Podcasts about rick karnofsky

Bruce Ames Sr Scientist at CHORI, and Prof Emeritus of Biochem and Molecular Bio, at UC Berkeley. Rhonda Patrick Ph.D. biomedical science, postdoc at CHORI in Dr. Ames lab. The effects of micronutrients on metabolism, inflammation, DNA damage, and aging.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show [00:00:30] 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 there. My name is Renee Rao and I'll be hosting today's show this week on spectrum. We present part two of our two interviews with Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick. Dr Ames is a senior scientist at Children's Hospital, Oakland Research Institute, director of their [00:01:00] nutrition and metabolism center and a professor emeritus of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California Berkeley. Rhonda Patrick has a phd in biomedical science. Dr. Patrick is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Children's Hospital, Oakland Research Institute and Dr Ames lab. She currently conducts clinical trials looking at the effects of nutrients on metabolism, inflammation, DNA damage and aging. In February of 2014 she published [00:01:30] a paper in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal on how vitamin D regulates serotonin synthesis and how this relates to autism. In part one Bruce and Rondo described his triage theory for micronutrients in humans and their importance in health and aging. In part two they discussed public health risk factors, research funding models, and the future work they wish to do. Here is part two of Brad Swift's interview with Dr Ames [00:02:00] and Patrick. Speaker 4: Is there a discussion going on in public health community about this sort of important that Rhonda, that one, Speaker 5: I think that people are becoming more aware of the importance of micronutrient deficiencies in the u s population. We've got now these national health and examination surveys that people are doing, examining the levels of these essential vitamins and minerals. 70% of the populations not getting enough vitamin D, 45% [00:02:30] population is not getting enough magnesium, 60% not getting enough vitamin K, 25% is not getting enough vitamin CS, 60% not getting enough vitamin E and on and on, 90% not getting enough calcium testing. It's very difficult to get. So I think that with these surveys that are really coming out with these striking numbers on these micronutrient deficiencies in the population, I'm in the really widespread and with triage, the numbers that tell you may be wrong because the thinking short term instead of long term, really what you want to know Speaker 6: [00:03:00] is what level [inaudible] indeed to keep a maximum lifespan. And our paper discussed all at and uh, but I must say the nutrition community hasn't embraced it yet, but they will because we're showing it's true and we may need even more of certain things. But again, you don't want to overdo it. Okay. Speaker 4: So talk a little bit about risk factors in general. In health, a lot of people, as you were saying, are very obsessed with chemicals or so maybe their risk assessment is [00:03:30] misdirected. What do you think are the big health issues, the big health risks? Speaker 6: I think obesity is like smoking. Smoking is eight or 10 years off your life. Each cigarette takes 10 minutes off your life. I mean, it's a disaster and smoking levels are going down and down because people understand. Finally, there's still a lot of people smoke, but obesity is just as bad years of expensive diabetes and the costs can be used. [00:04:00] Whatever you look at out timers of brain dysfunction of all sites is higher in the obese and there's been several studies of the Diet of the obese and it's horrible. I mean it's sugar, it's comfort food and they're not eating fruits and vegetables and the not eating berries and nuts and not eating fish. And so it's doing the main and the country is painful. Speaker 5: I think that the biggest risk in becoming unhealthy and increasing your [00:04:30] risk of age related diseases, inflammatory diseases comes down to micronutrient intake and people are not getting enough of that. And we know that we quantified it, we know they're not getting enough. And so I think that people like to focus on a lot of what not eat, don't eat sugar and that's right. You shouldn't eat a lot of sugar. I mean there's a lot of bad effects on, you know, constantly having insulin signaling activated. You can become insulin resistant in type two diabetic and these things are important. But I think you also need to realize you need to focus on what you're not getting as opposed to only focusing on what you should not [00:05:00] be getting. Yeah, Speaker 6: a colleague, lowest scold, and I wrote over a hundred papers trying to put risk in perspective. That part to been in pesticide is really uninteresting. Organic food and regular food doesn't matter. It's makes you feel good, but you're really not either improving the environment or helping your health. Now that you're not allowed to say that, things like that in Berkeley. But anyway, it's your diet. You should be worried about getting a good balanced time. So if you put out a thousand [00:05:30] hypothetical risks, you're lost space. Nobody knows what's important anymore and that's where we're getting. Don't smoke and eat a good diet. You're way ahead of the game and exercise and exercise. Right.Speaker 4: And in talking about the current situation with funding, when you think back Bruce, in the early days of your career and the opportunities that were there for getting funding vastly Speaker 6: different. [00:06:00] Well, there was much less money in the system, but I always was able to get funded my whole career and I've always done reasonably well. But now it's a little discouraging when I think I have big ideas that are gonna really cut health care costs and we have big ideas on obesity and I just can't get any of this funded [inaudible] but now if you're an all original, it's hopeless putting it at grant, [00:06:30] I just have given up on it. Speaker 5: Well the ANA, the NIH doesn't like to fund. Speaker 6: Yeah. If you're thinking differently than everybody else you do and they're only funding eight or 9% of grants, you just can't get funded. I didn't want to work on a 1% so I'm funding it out of my own pocket with, I made some money from a biotech company of one my students and that's what's supporting my lamb and few rich people who saw potential gave me some money. But it's really tough [00:07:00] now getting enough money to do this. That's an interesting model. Self funding. Well, Rhonda is trying to do that with a, she has a blog and people supporting her in, Speaker 5: I'm trying to do some crowdfunding where instead of going to the government and then all these national institute of cancer, aging, whatever, which essentially uses taxpayer dollar anyways to fund research. I'm just going to the people, that's what I'm trying to do. My ultimate goal is to go to the people, tell them about this research I'm doing and [00:07:30] my ideas how we're going to do it and have them fund it. People are willing to give money to make advances in science. They just need to know about it. What did you tell him what your app is? So, so I have an app called found my fitness, which is the name of my platform where I basically break down science and nutrition and fitness to people and I explained to them mechanisms. I explained to them context, you know, because it's really hard to keep up with all these press releases and you're bombarded with and some of them are accurate and some aren't and most of the time you just have no idea what is going on. Speaker 5: It's very [00:08:00] difficult to sort of navigate through all that mess. So I have developed a platform called found my fitness where I'm trying to basically educate people by explaining and breaking down the science behind a lot of these different types of website. And it's an app, it's a website that's also an app can download on your iPhone called found my fitness. And I have short videos, youtube videos that I do where I talk about particular science topics or health nutrition topics. I also have a podcast where I talk about them. I'm interviewing other scientists in the field and things like that. And also I've got a news community site [00:08:30] where people can interact posts, new news, science stories or nutrition stories, whatever it is and people comment. So we're kind of building in community where people can interact and ask questions and Speaker 6: Rhonda makes a video every once in a while and puts it up on her website and she has people supporting at least some of this and she hopes to finally get enough money coming in. We'll support her research. Speaker 5: No, I think we're heading that way. I think that scientists are going to have to findSpeaker 6: new creative ways to fund their research. Uh, particularly if they have creative ideas [00:09:00] is, Bruce mentioned it because it's so competitive to get that less than 10% funding. The NIH doesn't really fun, really creative and risky, but it's, you need somebody who gets it. If when you put out a new idea, right, and if it's against conventional wisdom, which I'd like to do with the occasion arises, then it's almost impossible anyway. Speaker 4: Even with your reputation. Speaker 6: Yeah, it's hard. I've just given [00:09:30] up writing grants now. It's a huge amount of work and when they keep on getting turned down, even though I think these are wonderful ideas, luckily I can keep a basal level supporting the lab. I found a rich fellow who had an autistic grandkid guy named Jorgensen and he supported Rhonda and he supported her for a year and she was able to do all these things. Yeah, my age, I want to have [00:10:00] a lot of big ideas and I just like to get them out there anyway. We shouldn't complain. We're doing okay. Right. It's a very fulfilling job. There's nothing more fulfilling than doing science in my opinion. Yes. Speaker 7: You're listening to spectrum and k a Alex Berkley. Today's guests are Dr. Bruce Ames and Dr Rhonda Patrick of Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute. [00:10:30] Oh, Speaker 4: the ames test. When you came up with that, was that, what was the process involved with?Speaker 6: Well, how do you devise that? Well, I was always half a geneticist and half a bio chemist and I thought you Taishan is really important. And nobody was testing new substances out there to see if there were mutagens. And so I thought it'd be nice to develop a simple, easy test in bacteria for doing that. That [00:11:00] was cheap and quick. And then I became interested in the relation of carcinogens to mutagens and so I was trying to convince people at the active forms of carcinogens were muted. There were other people in that area too, but I was an early enthusiastic for that idea and anyway, it's just came from my knowledge of two different fields, but that's a long time ago. I'm more excited about the brain now. The current stuff Speaker 4: doing obviously is it's more [00:11:30] exciting. Yeah. Do you both spend time paying attention to other areas of science? Speaker 6: I read an enormous amount and every 10 or 15 years I seem to change my feel of and follow off something that seems a little hotter than the other things and I've been reasonably successful at that, so that's what I liked to do. I am constantly Speaker 5: about all the latest research coming out. I mean, that's like pretty much all I do is I'm very excited about the new [00:12:00] field of epigenetics, where we're connecting what we eat, our lifestyle, how much stress we are under, how much exercise we do, how much sleep we get, how this is actually changing, methylation patterns, acetylation patterns. In our DNA and how that can change gene expression, turn on genes, turn off genes. I mean how this all relates to the way we age, how it relates to behavior, how it relates to us passing on behaviors to our children, grandchildren, you know, this is a field that's to me really exciting and something that I've spend quite a bit of time reading about. So for both of [00:12:30] you, what have been in the course of your career, the technologies, Speaker 6: the discoveries that have impacted your work the most? Well obviously understanding DNA and all the things it does was a huge advance for biology. And I was always half a geneticist, so I was hopping up and down when that Watson Crick paper came out and I gave it in the Journal club to all these distinguished biochemists and they said very speculative. [00:13:00] I said I was young script. I said, you guys be quiet. This is the paper of the century. And it made a huge difference. And there's been one advance after another. A lot of technical advances, little companies spring up, making your life easier and all of that. So it's been fun going through this. Speaker 5: I think, you know, in terms of my own research, which got me to where I'm at now, a lot of the, the technological advances in making transgenic mouse models, [00:13:30] knocking out certain genes, being able to manipulate, doing, inserting viral vectors with a specific gene and with a certain promoter on it and targeting it to a certain tissue so you can, you know, look specifically at what it's doing in that tissue or knock it out and what it's doing and that tissue. That for me is a, been a very useful technology that's helped me learn a lot. In addition, I like to do a lot of imaging. So these fluorescent proteins that we can, you know, you use to tag on, look at other proteins where they're located both tissue wise and also intracellularly inside the cell. Doing [00:14:00] that in real time. So there's now live cell imaging we can do and see things dynamically. Like for example, looking at Mitochondria and how they move and what they're doing in real time. Like that for me is also been really a useful technology and helping me understand Mitochondria. And how they function, dysfunction can occur. So I think a, those, those have been really important technologies for me. Speaker 6: And then computers change biology. Google made a huge difference. You can put two odd facts into Google and outcome Molly's paper. You'd spend years in a library [00:14:30] trying to figure all this stuff out. So Google really made theoretical biology possible. And I think this whole paper that Rhonda did, she couldn't have done it without Google. That's was the technology that opened it all up. This is so much literature and nobody can read all this and remember it all that we need the search. And so is this kind of a boom in theoretical biology? Well, [00:15:00] I wouldn't say there's a boom yet, but there's so much information out there that people haven't put together. Speaker 5: Yeah, people have been generating data over the years. There's tons of data out there and there's a lot of well done research that people haven't put together, connected the dots and made big picture understanding of complex things. So I think that there is an opening for that. And I do think that people will start to do that more and they are starting to do it more and more. Speaker 6: So in the past there really wasn't a theoretical biology that was certainly Darwin was [00:15:30] theoretical you could say and lots of people had big ideas in the unified fields, but it was rare. Speaker 5: I think we have more of an advantage in that we can provide mechanisms a little easier because we can read all this data. You know people like Darwin, they were doing theoretical work but they were also making observations. So what we're doing now is we're looking at observations other people have made and putting those together. Speaker 8: [00:16:00] [inaudible] and [inaudible] is a public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley. This is part two of a two part interview with Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick. Speaker 6: Are there, are other scientists active in the longevity field whose work you admire that you would love to collaborate with? [00:16:30] Well or associated with? Always collaborates. So science is both very collegial and very competitive. You think somebody might get their first. But one of the tricks I like in my lab is we have half a dozen really good people with different expertise and we sit around a table and discuss things and it's no one person can know all medicine. And so [00:17:00] anyways, that helps. Yeah. And it might be collaborating with this guy now because both of you contribute something that the other person doesn't have a technique or whatever. And in three years we might be competing with them, but that's why it's good to keep good relations with everybody. But business is the same way companies compete and collaborate. Yeah. Speaker 5: I, I personally am in terms of the field of longevity. Uh, I admire the work of Elizabeth Blackburn [00:17:30] who discovered, uh, won the Nobel prize for be playing a role in discovering the enzyme telomerase Speaker 6: that was done at Berkeley, by the way. Speaker 5: Yeah. And she's now a professor at UCLA. So I would be really excited to set up a collaboration with her. Speaker 6: Well, what are the lab's research plans going forward now? Uh, well, other than Ryan Reinders next two papers. Yeah. Rhonda has these papers to get out. And I'd like to get the whole business [00:18:00] of tuning up our metabolism on firmer ground, convince nutrition people who are expert in one particular environment or most people studied B six for their whole lives or study Niacin for their whole lives or magnesium. And I buy it at the experts in a particular field to think about triage and what protein do we measure that tells you you're short a not getting enough, the vulnerable ones and get that idea [00:18:30] out and do a few examples and convince people that RDA should be based on long term effects rather than short term. And then Rhonda and I were talking the other day and we both got excited about drugs. This money to be made. Speaker 6: So pharmaceutical companies compete on getting new and better drugs and they can be billion dollar drugs but nutrition, nobody can make money out of it. And so there, [00:19:00] do you want to do a clinical trial on Vitamin d the way you do with the drug? Food and drug wants a double blind randomized controlled clinical trial. That's the gold standard for drugs. But it's not for nutrition is nutrition. You have to measure if 20% of the population is low on vitamin D, you don't want to do a study where you don't measure who's low and who's high because otherwise it's designed to fail. So you have to measure [00:19:30] things. Now, vitamin D actually many more deficient, but a lot of vitamins, 10% of lower 20% is low and you can't just lump them in with all the people have enough and do a randomized on one clinical trial and think it's going to mean something without measuring something. Speaker 6: Rhonda has one of her videos on our website to [inaudible] all these doctors who saved the vitamins are useless. They're all based on clinical trials that are designed for drugs [00:20:00] and they don't measure anything. So you have to know who should deficient and then taking that amount of value and makes you sufficient. I think, uh, some interesting re ongoing research in our lab is also the cornea bar. Yeah. So yeah, Joyce mechanical amp is directing a project on the Corey bar. We were deciding how do you get vitamins and minerals into the poor and we made a little bar, which is kind of all the components of a Mediterranean diet that people [00:20:30] aren't getting enough vitamins and all the vitamins and minerals and fish oil and vitamin D and soluble fiber and insoluble fiber and plant polyphenols and we can raise everybody's HDL in a couple of weeks and this is the mass of people aren't eating, they think they're eating good tide aren't and obese people or have their metabolism all fouled up and you were even learning how to make progress there. So Speaker 5: cool thing about it is that you can take a population [00:21:00] of people that eats very unhealthy and they are obese, meaning they have a BMI of 30 or above and you can give them this nutritional bar that has a variety of micronutrients. It has essential fatty acids and some polyphenols fiber and give it to them twice a day on top of their crappy diet. You don't tell them to change your diet at all. It's like keep doing what you're doing, but here, eat those twice a day on top of what you're doing and you can see that, you know after a few weeks that these changes start to occur where their HDLs raise or LDS lower. I mean there's, there's a lot of positive effects, you know, lower c reactive protein. So [00:21:30] I think this is really groundbreaking research because it's, it says, look, you can take someone who's eating a terrible diet completely, probably micronutrient division in many essential vitamins and minerals and such are eating a bunch of sugar and crap and processed foods and on and on and on and yet you can give them this nutritional bar that has a combination of micronutrients in it and you can quantify changes that are positive. Speaker 5: I think that's a really exciting ongoing project in our lab, Speaker 6: Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick, thanks very much [00:22:00] for being on spectrum. It's a pleasure. Absolutely a pleasure. Thanks for having us. Speaker 7: Aw. [inaudible] to learn more about the work aims and Patrick's are doing. Visit their websites. Bruce seems.org and found my fitness.com spectrum shows are archived on iTunes yet we've created this simple link for you. The link is tiny url.com/k a Alex spectrum Speaker 3: [00:22:30] and now a calendar of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Kreisky joins me to present the calendar on Sunday July 13th the bay area meetup, random acts of science will host an event to do science with paper papers, one of the most commonly available materials with a variety of science applications. Everything from the dynamics of classic paper airplanes launching paper rockets and building structures in [00:23:00] Origami will be discussed. The group will also learn about fibers and paper and how to create their own homemade paper. Raw materials will be provided, but attendees are also welcome to bring their own. The event will be held July 13th from two to 3:00 PM outside the genetics and plant biology building on the UC Berkeley campus. It is free and open to anyone interested in coming basics. The Bay area art science, interdisciplinary collaborative sessions. [00:23:30] We'll have their fifth event on Monday the 14th from six 30 to 10:00 PM at the ODC theater, three one five three 17th street in San Francisco. Speaker 3: The theme is monsters. Professor John Haffer. Nick, we'll introduce the audience to a peracetic fly that turns European honey bees into zombies, author and translator, Eric Butler. We'll explain how literature and film have made the Vampire [00:24:00] a native of Eastern Europe into a naturalized American with a preference for the Golden State Marine biologist David McGuire. Well, disentangle the media fueled myth of the shark from its true nature and Kyle Taylor, senior scientist for the gluing plant project will show off plants that glow in the dark. Admission will be on a sliding scale from absolutely nothing. Up to 20 bucks. Visit basics.com for more info. [00:24:30] That's B double a s I c s.com. On Saturday, July 19th you see Berkeley molecular and cell biology Professor Kathleen Collins will host the latest iteration of the monthly lecture series. Signs that cow Professor Collins will discuss the connections between the seemingly incontrovertible fact of human aging. A fascinating enzyme known as telomerase and malignant cancers. Speaker 3: While cancer cells can grow indefinitely [00:25:00] all normally functioning human tissues will eventually die out. This is because with each success of cell division, the protective cap or a telomere at the end of each chromosome is gradually degraded while the enzyme to limb arrays or pairs this damage in embryos. It is not fully active in adult human tissues. Perhaps to prevent the uncontrollable growth of cancer cells. Professor Collins will discuss telomeres and telomerase function and how they affect the balance of human aging [00:25:30] and immortality. The free public talk will be held July 19th in room one 59 of Mulford Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. The lecture will begin at 11:00 AM sharp science need is a monthly science happy hour for adults 21 and over the pairs. Lightning talks with interactive stations on the back patio of the El Rio bar at three one five eight mission street in San Francisco. Speaker 3: [00:26:00] The theme for July Science Neat is backyard science and we'll feature the science of things right here in the bay area from plants to plankton and beetles. Two bikes. Admission is $4 and the event will be on Tuesday, July 22nd from six 30 to 8:30 PM and now a few of our favorite science stories. Rick's back to present the news. The rocky planets that are closest to our son generally have an iron core [00:26:30] that makes up about a third of their mass that is surrounded by rock that makes up the other two thirds. Mercury is an exception and is the other way around. With a massive iron core that takes up about percent of the planet's mass. This has been difficult to explain. If mercury had been built up by collisions the way that Venus and earth and Mars where we'd expect it to have a similar composition in a letter published in nature geoscience on July six Eric s [00:27:00] fog and Andreas Roofer of Arizona State University report their simulations that suggests that collisions may have stripped away Mercury's mantle, some moon and planet sized rocks would bounce off of each other, sometimes knocking one body out of its orbit while the impactor and the leftover debris coalesced into a planet. Speaker 3: This model is consistent with Mercury's high abundance of [inaudible] elements that have been observed recently by NASA's messenger spacecraft [00:27:30] in their so called hit and run model. Mercury is missing metal would end up coalescing onto Venus or in your report compiled by UC Berkeley. Scientist has definitively linkedin gene that has helped Tibetan populations thrive in high altitude environments to hit or too little known human ancestor. The Denisovans, the Denisovans along with any thoughts when extinct around 40 to 50,000 years ago about the time that modern human began to ascend [00:28:00] and Aaliyah is a version of a gene in this case and unusually of the gene e p a s one which regulates hemoglobin production has been common among Tibetans since their move several thousand years ago. John Habit areas at around 15,000 feet of elevation. Well, most people have Leos that caused them to develop thick blood at these high elevations, which can later lead to cardiovascular problems. The tobacco wheel raises hemoglobin levels only slightly allowing possessors [00:28:30] to avoid negative side effects. So the report, which will later republished in the journal Nature details the unique presence of the advantageous aliyah. Among Tibetans and conclusively matches it with the genome of the Denisovans. This is significant because as principle author, Rasmus Nielsen, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology writes, it shows very clearly and directly that humans evolved and adapted to new environments by getting their genes from another species. Nielsen added that there are many other [00:29:00] potential species to explore as sources of human DNA Speaker 8: [inaudible].Speaker 4: This show marks the end of our production of spectrum. I want to thank Rick Karnofsky, Renee, Rau, and Alex Simon for their help in producing spectrum. I want to extend a blanket thank you to all the guests who took the time to appear on spectrum over the three years we have been on Calex to Sandra Lenna, [00:29:30] Erin and Lorraine. Thanks for your guidance and help to Joe, Peter and Greg. Thanks for your technical assistance and encouragement to listeners. Thanks for tuning in and Speaker 7: stay tuned to Calico [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Ames is a Senior Scientist at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, director of their Nutrition & Metabolism Center, and a Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, at the University of California, Berkeley. Rhonda Patrick has a Ph.D. in biomedical science. Dr. Patrick is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute with Dr. Ames. Bruce Ames Sr Scientist at CHORI, and Prof Emeritus of Biochem and Molecular Bio, at UC Berkeley. Rhonda Patrick Ph.D. biomedical science, postdoc at CHORI in Dr. Ames lab. The effects of micronutrients on metabolism, inflammation, DNA damage, and aging.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm mm mm Speaker 3: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x [00:00:30] 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 4: Good afternoon. My name is Rick Karnofsky. I'm the host of today's show. This week on spectrum we present part one of a two part interview with our guests, Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick. Dr Ames is a senior scientist at Children's Hospital, [00:01:00] Oakland Research Institute, director of their nutrition and metabolism center and a professor Ameritas of biochemistry and molecular biology at UC Berkeley. Rhonda Patrick has a phd in biomedical science. Dr. Patrick is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Children's Hospital, Oakland Research Institute in Dr Ames. His lab, she currently conducts clinical trials looking at the effects of [00:01:30] micronutrients on metabolism, inflammation, DNA damage and aging. Here's Brad swift and interviewing doctors, aims and Patrick Bruce Speaker 5: Ames and Rhonda Patrick, welcome to spectrum. Thank you very much. Sue, can you help us understand the term micronutrient and briefly explain what they do? Sure. Speaker 6: About 40 substances you need in your diet and [00:02:00] you get it from eating a really well balanced style, get them more about eight or 10 of them are essential amino acids. So they're required for making your all your protein. And then there are about 30 vitamins and minerals, roughly 15 minerals in 15 five minutes. So you need the minerals, you need iron and zinc and calcium and magnesium and all these things, you know, and the vitamins [00:02:30] and minerals are coenzymes. So you have 20,000 genes in your body that make proteins, which are enzymes that do bio or Kimiko transformations. And some of them require coenzymes, maybe a quarter of them. So some require magnesium and they don't work unless there's a magnesium attached to the particular pace in the enzyme. And some of them require vitamin B six which is something called [00:03:00] paradoxal, goes through a coenzyme paradox of phosphate. Speaker 6: And that's an a few hundred and enzymes and they make your neurotransmitters and other things. And if you don't get any one of these 40 substances, you'd die. But how much we need is, I think there's a lot of guesswork in there and we have a new idea I can talk about later that shakes a lot up puppet. And so when your research, you're trying to measure these [00:03:30] micronutrients obviously, well people can measure them in various ways. Somebody can just measure in blood and say, ah, you have enough vitamin D or you don't have enough vitamin D. But some, for example, calcium and magnesium marine, your bones, but they're also used for all kinds of enzymes and if you get low, the tissue might get low, but you keep your plasma up because you're taking it out of the bone. So just measuring [00:04:00] plasma isn't useful in that case. Speaker 6: But anyway, there, uh, each one is a little different. Do you want to talk about the triage theory? Okay, I could talk to about that. Now. Some years ago we kept on finding when we had human cells in culture or mice, that when we left out various vitamins and minerals or didn't have enough, we got DNA damage. I'm an expert in DNA damage and we're interested in how [00:04:30] to prevent DNA damage. We sat leads to cancer and so I kept on wondering why is nature doing this when you're not getting enough of magnesium or iron or zinc, you getting DNA damage and then one day it hit me. I, that's just what nature wants to do. Through all of evolution, we'd been running out of vitamins and minerals. The minerals aren't spread evenly through the soil. The red soils with a lot of iron and the souls that have very little iron. Speaker 6: [00:05:00] Selenium is a required mineral, but there's soils with too much saline and we get poisoned. And then the areas where it, you don't have enough selenium so you get poisoned. So it's a little tricky. Back in 2006 I had this idea that nature must do a rationing when you start getting low on any vitamin or mineral, and how would you ration it? The proteins that are essential for survival get it first and the ones that are preventing [00:05:30] some insidious damage that shows up as cancer in 10 years or calcification in the arteries. That's the [inaudible] papers, those proteins lucid. And I call this triage ship. It's a French word for dividing up those wounded soldiers that the doctors can make a difference on. So anyway, I publish this with what data? That wasn't the literature, but it wasn't completely satisfactory. We didn't, hadn't really nailed it, but it was an idea. Speaker 6: And then Joyce McCain [00:06:00] in my lab wrote two beautiful reviews, one on selenium and one on vitaminK , and they both fit beautifully. And people who work in these fields had shown that the clotting factors get it first because you don't get your blood clotting and you cut yourself every week or two, you'd just bleed to death. But the price you pay is you don't make the protein that prevents calcification of the arteries so [00:06:30] people can die of calcification the arteries. But that takes 10 years. So when nature has to face keeping alive now so you can reproduce or you're getting calcification arteries in 10 years, it does this tradeoff. And also you don't have enough vitamin K. My ptosis doesn't work quite as accurately. So you'll lose the chromosome here or there and you get cancer in 10 years. But again, it's the trade off between short term survival and longterm health. Speaker 6: It all [00:07:00] makes perfect sense. It was a very plausible theory. That's why I came out with it. But it's true for vitaminK and the mechanism used in vitaminK is different than the mechanism and sleeping. So each system has developed a different mechanism for doing this racially. And so that changes our view of vitamins and minerals base. You're paying a price every time. You're a little low on one with them. So it's the disease of aging. So basically when you should have any vitamin or mineral, [00:07:30] it accelerates your aging in some way. You can accelerate some kind of insidious damage. And we're talking about huge numbers of people. 70% of the population is low in vitamin D and we're talking about magnesium, what we said the third 45% 45% these are big numbers and they're cheap boldly saying Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 8: [00:08:00] you are listening to spectrum on a l x, Berkeley. Today's guests are Dr. Bruce Ames and Dr Rhonda Patrick Speaker 9: with the micronutrients and the activity of DNA, RNA. Talk about the effect there, the impact, is there more to talk about that? Absolutely. So there are many different micronutrients [00:08:30] that are required for functions in your body that involve DNA replication involved DNA repair, preventing DNA damage. Things are all very important because we're making 100 billion new cells every day to make a new cell, we have to replicate the entire genome of that cell to make the daughter cell. And that requires a whole holster of enzymes. So if you don't have enough magnesium for those DNA polymerase to work properly, when ends up happening is that their fidelity is [00:09:00] lessen, meaning they don't work as well and they're gonna likely make more errors in that DNA replication that they're performing. And if they can't repair that error, then when ends up happening is that you can get every rotation and depending on whether that mutation has any functional consequences, sort of random, but the more times as occurs, then the more chances you're having of getting a mutation that can, you know, something that's not good and can either cause cell death or it can also [00:09:30] be something that causes dysregulation of the way your genes are expressed. Speaker 9: So it's very important to make sure you have the right co factors such as magnesium for DNA replication, also in your mitochondria and your mitochondrial DNA. When you make new Mitochondria, this is called mitochondrial biogenesis. It's an important mechanism to boost the number of mitochondria per cell. And this can occur during things like exercise when your mitochondria also have their own genome and they have to replicate this genome. Well guess what? Those mitochondrial [00:10:00] DNA were preliminaries. This also require magnesium. And so if there's not enough magnesium around, you're not making your mitochondria as optimal as you could be in Mitochondria. Play an important role in every single process in your body, including, you know, neuronal function. So that's really important to make sure that your Mitochondria Hobby. Also, this is very relevant for things like aging. These micronutrients like vitamin D gets converted into a steroid hormone that regulates the expression of over a thousand genes in [00:10:30] your body and some of those genes are involved in DNA repair and also in preventing DNA damage. So these micronutrients are extremely important for a variety of different physiological properties that are going on in your body every single day. Things that you can't see when you look in the mirror, we're talking about something that's not an acute deficiency that's going to lead to a clinical symptom like scurvy. Speaker 6: We think bad nutrition is the main thing, accelerating all these degenerative diseases of aging and contributing to these huge medical costs and [00:11:00] all of that. And it's something you can do something about because they're all very cheap minerals that are cheap. So the sourcing of the minerals and vitamins, it's not crucial at this point you think? I don't think so. Yeah. Getting them is the the really the key factor think and I think to really reform people's diet, we're going to need the numbers and we're working to try and show that there's some vulnerable protein that goes first when you're short of McNeese. I [00:11:30] mean you should measure that and then you'll know you're not getting enough and all the consequences or you're disabling all your DNA repair fronts. I'm so whatever. Speaker 9: It is ideal to try and get as many of these micronutrients essential vitamins and minerals that you can from your diet. For example, I personally make a smoothie for breakfast every morning, which consists of Kale, spinach, Swiss carrots, tomato, avocado, berries, and I'm getting a broad spectrum of vegetables and fruits [00:12:00] just from that one smoothie. And I think in addition to these essential vitamins and minerals that we know are in these various plants and fruits, I think there's also a lot of micronutrients in there that we have yet to discover that also may be doing important things. However, it's extremely difficult for people to get all of these micronutrients from their diet. And I think in that instance, supplementation can help fill those nutritional gaps. And we've actually shown that Speaker 6: in general, people in nutrition don't like the idea of pills, but people [00:12:30] are learning about all this. But you shouldn't overdo it. Mae West said too much of a good thing is wonderful, but she was saying about sex, not micronutrients, and particularly for minerals in minerals, there's a sweet spot. Too much can hurt you into little canary, Speaker 5: and that's what you're hoping these next generation devices would help people understand where they are situated within, right? The class of vitamins and minerals. What are they up in? What are they down? Speaker 6: So this may be a decades [00:13:00] worth of science to do this, but we're trying to frame the ideas and say, look, this is where we're going. And it isn't drugs that are gonna help you. It's getting your diet tuned up, your metabolism [inaudible] Speaker 9: your doctor can look at a few different nutrients and vitamin D is one test that they do. But there's a couple of companies that are out there right now such as something called wellness effects. They're measuring a variety of different micronutrients in people's blood, including omega [00:13:30] three fatty acids, vitamin D, magnesium, potassium, calcium. So looking at all these different vitamins and minerals and people are quantifying. It's called the quantified self movement where people are getting their vitamins and minerals and essential fatty acids measured. They're making dietary changes. If they find out they're low in vitamin D or they're low in mega three or they have low magnesium, they're making dietary changes and then about three months later they go back and they'd quantify the levels again so they can physically measure and quantify this, this change that they're making in their diet. And I think really that's the direction [00:14:00] to go. Speaker 6: Yeah, and analytical methods of Guinea. So wonderful that you can do it on a finger prick of blood. I have two entrepreneurs, scientist friends. One of them has put a machine in every hospital in China and he measures couple of dozen proteins of medical importance and the Chinese are subsidizing this. They think it's going to save money. And another friend of mine from Boulder, first one is built routed. The second one is Larry Gold. And he developed [00:14:30] an alternative to monoclonal antibodies and he can measure 1500 different proteins in one fingerprint compliant. I mean, it's fantastic and he's working to get them all right now it's a discovery system, but we're going to discover what protein tells you. You're low in magnesium and what protein tells you you're low in vitaminK or protein tells you low in paradox and then it's all going to go to your iPhone and you'll get the diagnosis. Speaker 6: We'll cut out the doctors [00:15:00] because they don't know much about Olis anyway, and they're too expensive. So it's not drugs you need for all of this. It's tuning up limit tap of the drugs that youthful. I'm not saying that not and for some things that are absolutely essential, but this area of getting your metabolism tuned up, see, people are worried about a pot Papillion a pesticide and it's all irrelevant. We, we published a hundred papers on that in that era, just saying, look, it's all a distraction from the important thing and important thing [00:15:30] is all these bad diets where eating and obesity isn't just calories in, exercise out a beach. People are starving and what this starving for vitamins and minerals because they're eating sugar and carbohydrate and every possible disease of aging is accelerated and hippies and plus huge costs, years of expensive diabetes and heart disease and cancer, you name it, it's been linked to obesity. So I think it's a big [00:16:00] opportunity to tune people up. Speaker 8: Spectrum is a public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley [00:16:30] is this part one of a two part interview with Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick. Speaker 9: So Rhonda, the recent paper you published on vitamin D explain that. So vitamin D gets converted into a steroid hormone in your body and the steroid hormone can regulate this expression [00:17:00] of between 900 and a thousand different genes. And the way it does that is that there's a little telltale sequence in your gene and it's basically a six nucleotide sequence repeat that's separated by three nucleotides. And this nucleotide sequence itself can determine whether or not vitamin D will turn on a gene or turn off aging. And so vitamin D can do both of these where it turns on genes and turns off genes. Well, what we found is that there's two different genes that encode for Tryptophan hydroxylase, [00:17:30] which is the rate limiting enzyme that converts trip to fan into Serotonin. There's one that's in the brain called Tryptophan hydroxylase too, and there's one that's outside of the blood brain barrier in tissues like Mosley got also in your t cells and your Peniel gland and placenta tissue if you're woman, and this is called Tryptophan hydroxylase one and what we found is that both of these genes have what's called a vitamin D response element that tell a sequence I was telling you about. Speaker 9: However, they had [00:18:00] completely opposite vitamin D response elements. One, the one in your brain had an activation sequence turn on and the one in the gut had a repression sequence. The turnoff sequence, which suggested that vitamin D hormone was controlling the expression of these two different genes in opposite directions. Vitamin D's important to turn on Tryptophan hydroxylase and two and your brain so you can make serotonin and it's important to turn it off and your gut to blunt the production of Serotonin in your gut. Serotonin in your gut. Too Much of it causes GI inflammation. [00:18:30] This was a really cool finding because there was a recent paper where they found that autistic individuals, 90% of them had some abnormal tryptophan metabolism and they didn't really identify what it was, but sort of like an Aha moment where it was like trick to fan metabolism. Well, chuck did fan, you need to make Serotonin, and so I started doing some reading and sure enough, there's a whole literature connecting Serotonin to autism. Speaker 9: Serotonin is made in your brain. It's an important neurotransmitter, but during early, early brain development, [00:19:00] it is a brain morphogenic meaning it actually is a growth factor that guides the neuronal proliferation, the development, the migration of neurons to different regions in the brain. It plays an essential role in shaping the structure and the wiring of the early developing brain. And so not having enough serotonin in early, early brain development in Utero can lead to very aberrant brain morphological and functional consequences. You know, this was kind of like, wow, well what if you're not getting enough vitamin D during that critical [00:19:30] period, which is important to activate that gene that converts Tryptophan into Serotonin? Is it possible then that you wouldn't be making enough serotonin in that early brain and therefore you wouldn't have a normal brain development? Also, the Serotonin in the gut can cause a lot of GI inflammation and also quite a few autistics have high GI inflammation. Speaker 9: Also, they have high levels of Serotonin in their blood. There's something that we call the Serotonin anomaly where they've measured brain levels of Serotonin autistics from SMRI and have also measured blood levels [00:20:00] of Serotonin. And there was sort of this weird dichotomy where autistics had high levels of Serotonin in their blood, but they had low levels in their brain and so it was like, well, why is that? Why would they have high levels in their blood, the low levels in the brain and we think we found a mechanism why if you're low in vitamin D, your vitamin D won't be turning on the one in your brain and you won't be making enough Serotonin in your brain and it won't be repressing the one you've got and you'll be making too much and you've got this sort of a a really cool finding. We also in our paper discuss how estrogen can [00:20:30] activate Tryptofan hydroxylase to in the brain pretty much the same way vitamin D does also a steroid hormone and the sequences, the receptors bind to a somewhat similar under dug out of the literature that people showed. Estrogen can turn Speaker 6: on the Messenger RNA for the brain enzyme making serotonin in girls, but it's not doing it in boys, which explains why five times as many boys get autism as girls. [00:21:00] Anyway, she worked out all this mechanism. We kept on explaining one thing after another render would come in every week, hopping up and down. Look what I found and look what I found and I think she walks on water, but she did this wonderful scholarship, which is a good metaphor, but she used to be a surfing instructor when she was incentive. Speaker 9: It's pretty exciting. It was largely theoretical work where we did find a underlying mechanism to connect these dots. So we're hoping now that people in the field are going to continue on and look even deeper. Speaker 6: So [00:21:30] what we think we know is how to prevent autism. But what we are not sure of is whether you can give vitamin D to people who have autism and help some of the symptoms. Uh, biggest people need to do clinical trials on all of this and they haven't done them right. But now that we have the mechanism, you can do them right. The trouble is drug companies aren't going to make money with vitamin D and they know that. And so [00:22:00] they're trying to develop a new drug. But we're hoping that these biochemicals trip to fain and vitamin D and nowhere to tone and and may get threes, which are all seem to be involved, which you can find out by reading Ramdas paper that that is going to at least give him mechanisms so we can do more focused clinical trials. Speaker 8: [inaudible] [00:22:30] to learn more about the work and Patrick are doing visit their websites, Bruce ames.org and found my fitness.com Speaker 7: oh Speaker 6: papers take a lot of polishing. Basically we're going into all these fields [00:23:00] that we don't know an awful lot about us and that requires a lot of double checking and sending it to experts and getting criticism. Speaker 9: First you have to learn everything and then you'd have to put, make the connections together and then you have to write it and then there's a whole process. It's very, it's a lot of work. Personally, my favorite part of it is the creative part where you just make all the connections and you find things and you start fitting things together and it's like, oh yeah, you know, it's just, it's almost like awesome rush, but then once you've make all those connections and you do that creative work, then you really have to [00:23:30] do all the tedious, hard digging and working diligence. Yes and that it's not as much fun. Then once you have a good theory Speaker 6: you assume no. Is it explaining new things that you didn't expect and right away this idea explains so many things and it was all really lying on the ground and round it just picked it up and put it together. Speaker 9: People like Bruce and I who liked to make those connections. I think that we play an important role in science as well. Like this paper that we published recently, [00:24:00] while we didn't physically do any experiments, we didn't test our theoretical work. We made a very interesting connection with a mechanism for other people to test. And I think that every once in awhile science needs that because there's so much data out there and now with Google we have access to all this data. So I think that taking people that are familiar with the fields and can put things together like pieces of a puzzle, I think that also advanced the science in a very creative way. Speaker 6: Biology's so complicated that there hasn't been much room for people [00:24:30] who just sit in their office and do theoretical work. And we do a lot of experimental work in lab and Rhonda is carrying on an experimental problem while she's doing all this. But I like to get it in between fields. I was always half a geneticist and half a biochemist and it was wonderful because I saw all these problems. The geneticists turned up and the biochemists didn't know existed and the geneticists didn't know how to tackle this was before Watson and crick and all of that. Uh, I'm pretty [00:25:00] old anyway. I think science is so competitive, but if you know two fields in this an interface, you have a big advantage on everybody else and we like to have people in the lab with many different expertise and put things together. Speaker 10: [inaudible]Speaker 4: you can tune into the rest of Brad's interview with Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick [00:25:30] two weeks from now. Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 4: irregular feature of spectrum is a calendar of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area over the next two weeks. On Thursday, July 10th the bay area skeptics will host a free lecture by Glenn Branch. The deputy director of the National Center for Science Education Branch will present untold stories from the scopes trial. [00:26:00] If you thought that you knew everything about the scopes monkey trial. Thank you again to commemorate the 89th anniversary of this seminal episode in the long contentious history of evolution. Education in the United States branch will tell the story of the scopes trial as it has never been told before. Focusing on obscure under appreciated and amusing details. The event will be at the La Pena Cultural Center, three one zero five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley [00:26:30] and it will start@seventhirtypleasevisitwwwdotbaskeptics.org for more info and here's the new story we think you'll find interesting in a paper published in nature neuroscience on June eight University of Minnesota researchers at B Steiner and a David Reddish report that they have made behavioral and neuro physiological observations of regret [00:27:00] in rats to regret is to recognize that taking an alternative action would have produced a more valued outcome than the action one took. Speaker 4: The research team created a circular runway with four spokes and feeding machines at the end of each spoke that contained different flavors of food pellets. The feeding was preceded by a tone that indicated how long the rat would wait at a particular machine for food if the rat left one of these restaurants with waiting time below [00:27:30] its threshold only. Do you find an even longer waiting time at the next spoke? The team hypothesized that the rat may regret the choice. Indeed, the rats that fit this description were more likely than control rats to look toward the spoke. They just left and electrodes indicated that neurons in the orbital frontal cortex fired at the same time. Science news talk to cold Spring Harbor Neuro scientist Alex Vaughan about the paper. He [00:28:00] said, the researchers did a great job of designing a task that can discriminate between the regret of making a poor decision and the disappointment that results when one is punished despite making all the right choices. Speaker 8: [inaudible] spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. [00:28:30] We have created a symbolic for you. The link is tiny, url.com/calix spectrum. Speaker 7: Oh Speaker 3: [inaudible]. The music [00:29:00] heard during the show was written and produced by Alex diamond. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Email address is Doug KLX. Hey, young com. Speaker 8: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Archaeologist Dr Diana Pickworth. She is presently a Visiting Scholar in the UC Berkeley Near Eastern Studies Department. Formerly Assoc Prof of Mesopotamian Art and Archaeology and Museum Studies at the University of ‘Aden in the Republic of Yemen.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k [00:00:30] a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Hey, good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show this week on spectrum. Our guest is archaeologist Dr Diana. Pick worth. She is presently a visiting scholar in the UC Berkeley Near Eastern studies department. Dr Pick worth is completing the work related to the publication of two volumes [00:01:00] on excavations carried out by a university of California team at the site of Nineveh in northern Iraq. Formerly she was an associate professor of Mesopotamian art and archeology and museum studies at the University of a sudden in the Republic of Yemen. Diana pick worth is an elected fellow of the explorers club and a member of the American School of Oriental Research. Here is that interview. Hi, this is Brad Swift. In today's spectrum interview, Rick Karnofsky [00:01:30] joins me, Rick [inaudible] and today's guest is Diana. Pick worth Diana, welcome to spectrum. Speaker 1: I'm honored and delighted to be here. Speaker 3: Diana would you begin by talking about archeology and how it got started and how it's blossomed into its multifaceted current state. Speaker 1: There's no doubt that the enlightenment in the 19th century sparked a huge interest [00:02:00] in the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire. And so during this period, the European countries, England, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, we're sending consoles and ambassadors to visit the Parshah and Istanbul. What happened was these countries became competitive in their desire, both the land and knowledge. And this was fueled somewhat by [00:02:30] Darwin's research and in 1830 his work on the Beagle and subsequently his publication of origin of species spoked enormous questions about the Bible. And it was this desire to understand the truth about the Bible. It had been viewed up until that point is a given that it was correct [00:03:00] and it challenged the world view at the time. And avast and I think changing Manoj and so layered from England, Botha from foams moved east of Istanbul into northern Iraq. And what we see is these two men really pitching at each other to stake a claim for that country to excavate in there tells that they [00:03:30] both discovered in the appetite risk space on and is that how the Fertile Crescent got started? Speaker 1: That whole idea of Fertile Crescent, that was a little later, but the Fertile Crescent represents an area where settlement could first begin and so the ice Asya hat is really a points on a map. It's a way of looking at how [00:04:00] geography, rainfall, and natural geographic circumstances create a circumstance where humankind can prosper and it can farm in what is called dry farming. And so what we find, it's an all running up from about the middle of their Dead Sea on the Palestinian literal all the way up in a circle across the top of what [00:04:30] is today, northern Syria and northern Iraq. Those sites date from as early as 9,000 BC and there's no doubt that's where we are. We all finding humankind's first farming and settlement currently. Then what's notable about the transition from the 19th or the 20th century in terms of archeology? I think on the one hand a tremendous continuity so [00:05:00] that those sites that would claimed in the 19th century tend to still be excavated by the same country. Speaker 1: There's an unspoken but still I think quite rigorous concept that a site is handed on. The perspective has become much more global so that we have people excavating in the Middle East, from South Africa, [00:05:30] from South America, from the United States, and these teams in most we would call the new world are essentially funded or sponsored by their universities. That still remains in the European countries. A tradition of sponsorship by the government and this makes a huge difference. They are able to continue with a very shore knowledge of funding [00:06:00] year after year. You talked a little bit about the Fertile Crescent. What are other examples of old settlements? What's the oldest settlement? I think in photo Cresson, certainly one of the most remarkable sites is Choteau here. And this was excavated by the University of California by Ruth Traynham and has some of the earliest illustrative material and [00:06:30] war paintings in that area. And representative, uh, no doubt of the earliest farming settlements. And it's a dense occupation. Surprisingly, there are dense a little later we see sites that we defined by this ceramic heritage, so at this point we have new written documentation but how suna and hello laugh of these very early pottery sites that are named [00:07:00] essentially from the first site, but we find a spread of occupation across the area. Further east, I'm a hindered Daro 2,900 BC is in what is modern day Pakistan and without doubt one of the earliest settlements Speaker 4: [inaudible]Speaker 5: you were listening to spectrum on k a l experts like archaeologist, [00:07:30] Diana [inaudible] is our guest. Speaker 1: How closely does archaeological training in universities track with the real world application of archeology? I think in many cases very well. One of the requirements of an archeologist above all others I think is flexibility and sturdy resilience, but there are three aspects we're trained theoretically [00:08:00] and this I think is where to refer back to your earlier question. There is a change from 19th century archeology today. We're trained to pose a theoretical question to come up with a hypothesis that we will try to test on the ground. I think an area background knowledge is essential training varies in this regard. For example, [00:08:30] in Germany, archeologists are expected to work all over the world whereas we tend to direct our training two area studies say that my area Mesopotamia and Arabian studies really requires a basis of language study under knowledge of the history of the area and so one becomes a specialist in a particular area. Speaker 1: The practical training [00:09:00] is fairly consistent. I think we begin in in the states, the students are sent in the summers to excavations and throughout their graduate career it's hope they'll have an opportunity to really work in different types of sites and all of us begin or hope to with a semester in a field archeology school so that ones practicing perhaps in a situation where one can't cause too much [00:09:30] damage within the United States field of study, how much might one drift from their graduate area into another area of the world as they start their career? That's an interesting question. In my experience, people do really tend to stay within their area of specialization. We're talking about as much as maybe six to eight years of a language study. The geography and the history of an area [00:10:00] becomes embedded in one's training and in one's doctoral dissertation, so I personally don't think there is such a broad shift. Speaker 1: I think theoretically once capable, there's absolutely no doubt and we find also that students who find themselves not to have strong language studies tend to move into pre history. If you're working in pre history, then really one can go anywhere. It doesn't matter. [00:10:30] There are loopholes in the system, some of the technical methods that are being applied to dating things. Does that mess up the history of it all, the timing, the dating, a lot of the earlier work, does it get overturned in terms of how old is this settlement? I think DNA has made an enormous, perhaps the most significant difference and whole groups of people have been shown to not be native to where [00:11:00] they have claimed in their own written literature that they've always left that spin. I think a delightful surprise, very interesting surprise. Certainly high and duel found that everyone going to the Polynesian islands was going in 150 degrees opposite direction from what he had anticipated. Speaker 1: So we do find that as time passes, the studies can be refined, but I would say it's rather a question [00:11:30] of refinement than are there just totally wrong assumptions. Can I call it it all about what proportion of work is done on newly found settlements, settlements that might've been found in the past couple years versus settlements that we've known about for some time? I think the introduction of Google and satellite imagery has made a vast difference to what we can do most recently in [00:12:00] a northeast Iraq in what is now the Kurdish settlement. Recent work by Harvard has discovered an enormous number of settlements and all of the previous research before they went into the field was done using satellite imagery and so that was unavailable until quite recently. It saves money. There's no doubt with satellite imagery. We can sit in an office in Berkeley and look at the satellite [00:12:30] sites surrounding a large site. We can see a pattern perhaps of movement along a track through mountain ranges from settlement, so that's enormously expanded. What we can do in the office before we go into the field. [inaudible] Speaker 6: spectrum is a public affairs show on KALX Berkeley. Our guest is archeologist in Diana. [00:13:00] She is a visiting scholar of the Near Eastern studies department. Speaker 1: Can you start to talk about some of your own work in Iraq? I first went to Iraq as a graduate student at UC Berkeley. I was invited by Professor David Stronach who is the director of the excavation for our first season. There were six graduate students and it was a relatively short season [00:13:30] to explore the site and decide how an excavation would be approached and what would it be involved. I was very determined to go. I had spent most my undergraduate time studying art history and museum studies, but as time went on I became more and more interested in archeology and really love living in the Middle East. I had lived in the Middle East a long time before. I have [00:14:00] a degree in education. And so I had worked as a governess in the Middle East in Yemen, and I was very keen to go back and the first day I climbed up onto Keon check, which is the tail of Nineveh. Speaker 1: I just knew that I'd found what I wanted to do and it was so wonderful and I liked it very much indeed. And I've been there ever since. Okay. And is there any prospect of going back to Nineveh [00:14:30] presently knew? No. Saul is extremely dangerous at the moment, and so unfortunately that's not a possibility. Certainly we've been invited back and I know that I could go back if it ever becomes a safe to do. So what's happened to the tail is hard to know. The other sad aspect is that there has been an enormous growth in the size of Mosul, the city adjacent on the other side of the [00:15:00] Tigris river. Your time in Nineveh. What was the big accomplishment that you thought you folks had achieved? I think in the three years that we were there assessing everything. Today as we write up the reports, it's incredibly encouraging. Speaker 1: We chose about six different areas of exploration that would represent aspects of the long duration at the site. It's an extremely [00:15:30] old city. And so one exploration on the side of the tail was a step trench down and this has been aided by erosion from water so that we were able to get down to 2,500 BC, um, without digging down through it. We could go in from the side. So there was a component that was of a very early period. The Small [00:16:00] Eminence just south of the sail or the citadel of the city where the royal family lived was also explored. And we expose there a really beautiful elite house, you could say, an administrative house and the surrounding area of that. We also worked up on the northern Northwestern corner by the sin gate. And inside of that we found a very fine [00:16:30] industrial area so that we were able to demonstrate that there was pottery making on the site as well as some metalla Jay, I think. Speaker 1: And then on the wall on the southeast corner, David [inaudible] excavated the [inaudible] gate to Housey. Uh, no gate had really been fully excavated by a Western team, although some of the other gates had been partially [00:17:00] excavated by the Iraqis. And that was where we found the evidence of the destruction of the city, which was extremely exciting. After Iraq, you moved back to Yemen? Yes, I had always studied Yemen. I have roped both my masters degree and my phd on the material culture of Saudi Arabia. And so I had written on the stone [00:17:30] statuary of the mortuary temples and it's very fascinating. A great deal of the material had been moved to Europe, so that had one tried to estimate how much there was there. It would have been easy to say very little, very little at all, but long detailed research program made it very clear that it wasn't, that there was very little, it was that it had been so widely dispersed. Speaker 1: [00:18:00] And so I eventually visited maybe as many as 25 museums and brought it all together again, which proved to be very interesting. And I was able to do a lot of dating from that. And then my doctoral dissertation, which I wrote here at Berkeley, was on the gemstones and stamps, seals of South Arabia and that I used to demonstrate the connection between these South Arabians, small kingdoms [00:18:30] and the greater empire, tight polity of a neo, Syria or other later Syrian period. And so what one found was that this trading network connected all the way across the Arabian peninsula up to Gaza and then on into the Assyrian Kingdom. And so there are in the British Museum at Gates that were sent by the king of Saba from Maarib to Gaza [00:19:00] and then on to Nimruz. And these were buried underneath the temple and they're signed with the king's name. So we knew that they had to been used in that way. So I had an enormous interest in Yemen and stayed there and taught in the university, essentially in Aiden, continue to work there until rather recently. Speaker 6: This is spectrum [00:19:30] k, Aleks, Berkeley archaeologist and visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. Diana, pick work. Sorry. Speaker 1: What advice would you give to people who are considering getting into archeology? I think an undergraduate degree in a hard science is really important in the long term and I think that was advice that perhaps [00:20:00] was less prophet earlier. I think there was more stress on art history and I think students today a well-served with incredibly sturdy technological skills, computer skills and science backgrounds and I think to avoid that is to invite a short career. I really do. I think the training of a hard science is also useful. I [00:20:30] think it makes for a strict discipline, critical thinking, theoretical background in thinking on analytical studies is really useful, very, very useful. And then field training this, no doubt. I think that field training prior to going into the field for the first time at least exposes warm to some of the surprises that will arrive. Speaker 1: I think for most archeologists [00:21:00] you have to think on your feet and so unless one is well-prepared and has made detailed studies of what one's going to do, then it's vital to err on the side of caution when you put the first spade in because otherwise it's destroyed and gone. And so those types of preparations, which are easily available. Field schools are available everywhere. So that prepares, I think an archaeologist for the field work aspect. [00:21:30] But Sonia, small part, the fieldwork is such a small part of the overall, it's like a blip in the middle in a way. There's a long lead in of preparation and research and location choice. Then that's the excavation and then an incredibly lengthy period of um, producing the data and getting it out. And the computers help that most excavations today. It's all of the data is going straight [00:22:00] into the computer and can be sent back to the university, which was an advantage, an enormous advantage. Speaker 1: How do you see archeology going forward? What is its future? What I find is that as one area closes, another will open rather recently, the northern Iraq area of what is now Kurdistan has opened up. It became rather safe up there for awhile. [00:22:30] So that an ability to move say from Syria into that area was seized by many archeologists. So that many teams have been in the field, I would say for the last five years in northeast Iraq. And Kurdistan, I googled to check for you where everyone is digging at the moment. And so there's sort of a narrow tight band of Middle Eastern scholars in Israel and down into [00:23:00] Jordan and that's a huge concentration. And then upon the northeastern potting Kurdistan and we've seen an opening up in Saudi Arabia, so wonderful materialists coming out of the tame excavation, which is led by the Germans, uh, by iHuman. That's been very, very exciting. And they are expanding. There's also been a lot of expansion by more than just [00:23:30] the British into the Emirates and say we have a lot of excavations at the moment and Kuwait behind [inaudible] Ku, Wayne and down into Dubai. So when one door closes, another opens and there are people in Oman as well. No one stays home. It's not appealing. We like to be in the field. Speaker 1: Is there anything we haven't asked you about that you want to mention? [00:24:00] Maybe China. There's an enormous ongoing excavations in China at the moment. It's definitely overturning and changing their own knowledge of their own history. And I find that fascinating. And as a northern southern divide about where the origins of China's more recent civilizations came from and so it's been fascinating for me to watch that. As I said [00:24:30] earlier, I think that we're very flexible people and I suppose that would be where I would move if I could never go back to the Middle East. Diana, pick worth. Thanks very much for being on spectrum. Thank you. I've enjoyed myself. Thank you. Speaker 6: Spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link for you. The link is tiny [00:25:00] URL [inaudible] dot com slash KALX at spectrum. Speaker 3: Now a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky joins me when the calendar on May 7th from seven to 9:00 PM UC Berkeley, professor of psychology and neuroscience, Matt Walker. We'll be it. Ask a scientist at the summer street food park, four to eight 11th street in San Francisco. [00:25:30] They'll discuss research showing that sleep is a highly active process that is essential for many cognitive functions including learning, memory, creativity and brain plasticity. The event is free, although you can purchase stuff to eat from the food trucks there. Visit, ask a scientist S f.com for more info. Why are many body problems in physics so difficult? A quantum information [00:26:00] perspective determining the physical behavior of systems composed of several particles is in general very hard. The reason is that the number of possible combinations of states increases exponentially with the number of particles for quantum systems. The situation is even worse in his talk. Ignacio Ciroc will explain this phenomenon in detail and we'll review several approaches to assessing this difficulty and to overcoming it under certain conditions. [00:26:30] NASCIO Ciroc has been director of the theory division at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum optics since December, 2001 this lecture is Monday May 12th at 4:00 PM in [inaudible] Hall, [inaudible] Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus. This event is free. Speaker 7: Counter culture labs is hosting a few free talks at the pseudo room. Hackerspace two one 41 Broadway in Oakland over the next few weeks. [00:27:00] On May 9th at 7:00 PM we'll hear from Ben Novak, who is it? Paleo geneticist working on using clone cells from cryo-preserved museum specimens and genome editing in an attempt to revive the passenger pigeon from extinction. Then on May 15th at 7:00 PM they will host Anthony Evans who was on the glowing plant project. This project raised a half million dollars on Kickstarter to add firefly DNA to [00:27:30] plants to make them glow. He'll discuss the process, how they've handled the public perception of GMOs and why open source science matters. For more information on these in future events, visit counterculture labs.org Speaker 3: now, Rick Karnofsky with an interesting news story, Speaker 7: nature news reports on an article by Gary Frost and Jimmy Bell from the Imperial College, London and [00:28:00] others that dietary fiber may act on the brain to curb appetite in a paper published in nature communications. On April 29th the team discussed how fiber that is fermented in the colon creates colonic acetate and using radioactively tagged Acetate and pet scans. They showed that colonic acetate crosses the blood brain barrier and it's taken up by the brain of rats. They also showed that acetate [00:28:30] administration is associated with activation of Acetol Coa, a carboxylase, and changes in the expression profiles of regulatory neuropeptides that favor appetite suppression. These observations suggest that Acetate as a direct role in the central appetite regulation. Speaker 4: Mm, thanks to Rick Karnofsky [00:29:00] for help with the interview calendar and with the news music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email, Speaker 8: email addresses spectrum, dedicate a lx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at the same [00:29:30] time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michel Maharbiz & Daniel Cohen. Michel is an Assoc Prof with EECS-UCB. His research is building micro/nano interfaces to cells and organisms: bio-derived fabrication methods. Daniel received his PhD from UCB and UCSF Dept of Bioengineering in 2013.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. 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: Hi and good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today we are presenting part one of two interviews with Michelle and Harb is and Daniel Cohen. Michelle is an associate professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley and the Co director of the Berkeley Sensor and actuator center. [00:01:00] His current research interests include building micro and nano interfaces to cells and organisms and exploring bio derived fabrication methods. Daniel Cohen received his phd from the Joint UC Berkeley and UCLA Department of bioengineering program in 2013 his phd advisor was Michelle Ma harvests. Together they have been working on the fronts project and NSF f Free Grant [00:01:30] F re stands for emerging frontiers and research and innovation fronts is the acronym for flexible, resorbable, organic and nanomaterial therapeutic systems. In part one of our interview, we discuss how they came to the challenge of measuring and understanding the so-called wound field. Here's part one, Michelle [inaudible] and Daniel cone. Welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Thanks. How was it that [00:02:00] electrical fields generated by wounds was discovered? So I think Daniel should take this one cause he's the, he's the group historian on this topic. In fact, he gave us a little dissertation during this thesis talk Speaker 4: in the day when electricity was sort of still a parlor trick. There was a lot of work being done to try to figure out where it was coming from. There was a lot of mysticism associated with it. And this is in the mid to late 17 hundreds and so Galvani is a name most people have heard. Galvanism was a term [00:02:30] coined for his work and what he found was all the work with frog legs. So he used to dissect frogs and could show that if you had dissimilar metals in contact with different parts of the muscle and the nerves, the legs with twitch and amputate the frog leg. So his conclusion was that electricity had something to do with life and their living things were made alive by having this spark of life. And this was a really super controversial idea because for a long time there had been a philosophical debate raging about vitalism versus mechanism, which is the idea that all living things are special because of some intrinsic vital force versus the idea [00:03:00] that physical principles explain life. Speaker 4: So the vitalist really liked this idea that electricity is the spark that makes living things special. There's a lot of dispute about this, but eventually Volta who is right after him and who the vault is named after showed that it was really just the movement of ions and things in salt solutions, but it was a little too late and the mystical aspect of this had come along. So the problem then was that this idea prevailed into the early 18 hundreds and so Galvani his nephew Aldini started doing [00:03:30] these experiments in England where he was given permission to take executed criminals and basically play with the corpses and he was able to create a corpus that would go like this. And raise an arm or wink an eye at an audience. And this was the idea of the reanimated corpse. So people were having a lot of fun with this, but it wasn't clear that it wasn't mystical. Speaker 4: And so this is the long answer to the question, but that's the backdrop where the science starts to come in. So the first thing is Frankenstein gets published out of this, and everybody's getting into the whole vitalism idea [00:04:00] at this point. And Frankenstein was written as a part of a horror story competition. It was almost a joke. But the funny thing is Frankenstein. Well, how would you say Frankenstein? The monster came to life to lightning? Like that's a line. It wasn't a Hollywood fabrication and everyone assumed that. But Mary Shelley never wrote anything about lightning or electricity. She in fact, wrote the technology was too dangerous to describe in texts for the average person. But in her preface, she explains that the whole origin of this idea, and this is where the answer to the question comes from, was that [00:04:30] she had writer's block when she was writing the story and she overheard her husband Percy Shelley and Lord Byron having an argument about work done by Erasmus, Darwin and Erasmus. Speaker 4: Darwin was a big natural philosopher or scientist at the time who was a big vitalist. So he's really into the idea of the spark of life and also this idea of spontaneous generation that where does life come from when you have a compost heap, fruit flies appear. There was an idea that be composing garbage produced life, and that was part of spontaneous generation. And he did a lot of experiments where he'd seal things like wet flour into a bell jar [00:05:00] and to show that organisms came out in a sealed environment and they just didn't know about microorganisms and things like that. So he did a famous experiment where he dehydrated some species called Vermicelli all. Sorry, I made the mistake. I'm about to talk about 40 cello, which is a little organism. And when he added water again, they came back to life. Now, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley didn't understand any of this, and the conversation that Mary Shelley eavesdropped on was one where they said that Erasmus Darwin had taken Vermicelli Pasta, put it inside the Bell Jar, sealed [00:05:30] it, and through some magic of his own allowed it to twitch. Speaker 4: So he had essentially given life to pasta. Now Mary Shelley wrote that she didn't believe any of this was actually really what happened. But this idea of animating the inanimate gave her the idea for Frankenstein. Then she writes the one line that links it to electricity, which is, and if any technology would have done this, it would probably have been galvanism, which is this idea of applying electricity to something. And so that's where this whole idea of life and electricity came from. By that point, the scientists had finally [00:06:00] caught up with all the mysticism and started to do more serious experiments, and that's when Carlo met Tucci in 18 and 30 something found that when you cut yourself, there's some sort of electrical signal at the injury source. And that was his main contribution that was called the wound current or the wound field and then after him was the guy who really formalized the whole thing, which was do Bob Raymond, who was a German electrophysiologist who found that if you have any sort of injury, he could actually measure a current flowing at the side of the injury. Speaker 4: He could show that that changed over time. He cut his own thumb and [00:06:30] measured the current flow and they didn't have an explanation for why it happened, but they knew that it had something to do with the electric chemistry there. This was the birth of electrophysiology and then he went off and did all these things with action potentials in neurons, which is why almost no one's heard about this injury side and the fact that electricity's everywhere in the body normally and it's not mystical, it's electrochemical. We're much more familiar with the neural stuff and this other stuff on the wound side sort of languished until maybe the late 19 hundreds because it was rare. It was weird. It wasn't clearly important [00:07:00] and a lot of the players involved were so caught up in all sorts of other things that we tend to forget about this. So that was the whole long winded history of where the wound field came from. But it's a good story. It is a good story. Yeah. Speaker 5: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum KALX Berkeley. Our guests are Michael ml harvest and and Daniel Colon. They're both bioengineers in the next segment they talk about the genesis of the fronts [00:07:30] project. Speaker 6: Michelle, when you approached the NSF yeah. For a grant for this idea, how long had you been thinking about it? The smart bandage idea, how far down stream were you with the idea? We had been toying with the idea for quite some time and there's a bit of background to this as well. So my group amongst other things builds flexible electrode systems. [00:08:00] You can call them for neuroscience in your engineering, and most of those systems are intended to record electrical signals across many different points across many electrodes usually honor in the brain. And so we had this basic technology lying around. This is sort of a competence that the group has had for quite awhile. The other thing that was beginning to intrigue us, and I have to credit Daniel for sort of beginning of the discussions and kind of pushing this along in the early years, so Daniel and I have like a tube man club of sitting around thinking of crazy things and [00:08:30] one of the things that Daniel had been interested in was the idea of resorbing or having so some of the materials disappear as they do their job in the body and this is a notion that's become very popular recently actually over the last couple of years in into community in the engineering community in general. Speaker 6: Which brings us to another question I had, which is the difference between resorptionSpeaker 4: and absorption. Absorption might imply that you're taking the components up and they're becoming part of the body. Resorption is really just a very strange [00:09:00] semantic term. That means something like the body's breaking it down or it's breaking down in some form and it's not really the same as that material winding up elsewhere in your tissues. It may just get excreted or it may go somewhere else. So really we use it when we don't really know what's going on. Yeah, we had been looking at this general area and then I think the last piece of the puzzle, I think in our minds looking at the extant literature, the idea that we could take meaningful electrical data from a wound began to really interest us. And so the [00:09:30] two parts of this really are one, can you use portable, resorbable systems? Something like a bandage, you know, something that that isn't going to require you to walk around with a handcart. Speaker 4: Can you use systems like this to measure electrical signals that are relevant to wounds? And then the other question is if you can do that, and if you have, you know, you learn about this, and by the way, we're not the first people to try to do this. There are a number of people that have been measuring electrical signals in the wounds as Daniel set for quite some time. If you can do this, is there a value to [00:10:00] trying to control or modulate that electrical information or those fields or those currents in the wound? Is there a therapeutic value? Perhaps there are scientific value. Is there something you can learn about the way the body works or tissue works? Both of those are open questions and you know we can delve into each of those, but those are really kind of how we think about them separately a little bit. Speaker 4: The flip side is that when we do a lot of this kind of design for medical things, you will want to know what's already happening and how the body handles its own injuries. And this field doesn't just arise passively. So they had no way of knowing [00:10:30] this when it was first discovered. But when you get this electric field, there is a navigational effect for incoming cells to the injury. So it actually helps guide things in like a lighthouse to the wound site. And so a lot of my phd work was showing how you can steer ourselves with a controlled electric field so you can really hurt them like sheep based on how the electric field goes. And that means that that was a source of this bio inspired part of it, which is we're not adding something that's not already there. We're taking something that's already there and we're modulating it to maybe improve. Speaker 4: [00:11:00] So evolutionary tools or things that the body has, it just happened to work well enough for us to survive as a species. It doesn't mean it's optimized and this field tends to go away very quickly. Nobody really knows whether extending the duration of the field would improve the healing or if we could shape it. Maybe you can control how scar tissue forms and things like that. So there's this idea of looking at how the body already heals itself and then figuring out where you might start to control it. And electricity is one of the areas that's really been under utilized in medical technology for the sort of thing. Yeah. I think for those of your audience [00:11:30] that are sort of tech junkies, if you will, the resurgence of this type of thing. Occurrent Lee I think arises because we've gotten very good at building very low power, very small electronics, and there's been a whole slew of new polymers and sort of new flexible substrates that are also conductive or can hold conductors. And so those two things together rekindled interest and trying to build gadgets that sit Speaker 6: on the skin. Or in the NSF case, we're not only doing the skin, but we're trying to develop a tool longterm [00:12:00] for surgeons to do something inside the body. So it'd be nice to be able to leave something that will help you heal, but then it'll be resorts so you don't have to reopen. Right. Speaker 5: Spectrum is a public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley. Our guests are Michelle. My heart is in Daniel Cohen of UC Berkeley. They want to build a smart bandage for wounds. In the next segment, they talk about the focus of their research. Speaker 6: [00:12:30] So in your approach to the NSF, was there some sort of focus, there's a technological focus and an application focus? The technological focus for the NSF was to point out that there was a lot of fundamental engineering science that had to be done to produce the type of systems that could do this. You know, we're looking at resorbable batteries are real parts wise, how you would build these systems, what polymers you'd use, what the rates of resorption. There's a lot of just fundamental stuff going on. If you posit that there'll be value to [00:13:00] these kinds of things. That's one focus as the other focus. I would say application wise we're looking at two things. The most ambitious is that you could develop systems that a surgeon could use for internal wounds. So the dream is a surgeon is, for example, let's say you have to resect the part of your intestine. Speaker 6: You then have to fuse the two parts that are left behind. There are methods for doing this and there's still research going on into what we know. The clinical methodology for this. It would be very useful if you could leave behind something that [00:13:30] could tell you, if nothing else, the state of how that is healing but would then go away because you're certainly not going to go back and open somebody's abdomen to take out a little piece of sensor that was doing something to intestine. Right? That'd be a not a good idea, and so that idea, that dream that you could leave behind, very small, very thin things that could take data if nothing else. Take data is really what was one of the applications. The other one is surface wounds. There are lots of surface wounds caused by illness. For example, advanced diabetes produces a [00:14:00] lot of problems in the extremities and wounds that are chronic that don't heal very well. Speaker 6: There's just a lot of ongoing interest in surface wounds and not just the technologies for understanding how they may be healing, but in things that maybe could help heal those surface wounds. Those are our full side view welders. I think of them as there are specific things we want to show we can do with our partners at UCLA, but there's also an entire wealth of engineering science that has to be done to build the fundamental. So the NSF was okay with that broad [00:14:30] a portfolio of research. Well, so that's sort of what their mandate is to go broad like that. Cause that seems like you're, you're doing stuff. Speaker 4: I think their main concern here is that they specifically discourage healthcare applications as NIH can fund those. But the difference is that what engineers have found for a long time now is that we don't actually know how to engineer biology. So any technology brings quantification Speaker 6: and an engineering mindset to solving this, like tissue engineering, growing organs. We don't have a lot of engineering for that. But if we start [00:15:00] to monitor everything we can, that chemical signals mechanical, electrical, we build up a set of stimulus and response type rules. We understand how to perturb these systems. So in the same way that you might build a bridge according to a manual of how you build a bridge and how you look at the loads in it and the ways of building a bridge, we might someday build organs. So if that's the pitch, that's much more fundamental science and that's really where it has a medical application. But we can't do it without science and engineering principles that just don't exist right now. There's two points I should mention. First of all, the key is this work [00:15:30] is really looking at the fundamentals of the engineering and the science. Speaker 6: We certainly have our foot into clinical side because I think it informs some of this, right? So that what you're doing is relevant so that someday you could go down that path so you're not in isolation because if you're not assuming that you're headed in this great direction. Exactly. And then you find clinical guys saying less clinically. Right. So the other were very good. And the second thing is that, um, we're funded under a slightly broader grant mechanism than usual. So we have a, what's called an NSF. Every, I think this is emerging frontiers and research and innovation I think [00:16:00] is what it is and these are sort of headline or marquee type thing. So we're very lucky that we were awarded one of these and so I think the NSF has really looking for this broad, far reaching hard-hitting effort. I think there's a good point to mention that this project is really a big collaboration between a number of us and I'd like to mention who they are because some of the material work has done by very talented people in the department on a rds and the Vec Subramanian are two professors in the ECS department and they're very well known for flexible printed systems and [00:16:30] the materials that go into them and we work also with Shovel Roy at UCF and Mike Harrison and Mike is a sort of brilliant pediatric surgeon and shovel. Speaker 6: Roy's well known for the technologies he builds at the interface with clinical need. It's really the fact that all these people come together that we're building all of these tools. Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 3: spectrum is a science and technology show on KALX Berkeley. We are talking with Michelle Mull Harvest Daniel Cohen. [00:17:00] They are researching the electrical field that is generated by wounds in mammals. Their hope is to collect meaningful data from sensors embedded in bandages placed on wounds. Speaker 6: If you approached interpreting and analyzing the electrical field data that you're getting out of the wounds in an animal right now we're being very cautious. We started a first few experiments with rodents over the last six months. What we've [00:17:30] built is a, is a series of systems. You can think of them as insulators with lots of little electrodes all over them. An array of of little electrodes. They're on order of a centimeter or less in terms of you can think of a postage stamp, maybe a bit smaller. We have different varieties of them. Some are stiff, some are very flexible. You can think of it as contact lenses or transparency paper, that kind of thing. And these arrays are connected to electrical sensing equipment. There's a miniaturize a little board that runs everything [00:18:00] and sends data to a block and all this data is collected and what we're currently looking at as a variety of different signals on both open wounds. Speaker 6: So if I, for example, cut the skin and on pressure wounds, pressure wounds or something that people that don't see clinics very often or hospitals aren't familiar with but in fact are huge, huge problem in hospitals right now. Then we lay these arrays over the tissue and we measure a variety of different things. One thing we measure what's known as electrical impedance between different [00:18:30] points on the array and you can think of electrical impedance as how much resistance to an electric current that tissue might produce. It's not a steady current, it's a time bearing current, so we sort of wiggle the current on and off, on and off negative, positive, negative, a sinusoidal and how quickly that current responds and how much of it there is. That allows us to calculate the impedance and there's a lot you can tell from that. You can tell whether things are very wet and conductive. Speaker 6: You can tell whether the tissue is tight knit, so that doesn't let things through a oily. You can tell whether there [00:19:00] might be changes in from one tissue to another. You can infer things about what tissues are might be underneath. The other thing we measure is actually electric potential when the wounds are immediately after they're made. We try to look at what kind of potentials arise and how they're changing. So right now that's in terms of measurement. That's really what we're looking at it. And another thing I should point out as we do these measurements as a function of frequency across a wide range of frequency spectrum up to hundreds of kilohertz. And that's sort of the rapidity with which we wiggle the signal because different components in the tissue [00:19:30] will respond differently at different legal frequencies. Once we have that complete plot, we can look at the difference between them and by to see whether we can build models that tell us, oh well we've, you see this type of distribution. Speaker 6: There's a in tech skin for example. So the dream, in this case, you put your bandaid on and your doctor checks his eye, his or her iPhone every 12 to 24 hours and just gets a different little map of how it's working without ever having to remove the dressing. How are you doing in understanding what those signals mean in terms of healing? [00:20:00] But we just had a meeting, they're doing great. They've basically collected a great deal of data on the latest set of wounds they did and now they're in fact proposing models and seeing how the data fits. They're fitting their models to the data to try to use those fits as ways of discriminating different types of tissues. So we're in the middle of it right now. I couldn't tell you much. We're still putting all that story together for publication. So, and are you able to leverage the work that other people are doing? Oh, absolutely. Sure. Well, I mean you always do that. Like I said, nothing is in a vacuum, right? So absolutely. We follow [00:20:30] the literature and, and we build off of what other people have found and try to add our own contributions. That's, that's how it works. Maybe these ideas came from discoveries from the 18 hundreds and then later on in the 1980s onwards, a bunch of really good developmental biologists have really pioneered a lot of this and gone down as, as showing that Speaker 4: even in an embryo you can detect changes in electrical potential at the surface of the embryo where limbs will form and things like that. So there's a huge amount of stuff out there that gave us the idea for the original thing, but we're barely scratching the surface. [00:21:00] We were technologist, right? We're engineers. So part of one thing and figure it out. Yeah. So the idea of trying to analyze the wound field data, do you have to solve that problem first before you can take on anything else? Like trying to instigate the healing? Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. You would never put this in the body without knowing, knowing that a real lot works. But on the surface it's a different healing mechanism than say a fracture, but it's still the idea that we don't necessarily know what the cause and [00:21:30] effect is yet. So we have to show that getting a field out relates to some state that we can say the wound is in and that we can intelligently put a field back in that actually helps. So we need some metric of success. And without that metric, that number that says the wound is doing better or worse, we're not confident saying that our stimulation is helping. So that's why getting this data first is really important. Speaker 6: The parameter space is fairly large, right? To number of things you could possibly change. Some of the effects are very subtle. And so just willy nilly going [00:22:00] in there and saying, oh, I applied some fields, you know, likely not gonna be very useful. And then there's another subtlety, which is that there are probably clinical contexts in which this is of limited utility, even if it works. And so that is, uh, something we spend a lot of time thinking about. So let me give you an example. Let's say I told you I can make that little cut on your knees heal 5% faster with a $15 bandaid. I'm pretty sure you're not going to buy a $15 [inaudible] except maybe once for the novelty of it. You know it tickles. But [00:22:30] there are contexts where, and Daniel alluded to this earlier, for example, scar formation is a big deal, right? Speaker 6: How a scar forms and the trajectory of the wound healing for certain load-bearing wounds of really big deal, right? Think of your abdomen if you had to go in there and hurt those muscles or hernia. And there are many things like this and so if, and I want to be very careful to say if if it was founded, electrical interventions can affect that type of healing in a way that produces a useful outcome, right? Much better scar developments so that your load bearing properties are [00:23:00] maybe not as good as the original, but a lot better than just letting it sit around with a dressing. That'll be a very big deal. But that's a very big space, right? Speaker 4: And that's why we split it into this in Vivo work on monitoring the surface and wound properties and in vitro work where we have cells and tissues and culture where we can directly stimulate them in culture in a very controlled environment and watch exactly how they respond to different shapes of fields and types of fields and come up with a way of describing how they behave. That doesn't require the Nvivo work. So we have two parallel tracks [00:23:30] right now and hopefully we can put them together. Speaker 5: [inaudible] be sure to catch part two of this interview with Michelle Maha Urbis and Daniel Cohen on the next spectrum in two weeks. In that interview, Michelle and Daniel talk about the limitations of sensors on or in humans, the ethics of sensing and inputs into living systems and moving research discoveries Speaker 8: into startup companies. Spectrum shows are [00:24:00] archived on iTunes university. We've created a simple link to get you there. The link is tiny url.com/k a l ex spectrum. We hope you can get out to a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Renee Rao and Rick Karnofsky present the calendar Speaker 9: nerd night east space first show of 2014 will be happening January 27th the show features three great Speakers. [00:24:30] First nerd night, San Francisco alum, Bradley boy tech. We'll guide you through how scientists organize and present some of the vast amounts of data available today. Then the Chabot space centers, Benjamin [inaudible] will discuss the most likely places to find life off of planet earth. Of course, finally KQ Eighties Lisa Allah Ferris will tell you what you need to know about Obamacare. The show will be held this Monday, the 27th at the new Parkway Theater in Oakland. Doors open at seven to get tickets for the HR event. [00:25:00] Go to East Bay nerd night, spelled n I t e.com this February 2nd the California Academy of Sciences will host a lecture on the Ice Age Fonda of the bay area. There's a good chance that wherever you happen to be sitting or standing is a spot where Colombian mamis giants laws direwolves, saber tooth cats and other megafauna. Also Rome during the ice age. Learn about the real giants of San Francisco and how you can embark upon [00:25:30] a local journey to see evidence of these extraordinary extinct animals. The lecture will be held@theacademyonfebruarysecondfromninefortyfiveamtotwelvepmticketsareavailableonlineatcalacademy.orgSpeaker 8: February's East Bay Science cafe. We'll be on Wednesday the fifth from seven to 9:00 PM at Cafe Val Paris, CEO 1403 Solano in Albany, Dr. Harry Green. We'll discuss his book [00:26:00] tracks and shadows field biology as art green, a herpetologist at Cornell blends personal memoir with natural history. He'll discuss the nuts and bolts of field research and teaching how he sees science aiding and in conservation and appreciation of nature, as well as give many tales about his favorite subject. Snakes. For more information about this free event, visit the cafes page on the website of the Berkeley Natural History Museum at BN [00:26:30] h m. Dot berkeley.edu/about/science cafe dot PHP. A feature of spectrum is to present news stories we find interesting. Rick Karnofsky and Rene Rao present our news in a letter published in January 15th nature. James us or would a locomotor biomechanist at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London and colleagues explain why Birds Migrate In v-shaped [00:27:00] formations. The team fitted several northern bald ibis is with gps trackers and accelerometers to measure wing movement. They found that the birds positioned themselves in optimum positions that agree with their aerodynamic models. Further the birds flap in phase with one another when in such permissions instead of the antifreeze flapping, they performed when following immediately behind each other. This in phase flapping maximizes lifted the plot [00:27:30] and is surprising as a team noted. The aerodynamic accomplishments were previously not thought possible for birds because of the complex flight dynamics and sensory feedback that would be required to perform such a feat. Speaker 9: The tenuous place in the human family tree of artifice guest room, it is a 4.4 million year old African primate has recently been solidified. Fossil remains Ardipithecus Ramidus or rd as a species is known first discovered by UC Berkeley [00:28:00] Professor Tim White and his team in Ethiopia in the 1990s and have proven a consternation to classify ever sense rd displays an unusual mixture of human and ape traits. Fossils reveals small human like teeth and upper pelvis adapted to bipedal motion, but a disproportionately small brain and grasping large toes, best suited for climbing trees. Scientists split over whether rd was our distant relative, essentially an ape that retained a few human features from along a common ancestor [00:28:30] or our close cousin, possibly even an ancestor. Recently Tim white among many others coauthored a paper with Arizona State Universities, William Kimball in which they successfully linked the rd to Australopithecus and thereby to humans. The team examine the basis of rd skulls and found surprising similarities to human and Australopithecines skulls indicating that those had already been may have been small. It was far more similar to a hominids than an apes Speaker 7: in in Speaker 9: [00:29:00] the music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l ex hate yahoo.com. [00:29:30] Join us in two weeks at this same Speaker 10: hi [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Richard Norgaard Prof Emeritus of Energy and Resources at UC Berkeley. Among the founders of ecological economics, his research addresses how environmental problems challenge scientific understanding and the policy process. Part two of two.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. 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: Hi there and good afternoon. My name is Renee Rao and I'll be hosting today's show today. We present part two of our interview with Richard Norgaard, professor emeritus of the energy resources group at UC Berkeley. He's among the founders of the field of ecological economics. His recent research addresses how environmental problems challenged scientific understanding [00:01:00] and the policy process, how ecologists and economists understand systems differently and how globalization affects environmental governance. In part two of the interview Norgaard talks about interdisciplinary problem solving. He also shares his thoughts on sustainability co-evolution and confronting a change in climate. Speaker 4: You've been very interested in them multi-disciplinary collaborative research model. Yeah, this is true. I've had very interesting experiences working in groups with people who think very differently [00:01:30] and I don't know when it starts. I guess probably the first project was a Ford Foundation funded project where eight or nine of us from different disciplines were set up as an Alaska pipeline team in 1970 the summer of 70 and we spent the summer talking to pipeline engineers to state officials, federal officials, scientists in the area, wildlife management people, native Americans, the Eskimo [00:02:00] about what's going on and as a team we tried to assess what's really the potential of [inaudible] Bay oil field for the state of Alaska and what are the myths, how do we break those myths and try to come up with a better understanding. Shortly after I came to Berkeley, Robert Vandenbosch from biological control entomology came into my office and said, we need an economist to work on pesticide use, and I didn't know anything about pesticide use other than what I'd read in silence swing by Rachel Carson and I [00:02:30] had an incredible experience working with Vandenbosch, Carl Huffaker, many, many anthropologists, but rather quickly. Speaker 4: Also just because there weren't other economists doing it. Found myself on a presidential advisory committee working with the council on environmental quality on pesticide policy, a working on on 19 University National Science Foundation Integrated Pest Management Project. And you get out in the field, you talked to farmers, [00:03:00] end up talking to the pesticide industry people and you learn a lot and you try to assemble it and try to change how things are working. So early in my career I got very involved with these interdisciplinary activities, but the, the strongest experience was just joining the knowledges, being on national academy committees with the former president of Stanford University whose names Donald Kennedy, a tremendous scientist that was able to work across [00:03:30] scientific fields with other people. But I was seen scientists involved in collective understanding or using their judgment together to try to say, this is what science can say and this is what society probably should do given what we know. Speaker 4: But it was a judgment process. It wasn't that there was a great big computer model that put all of our understanding together. And have you seen that process improving over time? I think there's more people participating in processes [00:04:00] like that. And the intergovernmental panel on climate change is certainly a massive experiment along those lines. And the Millennium Ecosystem assessment was one of these, we're doing it more. What we're not doing is actually teaching undergraduate students and graduate students that this is how science works when it really comes to understanding complex systems. It's a matter of getting in a room together and talking a lot and bringing your knowledges together. [00:04:30] And then that raises new questions that we can go back and study and do deeper research in small teams of maybe interdisciplinary or maybe it's strictly disciplinary, but it's that does my knowledge fit together with this other person's knowledge? Speaker 4: And if not, what does it mean? And if it does, great, you know, science does not come together. And if it did, who would know, who would be smart enough to know and how would we know that person knew? And so there's a great problem, you got to do it together [00:05:00] and we're not teaching that yet. I think the energy and resources group does, but it's not quite as explicit or as open as it should be. And is that what makes that program so distinctive? Well, I tried to leave that mark on it and had the advantage of serving on the admissions committee. And certainly one of my criteria was to bring people to the program who had enough experience to have a sense of identity [00:05:30] and a sense of voice, experiential knowledge that they could bring to the group, but also to not just take the most brilliant students we could find on the list that best matched the interest of the professors, but to actually try to select 15 to 22 students who could learn together, who had different understanding, who had different disciplinary backgrounds or experiential knowledge. Speaker 4: And so I literally tried to set it up as a shared learning to the extent I could. There's many people involved [00:06:00] in the, in the decision process, and of course the applicants this themselves have to say, yes, your best intentions are never carried out. But that was certainly an influence I tried to have. And to some extent did. And the book that you're working on now or I've just completed? Well, I just try authored a book, David Schlossberg and John Drysek. I have to say that they basically did most of the writing. We had try edited a handbook in Oxford Handbook on climate change in society [00:06:30] and so we decided we ought to build a write up a shorter book, a 200 page book that would be for lay people are educated obviously, but uh, a broader audience, a much broader audience. And the title of that is climate challenge society, right. And I [inaudible] wordpress. Yes. So I, I can say I contributed to the title climate challenge society and climate challenge in both ways that were having difficulty coming to grips with the concept of climate change. But we're also challenged [00:07:00] by the consequences of climate change and that books currently out. That book came out a couple of months ago. I have no idea how it's selling yet. I'm, I'm hopeful. Speaker 2: [inaudible] spectrums. Brad Swift is interviewing Richard Norgaard and ecological economists. Next segment. He talks about the book that he's currently writing. Speaker 4: [00:07:30] The book I'm writing now as the unusual title economism and the economy scene. And so elaborate on the first term economism. Uh, there's several ways to get into this, but you probably understand the difference between environmentalism and environmental science and that environmentalism is the movement. It draws on environmental science, but not as rigorously as it probably should. It doesn't mind using old [00:08:00] environmental science if that suits its purposes better. But environmentalism also feeds back on environmental science that environmental scientists needed speak to environmental ism environmentalist's and so they will choose words to speak to their public. We don't use the word economism. And the quickest way to say this, the difference between environmentalism and economism is that we don't use the word economism because there isn't any difference between economics and economists. [00:08:30] And they're kind of so tightly bound that we don't see the difference that, but economism is the beliefs we hold as a people. Speaker 4: And those beliefs help keep the economy going there. The ideas that are invoked in political discourse. You can think of it as just like we think of environmentalism as only kind of a religious movement or a movement that brings people their social identity. Economism is similar in that way that our economic beliefs help rationalize where we are in the economy [00:09:00] or economic beliefs. Help rationalize allowing our corporations to use cheap labor abroad or economic beliefs. Sort of explain how the system we're in exists and why it's there. Almost everything in our lives on a daily basis and to understand that we have economism that intertwines with economic sciences. Economists themselves are engaged in this belief system in partly perpetrating it and [00:09:30] partly changing it. So that's the nature of the next book, the second term as econo scene and he wrote a familiar, many of them audience would be familiar with the idea of the Anthropocene, the idea that we're now in a new geological era, an era in which people are the primary drivers of environmental change, and that's controversial among the scientific community, but it's begun to be used quite a bit. Speaker 4: And anthropocene to me is very vague. It doesn't [00:10:00] identify what it is. It's doing the driving. If you use the word econo scene, you should say, Nah, it's the economic system that we're in that's doing the driving and it's the economic system that we need to change. I mean we're not going to transform people. We're going to transform our social organization to solve this problem. And so econo scene to my mind is at least since post World War II is the appropriate term. As you look at the current economic system [00:10:30] you and mentioned earlier that the growth paradigm isn't really sustainable. Sustainability is a buzz word of the moment in so many areas. How can we define that and how do we pursue sustainability? I think we're so far from sustainability that it's very difficult to find and we're in this very difficult to understand very complex big system that has all these different feedbacks. Speaker 4: You know, the idea that we can comprehend sustainability is [00:11:00] like, can we comprehend the full environmental system? I don't think so. I think we have a strong sense that we're in a danger zone and we need to move out of it. And we know what directions we need to go. And that means slowing down the rates of material flows, slowing down the rates of energy use, slowing down the amount of toxic materials we're putting into the environment or pulling out of with the environment and transforming and releasing back into the environment. And [00:11:30] we have certain equity concepts that sort of says that those who are doing more of it should cut back more than those who are doing less of it. And I think as we move in those directions, we will see the system responding and we'll eventually get a better sense of sustainability, but we'll never really understand sustainability. Speaker 4: It's a really important word, but the idea that we can define it and get it all tied down scientifically and do it is now become part of our problem. But the idea that [00:12:00] we need to change and we know which direction to go, I think that's actually very clear within that change. Yeah. Does that relate to your idea of co-evolution? Is that sort of the basis of co-evolutionary thought or [inaudible] okay, so yeah, we haven't really laid that out. This was a thought experiment that I was in my own mind working in Brazil in the late seventies and I was very involved in sort of what's going on in the Amazon, gone onto [00:12:30] an Amazon planning team for Brazilian government and they were trying to optimally plan how things work, how could we develop the Amazon using science? And I was sitting there admits this process saying that's not the way development occurred in Europe. Speaker 4: That's not the way development occurred in the United States. There was a lot of experimentation and a lot of things didn't work and some things did work. Oh, that sounds like evolution at the time I was reading a lot of ecology and evolutionary theory and [00:13:00] was a friend of Paul aeroflex who was one of the cofounders of the idea of co-evolution species are primarily evolving in the context of each other, not to a fixed environment and what does that mean for how we think evolutionarily? And so yes, I began to try to understand or think about change in the human nature interaction in co-evolutionary terms. It's a pattern of thinking that sheds light on our predicament. But it's only [00:13:30] one pattern of thinking. So I don't say this is the answer, but it's very insightful. It's a pattern of thinking that says things are happening by experiment and that we should be experimenting more and be less certain about what we're doing. And what we've really done is set up a global system of everybody doing the same thing and we're not learning very much from it. And it's a very risky experiment. So I think if you understand change as an evolutionary process, you don't do what [00:14:00] we've done in globalizing the economy and trying to push that further and further and further. Speaker 1: Spectrum is a public affairs show on k Alex Burke. Our guest today is professor Richard Norgaard of UC Berkeley. In the next segment, he talks about the need for increasing diversity and experimentation in the world's economies. Speaker 4: [00:14:30] So the idea that industries and enterprises should try to become sustainable becomes an experiment. We're always experimenting. We have sincere corporations that are trying to go green. We have corporations that are greenwashing. Everybody's experimenting. But is the system as a whole set ups and those experiments are giving us the diversity we need from a systems [00:15:00] perspective and we're not doing that. And is that much easier to identify in the biological realm rather than in the technology economic world of manufacturing. And um, if economists were actually going out looking at how the world works more than we do, we, one of the beautiful things about biologists, they go out in the field and say, oh look, that's interesting. Yeah. I kind of spend very little time going out and say, wow, this industry is co-evolving [00:15:30] with that industry. Isn't this interesting? We tend to sit in our offices and smash data rather than actually try to observe. Speaker 4: I'm obviously, it's very difficult to observe economic phenomena today, uh, cause there's just so much of it happening and it's not as visible as it was say in the 19th century when industries were just emerging. Certainly there are applied and practical economists that are born at this. How are firms we configuring, how are they relating [00:16:00] to each other in different ways than the economics profession is the academic economics profession. Yeah. I think if we were to be more field oriented we would see co-evolution and maybe you'd be able to draw on it and learn from that. In terms of trying to alter the economic system and the path that we're currently on, given the ideological polarization, do you see a way that that could happen with the current polarization? I have great difficulties seeing it. [00:16:30] The common element unfortunately is we all need our share of material stuff rather than a discussion about what's the good life and how are we going to go forward. Speaker 4: The forward for both of them is more, it's more at the tension over who gets what. Until we get to a situation where we get beyond the stuff and use of energy to what makes a good life. I don't see that transformation happening, but I'm hopeful that it's creeping up somewhere [00:17:00] that those discussions are going on and that'll emerge somewhere. Certainly there are people talking about those things. I don't see it at the center we have now the two centers we have now two, can we create a world in which nations become less in tangled and we can get more experiments between them and then have some sort of a learning way between those different nations so that we retain our flexibility [00:17:30] and don't put all of our eggs in one basket. I guess that's the experiment I'm looking for and does the approach to climate change and global warming, is that an opportunity for the same kind of experimentation? Speaker 4: It may be the disaster that forces us into action. I don't know if you call that an or not, but a opportunity or disaster. It's certainly testing how well we understand complex systems and change with those systems [00:18:00] and I'm hoping we'll find a way to to make this adjustment, but we're not doing it very well now. It certainly seems that they're trying to stay within the growth paradigm so far in your mind until they abandoned that on some level or completely it's not really gonna pay off by my mind. Then again, growth is kind of tricky. What we don't want is a growth of impacts. We want a decline. We want to simplify the ways in which we're interactive with nature. Minimize the footprint. That's one way [00:18:30] to put it. Minimize the footprint so that's not a matter of growth or no growth, right? You could still have growth in the arts. Speaker 4: We could all cut each other's hair every other day and charge each other and the GDP would look fantastic. GDP is a very deceptive numbers just to measure market activity. If somebody wants to call that growth, that's okay with me, but what we really need to do is simplify and be less intrusive in the natural system. Similarly, looking [00:19:00] longterm and coming up with an experimental framework. The delta program that you were talking about and the delta in general being a mysterious black box that no one quite understands. Do you feel that there's a growing acknowledgement within the policy community that it's going to take years and years and years and a very dynamic approach to solve it? I think that's true. The Delta Reform Act of 2009 [00:19:30] is very supportive of science. It mandates that we use adaptive management. You know, it's acknowledging that we have to change our management as the times change. Speaker 4: It's legislation that says climate change exists and we need to bring climate change into our understanding of how we think of the Delta as right in the legislation. I mean that's unusual, you know, at least in the state of California already in a world in which we are acknowledging the system is changing [00:20:00] and we need to change with it. There's real complications as to how you get responsible public action and responsible private action in a changing world and a predictable world. You can say, if you do this, then this will happen. If you don't do it, you're responsible and changing world responsibility is really hard to assign and we still want responsible government. [00:20:30] We still want responsible managers, we want responsible enterprises, but how do you set up rules which you know need to change. If you know they need to change, then our agencies or private parties allowed to adjust before the rules are changed. You give it to see the problem. Structurally responsibility and a rapidly changing world are in conflict. This means we need a dramatic [00:21:00] increase in trust and that trust has to be based on actual actions that are based in scientific understanding of a changing world. How do we build that trust? It gets back to how do we collectively understand and learn together and live as a community together in a changing world, it's pretty dramatic transformation. Speaker 4: How do you see academic work addressing some of these [00:21:30] societal problems going forward? Is there a role? Of course, and of course academia is constantly changing and where the learning is taking place is constantly changing within academe. I guess I'd like to go back to this. You know, we're not a university where multiversity and Clark Kerr wrote a book on that almost 50 years ago. Yeah. How to become a university again. How to become a model for the experiment. We're actually in of trying to collectively understand [00:22:00] a very complex system. I think universities could play a very strong role in making an effort to actually change the system and the system of learning among students, and we're not even talking about that yet. We're still very much in the fractured disciplinary mode and if anything, maybe with the greater need for corporate funding for rich individuals help even more show going into the [00:22:30] disciplinary mode rather than the collective understanding mode. Richard Norgaard, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you very much for inviting me. It's great pleasure Speaker 2: spectrum shows are on iTunes here. This kid is simple link for you. The link is tiny url.com/k a l ex spectrum. Speaker 5: Now a few of the science of technology events [00:23:00] happening locally over the next two weeks. Vic, could I ski and I present the calendar on Tuesday, January 14th former NASA astronauts and Co founder of the B6 12 foundation. Ed Lou, well discuss protecting earth from asteroids. Why we may not see them coming at the Commonwealth Club of California, five nine five market street in San Francisco. Lou is pointed out that more than a million near Earth Asteroids are larger than the asteroid. That struck Siberia in 1908 [00:23:30] that one was about a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and it was only about 40 meters across, yet it destroyed an area roughly the size of the San Francisco Bay area. Lou will discuss his mission to detect and track the million with the potential to destroy any major city on earth and how his B6 12 foundation plans to build, launch, and operate a deep space telescope with an infrared lens. The first private sector deep space mission [00:24:00] in history and mission will be $20 or $7 for students. For more information, visit Commonwealth club.org Speaker 3: on January 16th Dr Tom Volk will present a talk on the hidden romantic lives of fun guy. Dr [inaudible] is a professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse where he teaches courses on medical mycology, plant microbe interactions, food and industrial in Mycology, organismal biology and Latin and Greek for scientist. [00:24:30] Dr. Buck has also conducted fungal bio diversity studies in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alaska, and Israel. His free public talk will be held on Thursday, January 16th from seven 30 to 9:30 PM and three 38 Koshland Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 5: Basics, the bay area art and science interdisciplinary collaborative sessions is hosting talks center reception with exhibits on our watershed. Over 7 million of us live near the bays, [00:25:00] rivers and creeks that comprise the San Francisco Bay watershed. Professor Jay Lund will highlight and explore the ramifications of the urban bay areas, dependence on water from distant sources, environmental artists, Daniel McCormick and Mary O'Brien. We'll discuss what they term remedial art, surveying some of their watershed sculpture projects and professor Sarah Cohen will introduce us to sea vomit and other species as she spotlights aquatic diversity [00:25:30] in the bay accompanied by a string quartet. The show will be on Saturday, January 18th seven to 9:00 PM with doors at six 30 it's at the ODC theater, 31 five three 17th street in San Francisco. Admission is on a sliding scale so you can attend for free. You should visit Oh d C dance.org to make your reservation Speaker 3: the years first iteration of the monthly lecture series signs that cow will be held on January 18th [00:26:00] Christian Reichardt or researcher at UC Berkeley will speak about his research on cosmic microwave background radiation. Much of it connected in the South Pole. Cosmic background radiation is our most ancient form of detectable lights and carries the imprint of the big bang. It has been a crucial tool and exploring the beginning of our universe. For the past 20 years, scientists had been mapping this radiation using telescopes located in the South Pole. Dr Reichardt will discuss what is already known about the Big Bang, what the latest results from the South Pole could mean and what it's like to work at the bottom of the world. The free public talk will be held [00:26:30] on January 18th in room one 59 of Mulford Hall on the southwest edge of the UC Berkeley campus. The talk will begin promptly at 11:00 AM a feature spectrum is to present new stories we particularly interesting. Rick Karnofsky joins me for the news. Speaker 5: Oxford anthropologist, Robin Dunbar is famous for formulating the so called Dunbar's number. That's the maximum number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships with and it's about 150 [00:27:00] people he's published in the proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. This week. His article coauthored by Jerry Sarah Maki from Alto University in Finland and others reports on a study in which 24 students we're giving it an 18 month sell contract. Throughout the study, participants were given a survey to rank the emotional closeness of friends and family members. Perhaps unsurprisingly, greater emotional closeness rankings correlated with the frequency and duration of [00:27:30] cell phone calls. More surprisingly though was the number of people a person called and how much time they spent on the phone with them remained relatively constant. Even if the particular people they talk to May change. For example, the top three contacts typically get 40 to 50% of the time spent on calls. As new network members are added, some old network members either are replaced or receive your calls. The author's note. This is likely to reflect the consequences of finite resources [00:28:00] such as the time available for communication. That emotional effort required to sustain close relationships and the ability to make emotional investments. Speaker 3: A team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have used the inorganic material, vanadium dioxide, to create a micro sized robotic torsional muscle motor. The artificial muscle is a thousand times more powerful than a human muscle of the same size. The device can also hurt all objects 50 times as heavy as itself up to a distance five [00:28:30] times as long as its own link faster than the blink of a human eye within 60 milliseconds. A paper describing the innovative machine and its use of material phase transitions appeared in a recent issue of the journal. Advanced materials, the material and the robotic muscle. Vanadium dioxide is highly prized itself because its properties change with temperature. At low temperatures. It acts as an insulator, but suddenly I 67 degrees Celsius. It becomes a conductor. Additionally, upon warming the crystal instructure, the material will contract in one direction while expanding [00:29:00] in the other two. The multi-functionality of the material makes it a prime candidate for use as an artificial muscle, as well as helping to improve the efficiency in other electronic devices. Okay. Speaker 1: And the music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, [00:29:30] please send them to us. Our email address is [inaudible] spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this time. Speaker 6: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Richard Norgaard Prof Emeritus of Energy and Resources at UC Berkeley. Among the founders of ecological economics, his research addresses how environmental problems challenge scientific understanding and the policy process. Part one of two.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 3: [inaudible]Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum [00:00:30] the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 4: Hi and good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today we are presenting part one of two interviews with Richard Norgaard, professor emeritus of the energy resources group at UC Berkeley. Richard Norgaard received [00:01:00] his phd in economics from the University of Chicago in 1971 he was among the founders of the field of ecological economics. His research addresses how environmental problems challenged scientific understanding and the public policy process, how ecologists and economists understand systems differently and how globalization affects environmental governance. In today's interview, Norgaard talks about the origins of economic science defines [00:01:30] ecological economics and discusses certainty and uncertainty in science. Here's that interview Richard Norgaard. Welcome to spectrum. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Would you describe how economic theory and the science of economics has been forged over time? Speaker 5: I hesitate to use that word science with economics, but like other patterns of thinking in in scholarly endeavors. It's a mix. There were the physiocrats [00:02:00] who basically were in admiration of physics and said, well, we ought to be able to think of the economy as a bunch of flows and they were on 1750 or so, didn't work out very well in the 19th century. As we knew more about energy, we had people more again from the physical side thinking about value, think about the economy as energy flows and we're still trying to do that well. What we really think of as sort of conventionally economics comes out [00:02:30] of moral philosophy and Adam Smith is sort of asking what makes a good society? How do people behave? And the markets have been around for Millennia. He took another look at markets and said, Gee, this is interesting to people acting in their own interests, make both of them better off. Speaker 5: And this was just a thought experiment. If that's true, then then what? Then what and any expanded that thought experiment, what does it mean [00:03:00] with Spec to the role of markets and the role of government? And that's been the dominant pattern. But what I would say thought experiments, if we look at what's going out out there and say she has it like this, if this this was happening, and then expand that to a more systemic understanding of the economy as a whole is not been by hard data collection and patterns emerging from the data though there is that element to it though, right? Reinforce the [00:03:30] thought. Oh to be sure. Malthus's thought experiment was one of the most important ever and he just thought, well, you know, it looks like agricultural production increases linearly and population increases geometrically and what does that mean? And that meant that you're going to come to the limits and clashes and war and bad behavior and and therefore abstinence would be good. Speaker 5: Late marriage would be good. And he definitely tried to back [00:04:00] that up with data. The data were very poor at the time. But yes, we've always tried to back up our thought experiments with data and sometimes that exchange changes how we think and makes our thinking more elaborate. But when I say we're different from other sciences in that we're less data-driven and more just pattern of thinking driven and then within the profession there are these various schools of thought to be sure we can [00:04:30] do get pressure to align yourself in some way. Where the school of thought, well I wouldn't say so much pressure, I would say it's, it's a desire or human desire for a sense of community and shared thinking and it's much more comfortable working with people who think like you do. And so there's pretty strong lines between people who think markets are most important and people who think power is most important sort of followers of Adam Smith or followers of Carl Marx. Speaker 5: But [00:05:00] yeah, there are times when, I guess you could say you feel the pressure, but it's more just the pressure of a community that and communities are good communities help us think together and dig deeper along a pattern of thinking. But of course they also keep you in the same Rut. And then we, if you become deviant, oh yeah. How are you treated at that point? Well and are you encouraged to be deviant? So anyway, so there are rankings of what's strong economics and what's weak economics. [00:05:30] And on the neoclassical side, the mathematicians have always had bigger Thrones than those who actually go out and study how the markets work. And then those who actually study the, the laws and regulations that determine how markets work. Those are referred to as institutional economists and for many years institutional economists, which are the lowest ranking, they studied the facts, they just studied history. Speaker 5: They weren't [00:06:00] high theorist, but of course it's, it's how, how laws get written that determine how markets work and not the mathematics. Early on in your career you've stepped out of the mainstream. I never was in the mainstream. I, I was out before I was in and I've always been out. I had a very strong experience as an 18 year old, 19 year old as a river guide in the Glen Canyon of the Colorado. And that's now under Lake Powell. And [00:06:30] I was one of a very small number of people who saw this area, but also saw it go under and I became a fairly committed environmentalist and then started thinking, well, I'm you know, 19 years old, I'm a sophomore, junior in college. What do I want to study, what I want to do in life? And I loved biology. I love geology, but nature is not the problem. We are. If we are, then what's the biggest thing? And it was not too difficult to say, well, it's, [00:07:00] it's our economy. It's how we think about our relationship with nature as determined by our economics and economic beliefs. And so I went into economics from the outside knowing that I was always on the outside. I don't recommend it. Speaker 2: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. [00:07:30] Richard Norgaard is our guest. He is an ecological economists. In the next segment, he defines it, logical, economic [inaudible]. Speaker 5: And what role do you think ecological economics has to play in shaping and informing policy? Well, we should probably describe ecologically economics a little bit first. And [00:08:00] I like to put it in a little bit in juxtaposition with environmental economics. Environmental Economics is basically a pattern of thinking that says things are left out of the economy or we don't get the opportunity to buy clean air. We don't get the opportunity to buy healthy environments and, and we just need to put everything in the market. And when everything's in the market, the market will be perfect. And so environmental economics is about [00:08:30] making the economy evermore inclusive by bringing more and more things into it. Ecological economics is not just an extension of economics. Ecological economics is a real effort to understand ecological systems and economic systems and try to understand where they may come into clash ecologies, basic premises, everything's connected to everything else. Speaker 5: And a basic premise of at least mainstream economics is that things can be divided [00:09:00] up and made into property and exchanged the one hand. The economic worldview is everything's divisible and ecological worldview. Everything is connected and that's a fundamental tension and human understanding of systems. And so at least to me is that tension that signifies sort of our ultimate limits of how we understand systems that's embedded in ecological economics. So how do you reveal that tension and then try [00:09:30] to have an impact on policy that would affect that tension. In Our world today is not set up that way. Our world today is set up that science brings answers and a better informed society can make better choices. But we also have sort of the idea that that we can have scientists inside of government that can say this is how things are, and then democracy is just about choosing between options. Speaker 5: [00:10:00] If you really see that fundamental tension all the way down and then science can't give answers and science can say, well look at the world as a divisible world. I see this. If I look at the world, isn't there connected world? I see this and it's up to all of us to then sort of get involved in the judgment process and the way policy is set up now it's very much in the context of a legislature that has certain roles and then the agencies that have certain roles and courts [00:10:30] that have certain roles and then policymakers are sort of in this process trying to set up options and pathways that if you follow ecological economics to its logical limits, we all need to be involved in this. And so I push ecological economics to discourse of democracy that we really need to think of democracy as a shared learning system, not as a vote counting system. Speaker 5: It's a process by which we all come to [00:11:00] better understanding and make compromises and that's very different than the way we think of policy and democracy and and science. Now the long step to their, and by no means do all ecological economists think this way. We do get involved in policy, but then it frequently comes into contradiction with sort of the fundamental problems of, of our understanding. Whenever you're in a system that's not where you think the system ought [00:11:30] to be, you're still stuck with these dilemmas of how do you intervene and, and transform the system. And so I myself get involved in and policy sort of positions and you know, you don't understand the nature of the world you're in unless you're engaged with it. You can't just sit back and say, well, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to engage until it's all set up. Right? So to be sure they're economists who don't see the tension and just say ecological economics ought to fit in the [00:12:00] policy process as it is, or ecologically economists who do see the tension and need to work or choose to work with the system to help transform it. Speaker 4: So in a sense, trying to build a consensus across the political world and just the general population as to the ongoing learning experiment that democracy could be. Speaker 5: Yeah, and we're so far from that now. We presumed that the enlightenment, everybody would become more educated. Everybody would be in a better position [00:12:30] to make rational decisions. But we actually created a world in which we have experts in various fields. We have a market system that divides us into very specialized tasks. And so our understanding is very fractured. And so partly the fact that economics is built on a divisible world has been used to create policy as further divided the world. And it's divided the world with through globalization to the point [00:13:00] where very distance from the production process of the materials, the clothes we wear, the food we eat. And so it's very hard to come to common understanding and make decisions collectively so that the system we devised as created serious problems for common understanding.Speaker 4: There seemed to be some people who are recognizing that more often and pushing back or asking for an alternative to that globalization [00:13:30] and division with this to hope, Speaker 5: this gives me hope, this, this division, this specialization, this fracturing of our sense of common understanding. Yeah, I see it in the drive for interdisciplinarity and the drive or you know, trying to understand the full effects of what we do, the and the bringing all the scientists together to understand climate change. As an example, I'm very involved in a process [00:14:00] in the California delta where we're trying to understand a complex system and we have procedures to try to bring in public input, but we still very much stakeholder staked down. We've got our positions and they're sort of a tension between the common understanding and let's just go to court. Let's sue each other. Let's battle it out. Let's you know I'm right, you're wrong. And that gets back to the community. I am mentioned with economists that you want to be in a shared [00:14:30] community, but if you've already got a shared community of laborers or shared community of capitalists or shared community of neoclassical economists, that's where you go back to and environmentalist are in a similar situation. Speaker 6: Spectrum is a public affairs show on KALX Berkeley. Our guest is [00:15:00] professor Richard Norgaard of UC Berkeley. In the next segment he talks about certainty and uncertainty in science. Speaker 5: Would the tension and increasing tension where systems potentially start to fail and common interest then gets galvanized by the failure of really large natural systems. Does the expression of risk management [00:15:30] start to bring people together? I think that's, that's a fair assessment of the situation where in that we have quested for certainty. John Dewey wrote a book on the quest for certainty and in the push for certainty we pretend we're actually reaching that certainty. And yet the very same time we're seeing that the uncertainty rules and sort of the story of climate science, it was always, well we don't know [00:16:00] this, we know none of this. We need to go back and build better and better models. And as we build better and better models, we, we learned how complex the system in is, is. And we can't really build in all the feedbacks of forest fires and uncertain events that are really contingent on particular things coming together particular time. Speaker 5: If we shift to what we don't know, that very powerful drive to be precautious and to come together and to slow the economy down. But that's also [00:16:30] like asking every scientist is say let's stress what we don't know instead of what we do know. And that's hasn't been, well the public hasn't asked that of scientists. Scientists aren't inclined to put all the emphasis in what we don't know. The whole system is sort of set up that science tells us this and then we can make a rational decision. And you know, you can imagine the climate deniers jumping on the scientific community. Well they do every time the scientific [00:17:00] community on climate becomes more specific and modifies what it knew before it gets jumped on. And so the tension is, is difficult. But yes, in the California Delta we're also in a situation where we really have to confess what we don't know and set up management systems to adapt to climate change, to invasive species to sea level rise and how the future's going to be unfolding is really unclear. Speaker 5: [00:17:30] But at the same time we have laws and legislation that say we have to write environmental impact statements and these environmental impact statements have to predict what's going to happen. And so we have a 20,000 plus page environmental impact statement for this Delta project. Is that information or is that just, you know, it's, it's, it's crazy. And so then is it kind of a general misunderstanding of science? Because really the flip side of science is the mystery and the unknown and that's really what drives a [00:18:00] lot of science is the unknown. And so it makes it so exciting. And so is it just that policymakers, general population only look to science for answers and don't want to deal with that whole mysterious side of science. I think, you know the mysterious side gets a little quasi religious sometimes and we tend to shy away from that. Speaker 5: But I think it's also just the way we've been set up in societies. This science has generated [00:18:30] a lot of technology. It's been technology generated out of just parts of what we know that then has consequences when we actually implement the technology. It changes us socially in the environment, but science has delivered lots of hard stuff. And then can we just extend that ability to understand the whole system and the answer does not look good and too says probably not. And that should then drive us to humility. [00:19:00] But when I went in and you get prestige for being a scientist, for coming up with answers, on the other hand, an honest scientist has to say, we're not holding it all together. We're not able to see the whole system and how do we understand the whole system? Who's going to understand the whole system and the level of understanding we have to have now is much greater as we have 7 billion going on, eight to 10 billion people, and [00:19:30] with the technologies we have today, we are intertwined with this system much more deeply and many, many, many, many more ways than humankind has historically. Speaker 5: And this has dramatically increased just the last 60 years. There's been a tenfold increase in economic activity. That's incredible. To have that kind of change and to think that it can continue, which is the paradigm that's, that will continue. It has to [00:20:00] have by the paradigm, but it, of course, that paradigm is has to be false and it's partly perpetrated by false economics or just reading a portion of what economists know, but that's inconceivable. But as we pushed this system harder, we have to understand it better and better and better and we're clearly not understanding it well enough. Now in your work, which tools and methods do you believe are the most important? I think I'm going to go back to those thought experiments. That's where the breakthroughs [00:20:30] come. Ways of reconceiving. What we're doing that gives us new insights that then help us change. Speaker 5: So Adam Smith's thought experiment gave us a much clearer understanding of what markets can do and we formulated a lot of our social organization along Adam Smith's ideas. We need new thought experiments that become equally popular somehow. [00:21:00] That's an issue because with markets we have stakeholders and with stakeholders then you get political power and then that reinforces existing system and how do we get a thought experiment within economics or ecological economics or from anywhere it comes that we'll reconfigure how we think about our relationship with nature to get us out of the system we're in now. Yeah. That's really the tool is I see it. That's what's been powerful in social theory. [00:21:30] The data collection, you know, fancy econometric analyses. Not so much model building and data driven stuff. Model building is good for understanding sort of the limits of how much you can understand and model building can be really good for bringing people from different disciplines together to have a shared project. That's fantastic, but as soon as you actually believe in your model, you're in trouble and that's [00:22:00] yeah, frequently happens. Speaker 3: Be sure to catch her Speaker 4: to have this interview with Richard Norgaard in two weeks. In that interview he talks about interdisciplinary problem solving. Speaker 6: Co-Evolution diversity and sustainability Speaker 4: [00:22:30] spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link for you to make it easy to find. The link is tiny url.com/k a l X. Speaker 6: [inaudible]. Now Speaker 4: the science and technology events happening locally [00:23:00] over the next two weeks. [inaudible] and I presented Speaker 7: the theme of January seconds after dark explore [inaudible] adult happy hour is sharing. Sharing isn't just about kids and toys. It's at the heart of some of the biggest problems facing all of us. Highlights of the evening include exploratorium social psychologist, Dr Hugh Macdonald, discussing the science of sharing the finer points of interviewing [00:23:30] with StoryCorps and a chance to share feedback on new exhibits about cooperation, competition, and collaborative problem solving. Admission do anyone 18 and over is $15 and is reduced for members visit exploratorium.edu for more information. Speaker 4: The life sciences division of the Berkeley Lab will hold a seminar on the effects that the deep water horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico [00:24:00] had on the resident fish populations. Dr Fernando Galvez from Louisiana State University will speak about his research on the Gulf. Upon hearing about the spill in 2010 Dr Galvez and his team were actually able to take water and tissue samples from seven marsh habitats around the Gulf before and after the oil hit in order to assess the long and short term ecological consequences. He has more recently been investigating the [00:24:30] ability of the native fish to compensate for crude oil linking effects from the molecular level to physiological performance. The free public event will be held January 7th from four to 5:00 PM in room one 41 of the Berkeley lab building at seven one seven potter street in Berkeley. Speaker 7: The programs and policies director of the Oakland based National Center for Science Education. Joshua Rose now [00:25:00] well discuss the predecessor of the NC s e the Salsalito based Science League of America at the free Skype talk hosted by the bay area skeptics at Luphinia Cultural Center three one zero five Shattuck in Berkeley on January 9th at 7:30 PM the Science League was formed by Maynard Shipley, a science communicator and former shoe salesman to educate the public about evolution. More information [00:25:30] is that BA skeptics.org Speaker 4: the Henry Wheeler Center for emerging and neglected diseases. Annual symposium aims to strengthen connections between San Francisco Bay area scientists working on infectious diseases of global health importance and the broader global health research, product development and advocacy communities. The theme for the 2014 symposium is academia and the global health pipeline, [00:26:00] basic science, innovation and translation. The symposium features a dynamic list of invited Speakers from around the world, including scientists from developing countries. Participants include academic researchers from UC Berkeley, UCF, Stanford, UC Davis, as well as representatives from local biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and global health nonprofits. The event will be held January 10th [00:26:30] from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM in the lead cost Xing Center Auditorium. The event is free to attend, but you must register online at the center for emerging and neglected diseases website by January 6th to attend the symposium. A feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find interesting. Rick Karnofsky joins me for the news. Speaker 4: The December 23rd issue of nature news reviewed a preprint submitted to archive [00:27:00] by Notre Dame, astrophysicist David Bennett and a large team of collaborators that offers the first suggested report have an extra solar moon, extra solar planets have been found routinely. We now know of over a thousand that are detected by analyzing how it stars. Light, brightens and dims with time, but detecting the moon is exceedingly difficult. The team saw a smeared out brightness as if two objects had magnified the light. [00:27:30] The study is conservative and notes that their observations best fit a model of the moon with a mass smaller than Earth's orbiting the primary planet of a gas giant, but that other models may also fit while they don't fit as well. They have been observed in more systems. These include a lower mass star or brown Dorf orbit by a fast and small planet about the size of Neptune. Speaker 4: The team stresses that their study shows the power of micro Lenzing to survey such systems and helps [00:28:00] for a higher precision measurements from huddle. The UC Berkeley News Center reports that a team of UC Berkeley vision scientists has found that small fragments of Keratin protein in the I play a key role in warding off pathogens. Professor Susan Fleisig, an optometrist at the University of California, Berkeley says, what we know is people virtually never get corneal infections unless they're a contact lens wearer or unless they have very severe injury to the cornea. Professor [00:28:30] Fleisig, along with other UC Berkeley researchers recently discovered the proteins in the eye called Keratins. We're able to ward off bacteria to test this. Researchers introduced normal cells to bacteria, which predictably attacked and killed the defenseless healthy cells. But when small parts of Keratin proteins were added, the normal cells lived. Scientists have made an artificial version of a small part of the Keratin protein and tested it against different diseases. The proteins [00:29:00] destroyed bacteria that can cause struck throat, diarrhea, and staff. Further research is needed before isolated. Keratins can be used to fight bacteria, but it could be a low cost discovery that might change the way we treat and prevent infections. Speaker 2: [inaudible] music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thanks to Renee Rao for help with the calendar. Thank you [00:29:30] for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email or email. Address is spectrum. Duck klx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Zoologist Toni Bodi is currently developing a genomic diagnostic screen for Alzheimer’s disease and is a founding member of the Berkeley Bio Labs new bio hacker space. Nature magazine.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Aw. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [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 and good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Our guest is Tony Bodhi Hickerson, a zoologist who was part of a cognitive study of howler monkeys in Mexico. Tony is trying to organize a noninvasive [00:01:00] dolphin study in the wild using wireless network technology. She is currently developing a genomic diagnostic screen for Alzheimer's disease and is a founding member of the Berkeley bio labs, a new bio hackerspace. Tony talks about cognition, Alzheimer's disease, and creating a scientific community resource in the bay area. Rick Karnofsky and Renee Rau interview Tony on this edition of spectrum. Speaker 4: So welcome to spectrum. [00:01:30] I'm Rick Karnofsky here with Brad swift and Renee Rao. Our guest today on spectrum is Tony Bodhi, Hickerson and zoologist. Welcome to spectrum. Thank you for having me. Can you give us a little bit of a description of what you work on? Kind of a brief overview for the audience. That cognition is essentially the ability to receive and process information and the most abstract form. And we kind of think of it as mental processes, which can be both conscious and subconscious. [00:02:00] And so I do research on cognitive abilities of wildlife and at the moment I'm also working on an application in humans. What wildlife do you look at? Um, well I have looked at primates and I've been also involved in a dolphin project. So high functioning mammals. And how do you assess their cognitive abilities? Well, you can do behavioral studies, which is what I primarily do. Speaker 4: And of course just looking at the anatomy as well. So [00:02:30] I try to be as noninvasive as possible. I don't work in a lab with monkeys in a cage. I actually work in the wilderness and follow monkeys around all day. So where do you do that? I was doing that in Mexico for my last study with seven months and from Sunup I watched the sun come up and uh, the howler monkeys, which is a species that I was working on would call in the morning. That's how we'd find them. So we trek through the jungle and find them and then start our study. And it would usually last, well it would last until sundown. So depending on how many hours a like we had [00:03:00] [inaudible] Speaker 5: can you just walk us through what the study was and what you looked at in the howler monkeys and how you interpreted it? Speaker 4: Well, this study, I was a, the head field managers, so it wasn't my particular study, but I was managing all the data collection and uh, we were looking at two different species of Holler monkey. And they're hybrids. So there's hybrid zone in Mexico where both of these species, which we believe based on genetic evidence have been separated for about 3 million [00:03:30] years. They have different number of sex chromosomes. They're very morphologically different, are coming together and meeting successfully. They also have very different social structures and one group tends to be far more aggressive than the other one is much more communal. It has large groups up to 25 30 and the other one usually has three to five. So to see how behaviorly they come together and genetically they come together because in one cross if you have a female of a and a male of B, they can [00:04:00] have an offspring. But if you inverse it they cannot. So it's really interesting also genetically to see how things recombine. What kinds of data did you take? Oh, we took auditory, so we, they're hollow monkeys. So we had all their calls, which it changes from group to group and obviously from species to species. We also took a lot of behavioral information, affiliative, so like affection and aggressive behavior, like attacks and genetic [00:04:30] information through and study captures as well as fecal samples. Speaker 5: I'm just super curious about what it was like following the Heller monkeys and spending literally all day with them. You, Speaker 4: I started to go insane. You actually do. Um, no, it was a really profound life experience for sure. And I couldn't have designed a better project to be part of. Like if I had designed my dream project, it would have been this project. When I started this project, I didn't speak Spanish and [00:05:00] every single person in my team only spoke Spanish, so I learned Spanish very fast. But during the process of learning a second language, you have this inability to completely express yourself and it kind of makes you go insane. And then when you couple that with standing in the middle of like a really humid forest, you know, surrounded by mosquitoes and following monkeys running through the canopy. I got you about month five I think, and I realized that I started to go insane. [00:05:30] When I yelled at an ant out loud, I paused and just laughed hysterically to myself and realize that like this is the point where like I've reached my mental break. Then I'm yelling at ants and I need to get to a city as soon as possible. Speaker 2: Okay. Our guest today on spectrum is Tony Bodhi Hickerson, but she answers to Tony Bodhi in the next, she talks about her idea for a dolphin stone. [00:06:00] This is k a l x Berkeley. Speaker 4: And what do you do with the dolphins? Uh, the Dolphin project, uh, is not a field project, unfortunately at the moment. It's an education campaign for the international mantle project, which is responsible for all dolphin safe tuna that you've ever seen as well as the documentary, the cove. So they're very avid group on [inaudible]. [00:06:30] And so I was putting together a campaign to try and inspire people that they're really intense creatures and why maybe we should respect them. Speaker 5: You tell us a little bit about those abilities and why they're so intense. Speaker 4: There are three groups of mammals that have large brains that's great. Apes, elephants and marine mammals. And the dolphins came from a very different evolutionary path. So they have different [00:07:00] structures, which is also really interesting. They don't have the prefrontal Cortex, which is what we tend to associate with being human, the sort of emotional side of being human. But they have a very intense limbic system, which is also associated with emotions and bonding behavior and sexual behavior. Dolphins have sort of this mixed reputation of being very kind of aggressive and also being really altruistic almost in their actions. [00:07:30] So looking at not only the hard facts of the biological side of things of like what structures they have and what those abilities are, but also case studies of look at these sort of altruistic behaviors. So their ability to perceive the world around them and to react in an emotional state is potentially really profound. Speaker 5: And um, in your study to sort of understand all the ways that the Dolphin perceives the world and the way that it often feels these things, are you looking at the structures in their brains and seeing [00:08:00] the corresponding place where these thought processes and these perceptions happen? Or are you just observing behavior or are you doing both? Speaker 4: Well, hopefully both. So I'm currently designing a project, which is hopefully gonna do exactly what you just said. Our tools at the moment are very limited, especially because we want to be as noninvasive as possible. Animals don't react in captivity the way that they react in the wild. And obviously they don't have the same space or social structure to be able to do the same sorts of things. [00:08:30] There is an up and coming technology that I hope to apply to this sort of research which would allow biological data to be recorded in real time and it would be completely noninvasive. It would be almost like a sticker, so there'd be no puncturing. There would be no need for captivity. Hopefully we could even apply it with minimal stress to the animal and with that we could have gps data body, we could potentially record the vibrations from their echolocation [00:09:00] and also neurological data and this would be the first information of its kind to be able to correlate if there's an approach or an affiliative behavior between two individuals, what areas of their brain are actually being, you know, lit up and that could really profoundly affect what we know about their structure. Speaker 4: Yeah, that that is sounds really exciting. So it would be noninvasive. Do you know how that works? That must be really amazing. The technology that I'm, I'm hoping to work with [00:09:30] is a flexible microchip and I'm hoping to be working with some of the innovators to make it appliable to dolphins and something that would stick for up to a month. They should scan very quickly, so that is a restraint. I don't know as much of the engineering side of it because I'm not as much tech, but from my conversations with the people developing it, it seems like it might not be up to use for a year or two, but hopefully eventually we'll get [00:10:00] there and we'll have a better understanding of how one of the smartest animals on the planet. Thanks. Are other people currently doing anything more invasive? Captivity can be a very invasive process. How animals and captivity get in captivity are often from Dolphin Slaughters, which kill hundreds of their fellow pod mates to get a handful of dolphins because a live dolphin that is pristine, [00:10:30] you know mark free that goes into entertainment or goes into a laboratory studies. They get taken out and they get sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and the rest of them get slaughtered and sold into the meat markets. Speaker 6: Mm MM. Speaker 3: You are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Our guest today is Tony Bow-tie Hickerson. Tony is a zoologist. In the next segment she talks about diagnosing Alzheimer's disease. Speaker 4: [00:11:00] I actually wanted to ask you a little bit about the work you're doing with Alzheimer's and dice diagnostic work. Could you maybe tell us a little bit about how the process of diagnosing Alzheimer's works currently and what you're hoping to change about that? Well, there really isn't much in terms of diagnosis that's out for the general public. What I'm actually attempting to do, and initially it was for my own curiosity and you know obviously see the potential for other people to use it as [00:11:30] well. I wanted to test myself on this gene. So there is a gene called apoe e and there are three expressions of it and they account for about 95% of all Hymers, one of these types of accounts for 50% of all hammers. I can essentially locate this gene snippet out of the enormous strand of DNA and then look at their two spots where [00:12:00] the nucleotide is a certain sequence that I can tell you. Speaker 4: If that is type one, two or three of that apathy and off of that, they're very strong statistics that will tell you that you have a very high likelihood or very low likelihood of getting Alzheimer's by a certain age. And it's sort of a spectrum due to the fact that we're deployed. So we have two copies of this gene. So if you have this like really strong negative version and one positive version, you will [00:12:30] have later onset Ohio Hymers. Then if you have two really negative versions, but there are really strong numbers that tell us what your likelihood is. But what I would like to do is to make it something that's very accessible for everyone. I don't want to produce this and market it as some expensive tests that's going to just perpetuate this whole medical debt system. I want this to be something that people can access and know for themselves to be able to plan [00:13:00] for their own future and to be able to take care of themselves and their family members more effectively and responsibly. Speaker 4: So it's pretty similar to the aggressive cancer testing would you say? Or? Um, yeah, it's fairly similar. I haven't looked exactly at that one to see. I believe it is also a snip, which is like this single nucleotide change. So it should be very similar. