September 14, 7:00PM Bigelow Physics Building, BPB-102. University Forum Lecure: Mario Livio on Human Curiosity.

Human Curiosity

Thursday, September 14 - 7:00 PM Bigelow Physics Building, BPB 102
Please note the location change.

Mario Livio
Internationally known astrophysicist and bestselling author

The ability to ask "why?" makes us uniquely human. Curiosity drives basic scientific research, is the engine behind creativity in all disciplines from the arts to technology, and a necessary ingredient in every form of storytelling (literature, film, TV, or even a simple conversation) that delights rather than bores. In a fascinating and entertaining lecture, renowned astrophysicist and author Mario Livio surveys and interprets cutting-edge research in psychology and neuroscience that aims at exploring and understanding the origin and mechanisms of human curiosity. As part of his research into the subject, Livio examined in detail the personalities of two individuals who arguably represent the most curious minds to have ever existed: Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Feynman. He also interviewed 9 exceptionally curious people living today, among them linguist Noam Chomsky and the virtuoso lead guitarist of the rock band Queen, Brian May (who also holds a PhD in astrophysics), and presents fascinating conclusions from these conversations

Co-sponsored by the Department of Physics and Astronomy

Prof. Livio is an Adjunct Professor in Physics & Astronomy at UNLV. He is the author of numerous books and academic papers, including his latest: Why? What Makes Us Curious. Simon & Schuster. 2017. ISBN 978-1476792095. He was interviewed recently on NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday.

August 21, 2017. 9:00AM. BPB roof. UNLV Physics & Astronomy Eclipse activity.

The Aug 21, 2017 Eclipse

Around 9:00AM we'll set up a couple telescopes on the Bigelow Physics Building roof. The scopes will project an image of the Sun onto screens that can be safely viewed. We'll live stream one of the screens on to the net. The URL is: https://www.twitch.tv/horizonsci/

The scopes will be up from about 9AM to 12 noon which spans the whole eclipse maximum which will be at about 10:30 with 72 % coverage.

Drs. David Jeffery and Jason Steffen will be around to answer questions and demonstrate pinhole projection. Other students, faculty, and staff may also be on site to answer questions.

Postscript

Obviously, we didn't have an optimal day for viewing the eclipse in Las Vegas as a storm front moved through the valley. However, some time around 10:30AM clouds began clearing, glasses came out, a telescope was hastily set up and we had some quite good viewing from the roof and the area surrounding Bigelow Physics with "pinhole effects" from the tree canopy. Some images:

August 18, 2017. 2:00PM. BPB-217. Timothy Waters. Properties, Dynamics, and Spectral Signatures of Clouds in AGN.

Ph.D. Defense

Understanding the high-pressure behavior of transport properties has been a driving force in the study of materials under extreme conditions for well over a century being pioneered by P.W. Bridgman in the early 20th century. Research dedicated to the study of these properties leads to a variety of important applications: exploration of insulator to semi-conductor to metal structural and electronic phase transitions, correlation of structural phase transitions and the electronic properties along phase boundaries, testing validity of theoretical models, understanding the effects of chemical pressure, among a slew of other applications. This work has designed and developed a specialized sample cell assembly for use with a Paris-Edinburgh press capable of performing high-pressure and high-temperature (HP-HT) electrical resistance, Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity measurements alongside energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction and X-ray radiography imagining up to 6 GPa and 500�C to fully characterize the electrical, thermal, and structural properties of materials simultaneously at extreme conditions. This system has been installed at Argonne National Laboratory at the Advanced Photon Source at the Sector 16 BM-B beamline of the High-Pressure Collaborative Access Team and is now available to general users as a measurement technique. Application of this system has been applied to thermoelectric materials: PbTe, SnTe, TiCoSb, and TiNiSn. Thermoelectric materials provide a valuable means of converting waste heat into useful electrical energy and studying their HP-HT properties allows a better understanding and identification of greater efficiency through tuning of transport properties. The detailed discussion of the design and development of this system alongside the important results on the thermoelectric materials mentioned will be presented in this dissertation.