SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS – FALL 2026 VIDEOS

Coordinators: Jim Brook, Steve Allen, Judy Weiss

Science and Scientists covers a wide range of scientific topics – and the stories of the women and men who have, in the past or present, engaged in the pursuit of knowledge about the world in which we live.

(Wednesday, B Week, AM, Auditorium, J. Brook)

To view a video click on the link above its description.

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
First Language Acquisition: Looking Under the Hood

Presenter: Anna Szabolcsi
Presentation Date: September 16, 2026

How children acquire their mother tongues is familiar to most of us. But much of the process is invisible to the naked eye (ears), because speech production significantly lags behind pattern detection and comprehension. Clever experiments reveal that, way before they start speaking at all, children confidently distinguish speech sounds and identify abstract patterns like AAB vs. ABA and can tell apart subject and object in English sentences at the stage when they only utter single words. Figuring out the meanings of words, which children do mostly without caregiver help, is another challenge that requires some solid heuristics.

In addition to the above, we touch on the critical period for first language acquisition, a window that closes around 6 or 7 years of age. Critical periods for first exposure also apply to the development of the visual system and to birds’ acquisition of species-specific songs.

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
Update on Artificial Intelligence

Presenter: Steve Allen
Presentation Date: September 25, 2026

In this session, we’ll look at a major advance in AI that has occurred over the past two years that is providing exciting new capabilities for AI users. We will review the science behind this advance, show demonstrations of these new capabilities, and discuss dangers associated with this advance.

Over the past decade or so, major AI advances have been led by two competing approaches. The approach of Silicon Valley’s Open AI was based on large language models, culminating in the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, while the approach of London’s DeepMind focused on creating advanced systems that tackled specific problems. Systems like ChatGPT were able to answer questions on virtually any topic but with limited reasoning ability. Their knowledge came largely from scanning the web.

DeepMind’s systems excelled at reasoning and made spectacular advances such as the revolutionary analysis of protein folding for which they shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. But this reasoning only extended to a few specific domains.

Only in the last two years have ways been discovered to combine these two approaches and produce systems capable of answering questions on virtually any topic using advanced reasoning abilities. These capabilities are now publicly available through several AI systems. An additional twist is that China now offers these advanced capabilities at a much lower cost.

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
The Mathematics of Secrets

Presenter: Steve Allen
Presentation Date: September 30, 2026

For thousands of years, people have been inventing secret codes to hide private military, diplomatic, commercial, and personal communications from prying eyes. For just as long, the wielders of those prying eyes have been inventing ways to break those secret codes. This battle has become particularly heated in the past 200 years as inventions such as the telegraph, radio transmission, and the internet have exponentially increased the number of messages with sensitive information that can be easily read by others than the intended recipients.

Fortunately, a startling discovery in the 1970s revealed that mathematical formulas could be used to create secret codes that are extremely close to unbreakable. Virtually all of current internet communications and protection of private information in databases is derived from this mathematical discovery.

We are also beginning to see practical applications of a second startling discovery about the power of mathematical formulas: the ability to provide verification of selected information from credentials without revealing anything other than the selected information. For example, you could send over the internet proof from a government document that you are over 21 without having to reveal your actual age or any other information about you. This new advance has many promising potential applications in areas like financial transactions and proofs of regulatory compliance without having to divulge trade secrets.

This talk will cover both the history of these discoveries and an intuitive overview of the mathematics that makes them possible.

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
Science in the Golden Age of Islam

Presenter: Jim Brook
Presentation Date: October 14, 2026

During the period known as the “Golden Age of Islam” scientists in the Muslim world made great strides in virtually all the sciences and how their discoveries could be put to practical use. (Cataract surgery!) This presentation will survey the great advances made in the sciences in the world of Islam during this period. AND how this knowledge eventually made its way to the western world.

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
Octopuses (not “octopi”!)

Presenter: Judith Weis
Presentation Date: October 26, 2026

  • Octopuses Video (This Class Was Canceled)

Although they are Mollusks and therefore closely related to clams (Pelecypods) and snails (Gastropods), which live in shells and don’t seem to be particularly intelligent, the Cephalopods (octopuses and squids) do not live in shells (except when they enter an empty one to hide), can change their color and body texture instantaneously in amazing ways, and have remarkable behaviors and exceptional intelligences. The film “Remarkably Bright Creatures” made them more familiar to the general public. The title of the film was the final line and was the octopus’s opinion of human beings.

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
Alzheimer’s Disease

Presenter: Pete Weis
Presentation Date: November 11, 2026

Dementia is a general umbrella term for a decline in mental ability. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a specific brain disease and the most common cause of dementia (60-80%). Put simply, every person with AD has dementia, but not all dementia is AD. Pete Weis will present the biological processes leading to AD, its progression, current treatments, ongoing research and suggestions for living with the disease.

More than 7 million people are estimated to be living with Alzheimer’s disease in the United States (~55 million world-wide). Do you have a friend or relative with AD?