Jeff, would you please start part two explaining Super Novi [inaudible] Speaker 4: observations [00:01:30] of exploding stars. These supernovae have been going on for thousands of years. Whether or not we knew what we were looking at for most of that time, we now know that those were exploding stars. Something that I did my phd thesis work on as well. I want to talk about a two exploding stars in particular that were found in 2011. The first one I'll talk about was found in late May, early June last year. It was founded by a handful of amateur astronomers, which is they find maybe hundred supernova per year. This has been going on for about a decade [00:02:00] or so. Uh, this one in particular, however, was so young and knew that somebody had emailed somebody who had emailed somebody who had actually tweeted about this new supernova. And so I got forwarded a tweet that said there's a new supernova in this very nearby galaxy and I happen to be using the Keck telescope, one of the biggest optical telescopes in the world, controlling it from UC Berkeley. Speaker 4: Saw this in my inbox. And we pointed at this supernova. We were the first ones to classify what kind of exploding start was confirmed that it was indeed [00:02:30] an exploding star and not some other, uh, asteroid that was just along the line of sight in the way or something else. Uh, and so that was as far as I know, the first time that a supernova was ever classified based on a tweet. The other Supernova, I want to talk about sort of the opposite end of having amateurs looking at a handful of galaxies. I'm part of a large international collaboration known as the Palomar transient factory PTF. And this collaboration uses a telescope down in San Diego to automatically monitor a bunch of these galaxies, [00:03:00] run these big computer programs to try and find if there is a new supernova, new bright spot in any of the images. Speaker 4: And this has been running for about two years now and we've been tweaking the algorithms to get faster and faster detections of these new spots. And so in August of last year there was some images taken in San Diego. Dr Peter Nugent, a professor in the astronomy department, was going through some of the newest candidates of what the computer program spit out and saw what looked like a very good supernova candidate and another very nearby galaxy, [00:03:30] a different one, but about the same distance, 20 or so million light years. We had an image from the night before that was very good and there was absolutely nothing at that position. So this clearly looked like a brand new spot. It couldn't be that old. So he immediately gets on the email list for this international collaboration. This was sort of the afternoon in California, but it was already nighttime in the eastern hemisphere. And we have collaborators who use telescopes in the Canary Islands. Speaker 4: So they point to it. They got not a great observation, but an observation that confirmed there was something there. And it was probably one of these [00:04:00] exploding stars by the time that they had worked on their data and emailed us. It was already nighttime in California and Hawaii. So we had the lick observatory telescopes out in San Jose as well as the Kecks in Hawaii pointing at this and absolutely confirming that it, it was a supernova. And within a few weeks we had already written a bunch of papers looking at the data very carefully. And we had actually found this supernova 11 hours after it exploded. So one of the earliest detections of an exploding star ever. People had speculated what you might [00:04:30] see that early and we actually got to throw out a lot of people's models saying we didn't see these things that you predicted possibly confirming some other predictions at this early time. Speaker 4: And this thing is still bright at its brightest. You could see it in a small backyard telescope are good binoculars from the Oakland hills. Uh, I saw it with my own eyes through a telescope, which was awesome. I think just an amazing, amazing proof of concept or success story of this huge collaboration without the the algorithms to, to run this quickly, we wouldn't have realized it was there until [00:05:00] days later without an international collaboration of friends expanding the globe. We wouldn't have been able to track it and confirm that it was the supernovas so quickly and so early and easily. So if I can ask, what's the biggest mystery about the way stars explode that you help solve by knowing about a supernova? Just a few hours after an explosion is actually happened. We'll solve as a strong word in science, but we can at least help get towards the truth. Speaker 4: As my advisor likes to say, this one that was discovered by the Palomar transient [00:05:30] factory in August is a specific kind of supernova that should have very consistent amount of energy. Sort of, you can think of it as a a hundred watt light bulb. It has the same amount of energy output always basically. So if you see it's very, very faint, it must be very, very far away. If you see it's very, very bright, it must be very, very close because it's sort of each of these objects has the same amount of light coming out of it and so we can measure very accurately how bright they are. We can compare to what we know they should be, how bright they should be, and we get a very accurate distance measurement to [00:06:00] all of these different supernova and figure out very accurate distances. How that distance has changed with time, and this is in fact how the accelerating expansion of the universe was discovered in the late nineties using these types of supernovae, which I will plug did win the Nobel Prize last year for physics and we're all very proud of that. Speaker 4: Saul Perlmutter up at the Berkeley lab was one of the winners and many of our group here at Berkeley and other places have collaborated on those projects over the years. So one thing that we aren't quite sure of, even though these are very, very consistent [00:06:30] explosions, we've observed them for a long time. We don't actually know the details of what stars are involved in the original explosion. We have some idea that a very dense star called a white dwarf made of mostly carbon and oxygen is blowing up. What exactly is around that star that's helping it blow up by actually feeding it some extra material and then pushing it over a limit to explode? We're a little bit unclear and so since this star that is feeding the mass to the white dwarf should be very close by. [00:07:00] They should be right near each other. One of the best ways you're going to observe it is right after the explosion, the explosion goes off. Speaker 4: The light and energy from that explosion could interact with the donor star that's right next door and then very quickly the explosion has expanded much further beyond that neighboring star and then it's sort of just hidden until either much, much later or perhaps never. And so by observing this supernova back in August 11 hours after the explosion and then taking subsequent observations sort of for the following few days, [00:07:30] we could rule out certain ideas of what that other star could be. There are very strong predictions. You should see some extra light in certain ways. If you had a certain type of star sitting there and we didn't see that, so it must be a very small star. Maybe something like the sun, maybe something like two times the mass of the sun. Speaker 2: Nope. This is spectrum k l x Berkeley. And you boys have been talking with Jeff Silverman [00:08:00] and Nicholas McConnell about supernova and black holes. So the Supernova is an issue. Speaker 4: Delusion of carbon and oxygen. You were saying that's great. What's the relationship of those explosions? Supernova to the black holes that were now discovered to be at the heart of every galaxy. So black holes come in a few different flavors, a certain kinds of supernovae uh, not the, the white [00:08:30] door of carbon oxygen ones. I was talking about a different flavor of Supernova that come from very massive stars that have 10 times the mass of the center bigger. They do explode as the different kinds of supernova collapse on themselves and can create black holes. The black holes end up weighing something like a few times the mass of the sun, maybe up to 20, 30 times the mass of the sun at the most. But those are sort of just kind of peppered throughout galaxies. What we've found over the past few decades and did a lot of work on lately is the supermassive black holes that can get up to hundreds of [00:09:00] millions or billions of times as massive as the sun. And those are found in the cores of galaxies as opposed to kind of peppered throughout them. And so there probably is a different formation mechanism that's still a very open question, how you make these giant black holes. But there are many, many orders of magnitude bigger than the ones that come from supernovae. Uh, and, and I'd actually say this is possibly a good segue that some interesting observation, right? Speaker 5: Progress is being made on which the most likely mechanisms are for forming these so-called seed [00:09:30] black holes that eventually grew into the monsters that we now observe at the senators of most galaxies in our own universe, in our current universe. Speaker 4: So was that a big shift then the, the idea of these supermassive black holes, Speaker 5: there's possibly a, a complicated relationship between the black hole at the center of the Galaxy and the galaxy itself, the black holes. Gravity is not sufficient to hold the entire galaxy together even though it is an extremely massive object and very near [00:10:00] to it. There's extremely powerful gravitational forces. Galaxies are so large and so extended that out in the the normal regions of the galaxy out near where the sun orbits in the Milky Way Galaxy. The fact that our Milky Way has a central black hole doesn't have any direct impact on our lives as the sun orbiting in the galaxy. On the other hand, if you consider the life cycle of a black hole starting from when it is formed from some seed object or birth process relatively early in the universe and evolving all the way toward [00:10:30] our present day universe over more than 10 billion years, black holes have very interesting variations in what they're doing over the course of their lifetimes. Speaker 5: In particular, when a black hole comes into proximity with a lot of gas, the gas spirals down and is funnel basically into the black hole and whereas some of the gas goes into the black hole and has never heard from again and increases the mass of the black hole. A lot of the guests on its way down heats up and releases tremendous amounts of light [00:11:00] because it takes time for light to travel. The distance between the object of meeting the light and us some of the furthest and therefore youngest things that we see of corresponding to very early times in the universe are in fact black holes that are swallowing tremendous amounts of gas. And some interesting discoveries