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the process of you sort of isolating this gene? Did you go through and read the papers [00:13:30] and see that this gene was associated with it and develop the processes snippet on your own or I'm in the process of developing the process to snippet. So right now I'm troubleshooting the primer. So the, the molecule that you use to actually cut the DNA, what I have is currently binding to itself. So it is also binding to the site that I want it to, but it's also binding to itself. So I'm trying to sort that issue out. Speaker 4: It's a process that needs to be critiqued a bit before. I'm willing to, you know, expose more [00:14:00] people to the answers cause I want to make sure that it is very accurate before I would to give someone those sorts of answers. You're currently doing some form of genetic screening and you previously did all of these behavioral studies. It's quite a transition. So how, how did you make that transition? Well they're both in principle based on cognition, mental abilities and so all Hymers is the degradation of cognitive abilities, the degradation of being able to recall information as well as [00:14:30] the breakdown of even motor skills and language skills and so that is profoundly interesting to me to to understand where and how cognitive abilities act and then to understand how they're dismantled is the cycle of, of the process of understanding exactly how things work. A lot of times we figure out what parts of the brain do what based on lesion studies, which is causing and disruption. Speaker 4: The initial draw [00:15:00] to this was for my own curiosity. And that was sparked because my father has severe dementia. So I wanted to know for him, is this all Hymers or is it something environmental? And so I want to develop a test for him, for myself and for the public to know what's their likelihood so that they can plan for the future. Are there other differentiating factors you could look at as well besides this, besides this gene? So the gene is pretty profound and [00:15:30] it's significance in whether or not people get all hammers. But there's, there's also, you know, of course a lot of different factors and I should mention that like echoey is a specific kind of all hammers. It's not early onset and not all dementia is Alzheimer's. There's lots of ways to get dementia in old age. So this isn't like a yes, no test. Speaker 4: If you have a really great diagnostic and it looks like you're clear for this, it doesn't mean that when you hit 80 that you're not gonna have problems [00:16:00] still. You still have to take care of yourself. And a lot of studies have shown that simple things and everyone says this, but simple things like diet and exercise. If you exercise on a regular basis, you can break down a lot of these corrosive molecules that cause a lot of mental problems, cause a lot of cardiovascular problems and you have to keep your metabolism up to deal with this and your body will also, you know, work to heal itself. It's just really profound what control you have over your future. [00:16:30] Like I don't want to give people this test and say you're doing, I feel that you two have a lot more control than a lot of people want to admit over the future. And so take responsibility for yourself and take care of your body. Go exercise and eat well and have lots of friends and learn new languages and go travel. See the world Speaker 2: spectrum is a science and technology show on KALX Berkeley. Our guest [00:17:00] today is Tony Bodhi Hickerson in the next segment that Tony talks about, the new Berkeley Bio lab. Speaker 4: So you're involved in a biohacker space. Uh, yes. So actually as of last weekend we moved into a space in Valeho which is my n when the other core members lab on the, hopefully we will be also opening a space [00:17:30] in Berkeley eventually, but for now we're in relay hope and it's essentially like a hacker space, but it's in biotech in general and you pay a membership and you have access to the lab and the materials to do your own research, detached from corporate biases and the strains of academia. So we provide a space in the community to kind of teach each other and [00:18:00] to work in and we allow real hard science to take place and sort of a pioneer setting. What's the name of it and how does it compare it to bio curious and some of the other spaces in the bay area? Speaker 4: Sure. The name of the lab is going to be Berkeley bio labs. Some of the other entities that will be occurring within this lab is a June cell technologies. We're trying to be much more accessible in that our membership [00:18:30] is only going to be $100 a month, whereas a lot of other bio spaces are $2,000 and up a month. I think that having more spaces isn't necessarily a bad thing. We tend to be a little bit more focused on regenerative medicine and stem cell research, so people who are more focused along that lines might be more attracted to work with us, but certainly weren't. We're not discriminating against people who aren't in stem cell research or regenerative medicine. That's just what we tend to do. I shouldn't ask you if you could [00:19:00] tell us a little bit more about the projects that are happening in the space now. Speaker 4: At the moment, we haven't even opened up yet. We were literally still moving all of the giant centrifuges and automated robots. And so right now I'm is my project as well as John's London, which is one of the founding members of the biohacker lab and he works in regenerative medicine and stem cells. [00:19:30] And once we kind of get settled and open our doors, we'll hopefully be screening lots of potential innovators to come and join our project and not necessarily his project but you know, whatever inspires them to try and you know, make a difference. And what will that screening process look like? It'll honestly be very personal. We're going to just meet with people one on one and see what they're interested in doing, what they have done and what they want to see in the future. It's much more about the people and [00:20:00] their drive to do something than the letters after their name. Speaker 4: We all feel that someone who's really driven to take the four or five years after a bachelor's and do their own research potentially has a lot more to offer than someone who might not know what they want to do in his just signing up for pastry. Cause they feel like it's the next step. So we're definitely open to pioneers, innovators and people who are willing to scrap to make a change. How are you getting the word out about the a space? [00:20:30] Well, actually the, the first thing that has happened so far on the 24th I believe it was, we had a paper written about us in nature. And so that was the first real publicity, and this is the second. So the article was called biotechnology independent streak. If anyone cares to look it up in the July 24th issue, it's gotta be super expensive to have all of the high mated robots and the giant centrifuge. Speaker 4: How are you financing [00:21:00] the space? All of the equipment is already owned by John. He's been working in biotech for quite some time and it has accumulated a very impressive stock of machinery and equipment and he's more than happy to share, to enable other people. He's been really phenomenal and assisting me and getting into a lab space, she's really enabled me to be able to do research that I would never be able to do on my own. And he's doing that for hopefully a lot of other people and so [00:21:30] I would hope to perpetuate that and help people get into it and start making a difference. What do you anticipate the future of the hackerspace pain? Well, we hope that we find lots of driven people who want to come and we are overflowing with scientists until we need to open up another space. I would love to see this be a scientific movement. Speaker 4: Science is all about curiosity. It's about having a question and figuring out how to find the answer and I think that that's [00:22:00] something in our education system that a lot of times is not really taught. People are taught facts, they're not taught. How do you figure facts out? You know? It's not about memorization. It's about teaching yourself how to think. How did you get into science? I have always been profoundly curious, but actually I started out as an art major and about two and a half years in I got called into my advisor's [00:22:30] office and I said, you can't take any more science classes. Told me you filled up all your electives and another semester. And if you take another science class, then we're going to kick you out of the fine arts school. So I said, okay. And I put in an application at another university and switched into science because I thought it was completely absurd that they would hinder me from taking science classes, but it was just a curiosity to understand how [00:23:00] the molecular and biological world works. Understand, you know, how life happens and how stars are born. It's something that I don't understand why every single person doesn't have this profound emotional response to understanding all Tony, thanks for joining. Yes, thank you. Speaker 2: Oh, [inaudible]. If you can not always catch spectrum broadcasts, know that shows are archived [00:23:30] on iTunes university, we have created a simple link to the archive just for you. The link is tiny url.com/calyx spectrum. No, a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky and I present the calendar. Speaker 3: Tuesday. August 27th the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens [00:24:00] will host a guided butterfly walk. Join Sally Levinson, the gardens resident caterpillar lady on a walk through the amazing collections of the botanical garden in search of butterflies to register for a butterfly walk, which is free with admission email garden@berkeley.edu the butterfly walk will be held from three to 4:00 PM on Tuesday, August 27th at the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens. At this month, [00:24:30] actual science, you can learn how the properties of diamonds are uniquely suited for scientific research. Christine beavers is a research scientist based at the advanced light source at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Her specialty is crystallography, which is the determination of 3d structures of molecules from crystals using x-rays. Actual science will be on Thursday, August 29th at 6:00 PM [00:25:00] at actual cafe six three three four San Pablo Avenue in Oakland and mission is free. UC Berkeley is holding its first monthly blood drive of the school year on August 29th you can make an appointment online, but walk-ins are also welcome. Speaker 3: You are eligible to donate if you are in good health way, at least 110 pounds and are 17 years or older. The blood drive will be on Thursday, August 29th in the Anna had [00:25:30] alumni house on the UC Berkeley campus. It will last from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM you can make an appointment or find more information at the website. Red cross.org using the sponsor code you see be wonder fest and ask a scientist present the neuroscience of magic on Wednesday, September 4th at the [inaudible] street food park, 48 [00:26:00] 11th street in San Francisco. You CSF professor of neuroscience, Adam Gazzaley and the comedy magician, Robert Strong. We'll lead discussions from ancient conjurers t quick handed con artists, two big ticket Las Vegas illusionists magicians. Throughout the ages, I've been expertly manipulating human at attention and perception to dazzle and delight us. [00:26:30] Of course, you know that the phenomenon of cognitive and sensory illusions are responsible for the magic, but you've got to admit it still kind of freaks you out when some guy in a top hat defies the of nature right in front of your eyes. The event is free. Now, two news stories. Speaker 3: Berkeley News Center reports a new theory by fluid dynamics experts at the University of California Berkeley shows how Zombie vorticies [00:27:00] help lead to the birth of a new star reporting in the journal Physical Review Letters, a team led by computational physicist Philip Marcus shows how variations in gas density led to instability, which generates the whirlpool like vorticies needed for stars to form. The Zombie reference is an astronomical nod to pop culture and because of the so called dead zones in which these vorticies exist, this new model has caught the [00:27:30] attention of Marcus's colleagues at UC Berkeley, including Richard Klein, adjunct professor of astronomy and fellow star formation expert, Christopher McKee, UC Berkeley professor of physics and astronomy. They were not part of the work described in physical review letters but are collaborating with Marcus to put the Zombie vorticies through more tests. Science daily reports the identification of what may be the earliest known [00:28:00] biomarker associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Speaker 3: The results suggest that this novel potential biomarker is present in cerebral spinal fluid at least a decade before signs of dementia manifest. If our initial findings can be replicated by other laboratories, the results will change the way we currently think about the causes of Alzheimer's Disease said Dr Ramon true? Yes. Research professor [00:28:30] at the CSIC Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona and lead author of the study that was published in annals of neurology. This discovery may enable us to search for more effective treatments that can be administered during the preclinical stage. These C S I c researchers demonstrated that a decrease in the content of micro chondrial DNA in cerebral spinal fluid may be a preclinical indicator [00:29:00] for Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, there may be a direct causal relationship Speaker 6: [inaudible].Speaker 1: The music hub during this show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Address [00:29:30] is spectrum dot k. Alright. yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Arash Komeili cell biologist, Assc. Prof. plant and microbial biology UC Berkeley. His research uses bacterial magnetosomes as a model system to study the molecular mechanisms governing the biogenesis and maintenance of bacterial organelles. Part1TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 3: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews, featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 4: Hi, and good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. We are doing another two part interview on spectrum. Our guest is Arash Kamali, [00:01:00] a cell biologist and associate professor of plant and microbial biology at cal Berkeley. His research uses bacterial magneta zones as a model system to study the molecular mechanisms governing the biogenesis and maintenance of bacterial organelles. Today. In part one, Arash walks us through what he is researching and how he was drawn to it in part two, which will air in two weeks. [00:01:30] He explains how these discoveries might be applied and he discusses the scientific outreach he does. Here's part one, a rush. Camelli. Welcome to spectrum. Thank you. I wanted to lay the groundwork a little bit. You're studying bacteria and why did you choose bacteria and not some other micro organism to study? One Speaker 5: practical motivation was that they're easier to study. They're easier to grow in [00:02:00] the lab. You can have large numbers of them. If you're interested in a specific process, you have the opportunity to go deep and try to really understand maybe all the different components that are involved in that process, but it wasn't necessarily a deliberate choice is just as I worked with them it became more and more fascinating and then I wanted to pursue it further. Speaker 4: And then the focus of your research on the bacteria, can you explain that? Speaker 5: Yeah, so we work with [00:02:30] a specific type of bacteria. They're called magnate as hectic bacteria and these are organisms that are quite widespread. You can find them in most aquatic environments by almost any sort of classification. You can really group them together if you take their shape or if you look at even the genes they have, the general genes they have, you can really group them into one specific group as opposed to many other bacteria that you can do that. But Unites Together as a group [00:03:00] is that they're, they're able to orient in magnetic fields and some along magnetic fields. This behavior was discovered quite by accident a couple of times independently. Somebody was looking under a microscope and they noticed that there were bacteria were swimming all in the same direction and they couldn't figure out why. They thought maybe the light from the window was attracting them or some other type of stimuli and they tried everything and they couldn't really figure out why the bacteria were swimming in one direction except they noticed that [00:03:30] regardless of where they were in the lab, they were always swimming in the same geographic direction and so they thought, well, the only thing we can think of that would attract them to the same position is the magnetic field, and they were able to show that sure enough, if you bring a magnet next to the microscope, you can change the swimming direction. Speaker 5: This type of behavior is mediated by a very special structure that the bacteria build inside of their cell, and this was sort of [00:04:00] what attracted me to it. Can you differentiate them? The UK erotic? Yeah. Then the bacterial, can you differentiate those two for us so that we kind of get a sense of is there, they're easy, different differentiate, you know the generally speaking you out excels, enclose their genetic material in an organelle called the nucleus. They're generally much bigger. They have a lot more genetic information associated with them and they have a ton of different kinds of organelles that perform [00:04:30] functions. All these Organelles to fall the proteins to break them down. They have organelles for generating energy, but all those little specific features, you know, you can find some bacterium that has organelles or you can find some bacterial solid that's really huge. Or you can find some bacteria so that encloses its DNA and an organelle. Speaker 5: It's just that you had accels have all of them together. Many of the living organisms that you encounter everyday because you can see them [00:05:00] very easily. Are you carry out, almost all of them are plants and fungi and animals. They're all made up of you. Charismatic cells. It's just that there's this whole unseen world of bacteria and what function does that capability serve, that magnetic functions that it can be realized that yet in many places on earth, the magnetic field will act as a guide through these changes in oxygen levels, sort of like a straight line through these. These [00:05:30] bacteria are stuck in these sort of magnetic field highways. It's thought to be a simpler method for finding the appropriate oxygen levels and simpler in this case means that they have to swim less as swimming takes energy. So the advantage is that they use less energy, get to the same place, that bacteria and that doesn't have the same capabilities relatively speaking, as a simple explanation, it's actually, because it is so simple, the model, you can kind of replicate [00:06:00] it in the lab a little bit. Speaker 5: If you set up a little tube that has the oxygen grading and then the bacteria will go to a certain place and you can actually see that they're sort of a band of bacteria at what they consider for them to be appropriate oxygen levels. And then if you inject some oxygen at the other end of the tube, the bacteria will swim away from this oxygen gradient. Now, if you give them a magnetic field that they can swim along, they can move away from this advancing oxygen threat much more quickly than [00:06:30] bacteria that can't navigate along magnetic fields. So that's sort of a proof of concept a little bit in the lab. There's a lot of reasons why it also doesn't make sense. For example, some of these bacteria make so many of these magnetic structures that we haven't talked about yet, but they make so many of these particles way more than they would ever need to orient in the magnetic field. Speaker 5: So it seems excessive. There are other bacteria that live in places on earth where there is not really this kind of a magnetic field guide. And in those environments there's [00:07:00] plenty of other bacteria that don't have these magneto tactic capabilities and they still can find that specific oxygen zone very easily. So in some ways I think it is an open question but there isn't really enough yet to refute the kind of the generally accepted model on the movement part of it. You were mentioning that they use magnetic field to move backwards and forwards. Only explain the limiting factor. Yeah, that's [00:07:30] an important point actually because it's not that they use the magnetic field for sensing in a way. It's not that they are getting pulled or pushed by the magnetic field. They are sort of passively aligned and the magnetic field sort of like if you have two bar magnets and if one of them is perpendicular to the other one and you bring the other one closer, I'll just move until they're parallel to each other. Speaker 5: This is the same thing. The bacteria have essentially a bar magnet and inside of the cell and so the alignment to the magnetic field [00:08:00] is passive that you can kill the bacteria and they'll still align with the magnetic field. The swimming takes advantage of structures and and machines that are found in all bacteria essentially. So they have flagella that they can use to swim back and forth as you mentioned. And they have a whole bunch of other different kinds of systems for sensing the amount of oxygen or other materials that they're interested in to figure out, should I keep swimming or should I stop swimming? And [00:08:30] as I mentioned earlier, the bacteria are quite diverse. So when you look at different magnatech active bacteria, the types of flagella they have are also different from each other. So it's not one universal mechanism for the swimming, it's just the idea that that the swimming is limited by these magnetic field lines. Speaker 6: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 5: Our guest today on spectrum is [inaudible] Chameleon, a cell biologist Speaker 7: and associate professor at cal Berkeley. In our next segment, [00:09:00] Arash talks about what attracted him to study the magnetism and why it remains in some bacteria and not others. This is k a l x Berkeley. So Speaker 5: let's talk about the magnetic zone, right? This is sort of my fascination. I was a graduate student at UCF and I studied cell biology. I use the yeast, which are not bacteria but in many ways they are kind of like bacteria. They're much simpler to study than maybe other do care attic [00:09:30] organisms and we have genetics available and so I was very fascinated by east, but I was studying a problem with XL organization and communication within the cell and yeast. We were taught sort of as students in cell biology at the time, that cell organization and having compartments in the cell organelles basically that do different functions was very unique feature of you carry attic cells and there's one of the things I've defined them. I received my phd to do a postdoctoral fellowship. I happen to be [00:10:00] in interviewing at cal tech and professor Mel Simon there he was talking about all kinds of bacteria that he was interested in and he said there's these bacteria that have organelles and I just, it kind of blew my mind because we were told explicitly that that's not true and in many textbooks, even today it still says that bacteria don't have organelles. Speaker 5: I learned more about men and I learned that these magnatech to bacteria that we've been talking about so far, you can actually build a structure inside of the cell, out of their cell membrane and within [00:10:30] this membrane compartment, it's essentially a little factory for making magnetic particles so they can build crystals of mineral called magnetite, which is just an iron oxide. Every three or four and some organisms make a different kind of magnetic minerals called Greg [inaudible], which is an iron sulfur mineral, but these are perfect little crystals, about 50 nanometers in diameter, and they make a chain of these magnesiums, so these membrane enclosed magnetic particles. [00:11:00] This chain is sort of on one side of the cell and it allows the bacteria to orient and magnetic fields because each of those crystals has this magnetic dipole moment in the same direction and all those little dipole moments interact with each other to make a little bar magnet, a little compass needle essentially that forces the bacterium to Orient in the magnetic field. Speaker 5: When I heard about this, I realized that this is just incredibly fascinating. Nobody really knew how it was that the membrane compartment forum [00:11:30] or even if it formed first and the mineral formed inside of it. There wasn't much or anything known about the proteins that were involved in building the compartment and then making the magnetic particle. It just seemed like something that needed to be studied and it was fascinating to me and I've been working on it for 1213 years now. Have we covered what the of the magnetic is that idea behind the function of the magnetism, which is the [00:12:00] structures of the cells build to allow them to align with a magnetic field. We think that function is to simplify the search for low oxygen environments. That's the main model in our field and I think there are definitely some groups that are actively working on understanding that aspect of the behavior better. Speaker 5: How it is that the bacteria can find a certain oxygen concentration. These bacteria in particular, what are the mechanics of them swimming along [00:12:30] the magnetic field and the, is there some other explanation for why they do this? For example, if they are changing orientations into magnetic field, can they sense the strain that the magnetic field is putting onto the cell? Can that be sensed somehow and then used for some work down the line and there are groups that are actively pursuing those kinds of ideas. You were mentioning that this is a particular kind of bacteria that has this capability, right, and others don't. Right. Yet both seem to be equally [00:13:00] effective and populating the water areas that you're studying. No apparent advantage. Disadvantage, so winning in Canada? Yeah, I mean it's a lot of the Darwinian, you could say as long as it's not severely disadvantageous, then maybe they wouldn't be a push for it to be lost. Speaker 5: What is kind of intriguing a little bit is there's examples of magna detective bacteria in many different groups, phylogenetic groups, so many different types of species that will be, let's [00:13:30] say bacterium that normally just lives free in the ocean and then I'll have a relative that's very similar to it, but it's also a magnet, a tactic. In recent years, people have studied this a little bit more and we know now what are the specific set of genes that allow bacteria to become magnetic tactic. So you can look at those genes specifically and say, how is it that bacteria that are otherwise so different from each other can all perform the same function? And if you know the genes that build the structures that allow them to orient [00:14:00] the magnetic fields, you can look at how different those genes are from each other or has similar they are. Speaker 5: And normally with a lot of these types of behaviors in bacteria, there's something called horizontal gene transfer that explains how it is that otherwise similar bacteria can have different functionalities. For example, you can think of that as bacteria being cars and everybody has sort of the same standard set of know features on the car. But you can add on different features if you want to. So you can upgrade and have other kinds of features like leather [00:14:30] seats or regular seats. And so the two cars that have different kinds of seats are very similar to each other. It's just one that got the leather seats. And so these partly are thought to occur by bacteria exchanging genes with each other. Somebody who wasn't magna tactic maybe got these jeans from another organism, but when people look at the genes that make these mag Nita zones, these magnetic structures inside of the cell, what you see is that they appear to be very, very ancient. Speaker 5: So it doesn't seem like there was a lot of recent [00:15:00] exchange of genes between these various groups of bacteria to make them magna tactic. And it almost seems to map to the ancestral divergence of all of these bacteria from each other. One big idea is that the last common ancestor of all these organisms was mag new tactic and that many, many other bacteria have sort of lost this capability over what would be almost 2 billion years of evolution for these bacteria. And then some have retained it. [00:15:30] Those of that have retained it is it's still serving an advantage for them, or is it just sort of Vista GL and they have it and they're sort of stuck in magnetic fields and they have to deal with it? No, but nobody really knows. Actually. The other option is that there was a period of horizontal gene transfer, but it was a very long time ago so that the signature is sort of lost from, again, a couple of billion years of evolution or divergence from each other, but it really looks like whenever this process happened, it was quite anxious. Speaker 3: [00:16:00] You are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Our guest is Arash [inaudible]. In the next segment, rush talks about organelles in bacterial cells. Speaker 5: [00:16:30] Explain what the Organelle is, so there's a lot of functions within the cell that need to be enclosed in a compartment for various reasons. You can have a biochemical reaction that's not very efficient, but if you put it in within a compartment and concentrates, all of the components that carry that reaction, it can be carried out more efficiently. The other thing is that for some reactions to to happen, you need a chemical environment that's different than the rest of the cellular environment. You can't convert [00:17:00] the whole environment of the cell to that one condition. So by compartmentalizing it you able to carry it out and often the products of these reactions can be toxic to the rest of the cell. And so by componentizing again you can keep the toxic conditions away from the rest of the, so these are the different reasons why you care how to excels. Speaker 5: Like the cells in our body have organelles that do different things like how proteins fold or modify proteins break him down and in bacterial cells it [00:17:30] was thought that they're so simple and so small that they don't really have a need for compartments. Although for many years people have had examples of bacteria that do form compartments. You carrot axles are big and Organelles are really easy to see where the light microscope so you can easily see that the cell has compartments within it. Whereas a lot of bacteria are well studied, are quite simple, they don't have much visible structure within them. And that's maybe even further the bias that there is some divide and this [00:18:00] allowed you carry out access to become more complex, quote unquote, and then it just doesn't exist in bacteria. How is it that they then were revealed? I think they'd been revealed for a long time. Speaker 5: You know, for example, there's electron microscope images from 40 years ago or more where you see for example, photosynthetic bacteria, these are bacteria that can do photosynthesis. They have extensive membrane structures inside of the cell that how's the proteins that harvest light and carry [00:18:30] out photosynthesis and they're, it seems like the idea for having an Organelle is that you just increased it area that you can use for photosynthesis sorta like you just have more solar panels if you just keep spreading the solar panels. Right. So that in this way, by just sort of making wraps of membranes inside of the cell, you just increased the amount of space that you can harvest light. So those were known for a long time and I think it just wasn't a problem that was studied from the perspective of cell biology and cell [00:19:00] organization that much. That's sort of a different angle that people are bringing to it now with many different bacterial organelles. Speaker 5: And part of the reason why it's important to think of it that way is that of course what the products of the bike chemistry inside of the Organelles is fascinating and really important to understand. But to build the organ out itself is also a difficult thing. So for example, you have to bend and remodel the cell membrane [00:19:30] to create, whether it's a sphere or it's wraps of membrane, and that is not a energetically favorable thing to do. It's not easy. So in your cataract cells, we know that there are specific proteins and protein machines. Then their only job is really to bend and remodeled the membrane cause it's not going to happen by itself very easily. And with all of these different structures that are now better recognized in bacteria, we really have no idea how it is that they performed the same function. Is [00:20:00] it using the same types of proteins as what we know in your care at excels or are they using different kinds of proteins? Speaker 5: That was sort of a very basic question to ask. How similar or different is it than how you carry? Like some makes an Oregon own fester was one of the first inspirations for us to study this process in magnatech the bacteria. And what sort of tools are you using to parse this information? In our field we use various tools and it's turned out to be incredibly beneficial [00:20:30] because different approaches have sort of converged on the same answer. So my basic focus was to use genetics as a tool. And the idea here was if we go in and randomly mutate or delete genes in these bacteria and then see which of these random mutations results in a loss of the magnetic phenotype and prevents the cell from making the magnetism Organelles, then maybe we know [00:21:00] those genes that are potentially involved. And so that was sort of what I perfected during my postdoctoral fellowship. Speaker 5: And that was my main approach to study the problem. And then on top of that, the other approach has been really helpful for us. And this is again something we've worked on is once we know some of the candidate proteins to be able to study them, their localization in the cell and they're dynamics, we modify the protein. So that they're linked to fluorescent proteins. So then we can, uh, use for us in this microscopy to follow them within the cell. [00:21:30] Other people, their approach was to say, well, these structures are magnetic. If we break open the cell, we can use a magnet and try to separate the magnesiums from the rest of the cell material. And then if we have the purified magnesiums, we can look to see what kinds of proteins are associated with them and sort of guilt by association. If there is a protein there, it should do something or maybe it does something. Speaker 5: That was the other approach. And the final approach that's been really helpful, [00:22:00] particularly because Magno take it back to your, our diverse, as we talked about earlier, is to take representatives that are really distantly related to each other and sequence their genomes. So get the sequence of their DNA and see what are the things that they have in common with each other. Take two organisms that live in quite different environments and their lineages are quite different from each other, but they both can do this magnetic tactic behavior. And by doing that, people again found [00:22:30] some genes and so if you take the genes that we found by genetics, random mutations of the cell by isolating the magnesiums and cy counting their proteins, and then by doing the genome sequencing, it all converges on the same set of genes. Speaker 2: [inaudible] this concludes part one of our [00:23:00] interview. We'll be sure to catch part two Friday July 12th at noon. Spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. Speaker 7: The link is tiny url.com/calex spectrum. Now a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Speaker 5: Rick Karnofsky [00:23:30] joins me for the calendar on the 4th of July the exploratorium at pier 15 in San Francisco. He's hosting there after dark event for adults 18 and over from six to 10:00 PM the theme for the evening is boom, Speaker 4: learn the science of fireworks, the difference between implosions and explosions and what happens when hot water meets liquid nitrogen tickets are $15 and are available from www.exploratorium.edu [00:24:00] the Santa Clara County Parks has organized an early morning van ride adventure into the back country. To a large bat colony view the bat tornado and learn about the benefits of our local flying mammals. Meet at the park office. Bring a pad to sit on and dress in layers for changing temperatures. This will happen Saturday July six from 4:00 AM to 7:00 AM at Calero County Park [00:24:30] and Santa Clara. Reservations are required to make a reservation call area code (408) 268-3883 Saturday night July six there are two star parties. One is in San Carlos and the other is near Mount Hamilton. The San Carlos event is hosted by the San Mateo Astronomical Society and is held in Crestview Park San Carlos. If you would like to help [00:25:00] with setting up a telescope or would like to learn about telescopes come at sunset which will be 8:33 PM if you would just like to see the universe through a telescope come one or two hours after sunset. Speaker 4: The other event is being hosted by the Halls Valley Astronomical Group. Knowledgeable volunteers will provide you with a chance to look through a variety of telescopes and answer questions about the night. Sky Meet at the Joseph D. Grant ranch county park. [00:25:30] This event starts at 8:30 PM and lasted until 11:00 PM for more information. Call area code (408) 274-6121 July is skeptical hosted by the bay area. Skeptics is on exoplanet colonization down to earth planning. Join National Center for Science Education Staffer and Cal Alum, David Alvin Smith for a conversation [00:26:00] about the proposed strategies to reach other star systems which proposals might work and which certainly won't at the La Pena Lounge. Three one zero five Shattuck in Berkeley on Wednesday July 10th at 7:30 PM the event is free. For more information, visit [inaudible] skeptics.org the computer history museum presents Intel's Justin Ratiner in conversation with John Markoff. Justin Ratner is a corporate [00:26:30] vice president and the chief technology officer of Intel Corporation. He is also an Intel senior fellow and head of Intel labs where he directs Intel's global research efforts in processors, programming systems, security communications, and most recently user experience. Speaker 4: And interaction as part of Intel labs. Ratner is also responsible for funding academic research worldwide through its science and technology centers, [00:27:00] international research institutes and individual faculty awards. This event is happening on Wednesday, July 10th at 7:00 PM the Computer History Museum is located at 1401 north shoreline boulevard in mountain view, California. A feature of spectrum is to present news stories we find interesting. Rick Karnofsky and I present the News Katrin on months and others from the Eulich Research Center in Germany have published the results of their big brain [00:27:30] project. A three d high resolution map of a human brain. In the June 21st issue of science, the researchers cut a brain donated by a 65 year old woman into 7,404 sheets, stain them and image them on a flatbed scanner at a resolution of 20 micrometers. The data acquisition alone took a thousand hours and created a terabyte of data that was analyzed by seven super competing facilities in Canada. Speaker 4: Damn. Making the data [00:28:00] free and publicly available from modeling and simulation to UC Berkeley. Graduate students have managed to more accurately identify the point at which our earliest ancestors were invaded by bacteria that were precursors to organelles like Mitochondria and chloroplasts. Mitochondria are cellular powerhouses while chloroplasts allow plant cells to convert sunlight into glucose. These two complex organelles are thought to have begun as a result of a symbiotic relationship between single cell [00:28:30] eukaryotic organisms and bacterial cells. The graduate students, Nicholas Matzke and Patrick Schiff, examined genes within the organelles and larger cell and compared them using Bayesians statistics. Through this analysis, they were able to conclude that a protio bacterium invaded UCR writes about 1.2 billion years ago in line with earlier estimates and that asino bacterium which had already developed photosynthesis, invaded eukaryotes [00:29:00] 900 million years ago, much later than some estimates which are as high as 2 billion years ago. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 4: The music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Speaker 3: Interview editing assistance by Renee round. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via [00:29:30] email or email address is spectrum dot [inaudible] dot com join us in two weeks. This same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

Dr. Thomas Immel is Assistant Research Physicist at SSL at UC Berkeley. His expertise is interpretation of remote-sensing data and modeling of physical processes in the upper atmosphere & ionosphere. His work includes UV imaging observations from 4 NASA missions. ICON.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews [00:00:30] featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today's interview is part one of two interviews with Thomas Emmel and assistant research physicist at the space sciences laboratory at UC Berkeley. In April, 2013 NASA selected the Ayana spheric connection explorer or icon to be the next Helio physics [00:01:00] explorer satellite mission. The icon mission is to be led by the space sciences laboratory at UC Berkeley. Thomas Emal is the principal investigator of the icon mission icon will provide NASA's heliophysics division with a powerful new capability to determine the conditions in space modified by weather on earth and to understand the way space weather events grow to envelop regions of our planet with dense ionospheric plasma. In today's interview, Dr Emel talks [00:01:30] about Helio physics, the space sciences lab, and small cube sets, which are small satellites being built at universities. Here's that interview, Thomas Ml. Welcome to spectrum. Speaker 4: Thank you. Brad, would you give us a short description of heliophysics? Sure. Here's your physics is sort of a new term and it's used at NASA to describe in shorthand the disciplines of solar and space physics. [00:02:00] Together. It's a little controversial because it means solar physics, obviously space physicists and people who studied the upper atmosphere have sort of felt the shift with changing it to solar physics. A lot of focus went to solar physics. I think icon is icon. Our mission that talking about today is shows a, another view of heliophysics or another focus. Can you describe starting at the earth's surface, the concentric layers of the atmosphere and out to [00:02:30] the ionosphere and beyond? Sure, and how do you define a layer of the atmosphere is sort of where you start. What's the answer? The answer is we defined layers of the atmosphere by their temperature profile or how the temperature changes with altitude. Speaker 4: It's as simple as that and so there are specific layers that on average have a temperature profile, one direction or the other. That means as you go up in altitude, does the temperature drop or increase as you leave the surface of the planet and go up and you're [00:03:00] in the troposphere and as you go higher in altitude, the temperature drops. And that has to do with just basic atmospheric physics. And also the fact that the surface of the planet is what absorbs most of the solar radiation. So it's hot and as you move away from that in an atmosphere that gets thinner without the Tude, the temperature drops. So you go all the way up to the top of the troposphere and you end up with the tropopause. So there's fears and pauses and once you cross the tropopause, you're in the stratosphere, [00:03:30] you know the next sphere and there you've know you've crossed it because temperature start to increase with altitude. Speaker 4: And they increased because of the fact that solar radiation is being actively absorbed in that region of space. That's not happening in the troposphere. The troposphere is transparent of visible light, but the stratosphere is starting to absorb solar radiation that is harmful to life, UV. And so the heating that occurs, the ozone that's in the stratosphere absorbs that [00:04:00] radiation and basically cause the cause of that place being much warmer. So when you're in the stratosphere though, you've already above about 90% of the atmosphere. It's all on a troposphere the stuff we breathe. So the stratosphere warms up all the way to the top. You hit the strata pause and then things turn around again. The chemistry that supports ozone does not work in the mesosphere and so you end up starting to drop in temperature again. So just like in the troposphere, the base of the mesosphere is the warm [00:04:30] straddle pause and it gets cold from that point. Speaker 4: And the coldest place in the vicinity of earth is the top of the menopause where those temperatures have been dropping all the way up to the boundary of space up to about 95 kilometers. At that point, you've reached just about the boundary of space and the temperatures turn around again and and warm all the way up into your in space and the, the atmosphere that's left up there, it's called the thermosphere because it's very hot and it's hot again because it's absorbing a different region [00:05:00] of solar radiation, extreme on fire ultraviolet. So again, protecting life on the earth as part of our atmosphere does that in a number of ways. So the thermosphere in that case is also where we find the ionosphere. The thermosphere is hot because the solar radiation is very energetic at that altitude. So energetic that ionizes the gas and that's where you find the ionosphere, you find a layer of plasma density, so ions and electrons [00:05:30] living together in the same place as plasma and that plasma becomes very dense, about 200 to 300 kilometers above the earth. Speaker 4: That's the dentist plasma between here in the sun. It's why you can hear at night radio tear ran from your ham radio set up if people still do that anymore because you're bouncing radio waves off of that and it's why you can hear, you know, I am stations over a long distance too in the daytime, but it's at night. That layer is all by itself hanging around and you can bounce [00:06:00] radio signals off of it. So then you keep going into space and the plasma density is actually dropped, but you are protected still. You don't enter into interplanetary space until you get out of the magnetosphere. And that's where Earth's magnetic field controls the motion of the plasma. And this is all the way out to 30,000 kilometers. And then you hit the bow shock and the end of the magnetosphere at the magneto pause. Everything has to end and you end up in the solar wind. Speaker 4: And that's interplanetary [00:06:30] space to interstellar space. And interplanetary space are two different things. We've never been to interstellar space. We're working on that. Voyager is on its way and there's a constant argument over whether or not it's out there. So the sun constitutes the helio sphere. It constructs the heliosphere by its energy and blowing out, and that's the sphere around our planetary system that we're part of. That's right. And that's where voyagers headed out of. Right, right out of the heliosphere. It's leaving and it's not coming back. [00:07:00] And I forget what star it's headed off to. So Helio physics is the study of plasmas and space plasmas and how they interact with bodies, uh, and interact with important things such as planetary atmospheres. Basically anywhere our star is an influence that can influence the processes that occur there. Speaker 3: Our guest today is Thomas Animal. In the next segment, Thomas Talks about heliophysics discoveries. [00:07:30] This is KALX Berkley. And what have been the big revelation trends Speaker 4: in heliophysics? Well, the first discovery and Helio physics was the fact that we had radiation belts. It was our first forays into space carried instrumentation. And the first few explorers, which we're still part of that line icon mission, is part of the explore line. But the first ones carried Geiger counters out of University of Iowa where Jim van Allen was in [00:08:00] charge of that department. And where they built those uh, experiments that discovered what we call the van Allen belts now. So that was the first discovery was that we had an environment around us in space that was hazardous and we didn't know where that radiation came from. It fill a Geiger counter just to see what was there. And when you found us a lot more radiation than they thought. The solar cycle has influences throughout the heliosphere. A solar storm for instance, can launch a coronal mass ejection. Speaker 4: They say these are the words [00:08:30] that are starting to show up in the common discussion of space, whether it was coronal mass ejections had come with a solar flare and we've timed these things. We see a coronal mass ejection, a very large one cause a massive magnetic storm at earth. And a good time later it flies by voyage here and it hits the heliopause and radio waves are admitted from the helio pause, the boundary of interstellar space and voyager picks them up. And those were some of the first studies of void. You're trying to figure out how close [00:09:00] it was to the heliopause. Where we are now in the past 10 years is what we understand more now than ever. That the forcing of plasma in near a space is controlled to a much larger degree than we ever suspected or dare to think or dare to discuss. Speaker 4: Really it's controlled by conditions in the lower atmosphere and that the atmospheric layers that we've talked about and talked to all the temperature variations that occur, there's processes that carry energy and momentum beyond past [00:09:30] all those pauses and layers straight from the surface to space. And it's actually biggest discovery in Helio physics in the last decade is that this coupling of the terrestrial atmosphere to spaces stronger than we thought. And what is your focus at the space sciences lab? Well, it has been in the upper atmosphere, in the atmosphere, looking at how solar wind energy propagates through the system. Solar Wind, [00:10:00] it impacts or it effects the MAG Nitas fear and the number of ways creates a shape, stretches it out. The magnetosphere is what processes also learned energy that produces the Aurora. The Aurora is energized by the solar wind. All that energy has to get through the magnetosphere and then down into our atmosphere in a number of ways. Speaker 4: So we're interested in how that energy propagates through the system and how it's eventually deposited in our atmosphere. And then also how our atmosphere and the [inaudible] sphere as you energize them and [00:10:30] make them more conductive through ionization by Aurora, how it feeds back through the system. So magnetosphere occurrence is a current system, electrical current that heats the atmosphere and how you turn that current on and off during a magnetic storm. The timing and how processes work together as sort of as an engineering problem is something I've been focused on for the past 10 years. That's changed over the years too. I've been sliding to lower latitudes where the plasma density is actually highest [00:11:00] and it's highest for two reasons. One because the sun is overhead more often at low latitudes and I NYSE in the atmosphere more actively or more strongly, but also because there's magnetic field tends to trap the plasma at low latitudes. Speaker 4: And when I say that the plasma is densest in the atmosphere between here in the sun, it's actually the low latitude ionosphere which has the dense plasma that interacts most strongly with the earth's atmosphere. Um, and we know now that the [00:11:30] energy and momentum that propagates up from the lower atmosphere that a lot of that energy is coming up from low latitudes as well. Cause that's where a lot of the energy goes in and tropical rainforest and in the tropical weather systems that curved from day to day with interesting periodicities. The reason you end up with large coupling from the little atmosphere to the upper atmosphere is because the atmosphere can be caused to move a wave like manner and we call it a tide, just like tides in the ocean. The atmosphere tends to have some [00:12:00] 12 hour, 24 hour period of city. Say you have a planet with the Brazilian rainforest on it and that fires up at two in the afternoon every day, day after day you start moving the atmosphere in a periodic manner and you end up growing these really, really large waves in the atmosphere that propagate up into space. Speaker 4: And so it's the combination of the tropical forcing and the tropical ion sphere, which is dense and captured by the magnetic field really creates this interesting environment and we're a great laboratory [00:12:30] for understanding atmosphere, space coupling. Speaker 3: Yeah. Listening to spectrum, I am k a l x Berkeley. Our guest today is Thomas Emma. In the next segment he talks about solar energy interacting with Earth's magnetosphere,Speaker 4: the Aurora [inaudible]. Can you just describe the Aurora for us? The Aurora is a feature of the planet [00:13:00] at high latitudes in the north and the south, the Aurora Borealis of North Aurora Australis down south. What it is, it is light coming from the energization of our atmosphere by space plasma. The Sun obviously has a lot of energy and solar atmosphere is constantly moving out and it's carrying a lot of energy with it. But so that energy arrives at earth as solar plasma blowing past the planet. So those are the energies we're talking about. The magnetosphere as sort of a, [00:13:30] it energizes all of the solar wind particles to higher energies and dumps them into our atmosphere. And the Aurora is what you see when you go out on your deck and Alaska and look up. It's the signature of that process occurring. And when the Aurora's very active, that means that process is very active and there's a lot of energy coming into our atmosphere from the solar wind. Speaker 4: What's great is a Nikon camera has great red response, so you can point your camera to the sky and you can put it to a two second exposure and it will see things [00:14:00] that you can't see with your eyes. Many people now have great auroral imagers in their mitts. They may not even know that they've got that capability. So the waves that are created around the equator in the low latitudes, in thinking about waves on the ocean, they're moving in a specific direction. Are these waves also moving in the specific direction? Are they sort of emanating everywhere? And that's a good question. So the really large scale waves in [00:14:30] the atmosphere, the first thing is to realize that once you've got a wave moving in the atmosphere, there's nothing really to stop it. The waves aren't going to crash on the shore somewhere. They're going to go up and they're going to grow with altitude, their waves, storms derive, and I am talking about the large scale continental scale waves that the wavelength is as large as a continent, at least horizontally, vertically. Speaker 4: There's about 2030 kilometers, but 2030 kilometers is a quarter or a third of the way to space. So they're still large even [00:15:00] though 2030 kilometers doesn't sound that far. In any case, those waves grow with altitude and by the time you get to the edge of space, a wave that might have had a half degree centigrade or Celsius variability to it in amplitude, by the time it gets to the boundary of space and crosses it, it can have an amplitude of 20 or 30 degrees Kelvin or our Celsius. It's the same thing. Uh, it's one way to measure the size of that wave. With that wave also comes a large wind component. The winds, the [00:15:30] motion of the atmosphere is going to go with it. It's this sloshing and the temperature comes from the compression and the expansion of the gas. As the wave moves around the planet, do they go in different directions? Speaker 4: Yeah, we talk about them. We see there's a number of technical terms for the waves. There's eastward and westward traveling waves and some of them are larger than others. This atmosphere supports a couple of waves eastward at a couple of ways, westward more than others. Some of these waves are excited [00:16:00] more naturally than others just because of the source of the excitation, the source of the excitation of the continents. If you look at a map of the earth where lightning occurs on earth, for instance, it's always over the continents because the solar energy is really just being deposited right there at the surface and the atmosphere starts to be put in a motion and the water vapor starts to condense. As the atmosphere rises and you get storms, a tropical rainforest and Africa, tropical rainforests in South America and also a third really large [00:16:30] region of tropical forcing to Southeast Asia. Speaker 4: Those three places on the earth firing off two in the afternoon in the South East Asia than two in the afternoon, Africa, then South American and do that over again every day. It's like a drum head problem, if you know what I mean. If you put a little sand on a drum and you start tapping it in one position, you can form a pattern. You would see where else you could tap it at the same time to reinforce that pattern. Now the rainy seasons of of those different places changes throughout the year. [00:17:00] That's one of the reasons we know it's from the lower atmosphere because we've observed conditions in space that changed with the rainy seasons and there's no reason to have rainy seasons in space. But we do and so we look immediately to where we do have a rainy season, which is in the troposphere. And so the recent developments and numerical model supports the idea that there's a strong connection between the tropic sun conditions and space. Speaker 4: Have you been involved in a lot of past satellite projects at the space science lab or a few [00:17:30] of them? I've been involved in too. Recently icon, which I'm leading and a small satellite re recently completed a flue called cinema that was a student led cubes hat, so a 10 by 10 by 30 centimeter satellite that we built at the lab designed and built. Before that I was analyzing data. I've been spending 10 years analyzing data from missions that we've supported or built and so combining data from a number of [00:18:00] different instruments that space sciences lab has built or satellites that space sciences lab has built. It's been something I've done at the lab, but this is my first time leading a mission. Speaker 5: This is k a l x Berkeley. The show is spectrum. Our guest is Thomas Emma, a physicist at UC Berkeley's space sciences lab. Speaker 4: How has the [00:18:30] cube sat changed the way satellite measurements are made? Well, in some respects that remains to be seen. There's been a number of advances in the capabilities that cubes hats can carry in terms of pointing and power and the instruments have all had to shrink in size as well. But there's a number of capabilities that have grown over the years that allow us to do that. Cell phones have been a big driver and shrinking small processors and getting [00:19:00] into low power processors and communications gear as well. And what's been nice is working with the students here at Berkeley actually. They've had a lot of experience in designing and programming processors for the purposes that we need to fly in space. So there's a number of universities working in this area now and I think they're just getting better. Cinema has been a good experiment for us. Speaker 4: We have four of them in the works this year. There's two Korean cinema. It's going up. [00:19:30] Kate, you young, he university was our partner. There's a lot of interest in supporting keeps that launches at NASA and throughout different government agencies and so you know, we went on a national reconnaissance vehicle, but a, it didn't cost us much. It was fantastic that we had that opportunity and NASA has worked with NRO and other agencies to make this possible for universities to do these. There were a number of university keeps that's on that launch. So these cubes hats that NASA embraces, I guess [00:20:00] that's the only way to get up is NASA says, yeah, this is worth putting up there, or are there now independent ways to get to space? I think NASA is where we'd like to start and that's who we've gone to before. NSF is really the organization that was the first to support a cube type program per se. Speaker 4: And National Science Foundation doesn't have a launch service, but NASA does. So there was a close collaboration early on and some key individuals at NASA Kennedy have taken a remarkable interest [00:20:30] in fostering that program and develop basically what they call a educational launch. Alana was, uh, is the acronym that we went on. Alana. Alana supports a number of, keeps getting into space. You propose to Atlanta, NSF sends them $20,000 or that's it was for us and you get your slot and you get your orbit and you're on orbit for many years. So it's really a great opportunity. So right now it's really good to work with NASA on this, on the cinema [00:21:00] projects. There's quite a bit of student involvement in those. I understand. Can you talk about that? Right. So National Science Foundation supported Space Sciences Labs, cinema project, which is a cube set for high ions, magnetic fields, c I n electrons, it went on it. Speaker 4: It's a great acronym for a very tough thing, but it's a base whether mission, it's to measure the particle environment in space and the magnetic fields. So that was great. You know, we [00:21:30] miss dearly, Bob Lynne, who was the former head of space sciences lab for more than a decade and the principal investigator on one of our explorers Hesi and the principal investigator on cinema, he put that international team together between CUNY University where he was an adjunct professor. We worked with imperial college as well on that mission and they provided the smallest magnetometer have ever seen for a space instrument. It was a high quality, high precision magnetometer, way better than even your iPhone if you can imagine. Also [00:22:00] we had a detector group at LBL and a group providing an electronic part and aces from France. So it was an unbelievable confluence of people and scientific interests that built cinema. Speaker 4: The student aspect was, there were students, uh, from the start in mechanical engineering who really came up with the initial design of a cube sat and it was a couple of masters students, one of whom is still a space sciences lab, David Glaser. And it was great working with the Mechanical Engineering Department [00:22:30] because it was that department of which took the controls problem of how you spin a spacecraft based on inputs from space, the Sun Sensor, we had the magnetometer measurements that you're making. So that was a remarkable achievement. I thought on the mechanical engineering side and working with the electrical engineers, we had a number of cs IEC students as well and really had a good team. They're working on interfacing with the mechanical engineering students who were working on the attitude control or working [00:23:00] with the imperial college students and researchers who were providing magnetometer those a number of difficult tasks that we had some great students come through and everyone got their chance to save cinema. It was a seat of your pants operation. The thing flew and it's functional. We are going to fly the next one with some updates that's gonna work better, so we need more students. The wonderful problem with students is that they graduate to go onto great careers and other places and so we'd like to have those people back. They're not coming [00:23:30] back, so we need to get a new crop of ex students and mechanical engineers and we'll probably be flyering at soda again. Speaker 5: That concludes part one of our two part interview with Thomas Emmylou. Part two will air on 14 in that interview, Dr Hamill discusses icon mission process start to finish. The icon explorer mission website is icon dot s s l. Dot. berkeley.edu [00:24:00] now a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Renee route Speaker 6: present the calendar this Tuesday, June 4th the San Francisco ASCA scientists lecture series. We'll be hosting a talk by two sides. Officers at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. You Know Greg Shamor and Kevin Wilson will speak about the potential of stem cell research to help in diseases such as diabetes, spinal cord injury, [00:24:30] heart night disease, and neurological disorders. They will also address the recent restrictions on research and where it is heading today. This June 4th event will be held that the Soma Street food park in San Francisco, the city's first permanent food truck pod. It will begin at 7:00 PM biological anthropologist, Helen Fisher of Rutgers. We'll speak with KQ eds, Michael Krasney about the science of love and attraction. On Tuesday, June 4th [00:25:00] at 7:30 PM at the North Theater in San Francisco, Fisher has written five books on the evolution and future of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery, and divorce, gender differences in the brain, the chemistry of romantic love and human personality types. Speaker 6: And why are we fall in love with one person rather than another? Tickets start at $20 and are available at cal academy. Dot. O. R. G. On Monday, June 10th Brian Day [00:25:30] deleted Lunar Science Institute director at NASA will give a talk about the latest lunar discoveries as litter robotics continue to advance. Our understanding of the moon continues to change. Well, the lunar surface has been previously viewed as a static desert environment. New evidence points to a far more dynamic moonscape than expected. Dr. David will discuss these new discoveries and elaborate on some of NASA's more recent and lunar exploration missions. The event will be held on Monday, June 10th at 7:30 PM in the California [00:26:00] Academy of Sciences. Planetarium. Tuesday we have tickets for the event. Visit the Academy website@calacademy.org the Computer History Museum at 1401 north shoreline boulevard in mountain view is hosting senior vice president and director of IBM Research John Kelly on June 11th at 7:00 PM Museum CEO John Holler, well moderate a conversation with Kelly on topics ranging from his background and the path that led him to IBM. [00:26:30] The history of research there, IBM's Watson and cognitive computing to the newest IBM lab in Nairobi, Kenya. IBM says that Africa is destined to become an important growth market. The company admission is free. register@computerhistory.org Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [00:27:00] spectrum is to present news stories we find interesting. Rick Karnofsky and Renee arou present. The news engineers at UC Berkeley have created a new hydro gel that can be manipulated by exposure to light alone. The team inspired by plant's ability to grow towards light sources [00:27:30] created their gel by combining synthetic elastic proteins with one cell thick sheets of graphite known as graphene. Graphene generates heat when exposed to light, which can cause synthetic proteins to release water. The two materials are combined to form of hydrogen with one side that is more porous than the other. This allows the material to mimic the way plant cells shrink and expand unevenly in response to light. This hydrogen also shrinks and evenly, albeit more precisely allowing to bend and move solely in response [00:28:00] to light. Create or speculate that the shape changing Gel could have applications in drug delivery and tissue engineering. Speaker 6: Mathematician Tang Jang of the University of New Hampshire in Durham published unimportant number theory proof and this week's issue of angels of mathematics. Yang proved a weak form of the twin prime conjecture and as the first to establish the existence of a finite bound four prime gaps. Prime numbers are natural numbers greater [00:28:30] than one that I have no positive divisors other than one and themselves. Interestingly, many come in pairs that have a difference of two for example, three and five 17 and 19 or 101 and 103 Jang showed that for some integer n that is at most 70 million. There are infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by n. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: [00:29:00] spectrum is archive on iTunes university. Our special link is tiny url.com/k a l ex spectrum. The music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. [00:29:30] Our email address is spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

Steven Glaser is the Intelligent Infrastructure team leader for CITRIS and a Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. Glaser talks about wireless sensor networks, geothermal energy testing and his earthquake simulation.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm your host, Brad Swift. Today's interview is with UC Berkeley Professor Steven Glaser. Stephen is a faculty member of the Department of Civil and environmental engineering. He's currently [00:01:00] the intelligent infrastructure team leader for citrus, the center for information technology research in service to society. He has also a distinguished affiliated professor at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. In our interview, Stephen Glaser talks about engineering education, his research and field projects Speaker 4: onto the interview. Steven Glacier, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Thank you for having me. With increasing frequency, [00:01:30] I hear engineers suggesting that engineering education needs to engage students imaginations and provide more opportunity for them to design and build things from day one when they start an education in engineering. What are your feelings about the future of engineering education? Well, it's in a way, it's two pieces. So what kids aren't doing nowadays is playing with physical things when they're young. So they're not necessarily running around [00:02:00] in the woods with their friends tearing stuff up. They're not working on cars, they're not building radios. So when they want to go out and do things in a laboratory or do things in the field, it's very difficult for, so that would be something good to bring back another hand if they want to do computery things, everything's fine and dandy because they have the experience doing that. Speaker 4: Then my lab, I have my own machine shop. I have a lays and bandsaw and mill and whatnot. I'm lucky to have students. I have [00:02:30] to up now, they're very good machinists, so my students all have to be able to do things with their hands. I've been lucky enough to attract them. Is it too late to sort of introduce that into the curriculum in college as an undergraduate? Would engineering benefit from a studio? Oh, I think it would, and I think you're starting to see that. I guess it's the maker movement. It's sometimes called our dean. Sastry is very into that now and do you feel that a unconventional Speaker 3: [00:03:00] path to becoming an engineer as an advantage Speaker 4: in a way, but it's not cost effective? Everybody has an unconventional path. I think you'd gain a lot. I think you see engineering more broadly and I think we see different types of solution. With a broader background, Speaker 3: how would you characterize the conventional path in engineering? Speaker 4: The conventional path would be somebody who you know who's good in math and science. Hopefully [00:03:30] somebody who was interested in things and they've taken math and science in high school. They'd come in, they'd do their engineering, which is quite focused because we have so much to learn and go off to work and they're going to be better at certain things. When I finished high school, I was going to go off to become a philosophy major, which I did. I didn't take math senior year. I didn't need it. I was going to be a liberal arts students, so the students that [00:04:00] do have this better background, they're always going to be better than math than me because they learn the fundamentals. When they were young, instead of me having to pick it up when I was 30. Speaker 3: Your path, the choices you made going into philosophy and then pretty radically altering even from that into being an operations engineer. How were you thinking about engineering at that point? Speaker 4: I'd never followed a path. I kind of followed what I was interested in and [00:04:30] things led to another. So I always read from a very, very young age and you know, literature, technical pieces. I always worked on things, whether it was building models when I was very young or go carts, fixing cars and whatnot. So I'm always was a very good mechanic, studied philosophy and that whole time I was working construction. I got an operating engineer's union and while I was still in college, so I went through the apprentice program. They're learning [00:05:00] to operate heavy equipment, fix heavy equipment, then worked as a driller for about eight years. So I goes fixing things, working with soils. Then I worked for a year in Iraq. My boss there, uh, had a background of being a operating engineer and then going to school and him and his wife talked me into, oh, you need to become an engineer. Speaker 4: And I don't know, one thing led to another and here I am. I never planned on being a faculty member. In fact, when I finished [00:05:30] my phd I didn't want to be a faculty member. Pieces just happened. And here I am at Berkeley. What sort of drilling were you doing? A, we are drilling deep foundations, so uh, might be a five foot diameter hole, a hundred foot deep, which we then use for foundations, for buildings, for retaining walls, for subway excavations of subway stations. I did a lot of work on the red line in the subway in Washington DC. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [00:06:00] our guest today is Stephen Glaser and the next segment he talks about two of his research projects, one in the lab and one in the field. This is k a l X. Berkeley. Speaker 4: Can you give us an overview of your research? We have a number of projects [00:06:30] different yet they have some fundamental similarities. One of the projects laboratory earthquakes. I designed and make a particularly fine nano seismic sensor. So I can measure displacements down to a pico meter that's tend to the minus 12th is very, very small and I can measure signals that accurately for very wide frequency band from about 10 kilo hertz to two megahertz. So I got like the ultimate seismometer. [00:07:00] So then I can set up experiments in the lab where I can control the geometry. So I know all the mathematical descriptions of the system. I have my perfect sensors, I can load in conditions that I know what's going on. And then when I pick up the signals from the small earthquakes we, cause I can start looking at very small details like what are the little motions that lead up to large sliding. Speaker 4: So I have a block of plexiglass on a very big plate of plexiglass. [00:07:30] So my earthquake is when the whole block moves. But something has to happen before we get frictional movement. And I believe you keep looking small and smaller. You have these small little contact disparities. You have to have little pops at these small areas. And then when do you get a chain reaction? Each pop releases a little energy to the contacts around it and you know at some magic point, enough energies released that all the contacts start popping and you [00:08:00] get an earthquake. And from the lab to a real world setting, how are you translating that kind of work into something that could be in the field? Good question. And it's not universally accepted that material we're using, we're not using rock, we're using plexiglass, but at the stresses we're working with at models ductal rock very well. Speaker 4: So rock that might be on parts of the San Andreas. There's theories [00:08:30] and lots of work that shows that the way the geometry of contacts is fractal, so it scales self similarly, so might surface on a small slider block actually can scale in terms of geometry to a very large fault. We just had a paper in nature that certain earthquakes have lots of high frequency shaking, so the ground shakes more rapidly. The higher frequencies are more dangerous because it reaches, the [00:09:00] resonant frequency is structure. So there's more damage to Hoku. Earthquake was particularly rich and high-frequency. How do you explain it? So my student had some ideas and it turns out it has to do with how long the fall teals between earthquakes. So we could show the mechanism, the lab, the mechanism to fields and now we have an explanation of what's going on in the field instead of strictly an observation. Speaker 4: But I can control things in the laboratory and see that yes, it was due to this [00:09:30] factor. So the healing is the time between earthquakes when the stasis is stable, right? Cause the surfaces, chemical reactions, they start to melt together on some level. Even simply putting a block on a table, the longer it sits, the frictional resistance does go up because it's chemical reactions that are giving us a sheer strength. And then some of your other research, [00:10:00] a big project looking at snow hydrology and the Sierras. This important because the state gets about 65% of the water from snow in the Sierras. And it turns out we don't know beans about how much snow is in the Sierra. So you have Frank Gerkey goes out a few times in the winter. He goes to let's say 40 sites and the Sierra sticks this pole in the ground and that really isn't giving us much information about how much snow there is. Speaker 4: So what we do is we go into a basin, [00:10:30] we'll pick a patch, approximately a square kilometer, put in let's say 20 sensing stations, each one measuring snow depth, temperature, humidity, solar radiation, soil moisture at four depths in the soil and matrix suction at four depths in the soil. We report back the data every 15 minutes. And then we might put like an American river basin, which we're working on now. We'll have 18 such [00:11:00] networks right across the basin and we end up with the network of networks. So each of these local networks sends back to our selves here. They're by cell phone, modem, or satellite modem. The data will come back here. So then you can correlate all that and create real time. We have real time data and our application we're working on now is hydroelectric generation. So we're working with the state, [00:11:30] with the Department of Water Resources. Uh, we're starting to work with PG and nee and southern California Edison. Speaker 4: On doing demonstration projects and ultimately then with the success of these, you would want to see this proliferate across the Sierra. So then I'll do the whole Sierras and we'd like to take these pieces and make a larger system, which would be a water information system for the state where we would also bring in groundwater information around water, isn't it regulated and we [00:12:00] know really little about the ground water situation, but the general project would be through citrus, our center for information technology research for the interest of society. That's one of the CIS psi four centers that were started by Grey Davis and were interdisciplinary in the building. We have people from law, from art production, from various engineering, all working together, sitting together to look at societal problems. And part of the goals [00:12:30] of the CIS PSI institutes, the four across the state is to take the knowledge from campus and put it in a form that it will help the financial wellbeing of the state and the physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, the state Speaker 7: [inaudible]. You're listening to spectrum oil expert. [00:13:00] Our guest today is Stephen Glaser. In the next segment, he talks about his geothermal project. Speaker 4: Let's talk a little bit about your geothermal research you're doing and Oh, we have an interesting experiment because we can blow ourselves up. First, we'll start with the idea of enhanced geothermal systems. So we usually think of a geothermal [00:13:30] system like that, the geysers up by Santa Rosa where there's natural water and you stick a straw on the ground and steam comes up and runs your generator. But that's exceedingly rare. I think that geysers might be the only field in the world that's making profit without any kind of subsidy. So what we do have as lots of hot, dry rock, there's hot rock everywhere. So the ideas, you would drill two wells, you would connect them through fractured rock, you'd [00:14:00] pump cold water down one well, push it through the fractured hot rock and pull hot water out of the other and make a cycle. Run that through the generator, then pump it back down. Speaker 4: There's been a lot of work. We're slowly moving towards that becoming a reality. But there's this idea that you could use super critical CO2 so that CO2 under very high pressure, that it's not quite a liquid. It's not quite a gas, but it has good heat carrying capacities, but very low [00:14:30] friction, very low. A Dutch would say viscosity cause it's a fluid. However, nobody has done any measurements with the heat capacity, the state behavior of super-critical CO2 going through hot pours media. So that's what we're doing. The models show one thing, but is it true? We're running experiments in the lab and we can go up to 5,000 PSI pressure and 200 degrees centigrade. So fairly extreme conditions. [00:15:00] We run the Sea of two through a pressure vessel filled with sand and then the vessels heated and we can do all sorts of measurements inside, outside the vessel. Speaker 4: The volume flowing through the mass, flowing through how the heat is taken from the sand into the fluid as it moves through the column. And we can then verify the models, help the modelers improve their program. And we've just written a paper where what we noticed [00:15:30] is that there's a change in the conductivity of the CO2 as it changes temperature that's large enough that it causes problems in the model because the model doesn't take it into account. So this will give us a more realistic view, whether the scheme actually is so much more efficient than using water. Now that we're talking about geology, do you have any comments about fracking? It's become sort of the controversy does your, yeah, I think the New York Times [00:16:00] is kind of responsible for that in and of itself. Fracking's just fine. I think what we've seen with gas production, there's a loophole in the EPA laws and in a lot of states they're very strict with fracturing for oil production and you don't hear horror stories about oil production fracturing and has done all the time. Speaker 4: So the gas, the problems is that they don't take proper care with the fracking fluid. They're not careful with how they cement in their pipes. [00:16:30] A variety of pieces like that. So it's the way the operations are done. It isn't inherently a problem with fracking. And by being careful, you're probably meaning spending money to do it right. Money. Right. And that's the motivation to do it haphazardly is you can do it cheaply, right? Cause in, in the end you need to do something with the fracking fluid and if you just dump it on site, that's obviously cheaper than trucking it away and treating it. If you think about it, the fractured you're growing or [00:17:00] on the order of meters, tens of meters, and they're taking place a kilometer deep, they are not affecting the surface, they're not effecting the awkward aquifers. The problems would be that the pipe which you're pumping the pressurized fluid down, if there's leaks there that would affect the near surface water, you're pulling the gas out. Speaker 4: Well, if the pipe isn't cemented in very well, then you would have leakage of gas, but it can be done totally safe. So it's really a matter of getting the regulation right and getting the [inaudible] in place [00:17:30] and right, exactly. That's the physical makeup of the shale. Make the fracking process, uh, do you need to be more cautious in that environment or there are some side effects to that that don't happen in other geological formations. Each formation is going to be different. What you would watch out for in your design and operation in general, you know, if we leave out the poor operation is that you don't want to damage your petroleum reservoir. So think [00:18:00] of it as a layer of rock that has the gas and then you'd have a cap and then a cap beneath it. And if you run your fractures through your cap, then you might lose your natural gas to some other formation. The chance of it going kilometer and a half to the surface is pretty insignificant. And from a given fracture, there isn't that much gas coming out anyway. You've got to have lots and lots of fractures because shales pretty well in permeable. That's why we thought we'd never get any [00:18:30] kind of patrolling production out of the shales. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 6: Mrs KALX Berkley, the show is spectrum. Our guest is professor Stephen Glazer, the civil environmental engineer Speaker 4: [00:19:00] with smart infrastructure, kind of a focus of citrus. Is there growing concern that the internet is being seen as not so secure? There's a tremendous amount of work being done now on, on cyber security. One way around it might be to have, you know, like a private internet cause actually to have communication system with let's say water and [00:19:30] power utilities. There is no reason to also be able to access Facebook off of that. In a way. Our telephone system is a pretty complex system, wide ranging system that is much more secure. So the military has their own system but does lots of work being done on that. We're not worrying about it. We can use, you know, the encryption that's available now. Uh, does it mean that the Chinese government can't hack it? Yeah, of course they can, but they don't care how much [00:20:00] snow is at big creek. Speaker 4: If the Internet becomes a means for people to do political action by denial of service and then everybody's kind of shutdown, slowed down, right. Things aren't operating. That's the more broadly based concern that I would hope is being worked on. But you're pulled in two directions cause one by making the Internet so democratic and open, it's open to people who want to make mischief as well as people who want to use it legitimately. [00:20:30] You know, the more freedom you have, the easier it is to take advantage. And you kind of then have to say, well yeah, like our legal system, it's worth a couple of guilty people getting away with a crime than having an innocent person go to jail. So I think a society, we have to decide where we want to be on this and it's certainly not an easy question to look at. Speaker 4: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you want to talk about? Oh, maybe the fine quality [00:21:00] of our students here at cal. I think we sometimes forget, but then I talk with friends at other schools and it's pretty amazing with the quality of people we have here and it makes my life tremendously easier. What is it about the students that you uh, notice in terms of their capabilities or their personalities? They're really interested in what they're doing. They're interested in understanding what they're doing. They're interested in doing new things. They're interested [00:21:30] in enhancing knowledge and they're interested in working hard. Sounds like a, a good environment to be a teacher. Your teaching responsibilities are what now? I teach a graduate class on sensors and signal interpretation. I teach an undergraduate class on geological engineering. Great. Stephen Glaser. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Brad, thank you for having me. Speaker 7: Aw. [00:22:00] Oh, spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a short leap to the spectrum Harker type, tiny url.com/kalx spectrum. That's tiny URL, [inaudible] dot com [00:22:30] slash Calex spectrum. A feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find interesting. Speaker 3: Rick Karnofsky and I present the news nature news reports that UCLA Chemistry Professor Patrick Heron well stand trial for three counts [00:23:00] of violating health and safety standards over the 2008 death of one of his research assistants. She heard Bono songy suffered third degree burns after the term butyl lithium. She was drawing from a vial caught fire. She was not wearing a lab coat. Heron could face four and a half years in jail. The UC regents made a plea agreement for their own role in the accident last year. President of the Laboratory Safety Institute, Jim Kauffman, because the case [00:23:30] a game changer that will significantly affect how people think about their responsibilities. fuse.org reports a study that began during the postdoctoral work of northern Arizona's universities. Gregory Cup Barrasso is shedding light on how adults and their dogs and kids share a microbial communities cup. RSO and assistant professor biology says, what we've been learning is the microbial communities that live in and on our [00:24:00] bodies can play a big role in our health. Speaker 3: What was exciting about this study was how cohabitation effected microbial communities. It's a unique data set. We all have bacteria in our digestive tract, but cup RSO explained that while any two humans are 99% identical in their genomes, their gut communities of bacteria may be up to 50% different. It's those differences that interest researchers who seek to link them to the origins of obesity, malnutrition or [00:24:30] even colon cancer cup also asks what factors are driving the difference between the microbial communities in my gut and your gut? This study was an attempt to see if who you're living with is one of the factors. As it turns out, individuals from the same household, particularly couples, share more of their microbiome than they do with other individuals, and having a dog resulted in an even greater similarity because of shared contact with the animal Speaker 7: [00:25:00] [inaudible]. No. We also mentioned a few of the science and technology [00:25:30] events happening locally Speaker 3: for the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky joins me for the calendar later today. Physicist Fabiola is your naughty co-discoverer of the Higgs Boson at the large Hadron collider in Geneva, Switzerland. We'll deliver a free public lecture titled the Higgs Boson and our life. The talk is part of a three day celebration of the work of University of California Berkeley physicist Bruno's Zunino, whose theory of supersymmetry [00:26:00] has emerged as a possible explanation for the number and variety of fundamental particles seen in nature. That's today, Friday, May 3rd 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM at the Chevron Auditorium International House, 2199 Piedmont Avenue in Berkeley spectrum airs at the same time as NPR is science Friday and we thank you for choosing us. But next week you'll have two chances to catch their team in the bay area, the [00:26:30] Jasper Ridge biological preserve and celebrating their 40th anniversary science. Fridays I ref Lado. Well discuss reviving the science statecraft dialogue with professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford Christopher field, cofounder of method Adam Lowry and Noah director Jane Lubchenco. Speaker 3: On Thursday May 9th at 5:30 PM this event takes place at the Synnex Auditorium, six for one night [00:27:00] way in Palo Alto. Then on Friday, May 10th there will be a live broadcast of science Friday at 10:00 AM at the lead ka-shing center at Stanford. These events are free, but will be first come first serve for details. Go to j r DP. Dot stanford.edu best selling author Mary Roach returns to the bone room, presents for a talk in signing of her latest book, Gulp Adventures on the elementary [00:27:30] canal in Gulp, America's funniest science writer. So says the Washington Post takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour of our insides. That's Thursday, May 9th 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM it's a free event at the bone room. 1573 Solano avenue in Berkeley. Wonder Fest is having a free event, the Soma Street food park, four to eight 11th street in San Francisco. [00:28:00] On Tuesday May 14th at 7:00 PM Elliot portrait professor of astronomy and physics at UC Berkeley. We'll be discussing the modern origin story from the Big Bang two habitable planets. He'll describe how the university evolved from its smooth beginnings to its current chunky state. Emphasizing how gravity reign supreme and builds up the planets, stars and galaxies required for biological evolution. [00:28:30] Visit Wonder fest.org for more Info. Science at the theater presents eight big ideas. Eight Berkeley lab scientists present eight game changing concepts in eight minutes each. That's Monday, May 13th 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, 2025 Addison Street in downtown Berkeley. This event is free. Speaker 7: Okay. Speaker 3: [00:29:00] The music heard during the show is written and produced by Alex Simon Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 8: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is [inaudible] spectrum dot k a l s@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

