Alex Herwig Project & Photo

51 years ago on April 12th, 1961, the Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history as the first human to enter outer space. Exactly 20 years later, the United States innovated the space age by launching the Space Shuttle (April 12th, 1981).

Yuri’s Night, which commemorates these events, aims to celebrate humanity’s past present and future in space launches Yuri’s Night celebrations this week around the world. The Bay Area has already started festivities with the inaugural San Francisco SpaceUp unconference. There are also options for celebrating Yuri’s Night in the East Bay, San Francisco and San Jose on April 12, 2012 and throughout next week.

SpaceUp

SpaceUp is an unconference all about space exploration. Participants decide event topics, schedule, and structure. I put on my Yuri’s Night hat and attended the first San Francisco installment of SpaceUp over the weekend of March 31st to April 1st and had a great time.

The unconference approach let a great diversity of people engage and network in a way that led to long conversations after the conference as well as intersection points you never would make at a normal conference. Highlights for me were reconnecting to contacts from NightLife, hearing the sheer enthusiasm of the Kepler Center director as he conveyed results of the mission, seeing the results of a moon-bounce, learning how crowdfunding can let the average person tour around space with the website launch of Idreamofspace.com, and understanding how synthetic biology will play its own part in longer missions and settlement.

East Bay

Kid friendly and family activities will be taking place the day of April 12th from 12pm to 4pm at Chabot Space and Science Center. You can find out if you have the right stuff to be an astronaut in their Astronaut Lab and Beyond Blast Off exhibit. Activities include building a rocket and blasting it into space or trying to keep your heart rate down while being subjected to extreme pressure. Hand-eye-brain coordination can also be tested using black hole goggles.

The Yuri’s Night activities are part of Chabot’s Break into Spring programming and more activities for the week can be found on their website. If you want to stare into the further reaches of space, the observatories are open for extended hours for both daytime and evening viewing throughout the week and weekend.

San Francisco

My museum alma mater, the California Academy of Sciences, will once again feature Yuri’s Night programming for the 21+ crowd at the Space Oddities NightLife on April 12th from 6pm to 10pm. Highlights of the night include: music by the San Francisco favorite DJ collective Space Cowboys, meeting researchers from UC Berkeley Space Science Laboratory, hands on activities at the Surfin’ the Solar Wind Booth, a NASA Kepler Mission presentation by Dr. Steve B. Howell at 7:30pm in the Forum Theater, and special showings of Dawn of the Space Age in the Planetarium. I’m sure cameras will be flashing as Yuri’s Night at Cal Academy has a history of inspiring great intergalactic costumes. Loretta Hildago Whitesides who co-created Yuri’s Night came the first year as a very convincing Princess Leia!

San Jose

Until April 15th, The Tech Museum is featuring a temporary exhibit– NASA’s Destination Station. It tells the story of the International Space Station (ISS) within a multimedia exhibit. You can learn about the 24/7/365 space-based research and how that research affects everyday life on Earth. The exhibit has hands-on activities, imagery and audio-visual technology connecting visitors to the destination of space.

If there are other events that should be highlighted, leave them in the comment section below or register them on the Yuri's Night website.

The San Francisco audio engineer rose early to spend a cold December Sunday taking part in the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count. During the last two weeks of every year, rain or shine, volunteers looking for birds spread out over 22,000 locations including such countries as Peru, Guam, Haiti, the U.S. and Canada. The count is one of the oldest, and largest, citizen science events in the world. The tradition has been taking place since 1900, when birders proposed a ‘kinder’ alternative to an annual bird hunt – a bird survey that scientists now rely on to determine how bird populations are changing.

