Did you know that Thursday, October 9 is “Curious Events Day”?!?! It might be a made-up holiday (aren’t they all?), but it’s great how it perfectly lines up with our next Nerd Nite. Afterall, EVERY Nerd Nite is a curious event! Join us at LIVE (102 S First St.) at 7pm (doors at 6:30). Plus, you might find the topics of October’s Nerd Nite a little scary—how fitting for spooky season! Let’s jump right in!
Have you ever noticed a bat zipping through the twilight sky? These night time flyers are some of the most important — and underappreciated — mammals in our local ecosystems, as Kim Williams-Guillén will tell us in Bats of Wayne County. What started as a casual request from the Wayne County Conservation District to help stop the destruction of an imperiled wetland has turned into a larger program of discovery and collaboration to leverage study of these incredible animals to protect forests and wetlands from development. Learn how wetlands, forests, and bats contribute to a healthy ecosystem for all Michiganders!
Kim is a scientist, conservationist, and regenerative farmer. After completing her Ph.D. on primate behavior, she developed an interest in bats. She completed a postdoc at the University of Michigan studying the conservation and ecosystem services provided by bats in shade coffee plantations in Mexico. After working in academia and non-profit wildlife conservation, Kim and her partner started a regenerative farm in Romulus. She is also an adjunct professor at the UM School of Environment, works part time for the Washtenaw County Conservation District, and supports citizen science work on bats in Southeast Michigan.
Next up, Chuwen (Cullen) Zhong with Loneliness Hurts—and let’s talk about it. Humans are social animals, and social connection is a basic human need. When we lack social connections — which means social isolation and loneliness — our health suffers in many ways. However, we haven’t fully understood why social isolation and loneliness cause harm to health. Also, there is a stigma around sharing feelings lonely or isolation. This talk will introduce what social connection is and why it matters for our health, and share how we can build more meaningful connections in everyday life.
Chuwen (she/her) is a first-year PhD student studying at the Department of Epidemiology at U-M. She has been doing research about social isolation and loneliness for over a year and will continue her passion in her PhD journey. When she is not poring over data, you might find her running, swing dancing, and exploring ways to forge more social connections in everyday life.
We’ll end the night by looking back up to the sky with Jim Ottaviani and How Asteroids (probably won’t) Ruin Your Day. But ‘probably’ isn’t good enough, so figuring out how many there are, how big they are, where they’re going, and then tracking them with NASA’s NEOWISE infrared space telescope — and its successor, NEO Surveyor — will help make sure we don’t have a very bad day like the dinosaurs had 66 million years ago. We’ll also talk about why asteroid strike predictions are so media friendly: The odds of an Earth impact always look small, then look alarmingly large for a headline-grabbing moment before dropping to zero. So far, anyway…
Jim has worked as a nuclear engineer, librarian, and writer of comic books about science, sometimes all at once. He’s also a NASA Solar System Ambassador, which gives him permission to talk about space exploration with strangers often, and friends all the time.