Zoi.
Climate change: its causes are so enmeshed in today's economies and its impacts so far-reaching, the topic incites a range of human responses not constructive to addressing it, including paralysis, denial, and rancorous debate. However, people do have the capacity to halt global warming. Scientists and engineers have pioneered a suite of technologies to power our economies without emitting greenhouse gases - and those technologies keep getting better. Entrepreneurs have created businesses to turn those inventions into commercial enterprises - and those offerings are spreading globally. Consumers continue to crave innovation that improves convenience, welfare, and quality of life - and this now includes technologies that reduce pollution. The growth of solar energy, the smart grid, electric cars, precision agriculture, the internet of things, and the sharing economy demonstrate human ingenuity taking hold. Continued innovation by inventors, entrepreneurs, and consumers -- in both digital realms and in new materials -- underscores that human ingenuity is a renewable resource. And if policy makers steer economies toward development and deployment of `good goods', modern society is capable of safeguarding the planet.

Nivas.
A groundbreaking innovation of Kathak maestro, Pandit Chitresh Das, Kathak Yoga is a technique developed from Kathak dance (classical dance from North India), where the dancer performs complex rhythmical compositions in footwork, movement and expression while reciting the underlying rhythmic cycle (theka), singing the corresponding rhythmic melody (lehara), and simultaneously playing an instrument. Kathak Yoga is a unique and virtuosic practice, innovated by iconic Kathak master Pandit Chitresh Das, requiring the dancer to integrate focus, breathing, stamina, and weight-bearing movement (the dancer wears ankle bells). The ultimate goal is for the dancer to achieve a complete oneness between the mind, body and spirit. Kathak Yoga was featured as part of Dr. Sarah Morelli's PhD dissertation at Harvard University. For more info and video highlights: http://rachnanivas.com/repertoire/%E2%80%A8kathak-yoga

Chafe.
Brain waves are translated to sound in a collaborative project between Stanford's Departments of Neurology and Music. Josef Parvizi, a music lover and brain scientist, suggested the possibility of tapping into and listening to brain activity as a means to efficiently diagnose epilepsy. Electrode signals from within the brain or from the scalp are sonified to detect seizures. The rhythms and sound textures of normal and abnormal brain behavior are easily distinguished and the sound which results has fascinating qualities which will be demonstrated in music clips by Chris Chafe, a science lover and composer.

Jacobs.
Why did brains evolve? Here I suggest that the first fundemental revolution in the evolution of the mind was the ability to map space. And because even bacteria use odors to orient, I propose that the first brain evolved using odors to map the environment and all the resources in it. The implications of this olfactory spatial hypothesis are with us today, where olfactory systems vary widely among different kinds of animals according to their use of odors to navigate. Yet even honeybees and humans perceive odors in the same strange ways. I'll propose that these perceptual peculiarities exist because "birds, bees and even educated fleas" are mapping the diffuse distribution of odors across a landscape in a particular way, in a parallel map structure. This gives animals (including humans) the ability to create a `cognitive map', a unique, flexible representation of space first proposed by Edward C. Tolman, the famous rat psychologist who founded Berkeley's Department of Psychology.