Oyster catcher. Photo, Alan Krakauer

This year, as part of Oakland’s 71st count, group leader McKereghan and seven volunteers are surveying an urbanized swath of shore along I-80 from Emeryville to Albany. “We’ve got to cover everything, the good and the bad. We will spend a lot of time in parking lots and roadways,” explains McKereghan. A 10 a.m. check-in confirms the group already has spotted more than 30 species including six ruddy ducks, six mallards one great egret and one oyster catcher. McKereghan takes the numbers down on a new iPhone app, the first time he’s not using a pen and paper check list.

Tips for Counting Birds

Now you might wonder, as I did, how one actually counts birds. I mean, it’s not like they are exactly… cooperative. “Certain things like eagles, you take note of the direction and time they are headed. You have to assume that we are missing a huge number of birds so I think it sort of averages itself out nicely,” says McKereghan. He says that when it comes to large flocks, like black birds on a wire next to Golden Gate Fields race track, it’s best to count in groups of ten, rather than individuals. Part of McKereghan’s count area includes the horse track, and his group is given access each year prior to race time. As jockeys put their horses through early morning runs, these bird watchers gather at the top of the bleachers — oblivious to the race horses below. Peering through scopes and binoculars, all eyes are trained on the edge of one of two ponds in the middle of the track. A small brown marsh bird known as a Wilson’s snipe has been spotted. “It has little stripes on its head, oh I have a good view,” exclaims one birder.

A Popular Hobby

You may have noticed birders get really excited over things that non-birders would not even notice. But these folks are definitely not alone. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates there are about 48 million birders in the U.S. – that’s more than twice as large as the television audience for the World Series. These hobbyists obsess over birds the way some fans obsess about sports.

Audubon volunteer Phila Rogers. Photo Credit, Nancy Warren

80-year-old Phila Rogers has been birding since she was eight. She explains the hobby as a kind of ‘madness.’ “You know, I took time off to have children and have love affairs but the birding was always there it was ready to bubble up from everything else,” says Rogers. The long time birder has served her time slogging through rain and chilly temperatures to complete the Christmas Count. Now Rogers participates as one of a few feeder watchers who observe birds, in her case, from her living room through a window onto her backyard deck, high in the Berkeley hills. You would think Rogers has seen it all but this year offered something really exciting. “For the first time in almost sixty years of watching birds at these feeders on this hill I see a white-throated sparrow. This is so big. So I actually took pictures. For me it was really exciting because it’s count day,” she says. Rogers could hardly wait to share her find at the area count compilation dinner.

Compilation Dinner

About one hundred birders gather in the community hall of a church in north Berkeley. Tired and hungry from a long day in the field, the volunteers turn in their check lists and warm up on hot chocolate. Although these birders skewed older, there were a few counters under 12, one already asleep on his dad’s lap. I caught up with two members of my group from earlier, Kevin McKereghan and Alan Krakauer, both excited over their high species count for the day, 110 total. Says Krakauer, "We had nice weather which is sort of a double bonus. For me Wild Turkeys were a big surprise to see way down into the flats and the urban area.” Kevin McKereghan thinks for a moment about what sighting most surprised him, “I think the white-throated swift and the pygmy nuthatch.” This year was even more special for the local birders because of the release of the long-awaited Alameda County Breeding Bird Atlas.

Wild turkeys. Photo, Alan Krakauer

As the evening went on, Oakland Count leaders Bob Lewis and Dave Quady, who both got up at 2:30 in the morning to count owls, ran through a check list of common birds. Next, presentations were given on special sightings and omissions. While some species like peregrine falcons and wild turkeys have been growing in number, the bird count also has shown some troubling trends. The National Audubon Society has documented a 40 percent drop in migratory birds over the past four decades, some common bird numbers have dropped by half, and there has been a move by some species north which could be an indicator of climate change. With the data, Audubon tries to take steps to mitigate some of the changes.

Photo by Dimaano Photography

On Monday night, I caught myself, while waiting at a crosswalk, squinting at the oncoming traffic and studying the difference intensities of light coming off of car headlights. I was trying to figure out which headlights were LEDs and which ones were incandescents. I missed my signal to cross and had to wait for the next light change because of my musings.

