First FundScience Meetup Follow-up
07.19.11 by David Vitrant
Hello From FundScience,
I wanted to personally thank everyone for taking time out of their Friday to come to the event. The event was a resounding success and we received a lot of good questions, ideas and comments. We hope to have these meetups regularly in the future, possibly with smaller “Meet a Scientist” venues in between.
Video of the event as well as the presentations will be posted on our website at www.fundscience.org.
NVIDIA Geforce Raffle Winner:
The winner of this Meetings raffle is Robert Dunkle from A.B.E.S Partners and the card will be shipped to him shortly.
Special thanks to: Douglas Crawford and Linda Eng from QB3 for sponsoring us and I would also like to thank our speakers Duan Xu PhD, Devang Sachdev, and Lee Worden PhD for talking about their exciting research and joining-in afterwords. Also special thanks to Stefan Hristu for helping me set everything up.
How can you help for future events?:
There are many ways to help. If you are interested in sponsoring or co-hosting a future event and have a venue in mind please contact me. We are also looking for scientists to speak at future events and for corporate sponsors to help us fund research as well.
Again I can be contacted at info@fundscience.org or david@fundscience.org for any questions, comments and suggestions. You can join our discussions on www.meetup.com/fundscience or www.facebook.com/fundscience.
Finally please review the event on Meetup or FundScience so we can hear about your experience.
Thanks,
The FundScience Team
FundScience Bay Area Meetup July 15th
06.28.11 by Mark
FundScience.org is holding it’s first ever meetup in partnership with QB3 @ Mission Bay. Thank you Douglas Crawford and Linda Eng for helping make this happen.
At this first meetup we would like to share how FundScience, an early stage non-profit startup is helping advance science with support of science fans like yourself. We will also feature two engaging talks by Lee Worden PhD and Duan Xu PhD. Finally we would like to hear from you about some of the areas in science where you feel FundScience could make an impact through crowdfunding.
Location: 600 16th Street, San Francisco 94158. Room N114 Genentech Hall.
When: July 15th. Event starts at 6:00 PM. Doors open at 5:30 PM.
Price: Free Event. However we would encourage you to support the event with $10 donations
Food: We will provide finger foods and homebrew beer that has been graciously donated by Joel Brand.
Promotions: An adventurous dragon boat ride for up to 20 was donated by Peter Kruger of the Berkeley Dragons and will be auctioned at the event. We will also Raffle an ultimate NVIDIA gaming card for your PC.
RSVP: Please RSVP at least 3 days before the event so that we can get an accurate head count for food. You can signup at http://www.meetup.com/fundscience orhttp://www.facebook.com/fundscience.
Who we are:
FundScience was formed to get the public invested in science. We aim to accomplish two goals:
1. Provide a way for scientists and researchers to self fund their research by crowd funding.
2. Bring people closer to science by providing an insight into research activities done across the globe.
In addition to staying in touch with scientific activity via FundScience.org, we are launching monthly meetups to give you an opportunity to get to know your favorite researchers in person. Come find out how you can be a part of their amazing work.
I co-founded FundScience a few years ago with the hope of getting the public invested in science. We had two goals when we began. The first was to get much needed funding and guidance to young researchers. The other was to get non-scientists to interact with researchers and understand the research process. Our first round of projects was selected and posted on the site (www.fundscience.org) late last year. In keeping with our goal of bringing science to the masses we’ve decided to complement our online presence with a monthly meetup were we can get researchers to discuss their advancements and get non-scientists to come and ask questions, interact and fund some projects.
Agenda:
- Introduction to FundScience
- Presentation by Lee Worden (10 minutes)
- Questions
- Presentation by Duan Xu (10 Minutes)
- Questions
- Maker Bot Demo, small experiments and Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream
- Drinks and socializing
Lee Worden PhD Abstract:
I will present key results from my work on mathematical models of cooperation and coexistence in ecology and evolution. This provides context for a proposed modeling project, aiming to develop basic theory about collective problem solving and deliberation, that is, how to find an agreeable solution to a problem when not everyone agrees on what’s desirable. I will present preliminary results from that project. If time permits I will say a few words about WorkingWiki, the free software I’ve developed for open online research collaboration.
