Welcome back to Science Fair, Bwog’s weekly roundup of science events happening around campus. As always, email science@bwog.com if you want your event featured.

Kenneth Prager – A Week in the Life of a Clinical Ethicist: Several Typical Cases

• Monday, October 24, 2022. 12:30 to 1:30 pm.
• 401 Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center, CUIMC and online. Registration required and preferred after October 17.
• “Presentation and discussion of cases from the hospital clinical ethics committee with Kenneth Prager, MD, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Director of Clinical Ethics and Chairman of the Medical Ethics Committee at Columbia University Medical Center.” More information here and here.

Biology Seminar – Jessica Tollkuhn

• Monday, October 24, 2022. 4:45 pm.
• 601 Fairchild.
• “To understand the mechanistic basis of ERα target specificity, we queried our multiomic datasets to identify cluster-specfic regulators of cell type identity. We identified and validated Nfix as a ‘terminal selector’ in a male-biased cell type and demonstrated its cooperative recruitment with ERα to a subset of target genes. Collectively our data identify gene programs that underlie the effects of estradiol on brain health and disease and illustrate the potential for discovery of novel gene regulatory strategies in behaviorally relevant neuronal populations.” More information here.

Julian Brave NoiseCat – Red Herring

• Tuesday, October 25, 2022. 5:45 to 7pm.
• Davis Auditorium, Schapiro CEPSR and online. Registration required.
• “In Sitka, Alaska, Indigenous peoples and commercial fishermen are locked in a fight over one of the last remaining herring fisheries in the North Pacific. Herring is one of the most important fish in the ocean. They feed everything: salmon, whales, seals, sea otters, sea lions, seagulls, eagles, and humans. For coastal Indigenous nations like the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, herring eggs are a delicacy exchanged and eaten at ceremonial feasts. For the fishing fleet, herring eggs are a valuable commodity sold for top dollar at Japanese markets. Based on a chapter from his forthcoming book, We Survived the Night, writer Julian Brave NoiseCat tells the story of Indigenous technologies, traditions, and movements shaping the future of an ecosystem.” More information here.

How AI Is Changing Artistic Creation

• Wednesday, October 26, 2022. 2 to 3:30 pm.
• Online.
• “This seminar will bring together AI artists and philosophers to explore the significance of this new mode of art production. It will discuss the implications of AI-generated art for the definition of art, the nature of the relationship between artists and tools, the process of digital curation, and whether AI systems can be as creative as humans.” More information here and here.

Using Deep Learning as a Last Resort?!

• Wednesday, October 26, 2022. 4:05 to 5:05pm.
• Pupin 1402.
• “For the last 10 years, we have seen a rapid adoption of deep learning techniques across many disciplines, ranging from self-driving vehicles and credit card rating to biomedicine. Along with this wave, we have seen rapid adoption and rejection in the nascent field of Machine Learning and Sciences. While we see more and more people working in the area of Machine Learning and Sciences, there are also quite a number of skeptics (sometimes for very good reasons). Some of us are believers of using deep learning as a last resort, and I will showcase a few of these scientific challenges ranging from understanding our Universe, the Milky Way, and the Solar System to our genome.” More information here.

Undergraduate Computer and Data Science Research Panel

• Wednesday, October 26, 2022. 6 to 7:30pm.
• Davis Auditorium, Schapiro CEPSR.
• “Join this special panel event to learn about research and career opportunities for undergraduate students in data and computer science. Student moderators will pose questions related to research practices, mentorship, continuing education, successes, and more to an esteemed panel of Columbia faculty members. This panel will help undergrads in related disciplines plan for their future in emerging scientific fields.” More information here.

Anne Casile – Toward an Interdisciplinary Approach to Exploring Climate-Water-Society Nexus in the History of “Late Medieval” Central India: The Example of the MANDU Project

• Thursday, October 27, 2022. 4 to 6 pm.
• Fayerweather 513. Registration required.
• “For this workshop, attention will be drawn to an ongoing project focusing on Mandu and its hinterlands (22°20’26.08”N-75°24’5.62”E), a famous area in Central India (Madhya Pradesh) whose history spanned over and beyond the past millennium and which in “late medieval” times was transformed to serve as the capital of the Malwa Sultanate (c. 1400-1650 CE). While engaging with the larger, multidimensional topic of society-environment relationships, this project involves micro and local investigations and interdisciplinary experiments to delve into aspects of the complex interplay and multivalent nexus between human adaptations, water management, and climate, and the mechanisms that link environmental conditions and social activity, especially around water.” More information here.

Environmental effects around binary black holes

• Thursday, October 27, 2022. 4:05 to 4:35 pm.
• Pupin 1402.
• Dr. Philippa Cole, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, specifically in the Gracitational AstroParticle Physics Amsterdam group, whose research “aims at a better understanding of natural phenomena at the very smallest, very largest, and most energetic extremes. To this end, we bring together gravitational waves, string theory, dark matter searches, high energy astrophysics and cosmology, and stimulate cross-fertilization of the different research directions.” More information here.

Unveiling the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization

• Thursday, October 27, 2022. 4:35 to 5:05 pm.
• Pupin 1402.
• “Some of the most important but least explored phases in the evolutionary history of our Universe are the epochs of cosmic dawn and reionization. It is extremely important to understand the thermal state of the IGM in order to understand the redshifted 21-cm signal from the cosmic dawn. There are several physical processes that could affect the IGM temperature during this epoch. In this presentation, I would highlight two not-so-standard processes of IGM heating i.e., the primordial magnetic field and cosmic rays as two sources of heating.” More information here.

What We Learned in the Pandemic

• Thursday, October 27, 2022. 6 to 8 pm.
• Faculty Room, Pulitzer Hall. Registration required.
• “The COVID-19 pandemic that began in the spring of 2020, and which we are still living through, was perhaps the biggest science story since the moon landing in 1969. What have science journalists learned from it?” More information here and here.

Science Fair via Bwarchives