My musings were inspired by a 90-minute walk through a hilly region of the city led by Robin Marks. Robin, a biochemist, science journalist and former science tinkerer at the Exploratorium, started Discovery Street Tours this past July. The website describes the tours as “more than just a walking tour. It’s an urban investigation of the science under your feet, in your food, and in your life. You’ll demo the science for yourself with hands-on activities, eat some tasty treats, and meet other folks like yourself—curious, active, and a little beyond the ordinary.”

Science got festive on the night of Sunday, December 11th as 18 of us, bundled against the cold and misting fog headed up 20th Street for the The Science of (Holiday) Light preview tour. Through the up-and-down mile and half route, we took frequent stops to admire holiday handiwork, discuss the history of holiday lights, view the different types and understand how our brains were taking in light signals.

My favorite part of the tour was when we stopped at a corner house strung with both LED and incandescent holiday lights. We were encouraged to look closely and notice the difference in both the quality and brightness of light. While incandescent bulbs use a filament to produce light and heat, LEDs (light emitting diodes) are lower energy semi-conducters. LEDs shoot out light in a straight line. After learning this, I was able to identify the LED string of lights not only by the light but the crystal cut bulbs around the light that enabled the straight line of light to be refracted — making the iconic twinkling glow associated with holiday lights.

As a nerd herder and being generally inquisitive about science, this was a very satisfying tour. I was able to ramble through the city taking in wonderful panoramic scenes in one instance and then turn around and look closer at the mundane with awe at how I was seeing it with new insight and understanding. My fellow tour-goers raised other questions about light and color, as our curiosity was further sparked by what we were seeing and learning. One conversation that got started involved pollinators; which insects and birds are attracted to the red over white flowers, and the effects the visible spectrum they see have on how they pollinate species of flowers.

As this was a preview, the inquisitive can still put science in their step. Robin will be leading The Science of (Holiday) Light tour several more times in December, including Christmas Eve and the evening of Christmas Day. Tours start at 6:30pm and all the dates, more details and booking information can be found online.

Photo by BruceTurner on Flickr

Local technology entrepreneurs, investors and a gaggle of tech loving folk will be descending on SF Beta tonight, the largest networking event for startup junkies in the Bay Area.

SF Beta's regular events offer early stage startups (those with under $1 million in funding) a chance to demo their product or service to a room of over 500 fellow technology fans. Companies will demo at SF Beta to gain exposure, meet business partners and grab the attention of investors. Part interactive competition, all the attendees receive three chips, simulating investment poker chips. Participants place their "bets" on their favorite demos and winners receive extra exposure at the event and online.

Started in September of 2006 by Christian Perry, the event is now entering into its fifth year. Perry created the event due to a lack of technology mixers for the next generation of startups. He pulled together the first event in two weeks and hasn't looked back. What started out as a hobby has become Perry's full time job. He now organizes quarterly "beta" events in Seattle, Bolder, NY, Boston and Dublin. SF Beta runs every other month.

Tonight's mobile game edition features 14 demos. For coding enthusiasts, Code Hero will be demoing its game which teaches Javascript through a game interface while Joypad will be showing off its app which turns an iPhone into a game controller. Snapzing, a social photo game, encourages users to take photos with their phone and compete in daily contests where they can win real prizes. With a dozen more gaming demos, this should be an inspiring event.

SF Beta is being held at Terra SF. The event runs from 6 – 9pm and costs $25 per person. For more information, visit SF Beta.

Be amazed at the Bay Area Science Festival! Photo: Bay Area Science Festival.

The Bay Area Science Festival, a 10-day celebration of science, starts this week. There are over 50 exciting events throughout the Bay Area, including hikes, lectures, and concerts. From a day of hands-on activities with Stanford’s Genetics department to a hawk talk in the Marin Headlands, from an exploration of food at the farmers’ market to a screening of the movie Contact with astronomer Jill Tarter (on whom Jodie Foster’s character was based), there is something for everyone.