that have happened recently is astronomers have been using different observational techniques to push further and further back into the universe's past, finding more and more distant black holes, swallowing [00:11:30] gas and learning about the universe at earlier and earlier times based on these observations. Speaker 5: And I think the current record holder now is a black hole that lived about 800 million years after the big bang, which translates to almost 13 billion years, 13,000 million years before our present day now. So looking that far back in time, we can no, first of all that these tremendous black holes exist that early in the universe. And we [00:12:00] can actually using techniques that follow up on the initial discovery and try to get more detailed analysis of them, we can make estimates of how massive they are. And in the case of the one that occurred when the universe was only 800 million years old, we learned that that black hole is far more massive than the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy bowed as massive as some of the most massive black holes that we've observed today. Um, so at least in some cases, black holes appear to have been seated by things that were relatively small, bigger than the tens of solar [00:12:30] masses that Jeff mentioned, but maybe a few thousand solar masses. And yet in the very earliest stage of the universe, they were able to grow tremendously fast and actually gain a ton of mass early in the universe. And then may have lived more peacefully throughout most of the duration of the universe. Speaker 2: You're listening to spectrum on k a l x, Berkeley, 90.7 FM. Today we're talking with Jeff Silverman and [00:13:00] Nicholas McConnell, both astrophysicists. We're discussing supernova. I am black homes. This is part two of a series three. Speaker 5: Another interesting outcome of looking at supermassive black holes early in the universe is it's often easier to see them far away than it is nearby because when they're far away and we see them, that's because they're swallowing a lot of gas. Many of the galaxies in today's universe [00:13:30] don't have gas near their black holes of the black holes are quiet. Uh, and in fact, you have to make very, very precise measurements of stars orbiting in their gravitational field to even know that a black hole is there. So one of the mysteries that had been going around for awhile is if you believe the masses of black holes very early in the universe, and you see these tremendously early things, but you want to know where are they now? They've had 13 billion years to evolve. What kind of galaxy is do these black holes live in today? Speaker 5: [00:14:00] Then you need to look in the nearby universe and try to find their quiet, ancient remnants. And recently, along with a couple other researchers at UC Berkeley, some other researchers around the country, my team discovered the two most massive black holes that we know about in today's universe. Black holes more than 10 billion times the mass of our sun, more than 2000 times the mass of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. And because these are the most massive black holes that we know about in today's universe, [00:14:30] and they're roughly correspond to the estimated masses of the most massive black holes that we observe very, very early in the universe. We think we're beginning to answer the question of what kind of environment do these very young black holes actually end up in after the entire history of the universe between them. If I could ask a question, do you other properties of the galaxies that are now hosting these most massive black holes that are different than other nearby galaxies [00:15:00] that may have less massive black holes, something like the Milky Way size. Speaker 5: One interesting thing about the galaxies that we looked at is that they're also anchoring large galaxy clusters. And so specifically we found the most massive black holes at the centers of galaxy clusters. Now that's not a perfectly robust result because to be perfectly honest, we started by looking in the centers of galaxy clusters. And so we haven't done a wide sample of other galaxies and other environments, but it's possible that there is an environmental effect [00:15:30] based on not only the galaxy that the black hole resides in, but the overall neighborhood of how many galaxies are around that central object that may have something to do with the final massive its black hole. And where do you go with this research now, Nicholas, are there specific experiments? Are you relying on certain data? Where are you drawing this information from? And so we use data from a few different telescopes because these galaxies are distant and we're trying to look at stars in a very [00:16:00] small region of space. Speaker 5: We rely on very large telescopes to give us good light collecting power and good spatial resolution. So we use the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. We also use the Gemini telescopes in Hawaii and Sheila and there is a telescope in Texas that we've done some work with and we are trying to use these telescopes to find black holes in as many galaxies as the telescope committees will allow us to look at. Uh, so each semester with the generosity of, of getting, observing time, we're able to look at [00:16:30] two or three more galaxies and hopefully over a few years we'll have a good dozen or so objects that we can search directly for the most massive black holes in addition to a few dozen that have been discovered by other teams throughout the world over the last 10 years or so. And that really is one of the big limiting factors, isn't it? Speaker 5: The access to the equipment because there's so much going on in astronomy. Everybody's in the queue. Yeah, that's right. A, just like most scientists apply for amounts of funding from [00:17:00] various organizations, astronomers do that. In addition to applying for telescope time, the oversubscription rates for many of the biggest telescopes, the Hubble space telescope, the Keck telescopes is something like eight to one 10 to one. So the total number of requested hours is something like eight or 10 times the number of nighttime hours. There are in a semester or in a year, so it's, it's very much like a funding situation and there is so many nighttime hours and there's so many telescopes in the world. It's very competitive and we're very lucky when we do get access to [00:17:30] these huge telescopes with amazing instruments and computing power. How does that allocated time work when you want to make observations within a couple of hours of something that you've just heard about? So that's a great question. There's been something that has been used by astronomers over sort of the last decade but really a lot in the last five years called target of observations Speaker 4: too is as we call them and it's sort of in addition to or separate from your standard classically scheduled nights where you will use the telescope on this night. You can [00:18:00] also apply if you have a good science case, which many of us do, especially for these kinds of exploding stars that go off and we want to look at it very quickly, you can apply for time that is allocated through this t o program. And basically what it is is the telescope committees have said, okay, you get so many times to interrupt any observer and say you have to go look at this. And as an observer at that observatory, you know that that's part of the program and that at any point somebody could call you and say, drop what you're doing and go move over to [00:18:30] this. And many times people want to do the best science and are very happy to help out. And oftentimes there'll be offered co-authorship or at least acknowledged to, you know, thanking them for their help. Uh, certainly for these two Supernova I spoke about earlier, we definitely used our target of opportunity and they did turn out to be these very interesting supernovae Speaker 6: [inaudible]. That concludes part two of our astronomy series. Be sure to join us in two weeks [00:19:00] when we discuss dark energy or dark matter. Part three a 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. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa Kovich join me for the calendar. Speaker 7: The fix-it clinic will be held on Sunday, March 25th at the Lawrence Hall of science in Berkeley from one to 4:00 PM bring your broken non-functioning [00:19:30] things, electronics, appliances, computers, toys, and so on. For assessment, disassembly and possible repair. We'll provide workspace specialty tools and guidance to help you take apart and troubleshoot your item. Whether we fix it or not, you'll learn more about how it was manufactured and how it worked. This is a family friendly event. Children are hardly invited. This event is included in admission to the Lawrence Hall of Science. Speaker 3: The Mount Diablo Astronomical Society [00:20:00] holds its general monthly meetings the fourth Tuesday of each month, except for November and December. At the March 27th meeting, UC Berkeley Professor Jeff Marcy will speak about the future directions in extra solar planet investigations. The meeting begins at 7:15 PM and lasts until 9:30 PM the event will be held at the Concord Police Association facility. Five zero six zero Avi Law road in Concord. The society website is m [00:20:30] d a s. Dot. N. E. T. The computer history museums Speaker for March 28th will be New York Times magazine writer John Gardner who will talk about his book, the idea factory bell labs and the great age of American innovation to cake. Speaker 8: You edis Dave Iverson Bell labs was the most innovative production and research institution from the 1920s to the 1980s at its peak, bell labs employed nearly 15,000 people. [00:21:00] 1200 had PhDs. 13 would go on to win Nobel prizes. These ingenious, often eccentric men would become revolutionaries and sometimes legends, whether for inventing radio astronomy in their spare time and on the company's dime, riding unicycles through the corridors or pioneering the principles that propelled today's technology. Bell labs combined the best aspects of academic and corporate worlds, hiring the brightest and usually the youngest minds creating a culture and even architecture that [00:21:30] forced employees in different fields to work together in virtually complete intellectual freedom with little pressure to create moneymaking innovations in Gartner's portrait. We come to understand why both researchers and business leaders look to bell labs as a model and long to incorporate its magic into their own work. The talk starts at seven at the Computer History Museum, 14 Zero One north shoreline boulevard and mountain view. Visit www.computer history.org to register Speaker 7: [00:22:00] Thursday April 4th from three to 4:00 PM Andy Grove, Co founder and former CEO of Intel will speak on the UC Berkeley campus. His talk is titled of microchips and Men Tales from the translational medicine front. Andy Grove had a major influence