Nerd Nite Seattle

Nerd Nite Seattle
LUCID
Monday, July 20
7:30 (Doors open at 6:30)
Admission: $5

Talk #1: Banana Bonanza! A Brief History of the Bizarre Berry
Marielle Saums

One of the world’s most consumed fruits, the banana is bland but far from boring. The Cavendish variety found in grocery stores today bears little resemblance to the bananas first cultivated in Papua New Guinea 10,000 years ago. From banana republics to clone wars, learn how the economy and ecology of this freakish fruit changed the world at this month’s Nerd Nite!

Marielle Saums previously gave a Nerd Nite talk about botanical explorers. Her favorite banana dish is the Elvis sandwich.

Talk #2: Vroom, vroom, crash — why it’s so hard to fix your own car (and so easy to hack into it)
Krunal Desai

Why does it cost $400 to change a headlight sometimes? What happened to the good old days of being able to fix your car with duct tape and WD-40? Vehicles are now filled to the brim with computers that are black boxes to the user — but not to hackers! Learn about the details of modern vehicle electronics, why you can’t really fix stuff yourself anymore, and why it’s easy for folks to send you careening of the road if they so choose!

Krunal is an electrical engineer who bailed on the auto industry to work on spacecraft. As a German car owner, the realities of simple repairs turning into multi-day, very expensive jobs are sadly all too familiar.

Come learn how scientists use fancy technology to study the ocean and its creatures deep and shallow. Be there and be square.

Bonus live Q&A with real-life researchers currently at sea on a research mission!

Nerd Nite Seattle
LUCID
Monday, July 20
7:30 (Doors open at 6:30)
Admission: $5

A modern voyage of exploration: remote sensing, telepresence, and giant robots aboard E/V Nautilus || Tim Dwyer

Even in 2015, most of the Earth’s surface – the part covered with ocean – remains mysterious to us. We have far better maps of the surface of the moon, Mars and Venus than we do of the seafloor right off our own shoreline. Seeking to change this, explorer Robert Ballard founded Ocean Exploration Trust (OET) in 2008 with the specific mission of exploring the unknown ocean, seeking discoveries in the fields of geology, biology, maritime history, archaeology, and chemistry. OET operates the Exploration Vessel Nautilus, one of only two such “E/Vs” in the US today. Nautilus carries out this mission using fantastic technologies including high-resolution sonar seafloor mapping, satellite communication “telepresence,” and large, remotely operated vehicles (equipped with lazers!). This presentation offers the audience a chance to speak directly with scientists and engineers currently aboard ship as they explore the depths of the northeastern Pacific Ocean.

Tim teaches science and math at Spring Street International School in Friday Harbor, WA. Always looking for new ways to get people interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, he applied and was selected to spend a month aboard Nautilus as a science communication fellow this summer.

Low speed, high tech: radio tracking small marine animals || Hilary Hayford

The intertidal zone–the region between the highest and lowest tides–changes from a terrestrial to a marine habitat and back every few hours. This makes it a difficult place to live, and could yield a lot of information about how plants and animals cope with extreme environmental changes. Tidal fluctuations also provide a challenge to those wanting to study intertidal life. Biologists often tromp out at low tide to make observations, but during high tide even diving/snorkeling views are obscured by wave action. This talk will describe one method of finding out what intertidal animals are doing when we can’t watch them: radio tracking. The animals may be slow, but the radio antenna is always listening. Sort of like Big Brother for snails. Spoiler: they are not, in fact, plotting to take over the world.

Hilary is a graduate student and marine biology researcher at the University of Washington. She has spent thousands of days at 100 sites across 3 countries crawling around the intertidal zone, trying to discover the secret to success of small, slimy creatures.

Come learn about hunting art forgers with your eyes and dinner with your nose and ears at this month’s installment of Nerd Nite Seattle. Be there and be square.

Nerd Nite Seattle
LUCID
Monday, June 15
7:30 (Doors open at 6:30)
Admission: $5

Master(piece)s of Deception || Sasha Myerson

Other titles for this talk which were considered and then summarily discarded because they were stolen or copied (no, the irony of that sentiment is not lost on me) were How to Steal a Million, The Art of the Steal, The Antiques Rogue Show, and F for Fake. The sheer number of stories about forgers and artistic con artists proves how fascinating we find them to be. The mystery! The romance! The intrigue of it all! My talk will dabble on what actually constitutes forgery and art fraud. Delve into some of the more famous and less famous but super interesting examples. And then (time, energy, and level of drunkenness permitting) will dip into detection.

Sasha is a fan of cons and grifters (as anyone who has seen her Netflix queue can attest) and if she didn’t have the artistic skills of a left-handed third grader that just got high from eating sparkle paste she might have wanted to pursue a career in art and artifact restoration. Instead she works in hotel management and occasionally whiles away her lunch hour with books about art, art history, and art crimes. She will now be the uncontested record holder for Nerd Nite Seattle speakers.

Nosing about: How leaf-nosed bats find prey || Leith Miller

All animals use sensory cues to accomplish even the most basic tasks, and many possess highly specialized sensory structures that allow them to perform extremely challenging tasks. For example, the common big-eared bat, can locate completely motionless and silent insects in the dense forest using echolocation alone – a feat that was previously deemed impossible. Finding prey is one of the most critical uses of the sensory system that can directly impact the survival of an organism.

