Stephen Forman, City of Hope: One of the first demonstrations of the immune systems ability to recognize and reject cancer came from the work done in stem cell transplantation as a treatment for leukemia. This therapeutic effect has been now shown for many other cancers including lymphoma, leukemia, and myeloma and actually contributes to the cure …

Lila Higgins, Senior Manager Community Science and Co-founder of the City Nature Challenge, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The planet’s human population is rapidly expanding towards 8 billion people. More people live in cities and developed areas than in rural or non-developed areas. Around the world, we are progressively becoming mo…

James Dickerson, Consumer Reports. We expect that the products we use every day will be safe, reliable, and effective. However, that does not always occur. A computer battery can unexpectedly catch fire, bedroom furniture can be unstable and topple, and food can be contaminated. Consumer Reports (CR) is committed to revealing the truth and raising …

Wanda Sigur, NAE Member, Aeronautics and Space Engineering BoardThis year marks the semi-centennial celebration of the accomplishments of the Apollo lunar landing missions, some saying these were the crowning achievements of human space exploration. Our generation’s fingerprints on the next saga of human space exploration can surpass those amazing …

John All, PhD, JD, Western Washington University: Nepal’s Himalaya and the Cordillera Blanca of Peru have both provided ecosystem services for local people for thousands of years. However, new economic possibilities combined with climate change impacts on local resources have changed local community vulnerabilities and resilience to change. From 19…

Learn about research that is shaping global policies for digital forensics and redefining what is possible in cyber investigations. How do the latest solid state drives and cloud computing effect evidence recovery? How do criminologists profile online predators and understand the effects of social networking in criminal behavior?…

As driverless vehicles are on the horizon, decisions about how they react in different situations need to be determined. If a driverless vehicle is in a situation where a collision is unavoidable, should it take the option that minimizes the overall impact at the possible expense of its occupants or should it always make the decision to protect its…

The Darwinian revolution began in a new understanding of how species change through time by means of natural selection, and affirms that each species, including our own, is genetically adapted in exquisite detail for life in a particular environment. The studies of adaptation through time and the diversity of the millions of other species are the c…

Nuclear technology, the basis for well-known energy production via nuclear power, has also been harnessed to serve a plethora of humanitarian functions in the fields of in agriculture, medicine, electricity generation, modern industry, transportation, public safety, environmental protection, space exploration, and even archeology and the arts. This…

Observations of very distant exploding stars show that the expansion of the Universe is now speeding up, rather than slowing down due to gravity as expected. Over the largest distances, our Universe seems to be dominated by a repulsive "dark energy" of unknown origin that stretches the very fabric of space itself faster and faster with time. Alex F…

Non-state-backed, decentralized “cryptocurrencies” such as bitcoin have introduced new paradigms for money movement in which transfers are public but the identities of the individuals behind the transfers are masked. This presents both opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, cryptocurrencies have important speed, efficiency and (in some resp…

What if extinction is not forever? Recent advances in ancient DNA research and genome engineering technologies have opened the door to turning this idea from science fiction into science fact. But, how close are we to actually making de-extinction happen, and, are there compelling reasons to do so? In this talk, ancient DNA scientist Beth Shapiro d…

One of the most striking creations of the brain is the mind … of other people. What I mean is: each human brain faces the critical challenge of predicting and explaining the choices and behaviours of other human brains. Because the true full causal story of how brains work is preposterously complicated, our brains invent simplified causal models of…

In 2017, Jevin West and a colleague developed a course titled “Calling BS.” The goal is to teach students how to spot and refute BS, especially the kind wrapped in numbers, data, figures, and statistics. The class discusses the role that social media and misdirected algorithms play in spreading this and other forms of misinformation, and how the br…

Media and technology are ubiquitous elements of modern life, and their use can offer benefits and rewards. At the same time, decisions about how we structure our use of media can be informed by consideration of whether and, if so, how the mind and brain are shaped by different media use patterns. Anthony Wagner will discuss seminal findings from ps…