on the ascent of micro electronics. Can a similar technological advance be achieved in medicine? He will discuss how we might open the pipeline to get life changing technologies to market without increasing the cost of care. [00:22:30] This event will be at the Sibley auditorium in the Bechdel engineering center. On the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 8: The Marine Science seminar brings local engineers, physicians, computer programmers, and research scientists to speak to high school students and other interested people. It happens six Wednesdays per semester, seven 30 to 8:30 PM at the Terra Linda High School in San Rafael in the physiology lab. Two zero seven the guests for April 4th to meeting is the lead [00:23:00] of Pixars research and future spectrum guest, Tony rose. He will present on math in the movies. Film making is undergoing a digital revolution brought on by advances in areas such as computer technology, computational physics, geometry, and approximation theory. Using numerous examples drawn from Pixars feature films. This talk will provide a behind the scenes look at the role that math plays in the revolution. Visit www.marinescienceseminar.com [00:23:30] now news with Rick, Lisa and myself last September, the opera experiment located under the Grand Sazo Mountain in central Italy reported measuring neutrinos moving at faster than the speed of light from cern in Switzerland. Speaker 8: The Icarus experiment located in meters away from opera has published a preprint on the archive on March 15th showing that neutrinos move at speeds close to the speed of light, but that there is no evidence that they exceeded [00:24:00] opera is measurement was conducted with 10 microsecond pulses while Icarus was conducted with pulses that were only four nanoseconds, 2,500 times shorter. This led to far more accurate timing measurements. Opera head claim neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds before it would be predicted, but scientists had remained skeptical in part due to issues with timing [inaudible], Icarus, LVD, and opera. We'll all be making new measurements with pulse beams from cern in May to give us the final verdict Speaker 7: [00:24:30] according to technology review.com and the I a. E. A website. The disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant a year ago prompted nations that generate atomic power to reexamine the safety of their reactors and even reevaluate their nuclear ambitions. Several countries have completely changed course. Japan has taken offline 52 of its 54 reactors and the future of nuclear power there is extremely uncertain. Germany shutdown seven reactors, [00:25:00] also elected not to restart another that had been down for maintenance and plans to decommission its remaining nine reactors by 2022 Italy, Switzerland and Mexico have each retreated from plans to build new nuclear plants and Belgium's government which took over in 2011 wants to make the country nuclear free by 2025 several other economically developed countries including the u s the United Kingdom and France are still generating roughly the same amount as they were before the Fukushima disaster and maintain [00:25:30] modest plans for future construction of additional reactors. But the future of nuclear power in the developing world is a different story. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency or I, a 45 countries are now considering embarking on nuclear power programs as Vietnam, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Belarus are likely to start building this year and Jordan and Saudi Arabia following in 2013 as of this week, the I a report [00:26:00] 63 new reactors under construction in 15 countries. The top constructors are China with 26 Russia with 10 India with seven and South Korea with three. The remaining 11 countries are building one or two reactors. Speaker 3: Technology review.com reports that researchers at Microsoft have made software that can learn the sound of your voice and then use it to speak a language that you don't. The system could be used to make language tutoring software more [00:26:30] personal or to make tools for travelers. In a demonstration at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington campus in early March, Microsoft research scientist Frank soon showed how his software could read out text in Spanish using the voice of his boss, Rick Rashid, who leads Microsoft's research efforts in a second demonstration soon used his software to grant Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, the ability to speak Mandarin. [00:27:00] Frank soon created the system with his colleagues at Microsoft Research Asia, the company's research lab in Beijing, China. The system needs around an hour of training to develop a model, able to read out any text in a person's own voice. That model is converted into one able to read out text in another language by comparing it with a stock text to speech model for the target language. Individual sounds used by the first model to build up words using a [00:27:30] person's voice and his or her own language are carefully tweaked to give the new texts to speech model, a full ability to sound out phrases. In the second language, someone says that this approach can convert between any pair of 26 languages including Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Italian Speaker 8: nature. News reports that researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and the Howard Hughes Medical Institutions Janelia Farm Research Center [00:28:00] near Ashburn, Virginia. I found that male fruit players are more likely to choose to consume alcohol if they have been sexually rejected by females. The key seems to be in Neuropeptide F, which is generated as a reward for either sex or alcohol consumption. When fly's denied of sex are given neuropeptide f they avoid alcohol and mammals. No transmitter y might act similarly for more information. You can see their article in the March 15th issue of Science Speaker 6: [00:28:30] [inaudible] [inaudible] spectrum shirts are gradually being made available online at iTunes university. Go to itunes.berkeley.edu and click through to Berkeley on iTunes. Then search for Calex 99.7 FM to finer the spectrum podcasts. [inaudible] [00:29:00] music heard during the show is from a low stone at David's album titled the Folk in Houston made available by creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. [inaudible]. 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 [00:29:30] 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.

Nicholas McConnell, PhD candidate in Astrophysics at UCB summer 2012, and Jeff Silverman, PhD of Astrophysics from UCB in 2011, part one of three, talk about their work with supernovae and black holes. To help analyze astronomy data go to www.galaxyzoo.org or www.planethunters.orgTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next 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 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 joined today by a spectrum of contributors, Rick Karnofsky and Lisa Katovich. Our interview is with Jeff Silverman, a recent phd in astrophysics from UC Berkeley and Nicholas McConnell, a phd [00:01:00] candidate unscheduled to be awarded a phd in astrophysics by UC Berkeley this summer. Jeff and Nicholas have generously agreed to help 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 two of three and in it we discussed Super Novi and black holes. Jeff, would you please start part two explaining Super Novi [inaudible] Speaker 4: observations [00:01:30] of exploding stars. These supernovae have been going on for thousands of years. Whether or not we knew what we were looking at for most of that time, we now know that those were exploding stars. Something that I did my phd thesis work on as well. I want to talk about a two exploding stars in particular that were found in 2011. The first one I'll talk about was found in late May, early June last year. It was founded by a handful of amateur astronomers, which is they find maybe hundred supernova per year. This has been going on for about a decade [00:02:00] or so. Uh, this one in particular, however, was so young and knew that somebody had emailed somebody who had emailed somebody who had actually tweeted about this new supernova. And so I got forwarded a tweet that said there's a new supernova in this very nearby galaxy and I happen to be using the Keck telescope, one of the biggest optical telescopes in the world, controlling it from UC Berkeley. Speaker 4: Saw this in my inbox. And we pointed at this supernova. We were the first ones to classify what kind of exploding start was confirmed that it was indeed [00:02:30] an exploding star and not some other, uh, asteroid that was just along the line of sight in the way or something else. Uh, and so that was as far as I know, the first time that a supernova was ever classified based on a tweet. The other Supernova, I want to talk about sort of the opposite end of having amateurs looking at a handful of galaxies. I'm part of a large international collaboration known as the Palomar transient factory PTF. And this collaboration uses a telescope down in San Diego to automatically monitor a bunch of these galaxies, [00:03:00] run these big computer programs to try and find if there is a new supernova, new bright spot in any of the images. Speaker 4: And this has been running for about two years now and we've been tweaking the algorithms to get faster and faster detections of these new spots. And so in August of last year there was some images taken in San Diego. Dr Peter Nugent, a professor in the astronomy department, was going through some of the newest candidates of what the computer program spit out and saw what looked like a very good supernova candidate and another very nearby galaxy, [00:03:30] a different one, but about the same distance, 20 or so million light years. We had an image from the night before that was very good and there was absolutely nothing at that position. So this clearly looked like a brand new spot. It couldn't be that old. So he immediately gets on the email list for this international collaboration. This was sort of the afternoon in California, but it was already nighttime in the eastern hemisphere. And we have collaborators who use telescopes in the Canary Islands. Speaker 4: So they point to it. They got not a great observation, but an observation that confirmed there was something there. And it was probably one of these [00:04:00] exploding stars by the time that they had worked on their data and emailed us. It was already nighttime in California and Hawaii. So we had the lick observatory telescopes out in San Jose as well as the Kecks in Hawaii pointing at this and absolutely confirming that it, it was a supernova. And within a few weeks we had already written a bunch of papers looking at the data very carefully. And we had actually found this supernova 11 hours after it exploded. So one of the earliest detections of an exploding star ever. People had speculated what you might [00:04:30] see