Duan Xu PhD Abstract:
Each year, There are more than half a million babies in the US born prematurely. The economic cost is tens of billions of dollars annually for additional healthcare and educational needs of the affected children, superimposed upon profound, unquantifiable emotional distress on the immediate family and surrounding communities. A better understanding of the plasticity of the brain would presumably offer treatment strategies to improve the cognitive outcome of those newborns, who are negatively affected by their premature birth. We aim to achieve this by developing in vivo imaging tools to construct and understand these evolving brain networks.
Following the speakers we may have some liquid nitrogen ice cream, perhaps a Maker Bot demo, and some small experiments to engage the mind.
On behalf of the FundScience team we hope to see you there!
Evolution’s “gravitational pull” toward mutualism: 1
05.13.11 by worden
I'm starting to add some pages about my research to the website. Here's the first one:
Evolution's “gravitational pull” toward mutualism: 1. Simulation results.
This describes some work I did as a graduate student, which led to me thinking that mutualism is much more central to what evolution does in communities than is generally thought, and ultimately to another project which suggests strongly that mutualistic cooperation is a more likely outcome in social interactions than we often believe, as well.
Evidence for threshold models
05.11.11 by worden
Tuesday: WorkingWiki (mostly) released
05.4.11 by worden
Open Science Summit 2010, International House, Berkeley, CA
07.30.10 by Mark
David and Mark are presenting at Open Science Summit 2010 this afternoon. We have a booth set up, with some brochures and swag. The talks so far are very interesting and the community is definitely building steam. Follow the action on twitter @fundscience and #OSS2010.
Backyard Brains bringing spikes to Maker Faire Detroit this weekend.
07.29.10 by Tim
Those of you in the Midwest, bring your families and friends to the Maker Faire at the Henry Ford Museum this weekend (July 31st and August 1st). Backyard Brains will be participating in this nerd paradise. Our exhibit number is 3534. Also, the “silent third” partner of Backyard Brains was recently highlighted by the University of Michigan School of Education for her work with the organization Michigan Future.
What is science to me? By Eli Horrowitz
06.6.10 by David Vitrant
“Science”?
After taking twelve-plus years of science classes and spending a good chunk of time investigating the philosophy of science, the one thing I can confidently say about the subject as a whole is that I’m bad at it. As much as the word is used to indicate a body of knowledge or a governing organization of sorts, science is at its heart a performance – and one that makes use of a wide variety of skills. Pertaining as it does to the physical world, scientific investigation requires a certain level of dexterity and patience. But since science is knowledge-oriented, it also calls for a measure of ingenuity and more than a little detachment. An excellent scientist will, therefore, be a hard thing to find.
But science progresses despite this – could science not be so difficult after all? I doubt it – as in every other field, the history of science is littered with mistakes, overconfidence, and even outright dishonesty. Scientists, after all, are only as human as the rest of us. In fact, there are many cases in which scientists – that is, paid practitioners of science – are more human (in the pejorative sense) than the general population. Experiments require money and money, even money provided with the best of intentions, comes with strings. Take this into account and the above list of characteristics grows to include “brave”: it’s never an easy thing to work at a job that could well inspire your benefactor to stop sending you checks.
Luckily, scientists don’t have to go it alone. For starters, there’s a scientific community, a group of roughly like-minded individuals aiming at the same goals. Where one of these individuals lacks practical imagination, for example, another can step forward to provide it. I imagine, then, that the best scientists aren’t necessarily the best scientists – a brilliant researcher or two can’t progress anywhere near as far as five or ten less talented but more cooperative ones. I hope that most scientists operate in this spirit of cooperation, but the odds of that aren’t good – again, scientists are only human.
