Knime

• What we'll do On https://blackecon101.podbean.com/ Thursdays at 6 pm. discussing the economy....

***In Person Location:*** Rockville Library, second floor meeting room (Collaboration Room 3). We are experimenting with a new virtual join link - [https://meet.jit.si/mocomakers](https://meet.jit.si/mocomakers) If you can make it in person, that's always recommended! We want to continue with full systems testing, after the powerline component repair - and overall just 'get back into it'. Let's resume repeated full end-to-end testing cycles and continue to iterate our design and resolution. Our community is building (and documenting for other teams) how to build a scanning tunneling microscope using a mix of common and 3D printed parts. This will allow us to scan and visualize a single atom - an ambitious we are doing over the course of a few months. The MoCo Makers community is one of the most innovative and competent groups in Maryland, and we've done everything from [publishing cancer research](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38136356/), to [launching products](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gotim/cozy-curvy-multi-contour-pillow), [winning grants](https://covidinfocommons.datascience.columbia.edu/awards/2014255), and inspiring thousands. Now our biggest challenge yet has appeared. We are building a Scanning Tunneling Microscope, that will allow us to scan and visualize single atoms. Does it sound hard? Perhaps.. However! I have every confidence that we are now operating at a level were we can take on this mean, cross-functional project. We continue to build on our past successes, and a key technology we previously applied was increasing the signal of small voltages using OpAmps - which we did during our custom pH Probe project - [https://www.mocomakers.com/ph-probe/](https://www.mocomakers.com/ph-probe/) \- That technology is exactly what we need to get this machine working\, and at a high precision\! To get a better idea of what we are doing, see our reference project here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N3OqTEq08g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N3OqTEq08g) All starting CAD, code, and reference files should exist. However, let's be the first Maker community to document the build process and share it with learners around the world. We have a bit over $2,000 in materials costs, so if you want to sponsor this project, and get banners at events with 20K attendees, and access to our email broadcast of 30K members, please contact matt@mocomakers.com We are also open to university, lab, or community partnerships so feel to reach out if you want to be part of this project. Together, we can do incredible things. ***In Person Location:*** Rockville Library, second floor meeting room (Meeting Room 3). To Join Virtually: https://meet.jit.si/mocomakers

**This talk has completely sold out in advance and no door tickets will be available.** [Profs and Pints DC](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“The Ballistic Missile Defense Question,”** on the operation of a controversial defense system and the debate over its use, with Dean Wilkening, a physicist and defense system researcher formerly at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Stanford University’s Center for International Security, and the RAND Corporation. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/dc-ballistic-missile](https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/dc-ballistic-missile) .] Ballistic missile defense has been a contentious political issue in the United States, especially after President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 speech calling for a “Star Wars” style barrier to Soviet nuclear weapons. Ballistic missile defense is also among the most expensive items in the Pentagon budget for research, development, test and evaluation, with funding estimated at $10.6 billion in 2026. Most recently, ballistic missiles have been making headlines as a result of Iran’s recent ballistic missile attack against Israel, Russia’s ballistic missile attacks against Ukraine, and President Trump’s call for America to be defended by a “Golden Dome” similar to Israel’s Iron Dome system. But is relying on ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems practical and wise? Hear that question tackled by Dean Wilkening, who recently retired from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, has spent much of his life studying a range of defense matters such as hypersonic weapons and ballistic missile defense, and who has published extensively and advised national boards and government agencies on his findings. Dr. Wilkening will discuss the technology underlying BMD systems, which seek to use precision guided munitions to essentially “hit a bullet with a bullet” to thwart attacks. You’ll learn about the support systems, including sensors and command and control systems, critical to making it all work. Then he’ll give an overview of the debate over ballistic missile defense systems, typically split along partisan lines. We’ll look at the evolving missile threat, which includes both conventional and nuclear ballistic missiles as well as hypersonic weapons, and the potential for armed conflict with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Dr. Wilkening will look at whether BMD systems meet the test of working technically, being able to survive attack, and being cost-effective at the margins. Finally, he’ll take on the big-picture question of whether ballistic missile defense is inherently “destabilizing.” Do they stimulate arms races? Do they actually make nuclear war more likely? (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image: A 2019 U.S. Army test of patriot missiles. (U.S. Department of Defense photo.)

