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NOVA Science Café

NOVA Science Café is a free monthly meetup for science discussions, NOVA film screenings, and community events in the WGBH studio at the Boston Public Library, and other locations across the city. Sponsored by NOVA, the science documentary series on PBS, NOVA Science Café is part of an international network of science cafés with over 350 active cafés in local communities across the U.S. and abroad. Find a Science Café near you!

http://www.sciencecafes.org/

All I Really Need to Know About Politics, I Learned in Middle School

Tue, Nov 19, 2019

How does psychology drive our political processes and decisions? Seeking allies, strategizing against enemies, protecting territory and having one group decide the distribution of power and resources for everyone else. Are we talking about politics or middle school? With just one year out from the 2020 U.S. presidential election, listen to Dr. Diana Direiter unpack the human psychology that drives some of our political processes and decisions.
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Making Self-Driving Cars Safer

Tue, Oct 22, 2019

Can wireless connectivity make self-driving cars safer? [NOVA Science Café](http://www.sciencecafes.org/what/) hosts Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) professor Dr. Alex Wyglinski. He explains the current state-of-the-art tech in vehicular wireless connectivity. Learn how vehicle-to-vehicle communication improves situational awareness of the road environment for self-driving vehicles. Although almost all self-driving vehicles rely on sensor technologies such as LIDAR, RADAR, and vision systems to gather data about the surrounding road conditions, wireless connectivity between cars and nearby infrastructure is often overlooked in the discussion about autonomous vehicles. For even more on self-driving cars and to see how they are being tested, check out [NOVA's "Look Who's Driving"](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/look-whos-driving/) — an episode that explores the challenges of training artificial intelligence to be better than humans at making life-and-death decisions.

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Experts Discuss NOVA's "The Planets"

Wed, Jul 24, 2019

Astrophysicist Dr. Anjali Tripathi, NOVA's Co-Executive Producer Chris Schmidt, and PBS NewsHour's science correspondent Miles O'Brien hold a discussion and offer a look at ["The Planets"](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/planets/), a five-part series that explores the awesome beauty of our solar system. From Mercury to the Kuiper Belt, learn about the history of the solar system, and how we've come to learn about its radical transformation over the last 4.6 billion years. **Stream "The Planets" online now at [PBS.org](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/planets/) ** Image: NOVA

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Algorithmic Bias: A Case Study of Facebook Ads

Tue, May 28, 2019

Measuring discrimination that can be caused by data-driven algorithms, and finding ways to mitigate it has been one of the most important recent developments in computer science. In this talk, Muhammad Ali, computer scientist and Ph.D. student at Northeastern University, will provide a general introduction to the problems of algorithmic bias, and present a recent case study of Facebook ads. After launching several ads, his research measures how, in the absence of any ad targeting criteria specified by the advertiser, the platform’s powerful machine learning algorithms are able to skew the ad’s delivery along gender and race by themselves — including ads for legally protected categories such as employment and housing. The results of this research further the conversation that, in addition to the content creators, internet platforms share the responsibility for the content their users see.

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Watertown, MA talks about opioid addiction

Tue, Mar 5, 2019

Wayside Youth and Family Support Network's Multi-Service Center hosts a screening of NOVA's film ["Addiction"](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/addiction/ "") followed by a panel discussion with local experts about the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history. Hosted at the Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown, MA. Watch NOVA's entire film "Addiction" and find screening resources [here](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/addiction/ ""). Image Source: Pexels

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The History of Medical and Scientific Racism in America

Tue, Feb 26, 2019

Udodiri R. Okwandu is a Doctorate student at Harvard University studying the links between social and science. She works to trace the histories of unethical medical practices used in America from the 19th century to present a history of racial inequality within the medical treatment industry. Udodiri uses this history to shed light on the ways in which problematic conceptualizations of race have contributed to health disparities among black Americans.

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Boston Talks About Racism

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Addiction: Facing the Opioid Epidemic in Massachusetts

Thu, Dec 6, 2018

In conjunction with the the new film [Addiction](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/addiction/ "nova addiction") from the PBS show NOVA, a local talk about the opioid crisis held jointly by Boston's Cafe Sci and the MIT Museum featured a panel applying their expertise toward raising awareness and tackling problems created by the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history. [**» Get more resources from NOVA and information about hosting your own screening of Addiction. **](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/addiction/ "")

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Transplanting Hope: Reengineering Organs to Save Lives

Tue, Sep 18, 2018

Organ transplantation is a miracle of modern science and medicine, and the need for donor organs is greater than ever. As of April 2018, there were more than 114,000 people on the U.S. waitlist for an organ transplant, and each day, 20 people die waiting for a transplant. In this talk, Dr. Korkut Uygun, Director of the Organ Reengineering Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, will discuss the current needs and challenges of organ transplantation and the exciting new research directions that are currently underway to recover unusable organs for transplantation. After his presentation, Dr. Uygun will be joined by his colleagues Dr. Heidi Yeh, Surgical Director of the Pediatric Transplant Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Dr. Basak Uygun, Assistant Bioengineer at Massachusetts General Hospital, to answer audience questions about the organ transplant process, and the newest research on organ reengineering. NOVA's newest film [Transplanting Hope](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/transplanting-hope.html "NOVA - Transplanting Hope"), will be broadcast on September 26, 2018 on PBS.

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When the Wind Blows: Predicting How Hurricanes Change with Climate

Tue, Jun 19, 2018

The 2017 hurricane season was the most expensive on record for the United States, inflicting a staggering $268 billion in damage. Areas of Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico are still rebuilding after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria made landfall last summer. The occurance of three devastating hurricanes in a single season highlights the importance of research on the relationship between climate change and the strength of hurricanes. Now that that 2018 hurricane season has begun, scientists are working to predict what's in store for this year and for years to come as sea surface temperature continues to rise. In this talk, Sydney Sroka, Tom Beucler, and Jonathan Lin, three graduate students studying various aspects of hurricane predictability and atmospheric physics at MIT, describe how hurricanes intensify, the state-of-the-art technology of hurricane prediction, and the way climate change is expected to influence hurricanes.

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A Gut Feeling: How Microbes Impact Human Health

Tue, May 1, 2018

The one-pathogen-one-disease paradigm – the focus of infectious disease research for more than a century – has been complicated by the discovery of the human microbiome (i.e. the bacterial communities that reside in and on our bodies). The gut microbiome is intimately tied to the development of our immune system, our physiology, and even our psychology. A breakdown in the ecological structure of our gut has been associated with inflammatory disorders, metabolic syndromes, and cancer. In this talk, Dr. Gibbons will discuss how disturbances of the gut ecosystem can make us sick and how restoration of the microbiome back to a healthy state can potentially alleviate many complex diseases.

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