Here are some of the highlights: MythBuster Adam Savage will talk with author Mary Roach about her book Packing for Mars. Science writer Carl Zimmer will talk with two UCSF scientists about tiny friends and foes in Gut Check: The Hidden World of Microbes. RadioLab will be live at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall.

Check out Dinosaurs vs. Robots at the Lawrence Hall of Science on Sunday, October 30.

At Dinosaurs vs. Robots at the Lawrence Hall of Science, you can do hands-on activities to see for yourself which is the most awesome: paleontology or engineering. KQED will moderate a discussion, The Challenge and Promise of Artificial Intelligence, with researchers from Microsoft and Google at the Computer History Museum in San Jose. And there are three Discovery Days, packed with free shows, exhibits, and games. The Discovery Days are at Cal State East Bay (10/29), Infineon Raceway (11/5), and AT&T Park (11/6). If you go, keep an eye out for QUEST’s table! Find more fun stuff on the calendar—be sure to click over to see the events in November, too.

The Bay Area Science Festival is part of a growing movement to celebrate science in the community. The festivals bring together different organizations and individuals to engage diverse audiences in science. The Bay Area Science Festival is organized by the Science and Heath Education Partnership at the University of California, San Francisco—along with dozens of partners. Science festivals started in the UK; now there are annual festivals in Philadelphia and Cambridge, Mass. And last year the first USA Science and Engineering Festival descended on the National Mall in Washington DC. To find a science festival near you, check out this map.

I’ll be representing the Lawrence Hall of Science at the Discovery Day in AT&T Park on Sunday November 6—the Festival’s finale. Hope to see you there!

Curious to know how sex and technology intersect? Arse Elektronika is certain to titillate. This year's theme, "screw the system" looks to explore questions such as:

"What are the labor conditions of non-Western workers who make most of the world's sex toys? What's the environmental footprint of a technologically assisted orgasm? How does the criminalization or stigma of sex tech production harm the communities in which it is produced? What's the product life-cycle and planning horizon of sex tech? What are the barriers to entry for sex tech production? How important is intellectual property to sex tech, and how is it enforced?"

The event kicks off its opening night with the Prixxx Arse award for the best in sex machines, orgasmotrons and teledildonics on Thursday, September 29th at Chez Poulet. The event is organized by the Austrian art collective, monochrom.

Talks at the event include such topics as "Making a Mind Controlled Dildo" and hands on workshops for the DIY crowd.

While Arse Elektronika isn't going to please all, I can't imagine a city better suited for such an event. For the curious, you can check out the full schedule on Arse Elektronika's website.

Right on the heels of California Wine Month and the beginning of grape harvest, comes Ken Burns latest documentary: Prohibition. The six hour series, which airs on PBS stations October 2nd, takes us back to an infamous thirteen year time period in our nation’s history when the commercial production and sale of alcohol was banned. For those not glued to the prohibition era TV series Boardwalk Empire, the 18th Amendment was passed in 1920 at the urging of the temperance movement.

Prohibition agents. Photo: Library of Congress

California’s wine industry, which had recently rebounded from a major pest infestation and was poised for great things, was devastated by Prohibition. Vineyards were ripped up and a majority of the more than six hundred wineries were shuttered. The few that remained open did so by producing wine for religious purposes. Beaulieu Vineyard was one of them. Founder Georges de Latour was a Catholic and a friend of the archbishop of San Francisco. Latour cut a deal to sell wine to all the priests in the diocese.

Prohibition was supposed to curb alcohol consumption, but instead the party went underground, giving rise to a thriving criminal economy run by bootleggers and gangsters. Port cities, like San Francisco, managed to stay pretty wet during those dry years, thanks to illegal liquor brought ashore in the dead of night, carried on ships from Canada. The roaring twenties saw the rise of a new breed of young women, known as "flappers," while beer, wine and spirits—some bootlegged, some made in basement stills flowed in hundreds of backroom speakeasies.

