9am “The NS SAVANNAH” Jim Ehrard, Fred Blonder, and Brent Warner. For the past 50 years NS Savannah, the only nuclear powered merchant ship, has been mothballed while the radiation level aboard her (with a half life of five years, now through ten half-lives have passed) dwindled to an almost safe level. Last November the reactor was removed here in Baltimore. For the past several months, Fred Blonder and Jim Williams have been working on a project to convert the atomic reactor and steam turbine control panel to simulated operation for demonstration purposes. Their talk will give a brief overview of the motivation for building the ship, her history and possible future, and a work-in-progress report on our work on the control panels, with discussion of the now-archaic design of the circuitry.

10am “How NIH is helping move innovation to Reality and the Market” Stephanie Fertig, MBA, HHS Small Business Program Lead at NIH:The National Institute of Health (NIH) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, also known as America’s SEED Fund, are a key part of NIH’s mission to turn discovery into health. These programs set aside $1.2 billion every year to support small business research and development. This session will provide an overview of how NIH accelerates the conversion of future scientific discoveries into healthcare solutions, as well as highlight products supported by NIH that improve health and save lives. 

11:30am “How have humans and animals shaped urban environments and learned to live with each other?” Dawn Biehler, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County: How do human inequalities affect urban animal ecologies? Geographer Dawn Biehler will explore the past and present of multi-species cities, and envision more sustainable, just, and healthy spaces for urban futures. She is author of the book “Pests in the City” and several articles about research on mosquitoes, housing, and environmental justice in Baltimore. Her research also addresses the challenges of making urban green spaces that support thriving for non-human animals and diverse human beings. She teaches about health and place, gender and race, climate justice, and human-animal relationships.

1pm “The Hunga Tonga—HungaHa’apai volcano eruption in the South Pacific and it’s eruption consequences” Larry Paxton, JHU-APL: On 15 January 2022 the Tonga volcano erupted. Typically, volcanoes release lava, ash, and dust as well as gases such as sulfur dioxide (SO2). This eruption was unusual in two ways: it destroyed the island that had been created by a previous eruption series and it injected enormous amounts of water into the atmosphere. I’ll share with you how we learn about the world by extending the range of human vision and how we were able to see this remarkable event. I’ll share some of the interesting effects that this event had on the near-Earth space environment. I’ll describe what we know about what created this special event and what volcanoes tell us about our planet and life. .

2:30pm“Wonderful News for Vampires—Synthetic blood (True Blood?) is being developed” Elaine Haynes, CEO of KaloCyte, leads the Baltimore-based biotech startup developing a bioinspired artificial red blood cell substitute. Why? Because every two seconds someone in the U.S. needs blood, a highly perishable, type-specific liquid dependent on an increasingly smaller donor supply. Many substitutes have been tried unsuccessfully over past centuries, including salt water, milk, beer, and even urine, leading scientists in this century to turn to the lab to develop alternatives. Come and learn about the long history of blood transfusions, and the latest cutting-edge research backed by funding from NIH, DoD, and DARPA, to develop a lifeline for when blood is not available.

4pm“Synthetic Biology: Engineering Artificial and Natural Components For Biological Factories” Panel with Jennifer Weller, National Science Foundation, and Ronald Taylor, National Cancer Institute, and Jon Dinman, U of MD College Park, Dept of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics: Synthetic Biology is the art and science of extending the biologically possible to produce results that are currently impossible to solve practical problems, such as modifying inborn errors of mutation that cause genetic diseases, driving out invasive pests using gene drives, or developing plants that can self-adjust their suite of small molecule toxins to repel emerging pathogens. However, there are plenty of wilder aims of SynBio research, including developing completely novel genetic codes, resurrecting long-dead organisms, and making novel proteins that are compatible with living organisms but have unique functional abilities.

5:30pm “Sound and Light: The Extraordinary Physics and Many Uses of the Interactions of Sound and Light” John Ashmead, whose latest paper Time dispersion in quantum electrodynamics has been accepted by the IARD conference. Light and sound have had a close relationship since the first stroke of lightning triggered the first sound of thunder. But it is only lately that science has entered the picture. From sonoluminescence (light emitted by imploding bubbles), to the use of the acousto-optic effect to use sound to control lasers, to polarons & plasmons (quantum particles which are strange hybrids of sound and light), we look at the science of sound and light as it is now — and how it might evolve in the future.

7pm “Artificial Intelligence: Myth, Fiction, and Future” Jim Beall: The talk traces AI from Talos (referring to “Jason and the Argonauts”) through “The Turk” with SF aspects like Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers and Keith Laumer’s Bolos. I will show how the treatment of AIs changed over time until many authors simply used it as a Handwavium plot device while others used it as characters (and even protagonists). And yes, Terminator, Skynet, etc will get mentioned, as will Asimov’s 3 Laws and Heinlein’s Mike and his girls in Time Enough for Love. I will show how scientists’ views of AIs have changed, and what steps have been taken, including the Turing Test. I will also provide my own speculation, including how we have all anthropomorphized AIs and that they would doubtless not fit our preconceptions.