Up-Coming Events

Upon opening a new deck of cards, have you ever attempted a so-called perfect shuffle? A perfect shuffle splits a deck into two equal stacks, and then perfectly interlaces the cards from the two stacks. (Eight successive perfect shuffles puts the cards back into their original, fresh-out-of-the-pack order!) Only experienced card handlers can reliably perform even a single perfect shuffle, and yet the mathematics behind perfect shuffles has a rich history, including everything from mathematical card tricks to sophisticated research.

Our speaker is Dr. Cornelia Van Cott, Professor of Mathematics at the University of San Francisco. As a geometic toplogist, she studies knots, surfaces, and the interplay between 3- and 4-dimensional objects.

We have a new supersensitive eye in the cosmic sky. Parked nearly one million miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is ~100 times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST observes at "low" frequencies, from the red to the mid-infrared parts of the spectrum, offering new insights into a vast array of objects and processes including solar system formation, star birth and death, galaxy evolution, and, perhaps, the origins of life.

Our speaker, UC Berkeley's Professor Alex Filippenko, will present early findings from JWST. Alex was voted UC Berkeley's "best professor" nine times; he is the only astronomer to contribute to both research teams whose work earned the 2011 Physics Nobel Prize; and among his many awards is Wonderfest's Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization.

Experiences at different times in life may alter aspects of personality: appetite for risk, tolerance for delayed gratification, interest in music, etc. Our brains seem to develop particularly rapidly during a staggered sequence of "sensitive periods" that stretch late into the second or third decade of life. Such periods of high neuroplasticity are ripe for specific types of learning; they are also susceptible to negative experiences that can lead to mental illness. Understanding sensitive-period brain plasticity will help us to improve education and personality development.

Our speaker, Dr. Linda Wilbrecht, is Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience at UC Berkeley. Dr. Wilbrecht conducts research through the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, and she directs The Wilbrecht Lab.