Flappers in the prohibition era. Photo: ©Scherl / Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo / The Image Works

After years of lawlessness, the 18th Amendment was eventually repealed. You can still visit remnants of the prohibition era throughout the Bay Area. Some former San Francisco speakeasies still remain and dozens of wineries survived Prohibition.

Called “Ghost Wineries” some have become homes, others used as barns or shopping complexes in Yountville and St. Helena. A handful of wineries have been restored and now have a second life including Freemark Abbey, Far Niente, Hall Wines and Storybook Mountain Vineyards in Calistoga.

Freemark Abbey 1898. Photo courtesy of Freemark Abbey

We’ve come along way since the dry days of Prohibition, in just seventy five years the state’s award winning wine industry has built itself up to be a world leader with more than 3,300 bonded wineries. But a new threat looms — this one from mother nature. Research shows that California's prime wine producing areas could shrink dramatically over the next three decades from climate change.

Find out much more about the past and future of California wines at California Academy of Sciences Prohibition NightLife this Thursday evening. You can purchase tickets online for the event or buy them at the door. QUEST will be screening the segment on wine and climate change featured below and serving up wines for warmer temps. Also, Cal Academy will be leading mixology classes and screening a sneak peak of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s new documentary on Prohibition. Can you think of a better way to commemorate the end of the 18th Amendment than with a cocktail party and wine tasting?

This post was originally published on KQED's Bay Area Bites.

"Napa Wineries Face Global Warming"

California Academy of Sciences
Address: Map
55 Music Concourse Drive
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 379-8000
Twitter: @calacademy
Facebook: California Academy of Sciences
This post was originally published on KQED's Bay Area Bites.

 Jim Wolpert’s Alternative Varietals - References ( pdf ) Jim Wolpert’s Alternative Varietals - References

Photo by Tama Leaver via Flickr

If, like me, you have traditionally though of SETI as an organization that searches for little green men, you'll be pleasantly surprised to learn that SETI's goals, projects and objectives have a significant impact on modern day science. "Celebrate Science" sounds like a great opportunities for families to learn more about SETI and what lies ahead.

"Celebrate Science" is a family event focused on activities for kids from 8 to 15. There will be a variety of hands on activities, such as learning more about the Institute's involvement with the Kepler mission, its ongoing search for life in space and even a solar telescope to take a close up look at what's happening on the sun!

The father of SETI and author of the Drake Equation, Dr. Frank Drake will be in attendance and Seth Shostak will be speaking about SETI and his book, "Confessions of an Alien Hunter". Moreover, this event is free to attend. More information can be learned on SETI's website.

Recently, SETI has fallen on hard times, with the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) being forced into hibernation due to lack of funds. The ATA comprises 42 telescopes in Northern California that scan for radio signals from outer space, searching for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. In response to this funding deficit, SETI recently launched SETIstars, a kickstarter to raise $200,000 to bring the ATA back online. With 17 days left, its reached nearly half its goal but could still use help. If you'd like to donate or learn more, visit SETIstars, and help SETI bring back the ATA.

Watch KQED QUEST's story for more info: SETI: The New Search for ET

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

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Credit: Cal Academy

The schooner Academy that crossed the seas to the Galapagos is a strong icon at the California Academy of Sciences. Its story embodies the mission of the museum to explore, explain and protect the natural world.

The schooner Academy set out for the Galapagos in 1905 and sailed home to find the devastation of the 1906 earthquake and the collapse of all the collections in the museum on Market Street except those Alice Eastwood heroically managed to save. The specimens bundled in the hold of the Schooner Academy became the center and rebirth of the Academy museum and its collections. The Galapagos collection is one of the best and most complete in the world, so it is no wonder that expeditions are a fond and respected part of Academy history.