that early and we actually got to throw out a lot of people's models saying we didn't see these things that you predicted possibly confirming some other predictions at this early time. Speaker 4: And this thing is still bright at its brightest. You could see it in a small backyard telescope are good binoculars from the Oakland hills. Uh, I saw it with my own eyes through a telescope, which was awesome. I think just an amazing, amazing proof of concept or success story of this huge collaboration without the the algorithms to, to run this quickly, we wouldn't have realized it was there until [00:05:00] days later without an international collaboration of friends expanding the globe. We wouldn't have been able to track it and confirm that it was the supernovas so quickly and so early and easily. So if I can ask, what's the biggest mystery about the way stars explode that you help solve by knowing about a supernova? Just a few hours after an explosion is actually happened. We'll solve as a strong word in science, but we can at least help get towards the truth. Speaker 4: As my advisor likes to say, this one that was discovered by the Palomar transient [00:05:30] factory in August is a specific kind of supernova that should have very consistent amount of energy. Sort of, you can think of it as a a hundred watt light bulb. It has the same amount of energy output always basically. So if you see it's very, very faint, it must be very, very far away. If you see it's very, very bright, it must be very, very close because it's sort of each of these objects has the same amount of light coming out of it and so we can measure very accurately how bright they are. We can compare to what we know they should be, how bright they should be, and we get a very accurate distance measurement to [00:06:00] all of these different supernova and figure out very accurate distances. How that distance has changed with time, and this is in fact how the accelerating expansion of the universe was discovered in the late nineties using these types of supernovae, which I will plug did win the Nobel Prize last year for physics and we're all very proud of that. Speaker 4: Saul Perlmutter up at the Berkeley lab was one of the winners and many of our group here at Berkeley and other places have collaborated on those projects over the years. So one thing that we aren't quite sure of, even though these are very, very consistent [00:06:30] explosions, we've observed them for a long time. We don't actually know the details of what stars are involved in the original explosion. We have some idea that a very dense star called a white dwarf made of mostly carbon and oxygen is blowing up. What exactly is around that star that's helping it blow up by actually feeding it some extra material and then pushing it over a limit to explode? We're a little bit unclear and so since this star that is feeding the mass to the white dwarf should be very close by. [00:07:00] They should be right near each other. One of the best ways you're going to observe it is right after the explosion, the explosion goes off. Speaker 4: The light and energy from that explosion could interact with the donor star that's right next door and then very quickly the explosion has expanded much further beyond that neighboring star and then it's sort of just hidden until either much, much later or perhaps never. And so by observing this supernova back in August 11 hours after the explosion and then taking subsequent observations sort of for the following few days, [00:07:30] we could rule out certain ideas of what that other star could be. There are very strong predictions. You should see some extra light in certain ways. If you had a certain type of star sitting there and we didn't see that, so it must be a very small star. Maybe something like the sun, maybe something like two times the mass of the sun. Speaker 2: Nope. This is spectrum k l x Berkeley. And you boys have been talking with Jeff Silverman [00:08:00] and Nicholas McConnell about supernova and black holes. So the Supernova is an issue. Speaker 4: Delusion of carbon and oxygen. You were saying that's great. What's the relationship of those explosions? Supernova to the black holes that were now discovered to be at the heart of every galaxy. So black holes come in a few different flavors, a certain kinds of supernovae uh, not the, the white [00:08:30] door of carbon oxygen ones. I was talking about a different flavor of Supernova that come from very massive stars that have 10 times the mass of the center bigger. They do explode as the different kinds of supernova collapse on themselves and can create black holes. The black holes end up weighing something like a few times the mass of the sun, maybe up to 20, 30 times the mass of the sun at the most. But those are sort of just kind of peppered throughout galaxies. What we've found over the past few decades and did a lot of work on lately is the supermassive black holes that can get up to hundreds of [00:09:00] millions or billions of times as massive as the sun. And those are found in the cores of galaxies as opposed to kind of peppered throughout them. And so there probably is a different formation mechanism that's still a very open question, how you make these giant black holes. But there are many, many orders of magnitude bigger than the ones that come from supernovae. Uh, and, and I'd actually say this is possibly a good segue that some interesting observation, right? Speaker 5: Progress is being made on which the most likely mechanisms are for forming these so-called seed [00:09:30] black holes that eventually grew into the monsters that we now observe at the senators of most galaxies in our own universe, in our current universe. Speaker 4: So was that a big shift then the, the idea of these supermassive black holes, Speaker 5: there's possibly a, a complicated relationship between the black hole at the center of the Galaxy and the galaxy itself, the black holes. Gravity is not sufficient to hold the entire galaxy together even though it is an extremely massive object and very near [00:10:00] to it. There's extremely powerful gravitational forces. Galaxies are so large and so extended that out in the the normal regions of the galaxy out near where the sun orbits in the Milky Way Galaxy. The fact that our Milky Way has a central black hole doesn't have any direct impact on our lives as the sun orbiting in the galaxy. On the other hand, if you consider the life cycle of a black hole starting from when it is formed from some seed object or birth process relatively early in the universe and evolving all the way toward [00:10:30] our present day universe over more than 10 billion years, black holes have very interesting variations in what they're doing over the course of their lifetimes. Speaker 5: In particular, when a black hole comes into proximity with a lot of gas, the gas spirals down and is funnel basically into the black hole and whereas some of the gas goes into the black hole and has never heard from again and increases the mass of the black hole. A lot of the guests on its way down heats up and releases tremendous amounts of light [00:11:00] because it takes time for light to travel. The distance between the object of meeting the light and us some of the furthest and therefore youngest things that we see of corresponding to very early times in the universe are in fact black holes that are swallowing tremendous amounts of gas. And some interesting discoveries that have happened recently is astronomers have been using different observational techniques to push further and further back into the universe's past, finding more and more distant black holes, swallowing [00:11:30] gas and learning about the universe at earlier and earlier times based on these observations. Speaker 5: And I think the current record holder now is a black hole that lived about 800 million years after the big bang, which translates to almost 13 billion years, 13,000 million years before our present day now. So looking that far back in time, we can no, first of all that these tremendous black holes exist that early in the universe. And we [00:12:00] can actually using techniques that follow up on the initial discovery and try to get more detailed analysis of them, we can make estimates of how massive they are. And in the case of the one that occurred when the universe was only 800 million years old, we learned that that black hole is far more massive than the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy bowed as massive as some of the most massive black holes that we've observed today. Um, so at least in some cases, black holes appear to have been seated by things that were relatively small, bigger than the tens of solar [00:12:30] masses that Jeff mentioned, but maybe a few thousand solar masses. And yet in the very earliest stage of the universe, they were able to grow tremendously fast and actually gain a ton of mass early in the universe. And then may have lived more peacefully throughout most of the duration of the universe. Speaker 2: You're listening to spectrum on k a l x, Berkeley, 90.7 FM. Today we're talking with Jeff Silverman and [00:13:00] Nicholas McConnell, both astrophysicists. We're discussing supernova. I am black homes. This is part two of a series three. Speaker 5: Another interesting outcome of looking at supermassive black holes early in the universe is it's often easier to see them far away than it is nearby because when they're far away and we see them, that's because they're swallowing a lot of gas. Many of the galaxies in today's universe [00:13:30] don't have gas near their black holes of the black holes are quiet. Uh, and in fact, you have to make very, very precise measurements of stars orbiting in their gravitational field to even know that a black hole is there. So one of the mysteries that had been going around for awhile is if you believe the masses of black holes very early in the universe, and you see these tremendously early things, but you want to know where are they now? They've had 13 billion years to evolve. What kind of galaxy is do these black holes live in today? Speaker 5: [00:14:00] Then you need to look in the nearby universe and try to find their quiet, ancient remnants. And recently, along with a couple other researchers at UC Berkeley, some other researchers around the country, my team discovered the two most massive black holes that we know about in today's universe. Black holes more than 10 billion times the mass of our sun, more than 2000 times the mass of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. And because these are the most massive black holes that we know about in today's universe, [00:14:30] and they're roughly correspond to the estimated masses of the most massive black holes that we observe very, very early in the universe. We think we're beginning to answer the question of what kind of environment do these very young black holes actually end up in after the entire history of the universe between them. If I could ask a question, do you other properties of the galaxies