Nearly 50 years ago, it was proposed that microbes in the ocean can regulate planetary health by maintaining a homeostatic balance through the exchange of chemical species with the atmosphere. Ocean microbes including phytoplankton, viruses, and bacteria have been coined the canaries in the coal mine as they show faster adaptive responses to our ch…

Prescription drug costs in the United States have risen to an unsustainable level, accounting for 1 in 6 dollars spent on health care and compromising many patients’ ability to afford the medications they need. Although there is broad, bipartisan agreement that policy action is required, several aspects of the problem make it unusually hard to solv…

We generate genetic information for research, clinical care and personal curiosity at exponential rates. Sharing these genetic datasets is vital for accelerating the pace of biomedical discoveries and for fully realizing the promises of the genetic revolution. However, one of the key issues of broad dissemination of genetic data is finding an adequ…

Over the past decades our diets have become sweeter because of the use of sugar as a food additive: today over 75% of foods sold at grocery stores contain added sugar (1). During the same time, the number of calories consumed per day has increased by 20%. What is the connection between food environment and obesity? Does excess dietary sugar reshape…

There is a building boom for tall buildings for West Coast Cities; daring architectural designs trumpet that they are designed to withstand the 2,500-yr earthquake shaking. In this talk, Dr. Heaton will explore whether or not these claims are scientifically based; or are scientists being used as “useful idiots” to facilitate the ambitions of develo…

Are we alone in the Universe? This is a question that has puzzled countless generations. While we are still unable to say whether there is life out there we are beginning to think about whether there are planets that remind us of home. The Kepler spacecraft has been used to identify several planets in the habitable zone of other star - a region aro…

Earth’s ecosystems are changing faster now than any time since the last ice age. Ironically we know little about most ecosystems, especially those in remote areas unexplored by scientists. To address this challenge, Greg Asner’s team combines laser and spectral instrumentation aboard a fixed-wing aircraft, the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, to prod…

Concussion is a hot topic in the media and on many people's minds, particularly in terms of sports-related brain injuries. This presentation will review what we know and do not know about concussion: Its acute effects, recovery, risks, and association with cognitive disorders later in life. This will include a review of recent studies of retired pr…

Urban infrastructure systems, such as highways, potable water systems, and the electric power grid, form the foundation for life in the US. Yet many critical components were designed more than fifty years ago and are reaching the end of their intended service life. Issues related to managing and improving these complex systems will be discussed. - …

From Alaska to the Amazon, wildfires are rapidly changing. Climate change is expected to influence drought and wildfires by the middle of the 21st century, and possible consequences for forests and human health. This lecture will focus on three research examples: Changing patterns of lightening that may enable forest expansion into the Artic; the u…

Our written and spoken language provides a wealth of data that can be used to inform legal disputes. In matters ranging from criminal prosecutions (some of which can be elucidated by speaker or author identification) to trademark litigation (for which consumer confusion can be dispositive) to wrongful-termination suits (which may call for assessmen…

Where is the best place to find living life beyond Earth? It may be that the small, ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn harbor some of the most habitable real estate in our Solar System. Life loves liquid water and these moons have lots of it! These oceans worlds of the outer solar system have likely persisted for much of the history of the sol…

Urbanization and coastal development in southern California over last 100 years resulted in considerable impacts to the marine ecosystem through habitat loss, pollution, and overfishing. This stimulated substantial state and federal regulations over the last 40 years to reduce these impacts, particularly necessary with a growing human population. O…

Our climate is changing. C02 levels in the atmosphere are growing at unprecedented rates and temperatures are increasing so quickly that in less than one hundred years humans will be living on a planet that will be hotter than at any time in the evolution of the human species. Increasing concentrations of atmospheric C02 are already effecting insec…

Origami is the ancient Japanese practice of paper folding, where cuts are not allowed, to make intricate works of art that are sometimes minimalist and sometimes amazingly complex and realistic. The past 5-10 years have seen a surge of interest in origami for applications in engineering, physics, architecture, and other branches of science. Origami…

Have you ever wondered what is in the toy that your baby just put in their mouth? Or about what goes into your hair conditioner and what happens when it gets washed down the drain? Chemicals, both natural and synthetic, are the building blocks of everything that you interact with every day. At Safer Made we support companies that create chemicals a…

The key outcomes of the Paris COP21 meeting in 2015 included: first, both an acknowledgement that global warming must be held below two degrees Celsius and national commitments to start down the road of deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions; second, a multinational recognition that clean energy technology innovation is at the center of solutions to…

Katharine Hayhoe, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, founder and CEO of ATMOS Research and author of A Climate for Change.