A discussion between two physicists on the Higgs Boson and Super Symmetry. Simone Pagan-Griso, Postdoc Chamberlain Fellow at LBNL, works on the ATLAS team at CERN. Will Johnson, a Physicist at Sandia National Lab in Livermore CA, has worked on the Collider Detector at Fermilab.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. 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 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm your host today. In today's interview, Rick Karnofsky talks with two physicists about the search for the Higgs Boson and supersymmetry at cern, Simona Pagan. Greece is a postdoctoral Chamberlain fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. [00:01:00] Some money first appeared on spectrum on September 23rd, 2011 you can listen to that show online at iTunes u soon after that appearance, somone moved to Switzerland to work in close proximity with the atlas team at cern on among other things, the search for the Higgs Boson. Rick is also joined today by will Johnson, a physicist at Sandia national laboratories in Livermore, California during will's Phd Studies in physics at UC Davis. [00:01:30] He worked on the collider detector at Fermi lab in Illinois. Somani was visiting Berkeley recently and we invited him and will for a followup interview. During the interview you will hear mention of GE v which stands for Giga Electron volt. Speaker 2: The Electron volt is a unit of mass and energy head to Wikipedia for more on the electron volt. Now the interview, welcome back to spectrum. Thank [00:02:00] you. Thank you. Glad to be back. Let's get to it. A few months ago it was widely reported in the media that scientists have discovered the Higgs. Can you walk us through exactly what people found and what bearing that has? Yes. Just a reminder. We look for coalitions of protons at the very high energy in this accelerator in Switzerland, and so what we really look at these, the products of these collisions and we tried to reconstruct for what to see what happened at the very [00:02:30] smallest Cade few months ago. We helped enough data and our analysis of the data got to enough refined to be able to distinguish from the existing of expose explosive with that mass and the not existence. And so we actually found it. Speaker 2: So that was awkward of success in the official masses and efficient mass is around 125 GV GVU is the unit information that we use for the mass. So is a roughly equivalent to the mass of a, [00:03:00] and what detector was this all? So we have two main detectors. General purpose for these kinds of searches are the large Hadron collider. One is called atlas, which is the detector I'm working on and other trees called the CMS. So both experiments had independent analysis on independent at the samples and they confirmed the existence of the heat disposal. So we had two different experiments confirming the same result, which of course is always good, right? And now [00:03:30] what's next? Now? Next, our first call is to measure more accurately the property of this new particular we found to really establish if it is fully the he exposed on or fetus any deviation. Speaker 2: There are several reasons why we may expect some deviations, but up to now I have to say everything looks like he exposed to as predicted by the most simple theory what kind of deviations would, so you can have several things if you want precision measurement that are ongoing [00:04:00] to determine if this is really the particle we were expecting. But on top of that there is a full harder program looking for other different products of these collisions which may show deviations from what we expect. We mentioned I think last time, very briefly one today, which is really popular in the last decades, which is called supersymmetry. This is probably the very next big thing that we are hunting for. Stepping back a little bit, in [00:04:30] the months that interceded are for sharing with you and the report of the Higgs, what if any big steps in data analysis or the way that you guys were running experiments had to change? Speaker 2: Since we talked? One big step came from data. When we're collisions that almost doubled the amount of data we had since we talked and that discovery was announced. One collision happens, but you may have multiple collision happening at the same [00:05:00] time and you need to disentangle them from what you see. A lot of work was put into actual decent tankers, these interactions, and this was really a key to be able to analyze efficiently. So enormous progress was made. Just to give you a rough ideas in our detector, one part of it try to track charged particles transverse in our detector. What you end up having are different points in different [00:05:30] layers of Europe. Sub detectors are you need to connect them to actually track the particles. So this seems easy to have one or two particle, but then you end up having more than a thousand of particles and you need to disentangle who belongs to whom. Speaker 2: Right? So this for example is an area I've worked a little bit hard to to be able to make sure that we actually can efficiently distinguished different particles and not be confused [00:06:00] by our connecting points, which are actually belonging to different particles. Tens are there still improvements being made to the data analysis? Of course, improvements are always ongoing. We worked very hard on that. Right now the larger collider is shutting down for a two years period and on February it will actually shut down and work will be made on the accelerator itself for two years almost. [00:06:30] And we expect to be back in taking data for physics analysis the first months of 2015 and the reason we do this works not only as maintainers, but actually to improve one big thing is that we will be able to raise the energy of the collision of disc pratum's almost double it a little bit less. Speaker 2: So right now we are working at around 8,000 GV. After the shutdown and improvements, we [00:07:00] will be able to collide protests around the 13 thousands GV. So why is that important? Increasing the energy. It actually also increased the probability of producing rare phenomenon like the he exposed in production or particular that predictably supersymmetry theory. In all this theory, the likelihood of producing such particles increased dramatically with an edge. The higher energy we can probe, the higher [00:07:30] are likely to produce those particles. And this is also because they may be heavy, even heavier than the Higgs and not only rare but also with a heavy mass and so the more energy you have the more likely is that you can produce them and what kind of work will be done besides this upgrade, what are all the staff scientists going to do with their time for two years? Speaker 2: We will keep us busy. I'm sure the detectors themselves will be upgraded as well. The [00:08:00] trust, etc. I'm working on has a big project of trying to replace one of its inner most part. I mentioned these detectors to detect charge particles. These are based on silicon and they suffer radiation damage. With all this collision happening, we have a lot of tradition which can damage all the electronics and the censor themselves. A new detector was made and we'd be inserted in addition to the existing ones in order to improve [00:08:30] the detection of discharge particles. This is probably the biggest project which will be ongoing doing shut down for our experiment. There are also several other minor maintenance and other upgrades which are ongoing and in the meantime we easy our analysis strategy, our software in order to be ready when we come back to put in practice what you've learned, analyzing the past two years data and to be even more efficient. So with these [00:09:00] new detectors it'll be detecting even closer to the points of collision? That's correct. In fact, I mentioned things happen very close to where the protons collide. So when I mentioned that particles decay to other particles and so on, that usually happens in a small space like way less than half a millimeter. So it's important to note that you never actually see the particles you produce. You only see the decay products from them. [00:09:30] That's correct. Exactly. Having a detector which is close to where the protons collide will allow us to differentiate even better. Yeah. Speaker 1: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Our guests today are Simona and Pega and will Johnson both are physicists. In the next segment they discuss supersymmetry. Speaker 3: [00:10:00] It may not be obvious, but so actually one of the main goals for High Energy Particle Physics is actually defined a single equation. And from this one equation we can drive everything we could possibly need to know about how particles interact, what particles exist, how everything works. So the goal is one grand equation, a grand unified theory right now we have a great equation called the standard model that takes [00:10:30] care of all forces. Everything we know about how physical objects interact and how they exist can be described by this one equation with the exception of gravity. We can't combine that in with this one equation. And also there's some parts to the equation that we think could be a little bit more elegant and we want to combine it with gravity and also possibly take care of some of these ambiguities. Going to supersymmetry allows [00:11:00] us to do that. So one of the big questions is we haven't seen supersymmetry yet. I know when the LHC turned on, everybody was hoping that it would just be very obvious and we would just see supersymmetry. But that hasn't been the case so far. Has there been any hints or signs that people are looking for that supersymmetry is most likely to be hiding? Speaker 2: We were hoping to see signs of the supersymmetry in a couple of years of running of the large Hadron collider. [00:11:30] The large Hadron collider started with an energy which was slower than what is designed and only after this shutdown we will get to the energy which was designed for, so we really hope that is increasing energy, which can shed more light on the natural supersymmetry and why we didn't see it so far. For sure. The data we analyzed so far already poses a slight challenge to the theory itself. It might be good to explain why supersymmetry is such an attractive theory. People who have been looking for it for [00:12:00] 30 years now, we've seen no hints of it yet. Still very convinced. Yes, supersymmetry can explain a lot of the unexplained feature that we see up to now. Supersymmetry will give us from the practical point of view, the door to unify also gravity with the other forces. Speaker 2: A lot of people think that this is the right way to go to be able to actually describe gravity together with the other forces in our single tier. People have already [00:12:30] heard about the string theories and so on. The all implicitly assume that supersymmetry exists in some form of it. So it's very important for us to find any sign of it or this theory, we lack a fundamental part of it. And so actually what happens if it turns out we don't see supersymmetry, the Higgs bows on looks exactly like the standard model predicts and we see no other hints of supersymmetry. Well certainly this is something that we need to consider, right? [00:13:00] There are open questions that we hope supersymmetry can answer if supersymmetry is not found still we need to answer those questions so we need to keep looking. There are several other theories which may predict and explain the same scenarios, just had not the more simple ones. Speaker 2: So just means that probably the most simple solution we found was not the correct one. So we still need to look for other sign of it. I we do it already in parallel. So we consider [00:13:30] the possibility of supersymmetry is not the right answer. It's just the one that we think is most likely we will keep looking even if we had no sign of it, so we really expect to find some sign of something. Maybe supersymmetry may be something else, but we really hope that with the next data we will find a sign of something else beyond what we know. If that doesn't happen still we need to find a mechanism to explain what we see, which is different from what we have taught so far [00:14:00] and that for sure will require big synergy between the theoretical part and the experimental one trying to work together towards a new different solutions. Speaker 2: There are people actively working on data from the LHC looking for other theories. Technicolor is one of the other big ones, but the detectors aren't designed specifically to look at supersymmetry. They're designed to try to catch as wide of possibilities as possible. [00:14:30] Yeah, this is actually a very good point. We perform some generalist searches which do not depend on a specific models, but just look for consistency between the given theory that we have. The standard pondered and what we see. So any hint of it can be used, at least as our guidance in watch theory can predict this kind of phenomenon. So we keep looking also for unexpected as much as possible. Speaker 1: [inaudible] [00:15:00] this is k a l x Berkeley. The show is spectrum. Our guests are Tsimané, Pegol Rizo and Bill Johnson in the next segment. The detailed useful byproducts of high energy particle physics. Speaker 3: Can you think [00:15:30] of any good examples of the technology developed our hundred [inaudible] physics or maybe the announced techniques designed for high energy physics and invented for it have affected people in common everyday life. Speaker 2: This research is really targeted in fundamental research, understanding how nature works, so the effects of it are usually a very long term, so it's very hard to predict what will happen. However, the means that we use to actually [00:16:00] perform these searches, they may have a more direct impact. If we go back a bit in the history, all the nuclear science that was used to start this particle physics in general decades ago is, for example, used to treat cancer. Here in alifornia is for example, very advanced in what is called heartland therapy, so try to treat cancer with protons and they have sidebar advantages with respect to the common radiotherapy, particular for inner most tumors. [00:16:30] In this way you can reach and try to kill the tumor burden, the size of the tumor without having to burn whatever is in the meter. All these kinds of the tactful with a lot of r and d of course on top of them but were taken from what was developed for nuclear physics in the past. Speaker 2: This is a very good example of how technology that we may use for our scope can actually be bring vented and adapted for other scopes in other very big challenge that we face every day [00:17:00] is that the amount of data we collect and the computing power we need to analyze it is huge. In order to cope with this, we had since several years our projects for distributed computing in order to be able our to analyze data everywhere using computing that are located everywhere in the world, sharing computing resources, sharing disc. This was a necessary step for us. In order to be able to carry on and having physics results. However, that can have [00:17:30] also an impact to everyday life. What we see now is our all the cloud computing increasing faster and faster in our everyday life. This is a slightly different version of this distributed computing that we've been developed and worked so far. Speaker 3: The web as we know it today from Speaker 2: what was created at cern. So if you actually see some of the photos of the very irst web browsers, they actually have design specifications and pictures [00:18:00] of the atlas detector at certain it was created for the scientists to communicate, but then it was such useful technology it felt to the rest of the population. So an interesting story is that even today that when you press and you don't find the page, you get these set of [inaudible] and this was actually the room at cern where the irst web server was hosted. A lot of the physics analysis that we do is [00:18:30] really from a statistical point of view, decent target. These huge amount of data that we collect and trying to find a rare phenomenon. It's usually trying to find a handful of events of collisions which have the characteristics you want among the billions that happened. Speaker 2: So these techniques are very similar and are in common to other challenges where you have a huge amount of data and you to find a specific [00:19:00] ones on a slightly different level. But it's what Google needs to find when you put some keywords and you can find what are the relevant pages for you. And there are few. So even in this case, what you need to do is basically try to find the most appropriate few pages among the billions that exist, which match what you're looking for. In many senses, this is not very different from what we try to do. And in fact, some of the technologies [00:19:30] with very big differences are actually in common. Well, ne question of course, is with the shutdown or from your lab, do you see the need for more accelerators besides certainly I strongly think these accelerators are big and they take a lot of resources of our community, not only in terms of the money you need to build them, but also as intellectual power of our community. Speaker 2: Run random and analyze data, but [00:20:00] having a new accelerator right now is not worth the investment in both their mind, intellectual power that we need to put on it, so the larger other collider will run at least up to the end of the Deca. Then probably up to the end of the next tech ad and this will be enough to give us data to answer most of the questions we actually build it for. Of course, people are already thinking of what's next. They're thinking [00:20:30] of new accelerators. They're thinking what is the best choice? I want to build it. If we have the technology, if we need to develop something that we are missing and people are actively working already on this and the LSE is a giant machine. It's hundreds of feet underground in miles Speaker 3: and miles across. So building a bigger tunnel is a very, very expensive proposition. Yes. And there's just fundamental limitations on how strong magnets can be. So a lot of people are investing [00:21:00] a lot of effort into finding other ways of accelerating particles or studying phenomenon that doesn't necessarily need accelerators. Is there anything particularly promising? There's the plasma wave accelerator. Um, there's cosmic sources, so some of the highest energy collisions we get are actually from particles from outer space. And a lot of people are using the atmosphere itself as a detector. So you can look at the interactions in the atmosphere [00:21:30] and then decay particles from those interactions to see what happened. There's also a lot of work going into just looking to see if you can study these processes with a lower energy. So maybe you won't be able to see what particle you're looking for, but you'll be able to see some very slight effects on other particles or another process. Very, very slight effects, which if you're very careful and you study it, it might tell you information about these much heavier particles than you can produce. So there's, there's a lot of ways of finding supersymmetry [00:22:00] yes. Or other further beyond the standard model. Yeah. These are complimentary ways in many senses. As you mentioned, there is a lot of work on going and it's very promising, so we really look forward to these [inaudible] well, thanks for joining us. Thank you Rick as thank you Rick. Cool Speaker 1: background [00:22:30] is archived on iTunes university. To find the archive, do a search in your favorite browser for iTunes Dash u space Calex space spectrum. Speaker 3: We'd like to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next wo weeks. [00:23:00] Rick Kaneski joins me for the calendar. The theme for the Spring Open House at the crucible is the science of art. The Criswell is located at welve sixty eventh street near West Oakland, Bart and mission on Saturday April ix it's free from leven am until our pm the open house seeks to highlight the scientific principles, inquiry and exploration behind the industrial arts processes. Taught and practiced at the [00:23:30] crucible. Highlights include the science of fire, the gravity of mold making, mysteries of steel made visible bicycle physics. Yeah. Surfing the solar flares with science at cal recycled glass processing and more. Speaker 4: There will be demonstrations, tuition discounts, food and bikes for sale. Visit the rucible dot org for more info. In April of wo thousand and twelve a small asteroid impacted [00:24:00] close to home in alifornia at Sutter's mill. The site where gold was irst discovered in ighteen forty eight media are astronomer. Peter Jenniskens of the Seti Institute started a tally of fines and mobilized NASA Ames research center into leading the recovery effort from the air and the ground. eventy seven media rights were found. He will summarize research results reported in a recent eventy author science article and also discuss a econd meteorite fall that happened in [00:24:30] Nevato and Sonoma last October. The presentation is Monday pril eighth at the Academy of Sciences. Planetarium. Tickets for the even hirty event can be purchased nline at Cal Academy Dot Org San Francisco Science Museum. The exploratorium is reopening in their new location at peer ifteen on Wednesday pril seventeenth to celebrate. They will offer free outdoor programming from ine am until en pm [00:25:00] the new museum offers ix galleries on human behavior, living systems maker culture, observing the landscape scene and listening as well as an outdoor space. Speaker 4: More nformation at exploratorium dot edu also on pril seventeenth UC Berkeley is holding its monthly blood drive. You can make an appointment online but walk-ins are also welcome. You are eligible to donate blood if you are in good health, weigh at least ne hundred and ten pounds [00:25:30] and are eventeen years old or older. You can also check out the eligibility guidelines online for it and initial self screening if you are not eligible or you prefer not to donate blood. There are other ways to support campus blood drives through volunteering, encouraging others and simply spreading the word. The blood drive will be on Wednesday, pril seventeenth in the alumni house. On the UC Berkeley campus. It [00:26:00] will last from noon until ix pm you can make an appointment or find more information at the website. Red Cross lood dot Org using the sponsor code you see B. We also like to bring you several news stories that we find interesting. Once again, Rick joins me for the news and Red Alax died of cancer in ineteen fifty one but her immortal cell line called Hela cells derived from her cervical cancer is the oldest and most [00:26:30] commonly used human cell line. Speaker 4: The cells were used to test the polio vaccine and have been used in the research of over eventy thousand scientific papers since lar Steinmetz and others in ermany published the genome of Heela and the journal g hree in March. However, the team has since removed the data from public databases because of privacy concerns expressed by family members and other scientists. Blacks did not give her a consent for the line [00:27:00] to be used and some are concerned that it may disclose genetic traits shared by her descendants. However, no law required that kind of consent in ineteen fifty one and even current regulation differs widely as to what consent would be required to sustain a modern cell line due to the extensive documentation of the cells. The privacy of the healer line may have already been broken with literature already published. Harvard medical school researchers have assembled a draft genome and [00:27:30] a team of University of ashington researchers have spoken about not only the heela genome, but also the more specific information about individual haplotypes at the American Society for Human Genetics Conference in San Francisco. Speaker 4: A recent UC Berkeley study on the lives of wild bees find that the insects thrive better within diversified farming systems. While you might consider the insects yellow nuisances, bees actually play a crucial role in the life cycle of cross pollinated [00:28:00] crops, which account for ne hird of our caloric intake. The mysterious decline in both honeybee and wild bee populations in recent years has prompted many scientists to study the buzzing insects more closely. This study found that crop yield generally increased with wild bee population, but also linked to the recent decline in bee populations to heavy pesticide or fertilizer use. Typically in large scale monoculture agriculture, a number [00:28:30] of alifornia beekeepers seem to agree. They recently sued the federal EPA for failing to ban wo pesticides, widely regarded as harmful to wild bees and honeybees. The wo insecticides named in the lawsuit known as [inaudible] and Simon Foxen have already been found to pose an unacceptably high risk to honeybees by the European food safety authority. Speaker 1: [inaudible] the music heard during the show [00:29:00] is by Louiston at David [inaudible] help on folk make available at creative Commons license hree point zero after music production and editing assistance by Renee Brown. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l xat Yahoo Dot com [00:29:30] join us in wo weeks at this same time. [inaudible] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Flaminia Catteruccia discusses the molecular basis of mating and reproduction in Anopheles gambiae mosquito. Her research provides insight into the mosquito reproductive biology to better develop vector control. Catteruccia is Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 3: [inaudible].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 4: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with Dr Flaminia cutthroat Chia associate professor of immunology and infectious [00:01:00] diseases in the department of the same name at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is also an associate professor at the University of [inaudible] in Italy. Malaria is a leading cause of death in tropical and subtropical regions. The plasmodium parasite that causes malaria is transmitted by the biting of female [inaudible] mosquitoes. Dr Cutthroat Chias group studies the molecular basis of mating and reproduction in both the female and male of [00:01:30] four species of mosquito. They are looking for the most effective and robust strategies to frustrate mosquito reproduction. Overall, they aim to provide insight into the reproductive biology of this malaria vector, which until recently remained largely unstudied. So the new targets for vector control can be developed. And Dr Cutolo Chia was in the bay area recently for a conference and I was able to arrange an interview Flaminia Katja, welcome to spectrum. [00:02:00] Thank you. What'd you give us an overview of your current Speaker 3: object? Yes, sure. So my research group is based at the Harvard School of Public Health, uh, is working on, uh, the biology of the mosquitoes that transmit malaria in Africa. And mother is still a massive problem for tropical and subtropical countries, but in particular for Africa as it scales almost a million people every year and infects not 200 million people [00:02:30] every year. So it's a massive social and economical problem and malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes. So we believe that if we can stop mosquitoes from transmitting malaria, then we can solve a big problem for the countries that are affected. Three particular, my group focuses on studying some aspects of the mosquito biology that are important for malaria transmission and will focus on reproduction on how mosquitoes reproduce, what makes them fertile. Because [00:03:00] at the end of the day, our goal is to develop novel methods to control mosquito populations. And we think that we could control them by introducing sturdy to international populations as an alternative to what's already been done now, which is mainly based on the use of insecticides to kill them. Speaker 3: And, but they have to be quite targeted ways to use the insecticides by pushing these insecticides on mosquito nets. So that mosquitoes that try to bite on night while people are asleep and the nets get killed [00:03:30] or through sprays or insecticides inside and house walls to kill mosquitoes at arresting indoors. But these methods are not sufficient to stop moderate transmission. And also mosquitoes are becoming resistant to the action of insecticides, which means they're not killed anymore and they change their behavior rather than biting at night inside houses to start by the outdoor and during the day so that insecticides can not get to them anymore. So our thought is our instead is on the idea that, uh, rather than killing [00:04:00] mosquitoes, we can sterilize them so that then there'll be fewer mosquitoes out there. They can transmit malaria and then eventually malaria transmission will stop. Speaker 3: And so we study how mosquitoes reproduce, what's important for their reproductive biology. And we have three major avenues or research. The first one is we try to understand what's important for reproduction because one tracking aspects of reproduction in the malaria mosquitoes is that the females have sex only once in their lives and after that they [00:04:30] completely switch off. They're not interested in more. And so this is quite a vulnerable step in the life cycle of our mosquito because it happens on once. So we are very much interested in understanding what is it that happens to females, what's the switch that completely abolishes that their receptivity to compilation. Because in principle, if we could understand what are the refactoring is as a call to further copulation, then we could induce the same mechanisms in variant females [00:05:00] and trick them into thinking that they've made it. And so they would make any model contributed to the next generations. Speaker 3: So that's a big area of our research where we try to understand what happens to females after copulation after sex so that we can identify what are those factors that change that behavior so that we can induce them. The second area or research and studies is a more translational side. We are interested in developing tools to induce the reality [00:05:30] in male mosquitoes. One idea of control is based on the release of males that are sterile. This males will of course try to find females to have sex with them and eventually those fund them. But there'd be no project coming out of these compilations. And so if we keep doing this over and over again, if you keep releasing sterile males, then we can sterilize most of the females that are natural populations and so the population will crush. And so with malaria [00:06:00] transmission, and so we are trying to find ways to serialize males in a genetic way, introduce genetic stability rather than using irrigations or chemo sterilizations as it's done for other insects. Speaker 3: Because it's important that whatever we do to fertility, it doesn't affect biology. The general biology of this mosquitoes and their behavior and also their fitness and that of competitiveness in terms of meeting and normally irritation or chemo sterilizations, those [00:06:30] can cause severe fitness costs to these mosquitoes. And so we got a little more subtle than we tried to study. So the mosquito DNA and understand what are the factors that are important for my facility so that we can interfere specifically with those factors. And so develop a male mosquito that is sterile and then we can release in the field. So that's our second area of research. And then a newer area research that we're interested in is in understanding what's the impact of what we do in terms of malaria transmission in particular, in terms [00:07:00] of what would be the impact of these measures on the ability of the female to transmit malaria. Speaker 3: Because if we introduce sterility in a population, how does that effect the partial development within those females? We don't want to develop mosquitoes that are sterile, but at the same time that are better at transmitting malaria. And so one new aspect of our research is trying to understand what's the link between reproduction and mosquitoes and Parkside development inside the female. So this [00:07:30] is broadly what our love is doing. Why is it that malaria is so lethal? Well, the mother has been eradicated from large parts of the world, has been eradicated from the u s from Europe and we are actually quite close already getting malaria in Africa as well in the fifties and sixties with the use of insecticides use a queening. And so drugs to kill the precise insecticides to kill mosquitoes. But unfortunately [00:08:00] those programs were stopped because of a number of reasons. And within a few years the number of Americans really went back to what it was before these programs were even started. Speaker 3: So one of the problems with malaria said it's a very dynamic disease from one single case, you can have tens and hundreds of secondary cases that can spread very quickly. So it's very difficult to control. So the synergy between the mosquito and the malaria [00:08:30] is the enabling factor in principle is a preventable and curable disease. It shouldn't be so deadly. However, our ability to control it in the countries where it's presence at the moment is limited by logistic reasons, lack of hospitals, lack of resources, and the fact that the mosquitoes are very efficient at transmitting the parasite. [inaudible] Speaker 4: [00:09:00] you were listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Our guest today is Flaminia Qatari Chia molecular entomologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, researching mosquito reproduction as a way to combat malaria. How long has your project been going? We've been working on it for six [00:09:30] years. So that's kind of new. Yeah. And does it have a length of time or is it pretty open ended? Speaker 3: It's open-ended until I get funded. It's the funding. Yes, yes. Always is, isn't it? Yes. And of course, until it's relevant release, I think the funding will be there until this was a breakthrough. Yeah. A solution. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And Udall, was that a completely empty niche? No one was doing that. So we are really the first ones looking at reproductive biology in this mosquitoes from a molecular [00:10:00] and genetic point of view. Most of the studies before us were performed at the ecological level. So there's actually quite a lot knowing about the ecology of reproduction, but not much known about genetic factors and the pathways that are important for fertility. That's something that is completely new. So whatever we find is novel. So it's exciting for us, but at the same time, we have to do everything you know, is, we have to start from scratch. So it's more challenging maybe Speaker 4: once [00:10:30] the mosquito has ingested the parasite, the malaria parasite from a human, how does it interact with the mosquito? Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 3: The parasite has a complex life cycle inside the mosquito vector, and it takes a few days to complete from when the mosquito ingests the parasite. When the mosquito can inject the parasite into the next person, it takes about 12 days. And that's the time that the press site needs to go through different developmental stages. [00:11:00] And so once some mosquito takes sliders infected, then the process will have to leave the blood environments. There'll be a stage that happens inside the mosquito midgut and then the prosight will have to leave as quick as possible. Uh, the makeup before he, it gets killed by the mosquito enzymes, digestive enzymes particular, and then it'll have to find its way to the salivary glands, which are these tissues where saliva is produced by the mosquito. And once it reaches the Salami Glands, then [00:11:30] it can be injected into the next person because during blood feeding, the female will inject a little bit of saliva into the team of the person that is this biting. Speaker 3: And so during that process the process can be transmitted. Actually most mosquitoes don't even live long enough for the proceeds to develop. So that's a major roadblock or process in development. Is there any thought to trying to alter the parasite itself? There's a lot of research on modifying [00:12:00] the mosquito so that rather than allowing person development, they'll kill the parasite. And of course there's a lot of research on finding drugs that can kill across sites in people that are infected. And there is research on malaria vaccines as well. We don't have a vaccine yet. There is a vaccine that is now in Stage three trials that could be promising in combination with other control measures. It's quite clear that malaria will not be defeated by using a single measure. So [00:12:30] the use of insecticides, possibly the use of sterile males, hopefully combined with the use of drugs to confirm [inaudible] in people and hopefully also without, without vaccine that could be effective for awhile. We will need all these measures to control the spread of the disease. Speaker 4: How large your group is, is the group that's working on your project. Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 3: My group is composed by about 10 people at the moment. Speaker 4: And what are the different scientific disciplines you've brought together [00:13:00] with that group? Speaker 5: Yeah, Speaker 3: well it's a combination of molecular biology and genetics and biochemistry. Also evolutionary biology, big of ecology as well. Speaker 5: Okay, Speaker 4: and within the group, how do you orchestrate the workflow of all that? How do you decide which thing you're going to focus on at what point in time Speaker 3: to go ahead and go forward with the research? Oh yeah, those are actually tough decisions sometimes because there is so much [00:13:30] that we can be doing, just so many different ideas. It's circulated in the lab and sometimes it's difficult to prioritize them. So in general, we do discuss ideas all together. I can come up with some ideas and then we discuss, uh, with the group and some we like the brainstorming and then more ideas emerge. And then we focus on what's more important according to our priorities. We always have to make choices. We tried to have projects that are most solid in a way that we [00:14:00] know will give us results quite quickly. And then at the same time also establish longer term projects for maybe bigger goals. So it's a combination of all the two. Speaker 4: What is the life cycle of this mosquito? Speaker 3: So the mosquitoes we work on, um, anopheles mosquitoes that, that are not fillings are the only mosquito, second trust mates, uh, malaria to humans and draw about 30, 40 and awful in species that transmit malaria. And we study in particular, um, our mosquitoes called [00:14:30] Anopheles Gambiae and that's the most important vector in Africa and therefore the most important actor in the world. But we also start in some other mosquitoes out important vectors in other parts of the world. We are now interested in southern American vectors, Asian vectors. So we have four different mosquito species in our lab for comparative studies and Life Cycle is from a female that is, I've been intimidated by a male. Then this female will need to feed them blog to develop eggs. And that's the step that is exploited [00:15:00] by the plasmodium parasite of malaria to be transmitted. And so the female will feed on blood preferentially on, on men, on humans. Speaker 3: She will develop her eggs and then the eggs will be fertilized by the sperm that is transferred from the male. The eggs will be laid water, so the eggs will hatch and give larvae. And then a pupa will with form that doesn't feed. And then after two days and adult will emerge from the PUPA. And so our, as a, as that [00:15:30] little step, males and females will have to find each other for copulation and then the female will have to block feed again. And so that the cycle can start all over again. So overall from egg to egg is about a couple of weeks. The Life Cycle Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: this is k a l x Berkeley. The show is spectrum. Our guest is Flaminia [00:16:00] [inaudible]. She's working to eradicate malaria. Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 3: Is there a side effect to affecting the mosquito population so thoroughly? Yeah, that's a very good question. What are the possible effect on the ecosystem of mosquitoes? Useful for anything? Do we need mosquitoes in this world? And these are very good concerns, very reasonable concerns. [00:16:30] However, the Fallon sets targeting fertility is a very specious Pacific control measure. Unlike the use of insecticides where you kill everything that comes in contact with insecticide, if you use mosquitoes to eradicate mosquitoes, that's a very selective way to do that. It's a very specific way to do that. So I think that the effects on the ecosystem will be very marginal, but of course that's something that will have to be followed and would have to be monitored, will be a very insane eco-friendly way to reduce monitor transmission because you would, [00:17:00] we would only target those pieces that cosmic me [inaudible] thousands of mosquitoes species on the planet and only 20 or 30 I at transmitting malaria so we wouldn't kill all mosquitoes and we would only have to target those that ugly at transmitting the disease. Speaker 3: With the mosquitoes that you're growing in the lab, how are you feeding them? We feed them differently depending on their developmental stage, so we, the larval stages, the early stages, we feed them with fish food or cat food and for the adults [00:17:30] we feed them with sugar solutions that both the male and the female will feed on. So it's water mixed with sugar and then the females, we have to feed them on bloods for egg developments, we feed them with blood that we buy from blood banks. So we've completely eliminated the use of animals for that, which is we are very pleased with. Speaker 4: Do you feel you're close with the sterilized male part of the project and do you have plans to try to take it to the next level? Speaker 3: Yeah, we, we are thinking [00:18:00] a lot now about how we can make our system more effective because the way we in use steroids in this males, it's very inefficient in the lab. We need more than a day's work to get 20 or 30 males that are sterile to how do we scale this up. We really need to push and hopefully we can work with engineers and find the best way to scale this up and do the automated way that can be much more effective. Speaker 4: [00:18:30] You're continuing to pursue the female side of it. Speaker 3: The female side of it is what's more exciting for us in a way because there's more biology behind it, but we're also very much interested in understanding what are the determinants of fitness in the males because when we make them sterile, we'll still need to make sure that there will be competitive for meetings with feel females. And so apart from studying the biology of reproduction in females, we're also very much interested in that in what makes a meal good [00:19:00] meal, a fit meal that will have good chance of success once it's released. So yeah, that's why we are studying both male and female reproductive biology. We are not just selling waist to induce 30 but also what are the determinants of fertility? Speaker 4: If you succeed in creating a sterilized male or a female that doesn't lay eggs, do you have a plan or is there a plan for how to introduce them into the wild [00:19:30] or is that something that would need to be developed when the time comes? Speaker 3: We don't have a plan as such, but we are starting to think about a plan in terms of the logistics of it. There is a lot of know how that comes from the release of sterile males for targeting other insects, species, insects, pieces that are mainly agricultural pests like fruit flies, Milo flies, school worms, potato. We will do that. Old insects that cause the via damage [00:20:00] to the agriculture. It's a drug programs and based on the release of millions of sterile flies all over the world really. And so all the issues concerning the mass production of these insects, the packaging and the distribution of these stallions, six to the places where they're needed and then the release, all those issues have already been sorted out for other insects and so in principle shouldn't be too difficult to transfer that expertise onto mosquito work. It [00:20:30] should be feasible. We don't have the expertise in ourselves, but working in collaboration with the people that have it, that should be possible. I'm optimistic that that could be done without huge efforts. Speaker 4: Are you teaching as well as doing your research? Speaker 3: Yeah, I have some teaching to do is not massive. I mainly teach postgraduate students and I teach while they work on, so it's infectious diseases. My teaching load is not very big. Maybe it will get bigger in the next few years because [00:21:00] I've just started a year ago and I'm enjoying it. I enjoy teaching postgraduate students very much because they're small groups and normally they're very interested, very dedicated and also they ask amazing questions. So it's actually quite fulfilling. I know that some of the Harvard students are just brilliant, so it's a different experience from what was used before. I like it very much. Yeah. But I really prefer doing research. You know, it's, it's like that's my first, uh, my [00:21:30] top priority is to do good research, but of course we have a mission to encourage the next generations to get into science and getting into research. I like the idea of contributing to that. Flaminia Katya, thank you very much for coming on spectrum. Welcome. Good luck. Thank you. Speaker 7: I'm gonna [inaudible] Speaker 3: um, Speaker 6: if you would like to hear a previous [00:22:00] spectrum show, they are archived on iTunes university, go to the calyx website, calix.berkeley.edu. Click on programming, select news, scroll down to spectrum and that section. There's a link to podcasts or send us an email@spectrumdotcalyxatyahoo.com and I'll send you the link. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 8: [00:22:30] a feature of spectrum is to present news stories we find interesting. When the news are Renee Rao and Rick Karnofsky, Speaker 9: the UC Berkeley habitus will play host to the first ever dreambox a three d printing bending machine. By the end of this month, the machine will allow users to take advantage of three d printing technology without paying steep up front costs for the machinery [00:23:00] to use. The machine users will first choose an item model within Dream Boxes Catalog upload one of their own via the web. Next, the print command is given and the order is sent to a cloud based print queue before being directed to the vending machine. Once the item has been created, it is put into a locker with a unique unlock code that is texted to the users. The creators estimate that each use of the printer will range from two to $15 on average depending on the complexity of the object and the materials used. Speaker 8: [00:23:30] A team from New Castle University reported in science that honeybees are three times more likely to remember a learn floral scent when they are rewarded with caffeine. Caffeine occurs in coffea and citrus species and to be pharmacologically Speaker 9: active but not repellent to the bees in higher concentrations. It is known to be toxic and repellent due in part to the bitter taste, but in lower concentrations that occur in nature. It offers a reward. [00:24:00] The team also applied caffeine to the brains of the insects and observed that it increased activity aiding the formation of longterm memories. Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 9: A [00:24:30] regular feature of spectrum is dimension. A few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Rick and Renee present the calendar this March nerd night. East Bay will feature UCB associate Professor Matt Walker on Sleeping Memory Guy Branum on the invasion of Canada and the Chabot space and science centers. Jonathan Bradman on the night sky. This will happen Monday, March 25th at the new Parkway Theater in Oakland. Doors will open at seven show begins at eight. [00:25:00] Tickets are available online for $8 and all ages are welcome. Past spectrum guests, Michael Isen will be speaking to the Commonwealth club on the subject of reinventing scientific communication. While most scientific literature is now online, it remains as inaccessible to the public as it was centuries ago. With the physical limitations of print journals replaced by expensive publisher paywalls, [inaudible] who cofounded the Public Library of science. [00:25:30] We'll discuss the scientific journals and new open access models. Tickets are $20 or $7 for students with valid id. Speaker 9: The talk is on Wednesday, March 27th in San Francisco. There is a reception@fivethirtyandthetalkstartsatsixpmvisitcommonwealthclub.org for tickets and more info this April 2nd the ASCA scientist lecture series. We'll discuss tiny creatures with the ability to invade your body, [00:26:00] hijack your cells, change your DNA, and modify you physically and behaviorally to suit their own devious goals. Jack Mackarel, director of the Center for discovery and innovation in parasitic diseases will lead the talk on the parasitic organisms that live among and inside us. Some of the world's most pernicious diseases are caused by these supreme sophisticated organisms, but according to evolutionary biologist, parasites have also played a significant role in shaping the human species. The event will be held Tuesday, April 2nd [00:26:30] at 7:00 PM in Soma Street food park near the corner of 11th and Harrison. Leonardo art science evening rendezvous or laser has several talks this month. Speaker 8: Jess holding explains the use of light and other natural phenomenon to explore perception. NASA is Chris McKay will speak about the curiosity. Mars mission, USF Vagina and Nagarajan presents embedded mathematics in women's ritual [00:27:00] art designs in southern India. She'll talk about the geometry of rice powder paintings. Finally, Nikki, you Layla will discuss the mechanics and construction of marionettes. Laser takes place@stanforduniversityonaprilfourthfromsevenpmtoninepmmoreinformationaboutthelaserseriescanbefoundonthewebatleonardo.info.Speaker 9: That's pretty good. Tuesday, April 16th in the Tuscher African Hall, Mary Roach [00:27:30] will lead an unforgettable tour of the human insides. Questions inspired by our insides are taboo in their own ways. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach burst? Can Constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? Roche will introduce her audience to the scientist who tackle these questions. She will then take the audience through her experiences in a pet food taste test, lab of bacterial [00:28:00] transplant and alive stomach. This lecture will take place Tuesday, April 16th at 7:00 PM in San Francisco for more information and to get tickets in advance, go online to cal academy.org Speaker 2: [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:28:30] music card during the show is by Lasonna David from his album folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. Special thanks [00:29:00] to David Dropkin for helping set up the interview. [inaudible] thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via our email address is spectrum dot klx@yahoo.com join us in two [00:29:30] weeks at this same time. The [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Halford discusses the NASA BARREL project and space weather. The Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses campaign will help study the Van Allen Radiation Belts and why they change over time by using balloons launched in Antarctica.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm [inaudible]. Speaker 3: Welcome [00:00:30] to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. Speaker 1: Good afternoon. I'm your host, Rick Karnofsky. Our guest today is Alexa Helford. Alexa is a postdoc at Dartmouth who studies based weather. She's involved with the balloon group there who recently finished their 2013 launch of the NASA barrel or [00:01:00] balloon array for radiation belt, relativistic electron losses campaign. 20 balloons. Went up in Antarctica in January and February. Next year there'll be doing it again. They're doing this to track where radiation goes when it leaves the radiation belts. Alex, I welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Can you talk to us a little bit about space weather? Speaker 3: Yeah, it is the coolest thing ever cause it's weather, but in space. What does that mean? So whenever you hear of like solar storms [00:01:30] or geomagnetic storms, which tend to make the news, that space weather, the sun always is spewing out junk at us. It's usually a combination of protons, electrons, and magnetic fields. Sometimes there's ions in there. Speaker 1: Well, but when that stuff Speaker 3: hits us, that space, whether it can sometimes create a geomagnetic storm, which is where we have our magnetic fields of the earth being completely rearranged and energy being transported normally into the inner magneto sphere where it can disrupt [00:02:00] things like satellites and eventually caused currently in our ionosphere, which can induce currents in the ground and that can cause problems for technologies even here on earth. Speaker 1: And how frequently do these problems crop up? It depends. So the Sun has an 11 year cycle where it, Speaker 3: it goes from having low activity, which we just came out of an incredibly quiet solar minimum just a few years ago and now we're starting to go into a region of higher activities. So we have a lot more [00:02:30] solar storms occurring. Speaker 1: It depends on the solar cycle. This one looks like it might be a little quieter than the last one, Speaker 3: but you can have multiple storms during the week. In the more northern or very southern regions of the world where you're near the polar caps, you are more effected bySpeaker 1: I sub storms, which can happen three times a day. People study space, weather, what do they hope to do? They hope to eventually it. Okay. Speaker 3: [00:03:00] Right now we are sometimes able to do now casting. So we can essentially tell you what the weather's like right now. And that's really good for us. We do, I mean can't just go outside and look. No, it's a little bit harder than that. No, I especially is putting together space weather packages and the van Allen probes are currently producing space weather data products as well. So we're getting a lot better at this. They usually give you at least a good, you know, [00:03:30] three or four days heads up as to if something's coming at us. They've gotten really, you know, pretty good given the type of data we have for even being able to predict if it's going to affect us or not. And what can we do with those predictions? So the radiation belts are where a lot of this, the damaging space weather effects occur. Speaker 3: They have highly relativistic electrons in them and these highly relativistic electrons can greatly affect ours [00:04:00] satellites. So what happens is any satellites sitting in the radiation belts actually will start gaining charge and we can get lightning strikes that actually occur across the [inaudible], the sides of the satellite, which in itself is quite damaging. Anytime you're hit by lightning is never really a good thing, but the really relativistic one's the killer electrons this week. Call them actually can bury themselves into the software and flip bits and so by flipping the bit they can send phantom [00:04:30] messages to the satellite and sometimes that message is to turn itself off or kill itself and not respond to ground control end. Essentially the satellite is dead floating in space. Satellite companies, when they find that there's going to be a solar storm that's going to hit us and possibly affect their spacecraft, they turn them off because if they turn them off then you know you're not going to get as much charging and you're not going to have as many problems. Speaker 3: What kinds of impacts do we see here on earth? So [00:05:00] back in 1989 there was a solar storm that actually induced currents in the power grid and blacked out. Most of the eastern seaboard of Canada and the North Eastern part of the u s and that was, that was quite a big problem where right now we've actually increased the connectivity of our power grids so that if the same storm were to happen about half the u s would be blacked out. Would there be actions that we could actually take if yes, so what you can do is you can actually turn off the grid or turn [00:05:30] off parts of the power grid so that you're not going to blow a transformer by having this huge amount of new current. In fact, one of the first things with space weather affecting our technology was way back with the telegraphs. They were able to run the telegraphs for hours without any energy because of the induced currents from the solar storms. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: are listening to k a l x Berkeley. [00:06:00] I'm talking with Alexa Helford about space weather. Speaker 3: We have stereo, which is one of the coolest missions ever, so it's two satellites. One is [inaudible], a head of earth around Earth orbit and the other one is falling behind [00:06:30] earth orbit and they're looking at the sun. So this is the first time we've ever had a three dimensional view of the sun and now they've gotten far enough around that. We're actually able to see what's going on behind the sun. So before we've always had to to kind of gas and use a Sonogram essentially. Yeah. To try to see what's on the other side of the sun. And now we have actual images of what's going on back there [00:07:00] and we're learning such amazing things from it. It's just the coolest thing ever. And besides, you get to wear 3d classes to view the pictures from it, which is always kind of cool. We're learning so much more about th what happens and, and how things are forming on the surface of the sun that it's really [inaudible] interesting time to kind of be a scientist and learning about [inaudible] this, you know, how space weather's happening. Speaker 3: Uh, besides that we have, you know, satellites in, in our own magnetosphere [00:07:30] that we can look at and we have ground-based magnetometers, which they're all really great with helping kind of understand the environment right now. What kinds of things do you have to measure and track and how do you track them in order to make predictions? That is really, that's an interesting question, but one of the cool things is, is us learning how to do all of this. Right now the ace satellite sits at the l one point, which is a stable orbit between the earth and the sun. We get magnetic [00:08:00] field particle data, so like densities and velocities, uh, from there, and we can use that to try to predict what it's coming at us. Unfortunately, what hits ace might not necessarily hit us, but it's our best predict. You're right now, it's coming to the end of its lifetime and we really need something up there, unfortunately, because we would want a space weather monitor up there, which [00:08:30] would help with science and research. Speaker 3: There's a fight going on as to who should be funding that and who wants to do that because it is, it is a large project, but it's something we need. Just like we need a tsunami warning systems. We need a space weather warning system. Can we talk about barrel a little bit? Yeah, so barrel is the campaign that I'm working on. Barrel is a, an array of that. We're going to be sending up in January of this year and January of [00:09:00] 2014 as well and possibly into February for both of those campaigns. Hopefully we'll be launching 20 balloons each year from two different stations in the antibiotics. So the British Halle Bay station and the South African Sinise station. And what we're going to do is these balloons are like what big weather balloons. They're going to be kind of drifting at 30 kilometers up in altitude and we'll be looking for x-rays. Speaker 3: [00:09:30] So when particles from space get perturbed during these geomagnetic storms, they can actually fall enough far enough down the field lines, these magnetic field lines that they'll hit the ionosphere in atmosphere where they can collide with different particles in neutral atoms and molecules and give off x-rays. And then we can measure those x-rays. So by backing out from that, that x-ray data, we can figure out what type of particles we're [00:10:00] being precipitated. So essentially we're looking at reins of highly relativistic particles and Artica we're looking in Antartica because if you remember your elementary school days when you played with bar magnets and, and iron fillings, you get, you know, if you have a bar magnet with the north and South Pole, you get these kind of curved arcs that go into and out of the northern and southern Poles. And the earth is just like that. So the earth is essentially a large [00:10:30] bar magnet and a, it has its dipole field that that kind of, you know, most of these field lines come in and out of the different poles. Speaker 3: And so when you're looking at these particles, they're going to be following those field lines. So they're just Tracy tracing out those lines that the iron fillings do with the bar magnet. And so these, these electrons and protons will come down the field lines and enter the atmosphere at the pole. So it's the best place to try to find stuff. And also there's not a whole [00:11:00] lot of things that the balloons can hit in the Antarctic, either from the two stations. The two stations give us a better range. And so by launching from both places, we'll be able to cover more land in Antarctica. And so at most we might have eight balloons up at any given time. And so we want to make sure that they're spaced as well as possible. You know, to be able to get the best coverage and having multiple loons up is going to give us an amazing opportunity that we [00:11:30] don't often have in space physics. You know by having multiple balloons, we're going to be able to take a look at how large some of these events are, how much ground they actually cover as well as how long they last. One of the things we can't answer is when you see these waves in space, how large are these waves? We know their wavelengths, but we don't know the region over which they occur. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:12:00] this is spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. I'm Rick Karnofsky talking with Alexa Helford of the barrel project, a mission to study the van Allen radiation belts. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:12:30] is barrel intentionally complementary to existing techniques? Speaker 3: Yeah, so in fact it is one of the first opportunity missions under the van Allen probes and so we're hoping to have conjugate measurements with them. So what that means is that we hope to essentially be on the same field minds as the satellites out in space. So while the satellites can measure the plasma out there and see these waves that are occurring in [00:13:00] space and see the different particles there, we're going to be able to then see how many of those particles actually made it down the field line. And it's one of the first missions with [inaudible] satellites and balloons that will really be able to do this. And, and hopefully because we're sending up 20 this year, hopefully we'll have lots of conjunctions. So that would be really great. And right now we're just Speaker 1: preparing for that. And do you have like a rough estimate of how high the satellites are versus how high the balloons are? Yes. Are the satellites, Speaker 3: they have [00:13:30] a pair of jeans. So their closest approach to the earth is, I believe around [inaudible], somewhere between three and 600 kilometers. So they're quite a bit higher. But when we have these conjunctions, these satellites are going to be at least four to six earth radii eye away from us. Speaker 1: So what kind of instrumentation is on these balloons? Speaker 3: So we are looking at, um, the magnetic fields. We have a gps transmitter there so that we can tell where [00:14:00] we are. That's kind of useful. And we have the [inaudible] Spectrometer, which is going to be looking at the x-rays and then we also have iridium phones essentially on there so we can actually get back our data quite quickly, which is very nice. It also means that we don't have to try to retrieve all 20 balloons. We've painted all of the payloads white and that's to actually help with the temperature control of all the instrumentation on board. But looking for it white Speaker 1: box [00:14:30] on a white continent turns out to be a very difficult thing. Right. And so these balloons go up, there's a small team over there and then you get all the data back at Dartmouth. Yes. What do you do with that? We are going to analyze it and have lots of fun working with all this data. Um, I'm really excited about it. We're also then going to be working Speaker 3: with the van Allen probes team and any other satellite mission that we can get in contact with that wants to look at our data. We're more than happy [00:15:00] to do that with. But having been an opportunity mission with the van Allen probe sets, the one we're really focusing on and really talking to and working with. So we're going to be looking at [inaudible] the different times when when we have uh, conjunctions and if there are any events. Now for this first mission, our conjunctions are going to be happening in the dawn sector. And so in the dawn sector, the waves that we're looking at are these micro bursts, which we [00:15:30] think are caused by course waves. Um, and this is going to be an exciting time cause it's one of the first times we're actually going to be able to look at this and, and, and be certain about it or relatively certain about it. And what's a course way, it's a course waves are these really fun little waves. They're caused by an electron, cyclotron instability. So it's all kind of generated by these electrons out in space. But if you listen to them, we can actually get way for them. So just like the radio waves you're hearing with us talking, [00:16:00] we get way forms of these, these waves in space and we can play them back through the radio and they sound like there. There sounds like a course of birds in the morning, which is why they're called course waves. Speaker 1: We have a recording of these course waves from the NASA van Allen probes. Speaker 2: [00:16:30] [inaudible] Speaker 4: the sound you just heard [00:17:00] was a chorus with an electromagnetic phenomenon caused by plasma waves in Earth's radiation belts. Hello, you're listening to spectrum on k a Alex Berkeley talking with Alexa Helford about space weather Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 1: it's sort of like terrestrial weather [00:17:30] where so much can influence it. Oh, you rattled off a large list of different particles, all of which have different masses and, and um, would presumably hit us at different times, right? Yeah. Um, how, how do you possibly keep up with all that data? Speaker 3: Um, through statistics? That's what I love to do is data statistics and we're starting to get to a point where we have large enough databases to look at. And actually statistics [00:18:00] is, is, I mean, I know a lot of people hear the word statistics and they think, oh, boring, boring, boring. But it is just so cool. Um, because like you said, we're have so many different things going on and like tresha whether there's so many different factors that we don't necessarily know about, we think we understand what physics is up there. Um, but we know that we're missing some of it because our models don't exactly predict what's happening. So with a lot [00:18:30] of physics, when you're working in a lab, you can control everything. And so your theories can be directly tested because you can control every little bit to match the theory in space. Speaker 3: We can't control anything. It is our laboratory and we can't tell it what to do. We put satellites and balloons and ground-based magnetometers and, and all these different, uh, instruments out there and hope that something interesting happens. So do other planets also experienced space weather? [00:19:00] Yeah. Yeah, they do. In fact, it's, it's really kind of cool when you start looking at it. So mercury has its own little magnetosphere. It's much smaller than ours. So things happen on a much faster time scale. Right now there's a satellite out there called messenger, which is studying the space weather at mercury. And it's really neat to compare it to what we see on the earth because we can see things happening so much faster. So that's really neat. Venus has [00:19:30] some interesting stuff going on there. It doesn't have a magneto sphere, but we can, we can use that as another comparison cause it's a similar sized body to us. Speaker 3: And so it has interesting things on its own. Mars used to have a magnetosphere [inaudible] but Mars is really interesting because that's where we want to go and send people someday. And I really think we should because if anything, humans have always tried to explore and try to go out farther. And so Mars is our new new world, [00:20:00] but we have to be careful going there because it doesn't have the protection of a magnetosphere like we do. So in order to protect the astronauts, we need to have better space weather warning systems in play. And these are all things that people have been thinking much harder about than I ever had. But it's really an exciting thing to think about cause that that's solar wind, it doesn't stop when it hits us. It continues out there. Jupiter, Jupiter is a massive thing. Need a sphere. [00:20:30] It is so cool. Speaker 3: It even has a planet that has a magnetosphere. So there's a main Nita sphere inside of magnetosphere, but Jupiter's magnetosphere is dominated by io. I O sends out tons and tons of sulfur ions from volcanoes and so drives a lot of the main use for dynamics we see there. Saturn on the other hand doesn't have a volcanic moon, quite like Io. [00:21:00] It has other geysers which seem to develop its rings. But a lot of the, the space weather events we see in its magneto sphere actually come from the solar wind. But by the time the solar wind reaches Saturn, it is so diffuse. But we still see things like Aurora out there. We see Aurora on the, um, on the Jovian magnetosphere as well. Um, and that's just so cool. And then once you, you know, you get farther and farther out and each of the big gas giants has its own magnetosphere and they're all [00:21:30] unique in their own way and it just gives us so many different comparisons to our own planet so we can learn so much more by studying theirs as well, which is just kind of cool. Speaker 3: We've only been a field really since about 1957 when the first satellite, we're not, we mean people have been studying space weather for a lot longer than that. But you know, we weren't ever able to get measurements where stuff is happening before we had satellites. So we're right at the [00:22:00] beginning and it's something incredibly exciting time. Yeah. To be in the field cause we're just learning what it's like up there. There's so much we don't know. And every time we put up a new satellite we get back new data. Even if we thought that we'd just be seeing the same kind of thing, there's always something new happening. And so it's so incredibly exciting just to, to see what's out there. Well with that Alexa Alford, thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [00:22:30] and now for some science news headlines. Here's an ana at Coolin and Renee Ralph Speaker 5: [inaudible],Speaker 6: professor in sleep expert, Matthew Walker explained in conversation with UC Berkeley new center that when we are young we have deep sleep that helps the brain store and retain new facts and information, but as we get older, the quality of our sleep [00:23:00] deteriorates and prevents those memories from being saved by the brain at night. In a recent study, UC Berkeley scientists discovered that there is a relationship between poor sleep, memory loss and brain deterioration. They found that poor sleep and old age affects memory loss. There are many stages of sleep, one of them being deep sleep, which is an important part of transporting short term memories to longterm memories. UC Berkeley researchers are now looking into therapeutic treatments for memory loss, such as electrical [00:23:30] stimulation to improve deep sleep and thus improve memory. You see, Berkeley researchers see this new discovery as an exciting opportunity to potentially help people remember more of their lives as they get older. Speaker 3: UC Berkeley have designed Speaker 6: a program to help decode ancient lost languages. Previously, human linguists have manually reconstructed languages by analyzing the relationships between the language and the patterns and sound change. The program takes modern [00:24:00] child languages, information about their word meaning and pronunciation and outputs, a rough approximation of the mother language. For example, if French and Spanish were input a language resembling Latin might emerge, the computer system we use together linkages across child languages to mathematically determine awards. First form. In a study published in the National Academy of Sciences Journal, the makers revealed that more than 85% of the system's reconstructions were identical to manual reconstructions [00:24:30] performed by linguist. Using this unique model, the system is essentially able to rewind the evolution of child languages all the way back to the original. The vast data crunching capabilities of the program have allowed scientists to begin seeing larger trends of spreading languages and banishing sounds well. Speaker 6: The computer system has extended the reach of computing in the field of linguistics. It's creators have stressed. They intend it to be used as a complimentary tool to human linguist, not as a replacement. A regular feature of spectrum [00:25:00] is a calendar of some of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area. Over the next two weeks, we'll hear once more from Anna and then Renee meet the animals up close at the Randall Museum home to over 100 animals that can not survive in the wild. Expect to see California wildlife such as rodents and fib. Ian's a great horned owl and even a tortoise every Saturday in March. Starting this Saturday, the ninth in San Francisco, doors open at 11:00 AM admission is free [00:25:30] in conjunction with San Francisco Sunday street program. The exploratorium. We'll have a day long road show featuring moving trucks with art, film, food, performances and activities. Speaker 6: The show will linger in three areas of the city, the mission Bayview and Embarcadero on its way to its nighttime finale at peer 15 this will take place in San Francisco this Sunday, March 10th from 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM for more information on performance times and locations, please visit [00:26:00] the exploratorium website which is exploratorium.edu stress and its effects on body and mind have always been biologically mysterious. This Monday, March 11th Dr Aaron Elica Nali will give her answers to some of those mysteries. Dr Canale is an assistant project scientist at the national primate research center in the Monday colloquium. She will speak about her research in the field of psychobiology. She will focus on the psychosocial effects of [00:26:30] early life stress. Dr [inaudible] has been studying relationships between biological and fostered offspring of rhesus monkey pairs and observing effects of exposure to early life stress on the relationships she has identified genes that cause physiological differences in the brain structure of these monkeys that suffered early stress. Speaker 6: She will also speak about the corresponding differences in the brains of human child abuse victims. The colloquium will be on March 11th from three to 4:30 PM in five [00:27:00] one-on-one Tolman hall on the UC Berkeley campus in case that's not enough science for one day. Also on March 11th Marvin l Cohen, professor of the Graduate School of physics at UC Berkeley will give a speech on condensed matter physics condensed matter physics is also known as goldilocks physics because its primary focuses are skills of energy, time and size that are somewhere in the middle. Consequently, this branch of physics has become one of the most interdisciplinary Professor Cohen will describe some of the fascinating [00:27:30] research involving semiconductors superconductors and nanoscience. He will also relay a few observations about Einstein and his seminar research in condensed matter physics. The free event is open to and aimed at all audiences and should provide an illuminating glimpse into a lesser known branch of physics. Speaker 6: It will be held on March 11th from five to 6:00 PM at the eye house on the corner of Bancroft and Piedmont. The march science at Cal lecture is titled Cloud spotting at Saturday [00:28:00] and titan learning about weather from a billion miles away. The talk will be given by a motto Adom Covex, a researcher in the astronomy department at UC Berkeley. He received his phd in physical chemistry in 2004 at cal studying the photochemical kinetics of hydrocarbon aerosols in planetary atmospheres. He will describe how measurements from telescopes on earth, the Cassini spacecraft that is still orbiting the Saturn system and the Huguenot probe that landed on the surface of Titan. [00:28:30] Saturn's largest moon all inform our knowledge of weather in the Saturn system. The lecture is scheduled for Saturday, March 16th at 11:00 AM and the genetics and plant biology building room 100 on the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 4: the music you [00:29:00] heard during say show we spend the Stein and David from his album book and Acoustic Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 4: It is released under a creative Commons license version 3.0 spectrum was recorded and edited by me, Rick Karnofsky and by Brad Swift. Thank you for listening to spectrum. You're happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. All right. Email address is spectrum [00:29:30] dot klx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 4: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In part 1, investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Michael Eisen talks about his research, the field, and both experimental and computational biology. Eisen is Associate Professor of Genetics, Genomics, and Development in UC Berkeley's Dept. of Molecular Biology.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible]. Welcome to [inaudible] Speaker 1: section, the Science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews [00:00:30] 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. Thanks for tuning in. Today we are presenting part one of two interviews with Michael Eisen and associate professor of genetics, genomics and development in UC Berkeley's department of molecular biology. Iceland employs a combination of experimental and computational methods to the study of gene regulation [00:01:00] using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model system. Isen and his colleagues have pioneered genomic approaches in modern molecular biology and our leaders in the emerging field of computational biology. In part one, Michael talks about how he got started in biology and how his research has evolved onto the interview. Michael Isen, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. My pleasure. Would you give us a narrative of how you initiated your research and how your research has [00:01:30] changed to what it is currently? Speaker 4: Okay. Actually, I grew up in a family of scientists. My parents were both biologists, so I always had an interest in biology. But as a kid, my talents were primarily in math and I was a heavy duty math geek and went to college expecting to be a mathematician and took this freshman calculus class and all the hardcore math geeks tuck. And I did fine. I did well in the class, but [00:02:00] there were several people in the class who were clearly a notch better than me in a way that I think you only can realize and you know, basketball and mathematics at the age of 18 that you're not destined to be the best. And I think math is a field where if you're not the best, it's just kind of boring. And so I stayed as a mathematician and math major in college, but I started increasingly taking a lot of biology classes and had more or less, you know, realized that biology was what really captured my, my attention and [00:02:30] my heart. Speaker 4: And so I went to graduate school but had the idea that I'm interested in biology, but I'm really good at math. So there must be some way of combining these two things. And so I entered a graduate program in biophysics, which is sort of a place where people who are interested in biology maybe haven't taken all the prereqs for a normal biology department but also have a quantitative background go cause. And so, you know, in the way that people sort of drifted into things, I drifted into working on protein structure and [00:03:00] did my phd studying the evolution of the proteins on the surface of flu viruses and using a combination of experimental work and I would hesitate to call it mathematics. It was really just sort of kind of physics and it's, it's a lot of data. You generate a lot of raw data, you generate a lot of data on the coordinates of individual protein molecules and things that they might bind to. Speaker 4: And so it was very natural to start using computers in that work. You know, my background was not in computer science. I programmed as a kid [00:03:30] because my grandfather bought me a computer and I taught myself how to program and I wrote programs to, you know, keep track of baseball statistics and other things like that. In College, I basically never programmed anything in the math department I was in. It was considered not math that you were touching a computer. And so I didn't really do anything with computers until I got to graduate school when you started seeing all this data coming down the pipe. But I wasn't particularly interested in structural biology and I discovered that through six years from graduate school that [00:04:00] although I liked doing it, it wasn't intellectually satisfying, was too small. You're working on one sugar bound to one protein in one virus and I was having trouble seeing how that would expand into something grand and whatever. Speaker 4: You know, the ambitions of, uh, of a graduate student wanting to do something big. And I got lucky in the way that often happens in that my advisor had a colleague he knew from an advisory board. He sat on and he was coming into town because his brother was getting some honorary degree [00:04:30] and I met him in his hotel room, Austin. And he had with him, uh, glass microscope slide onto which had been spotted down little pieces of DNA, each of which corresponded to one gene in the yeast genome. So it's about 6,000 genes in the yeast genome. And you could see them because there was still salt in the spots, but it was a very evocative little device. You could sort of hold it up in front of the sun and you could see the sun sort of glittering on all these little spots. Speaker 4: You could just see the grandness of [00:05:00] the device. Didn't know how people were using them. I didn't know what they would be used for. I didn't know what I would do with them, but I was sort of drawn in by the scale of it all. The idea that you could work on everything at once and you didn't have to choose to work on just one little thing and disappear into a little corner and study. Just that. And so my advisor said, oh, you really should go do this. They need someone who's, you know, understands biology, but can deal with the computational side of things. It's clear that this was going to generate a lot of data [00:05:30] and that, you know, he was right. I mean this was a field that really was in great need of people who understood the biology but could work well in the quantitative computational side of things. Speaker 4: So I packed up and moved to Stanford with a short stint as a minor league baseball announcer in between. Really it was just a very fortuitous time to have gotten into this new field. I mean, the field was really just beginning. So this was in 1996 the first genomes been sequenced, they were microbes, there's bacteria and yeast [00:06:00] and so forth. And we were just getting our first glimpse of the scale of the kind of problems that we were going to be facing in genomics. But what I loved about this device, which is a DNA microarray, it's the sort of became a very hot tool in biology for a number of years was that it wasn't just a computer, it wasn't just data in a computer. It actually you were doing to do experiments with this. I'm interested in biology cause I liked living things. I like doing experiments, I like seeing things and I didn't want to just disappear with someone else's data and [00:06:30] analyze it. Speaker 4: So I went to Stanford to work on these and it really was just this awesome time and we were generating huge amounts of data in the lab and not just me. There were, you know, dozens of people generating tons of different types of experiments and so forth. And we lacked any kind of framework for looking at that data constructively. You couldn't look at those experiments and figure out by looking line by line in an excel spreadsheet at what gene was expressed, at what level and what condition. It just wasn't [00:07:00] the way to do it. And so my main contribution to the field at the time was in bringing tools for organizing the information and presenting it visually and being able to interact with that kind of incredibly complicated data in a way that was intuitive for people who understood the biology and allowed them to go back and forth between the experiment in the computer and the data and really try to make sense of what was a huge amounts of data with huge amounts of information, but something nobody had really been trained to [00:07:30] look at. And so it was there that I really realized kind of the way I like to do science, which is this constant back and forth between experiments on the computer. In my mind and in what I try to teach people in my lab. There's no distinction between doing experiments on the bench or in the field or in a computer that they're just different ways of looking at biology. Speaker 3: This is spectrum line KALX Berkeley. Today, Michael [00:08:00] I's associate professor at UC Berkeley explains his research in developmental biology. Speaker 4: On the basis of that time at Stanford, I got a job at Berkeley and what I did when I started my lab at Berkeley was really tried to focus on one problem. I mean I had been working on a million different problems at Stanford where we had a huge group and a million different people working on, and I was sort of moving around from problem the problem and helping out people with their data or thinking of different experiments. And when I came to Berkeley, I really [00:08:30] wanted to focus on one problem. And the problem that had intrigued me from the beginning of working on the microarray stuff was figuring out how it is that an animal's genome, which is the same essentially in every cell in the body, how it instructs different cells to behave differently, to turn on different genes and to acquire different properties. And so partly because of the influence of people here at Berkeley who were working on fruit flies, I switched my research program to work on [inaudible] when I started my lab at Berkeley, the genome of that [00:09:00] had just been sequenced and I liked working with animals. Speaker 4: I like having something that moves around and you know, had some behaviors and so the lab started to work on flies and pretty much since then that's what we've worked on. That's sort of the story of how I got to where I am. So your research then is you're looking at flies over time? Yeah, I mean, I mean I see how the genes are expressed. I'd say we're looking at classified more as developmental biology in the sense that we're looking at how genes are expressed over time during the lifespan of a lie. To this day, [00:09:30] we can't look at a newly sequenced genome and say, oh well this is what the animal's going to look like. That is, I couldn't tell you except sort of by cheating and knowing, comparing it to other genomes. If I, you gave me a fly genome, I look at it, I wouldn't know it was a fly or a worm or a tree or it's just the way in which the organism acquires it. Speaker 4: Things that make them interesting, their form, their appearance, their function. We have just the tiniest scratch of understanding of how that works. And so it's, for me, the most [00:10:00] interesting problem in biology is how do you get in a complicated structure like an animal out of a single cell. And how is that encoded in a genome sequence? I mean it's a fascinating mystery that I thought, you know, when I first started doing this I thought we'd have solved that problem by now. Not Easily. You know, because we had all this new data, we had the genome sequences we could measure. And a lot of what my lab does is actually measure which genes come on when, during development and try to understand for individual genes where that's been encoded in the genome [00:10:30] and how that happens. And I just sort of figured, well, you know, the problem for all these years was not that the problem was that hard. Speaker 4: We just didn't have the right data to look at this problem. And now we can do these experiments. I can sequence the genome of a fly and in a day I can characterize which genes are turned on when during development. And I sort of naively thought, well, we'll just sort of put it into a computer and shake things up and be clever and we'll figure out how these things are related to each other. And I mean now it's laughable that I would've ever thought that, but it was a very, very complicated thing. It's a process that's [00:11:00] executed by very complicated molecular machines operating in a very complicated environment or the nucleus and it, you know, we really don't understand it very well. We've learned a lot, but it's not a problem. We really understand. And so what is it that you've accumulated in terms of knowledge in that regard? Speaker 4: What do you think you've learned? A small amount of this is coming from my lab, but this is a whole field of people looking at this. But that we know the basic way in which that information is encoded in the genome. [00:11:30] We know that there are tuneable switches that can turn genes on and off in different conditions. And we know basically what molecular processes are involved in doing that in the sense that we know that there are proteins that can bind DNA in a sequence specific manner. So they will stick only to pieces of DNA that contain a motif or a particular code that distinct for each of these factors. In flies, there's several hundred of these factors and for humans that are several thousand of these factors that bind DNA in a [00:12:00] sequence specific manner, and they basically translate the nucleotide sequence of the genome into a different kind of code, which is the code of proteins bound to DNA. Speaker 4: And we know from a million different experiments that it's the action of those proteins binding to DNA that triggers the differential expression of genes in different conditions. So if you have a particular proteins, these are called transcription factors. If you have one in a cell at high levels than the genes [00:12:30] that are responding to that factor will be turned on in that cell. And if there's another cell where that protein isn't present, the set of genes that responds to it won't be turned on. So we know that as a general statement, but working out exactly how those proteins function, what it is that they actually do to turn a gene on and off, how they interact with each other, what conditions are necessary for them to function. All of those things are, I wouldn't say we know nothing about it, but they're very, [00:13:00] very poorly understood. Speaker 4: A lot of this sort of simple ideas that people had of there being a kind of regulatory code that looked something like the protein code that we're, you know, amino acid code that people are familiar with, right, that there'll be a genetic code for gene regulation. The idea that that's true is long disappeared from our thinking in the sense that it's much more like a very, very complicated problem with hundreds of different proteins that all interact with each other in a dynamic way. Something bind recruits, something else. [00:13:30] The thing it recruits changes the coding on the DNA and essence to a different state and then that allows other proteins to come in and that somehow or another that we still really don't understand. You eventually reach a state where the gene is turned on or turned off depending on what these factors are doing and you know, while there's lots of models for how that might function, they're all still tentative and we're getting better. The techniques for doing these kinds of experiments get better all the time. We can take individual pieces of or Sophala embryo [00:14:00] and sequence all the RNA contains and get a really complete picture of what's turned on when the technology is improving to the point where we can do a lot of this by imaging cells as amazing things we can do, but still the next level of understanding the singularity in our understanding of transcriptional regulation is still before us. Speaker 3: Spectrum is on KALX, Berkley alternating Fridays today. Michael [inaudible], associate professor at UC Berkeley [00:14:30] is our guest. In the next section, Michael describes the challenges his research poses Speaker 4: and is the task then the hard work of science and documenting everything's, yeah. Mapping a little bit about just observing. I mean, I'm a big believer in observational science that what's limited us to this has been just our poor tools for looking at what's going on. I mean we still hard to visualize the activity of individual molecules within cells, although we're on the precipice [00:15:00] of being able to do that better. So yeah, it's looking and realizing when the paradigms we have for thinking about this thing are clearly just not sufficient. And I think the fields get trapped sometimes in a way of thinking about how their system works and they do experiments that are predicated on some particular idea. But you know, usually when you have an idea and you pursue it for quite a long time and it doesn't pan out, it's because the idea is wrong. Speaker 4: And not always, but I think the transcriptional regulation field has been slow to adapt [00:15:30] to new sort of models for thinking. Although that is changing, I think that there's a lot of activity now and thinking about the dynamics of DNA and proteins within the nucleus. You know, we tend to think about DNA as kind of a static thing that sits in the nucleus and it's a, it's sort of read out by proteins, but really much more accurate as to think of it as a living kind of warned me like thing in the nucleus that gets pulled around to different parts of the nucleus and where it is in the nucleus is one way in which you control what's turned on and off. And I think people are really [00:16:00] appreciating the importance of this sort of three-dimensional architecture of the nucleus as a key facet and controlling the activity that there's, the nucleus itself is not a homogeneous place. Speaker 4: There is active and inactive regions of the nucleus and it's really largely from imaging that we're learning how that's functioning and you know, we as the whole field and are there lots of collaborators and people who are doing work? Yeah, I mean I'd say oh yeah. I mean it's a, it's an active feeling. Pay Attention to [00:16:30] oh yeah. So it's an active, if not huge field and not just in flies. I mean, I think it's transcriptional regulations of big field and in particular in developmental biology where amongst scientists we're interested in how animals develop. It's long been clear that gene regulation is sort of sits at the center of understanding development and so people interested in developmental biology and have long been interested in transcriptional regulation and I think everybody's got their own take on it here. But yeah, it's a very active field with lots of people, including several other people at Berkeley who are doing really [00:17:00] fascinating stuff. Speaker 4: So it's not out in the wilderness. This is not the hinterlands of science, but it's um, it's a nice field to work in about appropriate size. Our annual meetings only have a thousand, a few thousand people. It's not like some of these fields with 25,000 people. I can realistically know all the people who are working on problems related to ours and I literally know them and I know what they're doing and we sort of exchange ideas. So I like it. It's, it's nice community of people. [00:17:30] Is the field driving a lot of tool development? Absolutely. I say, this is something I really try to encourage people in my lab and people I trained to think, which is when you have a problem, you should be thinking not what am I good at? What can I apply to this problem? What technique has out there that would work here? Speaker 4: But what do I need to do? What is the right way to solve this problem? And if someone else has figured out how to do it, great, do it. But if they haven't, then do it yourself. And I think that this applies sort of very specifically [00:18:00] to doing individual experiments, but also to this broader issue we were talking about before with this interplay between computation and experiment. I think too many people come into science graduate school or wherever, thinking, well, I'm an experimentalist or I'm a computational biologist or whatever. And then they ask a question and then the inevitably hit the point where the logical path and pursuing their question would take them across this self-imposed boundary. Either you're an experimentalist who generated data and you're not [00:18:30] able to get at it in the right way and therefore, you know what you really need to be doing is sitting at a computer and playing around with the data. Speaker 4: But if you view that as a boundary that you're not allowed to cross or you're incapable of crossing, you'll never solve it because it almost never works. You almost never can find somebody else no matter how talented they are. Who's as interested in the problem that you're working on as you are. And I think that's a general rule. Scientists should feel as uninhibited about pursuing new things even if they're bad at it. It's certainly been a mantra [00:19:00] I've always tried to convey to the people in my lab, which is, yeah, sure, you come in with a computer science background and you know you're a coder and you've never picked up a pipette or grown a fly. But that's why the first thing you should do in the lab is go grow flies and vice versa. For the people who come in perfectly good in the lab but unable to do stuff in the computer, the first thing you should do is start playing around with data on the computer and it doesn't always work and not everybody sort of successfully bridges that gap, but the best scientists in my mind are ones who don't [00:19:30] circumscribe what they're good at. Speaker 4: They have problems and they pursue them. When something like visualization, is that a bridge too far to try to embrace that kind of technology? I've always done that. I mean I almost every time I do an analysis in the computer, I reduce it to picture some way or another. You know, because of the human brain, no matter how fancy your analysis is, the human brain is just not good at assimilating information as numbers. What we're good at as thinkers is looking at patterns, [00:20:00] finding patterns and things, looking at looking at images, recognizing when patterns are interesting and important, and there's a crucial role for turning data into something the human brain can pull in. And that's always, for me, one of the most fun things is taking data that is just a string of numbers and figuring out how to present it to your brain in a way that makes some sense for it and the refinement of it so that it's believable. Speaker 4: Yeah, and so then you can do it over and over and over and get the same result. Yeah, and all, I mean it is one of the dangers [00:20:30] you deal with when you're working with, when you're relying on human pattern recognition is we're so good at it that we recognize patterns even when they don't exist. There's a lot of statistics that gets used in modern biology, but often people I think use it incorrectly and people think that statistics is going to tell them what things are important, what things they should be paying attention to. For me, we almost entirely used statistical thinking to tell us when we've fooled ourselves into thinking something's interesting, you know, with enough data and enough things going on, you're going [00:21:00] to find something that looks interesting there and having a check on that part of your brain that likes to find patterns and interesting things is also crucial. Speaker 4: You know, I think people understand that if you flip a coin three times, it's not that we are trying to land on heads, but they have much, much harder time thinking about what happens if you flip a coin a billion times. We're struggling with this in biology, this transformation from small data to big data, it taxes people's ability to think clearly about what kinds of phenomena are interesting and aren't interesting. [00:21:30] Big Data is sort of the promise land now for a lot of people. Yeah. I'm a big believer in data intrinsically. If you're interested in observing things and interested in understanding how they work, the more you can measure about them better. It's just that's not the end of the game. Right? Just simply measuring things that doesn't lead to insight. Going from observing something to understanding it. That's where the challenges and that's true. Whether you're looking at the movement of DNA in a nucleus or you're [00:22:00] looking at people by a target, right? Like the same. It's the same problem. Speaker 3: This concludes part one of our interview with Michael [inaudible]. On the next spectrum, Michael Eisen will explain the Public Library of science, which he [inaudible]. He will give his thoughts on genetically modified organisms and a strategy for labeling food. He discusses scientific outreach and research funding. Don't miss him now. Our calendar of science and technology [00:22:30] events happening locally over the next few weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Renee Rao present the calendar Speaker 5: tomorrow, February 9th from noon to one wild Oakland presents nature photography basics at lake merit. Meet in front of the Rotary Nature Center at 600 Bellevue Avenue at Perkins in Oakland. For this free event, learn to get more out of the camera you currently have and use it to capture beautiful photos of Oakland's jewel lake merit. [00:23:00] Bring your camera and you'll learn the basics of composition, camera settings, but photography and wildlife photography. Okay. Your instructor will be Dan. Tigger, a freelance photographer that publishes regularly in Bay Nature and other magazines. RSVP at Wild Oakland dot o r G. UC Berkeley Speaker 6: is holding its monthly blood drive. This February 12th you are eligible to no-name blood if you are in good health way, at least 110 pounds and are 17 years or older. You can [00:23:30] also check out the eligibility guidelines online for an initial self screening if you're not eligible or you prefer not to donate blood. There are other ways to support campus blood drives through volunteering, encouraging others and simply spreading the word. You can make an appointment online, but walk ins are also welcome. The blood drive will be on February 12th and the alumni house on the UC Berkeley campus will last from 12 to 6:00 PM you can make an appointment or find more information at the website. [00:24:00] Red Cross blood.org using the sponsor code you see be February 13th Dr. Bruce Ames, senior scientist at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute will speak at a colloquium on the effects that an inadequate supply of vitamins and minerals has on aging. Speaker 6: Dr Ames posits that the metabolism responds to a moderate deficiency of an essential vitamin or mineral by concentrating on collecting the scarce proteins [00:24:30] to help short term survival and reproductive fitness, usually at the expense of proteins important for longterm health. This is known as triaged theory. Dr Ian Discuss ways in which the human metabolism has evolved to favor short term survival over longterm health. He will also present evidence that this metabolic trade-off accelerates aging associated diseases such as cancer, cognitive decline, and cardiovascular disease. The colloquium will be on February 13th from 12 [00:25:00] to 1:15 PM on the UC Berkeley campus in five one oh one Tolman hall February 16th the Monthly Science at Cau Lecture series will hold a talk focusing on the emerging field of synthetic biology, which applies engineering principles to biology to build sales with new capabilities. The Speaker, John Dabber is a mentor in the international genetically engineered machines competition or ai-jen and a UC Berkeley professor, [00:25:30] Dr Debra. We'll discuss the new technique created in J key's link's lab to make low cost drugs to treat malaria. He will also introduce student members of the UC Berkeley Igm team who will discuss their prize winning project. The free public event will be on February 16th from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM will be held on the UC Berkeley campus in room one oh five of Stanley hall Speaker 5: on Tuesday the 19th how long now and Yearbook Buenos Center for the Arts Presents. Chris Anderson's talk [00:26:00] on the makers revolution. He describes the democratization of manufacturing and the implications that that has. Anderson himself left his job as editor of wired magazine to join a 22 year old from Tijuana and running a typical makers firm. Three d robotics, which builds is do it yourself. Drones, what based collaboration tools and small batch technology such as cheap 3d printers, three d scanners, laser cutters and assembly. Robots are transforming manufacturing. [00:26:30] Suddenly large scale manufacturers are competing, not just with each other on multi-year cycles are competing with swarms of tiny competitors who can go from invention to innovation to market dominance. In a weeks today, Anderson notes there are nearly a thousand maker spaces shared production facilities around the world and they're growing at an astounding rate. The talk is seven 30 to 9:00 PM at the Lam Research Theater at the Yerba Buena Center for the arts at 700 Howard Street in San Francisco. Speaker 5: [00:27:00] Tickets are $15 for more information, visit long now.org now to new stories presented by Renee and Rick. The Federal Communication Commission has released a proposal to create super wifi networks across the nation. This proposal created by FCC Chairman Julius Jenna Koski, is it global first, and if approved, could provide free access to the web in every metropolitan area and many rural areas. The powerful new service could even allow people [00:27:30] to make calls for mobile phones using only the Internet. A robust public policy debate has already sprung up around the proposal, which has drawn aggressive lobbying on both sides. Verizon wireless and at t, and t along with other telecommunications companies have launched a campaign to persuade lawmakers. The proposal is technically and financially unfeasible. Meanwhile, tech companies like Google and Microsoft have championed the ideas sparking innovation and widening access to an [00:28:00] increasingly important resource. We can add this to the growing list of public policy debate over our changing and complex relationship with the Internet. Speaker 5: A team at McMaster university as reported in the February 3rd issue of nature chemical biology that they have found the first demonstration of a secreted metabolite that can protect against toxic gold and cause gold. Biomineralization. That's right. Bacterium Delphia, [00:28:30] a seat of [inaudible] take solutions continuing dissolve the gold and creates gold particles. This helps protect the bacteria from absorbing harmful gold ions, but it also might be used to harvest gold. The researchers found genes that cause gold, precipitation, engineered bacteria that lack these jeans and observed that these bacteria had stunted growth and that there was no gold precipitation. They also extracted the chemical responsible [00:29:00] for the gold mineralization naming it delftibactin a, the molecule creates metallic gold within seconds in Ph neutral conditions at room temperature. Gold exists in extremely dilute quantities in many water sources and the bacteria or the metabolite might be used to extract gold from mine. Waste in the future. Speaker 3: [inaudible] the music her during the show is by Luciana, David [00:29:30] from his album foam and acoustic, released under a creative Commons license, 3.0 attribution. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about show, please send Speaker 1: them to us. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. Speaker 2: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

