Ever wondered what you’re supposed to do with your old electronics once you stop using them? Ever considered how the often toxic materials in your old laptops and cellphone can best be managed? If you’re interested in learning more about electronics waste recycling, head over to the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC) sponsored Electronic Waste Roundtable this Friday, February 17th at 2:30 in Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall. Speakers will include employees of market-drivers in the field, like Dell, and members of policy-oriented organizations, like Electronics TakeBack Coalition.

Last week, I had the chance to talk to Zoey Herm, Berkeley grad student and organizer of this forum, about electronics waste.

Why did you choose to organize a roundtable on electronics waste?

This is a very pressing issue globally in terms of human health and the environment. Specifically the topic was of interest to the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative because there’s a huge vacuum in the market for solutions to this problem. There are a lot of market incentives to work on this problem, which can be pushed by regulations, but also exist on their own. There’s a lot of valuable materials – plastics and metals – in electronics waste which can be recovered for profit.

If you pick up a Sudoku puzzle with your morning coffee, you may want to count the number of clues before you begin. An Irish mathematician has recently proven that Sudoku puzzles with 16 clues or less do not have unique solutions. Sudoku fans and mathematicians have long suspected that designing a puzzle with 16 clues was impossible. Using a supercomputing facility, Gary McGuire was able to prove it. Unfortunately, if you’re struggling with a more forgiving puzzle, you have no one to blame but yourself.

I love Radiolab. I’ve listened to pretty much every episode of this innovative science radio show, so I was thrilled to attend Radiolab: Live In the Dark at Zellerbach Hall last Friday. The live version of the radio show was put on as part of the 2011 Bay Area Science Festival (you can read more of BSR’s coverage of the festival here).

The funny thing about Radiolab is that many of its listeners don’t realize they’re being treated to rich science radio programing. In a way, they aren’t; the show doesn’t follow the usual script of explaining recent research breakthroughs in simplified terms, and the live act was true to the show’s unconventional style. Two of the three segments, a discussion of the experience of blindness and a few stories from an astronaut, were only tangentially connected to specific scientific discoveries. The third, an explanation of the eyeball’s evolution, was closer to standard popular science fare, but shared with the other two segments a profundity that surpasses the glorified press releases that often pass for popular science.

I thought the third segment, hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, was particularly fascinating — as well as visually sumptuous in a live setting — simply because, well, I’m a big science dweeb. But my friends — historians, artists, librarians, and waiters who previously knew very little about the science of the eye — loved the segment for very different reasons. For them, the intrigue came from the way that Jad and Robert connected a series of scientific discoveries back to a fundamental idea: the validity of evolution itself. Their experience reminded me that science makes important contributions to greater understanding of “existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.” As a graduate student, it is easy to lose sight of the big picture, but Radiolab made the connection obvious again.