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Frontiers in Science Lectures
Frontiers in Science Lectures
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ItemThe Fiction of Memory( 2020-02-27) Loftus, ElizabethFor several decades, Elizabeth Loftus has been manufacturing memories in unsuspecting minds. Sometimes these techniques change details of events that someone actually experienced. Other times, the techniques create entire memories of events that never happened: they create “rich false memories.” Collectively, this work shows people can be led to believe they did things that would have been rather implausible. They can be led to falsely believe they had experiences that would have been emotional or traumatic had they actually happened. False memories, like true ones, also have consequences for people—affecting their later thoughts, intentions, and behaviors. Can we tell true memories from false ones? In several studies, Loftus created false memories in the minds of people, compared them to true memories, and discovered that once planted, those false memories look very much like true memories: they have similar behavioral characteristics, emotionality, and neural signatures. Considered as a whole, these findings raise important questions: If false memories can be so readily planted in the mind, do we need to think about “regulating” this mind technology? And what do these pseudomemories say about the nature of memory itself? This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Psychol62:46ogy.
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ItemThe Geopolitics of the Rare and Not-So-Rare Elements( 2019-11-12) Kosal, Margaret E.Chemical elements have played important roles in the geopolitics of modern times and will continue to do so. From Einstein’s 1939 letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt highlighting the need to secure uranium ores, to an insurgency fought over phosphorus, to a Chinese embargo of rare-earth elements in retaliation for a maritime incident in the East China Sea, to “blood batteries” for electric vehicles dependent on cobalt mined by child laborers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to calls for new international agreements on asteroid mining, the role of elements in geopolitics is vast and significant. What does this mean for the U.S., for the rest of the world, and for the future of technology?
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ItemTurning Sour, Bloated, and Out of Breath: Ocean Chemistry under Global Warming( 2019-10-31) Ito, TakamitsuIn 1997, the Japanese oceanographer Yoshiyuki Nozaki compiled a periodic table of ocean chemistry, encapsulating the distribution of elements as a function of depth. In this periodic table, many elements share similar patterns, classified into just a few categories. The similarities indicate a common set of mechanisms behind the ocean cycling of elements. The interaction of ocean circulation, chemistry, and biology sets the distribution of elements in the ocean. For example, nonreactive elements are nearly uniformly distributed in the water column, homogenized by ocean circulation and mixing. Nutrient elements are depleted near the surface because of biological consumption and enriched in mid-depth due to decomposition of organic matter. Some trace metals – such as Fe, Zn, Ni, and Cd – follow this pattern. In contrast, some heavy metals – like Al, Mn, Co, and Pb – are subsumed into particles and removed from seawater. Building on the insights from Nozaki’s periodic table, this talk will interpret recent measurements of changing seawater chemistry, highlighting the importance of rising carbon dioxide concentration in the air, climate change, and pollution of rivers and atmosphere.
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ItemThe Elusive End of the Periodic Table: Why Chase It?( 2019-09-11) Halka, MonicaFor more than half a century, dedicated and eager groups of scientists have contrived ways to introduce heavier and heavier elements into the universe. Their efforts finally completed the seventh row of the famous—if poorly understood—periodic table of the chemical elements. Now all 118 elements have names, even though most spontaneously decay more quickly than you can say “Oganesson” or “Livermorium.” What now? Continue? Try to start another row? Why? To what end, and at what cost? This talk will explore the economic, societal, and scientific benefits and drawbacks inherent in this pursuit.
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ItemThe Periodic Table: A Treasure Trove of Passion, Adventure, Betrayal, and Obsession( 2019-04-18) Kean, SamWhy did Gandhi hate iodine? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium? How did radium nearly ruin Marie Curie’s reputation? And why did tellurium lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history? The periodic table is one of humanity’s crowning scientific achievements, but it’s also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession.
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ItemMathematical Mysteries of the Periodic Table( 2019-04-02) Baez, JohnWhy do atoms behave the way they do? Why do electrons form “shells,” as seen in the periodic table? Why does the first shell hold 2 electrons, the second 8, and the third 18: twice the square numbers 1, 4, and 9? It took many years to solve these mysteries, and a lot of detective work in chemistry, physics, and ultimately – once the relevant laws of physics were known – mathematics. Other mysteries remain unsolved, like the mass of the heaviest possible element. This talk will give a quick tour of these puzzles and some of the answers.
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ItemCelebrating Silicon: Its Success, Hidden History, and Next Act( 2019-03-05) Filler, Michael A.The history of silicon is usually told as a history of electronic materials and devices. However, it is better told as a history of manufacturing innovation. This talk will take a journey through the manufacturing innovations that transformed silicon from its humble beginnings as the most abundant metal in Earth’s crust to the enabler of the computer chips that underpin the modern economy. The journey begins with the extraction of silicon from sand and its processing into the most compositionally pure and structurally perfect human-made material. It continues through the mid-20th century breakthroughs that allowed fabrication and interconnection of high-quality electronic devices to form integrated circuits. It is from this perspective that we can most easily appreciate silicon’s impact on modern society and why it is finding increasing utility in technology areas as diverse as renewable energy, environmental sensing, and augmented reality. It is also from this perspective that we can understand silicon’s limitations and begin to see what innovations might be necessary to enable silicon’s next act.
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ItemHow the Universe Made the Elements in the Periodic Table(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-02-06) Sowell, James R.The creation of the elements in the universe took billions of years and required various processes. The first few minutes of the big bang produced only hydrogen (H) and helium (He). No new elements were formed until a few hundred million years later when the first generation of stars were born and they started fusing H and He into slightly higher-mass elements, such as carbon and oxygen. Various fusion reactions by multiple generations of stars eventually created elements up to iron (Fe). However, normal stars cannot produce elements beyond Fe. Creation of elements heavier than Fe required the cataclysmic explosions of supernovas. These violent deaths of massive stars not only completed the natural elements in the periodic table. They also enabled human life, because certain life processes require heavy elements.
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ItemComputer Science in Six-Tenths of a Second: What Happens After Hitting ENTER in a Google Search(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19) Fortnow, LanceWhat is computer science? Ask Google or Alexa, and you'll get an answer like "the study of the principles and use of computers." That doesn't really capture the breadth of the field. But how can you get an answer in a fraction of a second? Now that's computer science! Lance Fortnow will explore the ideas developed by computer scientists that transport your Google query to the cloud how the cloud keeps track of the massive amount of information needed to answer the question how algorithms and machine learning figure out what your question means and how best to respond All these take place in that six-tenths of a second from the time you make the query until answers magically appear, while keeping your information secure and private all the time.
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ItemIn Conversation with Ernő Rubik(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-11) Rubik, ErnőIn a rare public appearance, Ernő Rubik will give a public lecture, discussing a wide range of topics including design and architecture, the role of curiosity in the human condition, and his perspective on more than four decades of the Rubik's Cube.