that are now hosting these most massive black holes that are different than other nearby galaxies [00:15:00] that may have less massive black holes, something like the Milky Way size. Speaker 5: One interesting thing about the galaxies that we looked at is that they're also anchoring large galaxy clusters. And so specifically we found the most massive black holes at the centers of galaxy clusters. Now that's not a perfectly robust result because to be perfectly honest, we started by looking in the centers of galaxy clusters. And so we haven't done a wide sample of other galaxies and other environments, but it's possible that there is an environmental effect [00:15:30] based on not only the galaxy that the black hole resides in, but the overall neighborhood of how many galaxies are around that central object that may have something to do with the final massive its black hole. And where do you go with this research now, Nicholas, are there specific experiments? Are you relying on certain data? Where are you drawing this information from? And so we use data from a few different telescopes because these galaxies are distant and we're trying to look at stars in a very [00:16:00] small region of space. Speaker 5: We rely on very large telescopes to give us good light collecting power and good spatial resolution. So we use the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. We also use the Gemini telescopes in Hawaii and Sheila and there is a telescope in Texas that we've done some work with and we are trying to use these telescopes to find black holes in as many galaxies as the telescope committees will allow us to look at. Uh, so each semester with the generosity of, of getting, observing time, we're able to look at [00:16:30] two or three more galaxies and hopefully over a few years we'll have a good dozen or so objects that we can search directly for the most massive black holes in addition to a few dozen that have been discovered by other teams throughout the world over the last 10 years or so. And that really is one of the big limiting factors, isn't it? Speaker 5: The access to the equipment because there's so much going on in astronomy. Everybody's in the queue. Yeah, that's right. A, just like most scientists apply for amounts of funding from [00:17:00] various organizations, astronomers do that. In addition to applying for telescope time, the oversubscription rates for many of the biggest telescopes, the Hubble space telescope, the Keck telescopes is something like eight to one 10 to one. So the total number of requested hours is something like eight or 10 times the number of nighttime hours. There are in a semester or in a year, so it's, it's very much like a funding situation and there is so many nighttime hours and there's so many telescopes in the world. It's very competitive and we're very lucky when we do get access to [00:17:30] these huge telescopes with amazing instruments and computing power. How does that allocated time work when you want to make observations within a couple of hours of something that you've just heard about? So that's a great question. There's been something that has been used by astronomers over sort of the last decade but really a lot in the last five years called target of observations Speaker 4: too is as we call them and it's sort of in addition to or separate from your standard classically scheduled nights where you will use the telescope on this night. You can [00:18:00] also apply if you have a good science case, which many of us do, especially for these kinds of exploding stars that go off and we want to look at it very quickly, you can apply for time that is allocated through this t o program. And basically what it is is the telescope committees have said, okay, you get so many times to interrupt any observer and say you have to go look at this. And as an observer at that observatory, you know that that's part of the program and that at any point somebody could call you and say, drop what you're doing and go move over to [00:18:30] this. And many times people want to do the best science and are very happy to help out. And oftentimes there'll be offered co-authorship or at least acknowledged to, you know, thanking them for their help. Uh, certainly for these two Supernova I spoke about earlier, we definitely used our target of opportunity and they did turn out to be these very interesting supernovae Speaker 6: [inaudible]. That concludes part two of our astronomy series. Be sure to join us in two weeks [00:19:00] when we discuss dark energy or dark matter. Part three a 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. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa Kovich join me for the calendar. Speaker 7: The fix-it clinic will be held on Sunday, March 25th at the Lawrence Hall of science in Berkeley from one to 4:00 PM bring your broken non-functioning [00:19:30] things, electronics, appliances, computers, toys, and so on. For assessment, disassembly and possible repair. We'll provide workspace specialty tools and guidance to help you take apart and troubleshoot your item. Whether we fix it or not, you'll learn more about how it was manufactured and how it worked. This is a family friendly event. Children are hardly invited. This event is included in admission to the Lawrence Hall of Science. Speaker 3: The Mount Diablo Astronomical Society [00:20:00] holds its general monthly meetings the fourth Tuesday of each month, except for November and December. At the March 27th meeting, UC Berkeley Professor Jeff Marcy will speak about the future directions in extra solar planet investigations. The meeting begins at 7:15 PM and lasts until 9:30 PM the event will be held at the Concord Police Association facility. Five zero six zero Avi Law road in Concord. The society website is m [00:20:30] d a s. Dot. N. E. T. The computer history museums Speaker for March 28th will be New York Times magazine writer John Gardner who will talk about his book, the idea factory bell labs and the great age of American innovation to cake. Speaker 8: You edis Dave Iverson Bell labs was the most innovative production and research institution from the 1920s to the 1980s at its peak, bell labs employed nearly 15,000 people. [00:21:00] 1200 had PhDs. 13 would go on to win Nobel prizes. These ingenious, often eccentric men would become revolutionaries and sometimes legends, whether for inventing radio astronomy in their spare time and on the company's dime, riding unicycles through the corridors or pioneering the principles that propelled today's technology. Bell labs combined the best aspects of academic and corporate worlds, hiring the brightest and usually the youngest minds creating a culture and even architecture that [00:21:30] forced employees in different fields to work together in virtually complete intellectual freedom with little pressure to create moneymaking innovations in Gartner's portrait. We come to understand why both researchers and business leaders look to bell labs as a model and long to incorporate its magic into their own work. The talk starts at seven at the Computer History Museum, 14 Zero One north shoreline boulevard and mountain view. Visit www.computer history.org to register Speaker 7: [00:22:00] Thursday April 4th from three to 4:00 PM Andy Grove, Co founder and former CEO of Intel will speak on the UC Berkeley campus. His talk is titled of microchips and Men Tales from the translational medicine front. Andy Grove had a major influence on the ascent of micro electronics. Can a similar technological advance be achieved in medicine? He will discuss how we might open the pipeline to get life changing technologies to market without increasing the cost of care. [00:22:30] This event will be at the Sibley auditorium in the Bechdel engineering center. On the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 8: The Marine Science seminar brings local engineers, physicians, computer programmers, and research scientists to speak to high school students and other interested people. It happens six Wednesdays per semester, seven 30 to 8:30 PM at the Terra Linda High School in San Rafael in the physiology lab. Two zero seven the guests for April 4th to meeting is the lead [00:23:00] of Pixars research and future spectrum guest, Tony rose. He will present on math in the movies. Film making is undergoing a digital revolution brought on by advances in areas such as computer technology, computational physics, geometry, and approximation theory. Using numerous examples drawn from Pixars feature films. This talk will provide a behind the scenes look at the role that math plays in the revolution. Visit www.marinescienceseminar.com [00:23:30] now news with Rick, Lisa and myself last September, the opera experiment located under the Grand Sazo Mountain in central Italy reported measuring neutrinos moving at faster than the speed of light from cern in Switzerland. Speaker 8: The Icarus experiment located in meters away from opera has published a preprint on the archive on March 15th showing that neutrinos move at speeds close to the speed of light, but that there is no evidence that they exceeded [00:24:00] opera is measurement was conducted with 10 microsecond pulses while Icarus was conducted with pulses that were only four nanoseconds, 2,500 times shorter. This led to far more accurate timing measurements. Opera head claim neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds before it would be predicted, but scientists had remained skeptical in part due to issues with timing [inaudible], Icarus, LVD, and opera. We'll all be making new measurements with pulse beams from cern in May to give us the final verdict Speaker 7: [00:24:30] according to technology review.com and the I a. E. A website. The disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant a year ago prompted nations that generate atomic power to reexamine the safety of their reactors and even reevaluate their nuclear ambitions. Several countries have completely changed course. Japan has taken offline 52 of its 54 reactors and the future of nuclear power there is extremely uncertain. Germany shutdown seven reactors, [00:25:00] also elected not to restart another that had been down for maintenance and plans to decommission its remaining nine reactors by 2022 Italy, Switzerland and Mexico have each retreated from plans to build new nuclear plants and Belgium's government which took over in 2011 wants to make the country nuclear free by 2025 several other economically developed countries including the u s the United Kingdom and France are still generating roughly the same amount as they were before the Fukushima disaster and maintain [00:25:30] modest plans for future construction of additional reactors. But the future of nuclear power in the developing world is a different story. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency or I, a 45 countries are now considering embarking on nuclear power programs as Vietnam, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Belarus are likely to start building this year and Jordan and Saudi Arabia following in 2013 as of this week, the I a report [00:26:00] 63 new reactors under construction in 15 countries. The top constructors are China with 26 Russia with 10 India with seven and South Korea with three. The remaining 11 countries are building one or two reactors. Speaker 3: Technology review.com reports that researchers at Microsoft have made software that can learn the sound of your voice and then use it to speak a language that you don't. The system could be used to make language tutoring software more [00:26:30] personal or to make tools for travelers. In a demonstration at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington campus in early March, Microsoft research scientist Frank soon showed how his software could read out text in Spanish using the voice of his boss, Rick Rashid, who leads Microsoft's research efforts in a second demonstration soon used his software to grant Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, the ability to speak Mandarin. [00:27:00] Frank soon created the system with his colleagues at Microsoft Research Asia, the company's research lab in Beijing, China. The system needs around an hour of training to develop a model, able to read out any text in a person's own voice. That model is converted into one able to read out text in another language by comparing it with a stock text to speech model for the target language. Individual sounds used by the first model to build up words using a [00:27:30] person's voice and his or her own language are carefully tweaked to give the new texts to speech model, a full ability to sound out phrases. In the second language, someone says that this approach can convert between any pair of 26 languages including Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Italian Speaker 8: nature. News reports that researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and the Howard Hughes Medical Institutions Janelia Farm Research Center [00:28:00] near Ashburn, Virginia. I found that male fruit players are more likely to choose to consume alcohol if they have been sexually rejected by females. The key seems to be in Neuropeptide F, which is generated as a reward for either sex or alcohol consumption. When fly's denied of sex are given neuropeptide f they avoid alcohol and mammals. No transmitter y might act similarly for more information. You can see their article in the March 15th issue of Science Speaker 6: [00:28:30] [inaudible] [inaudible] spectrum shirts are gradually being made available online at iTunes university. Go to itunes.berkeley.edu and click through to Berkeley on iTunes. Then search for Calex 99.7 FM to finer the spectrum podcasts. [inaudible] [00:29:00] music heard during the show is from a low stone at David's album titled the Folk in Houston made available by creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. [inaudible]. 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 [00:29:30] 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.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study is doing a new analysis of the surface temperature record in a rigorous manner that addresses the criticism of previous analysis done by other groups.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 [00:00:30] 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 with Elizabeth Mueller, Co founder and executive director of Berkeley Earth surface temperature. The Berkeley Earth surface temperature project is redoing the analysis of the earth surface temperature record in a rigorous manner that addresses the criticisms of previous analysis. [00:01:00] All their work to date is available free at their website, Berkeley earth.org I want to briefly explain two terms that are used in the interview. Creaking is the Geo statistic method devised by Daniel Craig, a mining engineer in 19:51 AM o is the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. The Oscillation is principally the change of sea surface temperature over time in the North Atlantic Ocean. Onto [00:01:30] the interview. Welcome Elizabeth Mueller to spectrum. Thank you. How did Berkeley Earth come into being? Is that how you'd like to refer to it as at Berkeley? Yes, that's right. I did Berkeley Earth come into being. Speaker 4: Um, rich and I had been working together for a couple of years and we kept being asked about climate issues which had been involved in climate for a long time. He taught his class physics for future presidents and what she goes into global warming and he and I were working together doing consulting on energy and environment issues, but people kept asking [00:02:00] about global warming and we had been uncomfortable with some of the elements of of global warming for some time. There was the station quality issue which had been raised by Anthony Watts, which both of us uncomfortable but we weren't quite sure what to do about it. There were other issues as well. There was the data selection issue. Why did the major groups only use 20% of the data 10% in recent years, but it was also in part the climate gates scandal that really [00:02:30] made us think somebody else needs to come in and have a fresh look at this. We really wanted to be able to lower the barriers to entry. The data was inaccessible, people couldn't get it. It was impossible for any group to come in and easily do an analysis of global warming and this is such an important area of policy work, of economics, of so many elements of the world today that we felt everybody should be able to go in and look at the data themselves, look at the analysis [00:03:00] and really understand what the issues were. So that's why we decided to create the Berkeley Earth project and do exactly that. Speaker 3: For our audience sake, we should identify rich. Speaker 4: Yes. Richard Muller is a long time physicist. He's a MacArthur winner. He's been involved in climate issues for a long time. He wrote a technical book on Ice Ages and astronomical causes. He's been teaching physics for future presidents here at Berkeley for I think about 10 years now. He also wrote the textbook and a popular book called Physics [00:03:30] for future presidents. He's also my dad. He and I started working together about, I guess about four years ago now, and I had been doing consulting mostly in Europe and kept getting asked about energy issues and so I wanted to bring him in to my consulting firm, but instead the two of us ended up creating a business together, which has been great fun. His, he's a lot of fun to work with. Speaker 3: Besides wanting to clarify things or level of playing field, if you will, [00:04:00] and make it more accessible, was there a sense that you were the right group to do it? Speaker 4: Well, we weren't a group. We didn't exist as a group at the time and so it was a question of pulling together the right people from the right backgrounds to create a right group. We did think that we wanted a fresh perspective so that it wasn't necessarily a problem that we were new to this specific area of work. Many of our people had had deep experience with climate change in the past, but we also wanted to combine physics and [00:04:30] statistics. Modern statistics. Bringing in David Berliner early on was an important choice that we wanted to take a fresh look at the problem using modern statistics, which we believed would allow us to use much more of the data than the previous groups had been able to do. Speaker 3: Would you describe the research and planning that you did to form the group and get things started? Sure. Speaker 4: We needed a nonprofit. We discovered pretty quickly that in order to do a study like this and raise funding, we needed to be [00:05:00] a nonprofit. We didn't have a nonprofit and nonprofits take quite some time to create and we weren't quite sure what we were going to do about that. When rich had a call from Michael Ditmore in Santa Barbara with a group called Novem and Michael did more wanted rich to lead a study on geoengineering, and rich said, well, you know, I'm not really that interested in doing a study on geoengineering, but if you really want to do a study that's going to have big impact and be very important, you should consider helping us with a study on global warming. [00:05:30] And a Michael said, hmm, that sounds interesting. Tell me more. So we started talking to him and it seemed like an ideal group for us to work with and so Novem came on to house the Berkeley Earth efforts. Speaker 4: We also started looking into what the other groups had done. We wanted to look at why they hadn't used more than 20% of the data. What were the issues surrounding the station quality issue raised by Anthony Watts? What were the concerns around the urban heat island [00:06:00] that many people had been talking about? This is where people had been saying, yes, there's global warming, but cities, everyone knows cities are warmer than rural areas and the world is getting more urban. So is it possible that the world is getting warmer not because of carbon dioxide, but because it's getting more urbanized? This is something that we wanted to look at as well. We tried to look very carefully at what some of the other groups had done and we discovered that many of the adjustments that they had made to [00:06:30] the data they had done manually and they hadn't really kept very careful track of what exactly they had done. Speaker 4: So even they couldn't go back and duplicate it and this was a concern as well, we we, this is such an important topic. You want to be able to Redo it and make sure you get the same results every time you do. And so that was another thing we looked at carefully trying to pick the brain of the people who had been dealing with the data. Was that extremely helpful and crucial to the project? It was helpful. I mean it was very useful to speak [00:07:00] to them, to meet with them to try and understand what they were doing. But at the same time we knew from pretty early on that we wanted to do something totally different. So we weren't trying to duplicate what they had done. We wanted to take a totally new approach, something that had never been done before use all of the data are pretty close to all of the data and we had to develop a modern statistical technique in order to do this and that was done by Robert Roddy, our lead scientist in conjunction with David Brillinger, a professor of statistics [00:07:30] here at Berkeley and what that meant was that we weren't adding on to the previous research. Speaker 4: We were really starting it totally new from a totally different approach. We didn't know what we were going to find. We didn't know if we were going to find that there was more global warming or if we're going to find that there was less global warming. We only knew or we thought, we knew that we weren't going to find the same results as everybody had found before us, which is why it was such a surprise in the end that even using a totally different technique, we ended up [00:08:00] with results that were so close to what the previous groups had found. I think that's a really strong