Have you ever eaten food after it has been dropped on the floor or double-dipped a chip? What about the cleanliness of restaurant menus or how sanitary it is to play beer pong. Paul Dawson will talk about what the research says on these and other topics related to the bacterial transfer on and around food. We’ll look at the ways bacteria live and m…

Touch is essential for communicating our emotions. Indeed our earliest socio-emotional experience may be the protective embrace of a parent. Humans and non-human primates use touch to build and maintain bonds throughout life, yet little is known about how the brain extracts the emotional content of social touch. This talk will focus on the role of …

New technologies hold great promise for sustainable control of malaria parasite transmission by mosquitoes. The science of these technologies has advanced so quickly that the public understanding of their benefits and risks lags far behind. The challenge is to develop these new disease control methods while at the same time recruiting public suppor…

Neuroscience research over the past several decades has revolutionized our understanding of the change processes in the brain that underlie the development and elaboration of our skills and abilities in younger life, and that account for their predictable, progressive decline at an older age. Neuroplasticity studies also provide us with important n…

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in the United States. The most common factor that increases the risk of AMD is increasing age. However, environmental factors including cigarette smoking and nutrition also play important roles in the development of AMD. This lecture will discuss specifically how researchers e…

California relies on a network of dams and aqueducts to store and transport water from the primary source areas (e.g., Sierra Nevada mountains and foothills) to usage areas (e.g., Central Valley farms and coastal urban regions). Southern California, in particular, relies on this infrastructure for 60% of its water, with the primary supply aqueducts…

Magic is dramatized deception, lying as performance art, cons as theatre. Magicians trick our brains into seeing what isn’t real, and for whatever reason our brains let them get away with it.Turns out, you can learn a lot about how the mind works—and why it sometimes doesn’t—by looking at how magicians distort our perception.Through a mix of psycho…

If you want to find life on other worlds, then you may want to start by searching the deepest, most remote areas of our seafloor. At hydrothermal vents, high pressure and heat from volcanic activity transforms seawater into hot, mineral-laden water. These hot springs support thriving ecosystems that exist completely devoid of sunlight. Chemical clu…

One in ten human beings does not have access to clean potable water, a number that the United Nations predicts will more than quadruple in the next 13 years, mostly due to population growth in developing nations. These water needs can be met by desalination of ocean water but that requires a capital investment exceeding one trillion U.S. dollars. T…

Since 1981 when Richard Feynman proposed a device called a "quantum computer" to take advantage of the laws of quantum physics to achieve computational speed-ups over classical methods, quantum algorithms have been developed that offer fast solutions to problems in a variety of fields including number theory, optimization, chemistry, physics, and m…

Microscopic beasts including viruses, bacteria, and fungi often associate with hosts to facilitate their spread and reproduction. Host-microbial interactions stretch back to the origins of cellular life. These alliances range from hostile to cooperative and from transient to permanent. We will explore the influence of microbes on their hosts and ho…

This lecture will explore what happens when you look at online learning as a complex system, analogous to the yearly development of the flu vaccine. Dr. Rubin will draw on the complexity theory behind two-sided networks (critical to understanding both the economics of Health Maintenance Organizations and vaccine creation) and identify fundamental g…

Traumatic injury in the United States presents a staggering national economic and social burden. Unfortunately, despite the burden, trauma care does not garner the leadership, funding or research commensurate to it. If there is any positive to armed conflict, one might be that war advances trauma care in both the military and civilian sectors. It i…