About Ransom Stephens:
Ransom Stephens, Ph.D., is a professor of particle physics turned writer and speaker. He has worked on experiments at SLAC, Fermilab, CERN, and Cornell; discovered a new type of matter formed by the fusion of two photons, made the most precise measurements of rare bottom quark decays in the world, and was on the team that discovered the top quark. His new novel, The God Patent is set in the battle between science and religion over the nature of the soul and the origin of the universe. It features a character based on the turn of the century mathematician, Emmy Noether.

About the Speaker
Arthur Reingold, MD is Professor and Head of the Division of Epidemiology and the Associate Dean for Research in the School of Public Health (SPH) at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). He holds concurrent appointments in Medicine and in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Recently, Dr. Reingold was awarded the Edward Penhoet Distinguished Chair for Global Health and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Reingold completed his BA and MD degrees at the University of Chicago and then completed a residency in internal medicine at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is board certified in internal medicine and holds a current medical license in California, but has devoted the last 25 years to the study and prevention of infectious diseases in the U.S and in developing countries throughout the world.

The East Bay Science Café is a Café Scientifique style forum for discussing interesting and relevant scientific issues. The goal is to encourage public engagement with science by inviting members of the scientific community to present topics for a casual evening of conversation. The East Bay Science Café is brought to you by the University of California Berkeley Natural History Museums.

Like most plants, algae have mastered a process called photosynthesis. Basically, algae act like little factories. They use the energy in sunlight to pull damaging carbon dioxide out of the air. Then they break down water to manufacture that CO2 into sugars and fats, and spew oxygen into the air as a waste product. But for the algae, those sugars and fats are what it’s all about. They use most of these raw materials to assemble more algae, lots more. However, they can overeat sun energy and store the extra energy as oily fat – one that we could be used as fuel.

The Department of Energy sponsored an Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap workshop last year to discuss the basic research that is needed to demonstrate whether or not algal biofuels can be commercially viable. In the search for alternatives to gasoline, are algae the answer? Biologist Kris Niyogi of UC Berkeley will offer some answers.

About Kris Niyogi:
Kris Niyogi is a professor of algal biology in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a faculty scientist in the Physical Biosciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His areas of expertise are algal molecular genetics, genomics, and photosynthesis. Niyogi received a B.A. in biology from Johns Hopkins, a masters in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in biology from MIT. He went on to do postdoctoral research at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology at Stanford. Since joining the faculty at UC-Berkeley in 1997, he has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the Melvin Calvin Award from the International Society of Photosynthesis Research, and the Charles Albert Shull Award from the American Society of Plant Biologists, among other awards. His free time he spends with his family, running, and playing soccer

In an effort to learn more about this area and to prove to officials its value and need for preservation, De Anza College faculty and students created a field research program called the Coyote Valley Landscape Institute. The project allowed students with little to no background in field science to go out, collect scientifically sound data and use it to implement change in their community. Please join us to view “Coyote Valley: Connecting People, Connecting Wildlife” a film that tells the story of why Coyote Valley is so important to wildlife and to the youth of the South Bay.

Video about Coyote Valley:

Coyote Valley: Connecting People, Connecting Wildlife from Coyote Valley Landscape Inst. on Vimeo.

In this talk, Dr. Brian Fisher describes the unique behaviors and incredible adaptations of our planet’s most charismatic small animals. See how ants farm, hunt and tend “herds of livestock”. Learn how primitive Dracula ants feed on their sisters’ blood.

Watch the fastest recorded movement of any animal — a feisty ant with lightening-quick jaws that Dr. Fisher filmed with one of the world’s most advanced high-speed cameras. You’ll also learn about Dr. Fisher’s conservation efforts in Madagascar and gain new respect for our smallest neighbors.

We’ll also have a special performance this night by Genine Lentine. She’ll be reading ant-inspired poems and introducing LovePicnic – a humorous look at ants through the online dating world.

About Brian Fisher:
There are few modern-day naturalists who dodge bullets and rub elbows with billionaires and sheiks all in a day’s work. Biologist Dr. Brian Fisher is a 21st century explorer who treks through the last remote rainforests, deserts and plains of Madagascar in search of ants. His research highlights insects as a useful tool to discover and preserve all plants and animals on this unique island and beyond. Along the way, he has discovered over 800 new species and helped to introduce modern technology and techniques to the centuries-old disciplines of specimen collection and taxonomy. Dr. Fisher has been featured in a number of BBC, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic films and profiled in Newsweek and Discover magazines.

About Genine:
Genine Lentine’s chapbook Mr. Worthington’s Beautiful Experiments on Splashes is forthcoming from Diagram/New Michigan Press. Her poems, essays, and interviews have appeared in American Poetry Review, American Speech, Diagram, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, O, the Oprah Magazine, and Tricycle. The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden, her collaboration with Stanley Kunitz and photographer, Marnie Crawford Samuelson was published by W.W. Norton in 2005. Ongoing projects include Listening Booth, Spacewalks and The Heinous Task Table, all of which took shape in a 2009 Project Space residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is the Artist-in-Residence at the San Francisco Zen Center for 2009-10.

What do the Ozone Hole, MTBE-polluted groundwater, and arguably global climate change all have in common? They were all unexpected and unintended environmental problems that resulted from trying to make life safer and healthier for humans. Will we repeat those mistakes with a move towards a hydrogen fuel cell economy or wide-spread production of biofuels? As we debate solutions to current environmental crises, we?ll hear an atmospheric scientist?s historical and chemical perspective on the complex relationship between the Earth’s atmosphere and human activity.

Kristie Boering is a professor at U.C. Berkeley in the Departments of Chemistry and of Earth and Planetary Science who studies atmospheric chemistry and climate using a combination of atmospheric observations (using, for example, autonomous instruments aboard U-2 spyplanes and stratospheric balloons) and laboratory experiments. She grew up in Riverside, California, which she credits with sparking an early interest in the atmosphere, how humans affect it, and what we can do about it. She has a B.A. from UCSD, a PhD from Stanford University, and was a postdoctoral and research fellow at Harvard University before joining the faculty at Cal in 1998. Her two elementary-school-aged sons and teaching Chem 1A keep her fully entertained when she is not doing research.