Neotropical leaf-nosed bats (family Phyllostomidae) are one of the most ecologically diverse groups of mammals with over 160 species. They have an astoundingly wide range of diets, from insectivory, to carnivory (i.e., fishing), nectarivory, frugivory, and sanguinivory (i.e., blood-feeding). Unlike most bats, phyllostomids emit echolocation calls through their nose and possess a conspicuous nose leaf structure on their nares, which functions in echolocation. I study the anatomical variation in these sensory structures and how this influences the diversity of this group of bats. Studying the evolution of these sensory structures is important in understanding what drives resource partitioning, since predators must first detect prey items before they can eat them.

Leith is a Ph. D Candidate in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. She is extremely interested in how different bats find food through echolocation. She does this research by tromping through crocodile infested wetlands and dark bat caves in Costa Rica to try and capture as many species as she can.

What do poetry and water management have in common? Not much! Come learn about slams and dams at this month’s installment of Nerd Nite Seattle. Be there and be square.

Nerd Nite Seattle

LUCID
Monday, May 18
7:30 (Doors open at 6:30)
Admission: $5

The Wizard of Odds: Behind the Curtain of Water Management at the Baker Project || John Chandler

How are lakes and rivers managed? This presentation goes behind the curtain of how water management decisions are made at the Baker Project, a two reservoir, 200 MW facility which is operated by Puget Sound Energy and lies within the Skagit River basin. Taking a holistic view of how to consider several competing objectives are discussed, such as flood control, environmental constraints, recreational opportunities, generating power, providing grid stability, and operating in ways that avoid major damage to the equipment. Other topics include a high level discussion on implementing Baker’s new operating license, an overview of the different internal and external parties associated with managing the lakes, and making decisions in the face of uncertainty.

“So What?” A Brief History of Slam Poetry, the Art Form That Doesn’t Give a %$^# || Elisa Chavez

Spoken word poetry is older than Homer, but how did we get from the Odyssey to Def Poetry Jam? This talk will careen through the Harlem Renaissance, zip past the Beats, hang out with hip-hop, and explain the influences and circumstances that created one of the most vibrant and long-lived literary movements of the 20th century.

Elisa Chavez is a spoken word poet, pen-for-hire, and nonprofit foot soldier in Seattle, WA. She represented Rain City Slam at the 2014 National Poetry Slam in Oakland, CA, where her team placed 7th out of 72 teams. She also competed at the 2015 Women of the World Poetry Slam in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as one of the 72 top female poets in the United States and Canada. She does not get a lot of sleep.

Whether you’ve been wanting to learn how to procure a jumbo jet or hunt a rare plant species, this is the Nerd Nite for you! Be there and be square. (Well, as square as you can be on 4/20.)

Nerd Nite Seattle

LUCID
Monday, April 20
7:30 (Doors open at 6:30)
Admission: $5

Here’s your $350M jumbo jet – engines not included | Liang Sim

What do you think of when you hear “asteroid mining”? Bruce Willis, Liv Tyler and a soulful Aerosmith soundtrack, right? And when exactly will the “big one,” be hitting us poor Pacific Northwesterners, anyway? Join us for this month’s Nerd Nite to get the skinny on why asteroid prospecting isn’t just the stuff of fiction and whether we should start preparing to dig ourselves out of a giant pile of rubble.

Nerd Nite Seattle

LUCID
Monday, March 16
7:30 (Doors open at 6:30)
Admission: $5

Nerd Nite Seattle

LUCID
Thursday, February 26
7:30 (Doors open at 6:30)
Admission: $5

Happy Nerd Year!

This month Nerd Nite is bringing you two fabulous talks on John Cusack’s dramatic decline to artistic mediocrity and the wild world of homebuilt airplanes. Be there and be square!

Nerd Nite Seattle
LUCID
Monday, January 19
7:30 (Doors open at 6:30)
Admission: $5

An experimental homebuilt aircraft with no wings
Robert Ingle

What will you do when YOU retire?  How about something wacky like building a homebuilt airplane?  There are lots of homebuilt designs that are conventional, with wings in the middle and control surfaces in the back.  There are some that are backward, with control surfaces in the front, wings in the rear.  And then there is the FMX4, with no true wings, longer than it is wide.

Why would anybody build such a plane?  Why would anybody try to build it with 0.001” accuracy in every dimension?  How would you build it with 0.001” accuracy in every dimension?  Come to Nerd Nite and learn more than you want to know about the FMX4, CNC machining and the Experimental Aircraft Association.

Me:  Mild mannered, retired physician, board certified in Aerospace Medicine, (otherwise known as 1001 ways the aerospace environment can be harmful to your health).

The decline and fall of John Cusack: a case study in quantifying artistic mediocrity
Tola Marts

This month we bring you a Nerd Nite first: a married couple sharing the stage together as our two speakers! We’ll be learning about the wild world of crash test dummy and the literally wild world of our national parks. Be there and be square!

Why doesn’t Shakespeare get the credit he deserves… for being a total perv? And whatever happened to that Fukushima radiation that was supposed to kill all us West Coasters?

This month, Nerd Nite is bringing you two fabulously nerdy talks on dirty talkin’ Shakespeare and the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Bee there and be square!

Nerd Nite Seattle
LUCID
November 17, 2014
7:30 (Doors open at 6:30)
Admission: $5

Radioactive Fish: Do you we have anything to fear from Fukushima?
Andrew H. Thatcher, MSHP, CHP

Continued concern regarding the potential impact of the Fukushima nuclear accident to individuals in the United States has focused lately on radioactive contamination in ocean fish.  The talk will review the existing contamination in the Pacific Ocean and the contribution of Fukushima to the total.  We’ll then focus on the contamination levels in fish tissue and estimate the potential dose to humans.

Drew is a board certified health physicist with a master degree in health physics from Georgia Tech.  Drew has over 28 years of experience in nuclear and regulatory programs evaluating exposures from both ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.