statement in terms of what they are and what they mean is that even though you're using completely different approaches, you get results that are so, so similar. I think that really strengthens our confidence in the work that we did. Speaker 4: Talk a little bit about the gathering of the team. We wanted people on the team who were comfortable looking through huge quantities of data and had actually in the past made [00:08:30] discoveries by doing so, so it wasn't enough that they were able to pick apart other people's work. We wanted people who were able to dive in, get their hands dirty, and yet make an unexpected and surprising discovery and some of the people we chose, Jonathan wordly, Bob Jacobson had done this before, but also saw promoter who had done this and is working in cosmology and won the Nobel Prize this past year. So those were the people we wanted. People who had experience doing exactly that. Speaker 5: [00:09:00] You're listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Today's guest is Elizabeth Mueller, Co founder and executive director of Berkeley legal earth's surface. Speaker 3: That is really one of the big challenges of all this is the data set size. Speaker 4: It is, it's huge. It's huge. And merging that from the different sources [00:09:30] was really one of the biggest challenges we had to face. I should say Robert had to face, he was the one who really did most of the work, but he had 15 different data sources and almost as many different formats, all kinds of mess that really had to be sorted through. And that in many ways was one of the biggest challenges of the project was just getting through that. And we figured if we did nothing else but sifting through this data and putting together a clean data set, that would already be a huge contribution. Speaker 3: [00:10:00] So given that task, what other sort of methodology had you tried to impose on this data? [inaudible] Speaker 4: well, the other important elements, there's collecting the data, cleaning the data, um, merging the data. But the other part was of course analyzing the data. Um, and the other groups had only been able to use 20% of the data because they had a constraint. They needed to have long continuous records. Well Robert Roady, I'm together with David Berliner developed a new technique [00:10:30] based on creaking in which they're able to, to analyze all of the data, are virtually all of the data and the result was that we were able to use so much more and yet get very good, very carefully calculated error estimates and go much farther back in time than the previous groups had been able to. Speaker 3: And were you satisfied with the data sets that were available or did you look for other data sets? Speaker 4: Robert looked for everything. He really wanted to find all of the data that was out there and he, [00:11:00] he did a very complete job I believe in doing so. Speaker 3: Is that an ongoing process for him or the ongoing process? Speaker 4: The process is going to be updating it. We have now the 15 databases that this comes from and they are going to be updated on a regular basis since we want to be able to update our database on a regular basis and have it all automated so that that will just happen every few months or however often we decided Speaker 3: it needs to be. And so are these data sets pretty broadly accepted as the best available? Yes they are. And the source of them is government, [00:11:30] weather stations, Speaker 4: government, weather station. There's a lot of volunteer weather stations. There's a complete list of the 15 sources, many of which come through Noah Speaker 3: and I guess no is consolidating a lot of data sets from around the world. Speaker 4: Uh, yes. If you look at the data set, it really is around w from all around the world. Um, in the modern day. If you go back in time, it becomes less global. If you look at our earliest measurements, you may see data really only in the u s and Europe, [00:12:00] few places in India, but by the 19 hundreds you're really getting fairly good coverage of the globe accepting Antarctica, which doesn't really come into play until the 1950s Speaker 3: were there any other big challenges Speaker 4: under the cleaning of the data and developing the analysis framework? Where were really the biggest challenges? There were a couple of surprises though. The things that we didn't expect. One of the things that we discovered once we had access to the data, we were able to start playing with and looking [00:12:30] for other things that maybe people hadn't noticed before. One of the biggest surprises was the discovery that the oscillations in the data, which everybody had previously said, oh, those are El Nino are everybody's data goes up and down together and, and that's El Nino. We only looked at it very carefully. We discovered that, yes, it is highly correlated to to El Nino, but in fact it's even more correlated to the Gulf stream and that was a big surprise. We didn't expect that, but because we had access to the data, it [00:13:00] enabled us to look at these sorts of things and we're really very hopeful that now that the world has access to the data, there'll be many other important discoveries of the sort. Speaker 3: I know that you're doing land surface first, then ocean surface. Is that a natural two phase project? Are there more phases? Is there more? Speaker 4: Well, we wanted to start with the land because in large part that's where much of the controversy was, so we figured we wanted to start with a bite sized piece though. [00:13:30] Actually I think it was a much bigger bite than we thought it would be. But by analyzing the land, it looks at the issue of the temperature stations, the station quality issue. Anthony wants the urban heat island effect and this data selection issue was their data selection bias because they only used previous groups that only use 20% of the data. The oceans are going to be interesting in the next phase because of some of the discoveries we've made such as the Gulf stream. So we're really looking forward now to doing that [00:14:00] as a next phase of work because we want to look at this in more detail and see what we can find in terms of the relationship between the Gulf stream and temperature. Speaker 4: The Gulf stream, we found a 60 year cycle in the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation, which for the past 30 years has been going up. So the temperature has been going up and the temperature of the world has been going out temperature of both the Amo and and of the land surface temperature, which was unexpected. But it also [00:14:30] shows that the 60 year cycles is at a peak right now and it's going to start going down. The temperature is going to start going down. What is the impact of this going to be on global warming? Uh, is it possible that we haven't seen any global warming in the past 13 years in part because of this amo cycle and what's going to happen as the amo cycle starts, starts going down? We don't know it will, but we think it's a fascinating issue to look at. That fits in very naturally with our study of the oceans [00:15:00] and as the ocean data set, as extensive as the land, it's very different. Speaker 4: So instead of looking at a single locations, you're looking at mainly boats, so they're moving, there's different problems, different issues, but we think now that we have our framework developed, it shouldn't be as difficult as initially looking at the land was, but the analysis framework does have to change somewhat to accommodate for it. It does have to change some different collection process. Nothing's really out there. Stationary, taking [00:15:30] a reading every they are now in modern times they're boys and there's some fixed locations, but as you get back in time, as you go back in time, more and more of it come from boats. Your methodology for analyzing the data has less reliance on that longevity of sample. That's right. Our statistical techniques mean that we can work with fragments, we can work with little pieces, which has also been an advantage for dealing with some of these issues of station changes. Speaker 4: So you might have a station [00:16:00] that that goes along and it's reading a certain temperature within a certain range, um, fairly regularly for a number of years. And then all of a sudden the pattern is similar, but it's three degrees warmer than it was before. And you say, well, what's that? Um, what happened here? And previous groups would take them to say, okay, well this is probably a station move and this probably not exactly the same location as it was before. Something happened here. Maybe the time of day changed the time of the day that they were taking the, the, the readings. And so they corrected it and then they manually move [00:16:30] those, either they moved one down or they moved the other one up so that it would be a long continuous record. Well, with our statistical technique, we just cut it in into, and we say, okay, well we'll just assume that these are two different locations, two different records and handle it as such. And that means that we don't have to worry about adjusting the data. We just cut it and makes it much more easy to duplicate. And, um, that there's no manual adjustments that analyze why you that's right. And adjustment. [00:17:00] That's right. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 4: tune to k a l s Speaker 5: Berkeley. The show is spectrum. Our guest is Elizabeth Moore, Co founder and executive director of the [inaudible] surface temperature project. Speaker 4: In the peer review process that you've now entered into, yes. Is there a process for integrating the feedback or at least analyzing [00:17:30] what people are saying to you or is it too soon now? We've been getting a lot of feedback so we have the official feedback that comes through the official peer review journals and we've been working with the reviewers and the editors to incorporate that feedback. Um, we discuss it as a group. We had one of the lead authors go through it in bring any issues to the crew, talk about any additional analysis that's required and go in and actually make some of the changes to the papers. But perhaps even more interestingly is the [00:18:00] feedback that we've gotten from the peer review process outside of the official journals. Because we've posted our papers online. We've been contacted by a number of scientists from around the world who have gone through our papers in extraordinary detail and looked at some of the things, raised some important questions, um, raised some issues, some concerns and that's been extremely helpful. I think our papers will be better in the end because of the peer review that we've gotten through the open process, the global [00:18:30] process of putting our papers online. Speaker 3: In terms of longevity of the, the project and the data set, how long do you envision staying with the project? Is there a point at which you just, you're, you're done? Speaker 4: Well I think we're not sure. I think we would love