Gopnik.
In the last thirty years there's been a revolution in our scientific understanding of babies and young children, a revolution that's also transformed our understanding of human nature itself. In this talk, I'll outline some of the new discoveries and their implications for the way we think about young children and ourselves. Human beings have a longer childhood than any other animal - our children are more helpless and dependent than any others. Why make babies so helpless for so long? I'll show that childhood - our long period of helplessness - is responsible for our uniquely human consciousness and our ability to learn, imagine and love. Their long protected childhood gives human babies an opportunity to learn and play, and that let's them plan and work as adults. Our research shows that even the youngest babies have learning abilities that are more powerful than those of the smartest scientists and most advanced computers. Toddlers already analyze statistics and do experiments. In their unstoppable pretend play, preschoolers also use their discoveries to imagine new ways that the world might be. Children not only learn about the world around them, they also learn about other people and themselves. By the time they are three or four they understand love and morality. These remarkable learning abilities reflect special features of babies' and children's brains, features that may actually make them more conscious than adults.

Stork.
In the past few years, rigorous computer image analysis has addressed a number of problems and even controversies in the history and interpretation of fine art, from authentication of putative Pollock drip paintings to claims that Renaissance painters secretly traced optically projected images nearly two centuries earlier than previously thought. This talk will present recent computer image analysis of Self portrait in a convex mirror, an important early work by the Mannerist Parmigianino displayed in the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. The work was executed in Rome in 1524 on a circular wood support, convex, like the "barber's mirror" described in Vasari's Lives of the painters. The executed image and unique optics underlying this work means that the proper viewing position of this work is not perpendicular to the center of the work. To our knowledge there has never been even a single "proper" photograph of this painting in any art history book, monograph, or on the web. We present the first such photograph, and discuss the implications for museum display and the history of art.

Bergmann.
Since the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in 1895, this mysterious form of light has revolutionized many fields of science and research. Most people are familiar with the penetrating power of X-rays that allow us to see the inside of our bodies, but other properties of X-rays might be even more fascinating. For example, X-rays can bring to light the structure and chemistry of molecules with atomic precision, far beyond the best microscopes. X-rays can also identify and image individual chemical elements at extremely low concentrations. Over the past 40 years powerful X-ray sources based on large accelerators, such as the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) at SLAC, have dramatically advanced the field of X-ray science. Very recently the new X-ray laser at SLAC, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), has enhanced the brightness of X-rays sources by another staggering ten billion fold. We will discuss these amazing machines, some of the most exciting examples of X-ray research and provide a glimpse into the current cutting edge research and future, where we attempt to make movies of molecules in action.

Fullman.
Fullman will discusse her experiences in conceiving, designing and working with the Long String Instrument, an ongoing hybrid of installation and instrument integrating acoustics, engineering and composition.