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.

Single-Cell Atavism Reveals an Ancient Mechanism of Cell Type Diversification in a Sea Anemone

• Monday, February 6, 12 pm.
• 601 Fairchild.
• “Cnidocytes are the explosive stinging cells unique to cnidarians (corals, jellyfish, etc). Specialized for prey capture and defense, cnidocytes comprise a group of over 30 morphologically and functionally distinct cell types. These unusual cells are iconic examples of biological novelty but the developmental mechanisms driving diversity of the stinging apparatus are poorly characterized, making it challenging to understand the evolutionary history of stinging cells… Knockout of NvSox2 caused a transformation of piercing cells into ensnaring cells, which are common in other species of sea anemone but appear to have been silenced in N. vectensis. These results reveal an unusual case of single-cell atavism and expand our understanding of the diversification of cell type identity.” More information here.

Disability Accessibility and Fairness in Artificial Intelligence

• Monday, February 6, 1 to 2 pm.
• Online and in-person at the Presbyterian Hospital Building, Room PH20-200.
• “Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to automate and scale solutions to perennial accessibility challenges (e.g., generating image descriptions for blind users). However, research shows that AI-bias disproportionately impacts people already marginalized based on their race, gender, or disabilities, raising questions about potential impacts in addition to AI’s promise. In this talk I will overview broad concerns at the intersection of AI, disability, and accessibility. I will then share details about one project in this research space that led to guidance on human and AI-generated image descriptions that account for subjective and potentially sensitive descriptors around race, gender, and disability of people in images.” More information here.

How Urbanization Shapes Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics

• Monday, February 6, 3 to 4 pm.
• Altschul 903.
• “As part of the search for an ecology tenure-track professor, the Barnard biology department is hosting a series of seminars with the candidates… We would love to see you there!”

Nick Barberis – Model-free and Model-based Learning as Joint Drivers of Investor Behavior

• Monday, February 6, 4 to 5:30 pm.
• Jerome L. Green Science Center, Room L3-079. Register here.
• “In the past decade, researchers in psychology and neuroscience studying human decision-making have increasingly adopted a framework that combines two systems, namely “model-free” and “model-based” learning. This framework is imported into a simple financial setting, study its properties, and link it to a range of applications. Nick Barberis shows that it provides a foundation for extrapolative demand and experience effects; resolves a puzzling disconnect between investor allocations and beliefs in both the frequency domain and the cross-section; helps explain the dispersion in stock market allocations across investors as well as the inertia in these allocations over time; and sheds light on the persistence of household investment mistakes. More broadly, the framework offers a way of thinking about individual behavior that is grounded in recent evidence on the computations that the brain undertakes when estimating the value of a course of action.” More information here.

Malcom Ferdinand – Writing in the Toxic Ruins of Colonial Slavery: Politics and Science of the Chlordecone Contamination of Martinique and Guadeloupe

• Tuesday, February 7, 2 to 4 pm.
• Buell Hall, East Gallery. Register here.
• “Malcom Ferdinand talks about the use of an organochlorine compound called “chlordecone” (also known as Kepone), the subsequent contamination of the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and the scientific and political responses of the authorities and civil societies.” More information here.

Quantum Algorithms for Eigenvalue Problems

• Tuesday, February 7, 2:45 to 3:45 pm.
• Mudd Hall.
• “The problem of finding the smallest eigenvalue of a Hermitian matrix (also called the ground state energy) has wide applications in quantum physics. In this talk, I will first briefly introduce the mathematical setup of quantum algorithms, and discuss how to use textbook quantum algorithms to tackle this problem. I will then introduce a new quantum algorithm that can significantly and provably reduce the circuit depth for solving this problem (the reduction can be around two orders of magnitude). This algorithm reduces the requirement on the maximal coherent time for the quantum computer, and can therefore be suitable for early fault-tolerant quantum devices.” More information here.

CSC Panel: Computing in Neuroscience

• Tuesday, February 7, 5 to 6 pm.
• 402 Milstein.
• “Join three neuroscience faculty and researchers in a conversation about how computing, mathematical modeling, and data analysis are used and could be used in neuroscience to advance cutting-edge research.” More information here.

Tissue Talks: Shyni Varghese, Duke

• Wednesday, February 8, 3 to 4 pm.
• Online event, register here.
• “Join us every Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. ET for the wildly popular Tissue Talks, our weekly webinar series hosted by Dr. Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, and the Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering. Don’t miss the opportunity each week to hear from global leaders in Tissue Engineering!” More information here.

The Energy Transition and Indigenous Communities

• Wednesday, February 8, 6 to 7 pm.
• Online (register here) and in-person (Faculty House, register here).
• “Please join the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a panel of experts for a discussion about opportunities and risks for indigenous communities in the North American energy transition.” More information here.

The Grandpierre Lecture: Reading and Rewriting Post-Translational Modifications in Cells

• Thursday, February 9, 4 to 5:30 pm.
• Havemeyer 209.
• “Nature regulates many biological processes through post-translational modifications that modify protein activity and relay signals through protein networks. Interpretation of how nature uses these modifications will provide new insights to biological regulation, and open new frontiers in the design of therapeutic modalities that mimic nature to treat human disease… Here, I will describe chemical and biological approaches to write and erase chemical signals on target substrates in cells that in combination with molecular mechanism of action studies have led to the discovery of new regulatory processes through post-translational modifications in biology.” More information here.