to stay involved. I think there's a need to keep updating the data data set take to keep it live. We would love to do that. I think can we, we have somebody in charge of maintaining the data center, [00:19:00] but we're not a long term project for now. We're based on, on fundraising. We fundraise for the first 18 months for now looking to fundraise for the next 18 months. So we have not yet been able to establish that type of permanent longevity that would be necessary to keep doing this on an ongoing basis. But it's certainly something that we're thinking about. Speaker 3: I went to your website and was looking around and went into the a frequently asked questions and it noted [00:19:30] that none of the scientists involved has taken a public political stand on global warming. And I wondered if that was still the case or if as a result of your first release of data that there was a revision of that or not. Speaker 4: I think that's still true. And our scientists believe that the statement which you might be referring to saying that global warming is real, is now a scientific statement there. There is the data to support that. There's the evidence to support that. There's error bars, uh, to support that. So when we need to make a statement like that, we believe [00:20:00] that it's a scientific statement, not a political statement. We haven't looked into other issues such as how much of it is human caused. And so we haven't taken, I would call political statements on those sorts of issues. We don't want to get into the politics because it muddies the science and we want people to be able to look at our numbers to look at our analysis and say, okay, we know that this is 100% pure scientific analysis, but on the other hand there is a need for [00:20:30] scientific evaluation of policy to see which policies that are on the table would actually make sense according to science, which ones would actually not really help very much. Speaker 4: We don't know how much of this we might get involved and we haven't done any of it so far. It might be a question of only saying is as much as we feel can be stated, that's really grounded in the science. So as far as the group trying to get drawn into choosing a prescription [00:21:00] for affecting or impacting global warming, that's not really something the group is interested in at all, right? I don't, I don't think so. I mean there's certain elements that it does keep coming up as an issue and there are a lot of people asking us to to get more involved in this, but we really want to make sure that anything we did say would be very grounded in the science. There might be some limited statements we could make that would be grounded in the science, but we haven't taken a decision on on that yet. Speaker 5: [00:21:30] You were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're speaking with Elizabeth Miller, Co founder and executive director of the Berkeley Earth surface temperature project. Speaker 4: And from your experience and personal opinion, is there a prescription that you feel is the best available? Well, I think we need a lot of different things. We need energy efficiency. There's a lot that can be done for low cost, no cost even making [00:22:00] money by increasing our energy efficiency. But we also need other things like low cost, solar, low cost, wind, nuclear. There are many things that are all helpful, but it needs to be something that can be affordable, that can be adopted and the developing world, China, India, the rest of the developing world, it needs to be cheap and unless it's cheap enough for them to be able to afford, it's not going to happen there. There are other priorities, so so China, their emissions are growing so fast that anything we do [00:22:30] has live in an impact and less we can set an example that is able to be followed by China. Speaker 4: That means it needs to be cheap if it needs to ideally be profitable so that people in China and India and the rest of the developing world can afford to do the same thing. Unfortunately, I don't see this being addressed in the international debate right now at the UN and it's really an important problem that I wish had more visibility. Is [00:23:00] there anything about the group that I haven't asked you that you'd, you'd want to bring up? Well, everything that I've mentioned today is available on our website, so it's Berkeley earth.org we have all of our papers there. We have our data set and both text format. And in Matlab we have our programs. We also have a lovely video. I don't know if you've seen the video. It shows a map of the world that is getting warmer and colder and you see weather going across the, the different regions [00:23:30] of the world. Speaker 4: And it takes us from 18 hundreds through to the present. So data visualization. Absolutely. Is that something that you've embraced it? It is. It is. And we've actually gotten some requests from some museums who have big globes. I guess they have one up at the Lawrence Hall of science and, and wanting to project our global warming movie onto such a globe, which I think would be a fascinating way of looking at it. There's a couple of other, um, interesting images [00:24:00] on our, on our website. For example, if you look at the u s many people are surprised to learn that out. One third of locations in the U s have cooled. They haven't warmed two-thirds have warmed. But what it means is if you look up your hometown and you might say, Oh, I've never felt any global warming. Well, that's probably true. You probably haven't felt any global warming because the amount of global warming that we've seen is so small that it's absolutely overwhelmed by local weather phenomenon and there's one [00:24:30] third chance that you've been living in a, in a location that's actually seen cooling over the past 50 years. Speaker 3: Yeah. The personal relationship with global warming seems to be where a lot of people stumble and feel that it should be something visceral in their daily lives for it to be real and don't take the intellectual leap to regard the data on a worldwide basis because that's really sort of what your group has tried to do. Speaker 4: Yeah, that's absolutely right. One of the difficulties with global warming is that there's been less than one degree global [00:25:00] warming in the past 50 years. This is not something that you are going to be able to feel. You might think you have. You might say, Oh yes, if weather feel so different today than it did 10 years ago, that must be global warming. And people do that all the time. They say, oh, it's cold today, global warming, or it's warm today, global warming. But the truth is you can't detect it to be, you need hundreds, preferably thousands of records of locations from around the world in order to detect global warming. It's not something that you're going to go out and [00:25:30] feel on your own. Speaker 3: Do you know of any organizations that have embraced your data and are, are going off in some area of research that validates what you started this project to achieve? Speaker 4: Um, there are many organizations who have expressed interest in using our data. I think it's still fresh out there, so we're not quite sure who's going to be adopting it on a permanent basis. But we've gotten a lot of feedback. We've gotten a lot of emails, we've got a lot of people saying thank you for this. I've really been interested in getting into the stat and I was never [00:26:00] able to do it before. So I suspect that as time goes on and as our papers start to be published, there'll be more and more people using our data. Speaker 3: Elizabeth Miller, thanks very much for being on spectrum. Well, thank you. It's been my pleasure. It's been enjoyed being here. Speaker 6: [inaudible]Speaker 3: Rick Karnofsky joins me for the calendar and the news. Okay. Speaker 6: Oh, Speaker 7: the mycological society of San Francisco will present flavorful [00:26:30] foul and Far-flung guy on Tuesday the 21st at 7:00 PM in San Francisco's Randall Museum, one 99 museum way. Daniel Winkler, the author of a field guy to edible mushrooms of the will share his experiences collecting and eating wild mushrooms and in his travel agency mushrooming LLC that annually organizes and leads echo tours to Tibet and South America. For more info on this free event, visit www dot m s s f. Dot. [00:27:00] O. R. G. Speaker 3: The science had cow lecture for February. We'll be on Saturday, February 18th at 11:00 AM in Stanley Hall. Room One oh five the talk will be given by Professor Buford price and is entitled single celled microbes in polar ice, a proxy for evolution over 100 million generations. The presence of Pico Sino bacteria in ice at all. Depths in both Greenland and Antarctica provides an opportunity to study [00:27:30] microbial evolution over about 100 million generations. Professor Price, we'll discuss how this vast study is now possible. Speaker 7: Physicist Michio Kaku will appear at the first Congregational Church of Berkeley at two three four five Channing way on Thursday the 23rd from seven 30 to 9:30 PM advanced tickets are $12 or get in at the door for $15 Sunni professor Kaku who cofounded string field theory on popularity's his physics [00:28:00] on his science channel show and on two radio programs. He recently released physics of the future, which gives a vision of the coming century based on interviews with over 300 scientists that discuss cutting edge medicine, computers, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, energy production, and astronautics. Visit kpfa.org for more information. Behavioral neuroscientist, Karen Ersh of the University of Cambridge and her colleagues have an article in the February 3rd [00:28:30] issue of science that studies the genetics of addiction. The team tested 50 pairs of siblings. One in each pair was addicted to cocaine or amphetamines while the other had no history of drug abuse. Participants pressed a left or right Arrow key when seeing a similar arrow on a computer screen unless they heard a tone in which case they were to do nothing. People with poor self control including most drug addicts find it difficult to refrain from pressing the key. Surprisingly, the siblings who are not addicted to drugs perform just as badly as their siblings who were [00:29:00] indeed brain scan showed the pairs had very similar brain irregularities in commentary on the article imaging specialist Nora Volkow of the National Institute of Drug Abuse in Bethesda. Notes that even in children as young as four to 12 traits such as self control and flexibility can be improved by targeted interventions including exercise, train, martial arts, Yoga and computer games designed to enhance working memory. Speaker 5: [inaudible] occurred during the show was by list [00:29:30] on a David from his album folk and acoustic made available under creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have Speaker 1: 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. Speaker 2: I like that one. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.