Discussion with Sam Borgeson, a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. Sam’s aim is to reduce the environmental impacts of our buildings. He talks about building energy consumption, energy conservation, and the challenges building managers face in conservation.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: [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, a calendar of local events and news. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with three representatives of the organization, community resources for science, also known as crs. They are, relieves [00:01:00] a is cotton Nova crs program, Assistant Professor Bob Bergman of the UC Berkeley Department of chemistry. And Miriam Bowering, a graduate student and Professor Bergman's research group. Community Resources for Science is a nonprofit organization. The goal of crs is to help teachers give elementary and middle school students more opportunities to do science, to ask questions, test ideas, get their hands [00:01:30] on real science activities. Through these efforts, crs hopes to inspire the next generation of thinkers, makers, problem solvers, and leaders. This interview is prerecorded and edited today. We have a group of three people from the community resources for science talking with us about their program. And why don't you each introduce yourself and then we'll get into some details about your organization. Speaker 3: [00:02:00] My name is [inaudible]. Uh, I'm the program assistant at community resources for science. Speaker 4: My name is Bob Bergman. I'm a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley. And I help to organize an outreach program, which was initially called chemistry in the classroom and then became community in the classroom and now it's called basis and it helps to organize graduate students to do presentations in the local schools. Speaker 3: I'm Miriam Bowering. I am a graduate student in chemistry at UC Berkeley [00:02:30] and I'm also a classroom volunteer. I bring groups of my coworkers into fifth grade classrooms to do science with them. Speaker 2: We're Alyssa, can you give us an overview of what crs does? Speaker 3: Community resources for science is an organization that was started by two parents who were involved with a lot of science in their children's schools and they decided that there was now enough science being done, so they figured out a way to individual teachers [00:03:00] get the resources that they need, uh, Ba snails from a local store or books that they need, um, or waste organized field trips. And it evolved into bringing scientists into classrooms to do hands on presentations as well. And that's grown from that? Uh, yeah. I mean now we're able to organize hundreds of volunteers that we have go into, uh, over 280 classrooms this past year [00:03:30] and get kids involved in doing actual science. And where is it that, uh, that you do this? What school districts? Uh, yeah, we are primarily in Alameda County and the Berkeley and Oakland School districts, uh, that we do the actual presentations because um, our volunteers can reach those areas most easily those schools. Speaker 3: But we go out and provide services to teachers and Castro valley as well. And some of the other West Contra Costa County [00:04:00] schools. What's the grade range that you try to impact? Crs as an organization has been supporting teachers k through five from its beginnings and we've started expanding into middle schools, so mostly sixth grade, um, because they still have one science teacher, but seventh and eighth they kind of start to branch out into different subjects. However, we do still work with teachers in seventh and eighth grade and we're very [00:04:30] willing to provide them with the personal support on an individual basis that they might need, you know, requesting resources and things like that. And we do go into middle schools and do science days where we have four or five lessons going on for different classrooms and they do, you know, one set in the morning and then they switch it around and do another set in the afternoon. And for teachers to get involved, how did they do that? Free?Speaker 5: Uh, yes it is. I think they can just visit the website, [00:05:00] which is www.crscience.org all the information they need is there. So they can not only contact crs to get scientists into their classrooms, but they can also look for other kinds of resources on the website there. Speaker 3: How do you find volunteers? How do you go about recruiting a, we actually recruited a lot more volunteers this past year than [00:05:30] we have in the past. And we're really excited about that. And thanks to our campus coordinators, Leah and Kristen, we were able to really reach out to 20 of the departments on campus and we have volunteers from 20th think what is their 21 departments here at UC Berkeley? So we're really proud of that. And Bob has done a great job of really getting the word out in the Department of Chemistry and college chemistry. A little bit about, how about the history of that is Speaker 4: this really started [00:06:00] almost accidentally. I was at a party and one of the people from crs was someone that my wife had gone to a graduate school at UC Berkeley with and she said that they were thinking about trying to get more scientists into the classrooms and wondered if I knew of anybody who wanted to do that. So I said I would go back to the campus and send out an email message in my department and just see if anyone was interested in doing that because it must have been seven or eight [00:06:30] years ago, I guess. And we started with a group of about 12 volunteers. Uh, we met in a seminar room in the chemistry department and I think it was probably one of the original organizers. It was probably Anne Jennings who came over and gave a short talk about what crs was all about and what they wanted to do to organize this program. Speaker 4: It's not a very simple thing. You not only need to have good contacts with the teachers, but, uh, you can't just throw people [00:07:00] into the classroom directly. You've got to give them some training and, you know, get them to understand what, um, what's age appropriate. Especially for the classes we were targeting, which were grades three to five. So we started with those 12 people and they basically, at that time, I put together their own presentations. And one of the interesting things about this program is that the graduate student volunteers actually come up with their own presentations, mostly isn't canned presentations that they get some [00:07:30] from somewhere else and they've come with, come up with some extremely creative stuff. Um, they're teaching kids at this level of things that I personally, you know, are really relatively sophisticated. And I personally never thought that you'd be able to, you know, sort of do this with people at that age. Speaker 4: But that was reasonably successful and it's really been the graduate student volunteers who've done most of the recruiting. So it started out in the chemistry department and these 12 original people [00:08:00] began to kind of, you know, dragoon their friends into doing this. And so it grew from 12 to 20 to 40 to 50 and then they began to attract and talk to some people in other departments. And then we reached a point where we thought that maybe there was a slightly different way that we could do this. They came up with the idea that maybe instead of doing this on an individual basis, we could do it with teams of graduate students. You may know that [00:08:30] that in most science departments, graduate students are part of research groups. So there'll be one professor who directs a, you know, a bunch of graduate students whom anywhere from three or four to 15 or 20 people, sometimes larger. Speaker 4: Uh, so the idea was to now put together teams that would be localized. Each team would be localized in a particular research group that and that has several advantages. One was that someone who wanted to do this didn't have to join in as kind of a lone individual. There's [00:09:00] always a certain reticence about that. The other thing that I think major advantage of this change was that it generated some continuity so that graduate students are not here forever or at least we hope they are not. And uh, as they graduate and before they graduate, they begin to bring in new students first year students who see that this program is going on and see that there are people who are interested in excited about it. And so that really is a major attraction for people to sign up. Speaker 1: [inaudible] [00:09:30] you are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley we are talking with release has gotten over Professor Bob Bergman and Miriam Bowering about their work with community resources for science. Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say that one of the other things [00:10:00] that I worried about when we started this program was what, what their response was going to be from the research directors. That professors that these graduate students we're working with. Okay. Because you know, you, you could envision, um, somebody giving these kids a hard time because you know, they should be in the lab doing research and here they are out doing presentations in the local schools. I've seen my role as trying to, at least in the chemistry department, keep the faculty informed about what's going on. So right from the beginning when we started [00:10:30] this, uh, I, you know, got up at several meetings. My Chemistry Department faculty meets once a week and I gave several very short presentations telling people that graduate students were going to be doing this and that we hope that everybody would be supportive of it because we thought it was not only good for them educationally, but it was a real service to the community. Speaker 4: One of the things that that actually made this thing go much more smoothly than I might've thought is that a lot of people are supported, their research is supported by the National Science Foundation at [00:11:00] Berkeley and the National Science Foundation has actually required as part of their proposals, something called a statement of broader impact. And one of those broader impacts that you can put into your proposals is something about how people in your research group might be, you know, reaching out to the local community. So I think as time went on, people began to view this not so much as an incursion, as a favor to them because they could easily then put in their proposals the fact that their students were [00:11:30] involved in this and these activities. And I think that really was one of the things that that made it a lot less of a problem to do this and many research groups around the, around the campus, what is the teaching philosophy you apply to building your lesson plans? Speaker 4: There's a lot of, you know, ambiguity's about the research that's been done in educating people. One thing comes through extremely clearly and that is the two general ways that you can think of [00:12:00] or for educating people, and this is really true at any level including the college level, are to stand up in front of them and just talk at them and the other is get people involved in doing things, have them actually do hands on stuff. On the two founders started this, they knew that that kind of research had been done and so they started from the beginning making it clear to people that they were not the volunteers. I mean that they were not going to go in the classroom and just a lecture. Okay, just write things on the board and tell people stuff because [00:12:30] certainly at grades three to five and probably at even higher grades, you're going to lose people after about the first three minutes when you do that. So the, the goal of right from the beginning was to go in with presentations that involved having the kids do stuff that with their own hands and that's been something that we've stuck with really I think quite religiously since the beginning. Speaker 5: Definitely all lessons are expected to be hands on minds, [00:13:00] on, uh, inquiry style work. And Bob mentioned that the typical way you get to scientists in a classroom is someone's mom or dad comes in. And also typically what you get is someone's stands at the front and maybe doesn't talk but maybe just blow something up up there, which is fun for everyone. But it's, it's really great to go in there and gives the kids equipment to play with and let them start figuring things out themselves and, [00:13:30] and be able to guide them. I think it's also interesting to see the way we're able to even help educate teachers a little bit about how science works. So I've seen some really amazing teachers through this program, but you know, none of them are scientists and a lot of them don't really understand basically what it takes to be a scientist. Speaker 5: So at the end we usually give a few minutes to talk about any questions the teacher or students might have. And the teachers say, well, what does it take to be a scientist? Um, [00:14:00] and we might say, well just keep observing the world around you. Stay curious, play with things. And the teacher says, so what they meant to say was study hard and no, no, that's not it. You've got to be able to nurture that natural curiosity kids have. So I think that's a big part of what we do is go in there and kill some myths about what it takes to be a scientist. The great thing about the graduate [00:14:30] students that go in is they shatter stereotypes about scientists for the children. What do you see clip art style in your head when someone says scientist. Right. And that's not what ends up in their classroom. And that's really beautiful to see them kind of taken aback by that. When scientists first in, you know, Speaker 3: young and most of our volunteers are female actually, which is another great plus and young female scientists [00:15:00] doing things that kids didn't think was science. Speaker 4: Yeah. I think that it just turns out that graduate students are almost the ideal place in people's Times of life to do this. I have a bit more time flexibility. They still are still working very hard on their research, but you know, it's not, you know, okay, you have to be here at eight o'clock in the morning, you have to leave at five, you know, the way you would in a corporation setting. They're not overly wellmed with classes, at least not [00:15:30] after the first couple of semesters. So they have some flexibility in, in that regard. And there's a reasonable support from the institution. Right. I think that's a big issue that the, the campus and you know, and uh, as I said to a large extent, the, you know, people's research advisors have really provided a lot of at least moral support for this. And so it, it really makes graduate students almost ideal. Speaker 4: I think what relates is said about, you know, shattering these stereotypes is also has been a really interesting sort of eye opener for me. [00:16:00] It really is true that these kids have a very different stereotype about what scientists are from what they see coming into the classrooms and having people who they see almost as kind of corresponding to s you know, to a big sister or cousin or you know, somebody that, you know, they really can relate to I think has had a big effect. And then having people at, you know, sort of the student time of their lives when they're still young enough to be, to be seen as young people by the kids in the classrooms [00:16:30] as I think been an important facet of this. [inaudible] Speaker 1: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with releases, got Nova Professor Bob Burg and Miriam Bowery about their work with community resources for science. Speaker 3: [00:17:00] How do you assess the impact your presentations have on students? Speaker 4: Um, no. You put your finger on one of the stickiest issues with respect to all of this kind of thing with respect to education in general, which is not only how do you find out if it works, but how do you define what works? And you know, whether something works and what doesn't, [00:17:30] I think when all of us like to do in the most perfect world is, is actually track the people who experience these presentations and see what difference it makes in their lives. Okay. So this is a big deal, right? Because if you know anything about research in general and educational research, it's not enough to just track the people who have had this experience. You've got to have a control group of people who haven't had the experience, right? And then you've got to track two groups. [00:18:00] And you know, in some ways it's, it's like having a drug that's really effective. Speaker 4: There's a real moral question as to whether it's okay to keep a control group that isn't, doesn't have access to this stuff. Right? But assuming you can do that, um, it would require way more resources than we have to track people, let's say to the point where they've applied to college, right? Or even to the point where they've gone through college to see how successful they've been once they've been in that environment. What we hope and what we sort of believe [00:18:30] deep in our hearts completely intuitively is that people who have these experiences will do better later in their educational lives. But proving that in a scientifically respectable way is a major undertaking and it's one that we really don't have resources for by any means right now. So, you know, we're pretty much working under the, the faith I guess that exposing people to this sort of thing will really make them [00:19:00] more interested in science. Speaker 4: So we really believe quite strongly that a, a major impact of this is not just, you know, generating people who, who might turn out to be scientists. Although we certainly hope that would be one of the things that that happens. But we'd really like to educate the general public on scientific issues, how science is done and why it's exciting and the meaning of many scientific investigations is, and we hope that by catching people catching, you know, kids early and [00:19:30] doing this, uh, really will have a lasting effect. The best we can do is get feedback from the people involved in the program and see whether they like it. And if they like it and they feel it's been successful and there you are at the point at which they're experiencing these presentations, if if they're excited about what we're doing. That's what we're going with. Speaker 5: This is the great thing about community resources for science. There is a staff there who are experts in science education, [00:20:00] so I sent my lesson plan draft to Heidi Williamson who coordinates the basis program and she read it. She gave me a long email with lots of suggestions of various levels of detail and I worked them in and I continued to develop as now my team members are giving me feedback and so are the teachers. So the lessons really do get improved over time from that first draft. It's not, it's not just any graduate student can make something up and go in and help the kids [00:20:30] learn something. There really is some accountability [inaudible] Speaker 4: are there any interesting stories that any of you have that you want to share about classroom experiences with with the program? Speaker 5: My favorite moments in there are when kids really put stuff together. So when they hear what we've told them and they make their observations and then they just come up with something good at their own theory for why a water job looks different from an [00:21:00] oil drop and it really makes sense or why you can get a piece of pencil lead to float on water if it's horizontal but not vertical. And when they can explain that themselves after making the observations, it's just, it's incredibly high ventilation rates if you're not right under the dots, but they actually aren't accomplishing anything in terms of air quality. So that's my plug, I guess, for people to pay attention and think about their environment. Sam Bergeson, thanks [00:21:30] for being on spectrum. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: did you see an example of data visualization? Check out the official campus dashboard at the website. My power.berkeley.edu Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: [00:22:00] irregular feature of spectrum is dimension. A few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa cabbage with the calendar Speaker 6: on Saturday, December 1st wonderfest is putting on a special event called end of days. Does Hollywood get doomsday? Right? Planetary Scientists, Chris McKay will discuss this topic as he introduces a special screening of seeking a friend for the end of the world. Starting [00:22:30] Steve Grill and Karen Knightley popcorn is free and a no host drink and candy bar. We'll be there. Tickets are tax deductible and benefit wonderfest and variety children's charity of northern California. They must be purchased in advance for $25 visit wonderfest.org for more info. The annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union is the first week of December at the Moscone Center. Each year they have a public lecture that is [00:23:00] free and open to the public. This year that talk is on Sunday, December 2nd from noon to one and Moscone South Room One oh two lead scientists for the Mars exploration program. Michael Meyer program scientists for the Mars Science Laboratory. John Groton, seeing and participating in scientists on the Mars Science Laboratory. Rebecca Williams, well discuss curiosity driven Mars exploration. Curiosity is the most sophisticated explorer ever sent to another [00:23:30] planet and the trio. We'll talk about its latest activities. A full sized inflatable model of the rover and hands on activities for families will follow the lecture. For more information, visit agu.org Speaker 7: on Tuesday, December 4th at 7:00 PM at the California Academy of Science and Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Mary Ellen Hannibal. We'll present the Pritzker lecture, the spine of the continent, her book about one of the single most [00:24:00] ambitious conservation efforts ever undertaken to create linked, protected areas extending from the Yukon to Mexico, the entire length of North America. This movement is the brainchild of Michael Sule, the founder of conservation biology. EO Wilson calls it the most important conservation initiative in the world today. In this fascinating presentation, Mary-Ellen Hannibal takes us on a tour of her travels down the length of the North American spine, sharing stories and anecdotes about [00:24:30] the passionate, idiosyncratic people she meets along the way and the species they love. Reservations are required and seating is limited. Go to the California Academy of Science website for tickets. Speaker 6: Now three new stories, and I'm joined by Rick Kaneski and Lisa cabbage. The November 29th issue of nature has an article discussing a massive black hole in the tiny galaxy, n g c one two seven seven one of the galaxies in the cluster that is [00:25:00] the constellation Perseus to the best of our astronomical knowledge. Almost every galaxy should contain in its central region what is called a supermassive black hole. Past studies have shown that the mass of the black coal typically accounts for about a 10th of a percent of the massive its home galaxy that Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. In Heidelberg. Researchers know that the black hole has a mass equivalent of 17 billion suns, that the galaxy [00:25:30] is only a quarter of the milky ways diameter. These observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Hobby Eberly telescope show that the black hole accounts for almost 14% of the galaxies mass past spectrum guests. Nicholas McConnell published a paper last year that holds the current record for the largest black hole, which is between six and 37 billion solar masses. So the black hole in NGC one to seven seven may or may [00:26:00] not top this record. Speaker 7: The journal Nature Geoscience reports this week that the shells of marine snails known as terra pods living in the seas around Antarctica are being dissolved by ocean acidification. These tiny animals are a valuable food source for fish and birds and play an important role in the oceanic carbon cycle. During a science cruise in 2008 researchers from British Antarctic survey and the University of East Anglia in collaboration with colleagues from the [00:26:30] u s would tell oceanographic institution and Noah discovered severe dissolution of the shells of living terra pods in southern ocean waters. The team examined an area of upwelling where winds cause cold water to be pushed upwards from the deep to the surface of the ocean up well, water is usually more corrosive to a particular type of calcium carbonate or arrogant night that terra pods use to build their shells. The team found that as a result of the additional influence of ocean acidification, [00:27:00] this corrosive water severely dissolve the shells of terror pods, coauthor and science cruise leader. Speaker 7: Dr Geraint Tarling says as one of only a few oceanic creatures that build their shells out of air gunnite in the polar regions. Terror pods are an important food source for fish and birds as well as a good indicator of ecosystem health. The tiny snails do not necessarily die as a result of their shells dissolving. However, it may increase their vulnerability to predation and infection. Consequently having an [00:27:30] impact to other parts of the food web. Ocean acidification is caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere emitted admitted as a result of fossil fuel burning. The finding supports predictions that the impact of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems and food webs may be significant Speaker 2: science daily reports that dozens of climate scientists have reconciled their measurements of ice sheet changes in Antarctica and Greenland over the past two decades. [00:28:00] The results published November 29th in the journal Science roughly have the uncertainty and discard some conflicting observations. The effort led by Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds in the UK reconciles three existing ways to measure losses. The first method takes an accounting approach. Combining climate models and observations to tally up the gain or loss to other methods. Use special satellites to precisely measure the height and gravitational pull [00:28:30] of the ice sheets to calculate how much ice is present. Each method has strengths and weaknesses. Until now, scientists using each method released estimates independent from the others. This is the first time they have all compared their methods for the same times and locations. Understanding ice sheets is central to modeling global climate and predicting sea level rise. Even tiny changes to sea level when added over an entire ocean can have substantial [00:29:00] effects on storm surges and flooding and coastal and island communities. Speaker 8: The music heard during the show is by Stan David from his album, folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license 3.0 for attribution. Speaker 9: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please [00:29:30] 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Three members of The Berkeley Science Review (Editor-in-chief Sebastien Lounis, Web Editor Adam Hill, and BSR Author Lindsay Glesener) talk about the printed Review and the digital blog. They describe how the BSR has changed their view of science.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm hmm. [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: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. In today's interview, Rick Karnofsky talks with three contributors to the Berkeley Science Review. The review is a student run by annual magazine that publishes in fallen spring. The review is also started, a blog that publishes four times a week to augment [00:01:00] the magazine. Our guests, our blog editor, Adam Hill, editor in chief Sebastian Lunas and author Lindsey Glasner. They talk about how it all gets done and what it means to them to do it. Here is Rick with the interview. First of all, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for why don't you introduce yourself Speaker 4: then what you do for the BSR and also what your research here at cal says. Hi, my name is Sebastian Lunas. I'm the editor in chief of the Berkeley Science Review and I'm also a fifth [00:01:30] year phd student in the graduate group in Applied Science and technology. At UC Berkeley. I do my research at the molecular foundry up at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Delia Milan's group and focus on studying nanocrystals of transparent conducting oxides. Great. Speaker 1: Uh, my name is Lindsey and I'm a writer for the BSR in the upcoming issue. I'm a graduate student in the physics department with a little bit of luck. I'll be graduating this December getting my phd and I work at the Space Sciences Laboratory [00:02:00] for Dr Bob Lynne. We build instruments that go on rockets, balloons and satellites to look at the solar system and sometimes things outside the solar system. Speaker 5: Yes sir. Right. For the blog. Is that right? I will be, yes. Okay. My name is Adam Hill. I am the editor of the PSR blog and we sort of work in tandem with the magazine to both keep people aware of the BSR in between issues and also to independently promote science and issues of [00:02:30] science education. Great. And your research here at cal? I am in Charles Harris's group in chemistry where I use ultra fast lasers to look at the dynamics of organic metallic catalysts. Okay. So can someone tell me a little bit about the Berkeley Science Review? Speaker 4: I'll take that one. So the Berkeley Science review is UC Berkeley is General Interest Science magazine. It's written, edited, produced entirely by UC Berkeley graduate students and it comes out twice a year. Basically the goal [00:03:00] of highlighting and showcasing and the cutting edge research that's going on at Berkeley, as well as taking a look at UC Berkeley science community and science history and doing so in a way that is accessible to a general audience. So it's not a technical publication, it's not a peer reviewed journal, it's a a general interest science magazine and it's written with the aim of being able to be picked up by anyone on campus and get an exciting look at what's going on at Berkeley. Part of the mission is also to help train editors and authors [00:03:30] through the process of putting together a professional level publication. And we're able to do that because we only publish two issues a year. So it gives us sort of a six month cycle to actually spend some time and work out really high quality content for the magazine as well as a really visually appealing layout. How long has the Berkeley Science Review been around? The science review was started in 2001 man, it's been producing two issues a year since then, so we're, we're going on 23rd issue coming out [00:04:00] this fall has a blog band active for that of the block's been around since Speaker 5: 2010 and a gold team was responsible for starting the blog since then. I think it has grown significantly in scope and readership. And how do you attract readers to both the magazine and and the blog for the blog in particular, we found that social media is one of the best routes to getting significant readership. Speaker 4: In terms of the magazine, I guess to answers, we generally just print as many as we can [00:04:30] and get them all over campus. And what's your approximate circulation? That we typically print between two to 3000 copies per issue and we distribute those across campus and then to a couple of local organizations and coffee shops around campus. Then we have a small number of subscribers, but we sort of know based on the fact that our magazine sort of disappear very quickly that we are getting a significant on our readership, but we're actually conducting a readership survey this fall to sort of get a better idea of how people actually come across the magazine, how many people are reading it, what their sort of [00:05:00] demographic makeup is, and we've also been trying to do a better job over the last year or so of integrating our magazine content with the blog. Speaker 5: And where should people look for that survey? Speaker 4: The magazine will have a prompt in it probably on the inside of the front cover with the link to the survey. We don't want people that haven't read the magazine to be filling out the survey and skewing our results. So if you do pick up the magazine interview. Yeah, exactly. If you do pick up the magazine, [00:05:30] please fill out the survey and let us know who you are. We're very interested and we'd love to hear from you. Lindsey, how did you come to volunteer as a writer? Yeah, my history with the Berkeley Science review is very short. Up until last spring, I was one of those people who would pick up the magazine when I sighed in the places on campus, but I also saw a call for pitches that was advertised to a lot of the departments. I think the particular place I saw, it was graduate student mailing Speaker 1: list in the physics department [00:06:00] and it offered the opportunity to pitch a story for the Berkeley Science Review. And I thought, well, I've got something interesting to write about. So I sent in a pitch and it was accepted. And what was your pitch? The idea for my story was inspired by my phd project, which is a project to put solar, observing x-ray instruments on a NASA rocket. And I thought it might be interesting not only from a scientific perspective, but there's also a bit of a humanist aspect to the story because I thought [00:06:30] people might want to know about what it's like to build one of these experiments and what it's like to go to a launch facility and an actually launched the rocket and once I got a little deeper into the topic, another thing that came into it was Berkeley's long history of building experiments like these. It really goes back to the beginnings of NASA, the whole thing developed together. And so that aspect kind of started taking over the story and became very important to it. Speaker 4: And then from there you just decided to volunteer to write for the blog [00:07:00] as well or, Speaker 1: well I think we've decided that it would be organic to have some blog entries as well because this is a project that is going to launch with any luck on November 2nd so without the timing would be appropriate to have a story about the project and then to have updates on did it launch, what's happening with the project throughout the fall. Speaker 4: This is sort of an example of how we're trying to really integrate the magazine and the web content where it's where it's organic to do so. We figured since it was an ongoing project, [00:07:30] it was a perfect opportunity to sort of transition people right from reading the magazine to reading posts on the blog and sort of integrate those two. Oh, that's great. And it's also worth mentioning that I think there's a significant cross section of the readership who don't necessarily encounter the magazine on campus, but who do read it on our website that said science review.berkeley.edu and do you have your entire back catalog online? We do. We're in the process of fully introducing the very earliest issues as actual searchable texts right [00:08:00] now their catalog in sort of a reader format where you can read them that way, but we're sort of moving towards making them more indexable and more accessible. Speaker 4: And is Lindsay's volunteer story typical? Do you normally draw authors from your readership? I would say her story is typical in that she received an email through somebody, one of the departmental email lists and that's how we do a lot of our outreach for authors. Uh, we have our own active email list that we reach out to when we do a call for pitches, but we also spray them out through the departments [00:08:30] and I would say most of our authors come from that outreach effort. A good proportion of them have read the magazine before. We've been making an effort this year to also get in touch with a lot of the first year students on campus. A lot of our writers are more senior Phd Students, but I think there's also a huge opportunity for first year Grad students that aren't bogged down their research to get involved. Speaker 6: [inaudible] this [00:09:00] is spectrum on k a LX Berkeley. Today's guests are from the Berkeley Science Review and it's Gluck. Speaker 1: How was writing for the BSR different or similar to writing for other publications? It's very challenging. I've spent the last six years getting used to scientific writing for publications or for my colleagues, and it was surprisingly [00:09:30] difficult for me to write for the BSR. I imagine that sort of a common story because it's a broader audience or, yeah, when we're writing for scientific publications, we use very specialized language with carefully chosen words that are really specific, but they're meant for people who already know what those words mean and are very comfortable hearing them and using them. I think when you're writing for a broader audience, you have to choose your words just as carefully or maybe even more so, but you [00:10:00] have to focus less on being so specific and accurate and more on whether the words will be understood and whether they'll be interesting. Speaker 1: Usually when I'm writing a scientific article, I don't need to worry about it being interesting. Hopefully. Interesting enough to site, I shouldn't mention that. In the magazine we have, I serve a number of different formats, so we have a number of different lengths of articles ranging from short little snapshots that are three or 400 words, two feature-length articles like the one that Lindsey wrote, which are typically two [00:10:30] to 4,000 words, sometimes even slightly longer. And so Lindsay jumped in as a first time author with, with one of the features with which I think are quite challenging. I think she did a great job. It was definitely a big barrier to getting started. When I first sat down to try to put some of my ideas on paper, I found it extremely challenging. After things had gotten rolling and I got feedback from the editors, which was very helpful. Speaker 1: Then it became a lot easier. Can you describe that editorial process a little bit more? Well, let's see. So we go through several drafts. So before [00:11:00] the first draft I had met with the first editor for my story. His name is Alexis and she and I had talked about our ideas for the story, which directions we thought it should take, kind of what topics we wanted to put together for the first draft and then I wrote that first draft and that was the one that for me was really challenging to get something down on paper. Then after sending that to her, she circulated it amongst some of the other editors and several of them gave me feedback on it, give me ideas, [00:11:30] pointed out which parts of the draft they thought were interesting, which ones needed more development or just weren't as relevant and then working from that and building it into a second draft is where I got a lot more inspired and writing. It became much easier at that point. It was definitely a fun article to write, although it was difficult because in order to write it, I got to delve a bit into the history of the laboratory. I work at the Space Sciences Laboratory and conduct [00:12:00] interviews with people who are around for some particular pieces of that history. So I don't want to make it sound like writing this article was a huge ordeal that I hated. It was actually a lot of fun. It was just putting the words on paper that I found very difficult at the beginning. Speaker 5: Did you find yourself interviewing a lot of faculty members who you might not have otherwise been interacting with for the piece? Speaker 1: I didn't interview anybody that I didn't know already. Ours tends to be a very intimate community where people know [00:12:30] each other, but I did have conversations with people that I probably wouldn't have talked with otherwise. So a couple of the people that I interviewed were people that I know quite well and have had conversations with before or maybe work with. And some of them were people I knew of but hadn't really ever had a chance to chat with them. And so hearing their stories about building rocket experiments when they were students was very interesting. Speaker 5: Did want to comment on that because I do find that, [00:13:00] uh, both in the case of the blog and the magazine itself, I think one of the best parts of both is the part that gets people out there and talking with scientists either in their field or tangentially related fields with whom they might never otherwise be interacting. It's very easy to get stuck in this little world of your advisor, the couple of students with whom you work on your project, you know, maybe a couple of friends who you see for beer each week. But beyond that, a scientist world can get very [00:13:30] narrow if you're not being proactive in avoiding that. And I think that both the blog and the magazine can really open new experiences to people who are writers and editors in terms of interacting with people in other disciplines or with people of significantly different ages within their own discipline who they might never have otherwise met. Speaker 1: On that note, I also wanted to say a couple of things that had occurred to me too. If you were talking and I wanted to talk about the [00:14:00] value of writing for the BSR for the authors as well as getting information out there for the public. I think this is a really useful thing for the authors who write for both the magazine in the blog in two aspects. I was thinking first about my personal experience and at the stage I'm at in my graduate student career, which is hopefully near the end, you get very zoned in on one particular subject. You kind of managed to convince yourself that this is the only thing in the world that matters [00:14:30] and you spend all your time on that and you can get a little burnt out on that. So for me at the time I started writing for the BSR, it was great to kind of force me to open up my mind a little bit and put my own project in the context of its historical perspective and also the perspective of the community. Speaker 1: It was a great way for me remind myself that there are connections to the community and that I'm not working in this kind of void. This black box down in the basement at the lab. The other thing I was [00:15:00] thinking when you mentioned how you're trying to get a lot of first year authors involved is that that could be really influential for them in choosing a thesis group. I know in the physics department it can be a little bit daunting because you have so many choices of which research group to work with, which particular topic to specialize in and I think a lot of first year physics students are just a little bit lost in that vast parameter space. So by writing for the BSR, I think that would probably encourage them [00:15:30] to find a whisper something they're interested in and start talking to people about it and I could definitely see that leading to them choosing that group to do their thesis work with Speaker 6: [inaudible].Speaker 4: Today's guests on spectrum are Adam Hill, Sebastian Lewis and Lindsay Glasner from the Berkeley Science Review Speaker 6: [inaudible].Speaker 4: [00:16:00] So the print publication is free? Yes. Is your entire budget from cal or do you get outside contributions? We do get quite a bit of funding from cow to the graduate assembly, which provides us with quite a bit of funding and then we also work with our printer. They have a relationship with an advertising agency who then in turn provide the suite of ads that are relevant to a science oriented publication that we are able then to put into our magazine. And how is the editorial stuff [00:16:30] selected each year or each issue or however frequently you guys change things up? It's basically whenever someone decides to leave and we put out a call for applications for the editorial staff, so most editors stay on for two to four issues, which is good because it helps with institutional memory and you get people that are more experienced that are able to coach. Speaker 4: The more junior editors talked about authors and editors. What about art? I mean the BSR is usually a very beautiful publication. [00:17:00] Sure. Where does that all come from? The layout staff. The BSR is sort of the unsung hero of the magazine and one of the most exciting experiences as an author and as an editor is about halfway through the process. We have a meeting with our layout staff where they first show us the designs they've come up with for various articles in the magazine and working with just the words for for quite some time. And then coming in and seeing it actually displayed in a magazine format that looks incredibly professional and is very well designed is incredibly exciting. So the way it works for the magazine is we [00:17:30] have a team of about 10 layout editors and an art director. We don't require the layout editors to come in with an experience. This is sort of another one of the examples of how the BSR is able to take people that are excited about learning about how to do layout, how many to do design and because of the timescale of the magazine, Speaker 5: it gives people enough time to learn those tools and working in an interactive team where they're going to get a lot of feedback on what they're doing and how it looks. And end up with a really amazing product. [00:18:00] What's that editorial process for the blog? Look back, we published four times a week with a crew of about a dozen authors at the moment, so we'll tend to go about a month between publications for an individual author and they'll come to me with some sort of idea. Can I write about pesticides in farming and California is efforts to insist on labeling GMO foods or something like that? You know, I'll say absolutely and the, the main interaction that I have at the [00:18:30] early stage of the process is regulating tone. Actually they're coming at it from the right viewpoint and coming at it from a balanced viewpoint where what they'll have at the end of writing this reporting more than opinion, although we also do have a category for opinion, but I like to try to avoid any ambiguity between the two. Speaker 5: Sure. I think that's an issue that a lot of blogs face is that it can be difficult to separate the editorial standpoint of the blog. Ours is basically scientists' cool from the editorial [00:19:00] standpoint of the individual authors, which can often be very specific and very passionate. Then I'll often not have particularly significant amounts of feedback or interaction with the authors until just a couple of days before their blog is scheduled to go up at which point we'll start hashing things together and seeing it in the digital format is a great way to really get a feel for how a blog post is going to come together part because you can't necessarily know how a blog reads till things like hyperlinks are in place. [00:19:30] Then we'll tend to hang it back and forth making changes when things are going well. We wrap up about the night before the blog post goes up and then the next morning we'll send it up and relate it. To your point earlier about, um, how the BSR has helped you as a researcher have a little bit more breadth than you might as a Grad student. Do you see it changing how you go forward after you leave cows, start your postdoc or whatever? Speaker 1: I think it wouldn't lead me to make decisions differently [00:20:00] after I graduate. Otherwise I don't exactly know what's on their highs and yet for me, but it gives me a little more inspiration about my field. So in that aspect, I suppose it could have a really powerful effect because the decision that I'll be faced with when I graduate is decision that many of us are faced with when we finished our PhDs, which is do you want to stay in academia? Do you want to switch to an engineering job where you can potentially make a lot more money and have a lot more say in where you live, who you work for, that sort of deal. [00:20:30] So inspiring students at a point in their graduate career at which they're about to make that decision, I think is a really good thing. So reminding them of some of the inspiring and motivating things about the field they're in could help to keep them there. The other interesting issue whenever we have anyone involved in science Speaker 7: outreach who are themselves scientists on the areas, how they see the rest of the scientific community looking at their science outreach. So I think Brad Vojtech who was on the show earlier talked about this tweet [00:21:00] of Damocles. You're always waiting until your outreach efforts like sabotage your actual career in some way. Did you have any reservations before for writing to our broader audience? Speaker 1: I would say personally, no. I didn't have any reservations about it. I think that there is a sort of pervasive fear about that in the scientific community. Like if you do too much scientific outreach then people will think that maybe you're not serious about the thing that you're actually working on. And I think that's mostly false. I hope that [00:21:30] people don't actually have that view, but I would say that pretty common. Certainly an anxiety that people have. Yeah, I think so. And there probably is some reason for it as well. I would not want to do scientific outreach to the point where I was not putting out scientific publications because especially as a woman, you want to make sure that people know you can do the work as well as do the outreach about it. I think that some of the barriers between people doing scientific research and doing scientific [00:22:00] outreach are starting to come down a bit. Speaker 1: At my laboratory we're starting to see more and more people who are working both on hard science and doing outreach as well. In particular, a friend of mine is now splitting her time, roughly 50 50 between those two things. And so she's hired by both departments at our lab. So I think any stigma about those things or at least starting to to come down and be resolved. So what should people interested in volunteering for the BSR do? [00:22:30] They should contact us by email, I think is typically the best route for both. So the email address for the Berkeley science if you blog is science review blog@gmail.com and for the magazine or for the BSR as an organization in general. It's the science review@gmaildotcomishouldalsomentionthatmostoftheinformationabouthowtogetinvolveddesirewebsiteatsciencereviewdotberkeley.edu well Lindsey, thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. Cool at all. [00:23:00] Well, thank you both for joining. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of [00:23:30] the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Here are Lisa kind of itch Renee Rao and Rick [inaudible] with the calendar. They should both space and science center is starting their next season of night school tonight on third Friday of the month Speaker 7: from seven to 11:00 PM Chabot opens their doors to adults 21 years in over with drinks, music, planetarium shows, telescope viewings and more. Number admission is $5 and general admission is $12 [00:24:00] visit www.chabotspace.org for more information. That's c h a, B o t space dot o r g. Remote Speaker 8: islands have been heralded as natural labs with some spectacular cases of rapid evolution in proliferation of species on November 17th at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 science at cal presents professor Rosemary Gillespie, director of the ESIC Museum of entomology [00:24:30] at UC Berkeley. She will address one of the most puzzling features of the high diversity of species on remote islands with her lecture entitled vagrant and Variability Evolution on remote islands. Science at cal is a series of free science lectures aimed at general audiences. On November 20th a museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley will host a lecture by a university scientist, sue sumo Tomia, who will lead presentations on current research practice talks and discussions on topics [00:25:00] of paleontological interest. Coffee and snacks will be available. The lecture will be held in 1101 of the valley life sciences building on the UC Berkeley campus from 11 to 12:00 PM the new and wildly successful nerd night. East Bay will be held on Tuesday, November 27th at the Stork Club, 2130 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, doors open at 7:00 PM and the three lectures begin at 8:00 PM you must be 21 and the emission is $8. [00:25:30] Join Calyx DJ eye on the prize and hosts in Davis and Rick Karnofsky for this scientific salon in Oakland Uptown district, Speaker 7: the Stanford Linear National Accelerator Laboratory. Slack is celebrating their 50th anniversary on Wednesday, November 28th at 7:00 PM in the Oshman family JCC Cultural Arts Center located in Jessica Lynn, Sal Townsquare at three nine two one Fabian way in Palo Alto. [00:26:00] The Commonwealth Club presents the event that is $5 for students, $10 for members and $15 for all others. Nobel Prize winner and director of Meredith's, Burton Richter and scientist Norbert Holt comp. We'll discuss how the accelerator has made cutting edge advancements from particle to astrophysics, advanced energy science and more. Sac has discovered two fundamental particles prove that protons are made of corks and shown how DNA directs protein fabrication. For [00:26:30] more on this event. Visit Commonwealth club.org now two news stories with Rennie Rao and Rick Karnofsky Science Daily has recently summarized an article by researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology published in nature materials on a novel way of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen associate professor of material science and engineering. Abner Rothschild noted that their method of trapping light and the ultra thin films of ferric [00:27:00] oxide is the first of its kind. These rust films are about 5,000 times thinner than standard office paper and are inexpensive, stable in water, non-toxic and can oxidize water without being oxidized to get around poor transport properties. The team uses resonance, light trapping indifference between forward and backward propagating waves enhances the light absorption in quarter wave or in some cases deeper sub wavelength [00:27:30] films amplifying the intensity close to the surface, allowing charged carriers created by the light to reach the surface and oxidize water. This is a promising step into harvesting solar energy and storing it as hydrogen. Speaker 8: UC Berkeley's greater good science center has launched an interactive, shareable online gratitude journal through November. People in the campus community are invited to participate in the cal gratitude challenge by keeping a two week online [00:28:00] gratitude journal. The website was made both to conduct research and educate people about the powers of gratitude in their lives both before and after a 14 day period. Participants are asked to fill out surveys intended to measure traits like resilience, attachment tendencies, and happiest the projects designers are hoping for around a thousand participants. The website is located@thanksfor.org that's t h n. X, the number four [00:28:30] [inaudible] dot org Speaker 2: [inaudible]. The music or during the show is by Los Donna David from his album folk and acoustic released under creative Commons license 3.0 [00:29:00] attribution. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email or email address is spectrum@klxatyahoo.com [00:29:30] join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Voyteks created the Brain Systems, Connections, Associations, and Network Relationships engine, or brainSCANr. The tool is used to explore the relationships between different terms in peer reviewed publications. http://brainscanr.com/TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum [00:00:30] the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm Rick Karnofsky. Brad swift and I are the hosts of today's show. We're speaking with Jessica and Bradley Vojtech. Jessica is a designer and a developer who earned her master's of information management and systems here at cal and has [00:01:00] worked on several UC Berkeley websites. She's also working on the future of science education through projects like ned the neuron. Brad is in NIH, N N I g m s postdoctoral fellow at ucs f. He got his phd from cal. He's a prolific blogger and Zombie expert. The void techs are here to talk about brain systems, connections and associations and network relationships or brain scanner. This website helps people explore [00:01:30] how neuroscience terms relate to one another in the peer reviewed literature. They've documented their project in our recent journal of neuroscience methods paper. Speaker 4: Brad and Jessica, welcome to spectrum. Thank you for having us. Thanks. Can you tell us a little bit about brain scanner? Actually, I was at a conference here at cal hell by the CSA, so the cognitive science student association and Undergraduate Association here at cal that they had several neuroscientists and cognitive scientists come and give presentations and I was one of those people. I [00:02:00] was on a panel with a Stanford cognitive scientists at the end of the day. It was a Q and a. We got into a question about what can be known in the neurosciences and I had mentioned that the peer reviewed neuroscientific literature probably smarter than we are. There's something like 3 million peer reviewed neuroscientific publications and I was saying that that is just too many. There is no way for anybody to to integrate all of those facts and I said if there some automated or algorithmic way of doing that, we could probably find some neat stuff out and he disagreed with me pretty strongly on the panel [00:02:30] and I sort of stewed on that for awhile. Speaker 4: That ended up becoming the brain scanner project actually, which is using text mining to look at how different topics in the neurosciences relate to one another. We had conversation about this and I had just started about six months before my a master's program at the School of Information. So all of the stuff that he was saying really jived with what I was learning. So we got together after that. We talked about it off and on sort of over dinner and stuff occasionally, but I think it was [00:03:00] right around won't. Right, right before we found out you were pregnant. Right, right around Christmas when we first actually sat down together to work on it and that was just a random evening. We didn't have, well, we didn't have a baby at the time, so we didn't have much else to do. Brad was working on this thing and he said, you know, I've been working on this all day. Speaker 4: I'm trying to get this algorithm to work and see if we can get any results out of this. And I kind of challenged him. I said, I can do that faster than you can started taking my course. I had [00:03:30] all of these new skills that I just wanted to kind of show off. And I did. She actually beat me. You guys were both sort of where we were. We're basically coding. Yeah. We're sitting on the couch. Not really cause we weren't actually doing it together. We are using two different competitor competing. Exactly. So who do you see as the audience for brain scanner? Well I know the answer to that someone. Right. So I have colleagues who tell me a lot of Grad students actually mostly a who say that they use it as a stop for [00:04:00] searching. The peer reviewed neuroscientific literature. So pub med, which is the surface run by the National Library of medicine, which is part of the national institutes for health index is a lot of these peer reviewed biomedical journals. Speaker 4: Their search engine is quite good but it returns just textual information. You know, you just, you see the 20 most recently published papers or you know, however you want to sort it related to the search term or of interest. Yeah. So basically anybody who wants to create an app can get access to this data. You have to follow certain [00:04:30] rules, but otherwise you can get the information out of this database easily. In a, in a sort of standard format, we provide a graphic or a visualization layer on top of the search so you can put in one of these search terms and you can see here are the topics that relate to it very strongly in literature. Statistically speaking, you know, uh, by that I mean here are the words or terms that show up a lot in papers with the term memory for example. We also then list the papers that are related and you can see the full list of terms and [00:05:00] how it relates to different topics and things like that. Um, if I want to look at a brain region and say, okay, what are the other brain regions that are related to this can really quickly visually see that based upon these 3 million publications that we, we searched through Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking to with user interface developer, Jessica Vojtech. And neuroscientists, Bradley Wojciech about brain scanner Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: [00:05:30] do you see other potentially valuable ways you can harness PubMed's data or other reference sources? Yeah, absolutely. So one of the aspects actually of the paper that we published was ways to address that, that very question. Uh, initially we tried to publish the paper just as a here's a, here's a resource or one of the editor's version on that rejected the paper, said, you know, what, what can you do with this? And a, of course, you know, this is something we've been thinking about. And [00:06:00] so I tried to build a proof of concept. So one of the, one of the things that we showed statistically speaking that you can do with this, does the data they call hypothesis generation or semiautomated hypothesis generation. And this works off of a very simple idea. Um, it's almost like recommend their algorithms and um, like linkedin or Facebook or something like that. Speaker 4: You know, it's like if you know this person, you might know this person, kind of a friend of a friend should be a friend idea. You know, Rick and I, I know you and you know Rick, maybe you have a friend named Jim. And so statistically speaking, [00:06:30] Jim and I might get along right because you and I get along and you, and he'd get along, especially if I and Jim get along. And so you can go through algorithmically and say, you know, in the literature if Migraine for example, which is the example you give in the paper, uh, is strongly related to a neurotransmitter Serotonin, which I didn't know before we made the website actually, um, that in the medical literature there's a whole serotonin hypothesis from migraines I guess because Migraines respond to, uh, antidepressants, which are usually serotonergic drugs. So anyway, Serotonin [00:07:00] and Migraines are very strongly related and neuroscientists know a lot about the basic physiology of Serotonin, where in the brain is expressed and things like that. Speaker 4: And so on the neuroscience side, we know that Serotonin is very strongly expressed in, in a brain region called the striatum, which is sort of deep frontal part of the brain. And, uh, there's thousands of papers that talk about Serotonin and Migraines and Serotonin in this brain region, the striatum respectively, but there's only 19 papers or something like that to talk about that brain region and migraines. [00:07:30] And so statistically speaking, maybe we're missing something here, right? Maybe just nobody's really looked at this connection between migraines in that brain region. Maybe there aren't papers published on it because people have looked and there's nothing there. But, uh, that's why it's somewhat automated. You can go through this list of recommended hypotheses and you as an expert, I can go through that list and say, oh, some of these are nonsense. Or Oh, that's, that could be interesting. Speaker 4: Maybe. Maybe we should look into that. So it gives you a low hanging fruit basically. Yeah. And so that would be something [00:08:00] eventually I would like to build into the site. Are you continuing to analyze new papers as they enter in pub med? We haven't rerun it for awhile. I think there's something on the order of 10,000 new papers published every month in the neurosciences. But when you're standing in the face of 3 million, it's sort of drop in the bucket. So we, we worry running it every month or two. Um, but the results really don't change very quickly. Right. It's pretty stable. So yes, we, we should actually [00:08:30] run it again. It's been about six months or so. If you guys actually like, well I mean as a or perhaps how, you know, the ideas in the literature might change. For instance, that's actually something that I did do. Speaker 4: Um, I eliminated the searches to just bring the regions, so how different brain regions relate to each other across time. So I did a search for all papers published up to like 1905, which wasn't very many. Of course not in your, you know, you have an exponential increase in the number of being published. Okay. But then again, I ran it again for all papers published to like up to 1935, [00:09:00] 55, 75, 95 and you know, 2005, right? Uh, or 2011. And you could actually see how our understanding of how different brain regions relate change over time. And that was kind of neat. Um, if I was going to be a little bit statistically, uh, stronger about this, what I should have done in the original paper, and I didn't think about it until after we republished it was I should've run the semiautomated hypothesis generation algorithm, uh, on a limited amount of data. So I test data set up to like say 1990 [00:09:30] and then found plausible hypotheses from that Dataset and then run it again on the entire thing and see, you know, if we had found new things. And you know, if that corroborated what we've learned in the last 22 years. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: you're listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking with Brad and Jessica Vojtech about brain scanner. They're a site to show links [00:10:00] that may exist between brain structures, cognitive functions, neurological disorders, and more as data mined from the academic literature. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: I mean this is a side side project for us. Yeah, Speaker 1: it was two weeks in $11 and 50 cents. And what did that go to? Um, coffee and coffee. Yeah. [00:10:30] Um, no it, it went into the Google app engine server time. So we actually were able to use Google app engine to distribute the processing, which is also what made mind my code a little bit quicker to run through all of this data. Speaker 4: I was doing single queries at a time and because we have 800 terms in the database and we have to do how every term relates to every other term, it's 800 squared,Speaker 1: try to buy two essentially. And then there's the roundtrip between between his your machine and the um, [00:11:00] pub met database. So, you know, you're making requests, you're making requests, making requests anyway. It was maybe three days, three days or four days. And I was able to do it in about two hours by um, putting it into the cloud and using app engine. So that $11 and 50 cents went to paying for the service and agree to say a hundred squared divided by two minus 800 a lot. So do you want to talk about how that dictionary of keywords was generated? Speaker 4: Initially I [00:11:30] had wanted to try and figure out how brain regions relate this. This grew out of my phd work actually at Berkeley. I worked with Professor Bob Knight who used to be the head of the neurosciences institute, Helen Wells neuroscience here. And my phd thesis was looking at how to brain regions, the prefrontal cortex and the Basal Ganglia related to working memory. And as I was standing for my qualifying exams, I was trying to figure out, okay, what are the brain regions that send inputs to [00:12:00] [inaudible], which is one of the parts of the Basal Ganglia and where he dies this ride in project two. And in order to figure that out, I spent, I don't know, two months off and on three months off and on over at the biomedical library here, digging through old, uh, anatomical papers from the 1970s and basically drawing little hand-drawn charts to try and figure out how these things connected. Speaker 4: And it really surprised me. It was frustrating because you know, here we are in, well, when [00:12:30] I was doing this, it was like 2008 right? And all I wanted to know is how different brain regions connect. And I was like, why can't I just go to a website and say, okay, striatum, what are its inputs and outputs? Like we have that information, right? Why can't I do that? Um, and so anyway, that was one of the motivating factors for me also. And there's actually a paper published in 2002 called neuro names. And then this researcher was trying to create an ontology of, of brain region names Ryan. So the terms that we use now in 2012 aren't necessarily [00:13:00] the same that people were using back in 1900 when they were first describing the basic anatomy. And so you have some Latin names for brain regions. Speaker 4: You have modern names for brain regions, you have names for different groupings of brain regions. So I referred earlier to the base like Ganglia, uh, and that is composed of, you know, maybe five different brain regions. And if I talk about three of those brain regions, uh, can I give examples? Is the putamen and the Globus Pallidus, uh, Globus Pallidus is actually contained [00:13:30] of two separate ones. And the putamen and Globus Pallidus if you combine them together or known by one name. But if you combine the putamen with the striatum, that's a different name. And so you actually have these weird venn diagram overlapping naming Schema. Speaker 1: There's a significant vocabulary problem, which is the term that we use in the information sciences. Basically the fact that you have multiple names for the same thing and you have the same name for some different things. So you know this venn diagram idea. Um, so yeah, [00:14:00] if you're going to use a very simple search algorithm, you have, you can't do it, you wouldn't, you're not going to get all of the results. So, um, I think our system tries to solve that vocabulary problem a little bit. Speaker 4: And then there's actually a researcher, um, Russ Poltrack drag, who used to be a faculty of neuroscience at UCLA and I think he's in University of Texas now. And he actually tried to create an ontology for cognitive term. So in cognitive science and psychology and cognitive neuroscience, you know, we have terms like working memory [00:14:30] and attention and in they're trying to create a whole ontology for how these different things really. So like working memory as part of memory, which you know, in memory also contains a longterm memory. And so we'll use his first attempt as a dictionary as well. And then we went to the NIH website and they've got a listing of all these different kinds of neurological disorders and we use that. So we pulled a bunch of publicly available data basically and use those dictionaries as our starting point. Speaker 1: And then we [00:15:00] also took suggestions from the people on our website almost immediately we started getting requests for more and different terms. So you had the, when you find two keywords that appear in a paper together, you assume that they're actually related. Can you comment on if people might have demonstrated that they're not actually related, how does that affect your system? Like some, like an instance in which, uh, it says this brain region is not connected to this other [00:15:30] brain region, right? Um, yes, we have assumed that there's a publication bias that if there is not a connection then someone does not publish a paper about that. Speaker 4: Okay. And negative publications or negative findings go very under reported in the scientific literature. Speaker 1: Right. So we're hopefully taking advantage of that. Hopefully the law of large numbers means that our data is mostly correct and it does seem to be that way. The example that Brad gave, uh, with the Allen Brain Atlas, [00:16:00] that there is certain corroborating evidence that seems to suggest that this is a, at least plausible connections. There's obviously no one say that better. No, that's perfectly scientifically accurate. I tend to get a little bit specific when I'm talking about this kind of stuff. Speaker 4: Is there already some sort of bias that might drive certain kinds of papers up? If the paper has a lot of buzzwords, perhaps it suddenly becomes more important. Do you 100% yes, absolutely. There are always [00:16:30] hot topics. Uh, and that shows up for sure Speaker 1: only because there's more papers published on that subject. We don't currently have a any kind of waiting per paper. Speaker 4: Yeah. Like when you go into the website and you'd do something like, um, there's a brain region called the Amygdala and you know, it'll be very strongly associated with fear. And so that's actually one of my concerns is problem getting these biases. So, you know, there's a lot of literature on this brain region, the Amygdala and how it relates to fear, but it certainly does a lot more than just processing fear, [00:17:00] right? It's this general emotional affective labeling sort of idea that anyway, that's, that's neuroscience specific stuff, you know, and brain region called the insula and disgust or love or you know, these other kinds of strong emotions. And so yeah, it definitely reflects certain biases as well. And we, we try and quantify that even to an extent a little bit. So again, using the Allen Brain Atlas data, we show from our Dataset, what are the top five brain regions that express or that are related to dopamine, for example. Speaker 4: And in the real human brain, what are the top five brain [00:17:30] regions that express dopaminergic related genes? And you can actually see that there's a very clear bias. So one of the regions that expresses dobutamine very strongly is very hard to study. Neuroscientifically speaking. It's, it's deepen deep part of the brain. It's hard to get any, it's very small, so you can't get it from like brain scanning expresses a lot of dopamine, but people don't study it and we can actually quantify then some of these under-studied relationships, right? We're like, here's a brain region that we know expresses a lot of dopamine, but there's a a hundred papers only and another [00:18:00] brain region that's very sexy and too about domain has 10,000 papers. Right? So our system shows you an example well of the current state of scientific literature. So it's not necessarily 100% correct, but it reflects what scientists think as a whole at this point. Yeah, I agree. And we try and be very careful about that in the paper and in talking about it like we are right now Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: [00:18:30] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking with user interface developer, Jessica Vojtech and neuroscientist Bradley Vojtech about brain scanner. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: I was really surprised you. I taught neuro anatomy for three semesters here at Berkeley and you know, so I know the anatomy pretty well. And on your first ran it, I had one of those like yes, kind [00:19:00] of moments like I can't believe this work because it really does find all of these clusters really nicely. And that was a very pleasant surprise because technically speaking it couldn't have been any other way. Like it just has to, you know, I mean these topics co-occur a lot, so it should be that way, but it's always nice to see something like that work. Brian, I wanted to ask about the journals that you sent the paper off too. How did you pick them? Art Of picking a journal where to send a paper. It's actually really hard. So certain journals get [00:19:30] more readership than others. And then there's the open access factor. Speaker 4: So I'm, I'm a big open science, open data advocate and so I try and shoot for that. I had forgotten, there's actually sort of a, a very wide protest of Elsevier, which is one of the publishing companies right now. And the journal that published my papers and Elsevier Journal, but, uh, I had signed the petition and I was part of that Nash shortly thereafter. That would have impacted my decision had I been thinking about it. Yeah. And yeah, so it's mainly a balance between readership and expectation and you sort [00:20:00] of get a feel after publishing a few papers of what editors are looking for. And so yeah, I am the one that has experience with navigating the academic publishing environment. Yeah. So yeah, we sent it out to a lot of journals and, uh, mostly it didn't pass editorial review, which means that there's an editor that decides whether or not conceptually it will be interesting for their journal to publish it once got center review at a journal and they're like, well, it was sort of torn. Speaker 4: There were four reviewers, four pure reviewers, [00:20:30] and two of them were fairly enthusiastic and the other two are like, this is cool, but so what? Right. Um, and the general consensus was it didn't fit with the theme of the Journal. The Journal of neuroscience methods point really well and your reviewers are very, and um, actually there's a figure at the end of the paper where we did some integration with the Allen Brain. Alice Paul Allen, one of the co founders of Microsoft who is a cuisine heir, has put half a billion dollars into this institute. [00:21:00] Initially the goal was to map, uh, the expression of all of these different genes in the human brain, in the mouse brain, and they made all that data publicly available. And so we use that as a test data set. So we said, okay, where are these different, uh, neurotransmitter related genes actually expressed in the brain and what does our system think about wearing the brain? These neurotransmitters are, there's a week but significant correlation between the two, which suggests that our system reflects actual reality to a certain extent at least. [00:21:30] And that was a suggestion I got from one of the peer reviewers and that was really good. It was a lot of extra work, but it ended up being a really good addition to the paper. Speaker 1: But both of you guys are involved in science education and science outreach. So I was hoping you can comment on that. I'm actually starting a project with a friend of mine building a neuroscience kids books. So we're going to teach neuroscience to elementary school kids with an electronic ebook featuring the neuron. Yes, featured his name is ned the neuron. He's a pure middle cell and he works in the motor cortex of the brain. [00:22:00] And is the neuroscience focus partly driven by bad or do you have any sort of personal interest in as well? I do have a personal interest in and I, I, you know, obviously it's convenient that my husband is a neuroscientist, but actually the character and the original story idea is my partners who's also a neuroscientist and phd in neuroscience here at cal here at cal. Speaker 4: Yeah. I get this question a fair amount. Like why do I do blogging and outreach and things like that. So there's actually a few answers to that. One I find blogging, uh, helps me [00:22:30] do better science. If I have to figure out a very simple way of explaining something, then I feel like I understand it better. It's sort of like one of the best ways to learn something is by trying to teach it. Right. I had a very strange path to academia. I actually got kicked out as an undergraduate from the university. I had to sort of beg my way back in because my grades were pretty low. You know, a couple of people help me out along the way and that were pretty important to me. And I think a lot of Grad students have this experience where they, they feel like they don't belong there in in sense that like, oh [00:23:00] my God, I'm not smart enough to do this. Speaker 4: You know? And when I look at the resumes or cvs of, you know, tenured faculty here at Berkeley, right? It's just paper after paper and award and amazing achievement and you're just like struggling to even understand how to write a paper and it seems just like this daunting, intractable problem. And so because of that, I actually have a section in my CV where I actually list every time a paper has been rejected. I've actually had graduate students tell me that. That's been kind of Nice to see that you know, you see somebody who's doing pretty well and you see that, you know, in order to get there [00:23:30] you sort of have to slog through a lot of crap. Speaker 1: Did you plan to work together some more? I think so. You know, we're obviously working together to raise a son right now. We actually were talking on the way over here about trying to implement some of the ideas we've Speaker 4: been talking about that people have suggested. I think we could definitely do that. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of overlap. I'm very interested in dynamic data visualization and that's something that Jesse's is obviously getting quite quite good at and so I'd [00:24:00] like to start doing that for a lot of my research papers as well. Brad and Jess, thanks for joining us. Oh, thank you very much for having us. Thank you so much for having us. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: and now for some science news headlines. Here's Renee Rao and Brad sweet Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:24:30] the Berkeley new center reports researchers at the University of California Berkeley are gathering evidence this fall that the Feisty Fox squirrels scampering around campus or not just mindlessly foraging for food but engaging in a long term savings strategy to track the nut stashing activity. The student researchers are using GPS technology to record all of the food burials and in the process are creating [00:25:00] an elaborate map showing every campus tree building and garbage can. Miquel Delgado a doctorial student in psychology heads the squirrel research team in the laboratory of UC Berkeley, psychologist Luchea Jacobs. The research team is replicating the caching experiment on humans by timing students as they burry Easter eggs on campus and try to find them. We're using humans as a model for squirrel behavior to ask questions that we can't ask. Squirrels still got us said the group has a cow squirrels website to promote their work. Speaker 6: [00:25:30] UC Berkeley professor of cell and molecular biology and chemistry. Carolyn Bertozzi has won the 2012 Heinrich Violin prize. Professor Bartow Z has founded the field of bio orthogonal chemistry. In her groundbreaking approach, she creatively exploits the benefits of synthetic chemistry to study the vital processes within living beings. Professor Dr Volk Gang Baumeister, chair of the board of Trustees of the Heinrich Violin Prize says of Professor Berto z. [00:26:00] Her breakthrough method to identify sugar patterns on the cell surface is a milestone for our understanding of the functions of sugars in health and disease and paves the way for novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Speaker 3: Irregular feature of spectrum is a calendar of some of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area over the next two weeks. Brad swift and Renee Rao join me for this. The second annual Bay Area Science Festival is wrapping up this weekend. [00:26:30] Highlights include art in science and gallery gala showing the intersection of image and research tonight at the Berkeley Arts Festival, Gallery Science superheros tonight at the Tech Museum in San Jose and discovery days at at and t park tomorrow November 3rd from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM last year more than 21,000 people showed up to this free event this year. There are more than 150 exhibits. Visit Bay area science.org for more information about any of these [00:27:00] great activities and to see their regular calendar of science goings on. Speaker 6: Big Ideas. Berkeley is an annual innovation contest that provides funding, support, and encouragement to interdisciplinary teams of UC undergraduate and graduate students who have big ideas. The pre-proposal entry deadline is 5:00 PM November six 2012 all pre-proposals must be submitted via the online application on the big ideas website. Remember there are big idea advisers to help students craft [00:27:30] their pre-proposals. You can drop in at room 100 Blum hall during scheduled hours or email advisers to schedule an appointment at another time. Check the big ideas website for advisor times or to make an appointment. There will also be an editing blitz November 5th from five to 8:00 PM in room, 100 of bloom hall advisors and past winters will be available to provide applicants with valuable last-minute insights and advice on your pre-proposal. This is a great opportunity to hone your proposal and get support from those [00:28:00] who know what it takes to build a successful big idea. The big ideas website is big ideas.berkeley.edu Speaker 7: on November 8th the center for ethnographic research will hold a colloquium to understand cancer treatment trajectories using an array of ethnographic data. The Speaker Daniel Dohan and associate professor in the Phillip r Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. We'll discuss this research about inequality and culture with a focus on cancer. He will focus on his most recent study which examines how patients [00:28:30] with advanced diseases find out about and decide whether to participate in clinical trials of new cancer drugs. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held from four to 5:30 PM at 25 38 Channing waySpeaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: the music you [00:29:00] heard during say show was spend less on and David from his album book and Acoustic, it is released under a creative Commons license version 3.0 spectrum was recorded and edited by me, Rick Karnofsky, and by Brad Swift. Thank you for listening to spectrum. 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 [00:29:30] join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Susan Shaheen is co-Director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center and Lecturer at UC Berkeley. She discusses the revolution underway in transportation choices which she believes will be driven by smart phones.