Valerie Segrest – Native Food Sovereignty

• Thursday, February 9, 6 to 7 pm.
• Online, register here.
• “Valerie Segrest is dedicated to making sure tribal communities throughout North America can access traditional foods. In this talk, she discusses the many food sovereignty initiatives spearheaded by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, including regaining legal control of ancestral lands, organizing harvest and berry festivals, and offering workshops on elk-processing, salmon filleting, and other traditional food preparation techniques.” More information here.

A Clear Vision: How Animals and Robots See the Physical World

• Thursday, February 9, 6:30 to 7:45 pm.
• Online, register here.
• “Sensing the world around us might feel effortless, but how does the brain succeed in the complex task of interpreting what we see? Could understanding the neuroscience of vision be the key for creating robots that perceive, interact with, and learn from their surroundings as well as we can — or even better? In this pair of talks by two experts in distinct but related fields, our speakers will explore vision, from biology to technology, and discuss how the domains of science and engineering can inspire each other in tackling these fascinating questions.” More information here.

Intravital Imaging Across Kingdoms

• Friday, February 10, 11 am to 12 pm.
• Online, register here.
• “Since 2011, I have worked at the University of Southern California (USC) & Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) using a combination of experimental, computational, and theoretical approaches to quantitatively understand decision-making in single cells and tissues, focusing on questions in vascular, neural, and germ cell development. We have a quiver of new molecular tools that permit molecular perturbation to be induced in vivo with extreme spatiotemporal accuracy and generated new multispectral fluorescent sensors to assay changes in cell behaviors resulting from the molecular disruptions. The quail model system uncouples early embryogenesis from maternal influences, providing a simpler system to assay the complex and multifactorial effects of how germ cells act in their native environment during the equivalent of their first-trimester development. Recently we have been developing new spectral technologies to investigate marine-based cross-kingdom mutualistic interactions to advance understanding how diverse organisms adapt to their changing environment.” More information here.

Uniting Animal Ecology and Ecosystem Science for Holistic Conservation

• Friday, February 10, 11 am to 12 pm.
• Altschul 903.
• “As part of the search for an ecology tenure-track professor, the Barnard biology department is hosting a series of seminars with the candidates… We would love to see you there!”

Indigenizing Genomics and Advancing Indigenous Data Sovereignty

• Friday, February 10, 12 to 1 pm.
• Online, register here.
• “Indigenous peoples have embodied genetic understanding within Indigenous knowledge systems long before encountering settler-science constructs. Mātauranga Māori was the dominant knowledge system in Aotearoa/New Zealand, with developed concepts of inheritance utilized in agriculture, social systems, family, and identity. The Diné (Navajo) people incorporated understanding of genetics through k’é or clanship systems and through artificial selection in cultivation practices. Through colonization, these Indigenous knowledge systems were displaced by western science, and Indigenous participation in scientific activity was minimized and devalued. Now, genomics is at the leading edge of decolonizing policy and cultural changes, rapidly moving to a model where research is led by and for Indigenous peoples.” More information here.

Race, Climate, and the Built Environment

• Friday, February 10, 12 to 1 pm.
• Online, register here.
• “In the presentation, Broad Community Connections – a community development organization dedicated to building community power — will share its work to create a zine and billboard campaign ‘There are Black People in the Climate Just Future.’ This effort will explore its ongoing efforts to spread awareness and opportunities to implement climate change/stormwater management interventions across the Broad Street neighborhoods of New Orleans that showcase culture, equitable development, and anti-displacement strategies as central to neighborhood sustainability.” More information here.

OpenMC: a One-Stop-Shop for Fusion Neutronics

• Friday, February 10, 3 to 4 pm.
• Mudd Hall.
• “Nuclear and radiological analysis is quite often the rate-limiting step in the design iteration cycle for fusion technology. This is generally the case across a wide variety of projects from the design of SPARC to smaller experiments like LIBRA and is caused by a convergence of three factors: complex workflows, a lack of robust, scalable computational tools, and a limited workforce… This talk highlights the challenges of the current fusion neutronics ecosystem, how the OpenMC fusion roadmap addresses these challenges, and presents the first Rigorous 2-Step SDR calculation performed with a single open-source code.” More information here.

Universal Food Security: How to End Hunger While Protecting the Planet

• Friday, February 10, 4 to 5:30 pm.
• Online and in-person, International Affairs Building, Room 1501 (register for both here).
• “Imagine a world where every person enjoys a healthy diet derived from sustainable food systems… Now, take a further step to imagine a world where the food needed for those healthy diets is produced, managed, and distributed in ways that do not harm the environment. From production to consumption, contemplate the possibility of food systems that halt environmental degradation and even begin to repair the damage that has been done in our desperate efforts to feed humanity. This event explores the prospects and challenges for achieving universal food security.” More information here.

Header via Bwog archives