Once again the Academy is making history with another expedition. On April 26th, Academy researchers and educators started the trek to the Philippines to get the Philippine Biodiversity Expedition underway. Funded by the Hearst family, it is the largest expedition in the Academy’s history. Thirty scientists are investigating shallow-water reefs, the deep sea, and terrestrial and freshwater areas for undiscovered life. Within the first two weeks of this six-week expedition 28 new species have already been discovered!

What is hoped to be gained from this expedition other than finding new species? Just like it is important to know the health of a bay before an oil spill, it is important to document biodiversity and get baseline data to determine health and next steps. Using environmental and genetic diversity data along with specimens, scientists will be able to give reliable data to plan future conservation decisions in this region. Part of the collections will color the Academy Aquarium as well. Biologists have been given permits to selectively collect in order to further sustainable aquarium husbandry and captive breeding programs at the Academy. Results will also be shared with the Filipino public and here in the Bay Area through education, outreach, a symposium highlighting the entire exhibit and various public programs.

Public programs are not being put off until the end of the expedition – a live webcast from the field where Academy scientists will share their discoveries and explorations will be broadcasted in the planetarium at NightLife on Thursday, May 19th. Footage has also already come back from the field and been edited into a wonderful video. The video, more information about the expedition and updated blogs can be found in the Expedition 2011 section of the Academy website.

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Courtesy of yurisnight.net.

Yuri’s Night 2011 stats: 557 events in 75 countries on 6 continents on 2 worlds (Earth and the Space Station!)

50 years ago the launch of a bell-shaped capsule called “Vostok 1” on April 12th, 1961 by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history as the first human to enter outer space. Exactly 20 years later, the United States innovated the space age by launching the Space Shuttle (April 12th, 1981). Twenty years later Yuri’s Night was created to connect and inspire the globe about human spaceflight –– honoring the past while looking forward to the next generation of spaceflight (think Space X, the Google Lunar X Prize and Virgin Galactic!) This year commemorates the 10th anniversary of Yuri’s Night, the 30th Anniversary of the US space shuttle and the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight!

This also marks the 3rd anniversary of California Academy of Sciences involvement with Yuri’s Night. The NightLife team first began working with NASA and the Yuri’s Night collective back in 2009. NASA decided to cancel their Saturday night party at NASA Ames and asked us to host it at NightLife instead. We had 3922 guests come out to celebrate spaceflight. One of the guests was even Buzz Aldrin! In 2010, we expanded our reach. We had another very successful Yuri’s NightLife at the Academy and then participated at NASA Ames on Yuri’s Night School day on Friday and on their Festival Day on Saturday.

This year, NightLife celebrated Yuri by focusing on space as the great frontier on Thursday, April 7th. The Planetarium showed Dawn of the Space Age, the Geodome was set up in the Piazza to show star talks and Hofeld Hall was set up to give tours of Alien Worlds. Fred Bourgeouis, III, the CEO of Team Frednet came into speak about how his team of over 700 volunteers is prototyping a rocket to fly to the moon to win the Google Lunar X Prize and Mary Roach wowed and amused guests about fodder in her new book Packing for Mars.

Around dawn on Friday April 8th, the Portable Planetarium along with some very sleep colleagues set out to NASA Ames in Mountain View to give star talks about the night sky. I was told by a friend at NASA, that there were 6432 kids in attendance that day. The planetarium was scheduled for 15 minutes talks each half hour but it was so popular the presenters found a way to give back-to-back shows every fifteen minutes from 9am to 3pm. The rest of us were on sticker duty, keeping the kids amused while they waited, giving information and answering the survey question – Which is visible now in the night sky? The answer being Saturn, we even had the appropriate sticker to give out. All in all, it was a great third year for the Academy’s Yuri’s Night festivities and two among 557 events that celebrated human spaceflight this year.

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