However the details work themselves out, it’s certain that science is a messier endeavor than one would guess by the stereotyped image of dispassionate scholars in white lab coats peering at beakers. Although the process clearly works in at least the broadest of senses – you’re reading this on a computer, aren’t you? – the day-to-day workings of this thing called “science” remain utterly mysterious to me. As for the scientists themselves, it would be very surprising indeed if they had the time or energy to worry about PR. These facts combine to pose an interesting problem for the various scientific fields: to what extent does the public need to understand “science” – and who should be in charge of teaching us?
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Backyard Brains iPhone Application Now Available. You can record your spikes in the field and on the go.
05.20.10 by Tim
The SpikerBox allows you to amplify and listen to spikes in a cheap, portable, and easy way. Using the built-in headphone jack you can also record the spikes from your SpikerBox on a computer, but we all know modern laptops are way too bulky and are beginning to go out of style. What if you want to record and visualize your spikes, but only have your iPhone? Have no fear. You asked; we listened. The Backyard Brains iPhone Application is now available for download from the online App Store. What used to take a room full of equipment you can now fit in your hand. See some real recordings I made below from a cockroach; you don’t have to go to advanced college/graduate school to do this anymore!
Note: to go into the iPhone headphone jack, you need to modify a cable. It’s not too difficult; there needs to be 4.7 kOhm load in between the microphone and ground connections. You can also also order it from us if you don’t want to bust out your soldering iron and begin cutting cables.
Black Hole-like Behavior is Observed in Cold Atom Nanotube Setup
04.23.10 by Sarah Deren
Since I’m on a reading-up-on-nanoparticles streak…
Researchers at Harvard University have documented the occurrence of conditions similar to those of a black hole event horizon by simply using carbon nanotubes and cold atoms. The experiment, which is the first to discover these behaviors on an atomic scale, is described in the current issue of the journal of the American Physical Society, Physical Review Letters. (A synopsis is available at http://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.133002)
The researchers took a carbon nanotube, suspended it in a silicon structure and then charged it to a couple of hundred volts. A cloud of millions of single atoms was then laser-cooled to just 200 microKelvins (barely above absolute zero) and launched towards the carbon nanotube. Matter tends to demonstrate some interesting behaviors when temperatures near absolute zero (take Bose-Einstein condensates, for instance), and one of the benefits of cooling the atoms to such a low temperature is that it exponentially slows their movements down, allowing for easier detection and manipulation of individual atoms.
By aiming the cloud of super-cold atoms towards the nanotube, the ionization of the tube attracts the few atoms that come within a close enough distance with an irresistible pull, much in the same way that a black hole does with nearby stars, light and gas. The atoms begin to orbit the tube at a high speed of 2700 MPH, raising the kinetic energy of the atoms to a high enough level that the atom splits into an electron and ion pair. These mates continue their orbiting dance until the electron is “sucked into” the nanotube through a process known as quantum tunneling, a process that not only defies a simple explanation but also the laws of classical mechanics and Newtonian physics. Without it’s electron mate to keep it in orbit, the ion is repulsed away at a speed of 59,000 MPH.
Launched laser-cooled atoms are captured by a single, suspended, single-wall carbon nanotube charged to hundreds of volts. A captured atom spirals towards the nanotube (white path) and reaches the environs of the tube surface, where its valence electron (yellow) tunnels into the tube. The resulting ion (purple) is ejected and detected, and the dynamics at the nanoscale are sensitively probed. (Credit: Anne Goodsell and Tommi Hakala/Harvard University)
This experiment opens up new possibilities for topics of study in the fields of physics, quantum mechanics and cold atoms in particular. Scientists may be able to find new ways to unlock the darkest secrets of the universe and gain a greater understanding of the fundamentals of matter without having to resort to expensive and prohibitive methods such as the use of particle accelerators.
Launched laser-cooled atoms are captured by a single, suspended, single-wall carbon nanotube charged to hundreds of volts. A captured atom spirals towards the nanotube (white path) and reaches the environs of the tube surface, where its valence electron (yellow) tunnels into the tube. The resulting ion (purple) is ejected and detected, and the dynamics at the nanoscale are sensitively probed. (Credit: Anne Goodsell and Tommi Hakala/Harvard University)