friday’s snowstorm would have been picnic weather on neptune

We’re back with Science Fair, Bwog’s weekly curated list of interesting STEM-related talks, symposiums, and events happening on campus. For science and non-science majors alike, our list will bring you events that will satisfy your scientific curiosity for anything from astronomy to zoology, and everything in between.

For anyone, related-majors and non-majors alike:

  • “Alien Weather” Columbia Astronomy Outreach Stargazing and Lecture Series (Friday, March 9, 7pm, Pupin Hall)
    • “Weather on the Earth is driven by energy from the Sun and influenced by Earth’s oceans and continents. What are weather and climate like on a world such as Neptune, which has a bottomless atmosphere and receives a comparatively tiny amount of sunlight?”
  • Sexuality, Disability, and Aging: Queer Temporalities of the Phallus (Monday, March 5, 6:30-8:30pm, Buell Hall “Maison Française”)
    • “The talk brings together crip theory, feminist aging studies, queer temporality, psychoanalysis, and anecdotal theory. It considers how disability that begins in midlife and/or the entrance to middle age are lived as a threat to one’s sexuality and one’s gender, but also how these perspectives can supply us with alternative models of sexual temporality.”
  • Free Screening of “That Way Madness Lies”… a New Mental Health Documentary Film (Tuesday, March 6, 7:30-10pm, Jerome Greene Hall)
    • Presented by the Columbia Health Law Association – “In this documentary Sandra Luckow, the filmmaker, tracks her brother’s battle with paranoid schizophrenia and his attempts to navigate the complex mental health legal system. There will be a panel discussion following the film.”

  • Evidence and Theory in Neuroscience – Seminars in Society and Neuroscience (Monday, March 5, 4:15-6:15, Faculty House)
    • What kind of knowledge does neuroscience offer that psychology and behavioral sciences do not? How contingent on psychological theories is neuroscientific understanding?

Intended for more advanced students of the given subject (but still open to all interested students):

  • “Ultra-sensitive MRI using gamma rays: a surprising spinoff that began with neutron studies” Physics Colloquium (Monday, March 5, 4:15pm, 428 Pupin Hall)
    • “For over two decades, polarized He-3 has proven to be a powerful tool for investigating the structure of the neutron. The advent of liter-scale polarized He-3 targets, in turn, led quickly to magnetic resonance imaging of the gas space of human lungs with unprecedented resolution… In addition to providing some historical context, I will describe a new imaging modality that builds on noble-gas imaging, but that has enormously increased sensitivity.”
  • “Data Science for Human Well-being” Computer Science Faculty Candidate Colloquium (Monday, March 5, 11:30am, CEPSR 750)
    • The popularity of wearable and mobile devices, including smartphones and smartwatches, has generated an explosion of detailed behavioral data… In this talk, I will describe novel computational methods that leverage digital activity traces at the scale of billions of actions taken by millions of people. These methods combine insights from data mining, social network analysis, and natural language processing to generate actionable insights about our physical and mental well-being.”

neptune via nasa