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Our guest today is Susan Shaheen, co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley. Susan also lectures [00:01:00] at UC Berkeley. Susan's Shaheen received her master's degree from the University of Rochester and her phd in ecology from UC Davis. She joins us to talk about the work she's been doing at the center as well as the centers. Broader scope. Susan Shaheen. Thanks for coming on spectrum. My pleasure. I wanted to get your perspective, a historic perspective on transportation and when you look back, what do you see as the profound changes that [00:01:30] have happened over a period of time that you're comfortable with reflecting on Speaker 3: [inaudible]? So I think transportation and the environment were significant, particularly in the state of California in the mid 1950s where relationships between exhaust emissions and smog and other types of air pollutants came together. And we started to garner a lot more understanding about that. And so in terms of [00:02:00] my personal interests, that was a really significant moment in time for the nation, but in particular for California, which, which led the way and that garnered a lot of interest and vehicle technologies and strategies for addressing transportation emissions. Speaker 2: And is that really what started the sustainability movement within transportation Speaker 3: in terms of transportation? Sustainability in those terms I think are more modern day than the mid [00:02:30] 1950s when we started to become really cognizant of smog and emissions, particularly in the La Basin area. There was a, the Brundtland Commission came about and in 1987 they produced a document called our common future and that really focused on sustainability. And that's when we started to hear more about the three pillars of sustainability. So economics, equity and the environment. And around that late 1980s early 1990s period, I believe that's really [00:03:00] when a lot of the discussion about transportation sustainability came about, but we had already been looking at vehicle technologies, fuels strategies for demand management, like carpooling long before then. But I think in terms of there being more of a movement or a focus on sustainability and transportation, that probably came about more in the late 1980s and early 1990s before I came on the scene. Speaker 3: How did the Transportation Sustainability Research Center get started? [00:03:30] So the uh, Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California Berkeley as part of the Institute of Transportation Studies. It came about five years ago. It was founded as the brainchild of Professor Norgaard and Professor Sam or Matt Nat. And they thought it was really important time for us to put together a center that focused on vehicles, fuels as well as demand management strategies that could [00:04:00] employ electronic and wireless communication systems. So that's how we got our start in the center. How do you choose your projects? Well, we always choose our projects based on someone's interest within a center. So some, some great form of passion associated with it. And we find that sometimes the scale of the project needs to be very, very large. So if there's an opportunity for a large grant and it fits [00:04:30] with our mission and mandate for instance, goods movement, we have a project that's by point $5 million to implement a smart parking, uh, management system for long haul truckers on the I five. Speaker 3: And that requires a lot of money and a lot of technology and a lot of getting out there and getting your hands dirty and implementing things. And it takes scale and money and time to build something like that. And so that's our largest project overall and it really warrants that kind [00:05:00] of financial base, but we can also do things for 50 to $75,000 that are highly impactful. We've received awards for research on car sharing, things that I think may have cost $55,000 in terms of grant monies to produce. But the work itself was impactful enough that it made a difference and was really powerful to people in the field and to decision makers and gave them the data that they needed. So a lot of it just has to do with our passion and [00:05:30] if there's a grant opportunity that fits really well with our interests, we go for it and we don't necessarily say, okay, a small grant isn't going to do what we needed to do because we know about it than that, we know that sometimes you need small grants to do really impactful things and sometimes you need massive grants to do really impactful things. Speaker 3: It just depends on what we're trying to do. But in my research I've found over time that I don't need is larger grant anymore to do as [00:06:00] impactful and innovative research as I used to have to. And that's because there's so many innovative entrepreneurial companies out there doing this that I don't have to go and build the thing anymore and create the service and imagine the service because there's entrepreneurs everyday contacting us saying, would you partner with us and help us to study and understand what we've built? And we're delighted because that means we can do so much more research when we don't actually [00:06:30] have to go out and build it. But if we need to go out and build it, we will do that. Speaker 2: It does the center deal at all with larger forms of transportation trucks. You mentioned trucks that you were involved with that do you get into shipping overseas, shipping trains, things like that because California has such a, a destination for so much material from Asia products? Speaker 3: That's a great question. We have a great deal of interest in all forms of goods movement at present. Our focus is primarily [00:07:00] trying to get our hands around and our understanding of origin and destination patterns and the long distance trucking industry. And I believe that you know, more and more will venture into freight to rail and also deal more with the ports. But it's a different area of research. It's not as well understood. It's an unregulated industry in many ways. And so getting data is a major issue and really understanding that data and working [00:07:30] with it is I think a notable contribution that we're trying to make with respect to just even understanding what's going on on the [inaudible]. So I think it's going to be a big area and continuing area of research at TSTC. I think there's so many opportunities for us to make freight and goods movement more sustainable, but it's not the easiest area to study or to get into and we're really trying to build up this understanding and then go from there. Speaker 1: [00:08:00] This is spectrum on k a Alex Berkeley. We're talking with Susan Shaheen about transportation, sustainability. Speaker 2: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the free market and government approaches to having an impact on transportation? [inaudible] Speaker 3: [00:08:30] no, I think government can play a tremendous role in making sure that we continue to have public transportation and we continue to have safe roads and bridges and that's a really significant role and they can also play a notable role in terms of public policy with respect to incentivizing different types of behavior if it's through road pricing strategies, so to s mode shift, get people think about taking a different mode at a different time, incentivizing people to [00:09:00] buy alternative fuel vehicles, giving them access to the Hov lanes or the high occupancy vehicle lanes. I also feel that the government can play a tremendous role in terms of providing third parties with access to data about transit services. And what we've started to see is a lot of new companies and new opportunities providing people with access to information that really wasn't there before. So I think the government can play a role in really [00:09:30] encouraging and facilitating openness and sharing and a really different way of experiencing transportation than we ever have before. Speaker 3: And I think industry has a tremendous role to play as well. Why not allow them to be as innovative as possible and create new opportunities and new modes if some of the things I study include car sharing, which is short term access to vehicles, and we've started to see lots of investment and interest in the idea of peer-to-peer car sharing or personal [00:10:00] vehicle sharing services where people could actually put their own vehicle into a shared use setting and we could see car sharing go outside of dense urban areas where traditionally lives into suburban areas and there's ideas for scooter sharing services. Public bike sharing is just growing and leaps and bounds around the world. It's about to double in size in terms of the number of programs just in the year 2012 in the United States. So [00:10:30] there's so many opportunities for creating new industries and new jobs and new transportation choices. Speaker 3: And I think the government has a tremendous role in that and creating and encouraging and inspiring these partnerships with individuals who have innovative ideas. I think we're really entering into a new era of mobility, which is very exciting. And then you have to tread the line between interfering with the market, choosing winners and losers gets run out [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:11:00] and not over-regulated. So there's a balance there. Right. And I think that's where research is really critical is to understand, you know, when you incentivize, what is the impact of that incentivization, you know, is it working, is it not working? Do you need to do more, do you need to do less? And that's where I think a lot of our work can come in to help provide policymakers and decision makers with more informed understanding about what, what is actually happening in the system. And we're really [00:11:30] moving into an era of massive databases and opportunities to look at real time data and in a way that we never could before because of the availability of electronic and wireless communication systems, the ubiquity of cell phones and smart phone technology and sensor technologies and the cost of these things are dropping. Speaker 3: So again, I believe we're really entering into a new era and mobility and transportation and it's just gonna require sort of a new way of thinking about openness and sharing. And there are [00:12:00] going to be some, some struggles in this, but I think there's more opportunities than there are barriers. And is the center very focused on having an impact in policy? We're very focused on that. So we truly want to make a difference and we want to do real world research and get out and be involved in demonstration projects and pilot projects and any type of endeavor. You know, we just received a grant from the University of California Transportation Center here at Berkeley [00:12:30] to look at personal vehicle sharing services. So we're not actually going out and implementing it or designing it or doing any of that, which we often do, but we're actually just working with companies throughout North America to see what they're doing and to help them actually understand through our data collection processes and analyses, what is this doing and what kind of impact is it having and what role might policy makers play to encourage more of this and what would work best overall [00:13:00] in terms of growing this opportunity? Speaker 3: If people really like it, I'm a big fan of diversity and choice and all of my research. If it deals with fuels or if it deals with giving people an opportunity to see, you know, when is the next bus coming or on a mobile app in a, where can I find the bike sharing vehicle? I am really, really a big fan of giving people choices and information because I think that's critical to giving people an [00:13:30] opportunity to, to experience transportation in a new way. But I think for a long time people haven't felt that there's a lot of choices and once they invest in a private vehicle, they viewed that a lot of those, you know, transportation costs are sunk and so there's really minor expenses associated with that, but that's actually really not the truth. But you know that fixed cost really does change people's relationship with other transportation modes. [00:14:00] The more we can give people choices and have him think about transportation costs is variable. We can see a really different attitude towards taking different modes at different points in time, including getting lots of physical exercise. Speaker 1: And this is the public affairs show spectrum on KALX Berkeley. We're talking with Susan Shaheen about transportation sustainability. [00:14:30] Next we talk about bike sharing and car sharing, the bike sharing during Speaker 3: project. Can you talk a little bit about that? You were mentioning that it's going to double. Yeah, so public bike sharing as a form of public transportation, it's gone through actually several evolutions. The first generation of it started in 19 five and Amsterdam and it was a system called provosts or white bikes, which you might've heard of. They deployed, 50 of them, put them around the community and [00:15:00] they promptly disappeared. And so then we've seen different evolutions of the bike sharing concept into the 1980s where we moved into a more technology based approach where you had a coined deposit system so you couldn't just take it for free. Shortly after that we saw movement into what we call the third generation, which is more IT-based, which requires sort of the identity of somebody to be linked to that bike. And what we found is that the more advanced technology use, the more reliable [00:15:30] these systems become and the more they can be integrated into people's Daily community, which is pretty significant. Speaker 3: Now, bikes are being used not just for recreational purposes, but to complete a first mile or last mile or a many mile trip that is actually part of a person's daily life. And these concepts have just taken hold. And I started to monitor this about seven or eight years ago and cataloged more and more of these bike sharing systems. They leave [00:16:00] has over 20,000 bikes in Paris. Honjo, which we've studied is in China. 60,000 bikes will, Han has over 70,000 bikes and it's public bike sharing system. New York City is sent to launch sometime late this summer or fall with 7,000 bikes leading up to 10,000 bikes. They're not taking a cent of public money to deploy the system. They have a title sponsorship with City Group, so [00:16:30] things are really changing in terms of transportation and mobility. How do they deal with the safety side of it all? All these people jumping on bikes without helmets probably. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. On the safety side, it's actually quite interesting is the majority of programs do not require people to wear helmets, so the majority of people actually don't wear helmets and using these systems and I think liability issues associated with public bike sharing are going [00:17:00] to be become more prominent and more important, particularly as they scale in size and they become larger. We do think or hypothesize that as these systems proliferate and people become more aware of them, there will be safety benefits as well because drivers will be more aware that, okay, those are capital bikeshare bikes riding down the street. I need to be conscious and aware of them because there's a lot more bikers on on the road, but the issue of density and more and more of these bicycles hitting [00:17:30] the road is an issue and I think a lot of municipalities are working more and more to build supportive infrastructure. Speaker 3: New York City's an example of that. So these programs often go hand in hand with cycling infrastructure. But you do raise a good question associated with the helmets and there are some happening. San Vol is a company in British Columbia that's developed a dispensing system that actually cleans the helmet. So that could be a creative strategy. [00:18:00] A lot of the bike sharing programs actually offer helmets or give them out with a membership, but we think that a lot of times what happens is somebody who doesn't necessarily plan to take that bike and then realizes, wow, I want to take that bike. They're conveniently located like street furniture throughout the city. I'm just going to jump on it and go from point to point. And so the helmet is a difficult thing to plan for if that's how you use it. Carpools, car sharing. Can you talk about that a bit? Speaker 3: [00:18:30] Yeah, so I've been studying shared use vehicle systems since the mid 1990s I did my doctorate on car sharing. That again is the idea of short term vehicle access where you don't actually need to own a vehicle but you have access to a whole fleet of vehicles and you use them by the hour and we've seen over time tremendous growth in the number of operators throughout North America. We've seen a membership continually grow as we've been tracking it. We also see [00:19:00] some very interesting behavioral effects in response to what we call traditional or neighborhood car sharing where many times people who join these systems actually end up either foregoing or selling a vehicle after they start using the system because they realize they don't need a car and they can trade off this fixed vehicle asset for variable costs and take public transportation, more ride share, Carpool more bike more a, we're also seeing [00:19:30] a really neat concept which is called one way car sharing traditional car sharing works and that you go into an out of the same location similar to a rental car system and many of us in the shared use space of thought, if we were able to provide a one way service similar to public bike sharing where you start off one place and you leave the bike in another place or a vehicle in another place, this might attract a whole different usage pattern and what would this do? Speaker 3: [00:20:00] So several companies are getting started in this Daimler's cargo system, which uses a little smart vehicle launched in Austin. They're now in Washington, D c they're in Portland, they're in San Diego and this system is doing quite well. It requires a lot of public infrastructure because the vehicles have to be parked throughout the business areas or a neighborhood areas, but people actually instead of accessing the vehicle [00:20:30] by the hour, they're now actually accessing it by the minute and taking it one from one location to the next. BMW launched its program called drive. Now in the bay area, the first in the United States, it had only been operating in Germany prior to that. So lots of change and evolution in this shared you space coupled with public bike sharing, lots of innovation and ride sharing movements towards Uber taxi services and dynamic ride [00:21:00] sharing services have vago launched this spring and is providing dynamic ride sharing services. Speaker 3: So I think what we're going to start to see is the bundling of these concepts and technologies and hopefully linkages to smart card technology like your clipper card and it would give you access to any one of the car sharing programs or the public bike sharing program is planned for San Francisco. I think, you know, with time we're gonna see a lot more smart apps that tell us [00:21:30] what our choices are. If it'd be a taxi or a car sharing vehicle or a carpooling vehicle. And I think it's all going to be integrated. And I think the big mobility device is going to become our phone through these smart apps. So a lot is happening and there's a lot to be watching. We're actually keeping pretty busy these days. In terms of our projects in the shared use space, we, we just uh, got great news, uh, the end of last week that we were funded to actually evaluate cargos, pure electric [00:22:00] vehicle based one way, car sharing service in San Diego. Speaker 3: And we have another grant to look at the integration of electric vehicle bikes and to see car shares fleet in San Francisco. So it's going to be a service of both car sharing and Evy bike sharing, all combined into one service. So there's going to be a lot going on and a lot to watch in this space. And I, I do think the bay area is a critical location to see what's happening. What do you think is the best way [00:22:30] for individuals to find out about all of these options that are starting to happen? Is there someone who's consolidating these kinds of things on a website that they could go to or how do you search? I think you know for the bay area in particular, I think MTC, the metropolitan transportation commission has a really good five one one.org site that can provide you with a lot of information on your choices. Also, as of MTA has apps that you can download like the SF park site, so I think just go into your public transportation [00:23:00] operators websites like Bart, but also again, the regional transportation agencies are doing a really good job of getting information out there. Susan, Shane, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. You're welcome. It was great to meet you. Speaker 1: [inaudible] [00:23:30] regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky joins me with the calendar this month. Speaker 4: Leonardo art science evening rendezvous or laser is on Wednesday, October 10th at Stanford Universities. [00:24:00] Jordan Hall Building Four 20 Room 41 talk. Start at seven with Andrew Todd Hunter discussing bridging the fuzzy techie divide, the senior reflection capstone in biology. Terry barely years subsequent. Talk on where at the beginning meets the end. It's about making technologies vulnerabilities visible and illustrating how easily modern inventions can become footnotes to a bygone era. [00:24:30] Mark Jacobson then discusses a plan to power the world with a wind, water, and sun. He focuses on three of the most significant problems facing the world today. Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity. Tonight ends with composer Sheryl Leonard's music from high latitudes, making music out of sounds, objects and experiences from the polar regions. To Register, visit www.leonardo.info the [00:25:00] northern California Science Writers Association and Swissnex our host, Tina taught by why are dotcoms Kevin Polson on cybercrime an inside view.Speaker 4: He will talk about Max Butler, one of the highest value cybercriminals ever brought down by the FBI and Secret Service Butler, a hacker establish a worldwide operation from his safe house in a high rise apartment building in San Francisco's tenderloin. Butler eventually dominated a global black market in stolen credit card numbers, [00:25:30] supplying a far flung counterfeiting operation. Polson first described this in a wired article and then in his book published last year, kingpin, how one hacker took over the billion dollar cyber crime underground. The talk is on Thursday, October 11th doors at six 30 talk at seven reception with appetizers from seven 45 until nine 30 it's at Swissnex seven three zero Montgomery Street in San Francisco. Visit Swissnex, San Francisco. Dot. O R, g, [00:26:00] the San Francisco Opera, and the California Academy of Science Present Moby Dick, a whale of a tale in celebration of the musical conversion of Herman Melville's. Classic novel scientists will discuss Melville's famous dedication to the 19th century scientific accuracy in his writings. Speaker 4: There'll also be biologists who will present on modern day whale science and conservation practices. The event is at the California Academy of Sciences. 55 music concourse drive in San Francisco's [00:26:30] Golden Gate Park on Tuesday, October sixteenth@sevenpmitistendollarsforyourmembersandtwelvedollarsforthegeneralpublicvisitwww.cal academy.org now, here's Rick Karnofsky with two news stories to stellar mass. Black holes have been discovered in globular cluster m 22 located at 10,000 light years away by a team of international researchers who published their findings in nature on October 4th using the Carl g [00:27:00] jetski very large array in New Mexico. They found two black holes and argue that there may be as many as five to a hundred in the classroom. This runs contrary to earlier theories that suggested only a single black hole of that size could survive in a popular cluster. They are the first stellar mass black holes found in a globular cluster in the Milky Way and the first observed via radio waves that of course, I mean Arthur j straighter of Michigan State University and the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics was quoted [00:27:30] by scientific American saying that because they were seen by radio, they have to not just be in binary's, but they have to be in binaries that are close enough that mass transfer is actually taking place. Speaker 4: In an article published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in September, Yale researchers showed that academic research faculty have a gender bias in favor of male students. The team performed a randomized double blind study in which university scientists were given applications purportedly from [00:28:00] students applying for a lab manager position. The content of the applications were all identical, but sometimes a male name was attached and sometimes a female name was attached. Female applicants were rated lower than men on the measured scales of competence, higher ability mentoring and we're giving lower salary offers. The mean salary offered by male scientist for male students was $30,520 for the female students. It was $27,111 female scientists recommended lower salaries for both [00:28:30] genders, but had an even greater bias against female students who received an average offer of 25,000 compared to the average offer of $29,333 per milestone. Speaker 2: [inaudible]. The music heard during the show is from an album by Lascano David entitled Folk Acoustic made available by a creative Commons [00:29:00] license 3.0 [inaudible] Speaker 1: [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us. Email address is spectrum [inaudible] at yahoo.com [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Members of the UCSF Brewers Guild (Yug Varma, Kenton Hokanson, Ryan Dalton, Scott Hansen, and Rober Schiemann) discuss the science of beer making.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 3: Welcome [00:00:30] to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. Speaker 4: Good afternoon. I'm Rick Karnofsky, the host of today's show. Today we're talking about the science of Beer with UCF brewers guild members. You've Varma, Kenton, Hawkinson, Ryan Dalton, Scott Hansen, and Robert Shimon. Can you guys please introduce yourselves and say what your research focuses on? Speaker 5: [00:01:00] Hi, I'm Yogi. I am a post doc and I studied the human microbiome. We study bacteria associated with the human body. Speaker 6: I'm Kenton. I'm a Grad student and I said he synapses and the regulations. Mostly I am concerned with homeostasis and the idea is if you perturb one half of us in attic pair, then the other half somehow recognizes this and quickly adapts itself to maintain normal neuronal function. Speaker 1: I'm Ryan, I'm a graduate student in neuroscience [00:01:30] and I study the olfactory system. My name is Scott Hansen. I'm a graduate student and the questions I've been interested in are how cells interpret signals from their environment. Being a biochemist, I tried to understand how the proteins at the cellular level are being rearranged and forming different complexes to produce shape changes. My name is Robert Shimon. I'm a first year graduate student. I'm setting bioinformatics and uh, I got into brewing beer as an undergrad. When that [00:02:00] my hobbies, I kind of start doing something and I get completely obsessed with it. So I, at first I was, uh, didn't drink beer at all or didn't drink any alcohol and then, uh, had my first taste of beer and then decided within a couple of months that I'd start brewing and haven't looked back ever since. Cool. Speaker 5: Scott, can you please explain what the ucs F brewers guild is? Speaker 1: The UCSI brewers guild was founded by myself and Michael Schulty and Colin does more about three years ago. So we decided to just hang [00:02:30] out every month and just talk about the beer that we were making. Shortly after that, I joined forces with some people at linkedin laboratories and a the Soma San Francisco and they provided a venue for us to start having biannual beer brewing festivals.Speaker 5: Youth, how do we get beer? So beer is a holy confluence of hops, east malted barley or malted grains [00:03:00] and water. In fact, there is an ancient beer law [inaudible] which is the earliest consumer protection law and that says that beer must be only malted barley and hops and water. At that time. They of course did not know that east made beer. That discovery was made by Pester in the late 18 hundreds but essentially that's what beer is. Can you explain to us Robert? So the majority of grains used in brewering are malted grains. [00:03:30] And so what that means is basically after the grain has been harvested, it's taken, it's soaked in water, are allowed to absorb a certain amount of water and then allowed to germinate. And then once it reaches a certain stage of germination, it's roasted too to help germination and prevent the the seed from converting all of the starches into simple sugars. Speaker 5: But it's allowed to germinate long enough such that it produces the enzymes next necessary for the conversion of the starches into the sugars or the other reasons to get out these simple sugars. Some of these simple sugars are available [00:04:00] to the yeast right at the end. The chief reason why some of these start just have to be converted to sugar is because the next step is to roast them. Right? And the roasting process stops the germination, but it also causes a lot of the mired reactions to occur. The different flavors that you get from Malter because of two reactions. One is caramelization, which is just a sugar caramelizing, which gives you the Tophi sort of, you know, sweet caramel flavors. The other is the mired reaction, which will give you anything from bready to bread [00:04:30] CROs to nutty Biscotti chocolaty coffee. You know, that's the progression of flavors depending on how long euros and how dark the roast is. Speaker 5: And so for the Meyer reactions, of course you need amino acids or some nitrogen source and then you need the simple sugar because if you have the complex starch, all it'll do is burn. You're listening to the spectrum on Calex I'm talking to with the UCS have brewers guild. Now, is it fair to say that a lot of the difference in flavor that you get is from this malting process and this roasting process or do you get [00:05:00] differences based on where the multis grown or that kind of barley used for the malt? The variety of multi is important. The where it was grown I think less so. There's two row barley and there's six rolled barley. So two row barley has a lot more enzymes but very little sugar and six roll barleys the opposite. So you want some Touro barley to provide all the enzymes during mashing to break down the starches. Speaker 5: But you need some starches around six row malt is added to just get the heft [00:05:30] of the sugar in and are non barley and grains molted both that took, some are rice is not because rice is just a ton of simple fermentable sugars. Wheat is and Rye. Yes it is oatmeal. No. Okay. Um, you consider that's a non barley. That's a good point. Um, well you can roast oatmeal at home. I don't know if the oats, you get a roasted [inaudible] you get, [00:06:00] it would not be roasted, but people do toast it in their oven. Oh yeah. And that again, there's a little in my yard magic and gives you some roasted oatmeal flavors. So Kenton, the next process is to boil the granite, is that right? Speaker 6: Grain carries it inside of, it kind of starts as like a stored energy source. And what we do as brewers is buy grain that has all this starch. We crush it up and then soak it in water that activates a bunch of enzymes, [00:06:30] which are just little machines that chop up these starches into sugars. A ton of thought and work goes into just turning those starches into sugar using nothing but water at the appropriate temperatures and then flushing it out and we try to flush out as much of the sugar as possible. And then we've made sugary water that also has other compounds from the barley that gives a different characteristics. And then we just will, we boil it and he did that to sterilize it. And also it gives you an opportunity to add things that flavor. It's southern most common [00:07:00] of those obviously as hops. Speaker 6: And when you boil hops, they UI summarize an acid inside of them that turns the the sugar water, which we call wart more bitter. And that's also a time when you can add other things. Coffee, beans, fruit. And what's the spice that we often use? Corn Polo. Oh yeah. We used to the peppers a yeah. Of Coriander. Um, it gives you a chance to dump in anything you like that will influence how the, the final product tastes or if you dump it in right at the very end how it smells. [00:07:30] And so once you've boiled it for as long as you want to, you cool it as quickly as possible trying to keep it from being contaminated by any of the bugs that float around in the air. And then you dump in yeast, which love the sugar that you've put into the water. And so they will just go crazy for a few weeks fermenting when they ferment, they produce CO2 and alcohol and that turns the wart into a beer. Speaker 5: And Ryan does the boiling process change the malt in other ways. Speaker 7: You drive [00:08:00] where it called my yard reactions, which are reactions between diverse sugar molecules and the diverse short proteins and amino acids that occur in the beer. These reactions are essentially a linking of these two molecules and because you, you're creating a very heterogeneous set of compounds, you have a flavor that is very complex and it's very hard to replicate without actually boiling this set of ingredients together. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 8: [00:08:30] you're listening to spectrum on Calex Berkeley memories at the ucs after his guild are discussing the chemical conversions at the solutions of multi barley and hops and their analysis of homebrewing data [inaudible] Speaker 1: so Robert, let's talk about hops. Actually, one trend that I kind [00:09:00] of think is pretty cool and interesting on the technology side of things is that some breweries are using now it's called a super critical hop extracts packet tube full of hops. You pressurize it with CO2 on one end and all of the hot oils are kind of forced out and you're left with all the vegetable matter in the tube and you have all kinds of those. Nice, wonderful, rich oils left out of it. These breweries have taken to using these superhero hop extracts to kind of reduce their losses and beer and also kind of just increase the amount of hot oils you can get into beer and how do we get new hot varieties [00:09:30] and some understanding of how new for hot varieties arise is that they had this group up at Oregon State University. They breed new hops, get different hop varieties, try brewing beers with these new hop varieties, see if they taste good. If they taste good, they'll distribute them to breweries for them to experiment with. If the breweries like them, then they'll become kind of mainstays and you hops propagate by a rhizome. Speaker 5: Yeah, it propagates by Rhizome, which is actually a route modification under the ground and so it's very easy to swap rhizomes with someone who's growing hops and grow your [00:10:00] own because rhizomes are super hardy. They grow in binds, which are essentially creepers and their stem has this super velcro material, which is great to play around with. You just stick it on anything that has a fiber and it'll just latch on it. It's very, very tough. And anyone who's grown this will attest to it. They're really hard to get rid of once you've had them in for a year or so in your garden. Super Tunnel. Yeah. And they grow super tall and they grow super fast. Uh, you're a newly growing hop. Bine will [00:10:30] grow up to, I've heard a foot a day, which is kind of boggling, but I, I have seen it grow several inches a day. Speaker 5: Wow. Well, my hops will probably start a blooming in July or August and they're usually ripened by September or October depending on the season. Initially they're these green almost line green or, or darker green upside down sort of papery chandelier's. Uh, they look very [00:11:00] delicate and beautiful and when they're wet, they're kind of soft to the touch. But when they dry out, they get slightly more Brown and get papery and they have a kind of pollen that you can, that sort of rubs on your fingers. And when they get papery and dry, that's when the oils and the mature, and that's when you're supposed to harvest them. Even at that stage, they're usually a little wet, so you need to dry them. Air Drying is preferred over a oven drying over [00:11:30] the lowest possible temperature setting because obviously oven drying will get a lot more of the volatiles out of the house. Speaker 5: And what does this air drying process do? It just takes the water out. The air drying, partly matures the oils and it removes the grassy flavor because if you ever use wet hops in your beer, it'll taste like a mouthful of grass. The alpha acid that is often talked about by homebrewers is chiefly Humu loan, which is a fluoro all [00:12:00] derivative. And that I summarizes when you boil it into ISO alpha acids. Now, Humu alone on its own is not very soluble, but when you boil it, it gets more soluble. So you actually extract it. It also gets more bitter. The bitterness of course is a little, it gives a little bit of a stringency, which is bracing. But uh, more importantly, uh, hops is the chief antibacterial compound in beer. It Ma, it helps massively [00:12:30] to prevent spoilage. Hops are actually a soporific, right? They are. They're estrogenic. And, um, in fact, one of the, um, other things that I'm going to use them for is make hop pillows, just stuffed them into pillows and uh, apparently they help you sleep at night. Yeah. Speaker 7: This is spectrum. We're talking with the UCF brewers guild. Ryan, does water chemistry matter? The historical example that everyone always cites is the beers that come out of Burton on Trent versus the beers that come out of Dublin. The beer that comes out of Dublin is black and you know, you wonder [00:13:00] why it's black. It's great. You know, perhaps is not black because the, the people of Ireland, uh, enjoy a dark beer. It's, it's black because the water chemistry necessitates that. And the reason that is is because these enzymes that are converting starches to sugars during your mash depend on Ph and barley that it has been roasted for different amounts of time, have different effects on the acidity of your mash water. In Dublin where the water is quite basic, it needs to be acidified by a dark malt, which has a strong [00:13:30] power to acidify water to bring it into the range where these enzymes are active. Whereas if you have water that is already without adjustment at that Ph range, you do not need to to use dark malts and you can create a a lighter beer. I incidentally, the tap water in San Francisco is really good for a pretty diverse range of styles. And why is there water so good? Speaker 6: That's very low on minerals. So it gives you a lot of flexibility to add the minerals you want. It comes a little basic to begin with. So we often [00:14:00] add minerals to our mash to lower the Ph, but it'll, it'll turn out most things we, yeah, there like Florida where my sister lives, the water is cell-free and I don't think you could even brew with it. You know, one of the parameters that will affect how your, your beer tastes in the end is this sulfur to chloride ratio. And I don't think you could add enough chloride there. It's disgusting. So you know, in San Francisco we are, Speaker 5: this is actually funny because usually most a [00:14:30] beer book say, Oh, you know, you should worry about the chloride content of your water because water is chlorinated in most municipal water supplies and [inaudible]. Speaker 7: So do you use regular tap water then or do you filter it in some way reverse osmosis or buy distilled water? Speaker 6: A lot of people will cut their water with distilled water or reverse osmosis water to reduce the mineral content. Not Necessary, at least in San Francisco or anyone who gets their water from Hetch Hetchy, which is sort of a natural filter. So we don't, we don't [00:15:00] cut our water with anything. We add minerals to it for almost every brew [inaudible]. Speaker 5: So I, I started d chlorinating my water with Campton tablets. Do you guys do the same? Do you think that's necessary? I started using a, a sorbic acid, just vitamin C, which basically has the same thing as a Campton tablets. But honestly, I haven't noticed any flavor differences in my beard since I've started. Speaker 6: The San Francisco water report has the chloride content and it's not extraordinarily high. Yeah. So it's probably not a bad thing to do, but it's not necessary. [00:15:30] Yeah. Speaker 5: Yeah. In fact, one of the best ways of removing clothing from water register boil it boil for 15 minutes and you're pretty much getting rid of all the chlorine. So do you think that in the process of boiling all of the sugar and the wart that's equivalent to pre boiling water? I would say so. Uh, especially by the time it hits, I mean, or rather the heat, the yeast hits the work. Um, you're probably clear if a lot of, or [00:16:00] all the clothing that you should basically be worrying about would have just dissipated. Another way of getting rid of clothing is just, just pour water into a pot and just leave it out for hours and hours. So boiling is much more fast and efficient. Is it evaporating? It is. It's available tile. Um, and you know, it just, uh, it ds as the water is, that's what it does. Speaker 5: It just drives all the gasses dissolved gases from the water. The only problem is that that doesn't work for chloramines. So yeah, you can convert the chloramines [00:16:30] into chlorine by adding Campton tablets or a little bit of Campton tablet or a little bit of a citric acid or sorbic acid and then that'll convert into chlorine. And then either through boiling or letting it sit out, the chlorine will evaporate. Yeah. But I mean, I frankly love San Francisco water out of the tap is delicious to drink it. It's really one of the tastiest, sort of an unprocessed waters that I haven't drunk. Speaker 4: What kind of minerals do you add and why? Speaker 6: So we mostly add calcium [00:17:00] chloride and calcium sulfate. We, we basically drive the Ph as low as we can until our mineral additions get excessive. And we just feel like we're making it hard and stupid. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking about the science involved in beer making with members of the [00:17:30] UC Sir Gurus Guild. Kenton. If a person were to just start homebrewing, what do you think is the most important thing that they pay attention to? Speaker 6: I think temperature that is both really important and also one of the things that you get classically terrible advice about. Get a good thermometer. [00:18:00] If you're going to invest in one thing that doesn't come into standard brew kit, Speaker 5: you should consider what the temperature is in your house. You should have thermometers in different places in your house. Figure out what temperature is. If it's 90 degrees in the middle of the summer, you're not bro-ing okay. Unless you have a refrigerator. So, so just the temperature is think about what type of beer you want to make and then you know, brew with the seasons. I think that's the best way to do it. Speaker 6: Ryan, what kind of data [00:18:30] do you record when you're brewing? Speaker 7: We have a really good time brewing. You hear people say all the time that brewing is both art and science, right? In our brewing process and in our brewing theory, the art is in the exploration, but the science is sort of in making sure that we can get back to where we've been Speaker 6: for people. Like I think all of us in the room who are like probably unhealthily obsessed with data and getting it consistent and [00:19:00] being in control. Maybe the biggest obstacle to brewing and getting satisfaction from it was the terrible information that's available on the Internet. When you have a question that you want to answer to and you've just go out into the world looking for it, then some of the information is old and some of it is just like willfully wrong where someone has made the decision and like posted authoritatively about it and they're just wrong. Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean if you Google something and you get your answer from Yahoo Answers, then it's wrong. Right? [00:19:30] But that's basically what you're dealing with when you, when you Google something about beer recipes that no one followed up on, uh, ideas that people have a misinformation pass from one person to another with complete, uh, authoritative tone. Speaker 6: Yeah. So we started pulling together some things. I mean a lot of brewing is has been studied. I mean the breweries know everything and then we, homebrewers are sort of trying to like figure certain things out what we, on what parameters predict deficiency and everything. And so we started pulling together all the formulas, [00:20:00] everything into one place. So we keep track when we brew, we record things like our gravity's, which is the a measure the density of the water, which is a measure of how much is dissolved in the water. And we mostly worry about that being sugar. We feed that in a largely sugar depending on the way we mashed. Uh, so we record our gravity's and we record the lengths the durations are Boyle and things like that. And then we plug it all into what's been an excel sheet, [00:20:30] just a huge excel sheet that we call the beer gulay tricks. Speaker 6: And it basically builds predictions for us. Like we plug in our brewing plan and it will tell us things like the color and the bitterness, the volume that we should get out of it, how strong it should be in the end, how much it should cost to brew the diastolic power. Right. That the same or different as, as you were saying, different grains have a different amount of enzymes but that's sort of known in a rough way. And so it'll tell [00:21:00] you whether you have sufficient grain that will, you know, power you through the mashing step, things like that. And so we put it all in one place, which is online as well. It will be soon to be real metrics. And so you mentioned that you calculate the costs of brewing beer. Speaker 1: Is that mainly just you geeking out or do you, is this really a decision point Speaker 6: whether you brew a beer or not amount? It's not a decision. So we basically want to triumph [inaudible] [00:21:30] the turning point, right? The main thing we look at is our efficiency. And so then we like have a beer that we produced that we love and then we just want to try to make it better. And one thing we can use is like if we're more efficient than it costs less to brew the beer. And that's exciting, but we would never buy less green. Let's save money on it. Speaker 1: So for the wine making industry, they [inaudible] digital refractometers as gravity changes the refractive index of the liquid with which the gravity is changing also changes. And so when you, as the refractive index changes, if you [00:22:00] place this on the surface of a prism, the critical angle of light passing through this prism also changes. And so you can basically place a liquid sample on a prism ShineLight through the prism. And then from that you can kind of backward compute what the gravity of the liquid sitting on the prism is. And so what I'm hoping trying to do once I get a little bit of free time after I'm done with rotations in classes, my first year is to build, is to build a floating sensor that'll sit in my beer, give me real time temperature and gravity measurements with this little prison system. So [00:22:30] if any of you guys have any experience building, stuff like that, I'd love some help this summer. Scott and anyone else, what kind of advice do you have for aspiring homebrewers? One thing I often see with homebrewers is that they're so attached to their beers. The first batch of beer I made, Speaker 5: I dunno if I want to like give it out. Holding onto that beer is pointless. The only way that you're going to get good at brewing beer is taking chances and just and just going for it. So the process is [00:23:00] just extremely robust. It's very difficult to make a bad beer so you can invest at any level you like. We like to, to really geek out and, and understand it. We were obsessed with controlling it, but you don't need to do that to make beer. If you can cook, you can make beer. Homebrewers are the most genial, open, convivial fellows I have ever met. They don't hoard recipes. Home brewers in general are some of the best people to hang out with, especially when we're brewing cause we're probably [00:23:30] at our happiest or close to. It usually consists of consuming homebrewers as well. So if you, oh, I think that's a rule. I think that was written down somewhere. So if you're not doing that, you're breaking some pretty harsh rules. Speaker 1: Well guys, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Our pleasure. Thanks. Speaker 3: And now for some science news headlines, here's Brad swift and Lisa cabbage. Speaker 9: [00:24:00] The Economist reports that Dr. David Kaplan and biomedical researcher at Tufts University who has studied silk for 22 years and devised ways to use silk and biomedical applications, has developed a new way to pack medicines into tiny silk pockets that make the medicines almost indifferent to heat boiling silkworm cocoons in sodium carbonate. Caplin separates out of protein named fibrillin. He mixes the fibro in was salt. Then mixes that solution with the medicines [00:24:30] to be preserved and spreads the results out as a film before freeze drying them. The process immobilizes the medicines molecules preventing them from unfolding and thus losing their potency. Dr Kaplan and his team demonstrated the effectiveness of their new technique by trying it out on the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, as well as the antibiotics, tetracycline, and penicillin. The medicines when stored using this process retained 85% potency after six months at 45 degrees Celsius. The next step is to begin human testing [00:25:00] of the silk film medicines. If successful, this process will have enormous benefits for the global distribution of medicines. Currently, most medicines, including vaccines, require refrigeration to retain potency. The World Health Organization estimates that half of all vaccines produced are destroyed because refrigeration is lost at some point during distribution. Speaker 10: Science magazine reports that an international team of plant biologists working with the u s da have found that mitigating [00:25:30] climate change through carbon sequestration actually pumps more carbon into the atmosphere. Increased carbon dioxide stimulates the growth of our boosts dealer. My Corozal fun guy, a mF , a type of fungus that is often found in the roots of most land plants. Experiments were conducted in greenhouses as well as fields of wild oats, wheat and soybeans. Lay Chang post-doctorate fellow in plant science at Penn state said elevated levels of carbon dioxide increased [00:26:00] both the size of AMF colonies and decomposition. AMF colonies are found in the roots of 80% of land plant species and play a critical role in Earth's carbon cycle. The fungus receives and stores carbon. A byproduct of the plant's photosynthesis from its host plant in its long vein likes structures as the carbon transitions to the soil. The AMF triggers additional decomposition of organic carbon near the plant's root systems. This decomposition releases more [00:26:30] carbon dioxide back into the air, which means that terrestrial ecosystems may have limited capacity to haul climate change by cleaning up excessive greenhouse gases. The big fear is that this will turn the soil into a carbon source Speaker 9: rather than a carbon sink. A regular feature of spectrum is a calendar of some of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area. Over the next two weeks. Here's Brad swift and Lisa cabbage. Scott Stevens, [00:27:00] associate professor of fire sciences at the UC Berkeley College of natural resources and a past guest on spectrum will present a lecture entitled fire and Ecosystem Resiliency in California forests Thursday, September 13th from noon until 1:00 PM room one 32 in Mulford Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. The California coastal cleanup day is Saturday, September 15th from eight 30 to noon. Historically, this is the largest statewide volunteer event. The cities [00:27:30] of Berkeley and Oakland are organizing shoreline cleanups. The East Bay regional parks district is also organizing shoreline cleanups along East Bay waterways. Pick up every bit of human made debris you can find and record what you remove. Data collection is important. Your data goes into ocean conservancy's international database. Speaker 9: Used to identify the sources of debris and help devise solutions to the marine debris problem. To get involved and get more details, contact Kevin Fox at the East Bay regional [00:28:00] parks district. Patty Donald at the city of Berkeley and Brin Samuel at the city of Oakland or a search online for California Coastal Cleanup Day on September 16th from 11 to 12:00 PM the UC botanical gardens at 200 centennial drive in Berkeley will present a lecture, small space orchards growing fruit trees in small gardens, Claire and author of California fruit and vegetable gardening. We'll show you two simple techniques for growing [00:28:30] a small orchard in a typical bay area home garden. You'll learn the best fruit varieties, space saving techniques and plant and care for container grown fruit trees and much more copies of Clare's book will also be available for purchase. You must register in advance Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 3: The music you [00:29:00] heard during say show was Palestine and David from his album book and Acoustic Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 3: It is released under a creative Commons license version 3.0 spectrum was recorded and edited by me, Rick Karnofsky and by Brad Swift. Thank you for listening to spectrum. You're happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum [00:29:30] dot klx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 3: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

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, 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]. 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]. 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. 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 exoplanets and the search for water in the universe. To help analyze data www.galaxyzoo.org or www.planethunters.orgTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, [00:00:30] a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm joined today by spectrum 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 candidate unscheduled to be awarded his phd in astrophysics by UC Berkeley this summer. [00:01:00] Jeff and Nicholas have generously agreed to help spectrum present three shows on astronomy, explaining the big ideas, recent experiments, international collaborations and improvements and observations on technology that are transforming astronomy. In part one we discuss extra solar planets known as exoplanets and the search for liquid water in the universe. Nicholas McConnell and Jeff Silverman. Welcome to spectrum. Thanks for having us do. You're both astronomers. Yup. And today you're going to talk with us about [00:01:30] what's been happening in astronomy in say, the past five years that really stands out for you. That's very salient that you think's important. Nicholas, why don't you bring up the first topic that we're going to discuss here? Speaker 2: Sure. Well, there are many things to choose from, but for me, one of the most exciting things that I think has been happening is that over the last two or three years, thanks mostly to a NASA satellite called the Kepler mission. Astronomers have been discovering literally thousands of new planets orbiting other stars, uh, in our own galaxy every year. [00:02:00] And one particularly exciting discovery that happened in December, 2011 was we found a planet around another star that appeared to be in the so called habitable zone of that planet. The zone where the distance from the star was appropriate that the temperature on the planet could possibly be not too cold and not too hot to have liquid water. And how much of that exoplanet research is done here in the bay area? Quite a large amount. There's a large healthy exoplanet team in the UC Berkeley Astronomy Department, [00:02:30] and many scientists here are heavily involved in the Kepler mission besides this planet in the habitable zone. Speaker 2: Like Nicholas mentioned, thousands of planets have been discovered by this Kepler mission of all shapes and sizes from nearly earth size to Uranus and Neptune size. Did you put her in a little bit bigger orbiting their stars that are sun-like sometimes a little bit smaller, sometimes a little bit bigger than the sun at various distances. There's maybe a couple of examples where we've seen a system of a few planets that sort [00:03:00] of mimic the sizes of planets in our solar system at some of the distances, but most of these planets are found very close to their host star. Nothing like what we see in our own solar system, things that are the size of Jupiter and Saturn that are orbiting even closer than mercury. And so this is a huge weird question that's outstanding. People are trying to figure out how do you make these systems, how do you make these planetary systems and why are they so prevalent and so different from what we know in our own solar system. Speaker 2: And are there some sort of limitations to the [00:03:30] finding techniques to, to locate these planets that might sort of bias you towards finding these large close planets spoken like a true scientist? Yes, we are absolutely biased to find big planets that are very close to their stars. So the first handful of planets that were found were very big. These so-called hot Jupiters, very big Jupiter sized planets near their stars. We are definitely biased by the techniques to find these kinds of planets. Capillary is doing a bit of a better job finding smaller planets, finding them further out. And so we're getting into a point [00:04:00] in time where we're close to being able to find similar looking systems to the solar system, bigger planets further out earth planets around the distance of earth from the sun and we're not really finding them as often as you might expect. Speaker 2: And so it does seem still that even taking into account some of this bias that our solar system is a bit of an oddball now that's certainly may change in the next few years. This is a huge fast moving field, but right now we're still an odd ball. Yeah. I have to say that the, the Kepler mission was designed [00:04:30] so that over the course of the missions lifetime, which was roughly a three year time period, starting maybe 2010 and going through 2013 or so, it was designed so that over that period it could detect a planet, maybe twice the size of our earth but orbiting at star at the same distance that the earth orbits the sun. So capillary is definitely doing a better job than previous missions, finding planets that aren't quite as small as earth but are getting down in that region where we can say this plant is actually fairly similar to the planet earth. Speaker 2: And because we're now simply becoming [00:05:00] able to start to find planets like this, we can begin to say things about how common are earth like planets relative to these hot Jupiters that Jeff was talking about before when we had only detected the hot Jupiters, there was nothing we could say about their relative abundance in the universe compared to planets like the earth was their technology. And Kepler that made this possible. Was there a breakthrough somehow in the, the instrument? The thing Kepler does is it measures the brightness coming from a star [00:05:30] over and over and over again. Uh, and what happens is that if a planet passes in front of the star along the line of sight to Earth, it blocks a little bit of the disk of the star. And so the star gets very slightly fatter. But these differences in the stars brightness are smaller than a percent. Speaker 2: And so in order to pick out that signal that you need to have an instrument that can measure the brightness of a star very, very accurately, repeatedly over and over again and simply by having it outside ears, atmosphere, having it in space and all of the different instrumental [00:06:00] things they did inside that satellite enables Kepler to measure stellar brightnesses with more precision than any instrument that we'd done this for previously. Another interesting piece of technology that was something that they had to tackle. And it's still sort of one of the limitations actually of Kepler, is because you're measuring the brightness of thousands of stars many, many times over and over and over again. That's a huge amount of data, just pure raw pictures that you have floating on a spacecraft and you need to beam those down to earth, to big computers to hold those. Speaker 2: And so [00:06:30] one of the biggest limitations from my understanding is just the bandwidth. It is hard to move that ms send that many, you know, picture files basically from space down, you know, different satellites to big data centers on earth. And so they kind of do it in big bursts and in chunks and they only take certain subsets of the pictures of different stars. Very, very close, a little snapshot, postage stamps right around each of the stars that they're monitoring. And it's still huge amounts of data. Uh, and so this has been a big breakthrough for a number of different [00:07:00] astronomy discoveries, is the large amount of data being able to move it through the Internet, through fiber optics and storing it and going through it in a fast, efficient way. Do you know if there's any kind of preliminary data analysis actually on the coupler? Speaker 2: I'm not completely sure, but there is some, as far as I know, a basic calibrations and, and basic work that it does before it sends down some of the products. But looking, as Nicholas said, for these very slight amounts of dimming in the stars takes a lot of computing power [00:07:30] and fancy algorithms that are run on big machines back on earth. And one of the really interesting things that's actually been done with the Keppra or data is after this processing, after you have, um, sort of your reduced scientific measurements. Um, recently these data have been put on the Internet so that by crowdsourcing people can go, ah, I think the website is called Kepler Zoo. And look at the period, the, the patterns of brightness versus time for all of these different stars. Um, and humans can try to find patterns that the best computer algorithms have failed to find. Um, and [00:08:00] I think there is a space of patterns that computers don't do very well at, but humans are better at. Um, so we're using the public to try to get more planets, uh, than when we, we'd be able to do just the astronomy community by itself. Speaker 1: [inaudible] this is spectrum on k l x Berkeley. We are talking about exoplanets with Jeff Silverman and Nicholas McConnell [00:08:30] reflecting on coupler. How do you, Speaker 2: I think it's changed your worldview. The entire subfield and astronomy have of exoplanets. Planets around other stars effectively didn't exist until the mid to late nineties. So when I was in elementary school, it was nice to think about planets on around other stars and see it in the movies. But it was very scifi. Speaker 3: Fast forward to to mean in college, in the early two thousands [00:09:00] taking astronomy classes, astronomers had discovered a handful of these exoplanets. And I distinctly remember one of my professors saying, you know, we found a few, we're going to find some more in the future. One day you'll pick up the newspaper and the front page will be a picture of an exoplanet. And sure enough, a few years ago, Berkeley astronomers took a picture of an exoplanet and it made the front page newspaper. Uh, and I'll never forget seeing that picture on the front page of the newspaper, just like my professor in college predicted. This is a very fast moving field. We're going to find even more planets earth-like [00:09:30] around sunlight stars that could very well have liquid water. It'll possibly be not that rare to have an earth-like planet in the very near future. Personally, to me, I think it's great. It makes me hope that perhaps we can find an exact earth analog around a sun analog and perhaps there is intelligent life or some kind of life that we can find. And I think an amazing thing that astronomers can do for the world. Speaker 4: I think with the discovery of planets that are similar [00:10:00] to Earth or at least about the same sizes, or we're beginning to go from detecting one, then a couple to actually doing decent statistics where we can project how many have planets about the same size of earth exist, say in our galaxy. I tried to do a very, very rough calculation this morning. If you ask how many earth sized planets are there in the Milky Way, I think the answer is there's probably about a billion or a couple billion. And so I think that's just another interesting way of looking at how [00:10:30] earth is not necessarily unique environment in the universe, but just as we have so much diversity here on earth than in our galaxy. We have evidence now that there is space and room to have as much diversity possibly throughout our galaxy. So I think we really are getting a profound sense of just what kind of environment we have for possibly life and for different conditions, not only in our own solar system, but in this much larger piece of the universe that we're [00:11:00] only beginning to explore. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 6: you're listening to spectrum on k a l x, Berkeley. We are talking about astrophysics with Nicholas McConnell and Jeff Silverman. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 3: let's talk about water in the universe. So we've found quite a bit of water [00:11:30] in the universe, oddly enough, sort of starting on the biggest scales. There's, there's some nebulae, some clusters of gas and particles out in the universe that are huge reservoirs of water and sort of related huge reservoirs of alcohols, ethanol's, things like that. Coming a little bit closer to home and looking a little bit more recently. In the past maybe five or 10 years, there's been quite a few new detections, new possible detections, new lines of evidence of liquid water, ice water in our solar system in very interesting [00:12:00] places. One, the moon of Saturn known as, and Solidus is a very shiny, very bright object. It's very, very white, snowy, clean looking objects. A handful of craters have much less cratered than our own moon, a little smaller than our moon as well. Speaker 3: But it had some weird features to it. It looks kind of neat. And so the the Cassini spacecraft, which has been around exploring Saturn and its moon systems and its ring system for the past decade or so, did a few very close flybys of this very interesting moon in solidus [00:12:30] figured out that most of the surface is solid ice water, ice, ammonia, hydrocarbons, stuff as well. Also notice that there were geysers coming off of the surface, which we've seen geysers on a couple of other moons of Jupiter and Saturn, but these were kind of interesting and Cassini was there and we lucked out and Cassini actually flew through one of these geysers and got to detect the particles from the geyser itself, right? They're very direct institute measurements of what's in the guys there and it was mostly water and some ammonia, which was [00:13:00] interesting. And then there's evidence that there was actually more organic compounds in there and so possibly there, this could lead to life. Speaker 3: There could be some kind of bacteria down in the innards of in solidus. That's sort of pushing a a little bit, sort of the next step beyond what the evidence is actually telling us. But it's very, very tantalizing. Just about four or five years ago, a NASA panel on moons and moon explorations in the solar system said that in Solidus is probably the best possibility [00:13:30] for current life outside of earth in our own solar system. And the idea is that underneath this sort of very smooth, icy surface, there's probably a liquid ocean, mostly water, maybe a little bit of salt water, like I said, a little ammonia, some organic compounds, perhaps probably not gray whales and great white sharks. Probably not even little fish and shrimp, but it seems reasonable that there could be microscopic organisms, some kind of life, you know, to be determined. Speaker 3: But it's possible. [00:14:00] There's liquid water, there's reasonable conditions. It's not too salty, it's not too acidic, it's not too hot. And there does seem to be at least the building blocks, some of these organic compounds, perhaps one outstanding issue is how thick is this outer ice layer. So there's been some ideas of what we should send another mission that's just going to drill in there and it had the little submarine and go look around for fish and organisms, but we don't actually have a great handle on how thick that ice layer is. Uh, so Cassini is continuing to study this moon along with the [00:14:30] rest of the stuff in the Saturn system. Other moons, the planet itself, the Rings, uh, and we'll hopefully learn a little bit more about it, but they're already in the works, uh, both NASA, Japanese and European missions to go explore in salad. It's even more now if you want to go a little bit closer than Enceladus, one of the most promising planets areas in our solar system where Speaker 4: people have thought about the possibility of liquid water, where we certainly know that frozen water exists and where we have a headstart on [00:15:00] objects actually on the surface exploring is the planet Mars. And there've been some recent discoveries about both water in the past history of Mars and possibly salty liquid water, actually existing present day on Mars that are fueling a lot of excitement in the scientific community. Right now we have two different kinds of instruments that are doing fantastic observations of Mars. One of them is called the Mars or condescends orbiter. It is a satellite in orbit around Mars that can take fantastically detailed [00:15:30] photographs of the Martian surface. You can see features about a few feet across on the Martian surface with the satellite and then the other are the famous Mars Rovers. Spirit and opportunity spirit recently shut down, met its demise even though these two rovers outlasted their nominal mission timeline by a factor of 10 or so, Opportunity is still exploring the Martian surface and in both cases, instruments have found evidence for water on Mars. Speaker 4: In the case of opportunity. The rover fairly recently [00:16:00] discovered this mineral vein in a rock in a crater on Mars that scientists are pretty certain, could only have been created by liquid water flowing through a crack in the rocket, some ancient time and marches history and creating this particular mineral known as gypsum in certain variances what we use to make plaster of Paris here on Earth. So there is evidence that in particular Martian environments, there was almost certainly liquid water on Mars in the past. Combine that with theoretical models of how the planet and its atmosphere would have evolved over time. [00:16:30] And there are some pictures of ancient Mars being this sort of lush liquid water, much warmer environment than it is today. And so possibly Mars in its past was a hospitable environment for life. Although I'll emphasize we've, we have not yet detected any evidence of present day or fossilized life on Mars, but frankly, we haven't explored a very large fraction of that planet yet. Speaker 4: So I wouldn't be entirely surprised if some discovery came along in the future. Another very, very interesting observation on Mars coming [00:17:00] from the Mars reconnaissance orbiter is that looking over time at the edges of some of the craters on Mars in the warm seasons, they actually found stream like features that looked like dark streams were appearing on the edges of craters and over the course of the warm season as these craters were being more exposed to the sun and warming up a little bit, the streams lengthen as you might expect, little trickles of liquid water to flow downhill and based on mineral analysis which you can do using spectroscopy [00:17:30] from the orbiter and just generally the overall pattern of how these streams change with the seasons. We think that's good evidence that some sort of salty water was creating the streams. Unfortunately we were not able to directly detect water. What we see, it looks more to be like residue from a salt water stream where the water evaporated or where the water is just below the surface. But it seems that in certain seasons and certain places of the planet, there could actually be water and liquid form just at the surface or just below the surface [00:18:00] of Mars today. I mean if you have salt water on Mars, then I think there's at least some chance that you could have some kind of primitive life forum thriving in it. [inaudible] Speaker 3: it's been amazing in the last few years using the orbiter and the rovers on Mars, the different lines of evidence that we have for this ice, either on the surface or just below the surface centimeters below the surface, inches below the surface. And so NASA just recently launched a mission to head to Mars and even bigger rover, something like the size of a small car [00:18:30] that's going to go around and specifically look for water, look for organic molecules, building blocks of life in different parts than where we've already explored on Mars. Speaker 4: And that rover is called curiosity and it's supposed to land on the Martian surface this summer. Is there water on the moon? Our Moon, there is water on the moon in the form of hydrous molecules, so where water is directly incorporated into a solid rock, but I don't think there's any evidence for frozen or liquid water on the moon, [00:19:00] certainly not liquid water. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 4: can you reflect on the importance of water being discovered in our solar system or in some other solar system or galaxy? Speaker 2: Clearly on earth, water is essential [00:19:30] for all life forms and so whereas there are ideas about exotic kinds of life that could exist without our requirement of having water. It certainly seems like the most natural place to start looking for life outside of our own planet. So knowing that it exists in liquid form in different places in the universe and knowing Lisa in our own solar system where it exists is I think a really good start toward actually doing an Ernest search for life outside earth, maybe in our own solar system. [00:20:00] And I think just knowing how much water there actually is in our universe makes it seem like the universe is maybe a friendlier place than we thought it was. Okay. Speaker 3: One of the basic questions in astronomy of humanity, one of the things that got me interested in astronomy originally was are we alone in the universe? Is there life out there in the solar system, in our galaxy, and looking for water is probably the best way, the most direct way to find where that life could be. Being able to go visit Mars, the Moon, various [00:20:30] moons in our own solar system. Looking for that life in the water or around the water, I think is is something that's a fundamental question for all humankind, not just scientists and astronomers. Speaker 7: That ends one, Jeff Silverman and Nicholas McConnell. We'll be back with part two on our next show. We'll talk about Super Novi and black holes. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa Catholic joined me [00:21:00] for the calendar and the new black hole, Speaker 8: the harmonic oscillators of the 21st century presented by Andrew Strom and dear professor of physics, Harvard University, Monday, March 12th at four 15 to 5:30 PM La Conte Hall Room Number One in the 20th century. Many problems across all of physics were solved by perturb native methods which reduce them to harmonic oscillators. Black holes are poised to play a similar role for the problems of 21st century physics. They are at once [00:21:30] the simplest and most complex objects in the physical universe. Professors durometer will give an introduction to the subject intended for a general audience Speaker 9: daily and Nardo art science evening rendezvous or laser is a monthly series of lectures, presentations, and networking between artists and scientists. This month, laser is on Monday, March 12th at the [inaudible] room of the front building at the University of San Francisco to one 30 zero Fulton Street. It is free, but [00:22:00] please RSVP to p at [inaudible] dot com the event starts at seven with a talk by [inaudible] Viskontas on the art and neuroscience of effective music performance. What is it about this art form that draws people in? What distinguishes a performance that is technically accurate but unmusical from one that elicits the chills. We will explore how music engages the brain and why it continues to be a worldwide addiction. This will be followed by Rebecca Cayman's talk, making the invisible visible [00:22:30] discoveries between art and science, the history of artists as scientists and scientists as artists will be shared drying from the collections of the American philosophical society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation. The development of new art science collaborations will also be discussed. Shawmut caught true of the Stanford Physics Department. We'll speak on are there more dimensions of space which we'll discuss how the extra dimensions proposed by some models such as string theory may explain and unify puzzles [00:23:00] of modern physics. The night we'll conclude with Scott killed doll and Nathaniel stern who will discuss beaming Twitter messages to glaze five eight one D and exoplanet 20 light years away that can support extra terrestrial life using DIY technology. The website for laser is www.leonardo.info Speaker 8: the creative destruction of medicine Wednesday, March 14th at 6:00 PM at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on the second [00:23:30] floor of five 95 market street, Eric Topol, MD, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, Co founder and vice chairman of the West Wireless Health Institute and author of the creative destruction of medicine. Dr Topol says that is poised to go through its biggest shakeup in history and unprecedented convergence of technologies such as the ability to digitize human genomes and the invention of wireless tools is gaining momentum, thrusting the medical field into the digital era. Tickets are $20 [00:24:00] for general public, $8 for members and $7 for students. Speaker 9: Ask a scientist is hosting a puzzle party on Pi Day Wednesday, March 14th at 7:00 PM this is a math and logic puzzle competition for teams of up to six people. It is free, but you're encouraged to support the venue by purchasing foods and or drinks. The winning team will get a round of drinks and an overwhelming sense of pride. Bring a jacket in case there is overflow onto the sidewalk of the bizarre [00:24:30] cafe. Five nine two seven California at 21st in San Francisco visit. Ask a scientist sf.com for more info. Speaker 7: Yeah, Speaker 6: the March Science at cal lecture will be given at 11:00 AM on Saturday, March 17th in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 the talk will be given by Dr Hazel Bane and is entitled The Sun a star in our own backyard. Dr Bain is a post doc with the Ruben Rahmati high energy spectroscopic [00:25:00] solar imager solar physics group at the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley. Her main area of research involves studying solar eruptive events such as flares, jets, and coronal mass ejections using both space and ground-based instruments. In describing her talk, Dr Bane said the stars in the night sky have always been a source of intrigue and wonder with our very own star at the center of our solar system, the sun offers us a unique [00:25:30] opportunity to study the inner workings of these giant balls of plasma. Starting at the core, I will discuss the processes occurring at the different layers of the sun onto news. Speaker 9: The four mile long t veteran particle accelerator at Chicago's Fermi lab was closed in September, 2011 after being one of the most powerful accelerators for 20 years, but in analyzing 500 trillion subatomic particles, Asians from the CDF and DCO, the team says that they may [00:26:00] have generated about a thousand Higgs Bosons the particle that is responsible for mass in the standard model of physics in a previous episode of spectrum that you can download from iTunes you, we interviewed Dr Simoni Pig Ingreso about the hunt for the Higgs. The probability of these measurements being due to a statistical fluke instead of the measurements of the Higgs is about one in 30 or about 2.2 sigma. This is well below the one chance in 3.5 million or five sigma that will be used to claim the actual discovery of the Higgs. [00:26:30] The energy of the detected events is between 115 billion and 135 billion electron volts, which is in good agreement with the range of 124 billion electron volts to 126 billion electron volts that turns large. Hadron collider established with 3.6 sigma certainty. The large Hadron collider is on winter break, but we'll be fixed up again in April to continue trying to find the Higgs with five sigma certainty. Speaker 8: The Cal Energy Corp is offering internships [00:27:00] around the world from Brazil to Germany to Ghana, to China, as well as in the bay area. During the summer of 2012 internships will offer UC Berkeley undergraduates the opportunity to pursue challenging hands on projects and energy and climate research. According to the office of the vice chancellor for research among the projects, cal energy core interns will be involved in our efforts to create green coal as industrial fuel, helping to produce biofuels, working on improving photovoltaics for integration into the [00:27:30] electricity grid, building models to better understand climate change and designing and testing. Cookstoves. The internship program provides a $600 weekly stipend for all interns as well as funding to cover transportation and housing. All placements are full time, more information and application forms are available at the cow energy core website. Speaker 9: Yeah, Speaker 6: explaining science to an 11 year old. The flame challenge sponsored by the Center for communicating science is an attempt to reach the very core of [00:28:00] science communication. The contest asks scientists and generally clever people to submit their own explanations of what a flame is, explanations that would captivate an 11 year old. The flame challenge contest is open for entries between March 2nd and April 2nd with the winners to be announced in June. Entries can be in writing, video or graphics and they can be playful or serious as long as they are accurate and connect with the young judges. For more information and entry [00:28:30] forms, visit the challenge website. Flame challenge.org Speaker 7: [inaudible] music curse during the show goes by on Donna David [inaudible] on for his album title folk and acoustic [00:29:00] just made available by creative Commons license 3.0 contribution. [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show [inaudible] [00:29:30] to our email address is [inaudible] means in two weeks. It's Speaker 6: the same Speaker 5: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Peter Gifford is the President and CTO of Cyromech Inc. He talks about cryogenics, the science of super low temperatures, and the challenges of growing a mid-sized high tech manufacturing company.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 3: [inaudible]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 4: Hi and good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Our guest today is Peter Gifford, [00:01:00] president and chief technical officer of crown incorporated, a manufacturer of cryogenic refrigerators for industry and research. Peter was visiting the west coast and we took the opportunity to talk with him. Peter's father, William e Gifford co-invented, the Gifford McMahon's cycle with Howard McMahon in the late 1950s while they both worked at Arthur D. Little company. The Gifford McMahon cycle is a unique method of reliably providing closed cycle refrigeration at temperatures [00:01:30] below 10 degrees Kelvin, which is minus 452 degrees Fahrenheit. The Gifford McMahon cycle became an important standard for the semiconductor industry. It was also vital to the early u s space program by cooling microwave amplifiers in ground stations for satellite communications. Peter Gifford talks about cryogenics and the integration of science, engineering and manufacturing. The day of the interview. Peter had a bad cold and his voice [00:02:00] is scratchy. Rick Karnofsky also joins me for the interview. Peter Gifford, welcome to spectrum. Well thank you. Good to be here. Peter, give us an overview of cryogenics. Speaker 5: The basic definition that I use is all the temperature range from liquid natural gas, colder. That's about a, you know about 120 Calvin and Speaker 4: what are the large scale applications of crowd genics? Speaker 5: Yeah, I wasn't around [00:02:30] in the early 19 hundreds when the early work was, but I think what they were trying to do as they are trying to separate liquid air into oxygen and nitrogen, they are trying to get oxygen so that they could make fire hotter for steel manufacturing. During the Cold War, it started to be wanting to see what the Russians were doing. So we had these satellites and they'd send them these very faint messages from satellites and the receivers. Temperatures had to be reduced low [00:03:00] enough so we can reduce without noise. That vibration of the atoms and the crystal, so we could see lay an egg breast, Jeff's cool pack of cigarettes in his pocket at the wharf and flat a boss Doc, you know, that kind of stuff. That's when the different McMahon segway refrigerator started coming out and with those small refrigerators, the next thing that happened was all the materials scientists and other physicists wanting to use cryogenics and laboratories. They found that they could start [00:03:30] to recognize more stuff, more interesting physics in their a samples at low temperatures. Then after that they started prepping vacuums with thing called cryo pumps. Every chip manufactured in every phone, television, anything is made in the Cryo pumped vacuum with a Gifford McMann type cryo pump bay on those things. We didn't make all that money, so I've had to work for a living. The next big application was cooling MRI [00:04:00] magnets. When you go in those MRI things, they slide you in there and they have that sound. Speaker 5: That's a cry refrigerator is re condensing liquid helium. That's for Calvin. It cools the magnet in there. It's just a little distance away from your body and then after that there'll be a few things coming out with high temperature superconducting future, but right now I have a, as far as HTS, I attempted superconducting applications that [00:04:30] people don't really know yet. And what does Cryo Mek do in particular for this industry? What chromic does is we manufacture crier refrigerators. That means we take heat out of something so that it can reach cryogenic temperatures below 120 Calvin cr refrigerators at our place go down to 1.7 k. It's a very simple device. What my father's invention was is he separated and integral crier [00:05:00] refrigerator with a compression part of it and the expansion part of a write together, he's separated the two and made them more reliable and you could use off the shelf air conditioning parts and the compressor while you made the expanded device. Speaker 5: Very particular, very controlled environment. That's what we do our specially, we've got 32 different crier refrigerators and 54 different products based around them. The area of cryogenics than that [00:05:30] that you work in, how do you describe that? We sort of spend most of our time looking for the new applications. So our manufacturing models, we are open and flexible to new opportunities and then we can manufacture our cry refrigerators efficiently so we can make money and stay in business. And what are some of the unique features of these? Are they larger volumes or do they get down to the lower temperatures? Well, people say small crowd coolers, small crowd colors might be anything. It's [00:06:00] hard to describe. We are talking in Watts here folks. A Wad is one joule per second of heat being taken out of an object. Okay. So we'd go down to maybe a half a watt up to like 600 watts. Speaker 5: Big Air separation plants as large cryogenics, you know, for big research institution where they're talking megawatts, we're talking very small in terms of capacities. I don't know if that defines it. That's a very tough definition. [00:06:30] Do you want to go more into the innovation of your father's invention? My father's basic innovation was back there in 1955 56, he had been working down in a, the redstone arsenal, Donald Huntsville, Alabama for the start of NASA, uh, where they had the Germans brought in to make rockets and rocket fuel, sort of liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen. And so we left there. We'd come in from Boulder, Colorado. We left there and went up to Boston, [00:07:00] uh, precisely so that my father could work on making smaller ground coolers. So this big integral thing that would take about the size of an average living room could be a more portable things so they could set up these receivers for the satellite systems all around. And so to do that, he's, the separation is really the Gifford McMahon Cycle. And uh, it was, it was quite unique and it allowed people to have cry refrigerators anywhere you want [00:07:30] them. Right now. Crier refrigerators on the South Pole on the North Pole on icebreakers. I've got, um, you know, under tents in Ethiopia making liquid nitrogen for artificial insemination purposes for producing milk. Speaker 3: [inaudible]. [00:08:00] Our guest today on Spectra is Peter Gifford, the president, CTO chromic incorporated. In the next segment, Peter Talks about making cryo refrigerators. This is kv LX Berkeley. Speaker 5: What kind of balance between making new instruments and selling these new instruments versus supporting instruments that you already have [00:08:30] out there? Do you have the drive to that? Our customer is pretty much two by yielded. That'll run as long as it can go. When I first got in the business, if you made a career, refrigerated, ran for 5,000 hours, that's you know, the year as eighties six 70 or something, it was considered good. Then it went to 10,000 hours. Then it went to 20,000 hours. About the year 2000 now we're suppressing 30 and moving up to 40,000 [00:09:00] hours. Meantime between any maintenance on these devices, so that's what people expect from crier refrigerators in course of running the company over these many years. How has the manufacturing process on your side changed keep well an adding more products, but the basic products have stayed the same. What has happened is as we've made more, instead of going from one a month to one a week to [00:09:30] one a day to now three a day coming down the line, trying to build the capacity, you can focus as you get to bigger numbers and start to focus on different places, you got more people and you can start to recognize what it is that you ought to be doing at different places. Speaker 5: It's hard to see everything when you're small and you're just doing a few things. It's, it's amazing. Uh, right now my key word is the word recognize. I'm seeing [00:10:00] things clearly. I'm recognizing things a lot clearly in the manufacturing process. Plus I got a lot of people out there that are paying attention. What kind of challenges are you most interested in solving? Are they some of the managerial stuff or some of this stuff on the sales side or some of the engineering and technical challenges still? I wonder whether or not I've ever separated those. There are some interesting things coming at us. Again, recently we've instituted [00:10:30] a new quality management system where we're defining what we need. We're training people better than we audit people and we've gotten a lot better. It's very interesting, these sort of soft sociological things that you do at a company that yets the employee more, the employee starts to feel more included and it's amazing how the whole foundation of the company's quality rises. Speaker 5: [00:11:00] It's been unique to witness for the last year. So I guess what I'm saying is is I liked the manufacturing production side of it. Peter, when you joined the company, at what point in that process did you feel comfortable with the engineering aspects of the, I went back and finished a lot of the engineering courses I hadn't had in my truck. Gated scientific training. I asked my father if I needed a to get a full mechanical engineering [00:11:30] degree and he said, no, don't waste your time comfortable with the technology maybe only in the last 10 years. So that means after 27 years or so messing around, people contact us from everywhere from malaria research in Malawi, needing to have a small liquid nitrogen. People talk to us through technical issues. I think what you do when people talk to you and try [00:12:00] to ask you how they can use cryogenics or can their cryogenic connect to what they need. It took a while to accept that what I was doing just Leslie and well was the best thing I could bring to a field. Then the other thing is if somebody really needs something to, and if they're good, they will take the time to explain it to you clearly. Speaker 6: [inaudible]Speaker 4: [00:12:30] you are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Our guest is Peter Gifford. In the next segment he talks about research funding. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: [00:13:00] have you learned anything from other cryogenics companies? I have seen graduate and companies that spend a lot of money on developing products that people didn't need and wondered why they didn't need them. I've seen cryogenic companies, you know, make a good product that I'm sort of, you know, I missed the boat. Um, but how do you say the relationship [00:13:30] of watching your competitor move? Uh, I don't know. I don't know how to the answer that we don't spend a lot of time reverse engineering. I think historically people have been copying us most that sought. And do you see any gaps that the industry as a whole has to push through? Speaker 5: Well, you know, there are things that I would like to do. The thing is is the question is whether or not somebody needs them. [00:14:00] I guess my head is really stuck there. When you're running a business, do you do what you want to do or what your customers need? I think the answer, and that's pretty simple if you're ready, but there's a sort of a school of thought of pure engineering that you build it regardless of whether or not it's going to have any application or anything like that. It's just because it's sort of a spiritual thing that you have in you. You've got to build it and there are some people, yeah, we'll certainly make money. That's something that historically the government [00:14:30] labs were useful. Here we go. What's looking to see if we can do that? I would like to make a little statement here. Speaker 5: The federal government is not funding research in the United States anywhere at any levels equal to Korea. The Europeans anywhere we have fallen beyond what it was like the 60s and the 70s when this country was on fire and the money has been taken away from it. This idea that basic research [00:15:00] will be dead at corporations. It is not corporations job to do basic research. That tall space race, that paranoia about the communist block at stuff's gone. What is motivating it? Now I've go to Korea. Somebody took me to a university that was being set up 20,000 students, but he told me they are putting up a new one every five years. They had the latest, you know, electron microscopes, the latest big cryogenic plants and recovery [00:15:30] systems and so I'm going, wow, that isn't happening in the United States and aside idea that you don't have to fund this. Speaker 5: That's what made America really good at that time. It's just, it was all hidden from the average person. A lot of side fund research, fun universities and hopefully some of that will trickle down to you too. Some of it will. Right now I would say most [00:16:00] of our business comes from people who actually make products. I'm thinking more about learning what the next applications are. That early Gifford McMahon cycle refrigerator was funded by the government, tried to read messages off of satellites for defense. There's all kinds of stuff, early computers, the chip manufacturing, everything. It was being funded some way that way. Speaker 4: Where do you see research happening now in crowd genics? Are there institutions [00:16:30] and organizations that you follow that you look to? Speaker 5: NIST is still spending quite a bit of money on cryogenic research. That's the old national bureau standards. We'd not seen that much in university labs. As the research gravitated overseas, our strongest competitors we have is basically company in Japan. Everybody said a wondering when there's going to be a Chinese company making cryogenic refrigerators of our time. They haven't seen them yet. [00:17:00] That could be a real game changer, but there were a lot more crier refrigerator manufacturers in the eighties and nineties and some of them have left the picture consolidated under that one big company. So they got bought up basically. Yeah. Or the business took too long to get big for the investors to wait for Speaker 4: how much of the engineering can now sort of pass off to others and how big his engineering team [inaudible]. Speaker 5: Right now we have eight engineers [00:17:30] at Crab Mc, we should be more like 15 we've been having trouble hiring people. We like to get people to different types of somebody with a lot of experience deepen in cryogenics, but most of the time we want to get raw mechanical engineers directly out of school. Somebody with an open mind and with good practical tools sense the chief technical officer, part of my job, everybody calls me an entrepreneur now and entrepreneur. Really [00:18:00] the form that I am who sort of grows with a company out of nothing. We don't really know what we do. You don't really know all the things you do because you take it on naturally to be successful. You're not really that aware of it. But one of the things as I pull him back, I recognize how they need my scientific recognition in the different aspects of the business. Speaker 5: I hope that's not getting too conceptual. You know, you have an engineering perspective [00:18:30] as whether or not form, fit and function is doing what we need. You know, you have the technical perspective, the people whose hands are actually touching the device on the line. You know you have the financial officer's always looking over the shoulder, but in a technical business that's innovative, you don't want them running the show, but you want them to be aware of what's going on. You know? And then there's my point from the chief technical office and just the business thing. Can we do this? Do they get [00:19:00] it? Is there training? Getting in, is the quality being held up? That's sort of, there are different birds of prey. How about birds of friendships, sort of soaring over the situation, recognizing what ought to be done there at any moment on the production line. So that's I think my most important job and also trying to figure out strategically where we go next. Speaker 3: [inaudible] [00:19:30] spectrum is a public affairs show. [inaudible] hail expert. Peter Gifford is cryogenics engineer and our guests could today. In the next segment, Peter Talks about engineering and the stimulation it is brought to his life. Speaker 5: [00:20:00] What sort of technology changes happened over the years you've been running Cromac that affected your business? I would say the most important one for us is the Internet. The Internet allowed us to market and then communicate with people by email. When I first got into the business, the only way to send a drawing and try to figure out what somebody needed [00:20:30] from you was through the mail. Then it went to telexes, then it went to FedEx. Then it went to fax machines and now with the Internet it's just amazing if you've got a draw and you can send to anyone planted real quick and I'd say roughly about 60 to 65% of our business is overseas. In terms of other things, CMC machines, material manufacturers, a CNC, [00:21:00] CNC is computer it basically it's computer machine. In your devices, your pieces and stuff, temperature sensors had been better. Speaker 5: Vacuum equipment is getting better. What's happening is a lot of the equipment that you were working with in the fifties sixties and seventies and eighties have matured. People have been making them for a longer period of time. And that maturation and a mechanical devices is a, Jess gets better with time. That's [00:21:30] just the way it is unless you know the front offices are taking the value out of the product. You talked a little bit earlier about what you look for in a young engineer, a new engineer out of school. Do you want to go into that a little more? Uh, you think that people are maybe getting too much pressure to go to a phd? I'm not that interested in higher and a phd in what we're doing right now. I have a phd in house who is the crowd refrigerator expert [00:22:00] really getting into her career and you know, making work, you know, you gotta be there on the job. Speaker 5: Most of the phd work is laboratory work anyway. At least it is in mechanical engineering. You know, it's that integration between the science and the actual thing that's getting made. That is the important thing. And if you're in the laboratory studying, not getting out there where it's being made, then you miss all that. [00:22:30] The best thing to do is get out there and start doing it right away. It's pretty obvious when you start working with people whether or not they've got the courage to use their intelligence. You know whether or not they're going to work on their communication skills, whether or not they're going to start to recognize the important stuff you see it go out there and get involved. I would recommend sooner than later. Don't be so timid. A lot of people are timid to get involved in the workplace [00:23:00] and it's are you looking for people that have a bachelor's of science or master's degrees right now? Speaker 5: We'd be happy with Bachelor's science and that falls into that whole idea of gets started. Get going. Yeah. Get into the mix. We have a lot of very interesting applications. We recently hired three engineers all about three years ago and all three of those young guys are absolutely slumped with new things to learn and they're just alert. They're sort [00:23:30] of running around and not sitting behind computers. Drafting. They like getting a drawing, going out there, doing something, traveling, answering that service question from Kazakhstan about a little liquid helium plant. They're calling up a and talking about vacuum equipment that learning about thermal conductivity and thermal radiation. They're using size. My father once said for you, he said, Peter, you know the real enemy is, I go, what? I didn't [00:24:00] even know what he's talking about. And he said, boredom. Boredom's the enemy. And since I've been involved in cryogenics I had just not bored. Speaker 5: I'm a 63 and people were saying, oh you kind of step back from business now and I will tell you this, I am afraid of stepping back from the intellectual stimulation of the business. You know some of the stress managing all the people on the floor. Yeah, but the intellectual variation of it. No, I don't [00:24:30] know if I can step back. I think it would be self-destructive. You know, I've been in this business as 1973 and I happened in it because my father had this little company. Here's a full time college professor. So I started making refrigerators. I graduated from high school in 1966 from the best high school in Syracuse, New York, not one of the other people in that graduating class as far as I've been able to see did anything in manufacturing. They became doctors, lawyers, some [00:25:00] other type of businessmen or professional types. Speaker 5: I'm the only one who went into manufacturing and in the eighties and the nineties and the early two thousands everybody thought I was an idiot to be trying to manufacture cryogenic refrigerators and upstate New York and uh, it's been a great career for me. It's just very, very interesting. We built a company up to 105 people. We've been profitable since 1988 no, it's been a very good life [00:25:30] and I'm very pro manufacturing and I don't think that the United States is going to get back on its feet again until people start manufacturing a lot more stuff and seeing it as a reality we can manufacturer for [inaudible]. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. You're welcome. Speaker 2: [00:26:00] Spectrum is archive Speaker 3: iTunes university. We've made a special link. You can get to the link is tiny url.com/k a l ex spectrum. For this archive version of spectrum, we are for going to calendar the music or during the show was written and produced on my Alex Simon. [00:26:30] Thank you for listening to [inaudible] Speaker 7: Trim. We are happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Martin Mulvihill, the Executive Director of Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry, discusses the Center’s efforts to build an academic program to advance green chemistry through interdisciplinary scholarship. He discussed his views of sustainability in chemistry. bcgc.berkeley.eduTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 3: 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 [00:00:30] technologists. Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Good afternoon. I'm Rick Karnofsky. Brad swift and I are co-hosting today's show today. We have on Martin Mulva Hill, the executive director of the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry. He'll talk to us about the center's efforts to build a novel academic program and how he views sustainability and chemistry. Marty Mulvihill, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I wanted [00:01:00] to have you talk about sustainability and then my take on things. Sustainability is fast becoming a cliche, so if you would spell out what you believe sustainability to be. Speaker 4: Yeah. Sustainability is a broad movement towards both dematerialization materialization and trans materialization, so looking at ways to use fewer resources to still meet the means of society such that future generations [00:01:30] can also meet their needs. That comes from the Brundtland report, which is the UN report, which back in 86 sort of defined sustainability. Sustainability includes a lot of different things, which is much broader than any one discipline and even any one interdisciplinary center can really take on, in my opinion, at the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry, my background and my current position, we really focus on a narrow part of sustainability and that's the chemicals piece. How do we ensure [00:02:00] that at the molecular level, the things we're building, um, are more sustainable, I. E don't use more resources than necessary and are safe for human health and the environment. The overarching goal for the center, how would you characterize that? Speaker 4: And you're the executive director of the center now, right? That's correct. We have like many of the centers on campus, three main purposes. The first is education. So we're teaching [00:02:30] a number of graduate classes and are redoing the undergraduate laboratories in chemistry. So first and foremost, it's about bringing these concepts of sustainability and green chemistry to our students here at UC Berkeley. Secondarily, as a research institution, we're very interested in pushing the bounds of green chemistry. So making the new materials, working with people to make safer materials and understanding the broad consequences of chemicals within [00:03:00] our environment and business supply chains such that we have better and safer chemicals for consumer use. That's the research piece. And the third piece, because this is applied and a big topic is about engagement. So that's working with both local NGOs, the California government, as well as a local businesses to take a look at how do we, beyond the [00:03:30] walls of UC Berkeley, actually improve the chemical footprint, so to speak. Speaker 4: Can you give us an example of a sustainable versus an unsustainable chemical process? Yeah. I'll give you an example of something that we're working on right now. So we don't necessarily have the more sustainable substitute at hand. But in the wake of the recent oil spills, we were taking a close look at what was used, [00:04:00] what was the response? So first we have to characterize what are your options that are available? What are the technologies in the case that dispersants so something that's gonna take that oil slick and turn it into small globules are your only option either because of concerns about the environment or concerns about the human health, safety of the people cleaning up the oil spill. Sometimes these really are your best option. You dig down another level and you talk to the folks in a toxicology [00:04:30] and you find out that the dispersants we use actually break down more slowly than the oil itself. Speaker 4: So if you're going to add something to an oil slick, it seems like what you'd want is something that breaks down at least as fast as the oil you're trying to get rid of. So again, we talked to our colleagues and we're characterizing this issue. So as chemists, we can think about how can we make something that breaks down more quickly. Additionally, you talked to your, our colleagues that have worked out in the Gulf and characterize [00:05:00] the biological communities that actually break down this oil, found that there are a couple of strains of bacteria that are primarily responsible for that and one of those strains of bacteria is adversely effected by the most commonly used oil dispersant. That's a problem. Again, if you want to clean up oil and sometimes it's absolutely necessary to disperse it, you want to make sure that the things that are naturally going to break it down aren't going to be harmed by the thing you're using to disperse it. Speaker 4: So [00:05:30] with those design parameters in mind, the center is now seeking to create an oil dispersant that breaks down as quickly or more quickly than awhile and is not toxic hopefully to any aquatic life, but especially not to the aquatic life that's going to be primarily responsible for breaking down the dispersant in the oil that we're getting rid of in the first place. So it's a way of, in the past, you would have chemists just to create a molecule that effectively disperses [00:06:00] oil. Absolutely good goal. But it wasn't until other people took a look at what they created that you started understanding the environmental fate and the toxicology of these things. Now we have the knowledge upfront, so I'm working with graduate students in toxicology and in chemistry to characterize this solution from beginning to end before we even claim that this is something we can be used out in the environs Speaker 2: [inaudible] [00:06:30] you you're listening to spectrum on KALX we are speaking with Martin Mulvihill, executive director of the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry. Speaker 4: The the key thing to getting the center off the ground was getting buy in from college chemistry, the School of Public Health, college in natural resources, Haas School of business and the College of Engineering. So getting all [00:07:00] of those folks at the table was actually probably the biggest challenge. The center is so far met because you find that as the disciplines become, you know, more and more focused and more and more advanced, their ability to communicate actually has lost a little bit. So understanding that a chemist doesn't advance in his field without making new products, while at the same time a environmental scientist has a hard time advancing in his or her field if they don't actually [00:07:30] characterize problems. Chemists don't like to hear about problems. Environmental scientists don't necessarily like to hear about the millions of new chemicals we want to make. So those discussions are aren't necessarily, it's easier as natural as we'd want them to be, but we're breaking those barriers down at Berkeley and the people who break them down the most are actually the students because they aren't indoctrinated in one way of thought yet. So they naturally see the connection between making a capital goal and understanding where [00:08:00] it goes. It's really the people who have been trained for the longest have the hardest time breaking down those boundaries. So a bit of a generational issue. Yeah, absolutely. We view a generational shift in the way that we can see of making and distributing chemicals and materials in our society. Speaker 4: And what about the regulatory environment? I know the European Union is very aggressive and the EPA has somewhat, [00:08:30] California's always been very aggressive. How does that play in this with the industry and their costs and how they want to go forward? Yeah, the regulatory question is a very important one and is actually in some ways where you see Berkeley. Got It start. So since 2006 the folks in public health, especially Mike Wilson makes Schwartzman, they were both working actively with California legislation in this area and continue to work [00:09:00] actively in this area. The regulatory piece, at least the way we see it is all about providing more information, more information to the marketplace and also more information to the consumer. So when you look at things like the reach initiative in the European Union, what is really asking for is information. If you produce chemicals at certain scales, you have to, as the scales increased, provide more and more information. Speaker 4: The next step is going to be how do [00:09:30] we figure out what to do with that information. And it is regulation that can create economic barriers or incentives to adoption of safer chemicals. So the California Green Chemistry initiative is still in the phase of deciding what information we're going to ask for. And then how are we going to promote changes to safer chemicals. Those discussions involve both industry folks, academic folks and NGO folks. They're happening in [00:10:00] real time, so there are certainly differences of opinion there, but we are intering a phase of global chemical production where more information is going to become necessary and consumers, governments and other folks are going to start asking for products that perform better environmentally is an international standard, something that's conceivable and possible because what seems to happen is that developing countries create strict standards [00:10:30] and then the companies just dump in the non developed world or company places where they don't have any sort of regulatory framework. Speaker 4: Yeah, certainly from a my viewpoint international action is certain is necessary because if you have different sets of economic and environmental drivers in different places, it's easy to game the system. I mean we do have a, a global chemical manufacturing [00:11:00] system. It's already global so they can easily move things from one place to another. I think that it's in the best interest of all of us in the end, all of the stakeholders, both individual consumers as well as the companies and the governments to do some coordination, um, coordination of international policies, very tough. You sometimes run the risk of being pushed to the lowest common denominator. I think that's the danger [00:11:30] of going that route. The first step. And what I would like to see globally is at least some standard information requirements. So taking a look at what do you have to test for chemicals produced at what levels based on where you're selling them. So you might be producing them somewhere else and you have to worry about all those, uh, waste products and how they're being dealt with. But at least if you have a standard [00:12:00] for a global standard for what information you have to test in order to sell, it does, you know, good to produce a chemical somewhere that you can then sell back into the developed world. Speaker 5: Talk a little bit about your research in nanotechnology. Speaker 4: Yeah. So, um, I've actually been at Berkeley Awhile and my research as a graduate student was in nanotechnology, making [inaudible] new materials, mostly inorganic materials [00:12:30] that had some application for either the energy space or environmental sensing space. So I was able to create a sensor for arsenic in groundwater. That was actually the project that got me excited about this more interdisciplinary approach to science and technology. After that, I did research on the fate of nanoparticles in the environment. So I went up to the national labs, um, Berkeley national labs right up the hill behind campus [00:13:00] and did a year long postdoc in environmental science and material science characterizing the fate of Nano materials in the environment. Because as we create all these new materials, it's important to take a life cycle approach, right? Understand both how as a chemist I can get the function that I want out of a new material, but also make sure that the end of life isn't going to create unfortunate undesirable harms. So that's an exciting area of my own research [00:13:30] where now that I have a better sense of the life cycle of nanomaterials. We're trying to apply some of that too. Water purification technology, so I still work with a show Gad go who's in environmental engineering and e t d at the labs trying to create new, a safer, I'm sorbent for mineral contamination and groundwater so get rid of things like arsenic or excess fluoride. Speaker 5: Nanoscience then could [00:14:00] also have this kind of sustainability issue and push in. It's Speaker 4: growing cause this, this is a brand new science. It's, yeah, I think nanoscience is a great case study. Take a look at Green Chemistry and nanoscience side by side. They actually started around the same time and they have a lot of the same goals. The goal of nanoscience really is to do more with less, right? Let's take small materials that are well-engineered [00:14:30] to more efficiently produce energy. I mean you look at what Nano technologies being used for. It's a lot of, it looks like the same things that green chemistry is trying to do and in fact folks are also it already looking at the end of life issues around nanomaterials. I think it's a perfect example of how greater awareness, greater awareness from the funding agencies is actually taking a more proactive approach to new chemical materials, Nano materials [00:15:00] being a large class of the new materials that we're producing. So you already have large centers throughout the country that are taking a look at what are the environmental implications of nanomaterials, what are the toxicological fates of new nano materials? It's actually a place where I think we're ahead of the historical curve. Are there still concerns and unknown knowns about nanomaterials? Absolutely. Are nanomaterials making it into consumer products? Yeah, they're just beginning to, [00:15:30] I don't think they represent a clear and present danger that's larger than any of the other chemicals that we're using. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: you're listening to spectrum on KLM Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: one exciting thing I'd just plug is that this May, we're going to be having our second conference here on campus. So last March was [00:16:00] our first kind of big open public conference and brought in people representing all of these backgrounds. And we're going to do that again, this May. So take a look at our website, it's going to be on May 3rd here on campus. So you know if you're interested in being involved, always send me an email. We have lots of opportunities. Take a look at our classes and consider coming to our conference in May. And the conference is open to the students and community. Absolutely, absolutely. [00:16:30] Great. And what's the website? The website is BC gc.berkeley.edu so Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry, BC GC. Good. See you there. Excellent. Marty Mulvihill thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you very much. Speaker 2: Pleasure. [inaudible] Speaker 6: [00:17:00] irregular feature of spectrum is a calendar that highlight some of the science and technology events happening in the bay area over the next two weeks. The Audubon society is hosting a winter bird count tomorrow, Saturday, January 28th this is a free event open to families of all ages and sizes. Naturalists will lead a bird walk around lake merit to discover and [00:17:30] count wintered bird species such as ducks cormorants inheritance. Meet at the lake 600 Bellevue Avenue in Oakland. Dress warmly bring binoculars and field guides if you have them, but binoculars will be available to borrow. Bring water into lunch. Please RSVP with the Golden Gate Autobon g g a s education@gmail.com or (510) 508-1388 or [00:18:00] also visit www.andgoldengateaudubon.org for more information. Speaker 1: Registration is open for she's Geeky Bay area. This event runs January 27th 28th and 29th at the Computer History Museum in mountain view. She's Kiki hosts on conferences across the U s providing a unique environment for women working in technology and other geeky fields including science, engineering and math. To learn from one another. Grow networks, [00:18:30] connect across generations and discuss issues. Women attending. She's Geeky events. Find inspiration and gain self confidence to pursue or continue on stem career paths because they are given the opportunity to present their work often for the first time. Discuss critical issues and build peer networks for support. Visit www dot [inaudible] dot org for more information Speaker 5: producing natural gas from shale opportunities and challenges of a major new energy source. Mark Zoback is the Benjamin M. Page [00:19:00] professor of geophysics at Stanford University. Mark Conducts Research on institute stress, fault mechanics and reservoir geomechanics. He currently serves on the National Academy of Energy Committee investigating the deep water horizon accident and the secretary of Energy's committee on Shale gas development and environmental protection. His presentation is Monday, January 30th at 4:15 PM on the Stanford University campus whining science center [00:19:30] and Video Auditorium. It is free and open to the public conversations at the Herbst, the power of gaming on a planetary basis. We spend 3 billion hours a week playing video games. That's a lot of time enough to change our lives and probably save the world. The real world while we're at it, author of reality is broken, why games make us better and how they can change the world. Dr Jane mcgonigal discusses her belief [00:20:00] that video games can be a positive platform for exploration and problem solving in our lives and for our planet. In conversation with Ryan Wyatt, director of the Morrison Planetarium, Tuesday, January 31st at 8:00 PM at the herps theatre four oh one Venice avenue in San Francisco, tickets start at $22 Speaker 6: February's free. Leonardo art center, evening rendezvous or laser will be on the first at Sanford [00:20:30] universities. PGO Hall Room one 13 networking begins at six 45 and a talk starts at seven here from artists, Daniel Small and Luca and two Nucci on firstlight, their art based on the Hubble ultra deep field imaging systems portrait of the visible universe that reveals the first light from 13.5 billion years ago. Architect and photo person will present city of the future as of 2008 over 80% [00:21:00] of land of the world that is suitable for raising crops is in use. Where will we find farmland we need? By 2040 80% of the world's population will reside in urban centers pushing out into the neighboring agricultural land. How will we feed ourselves form a NASA scientists. San Gill will talk about collaborative intelligence and how evolution and natural systems can inform social problem solving. Then I will conclude with artists, Phil Ross, his presentation [00:21:30] on micro architecture. Fungi can be used to transform agricultural waste into durable and low impact materials at room temperature. The future is moldy in this presentation, Phil will describe as research on growing a building out of living fungus. For more about the laser series, browse www.leonardo.info Speaker 5: the February science cafe presents exploding and brains mice [00:22:00] who love cat piss and people who eat too much cake. The hidden ways that microbes manipulate animal behavior. All animals live in close contact with micro organisms of all sorts. These micro organisms depend on animals for food, shelter, places to reproduce, et cetera. These microbes lives are thus affected by ways in which the animal behaves in. Many of these microbes have evolved ways to ensure that their hosts behave in ways that are good for them, often at the [00:22:30] expense of the animals. Dr. Michael Isen, we'll talk about new work from his lab and elsewhere. Looking at a variety of different ways in which micro organisms use chemical signals and targeted disruptions of cells in the nervous system to alter animal behavior. He will also touch on the ongoing battles over public access to the scientific literature. Michael Isen is an evolutionary biologist at UC Berkeley and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Science cafe happens Wednesday, [00:23:00] February 1st at 7:00 PM in the La Pena Cultural Center, 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley.Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: you're listening to spectrum Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: and now for some science news headlines. Here's Brad swift Speaker 5: diesel truck emissions in Oakland fall sharply in January, 2010 [00:23:30] the California Air Resources Board banned all 1993 and older drayage trucks from ports and rail yards statewide. They also ordered trucks built within the years 1994 to 2006 to particle filters by the end of the year 2011 in a paper recently published in environmental science and technology. You see Berkeley Professor Robert Harley and coauthors Tim Dolman and Tom Cush [00:24:00] stutter described the process and the results of their monitoring truck exhaust at a section of highway near the port of Oakland and the Oakland rail yards. They compare data they collected from November, 2009 before the ban with data they collected from the same Oakland site in 2010 after the ban, the comparison found black smoke emissions were reduced by about half and the nitrogen oxide emissions dropped by 40% Harley [00:24:30] and his researchers will return to this section of highway several more times over the next two years. As the remaining 2004 to 2006 truck engines are retrofitted with filters, they expect to study in greater depth the properties of emitted particulate matter. They will also examine more closely the chemical composition of the nitrogen oxide emissions to determine the split between nitric oxide and the nitrogen dioxide. [00:25:00] This diesel emissions control program will go statewide to all trucks over the next several years, including trucks from out of state, Speaker 6: neuro psychopharmacologist, David Nutt and colleagues at the Imperial College. London wrote an article that was published in the January 23rd of the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on how hallucinogens such as magic mushrooms work in the human brain. 15 people with previous history of psychedelic usage were injected with a small amount of psilocybin. [00:25:30] This caused an immediate reaction that peaked within minutes and lasted for about an hour. This differed from those injected with Saltwater Placebo functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans before and after administration showed decreased blood flow activity through some regions of the brain. The result was found again with a new batch of 15 volunteers and through a different brain scan methodology that showed lower blood oxygenation in the brain. Specific areas [00:26:00] affected included the posterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex. Science news reports that Brian Roth of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who was not involved with the study remarked that they had the complete opposite of what had been predicted. They differ from earlier studies that use positron emission tomography. This work hearkens back to an earlier headline we ran on spectrum that reported that some hallucinogen and phenomena such as synesthesia [00:26:30] may arise from a relaxing of some of the brain's filters. It may also help find drugs or derivatives to be used in the treatment of depression, cluster headaches, obsessive compulsive disorder, and other conditions that linked to too much brain Speaker 5: activity. For the first time ever, stem cells from umbilical cords have been converted into other types of cells, which may eventually lead to new treatment options for spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis among [00:27:00] other nervous system diseases. James Hickman at University of central Florida, bioengineer and leader of the research group says we're very excited about where this could lead because it overcomes many of the obstacles present with embryonic stem cells. The main challenge in working with stem cells is figuring out the chemical or other triggers that will convince them to convert into a desired cell type. Had Devika Davis, a postdoctoral researcher in Hickman's lab, [00:27:30] was able to transform umbilical stem cells into oligodendrocytes critical structural cells that insulate nerves in the brain and the spinal cord. There are two main options the group hopes to pursue through further research. The first is that the cells could be injected into the body at the point of a spinal cord injury to promote repair. The other possibility for the Hickman team's work relates to multiple sclerosis [00:28:00] and similar nervous system diseases. Speaker 2: [inaudible] music you heard today was from Lozan and David Sofer. These album Croak and acoustic. It is released under the creative Commons attribution license version 3.0 [inaudible] [00:28:30] spectrum was recorded and edited, and by me, Rick Karnofsky and by Brad swift and Mark Taylor, thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from this. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [00:29:00] [inaudible] [00:29:30] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Chris Jones is a Research Associate at RAEL and Phd student in ERG at UC Berkeley. His research is in industrial ecology, environmental psychology, ecological economics. He is lead developer of the CoolClimate Calculator at the web site coolcalifornia.org.TranscriptSpeaker 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: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with Chris Jones, a research associate at the renewable inappropriate energy laboratory known as rail and a doctoral [00:01:00] student in the energy and Resources Group at the University of California Berkeley. His primary research interests intersect the fields of industrial ecology, environmental psychology, ecological economics and climate change policy. He is lead developer of the cool climate calculator and online tool that allows households and businesses to estimate their complete carbon footprints, compare their results to similar users and develop personalized climate action plans to [00:01:30] reduce their contribution to climate change. Versions of this tool have been adopted by the state of California via the cool climate network partnership along with nongovernmental organizations and communities throughout the United States. Chris Jones, welcome to spectrum. Thank you very much, Brad. Thank you for having me. Can you give us an overview of the renewable inappropriate energy lab? Speaker 4: Sure. Rail as we call it, is a multidisciplinary energy research [00:02:00] lab on campus. The director is professor Dan Kevin. He's a leading energy expert in really a broad range of disciplines. And then the important part about rail and the energy and resources group is that it's multidisciplinary. So everybody at Erg has to do engineering policy, environmental sciences, social sciences. There's also a lot of law and business and public health and we put it all together. Rail is really solutions oriented. So we're looking at developing programs, technology [00:02:30] and policy and putting them together both in developing country context and in developed countries, for example, here in the United States. Speaker 3: So the lab is this interdisciplinary group. And do you have a certain focus for yourself? Speaker 4: We've been developing online carbon management software for quite some time now. And we are also developing programs that use these carbon management tools. So we do lifecycle assessment and we do behavioral sciences [00:03:00] and we try to put those two, uh, disciplines together in new ways. Speaker 3: And I think the lifecycle assessment I'd be, I'm curious about how you, how you go about it Speaker 4: doing that. Sure. Lifecycle assessment is really the foundation of the work that we do in the lab in the cool climate network which develops these online carbon management tools. Lifecycle analysis fundamentally is just looking at the materials and the processes that go into a product or a service [00:03:30] and then applying emission factors essentially for each of the material in inputs. A problem is of course is that for any given product there could be hundreds of companies involved or more in making any individual products so it can get out rather complicated. What you end up doing is making certain assumptions about average materials or average products and trying to figure out what are the important components of that product and then coming up with an estimate. Of course people have different ways. Different researchers [00:04:00] have different assumptions that go into, you know, analysis so you could get different researchers doing analysis of the same product and come up with different answers. Speaker 4: Many times, thankfully there are international standards of doing this stuff. We really look not at the product level but at the full consumer level. So, uh, we might look at the typical American household and say, well how much meat do they consume? How much dairy do they consume, how many grains and how much [00:04:30] vegetables do they consume and come up with an estimate of their total food carbon footprint. And they compare that to their transportation footprint, their energy footprint, waste and come up with a full more comprehensive analysis. So we're really looking at the high level and then some of the uncertainties in the individual product life cycle assessment can kind of, um, hit the impact of those is less important. Speaker 3: So the focus is on a broader use pattern rather than discreet individual products. Speaker 4: [00:05:00] Yeah, exactly. And in, in some sense for some people, being able to differentiate between individual products is the holy grail for many people. So being able to tell the difference between product air B, which one should I select? The problem is that given uncertainties in life cycle assessment, the uncertainty or the margin of error is often greater than the difference between the competing products. So you really will never be able to tell the difference between coke or Pepsi, [00:05:30] but what we can tell is that on average soda has this impact and milk as something else and water has a very different carbon footprint. Those are the types of data that we can provide to individuals that I think is useful and meaningful as well and that we have actually good data to support. Speaker 3: Do you use some data and not other data because of those, those very differences that you were talking about and how do you choose what data is going to be the best? We have to look Speaker 4: at how other practitioners [00:06:00] are using the data and which data are the most highly vetted, but in many cases we need to use a new data and so it really is a ongoing process of validation using the peer review system as kind of a minimum bar for validating the types of data that we think could be used. Speaker 3: Is The lab trying to do some data generation of its own? Speaker 4: We are mainly providing secondary data and [00:06:30] analysis and algorithms that we try to make freely available. We think that providing sophisticated analysis that's also transparent and we develop into this online software that's user friendly, that we make freely available. We think that that really is our value in collecting a lot of the data, putting it together in new and useful ways. So in terms of collecting raw data, we don't actually collect a lot of our own raw data. Speaker 3: So in building your models, are [00:07:00] there any overarching algorithm approaches or is each case setup Speaker 4: cool? Well, each case is, is very different. They're little engineering models that we put together for either each kind of product or each behavior that we're trying to change. And oftentimes we draw on existing research and those models can be very different. At the end of the day though, it really comes down to pretty simple math, back of the envelope calculations. And many times they, they really do start out in the corner [00:07:30] of a piece of paper somewhere and we, you know, we put them into our spreadsheet models. We also do, uh, different econometric models. We do engineering analysis, energy analysis, life cycle input, output analysis. And, uh, we do try to look at what other researchers are doing. I think it's really important for researchers to be able to share methods, be able to share data and through online systems you can actually do that. And really interesting and new ways. It's called open data [00:08:00] or linked data. So if you want the carbon footprint of a product, you should just be able to put in your software carbon footprint, this product and anybody who's done research on that, the data should just pop right into your wife's website and it should be done in real time. So there's a movement to make open and link data widely and freely available. Speaker 5: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. [00:08:30] We are talking with Chris Jones about carbon footprint calculator. He helped develop called the cool climate calculator. You can try it if the website cool. California Dipo RG. Speaker 3: The cool climate calculator is focused now in the United States. And what are your plans for taking it beyond that? Speaker 4: In fact, the next [00:09:00] stage is to develop international versions of the calculator. So we've already in partnership with researchers in Brazil, built a Brazilian one version. We've built a version for the US Virgin Islands. We're developing a version now for Sweden and we have an abroad international dataset that we're going to be using to develop international version of the tool. We're also trying to get much more specific and local and better within the United States. So to get these, you know, estimates at the city level, actually [00:09:30] something we've developed but haven't launched on the online interface yet. Ultimately we'd like the city of Berkeley and the city of Los Angeles and you know, any city in the United States actually to have an online portal, kind of a dashboard system, uh, that has all this information displayed in really useful ways. And also ultimately we'd like to do it over time as well. And we have these estimates to see how, uh, cities are meeting their climate action goals. For example, to see how users within a particular community are using [00:10:00] the tool, engaging with their community based programs to set targets, engage in local programs and not only make pledges but actually make reductions and track those. Over time Speaker 3: it would seem that Americans are so much more wasteful than the international community in general. So that the contrast that if we can do it here then with, with having the website able to contrast what it's like California versus Italy [00:10:30] versus Spain, Speaker 4: turns out the, the largest contributors in the United States to carbon footprints often are not the largest contributors elsewhere. And many countries they have larger sources of renewable energy, uh, hydro energy, nuclear energy, which means that emissions from energy consumption are much, much lower. Half of our energy, electricity is produced by coal and a huge carbon footprint from using energy in this country. It's less than California. We have a lot of natural gas [00:11:00] and it turns out that in many developing countries is actually food that is the largest impact. You know, these comparisons internationally are really interesting, but ultimately you're right. I mean the United States, our carbon footprint is on average five times greater than the global average. So let's say we're able to reduce our emissions by 80%. Well that would just get us to the current global average and if everybody lived like that, we would have the existing emissions of greenhouse gases. Speaker 4: [00:11:30] We need to get 80% below that. In order to stabilize the climate, we need to think about what types of programs we put in place in order for us to get there. A lot of people look at individual behavior and they say, well, that's not where it is. Um, you know, we have to change policy, we have to change technology and of course those things are true. However, we won't get all the way through policy and technology. We, the studies that we've done through other studies that I've seen from other groups that what is in placed in projected [00:12:00] won't actually get us there. We need to change behavior and through individual behavior. Anybody who has taken steps to reduce their own impact immediately wants to do collective action. They want to show others what they've done and it's much more powerful if they can move towards collective action. Speaker 4: And then from collective action they often move to political action. So we say, well it's a chicken and egg thing and we say we can't do anything without political world, but you're not going to get political will without getting people involved. And so by showing [00:12:30] people that this is actually easy, fun, makes your life better, you would ultimately generate the political world. So I think behavior needs to play an important role and it's all behavior. People need to adopt the technology. That's behavior. People need to adopt the policies, support the politicians that are going to drive change. And so really understanding individual behavior I think is really an important key to invest in it. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [00:13:00] you are listening to spectrum KALX Berkeley. We are talking with Chris Jones by his work to influence greenhouse gas related behavior by individuals, families, businesses, and communities. Speaker 3: What is it that refines the data and can you characterize how the data gets better? Speaker 4: We like [00:13:30] to develop smart tools. Ultimately we'd like to develop learning tools, uh, learning tools that can collect data from all of the users and then be able to use that in ways that can help inform the development of the, of the, the tools as well. Particularly things like the recommendations. So we could look at the most popular recommendations or how many people are taking this particular action, how much total CO2 are people saving from these particular actions. We also have a lot [00:14:00] of work, just basic research grant work in collecting all of these new data sets because there are so many that go into our tools and updating them all the time and it's just a constant task for us to do to keep these tools updated. Now, if the data were smart and linked in an open data and linked data framework, our job would be much, much easier. But we have to make our own data open and linked as well before we can expect that from others. Ultimately [00:14:30] someday, hopefully, um, these totals will get much smarter, much quicker. Speaker 3: So the real goal then is to make your program the centralized repository. Speaker 4: We can think of it like a hub, a hub of part of a network, a large network. And so hopefully our hub will support lots of other initiatives. And of course there'll other hubs out there as well. But the important thing is to kind of link this kind of sophisticated is information network together in a way that [00:15:00] is optimal that that kind of meets everybody's needs at the lowest cost, lowest amount of investment. I think. And Dan Cameron, a director of our lab has said this many times, the greatest barrier out there right now is just lack of technical expertise in solving all of these problems. There's a tremendous need for research capacity, for intellectual capacity because all of these disciplines need to work together. So a lot of experts in many different disciplines, [00:15:30] but how do they work together? We have a limited kind of ability to solve these problems collectively. Speaker 4: And if we're all doing the similar work or certainly not optimizing our potential. So somehow we have to learn to communicate in a much more effective way. That's a real challenge. Well, it's a real challenge. Even on campus. We don't know what each other are doing. I had a meeting last week in a research lab and told them about the data that we had and they like, oh great. That [00:16:00] would save us months worth of work. We're planning on doing the same thing. They didn't know we had it and you know there are over 400 researchers on campus, faculty doing environmental research just right here on campus and we often don't know what each other are doing. I'm not faculty. I work under Dan. So Dan has, you know, he's one of the 400 and then Dan has staff and graduate students who are all doing different things too. Now that's just right here on campus, much less statewide, nationally, internationally. It's, it [00:16:30] is really a challenge to know what people are doing and more and more people don't want to share what they're doing until it's done. So it's, it is a, it is a challenge. Yeah. Speaker 5: [inaudible] spectrum on KALX Berkeley. We're talking with Chris Jones about the cool climate calculator he developed. You [00:17:00] can try this calculator at the website. Cool. california.com [inaudible]. Speaker 4: So you've mentioned that you're looking at, at a more of an overview context, but do you feel that products in general should have an identifiable greenhouse gas rating or not in terms of information on specific products? [00:17:30] I think you need to look at, you know, experts like the GoodGuide, uh, who, whose job it is to evaluate what we can actually say, given what we know about particular products. And often it's not the product we know about, it's the company, but are we able to put a carbon score on an individual product? Hmm. Some sort of rating I think is possible. And I don't know if a carbon score itself is meaningful to people may not be, then there's other issues involved. So it depends [00:18:00] on what the product is, you know, if it's a cleaning product, then you care about the chemical makeup as well as you might want to know was it intensive carbon use to make it? Speaker 4: Yeah. So there's, there's a variety of things that come into the mix and it would seem that you have a large behavioral component in what you're trying to do. And so you don't really want to overwhelm people with data and make them more confused than they were or drive them away from even trying to deal [00:18:30] with this, right? It's how are you trying to assess what, what works, what doesn't work, right? Well, people can quickly get overloaded with information. Absolutely. And you have to be really selective with the type of information that you provide to two people. And the context in which you provided is really important. If it is a recommendation that comes from a friend, and that can be much more useful than going to some website somewhere and clicking through and trying to find out some data. [00:19:00] We are really highly influenced by our peers and not just what are our friends doing? Speaker 4: What are people like us doing, but what do they expect of me? How do they expect me to behave? And those social influences are really extremely important on determining our behavior. We need to learn to tap into those social [inaudible] motivations and to really understand what drives people's behavior. And that is part of the work that we do through a program called the cool California challenge. [00:19:30] It's a competition between California cities to be the coolest California city. So we're going to engage cities across the state in competition. We're going to choose three finalists. Individuals are going to get points for doing things we want them to do, so they'll get points for reducing their energy consumption, they get points for driving their car less. Uh, we're gonna use this as a social experiment to figure out what types of messages, what types of incentives, what types of rewards are going to motivate individuals, [00:20:00] at least in a California context. Speaker 4: And when does that start? Well, it'll start in early 2012 once we have got all of the approvals we need from the university. So people are going to be able to voluntarily share information through the program. And so we'll be picking three cool California cities and they have the chance to even become the coolest California city. But really it's about community building more about collaboration than anything else. So we're using these [00:20:30] points structure as a way to engage the community in a whole range of different efforts that they want to do already. To the extent that we can quantify the emission savings from things that they're doing, which is what we're good at, we'll be able to give them points. And those points were kind of serve as an umbrella for accomplishing things that the city wants to already accomplish to meet its climate action goals. For example, Speaker 6: is there any point that I haven't brought up that you wanted to make about [00:21:00] the research or the lab that you're Speaker 4: part of? Well, one thing that does come up often in a university is how can people make a career of this kind of thing? Well, often my answer is, well, how can you not make a career about it? At Berkeley, we have so many opportunities to do this type of work, to do work that's meaningful. It may not be climate change related work, but to do something that is of value to society and we have in some sense an obligation to do that [00:21:30] because we have kind of an opportunity cost if we decide not to take this opportunity to create programs, to use this information for the benefit of society and we decided to do something that is a little perhaps more self-serving than we're kind of foregoing that opportunity. I feel like there's just tremendous amount of potential here on campus to really be leaders to, you know, making a better world. Speaker 4: And I think that's what most people here try to do. Whatever discipline they're in, hopefully [00:22:00] students recognize that hey, they want to get involved. Tons of things for them to do. Volunteer your time, find some time to dedicate to a research lab that's doing this stuff. We have hundreds of research tasks that need doing. It's really just endless the amount of opportunities here, so people who want to get involved, lots of things to do. Lots of good work to be done. Chris Jones, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [00:22:30] your resolution to lower your carbon footprint in 2012 and beyond can be realized with the help of the cool climate calculator. Does it cool. california.org that is cool. California all one word.org Speaker 6: a regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. [00:23:00] Rick Karnofsky joins me for the calendar on New Year's Day. This Sunday, the Arden wood historic farm 34 600 Arden Wood Boulevard in Fremont is hosting a $2 walk to a Monarch Butterfly overwintering site. Discover the amazing migration of these tiny creatures and how they survive the long cold season. In the eucalyptus trees, you'll use spotting scopes to see the magnificent creatures up close and personal. There are two drop in events with no registration required. [00:23:30] The first walk is 1130 to 1230 and the second walk is one 30 to two 30 call (510) 544-2797 for more information. January 5th is the first Thursday of the month and thus free admission day at the UC botanical garden. The garden is open 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM there is a docent tour at 1:30 PM on the first Thursdays of the month. Speaker 6: They explore to him next to the Palace of fine arts in San Francisco. Hosts [00:24:00] after dark from six to 10:00 PM four guests 18 and over. Enjoy the standard museum exhibits, cocktails for purchase and special attractions that vary by the month. Theme. January's theme is rock, paper, scissors. In addition to a tournament they exploratorium. We'll have a talk by evolutionary ecologist, various nervo on how the evolutionary game of rock, paper, scissors is played by the common side. Blotched lizard. Learn how the game is found in hundreds of species worldwide [00:24:30] and how it drives the formation of new lizard species and keeping with the rock part of the theme. SLAC national accelerator laboratory scientists, Sam web reveals how paleontologists determine pigmentation patterns in dinosaur skin and feathers by using an intense x-rays to excite copper, calcium, and other elemental Addams embedded in fossils. Paper brings you collaborative, ink drying and scissors brings you complimentary. Speaker 6: Haircuts and mission is $15 $12 for senior students and persons [00:25:00] with disabilities or is free for our members. Visit www.exploratorium.edu/after dark for more information, the bay area skeptics present a talk titled Skepticism and critical thinking. Teaching our children and ourselves. This free event presented by Dr Matt Norman, associate professor and director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Psychology at University of the Pacific. He characterizes the talk by saying we all need to evaluate [00:25:30] the world critically and scientifically without disability. We fall prey to anyone wishing to sell us goods and services regardless of their true efficacy, effectiveness or even harmfulness. This will be Wednesday, January 11th that Cafe Valparaiso 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley. That talk begins at 7:00 PM Thursday is the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's golden gate park hosts nightlife from six to 10:00 PM four guests 21 and over. There's no nightlife for January 5th [00:26:00] consider heading to the exploratorium instead. There will be a nightlife on January 12th the theme is how to, in honor of the new year, nightlife is teaming up with experts at skillshare. Speaker 6: Make SF, the distilled man and the bike kitchen to create the ultimate how to workshop at stations throughout the building. Learn to play guitar, build a bike, juggle boil and egg pin insects, DJ like a pro with help from the urban music program and even how to impress your date with your knowledge [00:26:30] of the cosmos. It's also your last chance to visit the live reindeer. See the Aurora borealis in this new man theater and dance under a snow flurry in the Piatsa before the season. Four science closes on January 16th tickets are $12 or $10 for academy members. For details in tickets, please visit bit dot Lee slash n l Dash Info. Now several news stories. The Kepler space telescope has found the first two earth sized exoplanets. [00:27:00] The planets are currently due. You noted Kepler 20 e and capital 20 f and orbit a sunlight star called Kepler 20 that is 950 light years from us. Speaker 6: Kepler 20 he is 87% of their size, but at 1,040 Kelvin is hot enough that it has most likely evaporated. Any atmosphere capital of 20 f might have an atmosphere and is only 3% larger than Earth at 705 Kelvin is still quite warm. UC Santa Cruz, planetary [00:27:30] scientists, Jonathan Forney claims. If it started out with the amount of water we had on earth and Venus is probably long gone just like it is on Venus. But if that planet had a tremendous amount more water than it might have some leftover, the coupler 20 system includes an additional three larger planets and surprisingly these have orbits that alternate with the small earth sized planets. Speaker 6: Science now reports that pigeons can learn basic math, while many species can discriminate quantities. [00:28:00] So you were thought to be able to reason numerically. In fact, many believed only primates can do this. Damien scarf in his colleagues of the University of Ark to go in New Zealand trained pigeons to sort sets by the number of objects within the set, regardless of the color or shape of objects that the set contained Duke University neuroscientist, Elizabeth Brennan, noted that despite completely different brain organization and hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary divergence, pigeons and monkeys [00:28:30] solve this problem. In a similar way, the findings make scientists optimistic about finding basic and perhaps even advanced mathematical skills in other animals. Speaker 2: Yeah. [inaudible] [inaudible] the music heard during the show is from a David loss sauna album titled Folk and Acoustic. [00:29:00] Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email or email address. Is spectrum a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [00:29:30] [inaudible] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Anthony Garza Jr. is the supervisor of horticulture and grounds at the botanical garden. He runs a class on horticultural methods and is responsible for the transition to more organic methodologies at the garden.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Hi, this is Rick. We edited this file on April 30th, 2013 in order to fix file upload problems we had within earlier copy Speaker 2: spectrum's. Next then Speaker 3: [inaudible].Speaker 4: [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 [00:01:00] technologists. Speaker 5: My name is Rick Karnofsky. Brad swift and I are the host of this show. Today. We are pleased to speak with Anthony Garcia jr who will discuss the UC botanical garden at Berkeley. He's the supervisor of horticulture and grounds at the botanical garden and oversees a large number of employees there. He runs a class on horticultural methods and is responsible for the transition to more organic methodologies at the garden, including the recent adoption of compost tea. Speaker 1: Anthony Garza Junior. [00:01:30] Welcome to spectrum. Thanks for having me. Brad. Give us a, an overview of your responsibilities at the botanical garden. Sure. I'm the supervisor of horticulture and grounds and so I work very closely with [inaudible]. My boss who is the associate director of collections and horticulture and our director. I supervise about 10 area horticulturists. Okay. A lead building, maintenance employee, and a groundskeeper. [00:02:00] And I do a lot of interfacing with physical plant campus services here to support the infrastructure at the garden. I run a class called horticultural methods, which is IB one 12 l. Yeah. So I'm all over the place doing a lot of things. So it keeps it interesting every day. Speaker 1: How old is the garden? How, what's the history of the garden? Sure. The garden actually started down here on campus. I have an old black and white picture, my office of Palms and bananas and, and other interesting [00:02:30] plants out in front of I believe North or South Hall. Well that was pre 1930 because the gardens started moving up the hill, uh, to its current site, which is a former sheep and cattle farm in 1929. So it's been there that long. We actually have collections, uh, plant collections in the garden, say from the new world desert that date from the early thirties that are still alive. What's your favorite place in the garden? [00:03:00] Oh, that's hard to say. The garden is such a beautiful place and there are several spots where when you're up in the canyon you have views of the Golden Gate Bridge, um, which is unique to University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley. Speaker 1: I'd have to say my favorite place is probably out in the farthest reaches of the collection in the Mesoamerican or the Mexican and Central American collection because it, it's sort of wedged down in, uh, [00:03:30] Strawberry Canyon. So he can be out in that collection among plants from, uh, Mexico and feel like you're really out in habitat and cause you're seeing very little other built structures around you. It's, it's a really fine collection and probably the least visited because it's the furthest out from the front entrance. Is there any activity that the garden does to try to preserve certain species? Yes, absolutely. Might be in danger. Most of that work is, has been done just because of where [00:04:00] we are here in California with California native plants. And a lot of that conservation work is done by our curator, Holly Forbes and Barbara Keller. And, uh, for example, uh, there are several, uh, there's a recent case of a, an Arctic staphylococci or, uh, a Manzanita California Manzanita being rediscovered, uh, in the Presidio on Doyle drive. Speaker 1: They were, um, doing some road construction and found one individual, a plant that [00:04:30] was thought to be gone. And so, uh, that plant was before it was dug up and moved to another side and the Presidio, a bunch of cuttings were taken a vegetative cuttings. So we were involved in that and we received a lot of those cuttings and have propagated those and grown those on for, you know, growing back out at the Presidio or other botanical gardens. And we're growing some in the ground. So we're involved in sort of these, what you could call in the plant where [00:05:00] at these care charismatic rescues of very rare individuals and on campus there's the ability for researchers to apply to the garden to do, do, use your space and or do something on the grounds. Yes, we have both indoor and outdoor space available to students, postdocs, faculty, uh, indoor greenhouse space can be utilized. Speaker 1: [00:05:30] Um, if someone wants to study plants in an indoor setting for a particular reason, we also have a research plateau, which is outside and this can be used for growing plants in the ground. Uh, so yes, uh, that those two areas are available to, uh, anybody on campus who's doing research. Um, they usually just run it through our curator and our associate director of collections and horticulture. Uh, we make sure we can accommodate the plants and the type of work [00:06:00] and uh, Eh, that's been well utilized over the years. Alright. We also do other types of research or support other types of research in the garden that one might not think would happen in a botanical garden. Uh, for several years we had, uh, a magnetometer up on the research plateau that was run by, I believe, the physics department. And they were, uh, working to develop a very sensitive machine, almost like an MRI. So they were picking up, uh, [00:06:30] magnetic impulses from all over the bay area. And so they needed a quiet space away from a lot of noise. So they, uh, they use that. There's a people from campus doing research on on bees and how far they migrate and what types of plants they they travel to in pollinate. So it can be a a a wide ranging, uh, okay. Wide ranging types of research. It doesn't have to just be a plant or plant genetics based Speaker 6: [00:07:00] [inaudible] Speaker 3: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on KALX we are speaking with Anthony Garcia jr about the UC botanical gardens. Speaker 1: Yeah, compost tea has been around for a while. [00:07:30] Most of the work on compost, he started with a group called the soil food web. They were doing and still continue to do research on compost tea as mostly an organic replacement for synthetic fungicides for disease suppression in agriculture, horticulture and landscaping. So weed heard about it and we had some colleagues at other gardens starting to use compost tea with good results. [00:08:00] And so that's how we first started to hear about it. And what were the challenges in terms of embracing the process [inaudible] well, compost tea takes some specialized equipment. It's, it's a new approach that, like I mentioned before, it is not just pulling out the, the chemical fungicides to treat a problem. It's more, it's a more holistic approach where you're trying to get beneficial biology out into the environment and on your plants [00:08:30] to suppress diseases. Speaker 1: So it takes a while. So there's a, there's a learning curve and uh, an a by n curve with, you know, even my staff in terms of believing that this a new organic approach to disease suppression and introducing organic fertility will actually work. So, but it helps to have other botanical gardens Arboreta and other colleagues who have worked with this and have had good results from it. Talk [00:09:00] about the brewing process. Sure. So [inaudible] we were fortunate to get a grant from the Green Initiative Fund here on campus that paid for our compost tea brewing equipment. This includes a 100 gallon tank brewer with a motor that blows air into the tank. And we also bought a large commercial grade worm composting bin and started off with some bulk ingredients to make compost. [00:09:30] And so essentially what, what the process is, is taking hot compost or what we call thermophilic compost that is cooked down from organic biomass. Speaker 1: And then taking worm compost. The done the castings, uh, from the worms. Uh, both of these things end up looking like soil when they're fully done. And we take these two things and we put them in a fine mesh bag and we can suspend them in the [00:10:00] tank of water or we can put them in a five gallon bucket of water. And we, it's like kneading dough. We need all this material a and w a water solution. And what we're doing is if you have a healthy compost, uh, what you'll get in that water is a very rich mix of beneficial fungi, bacteria, nematodes, protozoa, uh, along with some nutrients. And so we take this [00:10:30] slurry, this comp, this t from compost, put it into the larger unit, fill that with water. We add some humic acids to sort of bind up the chloramines that are in the East Bay mud water. Speaker 1: And then we add some extra fish, emulsion and Capitol Kelp emulsion. The fish and Kelp emulsion are used to feed the biology that we've put in that water. We fill the tank up a hundred gallons and we airaid it with the motorized blower for 24 to 48 hours. [00:11:00] So what happens here is that all that beneficial biology propagates with the in the, in the water and with the air and the extra organic food provided by the fish and kelp. And so during that airation process, all this biology multiplies many, many fold. And so that's our basic brewing process. Speaker 1: So the real benefit will be how healthy you assess [00:11:30] your plants to be. And it, I guess over time you can make that assessment. Yes. Uh, at this point we have mostly been using our compost tea and our Rose Garden. We have a garden of old roses and this is a small collection and so it's been easy to apply, um, are relatively limited equipment, uh, to this collection. Also roses, uh, particularly cultivated roses are classics for having [00:12:00] Fungal Pathogens, like a black spot, powdery mildew, things like that. So we've been using it in there and some things have responded well. Some things haven't responded so well. And we've also been using the compost tea in the Rose Garden, not just for disease suppression on foliage, but to build the health of the soil in terms of the biology of the soil, the fertility in the soil. And so it can take time to convert a soils from [00:12:30] a conventional methodology where you're using synthetics, uh, and then changing into using organics that that can take time and that is pretty well supported in their literature. Going from conventional methodology to organic methodology. Um, it certainly takes some time to convert uh, soils and plants. Speaker 3: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [inaudible] [00:13:00] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x. We are speaking with Anthony Garcia jr about the UC botanical gardens. Speaker 1: Right now we have a student intern who has started and uh, there will be doing the brewing and helping with the brewing and application process in [00:13:30] afforded cultural methods. IB One 12, I'll be exposing my students to the process. There is a student run course on campus, uh, called decal. And so we'll also be bringing the decal classes up for demonstration of how we brew in our methodology. So, and we're certainly at this point, mostly getting the word out about compost tea, um, to students and, and other groups right here on campus. Yeah. [00:14:00] But it helped to broaden that out reach as again, as we see positive results from our, from our program. What does the volunteer program at the Botanical Gardens, the volunteer program comprises several, several arms. Uh, you can volunteer, uh, in horticulture with the area horticulturist, we have a very large volunteer pool of plant propagators who propagate plants for our plant sales, both our plant [00:14:30] deck, which is open daily and our two big plant sales in spring and falls. We have a very large volunteer plant propagator program. We also have volunteers who work in our, with our curators doing all types of, uh, things that curators do in museums. Um, and then we also have very large and active docent volunteer program as most museums do. So that docents, um, lead tours, uh, adult tours, [00:15:00] children's tours, and a free tours to the public as well. Speaker 7: Now the, the Volunteer Program embraces the university faculty, Staff Students, and it's also open to the community as well. Is that right? Speaker 1: The volunteer program, right? Oh yes. Uh, the volunteer program is open to anybody who's got the time, uh, to commit. I believe we do ask for a certain, uh, time commitment, um, before we'll, [00:15:30] we'll, uh, you know, give you your badge and your parking Pasch as a, you know, a lot of people come and go. But, uh, we've, we really couldn't do what we do without our volunteers. They do an amazing amount of work from the docenting to the volunteer plant propagation working in horticulture and curation. Uh, because the garden is, is understaffed and underfunded. Unfortunately we rely heavily on the work and the services of our volunteers. Speaker 7: And within that volunteer program, the kinds of opportunities there [00:16:00] are to learn about if someone doesn't have a great deal of experience, how much training is involved in that program where people who are interested but don't have expertise, could be of great assistance to you essentially learn how to do it all. Speaker 1: There's a very specific, uh, training program for the docents. In fact, that is, uh, that is fee-based. The docents actually have to pay to come and be trained for the docent program. And that runs [00:16:30] for several months. Uh, volunteer propagation training program is a little more casual, but there we have section heads in the volunteer propagation program who grow certain groups of plants and they'll, uh, train new people who come in along with our volunteer plant propagation program coordinator. Uh, they'll also do some sort of hands on training. Um, horticultural volunteers are a little different. We do prefer horticultural [00:17:00] volunteers that come in with us, some bit of knowledge, um, at least general knowledge about horticulture and landscaping and, um, tools and things like that. Uh, but horticultural volunteers, you know, it's mostly about time and having the interest and, uh, they'll come in and work with the horticulturist and, uh, and certainly learn quickly. Speaker 4: [inaudible] [00:17:30] you are listening to spectrum on KALX we are speaking with Anthony Garcia jr about the UC botanical gardens. Speaker 7: Are there other ways that the garden is reaching out Speaker 1: to the community or involving the community and activities? Uh, yes, we have programs that we run through the year and they may not specifically be on, [00:18:00] uh, you know, growing a particular plant. Uh, we try and broaden the interest range with our programs. It can be things like succulent wreath making. We have a concert series during the summer. We have children's programs that may or may not have to do with plants. We have, uh, classes on botanical illustration. So we really try and broaden, uh, the interest, um, and appeal to other groups besides people who are just specifically interested [00:18:30] in growing plants. Uh, one of the audiences we're reaching out to right now are our people, uh, who are interested in, in the arts are artists themselves. Uh, we have a very unique, uh, installation in the garden right now by Shirley, uh, Alexander Watts. And this is a installation that has to do with, uh, bringing awareness to the plight of, uh, honeybees and California native beast. Speaker 1: A very interesting [00:19:00] physical installation that you can come and see in our Mediterranean basin collection just above the Rose Garden. So that, uh, is a trend we're seeing in botanical gardens in particular is, is broadening the appeal to other audiences, including art installations. And so we're trying to be thoughtful and tasteful about it. And in this case with the, with the bee installation called a garden of mountings, which is a reference to a Sylvia Plath poem. We're trying to cross [00:19:30] link that art with, uh, the mission of the garden. And so this is a nice fit because it is about, uh, being aware about native bees and their role in the ecosystem and their relationship with plants. So that was a nice fit. And so a unique opportunity to come and see a unique piece of art, uh, in the botanical garden. So we're doing things like that to, to draw in other people besides just what we call plant people. Speaker 1: And how long will that installation be up? Well, it's been in for a couple of months [00:20:00] now and I think the duration was roughly about six months. Um, it will eventually probably succumb to the elements and so we'll have to take it down at some point, but it is something you can actually walk up, walk under, sit in a, there's a poem in there, there's pictures of the bees with their names and their roles in the environment. So it's a very interesting and educational, uh, art installation, which also happens to be I think, beautiful and appealing and in a unique setting in the garden. Speaker 1: [00:20:30] Great. And other artists out there that might be listening who would want to run an idea by you? What's the way to get in touch? Uh, they would probably get in touch with Vanessa Cruz, uh, who is on staff and she's been working with surely. And in fact, Shirley Watts is, um, working on bringing in more artists in the next year to do multiple installations in the garden. So we're looking forward to that. [00:21:00] And do you have a funding source for that? Is it, I believe that one is a, the fundraising is being done by, uh, the groups of artists who are actually coming in, uh, to do it. So we, yeah, we at this point, um, wish we, we did, but we don't have a lot of money to support the arts, but we like to promote the idea of the arts. Um, so we hope it's a good cross-collaboration in, um, having interesting [00:21:30] art in the garden for people to see and also giving the artists, um, some good exposure to their audiences. Speaker 1: Well, any point that you would like to make about the garden that I haven't, uh, covered? Yeah, I think one of the things that always surprises us at the garden is, um, how many people, even people who have lived in Berkeley for years and years, uh, have never been up to the botanical garden. It really is a hidden gem here in the greater bay area. There's nowhere [00:22:00] else where you can come and visit for relatively, uh, a cheaply where you can experience plants from around the world, grown in naturalistic assemblages, um, and have a view of the golden gate bridge places to have a picnic. It's really a unique setting in the bay area and um, and still underutilized even by, uh, the campus. So that that would be my one. Uh, shout out if you will for the garden is to please come and visit, [00:22:30] uh, and support, uh, the botanical garden and its mission. Correct. Anthony Garza, thanks for coming on spectrum. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Speaker 6: [inaudible] that was Anthony Garza Jr. You can find out more about the UC botanical garden botanical garden.berkeley.edu Speaker 5: [00:23:00] irregular feature of spectrum is presented a calendar of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area over the next two weeks. On the third Friday of every month. The Chabot space and science center located in the Beautiful Oakland Hills at 10,000 skyline boulevard hosts night school from seven to 11:00 PM guests 18 years or older are welcome to enjoy full access to exhibits, special activities, workshops, open labs, discussion [00:23:30] forums, alive, planetarium show, film screens, and telescope viewings. If weather permits, food, beer and wine are available for purchase. Tonight's theme is home-ec and we'll feature DIY projects including a green gift, bizarre holiday kitchen science fix it. Workshop discussions with they local monthly meetup group that craft intellectuals and mold wine. Who is it? www.chabotscience.org for more details. [00:24:00] Okay, tomorrow is Saturday, December 17th the director of the UC Wide Institute for Nuclear and particle astrophysics and cosmology. Bernard [inaudible] Dulay is giving a talk for the free monthly science of cattle lecture series. This talk will be 11 to noon in room 100 of the genetics and plant biology building here at UC Berkeley. Okay. Shedding light on the dark side of the universe. He will share current attempts to detect the weekly [00:24:30] interactive massive particles which could make up the dark matter. That makes up five times as much of the energy in the universe as ordinary matter. Visit science@caldotberkeley.edu for more information. Speaker 5: Nerd night is the discovery channel with beer on the third Wednesday of the month in this case, December 21st nerds of all walks of life gather at the rickshaw stop. One 55 fell street at Vanessa in San Francisco. [00:25:00] Plunk down their hard earned $8 drink, mingle and here three talks this month. Senior, UC Davis medical student, Erica Lee will present genes, gonads and genitals, the miracle of human sex differentiation. Anna Quillo, capital co-founder Adam Bristol. We'll discuss the future of personalized medicine and predictive bioinformatics. There'll also be a third surprise Speaker, sf.nights.com for more information [00:25:30] and now with some news headlines. Here's Brad Swift. Speaker 7: The surprising discovery of a new way to tune and enhance thermal conductivity gives engineers a new tool for managing thermal effects in smartphones and computers, lasers, and a number of other powered devices. Science daily reports. The finding was made by a group of engineers headed by day you, Lee, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University and published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. [00:26:00] On December 11th Lee and his collaborators discovered that the thermal conductivity of a pair of thin strips of material called Boron nanoribbons can be enhanced by up to 45% depending on the process that they used to stick the two ribbons together. Although the research was conducted with Boron nanoribbons, the results are generally applicable to other thin film materials according to lead. The force that holds the two nanoribbons together is a weak [00:26:30] electrostatic attraction called the Vander vols force. Professor Lee stated traditionally it is widely believed that the phone ons that carry heat are scattered at vendor vault interfaces which makes the ribbon bundles thermal conductivity the same as that of each ribbon. Speaker 7: What we discovered is in sharp contrast to this classical view, we show that the photons can cross these interfaces without being scattered, which [00:27:00] significantly enhances the thermal conductivity. In addition, the researchers found that they could control the thermal conductivity between high and low value by treating the interface of the nano ribbon pairs with different solutions. One of the first areas where this new knowledge is likely to be applied is in the thermal management of micro electronic devices like computer chips and nano composites that are being developed for use in flexible electronic devices and structural [00:27:30] materials for aerospace vehicles. Speaker 5: Joe Cordeiro and the Economist pointed me to an article that appeared in the October 17th issue of the Journal of Agricultural and food chemistry in it. French researchers, Caroline Molet and her team studied the quality of Miele duck foreground. France produces 73% of these fat duck and goose loaders. One undesirable issue is that some lovers seem to have larger amounts of fat loss during cooking than others. Market regulation limits fat [00:28:00] loss to 30% and lower fat loss leads to more highly priced delicacies. A proteomics study got to the biological cause of this fat loss. Intense anabolic pathways lead delivers with low fat loss by dimensional electrophoresis and mass spectrometry showed that deliveries were rich in proteins that help with the digestion and storage of food, the less desirable livers that lost a lot of fat or in a different physiological stage and had unique proteins including fatty acid binding protein for this is a marker for [00:28:30] a nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in humans. This suggests that the liver quality is dictated before the slaughter of the animal. One practical aspect is that the yield of four gras is improved by reducing the duration of overfeeding. Understanding the biological mechanism can increase yield and thus improve the humane production of fatty livers. It should be noted that the state of California health and safety code and acted in 2004 prohibits the force feeding of birds for the purpose of enlarging their livers or the sale of such products. [00:29:00] Starting on July 1st, 2012 Speaker 6: [inaudible]Speaker 4: the music credit. Today's program was the track petite to leap off of list on a David's 2011 album entitled folk and Acoustic [00:29:30] and is released under the creative Commons attribution license version 3.0 thank you for listening to. We are happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l s@yahoo.com and join us in two weeks at this same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Professor Leachman explores the origins of Industrial Engineering Operations Research, his particular interests in the field, and an extensive analysis of supply chains from Asia to California and the dispersal of goods to U.S. markets.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Hmm 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: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and along with Rick Karnofsky, I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with Professor Robert Leachman of the [00:01:00] industrial engineering and operations research department at UC Berkeley. He received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics, his master's degree in operations research and a phd in operations research all from UC Berkeley. Professor Leachman has been a member of the UC Berkeley Faculty since 1979 professor Leachman, welcome to spectrum. Speaker 4: Thank you.Speaker 3: The department [00:01:30] that you're in, industrial engineering and operations research, those two fields, how did they grow together? Speaker 4: Well, if we trace the whole history, industrial engineering started shortly after the turn of the century focused on improving the efficiency of human work and over the years it grew to address improving the efficiency of all production and service systems. Operations. Research started during World War Two focused on [00:02:00] mathematic and scientific analysis of the military strategy, logistics and operations. And it grew to develop that kind of analysis of all production and service systems. So in that sense the fields grew together. But in another sense they're different. Operations research steadily became more focused on the mathematical techniques for analysis of operations, whereas industrial engineering always has been more focused on the operational [00:02:30] problems and the engineering practice of how to address those problems. So in that sense, the two fields are complimentary. So how is it that things have changed over say the past 20 years? Well, I think the domain for ILR has, has changed as the u s s become less a manufacturing based economy and more a service space that has increased the focus and service areas [00:03:00] for applying industrial engineering operations, research type thinking and analysis, be it things like healthcare, financial engineering, energy conservation. And there's certainly been a lot more activity in supply chain analysis, particularly multi-company supply chains and even the contractual relations between those companies. Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 3: And in your work, which complimentary technologies do you find the most helpful and have the most impact? Speaker 4: Well, I [00:03:30] think certainly the, the progress in computing power or the progress in automated data collection and the data resources we have now makes a lot more things possible now that weren't possible before and certainly changes how I do things. We can do much more analysis than, than we used to be able to do. Speaker 3: The idea of keeping things simple, which is sort of an engineering paradigm of sorts, right? Is that still a virtue or is that given [00:04:00] way to a lot of complexity that all these other capabilities lend themselves to? Speaker 5: Yeah, Speaker 4: I think there's a Dick Dichotomy here in industrial practice. I think simplicity wins out. If you have an elegant, simple solution that will triumph. I think the incentives are a little different in academic research, especially mathematical research from the kind of an elegant theory is one where you start with a [00:04:30] small set of assumptions and you derive a great complexity of results and analysis out of that. And so sometimes I think there's kind of a different direction between what's really successful in practice and what's really successful in academia. Speaker 3: What is the research like in industrial engineering and operations research? In terms of the academic research and theoretical research that happens? Speaker 4: Well those [00:05:00] doing research on the mathematical methodology of operations research considered themselves to be theoreticians and those doing work on advancing the state of the art and engineering and management practice are often labeled as quote applied and quote researchers, but I always flinch a little bit at that term. I think the implication is that those advancing the state of the art of practice are merely applying quote unquote the mathematical methodology [00:05:30] developed by the theoretical researchers, but that's not my experience at all. If and when one is able to advance the state of the art, it comes from conceptualizing the management problem in a new way. That is, it comes from developing the insight to frame in a much better way. The question about how the industrial system should be run at least as much as it comes from applying new mathematical sophistication and moreover available mathematical methodology. Almost always has [00:06:00] to be adapted once the more appropriate assumptions are realized in in the industrial setting. Speaker 4: So in that sense the quote unquote applied IUR researchers actually do research that is basic and theoretical in that scientific sense I talked about and that is its theory about how the industrial systems and organizations should be run. So beside the efficiencies and productivity gains that you're striving for, [00:06:30] are there other benefits to the industrial engineering and operations research? I spend a fair bit of time working on what I call speed and that is speed in the sense of the time to develop new products, the time to ramp up manufacturing and distribution to bring into market. And my experience in a lot of industries, especially high technology, is that the leaders are not necessarily the ones [00:07:00] with the lowest cost or the highest efficiencies, but they're almost always the ones with the greatest speed. And IOR can do a lot for improving the speed of that development and supply chain. Speaker 4: And that's an area I work on. And that has applications across the board taking things to market. Absolutely. And we have expressions like a time is money or the market [00:07:30] window or things like this, but they're often very discrete in nature like you're going to make the market window or you're not the way we describe it, but that's, that's not the reality is that everything is losing value with time. There is a great value on on bringing stuff out earlier. Everything is going obsolete and that is undervalued. In my experience in organizations, most people have job descriptions about cost or perhaps revenue, but a, there's little or nothing [00:08:00] in there about if they do something to change the speed, what is it worth to the company, so we work to try to reframe that and rethink that to quantify what speed is worth and bring that down to a the level of NGO, every engineer so that they can understand what impact their work has on speed and that they can be rewarded when they do things to improve speed. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [00:08:30] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Today's guest is professor Robert Leachman of the industrial engineering and operations research department at UC Berkeley. We are talking about analyzing supply chains. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 3: [00:09:00] can you give us a, an overview of this kind of mathematical analysis that you use in your work? Speaker 4: Okay, well let me take a recent topic. I've spent a lot of effort on and that is, uh, studying the, the supply chains for containerized imports from Asia to the United States. [00:09:30] Over the years I have been fortunate to have access to the all the u s customs data to see who's bringing in what goods and declared values their pain to bring those in. And I've been fortunate to have access to the transportation rates and handling rates that they're paying. And I can start to lay out the picture of the supply chains for each company and how it can be best managed. And so that involves mathematics [00:10:00] to describe the variability and uncertainties, uh, the variabilities in the shipment times and the chances for mistakes, the uncertainties in sales in various parts of the u s and so on. And then putting together the mathematics to simulate this so that we can now see how alternative supply chains behave. And also the impact of changes in government policy such as fees on the imports or improving the infrastructure [00:10:30] with uh, expanded ports or rail lines or uh, highways and the like. This is kind of a long, large effort to where we've been able to replicate inside the computer the whole trade going on and then inform both policy analysis for the governments and for the importers themselves. Speaker 3: California in particular, it's a real destination for the Asian supply chain. Are there peculiarities about California that you could tell us about? Speaker 4: [00:11:00] Well, close to half of all the waterborne containerized imports from Asia to the u s enter through the California ports. A few include Long Beach Los Angeles in Oakland and there are very good economic reasons why this happens and this has to do primarily with managing the inventory and supply chains. If you think about the alternatives of at the factory door in Asia, we can decide how much is going to go [00:11:30] to various regions of the United States before we book passage on the vessels. Then considering the lead time, you need to book a vessel at least two weeks in advance. And considering the answer it needs and so forth is that you're committing how much is going to go where one to two months before it gets there. Whereas if you simply ship the stuff to California and then after it gets here, now reassess the situation based on how much arrived in California [00:12:00] and what is the updated need in the supply chain in the various regions in the u s then you can make a much more informed allocation, a match the supply to demand much better and you'll reduce the inventory in the system and you'll decrease the time until goods are sold and people will be able to get their goods earlier. Speaker 4: The big nationwide retailers we have in the U S and also the nationwide, uh, original equipment manufacturers that resell the good once they're here in [00:12:30] the u s practice, these kind of supply chains. And so they bring the stuff to California and then reship. So that means that a, we have a critical role in supply chains and more comes here then goes elsewhere. If you were to think about doing what we do at, say, the port of Seattle or, or through the canal to the Gulf or east coast, then you would have to ship into that southern California market, which is the largest local market in North America. And that would be much more expensive [00:13:00] than if you start there and ship out from there. So you don't have to ship that local market stuff. The downside of that is that there's a huge amount of pollution created with all the truck traffic to bring the boxes from the ports to a cross dock or a warehouse and trans ship the goods, reload them and send them back to a rail yard and so on. Speaker 4: And uh, that creates traffic. It creates pollution, creates concern for the governments and rightly so. Uh, and [00:13:30] so there's been a lot of proposals that maybe there should be some sort of special tax on the containers to pay for infrastructure and to pay for environmental mitigation and the like. So I've done some of the studies of that question from the point of view of the importers of what is the best supply chain for them in response to changing infrastructure or changing fees and taxes, changing prices at the California ports. I'd probably some studies that have [00:14:00] been a highly controversial and got a lot of people excited. I did two scenarios. One where there's just taxes placed on the boxes and there's no improvements in infrastructure. And the answer to that scenario is a pretty significant drop, especially the lower value imports where inventory is not so expensive as simply moved to other ports. Speaker 4: But then I also did a scenario where if there was a major improvement in infrastructure of moving [00:14:30] a cross docks and import warehouses closer to the ports and moving the rail yards closer to the ports to eliminate the truck trips and alike, uh, that even as high as $200 a box, this would be a value proposition to the importers of the moderate and expensive imports as they would make California even more attractive than it is now. And so that got picked up by one camp saying, see we can tax them and they will stay and pay. Uh, but they didn't [00:15:00] quite read the fine print in the sense that no, you have to build the infrastructure first and then you can use that money to retire the bonds. But if you tax them first without the infrastructure in place, they will leave. The bill passed the California legislature. Speaker 4: But, uh, fortunately governor Schwartzenegger staff contacted me and talked about it and I think they got the story straight and the governor vetoed the bill. But the challenge remains is that I find it intriguing that generally [00:15:30] the communities near the ports are, are generally hostile to a logistics activities. They don't want warehouses, they don't want truck traffic, they don't want rail yards. Uh, and this tends to mean the development of those kinds of things happens much further out in greenfield spaces, which of course increases the congestion increases and the transportation. And I mean, there's something almost comical about hauling stuff around when we don't know where they should go yet. [00:16:00] But there's an awful lot of that that happens. So there's still a lot of potential to improve the efficiency of the supply chain. Speaker 3: Okay. Would this experience that you've had doing some research and then getting involved a little bit in the public policy side of it, is that something that you could see yourself doing more of? Speaker 4: Well, I guess it is that I was asked by a government agency that the Metropolitan Planning Office for Southern California is, is, [00:16:30] is as the acronym Skag s c a g southern California Association of governments. And they asked me to, to look at the problem and I, and I was happy to do so. I think in one sense it's, it's nice to make a contribution to public policy so that we can have a more informed public management just like it is to help private companies do that. But on the other hand, a political process is pretty messy, pretty frustrating at [00:17:00] times is that usually things are a little more sane inside a company, but it's important and I'm Speaker 2: glad to do it. You are listening to spectrum on k l x Berkeley. Our guest is professor Robert Leachman, the industrial engineering and operations research department at UC Berkeley. We are talking about analyzing supply chains and global trade Speaker 3: to sort of address the idea that [00:17:30] all these efficiencies and productivity gains take jobs out of the economy. Is there some swing back where there are jobs that are created by all these changes? Speaker 7: Yes. Speaker 4: Well, let me divide this into two pieces. First, with regard IOR type work, where we're developing systems to manage supply chains or industries better is that I've been doing this kind of thing [00:18:00] since about 1980 in industrial projects in the U S and abroad. Uh, and I don't ever remember a single project where what we did resulted in a decline in employment. And in fact a lot of those were companies and crises. And if we hadn't been successful, I think a lot of people would have been put out of work. And every one of those projects created new engineering, managerial jobs to manage the information technology that was being used to run the system [00:18:30] better. So kind of on a micro scale of doing projects, it's not my experience that IUR type work reduces in employment. And when I think about the larger scale of all the offshoring of manufacturing from the U S to Asia, the companies doing this are more profitable and the costs of the consumers are much less. Speaker 4: And if you look at the gross national product and the like, these numbers are pretty good and the average [00:19:00] income of Americans is very high compared to the rest of the world. But the distribution to that income bothers me a lot. Increasingly, we're a society of a small number of very wealthy people and a lot of people who were much worse off. And in the era when we manufactured everything that provided a huge amount of middle-class type jobs and we don't have that anymore. We have low paying service jobs and we have a lot of well paying [00:19:30] engineering and management jobs. And that concerns me. I think all the protests we start to see going on even today here on campus, uh, illustrate that. Speaker 3: How do you see the outsourcing of manufactured goods to low wage regions? And supply chain efficiencies playing out over time? Speaker 4: Well, certainly the, the innovations in supply chain management have enabled it, but you know the difference in in salaries between [00:20:00] this part of the world and there has always been there and that wasn't something that was created right and it's not going to go away immediately. Take some time. I think there's, there's little question that Asian goods will cost more. The Asian currencies have been artificially low for a long time, but they are starting to move up as energy gets more deer, transportation costs go up. Our interest rates have been artificially [00:20:30] low since the recession and before. I don't think those low interest rates will last forever and when they go up then inventory gets more expensive and so those supply chains all the way down to Asia will get more expensive. I think we've done a lot of brilliant engineering and other technology improvements that have lowered costs a lot, but I think those costs are going to go up and as they do, then the answer for the [00:21:00] best supply chains is going to bring some stuff back to America. And that's already happening first. The very bulky stuff like furniture and it left North Carolina, but now much of it is come back and I think you'll, you'll see that the, the most expensive items to ship around will be the first to change. Nowadays the big importers have very sophisticated departments studying their supply chains and I truly [00:21:30] believe that they could save a penny per cubic foot of imports. They will change everything to do it Speaker 4: and so things can change very fast. Following the economics Speaker 3: and I understand you're a musician, can you give us some insight into your, a avocation with music? Speaker 4: Well, I'm a jazz pianist. I had come up through classical piano training but then at middle school, high school age, moved to the bay area and [00:22:00] there was lots of jazz happening here and I was excited by that and I actually learned to play jazz on the string bass first. But I had a piano in my room and the dorm I lived at here at Berkeley. And so I was playing a lot and listening to records of people I really enjoyed. And there was lots of jazz happening here and other musicians and we learn from each other and you grow your vocabulary over time and I was gone a couple of years between, Speaker 5: yeah, Speaker 4: Undergrad and Grad school working in industry, but [00:22:30] when I came back here to Grad school then I was playing bars in north beach and the like, but at a certain point you have to decide whether you're going to be a day animal or a night animal. You don't have the hours to do both, but art is very important to me and lyrical jazz piano is very important to me. It's, it's a way to do expression and creativity that I don't think I've found another medium that can match it. Speaker 3: Professor Leishman, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. My pleasure. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [00:23:00] irregular feature of spectrum is to present the calendar of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area over the next two weeks. Brad Swift joins me for this. Speaker 3: Get up close to a hundreds of wild mushrooms at the 42nd annual fungus [00:23:30] fair being held this year at the Lawrence Hall of science in Berkeley. Eat edible mushrooms, meet vendors and watch culinary demonstrations by mushroom chefs. Get the dirt on poisonous mushrooms and checkout other wild funky from the medicinal to the really, really strange mushroom experts will be on hand to answer all your questions and to identify unknown specimens brought in by the visitors. My cologists will present slideshows and talk about foraging for mushrooms. [00:24:00] Find out how different mushrooms can be used for treating diseases, dyeing cloth or paper and flavoring foods. The fair will be Saturday and Sunday, December 3rd and fourth from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM each day. There is a sliding admission charge to the hall of Science, which includes all the exhibits and the fungus fare. Check their website, Lawrence Hall of Science. Dot Orgy for details. Speaker 8: On Tuesday, December 6th [00:24:30] at 7:00 PM the Jewish community center at 3,200 California street in San Francisco is hosting a panel discussion on digital overload. Debate continues over the extent to which connectivity is changing the QALY of our relationships and reshaping our communities. Now there are major concerns about how it's changing our brains. Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times Tech reporter Matt. Righto wired Steven Levy and rabbi Joshua Trullo. It's joined moderator, Jonathan Rosen, author of the Talmud [00:25:00] and the Internet to address pressing ethical questions of the digital age, including what are the costs of growing up digitally native are our children casualties of the digital revolution. What are the longterm effects of net use? Visit JCC s f.org for tickets which are $20 to the public, $17 for members and $10 for students. Speaker 3: Women's earth alliance presents seeds of resilience, women farmers striving in the face of climate [00:25:30] change Tuesday, December 6th that the David Brower center in Berkeley. The doors will open at 6:00 PM for reception and music program is at 7:30 PM it entails stories from the field by India, program director, RWE, Chad shitness, other special guests and Speakers to be announced. Admissions is $15 in advance and $18 at the door. Speaker 8: December is Leonardo art science evening rendezvous [00:26:00] or laser will take place. Wednesday, December 7th from six 45 to 8:55 PM at Stanford University's Geology Corner Building three 21 zero five in addition to socializing and networking, there will be four talks showing the kitchen of San Jose State University will speak on hyperfunctional landscapes in art and offer a fresh outlook at the technological adaptations and how they can enhance and enrich our surroundings rather than distract us from them. UC Berkeley's Carlo [00:26:30] squint and we'll show how knots can be used as constructivist building blocks for abstract geometrical sculptures. NASA's Margarita Marinova will share how the dry valleys event Arctica are an analog for Mars. These are the coldest and dry rocky place with no plants or animals and site. Studying these dry valleys allows us to understand how the polar regions on earth work, what the limits of life are, and to apply these ideas to the cold and dry environment of Mars. Finally, San Francisco Art Institutes, [00:27:00] Peter Foucault will present on systems and interactivity in drawing where drawings are constructed through mark making systems and how audience participation can influence the outcome of a final composition. Focusing on an interactive robotic trying installation. For more information on this free event, visit leonardo.info. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [00:27:30] now new stories with Rick Karnofsky Speaker 8: science news reports on research by UC San Diego, experimental psychologist David Brang and vs Ramachandran published in the November 22nd issue of plus biology on the genetic origins of synesthesia. The sense mixing condition where people taste colors or see smells that affects only about 3% of the population, half of those with the condition report that family members also [00:28:00] have the condition, but parents and children will often exhibit it differently. Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist, David Eagleman published in September 30th issue of behavioral brain research that a region on chromosome 16 is responsible for a form of synesthesia where letters and numbers are associated with a color Brang hypothesizes that the gene may help prune connections in the brain and that soon as synesthesiac yaks may suffer a genetic defect that prevents removing some links. [00:28:30] An alternate hypothesis is that synesthesia is caused by neurochemical imbalance. This may explain why the condition intensifies with extreme tiredness or with drug use. Bring in colleagues believe that it is actually a combination of these two that lead to synesthesia. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: spectrum is recorded and edited by me, Rick Klasky, [00:29:00] and by Brad Swift. The music you heard during this show is by David [inaudible] off of his album folk and acoustic. It is released under the creative Commons attribution license. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via [00:29:30] our email address is spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

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

In 1965 Prof. Zadeh published a paper titled Fuzzy Sets in the journal Information and Control. Fuzzy Set theory and Fuzzy Logic has been hailed as a brilliant addition to Set theory. Zadeh is Prof. Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: [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, my name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Today's interview is with Professor Lutfi Zada. He is professor emeritus in the electrical engineering and Computer Science Department of the College of Engineering [00:01:00] at UC Berkeley. Professor Zada was trained as an electrical engineer at the University of Toronto where he received a bachelor's degree at MIT where he received a master's and Columbia University where he received a Ph d from 1950 to 1959 Zara was a member of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. He joined the Department of electrical engineering at UC Berkeley in 1959 and served [00:01:30] as its chair from 1963 to 1968 during his tenure as chair, he played a key role in changing the name of the department from electrical engineering to electrical engineering, computer science or [inaudible]. In June, 1965 professor Zada published a paper titled Fuzzy Sets in the Journal Information and control. This paper formalized his seminal fuzzy set theory. In the years since fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic has been hailed as a brilliant [00:02:00] addition to set theory. Speaker 3: The word fuzzy is used to characterize the imprecision and uncertainty of real world phenomena that the theory embraces. Essentially, a fuzzy set is a set whose members have degrees of membership within the range. Zero and one fuzzy set theory permits the gradual assessment of the membership of elements in a set. The membership is described by a value in the interval zero to one fuzzy logic is based on fuzzy set theory where [00:02:30] sets are approximate rather than fixed and exact how's he logic embraces the concept of partial truth where the truth value may range between completely true one and completely false zero. This interview is prerecorded and edited professors Oughta. Thank you very much for joining us on spectrum. It's my player. What do you think it was about being here at Berkeley that got you thinking about fuzzy logic [00:03:00] and the work that you then published? Right? Speaker 4: What did he see? What happened is that I have always been a strong believer in mathematics. I always believed that [inaudible] is solve all problems and simply, and that's what I've learned. You can [inaudible] if you cannot solve the problem with what, you know, learn more and then you go with the, so that was my fear. But then I began to feel that there is a disconnect between the precision of mathematics and the precision [00:03:30] of the real world. So I began to feel that way, uh, in 1960160260 three during sort of that period and my feeling that there is a problem grow in 1964 then when I was visiting New York, this idea occurred to me the same to do is to introduce the concept of a presence at the class, which [00:04:00] does not have sharp boundaries. So instead of talking about something being in a class or not being in a class, you're talking about degrees to which you are a member of a class, which seems to be a very natural sort of a thing. So what is surprising is this very simple national idea was not introduced in mathematics to some degree. It is amazing. There is multivariate logic and long [00:04:30] to validate logic. Truth is a matter of degree and fuzzy logic. Everything is a matter of degree. High geologic follows for, as you said, theater, everything is relative degree. So agenda of ideological is completely different from the agenda. [inaudible] Speaker 3: so do you consider yourself a creative thinker? Speaker 4: I think so, yes. I think this is [00:05:00] my strength. Yours and cut it up with original ideas. That's my sense. There are people who are smarter than I, but they were not creative. In other words, if we took exams, probably they do better, but somehow they are luck. This particular capability. Let's see. So what is something unusual? And I must pat myself on the back. Yes. The people at my [00:05:30] age, you know, I turned 19 continue to do something and tell them, I said we won't get to being a certain kind of environment that allows me to do that. I wrote my first paper [inaudible] 1965 at that time I was chair of the department and we had, I was on editorial boards. I had recognition. I submitted a paper publication during use. We're look for them. [00:06:00] If I were not a member of, they told you the board of that journal. Speaker 4: It wasn't getting turned down but I said, man, I thought of Kirsten. See they published. Know that paper by 1965 paper is the highest side that they put in that journal to NJ 6,000 citations. The next highest cited paper that it still 1,010 times more. Yeah. If a paper has 200 200 citation, that's considered to be [00:06:30] respectable in Europe I think they would be promoted to full professorship. You need at least 50 citations. A many people don't realize that. Yesterday I gave a lecture, he wished there was a little discussion of physiologic and the number of papers with fuzzy in title I or somebody who knows nothing about physiologic. I said, your perception, how many papers you guys are children [00:07:00] have Pfizer entitled because I said was 14 and he is a professor. He was a lecturer. Another suit. I asked somebody else. 50 okay, what is the correct number? 245,000 that's a lot. 245,000 papers with Pfizer and title. That's not something that's as black and white, either some title or southern title. [00:07:30] See how many patterns? 33,000 patterns relate to Pfizer here it's a little bit of question isn't related or unrelated to what degree? This is the picture, so it shows you the degree to which competent people can misunderstand something. So we send the people to reviewers presumably who know a lot and then they say this is piece of nonsense, garbage, whatever, whatever, whatever.Speaker 3: Is this the conservative [00:08:00] nature of the math world and people in mathematics that they're very conservative. They don't want to embrace a new idea, like fuzzy logic. I just Speaker 4: have difficulty in the, unless you're very much in the spirit of what's being done. Let me see if it's very much in the spirit of waste being done. No problems. So if you have four color problem, one pheromones, serum and you prove it, no problem. But if you come up with some [00:08:30] new rules, something, something, something you may have a problem. So at the same thing got placed in music and many other things usic in particular, you know, if you can pull something that is in the spirit of what's been too great but usually a couple of something it's completely different. People would throw to later say to you, which was I happened in music, you know, mineral service here. People like that, you know, very [00:09:00] they told on music this music that you write music is a good example of the situation which uh, which outage or now I'd say of in a certain sense gets you in trouble. Speaker 3: You are listening to k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with professor and Lucky Zada the creator of fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic [00:09:30] found its niche in industrial controllers. It was jump-started by a Cillian and Mandani in 1974 with their fuzzy linguistic algorithm to control the steam edge. The fuzzy vacation of industrial controllers took off cement kilns and Denmark subway trains in Sendai City, Japan, elevators, consumer products like cam quarters washing machines, back home cleaners and cars. Professor Zada attributes the success of fuzzy algorithms [00:10:00] to two concepts. He introduced linguistic variables and fuzzy if then rules. The hierarchy of a linguistic variable can be described as follows. Page can be a linguistic variable. Age is made up of, for example, three fuzzy sets named very young, young and old. The membership function. Each of these sets is mapped onto a numerical scale of values. In this case zero to 100 [00:10:30] years old. Each data element can be then tested for its degree of set membership. The higher the degree associated with an element in a given set, the more reliable the membership. The importance of this concept is how widely linguistic variables can be applied to problems. If you can describe what it is you want to know or how you want a system to behave, you can build a linguistic algorithm and compute. Speaker 4: But [00:11:00] the, and let me explain why there were so many applications. So I wrote my first paper in 1965 in 1973 I wrote the paper. Yeah, we're trying to use the concept but of a linguistic variable. It didn't really sit variable. And that's why I say key concept. It's a variable whose values itself. Wars. Humans use it all the time. Talk about age. [00:11:30] You can't use numbers one, two, three, four, five. But you can use words young, not young, very young, more or less young, old, not very old village. People use boards instead of numbers. That's the point. So I caught a variable like that linguistic variable, the variables whose values are words, but those words are enablers of pleasure sets. So when [00:12:00] you say town, it is a fight. He said, if I just said it's associated with memories, your function, that means that given that particular height, you could tell it to one degree is the person who that uh, is a member of the class of thought that this is because members, your firms. Speaker 4: So then we seek malleable. It's not just something that takes those matters. He was do that, but he was do not associate, [00:12:30] but your sets with the value. That's a big difference. But once you are associated for, as he said, you can compute with those of sets. And that turned out to be a key Isaiah because there you could program in natural language. So in that people in 1973 feet, I introduce [00:13:00] two basic concepts. One was the kinds of linguistic credible and the other one the Christ. I'm still fuzzy if they're in the room today, the 95% of our application for your logic, use those two pencils and you'll begin to see why it's easier to use natural language and medication. If I asked you how do you park your car, you could [00:13:30] explain it as a natural language, but if I asked you to do it using numbers, you can do it. Speaker 4: I said if you all were there, so many fears, then you wrangling so much, then turn the WM by 70 degrees. Nobody can do that, but people can use words. So you take words and associate those labels with them and then you execute. So people find that they can solve many problems. [00:14:00] A good example is balancing the worth, inverted pendulum stick. So it 10 year old gun, right? The rules. If this angle is low, Marcela's increasing, then give it a big push to traditionary to solve the problem. People use control theater. There are differential equations. They do that not near, not necessarily a 10 year old can solve the problem. Speaker 3: When you were [00:14:30] developing your fuzzy set theory, where are you collaborating with anybody at all? At the university? Speaker 4: Nothing really. I've never been much of a collaborator. That's the way I function. So I've always been like, I'm not saying that this is a good thing. I, I'm pointing to myself as a role model, but I to I think is the opposite. I think students enjoy working closely with a supervisor, [00:15:00] but somehow I was felt more comfortable doing things [inaudible] Speaker 3: do you think your education in some, some manner helps you become more creole? Speaker 4: One of the major with, I went through the systems. Yeah. The which uh, the emphasis was on not that money, but on, uh, education and being a good student. A good relationship [00:15:30] with your professors. It was a very and very wholesome environment. I consider myself to be lucky in that I went through that kind of an environment friendly, friendly and later at the mic and uh, also at Columbia I was also in an environment that does not exist today. Unfortunately today we have money centric environment. Everything revolves [00:16:00] around money. That was not the case when I was a student at MIT when I was a student. Professors didn't know what his demeanor to go for grants, a Washington proposal late in the worries man today, unless you bring some money, they treat you like a piece of dirt. I find it very disconcerting that young people today are brought [00:16:30] up in daddy's where they're told, look, if you don't manage to get money, we will not advance you to tell you. So they have to kill themselves to try to get money. But even what they say when the wars is that the people who tell these young people, unless you got money, we want to advance your team. They know that those young people will not succeed, but they will be able then fire them at some point and [00:17:00] replace them with another cheap and naive young person they see. Right. Speaker 3: Do you see the same sort of tension between publishing and teaching historically in education? Speaker 4: Well, this has always been the case. You know, publish or perish, but they says nothing money, a centricity. This is some other century city. Speaker 3: Well, it sort of goes to the core values of the institution. Is it more important to teach or is it more important to publish? [00:17:30] Well, Speaker 4: it depends. It depends. Of course institutions. I would put Berkeley right at the very top in terms of a enlightened approach to these issues. If I lost all of my money, as I said, there was not big [inaudible] to a small thing. I was 93 days when I get this of dirt, I would be some of the places and if I did not publish and they saying, but I did some good work, I would [00:18:00] still be treated with respect. I may not get promoted that rapidly, but in other places I'm a stereo there that unfortunately these changes have not been for the better and I am very, very anti money. Three city, I see the evil effects a bit all over the place and I'll see in other countries [inaudible] Speaker 3: you are listening to k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Professor Lockney Zada, [00:18:30] the creator of Fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic. Lutfi Zada feels that computing with words can have an impact in fields like biology, medicine and the humanities where conventional mathematical and analytical methods are ill-suited by combining fuzzy logic with other techniques like neural networks, evolutionary computing, machine learning, and probabilistic reasoning. A new kind of computing can be realized. This week it was announced that professors on was inducted into [00:19:00] the artificial intelligence hall of fame launched by the I Tripoli Intelligent Systems magazine. Speaker 4: Do you enjoy the teaching? Yes, very much so. I've always enjoyed teaching now and let's see, I do on myself to be very lucky in that what I like to do and what I had to do were almost always coincident. Now some parts of teaching. Uh, I cannot say that [00:19:30] I like that much. For example, grading, homeworks, grading exams, you don't know, but that's the price that you have to pay. But if somebody asked me what you likes to do something else and not one microsecond, and this is wonderful though, Speaker 3: is there a part of mathematics that you find most intriguing other than what you've focused on Speaker 4: that sort of inspired you? [inaudible] and I think it [00:20:00] is really important. I think it's really important. It has to do with the capability of mathematics to solve computational problems, which are stated in a natural language. So usually when you find a problem in some books on this and then you, no bunch of numbers there, you, when this and this and this one, there is something else. Okay, that's typical problem. But suppose [00:20:30] that you have a property movies instead of numbers, you have words can mathematics. So problems of this kind. That's a question. My answer to that. My contention is no traditional mathematics cannot solve. I know you have simple problems and they give it to people who have been chasing mathematics, going some books on mathematics and we to books and this and that. They cannot solve it. Let me give you a very simple example. Speaker 4: Probably [00:21:00] John is tall. What is the probability that Johnny is short? Not One person has been able to come up with their mathematical solution. People use come and say as they say something but they cannot come with a mathematical solution. So what I have done and what I call computing with words opens that door. You added two mathematics, traditional mathematics [00:21:30] and that mathematics plus computing many words has the capability to solve problems which are stated in action. I think that this is an important capability and what is particularly striking to me is that the only system today computational system or system of computation that has that capability is fuzzy logic based computer with [00:22:00] words. So he will have mathematics, cannot solve problems which are state national language and yet it's quite obvious there are many in the real world, real vibe. There are many problems like that, but people usually solve them using sort of common sense. See, but they cannot be solved mathematically. So I feel that, uh, this is not widely recognized as yet, but I'm beginning to talk about it and beginning [00:22:30] to write about it. Speaker 5: Well, professors Oughta, thank you very much for spending this time with us Speaker 4: in the forgiven. Protect me as an opportunity to vent my views. As you can see, I express myself, uh, somewhat strongly and if I offend somebody, please accept my apology. But they tell me something about the Brahms browns had the sharp down, he was leaving a [00:23:00] party and he had the, I said, we're thinking the point he says, if there is anybody in here who I have not offended, please accept my oppose. [inaudible] Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 5: a regular feature of spectrum just to mention [00:23:30] a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Here's Rick Karnofsky today August 26 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM professor Elliot Lab with no pitch of the ECS department and the director of the Center for energy efficient electronic science. Well present, searching for the millivolt switch. Moore's law predicts smaller components leading to increased energy efficiency. Well, while wires can operate at very low voltages, current transistors can not can the transistors be replaced with new low voltage switches [00:24:00] that are matched to the fine low voltage wires. Visit the Hearst memorial mining building room three 90 today at 2:00 PM to find out the community resources for science or the crs are having a founder celebration Sunday, August 28th from four to 6:30 PM at cliff bar and company 1451 66th street in Emeryville. Crs gives practical support for it. Great Science Teaching to get kids excited about science. Dr Peter h Glick is the co founder and president of the [inaudible] Speaker 1: [00:24:30] [inaudible]. Speaker 5: It's about their experience in East Bay classrooms. Tickets are $25 for students and teachers or $40 for the general public visit. Founder of celebration, 2000 eleven.eventbrite.com for tickets on Thursday September 8th [00:25:00] from seven to 9:00 PM they called you center at five three zero San Pablo Avenue near Dwight in Berkeley. Associate a free lecture. It is entitled from auto cities to Eco cities. Examples from around the globe, they'll discuss city design from around the world. That favor is walking, cycling, and public transit. The presentation will be followed by an interactive session based on an evolving Eco city framework under development by the ECO city builders and an international advisory committee. Visit Ecology center.org for more info. [00:25:30] The exploratorium after dark is an evening series four 18 and over is that mixes, cocktails, conversation and playful, innovative science and art events. It happens the first Thursday of the month from six to 10:00 PM after dark is included in the general admission price, which is $15 for adults. Speaker 5: The theme for September 1st after dark is music and creativity. Explore unique musical instruments made by local artists. Soon came and hear Indian classical music performed by Dr Perrin, Georgia, who research is connections between music [00:26:00] and creativity as the head of the music intelligence group at the Georgia Tech Center for music technology. He'll also share his work on the creation of new technologies for musical self-expression and then you're all basis for musical emotion and the cognitive underpinnings of musical experience. Visit exploratorium.edu for more info now, two new stories, David Lipkit and Chris Todd Hettinger and other researchers right in the August 22nd issue of the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have discovered a strain of yeast and Patagonia [00:26:30] that they believe is one of the parents of the modern day lager yeast. Saccharomyces pastoral Arianna's loggers are brewed at 39 to 48 degrees Fahrenheit. The style is believed to have originated in Germany in the 15th century because low winter temperatures prevent contamination. Speaker 5: However, most Fridays of the common Ailey's sacrum IC survey see are active at higher temperatures. 59 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Lager, you started domesticated hybrid of the Ale yeast with a cold resistant species. The researcher's notes that the draft [00:27:00] genome sequence of the newly discovered yeast sacrifices you be honest, is 99.5% identical to the Non Ale east portion of the lager yeast genome. The journal Science reports that white researchers are nearly twice as likely as blacks to win grants from the National Institutes of health or the NIH, NIH director Francis Collins notes that she is deeply dismayed and has said that this is simply unacceptable, that there are differences in success that can't be explained. Between 2000 and 2006 [00:27:30] 29% of white applicants received funding, but only 16% of black researchers did. Hispanic and Asian scientists had approximately the same success ratio as white researchers, particularly after correcting for nationality and past research record. While reviewers do not have direct information on the race and ethnicity of applicants, it can be inferred from names and biographies. The bias seems to rise early in the [inaudible] process and the NIH is striving to find measures that will eliminate it by drawing on more minority reviewers and possibly helping applicants with their grant writing. [00:28:00] Hmm. Speaker 1: [inaudible] editing assistance from Judith White Marceline production assistants, Rick Karnofsky, the music heard during the show is from Elliston at David album entitled folk and Acoustical. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, [00:28:30] please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k o x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In critical spawning and overwintering habitat for salmonids Hwan studies the effects of temporal stream fragmentation across three organizational levels of ecology: population, community, and ecosystem levels.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: [00:01:00] 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, my name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with Jason won a third year phd student in the Carlson lab, which is [00:01:30] part of the environmental science policy and Management Department of the College of natural resources. Professor Stephanie Carlson directs the lab and she is a fish ecologist. Jason is researching the effects of summertimes stream drying on fish ecology in the John West fork, a creek in Marin county. The John West fork is the spawning grounds for two varieties of salmon the summer of 2011 Woolmark the third year of his research on this stream. [00:02:00] His research will continue for two and possibly three more years. This interview is prerecorded and edited. Speaker 4: Jason, welcome to spectrum. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. Wanted to ask if you could, uh, give us a brief overview of your research and add in there how it's being funded. My research is looking at the effects of low summer flow on juvenile steelhead, on the insect communities out in the stream and [00:02:30] on certain ecosystem processes such as Algal production and leaf decomposition. And it's currently being funded by, mostly by my, by my guiding professor, Stephanie Carlson. And I also have some funding from our department and the division within our department. All right. We get out a sperm wildlife grant, which helps fund the research. And also I'm currently on an NSF graduate research fellowship. Described the, the general [00:03:00] area of the site that you chose. Sort of put it in context of where it is. So my study say, uh, the John West work is in point Reyes national seashore, which is about an hour north of Berkeley in a national park in and surrounded by some state parks. Speaker 4: Also. Can you explain the watershed and the area that you're working, how it all interrelates to the watershed? So I'm, I'm working in the Lagunitas watershed. I'm working [00:03:30] in a creek that is a tributary of a tributary of a creek to the lock Anitas to log in neatest creek and log Anitas creek flows into Tomas Bay in point rays. The creek that I'm working in is a little different in that there are only two species of fish up there. Both our salt Monets, there are still head and coho salmon. This is because it's not that the creek went dry, completely dry one year and there's, there [00:04:00] was a culvert that was put in place and other fish species weren't able to recolonize the creek, but someone had adults can jump over the barrier. And so they were able to recolonize the creek and they're actually jumping through the culvert. Speaker 4: Yeah. And through this culvert and swimming up swimming into the two John West work. And what's the drop on the culvert like from, from the the bottom lip to the dead of the bid. Lower part [00:04:30] of the creek. It's about four feet. Four feet drop-off. Yeah. So that's quite a leap for the salmon. Yeah. And so with this study, what is it that you're trying to learn? That is not already known. So I'm basically trying to look at the effects of low flow and my study is really looking at what the affects are at a really fine scale. So I'm tracking, uh, juvenile steel head growth, movement and survival and I'm tracking them on a weekly basis. So [00:05:00] it's pretty fine scale monitoring, which is something that hasn't really been been carried out before. And the low-flow period is when, uh, the low, the low flow start after the last records. Speaker 4: And as the, as a temperature gets warmer, the stream starts to dry and it pretty much lasts throughout the summer until the first rains of the following year. Are you collaborating with other people on your project? Not directly with my lab mates on [00:05:30] my project. Sometimes they might come out and help me, but for the most part I've been working alone with the help of some undergraduates. There are certain side projects that we collaborate on. Um, there's also a person who is working with me from, uh, from a different department. He's not really working on my project, but, uh, something that's related to my project out on my field site. It mean it helps both of you? Yeah, definitely. And is that going to have some bearing is his, his [00:06:00] work or her work and I have some impact on your results. It definitely is connected. It is connected to, I'm more at the temperature and looking at how stratification and pull temperature stratification in pools might affect fish behavior. Speaker 4: So where, where they kind of hang out in the pool. So that's something that could definitely help us fold into your report. Yeah, exactly. So in doing your research [00:06:30] and working in the field as opposed to, uh, if you're working in the field and the lab, how much time do you spend in the field and in the lab? Um, when I'm out during the summer, uh, during my field season, it's a pretty big chunk of it. About 80 to 85% is probably spent in the field and the remainder is spent in the lab. Um, but once the summer is over and on, the field season is over. Most of the time is spent in the lab, um, [00:07:00] crunching data, processing samples and stuff like that. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 2: you're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Today we're talking with Jason Juan about his research into summertime streaming drying its effect on Fish CollagenSpeaker 5: [00:07:30] [inaudible]. Speaker 4: And so was there fish breeding going on in this part of the Stream? I would assume that that's the reason they're up there. Yeah. So one of the adults jump up into the stream. They breed typically during the winter when the rains, they come back with the rains [00:08:00] and they breed and the eggs hatch and spring. And then I kind of track the juveniles once they get to a large enough size to be able to monitor to them. So as you start to go up in the early spring, you're seeing lots of of small fish. Yeah. And it's so the fish that have spawned, have they left then or are do some stay? Yeah, but most of them have left. They're too large to stay in some of these pools. So most of them leave and with the Coho that or [00:08:30] they die right after they breed because they just breed once and they die. Speaker 4: But with the, with the steelhead, they're able to breed multiple times. And Are you tracking it all that mortality of the coho that are coming up and breeding? No, but the park service is definitely keeping track of adults, adult spawners they go up every winter and quantify the amount of a salmon reds, which are the nests that someone is build. And they also try to [00:09:00] keep track of how many fish, adult fish that they see. Talk about the insects in the fish in the same context of the frequency. So with, with the insects, um, it's, it's a pretty disturbing method to go and collect them. So we try not to collect them too frequently. We recollect them once at the beginning of the summer and again at the end of the summer. So we don't want to disturb the habitat too much that we have to kind of dig in [00:09:30] to the stream and it just disrupts, disrupts things a lot. Speaker 4: So we try to keep the frequency down and with the fish, um, we go out again, it's similar to to the insects that's we have to go and shock them and which as you can imagine, um, is quite stressful to the fish. So we shock them once in the beginning, beginning of the summer and we place pit tags into them, um, which allows us to monitor them across [00:10:00] the summer without having to actually handle them. Also, while we, um, capture them during the first event, we weigh them and measure them. And then during the late season capture event, we weigh them and measure them again and we're able to identify which the fish that were tagged, we were able to determine their growth rates and their survival. In addition, we can monitor them using the pet tags. We have a, a [00:10:30] handheld antenna that we take out and we just place it over the stream and we're able to find out where they're located or, and also if they're other still alive. Speaker 4: So that happens pretty much once a week. So the pet tag is like a radio. Gotcha. Yeah, it's an audio id, tariff id similar to what is found in a for pets, the microchips that they use for pets. And then you can also measure the mortality with that as well I guess if, yeah, so we go [00:11:00] out and we try to track their movement and also if we find a pit tag, we just kind of disturb the area around, uh, around the tag lightly. And if, if the tag isn't moving, then we kind of can surmise that there has been a mortality event that that occurred. Do you remove the fish or the die or now it's pretty hard to find them because we don't track them every day. So, so things happen [00:11:30] within the week and sometimes we kind of look around for the tag but it's pretty hard to find the tag. Speaker 4: But if we do come across any fish we do, we do take you back to the lab. Any dead Fisher and they are often tagged or have they not? Some of them are just untagged. We try to tag as many fish that we can capture at that are a certain size. They to be a certain size and size for them. So we do try to capture and tag every fish that is of [00:12:00] a certain size, but whether we do within that period of time that you can do the, that you're doing the tagging because you try to limit that. Yeah. How long is that period? What do you do? I've tried to do it all in a week. Three to four days. The tagging, the taking takes about three to four days. The caption and taking. And what's that like in terms of a process? Is it, is it you and a bunch of people doing it together? Speaker 4: Yeah. Take a little group out. Yeah, we actually took a group out, um, and we actually stayed out there for the three, three or four days. We wanted to get an early start [00:12:30] in the day and it takes about an hour to get, get out there each day. So we just decided to stay out there and it's actually quite fun. Um, most, most people really everybody volunteers to do to do like fish capturing. They're like, oh yeah, I want to do that. It's something that the interns really enjoyed. So is that time that you're in the creek, are you actually standing in the creek? So I, yeah, I actually get into the creek and I have a, an electrical Fisher and I move through the creek, [00:13:00] shocking the fish and there are a couple of them matters beside me on the scoop up any fish that had been shocked and we placed them into a bucket and then from there we kind of weigh them and measure them after, after all the fish have been captured for a certain pool. So you do this pool by Paul? Yeah, exactly. Speaker 5: You [00:13:30] are listening to spectrum on KLX Berkeley. We're talking with Jason y about his researching the summertime scream drying and its effect. Speaker 4: So Jason, how did you get interested in science when you were in high school, say or college? [00:14:00] I've always kind of really been interested in science as a kid. I really enjoyed reading science textbooks and it was as one of my favorite subjects and I just decided to stick with it. And I, I majored as a, as a biology student. And what about it appealed to you when you were young? It was like, it was the investigative process, [00:14:30] I guess that that appealed to me. It was just something that you can go out and observe and I really like that, that you can, you can actually just go out and see how nature works. And I was really fascinated by that. So biology was sort of the entree and then as you went through high school, College, yeah, I majored in biology and I really enjoyed my ecology class, just getting up out [00:15:00] there and I wasn't too keen on the molecular side of biology, but the ecological part aspect of it was really fun to get out there and observe things. And, and so it was it field work then that led you to streams? Yeah, I actually worked as a, as an undergraduate. I worked with a professor of mine and he would take me out into streams in southern California and it was quite a great experience for me. And what sort of work and studies research [00:15:30] was he doing? He was, he was doing, uh, population, uh, studies of endangered and threatened fish in southern California. Speaker 4: So when you're in the lab, what sort of data are you gathering? So for instance, with the leaf litter bags and the Algo production, um, when we come back from the field we have to process those samples. So we deploy tiles and we have to scrape off the LG from the tiles. And then we [00:16:00] have to run an analysis to quantify chlorophyll production. With the leaflet or bags that we set out, we bring them back and we, we way leaves in them and quantify how much leaf litter mass has been lost across time. What is it about the algae that you want to know in the river? With both the algae and the leaf litter, we want to see how the stream drying effects say Algal PR productivity or leaf litter decomposition. So we want [00:16:30] to see how much, how much Algo productivity there is in the early part of the summer when or when the stream is still pretty connected. Speaker 4: And then again, we want to track that change over time to see how productivity changes as the string gets dry and dry and with the leaf decomposition, same thing, seeing it over the, over the time, yeah. We want to see how decomposition rates change as the stream gets dryer and with that we're finding that decomposition rates slowed down quite a bit. [00:17:00] As the stream dries, there's less microbial activity, less insect funner to shut up the leaves. Are there other key data points that you're collecting out of the stream? Yes. I'm trying to measure the volume of water in the creek. Mostly the volume of water in between the pools of the fast flowing portions called riffles. I tried to measure how much water is in these portions and I go out pretty much every week and measure the dimensions [00:17:30] of the riffles and I'm able to get volume on every week and I'm able to quantify how this volume gets smaller and smaller every week. Eventually these, these pools are isolated and there's no more flow exactly. Between pools. Yeah. The, the riffles just most of them completely dry up by the end of summer. Speaker 3: And so the fish are then isolated in these, yeah, they're isolated. Speaker 4: The there aren't able to move among the different pools Speaker 3: at this point. Is it too soon in your study to, to [00:18:00] reflect on what you might conclude? Well, I'm, Speaker 4: I'm already seeing some pretty drastic inter-annual variation and precipitation in the area. So as I mentioned earlier, 2009 was a very dry and that was your first year? Yeah, 2009 was a very dry year, so I noticed that there was quite a bit of a mortality for the fishes. Uh, this past year, 2010 and during that summer was a lot wetter. There was a lot more habitat for the fish. A survival was a lot higher. So [00:18:30] Marty seen, uh, some significant results in terms of inter annual variation and how more extreme temperatures and extreme dry might influence the fish population. Speaker 3: Is there any part of water quality that you're measuring? Speaker 4: Temperature and a dissolved oxygen levels? Not In terms of pollution really, but a temperature and dissolved oxygen are are really key for [00:19:00] some almond species in particular, they require cool temperatures that are pretty well oxygenated. Speaker 3: The information that you're getting from your study will have an impact on other streams and creek management potentially. Yeah, that's, that's my hope Speaker 4: is that especially in certain areas where water withdrawals occur and there needs to be a certain amount of a water, hopefully our findings can maybe influence these areas where water withdrawals occur in the [00:19:30] stream comes even more dry than they typically should naturally. Speaker 3: Jason, thanks very much for coming in and talking about your research. Yes. Speaker 6: Oh, Speaker 7: [inaudible].Speaker 3: A regular feature of spectrum is dimension. [00:20:00] A few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Joining me this week to bring you the calendar is Rick Karnofsky. Speaker 8: In 1848 gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada mountains luring people by the thousands to California. Join Ranger Tammy on Saturday, August 13th from 11 to noon to find out how this event changed the San Francisco Bay forever at the Bay model visitors center in Sausalito. This is a free event on Saturday August 13th at 4:30 PM Christopher de Carlo [00:20:30] will present how to be a really good pain in the ass. A critical thinkers guide to asking the right questions at Kelly's Irish pub, five 30 Jackson Street, San Francisco visit. Reason for reason.org for more info. That's r. E a s o n, the number four R e a. S. O. N. Dot. O. R. G. Speaker 3: The science at Kow lecture series for August will be presented by Dr Willie Michaelson and is entitled nanotechnology, Enabling Environmental Monitoring. [00:21:00] Dr Michelson is the executive director of the center of Integrated Nano Mechanical Systems known as coin's, a nanoscale science and Engineering Center headquartered at UC Berkeley dedicated to enabling and realizing novel environmental monitoring applications using nanotechnology. The date of the lecture is Saturday, August 20th at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room. 100 Speaker 8: August 17th center night takes [00:21:30] place at the rickshaw. Stop. One 55 [inaudible] street at Van Ness in San Francisco from seven 30 to 10:00 PM at this $8 old age of show you'll hear talks about winery building, a virtual reality chocolate factory and neutrophils, one of the first immune cells to reach infection sites. Be there and be square. Visit SF dot [inaudible] Dot Com that's SF dot n e r, d an ite.com Speaker 8: nightlife takes place Thursday nights from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM at the California [00:22:00] Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It is 21 and over and pictures music, cocktails and exhibits centered around a theme. In addition, the regular exhibits such as the rainforest and planetarium will be open. August 25th nightlife is on dinosaurs. Paleo lab will present a fossil shone till featuring trilobytes Coprolites, Aka fossilized dyno poop and other amazing fines that are 65 to 500 million years old. Check out additional specimens from the academy's research collections and at dyno burlesque. Show [00:22:30] the planetarium will feature cosmic collisions, a fulldome show depicting the hypersonic impacts that drive the evolution of the universe, including a recreation of the meteorite impact that hastened the end of the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Clearing the way for mammals like us to thrive admission is $12 for more info and for tickets, visit www.cal academy.org that's www dot c a l a c a d e m y dot o r g Speaker 3: [00:23:00] and now several news stories. This item from the inside science news service scientists battle the dramatic declines of honeybee colonies with targeted breeding. There are a handful of pests and diseases that individually and in combination are causing unprecedented mortality in [00:23:30] honeybee colonies in Europe and North America. Serious efforts are being made to find solutions that can eradicate the pests and diseases. While the search for a solution continues. Researchers in Canada and the United States are attempting to bees that are resistant to Mites and viruses that attack bee colonies. The breeding process exposes the Queens to high levels of what is termed disease pressure. According to Rob Curie, professor of entomology [00:24:00] at the University of Manitoba. The survivors are then bred next season and so on. Seven generations have been bred so far. We are looking for bees that are resistant to mites and with a greater tolerance to viruses because they appear to be the two main factors behind colony loss. Speaker 3: QRI said and added breeding attribute pursued by the Canadian breeders is the ability to withstand the brutal North American winters. Curious said [00:24:30] that normally only 46% of the species known as European honeybees survive the Canadian winter, but the newest generations have a 75% survival rate. The total losses from managed honeybee colonies in the United States were 30% from all causes for the 2010 2011 winter according to the annual survey conducted by the US Department of Agriculture and the apiary inspectors of America. [00:25:00] This is roughly similar to the losses reported in similar surveys done in the four previous years. This story from Metta page today, lab grown trickier implanted in patient June 9th, 2011 at the Karolinska University Hospital in hunting, Stockholm, Sweden. Dr Paolo Macchiarini implanted the first ever bio artificial trachea grown on a synthetic [00:25:30] substrate using the patient's own stem cells. The patient was a 36 year old cancer patient for this procedure. Dr Macchiarini and his colleagues collected stem cells from the patient who had late stage tracheal cancer since no suitable donor windpipe was available. The researchers used a nano composite tracheal scaffold designed and built by Alexander Se Follian Phd of the University College London. [00:26:00] They seated the polymer model with auto Lucas stem cells. These are blood forming stem cells and grew them for two days in a bioreactor. Dr Mk Jadine says there's no room for rejection because of the cells are the patient's own. Thus, there is no need for him to be on immuno suppressive drugs. Speaker 2: [inaudible] [00:26:30] occurred during the show is pointless on a David Kearns album, folk and acoustic made available for creative Commons license 3.0 attribution [inaudible] mm editing assistance provided by Judith White Marceline production assistance provided by [00:27:00] Karnofsky [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear if you have comments or questions, please send them to us via email address. Is Spectrum. K A l s yahoo.com Speaker 5: [00:27:30] genius at this same time. [inaudible] Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:28:00] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

CRS engages educators, students, and scientists in an innovative web of science learning resources, transforming science education. CRS is a group of educators and scientists working together to excite children about learning through scientific exploration of the world.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: [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, a calendar of local events and news. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with three representatives of the organization, community resources for science, also known as crs. They are, relieves [00:01:00] a is cotton Nova crs program, Assistant Professor Bob Bergman of the UC Berkeley Department of chemistry. And Miriam Bowering, a graduate student and Professor Bergman's research group. Community Resources for Science is a nonprofit organization. The goal of crs is to help teachers give elementary and middle school students more opportunities to do science, to ask questions, test ideas, get their hands [00:01:30] on real science activities. Through these efforts, crs hopes to inspire the next generation of thinkers, makers, problem solvers, and leaders. This interview is prerecorded and edited today. We have a group of three people from the community resources for science talking with us about their program. And why don't you each introduce yourself and then we'll get into some details about your organization.Speaker 3: [00:02:00] My name is [inaudible]. Uh, I'm the program assistant at community resources for science.Speaker 4: My name is Bob Bergman. I'm a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley. And I help to organize an outreach program, which was initially called chemistry in the classroom and then became community in the classroom and now it's called basis and it helps to organize graduate students to do presentations in the local schools.Speaker 3: I'm Miriam Bowering. I am a graduate student in chemistry at UC [00:02:30] Berkeley and I'm also a classroom volunteer. I bring groups of my coworkers into fifth grade classrooms to do science with them.Speaker 2: We're Alyssa, can you give us an overview of what crs does?Speaker 3: Community resources for science is an organization that was started by two parents who were involved with a lot of science in their children's schools and they decided that there was now enough science being done, so they figured out a way to individual teachers [00:03:00] get the resources that they need, uh, Ba snails from a local store or books that they need, um, or waste organized field trips. And it evolved into bringing scientists into classrooms to do hands on presentations as well. And that's grown from that? Uh, yeah. I mean now we're able to organize hundreds of volunteers that we have go into, uh, over 280 classrooms this past year [00:03:30] and get kids involved in doing actual science. And where is it that, uh, that you do this? What school districts? Uh, yeah, we are primarily in Alameda County and the Berkeley and Oakland School districts, uh, that we do the actual presentations because um, our volunteers can reach those areas most easily those schools.Speaker 3: But we go out and provide services to teachers and Castro valley as well. And some of the other West [00:04:00] Contra Costa County schools. What's the grade range that you try to impact? Crs as an organization has been supporting teachers k through five from its beginnings and we've started expanding into middle schools, so mostly sixth grade, um, because they still have one science teacher, but seventh and eighth they kind of start to branch out into different subjects. However, we do still work with teachers in seventh and eighth grade and we're very [00:04:30] willing to provide them with the personal support on an individual basis that they might need, you know, requesting resources and things like that. And we do go into middle schools and do science days where we have four or five lessons going on for different classrooms and they do, you know, one set in the morning and then they switch it around and do another set in the afternoon. And for teachers to get involved, how did they do that? Free?Speaker 5: Uh, yes it is. I think they can just visit the website, [00:05:00] which is www.crscience.org all the information they need is there. So they can not only contact crs to get scientists into their classrooms, but they can also look for other kinds of resources on the website there.Speaker 3: How do you find volunteers? How do you go about recruiting a, we actually recruited a lot more volunteers this past year than [00:05:30] we have in the past. And we're really excited about that. And thanks to our campus coordinators, Leah and Kristen, we were able to really reach out to 20 of the departments on campus and we have volunteers from 20th think what is their 21 departments here at UC Berkeley? So we're really proud of that. And Bob has done a great job of really getting the word out in the Department of Chemistry and college chemistry. A little bit about, how about the history of that isSpeaker 4: this really started [00:06:00] almost accidentally. I was at a party and one of the people from crs was someone that my wife had gone to a graduate school at UC Berkeley with and she said that they were thinking about trying to get more scientists into the classrooms and wondered if I knew of anybody who wanted to do that. So I said I would go back to the campus and send out an email message in my department and just see if anyone was interested in doing that because it must have been seven or eight [00:06:30] years ago, I guess. And we started with a group of about 12 volunteers. Uh, we met in a seminar room in the chemistry department and I think it was probably one of the original organizers. It was probably Anne Jennings who came over and gave a short talk about what crs was all about and what they wanted to do to organize this program.Speaker 4: It's not a very simple thing. You not only need to have good contacts with the teachers, but, uh, you can't just throw people [00:07:00] into the classroom directly. You've got to give them some training and, you know, get them to understand what, um, what's age appropriate. Especially for the classes we were targeting, which were grades three to five. So we started with those 12 people and they basically, at that time, I put together their own presentations. And one of the interesting things about this program is that the graduate student volunteers actually come up with their own presentations, mostly isn't canned presentations that they get some [00:07:30] from somewhere else and they've come with, come up with some extremely creative stuff. Um, they're teaching kids at this level of things that I personally, you know, are really relatively sophisticated. And I personally never thought that you'd be able to, you know, sort of do this with people at that age.Speaker 4: But that was reasonably successful and it's really been the graduate student volunteers who've done most of the recruiting. So it started out in the chemistry department and these 12 original people [00:08:00] began to kind of, you know, dragoon their friends into doing this. And so it grew from 12 to 20 to 40 to 50 and then they began to attract and talk to some people in other departments. And then we reached a point where we thought that maybe there was a slightly different way that we could do this. They came up with the idea that maybe instead of doing this on an individual basis, we could do it with teams of graduate students. You may know that [00:08:30] that in most science departments, graduate students are part of research groups. So there'll be one professor who directs a, you know, a bunch of graduate students whom anywhere from three or four to 15 or 20 people, sometimes larger.Speaker 4: Uh, so the idea was to now put together teams that would be localized. Each team would be localized in a particular research group that and that has several advantages. One was that someone who wanted to do this didn't have to join in as kind of a lone individual. There's [00:09:00] always a certain reticence about that. The other thing that I think major advantage of this change was that it generated some continuity so that graduate students are not here forever or at least we hope they are not. And uh, as they graduate and before they graduate, they begin to bring in new students first year students who see that this program is going on and see that there are people who are interested in excited about it. And so that really is a major attraction for people to sign up.Speaker 1: [00:09:30] [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley we are talking with release has gotten over Professor Bob Bergman and Miriam Bowering about their work with community resources for science.Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say that one of the other things [00:10:00] that I worried about when we started this program was what, what their response was going to be from the research directors. That professors that these graduate students we're working with. Okay. Because you know, you, you could envision, um, somebody giving these kids a hard time because you know, they should be in the lab doing research and here they are out doing presentations in the local schools. I've seen my role as trying to, at least in the chemistry department, keep the faculty informed about what's going on. So right from the beginning when we started [00:10:30] this, uh, I, you know, got up at several meetings. My Chemistry Department faculty meets once a week and I gave several very short presentations telling people that graduate students were going to be doing this and that we hope that everybody would be supportive of it because we thought it was not only good for them educationally, but it was a real service to the community.Speaker 4: One of the things that that actually made this thing go much more smoothly than I might've thought is that a lot of people are supported, their research is supported by the National Science Foundation at [00:11:00] Berkeley and the National Science Foundation has actually required as part of their proposals, something called a statement of broader impact. And one of those broader impacts that you can put into your proposals is something about how people in your research group might be, you know, reaching out to the local community. So I think as time went on, people began to view this not so much as an incursion, as a favor to them because they could easily then put in their proposals the fact that their students were [00:11:30] involved in this and these activities. And I think that really was one of the things that that made it a lot less of a problem to do this and many research groups around the, around the campus, what is the teaching philosophy you apply to building your lesson plans?Speaker 4: There's a lot of, you know, ambiguity's about the research that's been done in educating people. One thing comes through extremely clearly and that is the two general ways that you can think of [00:12:00] or for educating people, and this is really true at any level including the college level, are to stand up in front of them and just talk at them and the other is get people involved in doing things, have them actually do hands on stuff. On the two founders started this, they knew that that kind of research had been done and so they started from the beginning making it clear to people that they were not the volunteers. I mean that they were not going to go in the classroom and just a lecture. Okay, just write things on the board and tell people stuff because [00:12:30] certainly at grades three to five and probably at even higher grades, you're going to lose people after about the first three minutes when you do that. So the, the goal of right from the beginning was to go in with presentations that involved having the kids do stuff that with their own hands and that's been something that we've stuck with really I think quite religiously since the beginning.Speaker 5: Definitely all lessons are expected to be hands on minds, [00:13:00] on, uh, inquiry style work. And Bob mentioned that the typical way you get to scientists in a classroom is someone's mom or dad comes in. And also typically what you get is someone's stands at the front and maybe doesn't talk but maybe just blow something up up there, which is fun for everyone. But it's, it's really great to go in there and gives the kids equipment to play with and let them start figuring things out themselves and, [00:13:30] and be able to guide them. I think it's also interesting to see the way we're able to even help educate teachers a little bit about how science works. So I've seen some really amazing teachers through this program, but you know, none of them are scientists and a lot of them don't really understand basically what it takes to be a scientist.Speaker 5: So at the end we usually give a few minutes to talk about any questions the teacher or students might have. And the teachers say, well, what does it take to be a scientist? [00:14:00] Um, and we might say, well just keep observing the world around you. Stay curious, play with things. And the teacher says, so what they meant to say was study hard and no, no, that's not it. You've got to be able to nurture that natural curiosity kids have. So I think that's a big part of what we do is go in there and kill some myths about what it takes to be a scientist. The great thing about the graduate [00:14:30] students that go in is they shatter stereotypes about scientists for the children. What do you see clip art style in your head when someone says scientist. Right. And that's not what ends up in their classroom. And that's really beautiful to see them kind of taken aback by that. When scientists first in, you know,Speaker 3: young and most of our volunteers are female actually, which is another great plus and young female scientists [00:15:00] doing things that kids didn't think was science.Speaker 4: Yeah. I think that it just turns out that graduate students are almost the ideal place in people's Times of life to do this. I have a bit more time flexibility. They still are still working very hard on their research, but you know, it's not, you know, okay, you have to be here at eight o'clock in the morning, you have to leave at five, you know, the way you would in a corporation setting. They're not overly wellmed with classes, at least not [00:15:30] after the first couple of semesters. So they have some flexibility in, in that regard. And there's a reasonable support from the institution. Right. I think that's a big issue that the, the campus and you know, and uh, as I said to a large extent, the, you know, people's research advisors have really provided a lot of at least moral support for this. And so it, it really makes graduate students almost ideal.Speaker 4: I think what relates is said about, you know, shattering these stereotypes is also has been a really interesting sort of eye opener for me. [00:16:00] It really is true that these kids have a very different stereotype about what scientists are from what they see coming into the classrooms and having people who they see almost as kind of corresponding to s you know, to a big sister or cousin or you know, somebody that, you know, they really can relate to I think has had a big effect. And then having people at, you know, sort of the student time of their lives when they're still young enough to be, to be seen as young people by the kids in the classrooms [00:16:30] as I think been an important facet of this. [inaudible]Speaker 1: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with releases, got Nova Professor Bob Burg and Miriam Bowery about their work with community resources for science.Speaker 3: [00:17:00] How do you assess the impact your presentations have on students?Speaker 4: Um, no. You put your finger on one of the stickiest issues with respect to all of this kind of thing with respect to education in general, which is not only how do you find out if it works, but how do you define what works? And you know, whether something works and what doesn't, [00:17:30] I think when all of us like to do in the most perfect world is, is actually track the people who experience these presentations and see what difference it makes in their lives. Okay. So this is a big deal, right? Because if you know anything about research in general and educational research, it's not enough to just track the people who have had this experience. You've got to have a control group of people who haven't had the experience, right? And then you've got to track two groups. [00:18:00] And you know, in some ways it's, it's like having a drug that's really effective.Speaker 4: There's a real moral question as to whether it's okay to keep a control group that isn't, doesn't have access to this stuff. Right? But assuming you can do that, um, it would require way more resources than we have to track people, let's say to the point where they've applied to college, right? Or even to the point where they've gone through college to see how successful they've been once they've been in that environment. What we hope and what we sort of believe [00:18:30] deep in our hearts completely intuitively is that people who have these experiences will do better later in their educational lives. But proving that in a scientifically respectable way is a major undertaking and it's one that we really don't have resources for by any means right now. So, you know, we're pretty much working under the, the faith I guess that exposing people to this sort of thing will really make them [00:19:00] more interested in science.Speaker 4: So we really believe quite strongly that a, a major impact of this is not just, you know, generating people who, who might turn out to be scientists. Although we certainly hope that would be one of the things that that happens. But we'd really like to educate the general public on scientific issues, how science is done and why it's exciting and the meaning of many scientific investigations is, and we hope that by catching people catching, you know, kids early [00:19:30] and doing this, uh, really will have a lasting effect. The best we can do is get feedback from the people involved in the program and see whether they like it. And if they like it and they feel it's been successful and there you are at the point at which they're experiencing these presentations, if if they're excited about what we're doing. That's what we're going with.Speaker 5: This is the great thing about community resources for science. There is a staff there who are experts in science education, [00:20:00] so I sent my lesson plan draft to Heidi Williamson who coordinates the basis program and she read it. She gave me a long email with lots of suggestions of various levels of detail and I worked them in and I continued to develop as now my team members are giving me feedback and so are the teachers. So the lessons really do get improved over time from that first draft. It's not, it's not just any graduate student can make something up and go in and help the kids [00:20:30] learn something. There really is some accountability [inaudible]Speaker 4: are there any interesting stories that any of you have that you want to share about classroom experiences with with the program?Speaker 5: My favorite moments in there are when kids really put stuff together. So when they hear what we've told them and they make their observations and then they just come up with something good at their own theory for why a water job looks different from an [00:21:00] oil drop and it really makes sense or why you can get a piece of pencil lead to float on water if it's horizontal but not vertical. And when they can explain that themselves after making the observations, it's just, it's incredibly high ventilation rates if you're not right under the dots, but they actually aren't accomplishing anything in terms of air quality. So that's my plug, I guess, for people to pay attention and think about their environment. Sam Bergeson, thanks [00:21:30] for being on spectrum. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: did you see an example of data visualization? Check out the official campus dashboard at the website. My power.berkeley.eduSpeaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: [00:22:00] irregular feature of spectrum is dimension. A few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa cabbage with the calendarSpeaker 6: on Saturday, December 1st wonderfest is putting on a special event called end of days. Does Hollywood get doomsday? Right? Planetary Scientists, Chris McKay will discuss this topic as he introduces a special screening of seeking a friend for the end of the world. [00:22:30] Starting Steve Grill and Karen Knightley popcorn is free and a no host drink and candy bar. We'll be there. Tickets are tax deductible and benefit wonderfest and variety children's charity of northern California. They must be purchased in advance for $25 visit wonderfest.org for more info. The annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union is the first week of December at the Moscone Center. Each year they have a public lecture that is [00:23:00] free and open to the public. This year that talk is on Sunday, December 2nd from noon to one and Moscone South Room One oh two lead scientists for the Mars exploration program. Michael Meyer program scientists for the Mars Science Laboratory. John Groton, seeing and participating in scientists on the Mars Science Laboratory. Rebecca Williams, well discuss curiosity driven Mars exploration. Curiosity is the most sophisticated explorer ever sent to another [00:23:30] planet and the trio. We'll talk about its latest activities. A full sized inflatable model of the rover and hands on activities for families will follow the lecture. For more information, visit agu.orgSpeaker 7: on Tuesday, December 4th at 7:00 PM at the California Academy of Science and Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Mary Ellen Hannibal. We'll present the Pritzker lecture, the spine of the continent, her book about one of the single most [00:24:00] ambitious conservation efforts ever undertaken to create linked, protected areas extending from the Yukon to Mexico, the entire length of North America. This movement is the brainchild of Michael Sule, the founder of conservation biology. EO Wilson calls it the most important conservation initiative in the world today. In this fascinating presentation, Mary-Ellen Hannibal takes us on a tour of her travels down the length of the North American spine, sharing stories and anecdotes about [00:24:30] the passionate, idiosyncratic people she meets along the way and the species they love. Reservations are required and seating is limited. Go to the California Academy of Science website for tickets.Speaker 6: Now three new stories, and I'm joined by Rick Kaneski and Lisa cabbage. The November 29th issue of nature has an article discussing a massive black hole in the tiny galaxy, n g c one two seven seven one of the galaxies in the cluster that is [00:25:00] the constellation Perseus to the best of our astronomical knowledge. Almost every galaxy should contain in its central region what is called a supermassive black hole. Past studies have shown that the mass of the black coal typically accounts for about a 10th of a percent of the massive its home galaxy that Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. In Heidelberg. Researchers know that the black hole has a mass equivalent of 17 billion suns, that the galaxy [00:25:30] is only a quarter of the milky ways diameter. These observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Hobby Eberly telescope show that the black hole accounts for almost 14% of the galaxies mass past spectrum guests. Nicholas McConnell published a paper last year that holds the current record for the largest black hole, which is between six and 37 billion solar masses. So the black hole in NGC one to seven seven may or may [00:26:00] not top this record.Speaker 7: The journal Nature Geoscience reports this week that the shells of marine snails known as terra pods living in the seas around Antarctica are being dissolved by ocean acidification. These tiny animals are a valuable food source for fish and birds and play an important role in the oceanic carbon cycle. During a science cruise in 2008 researchers from British Antarctic survey and the University of East Anglia in collaboration with colleagues from the [00:26:30] u s would tell oceanographic institution and Noah discovered severe dissolution of the shells of living terra pods in southern ocean waters. The team examined an area of upwelling where winds cause cold water to be pushed upwards from the deep to the surface of the ocean up well, water is usually more corrosive to a particular type of calcium carbonate or arrogant night that terra pods use to build their shells. The team found that as a result of the additional influence of ocean acidification, [00:27:00] this corrosive water severely dissolve the shells of terror pods, coauthor and science cruise leader.Speaker 7: Dr Geraint Tarling says as one of only a few oceanic creatures that build their shells out of air gunnite in the polar regions. Terror pods are an important food source for fish and birds as well as a good indicator of ecosystem health. The tiny snails do not necessarily die as a result of their shells dissolving. However, it may increase their vulnerability to predation and infection. Consequently having an [00:27:30] impact to other parts of the food web. Ocean acidification is caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere emitted admitted as a result of fossil fuel burning. The finding supports predictions that the impact of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems and food webs may be significantSpeaker 2: science daily reports that dozens of climate scientists have reconciled their measurements of ice sheet changes in Antarctica and Greenland over the past two decades. [00:28:00] The results published November 29th in the journal Science roughly have the uncertainty and discard some conflicting observations. The effort led by Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds in the UK reconciles three existing ways to measure losses. The first method takes an accounting approach. Combining climate models and observations to tally up the gain or loss to other methods. Use special satellites to precisely measure the height and gravitational pull [00:28:30] of the ice sheets to calculate how much ice is present. Each method has strengths and weaknesses. Until now, scientists using each method released estimates independent from the others. This is the first time they have all compared their methods for the same times and locations. Understanding ice sheets is central to modeling global climate and predicting sea level rise. Even tiny changes to sea level when added over an entire ocean can have substantial [00:29:00] effects on storm surges and flooding and coastal and island communities.Speaker 8: The music heard during the show is by Stan David from his album, folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license 3.0 for attribution.Speaker 9: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please [00:29:30] 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.