We start our new run on the intersection of Woodson Ave. and Soward Dr. promptly at 6:05pm. There is street parking on Soward and Woodson. This route will take us through the Rock Creek Palisades Neighborhood near Albert Einstein High School. STARTING AND ENDING POINT http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/7/d/9/600_457062969.jpeg FULL ROUTE: http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/7/e/7/600_457062983.jpeg

**\*\*\* You must purchase a ticket to attend. Purchase tickets [here](https://sommcircle.clubexpress.com/content.aspx?page_id=4002&club_id=650343&item_id=2780299) \*\*\*** Join Somm Circle for a special tasting journey to Ukraine's wine country! We're excited to explore the distinctive wines of SHABO, one of the most prestigious wineries in Odessa, located along the historic Black Sea coast. **About the Tasting:** Discover the unique terroir and winemaking traditions of Ukraine through a guided tasting led by importer Sam, a U.S. military veteran who fell in love with Ukrainian wine while helping repel Russian forces. SHABO Winery has been producing exceptional wines in the Odessa region, and this is a rare opportunity to experience wines that showcase the character of this underappreciated wine region. Our expert host will guide us through a selection of six SHABO wines, sharing insights into Ukrainian viticulture, the winery's history, and the distinctive qualities of Black Sea coastal wines. We will enjoy this tasting in an intimate setting at the historic DACOR Bacon House in downtown Washington. Only 19 seats available. Don't miss out! Large charcuterie boards at each table, will accompany the tasting. **Please Note:** While wines will not be available for purchase at the event, order forms will be provided for anyone interested in ordering bottles to enjoy at home. * **Cost:** $78 for Somm Circle member per person, $85 for non-members * (includes wine tasting, large charcuterie boards at each table, and light refreshments) Purchase tickets [here.](https://sommcircle.clubexpress.com/content.aspx?page_id=4002&club_id=650343&item_id=2780299) * **Capacity:** Limited to 19 guests

Winter just got a lot more delicious. ❄️🍝 Celebrate DC Winter Restaurant Week at Divino, extended January 19–February 1, with a three-course dinner for $40. Cozy flavors, Italian favorites, and the perfect excuse to order that extra glass of wine. See you at the table. DINNER MENU $40 =ANTIPASTI= POLPETTE meatballs, San Marzano tomatoes DOP, Parmigiano Reggiano CAESAR SALAD Earth - Eats romaine, Grana Padano, anchovies, pangrattato BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP crispy prosciutto, sage foam, pine nuts =ENTREES= LINGUINE pomodoro or broccolini pesto TAGLIATELLE BOLOGNESE San Marzano tomatoes DOP, beef, peperoncino GRILLED SALMON zucchini, red pepper sauce, cherry tomatoes BAROLO BRAISED BEEF SHORT RIBS creamy polenta, oyster mushroom, demi-glaze DOLCI MOUSSE AL CIOCCOLATO chocolate, cream, strawberries CLASSCI TIRAMISÚ

Knit or crochet? Let's meet! I've been wanting to meet more people who are passionate about knitting and crochet :) This event will be small since I won't be reserving the space (this is also the first event I've organized!)

***Nucleum*** is a heavy euro board game in which players take role of industrialists trying to succeed during the economic and technological boom of 19th-century Saxony, fueled by the invention and spread of the Nucleum (a nuclear reactor). https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/396790/nucleum Light Refreshments are provided. Limited Guest Parking is available for Free if notified 24hrs in advance. We are right on the NOMA Red Line Metro Stop. Please RSVP so we can account for Snacks.

Anime Kids Zone Age range 10 and up The Anime kids zone is an way for parents whose kids are into anime to meet up with other kids who are into anime. Taking place at Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library 901 G ST NW Washington, DC 20001 Room 401 on the 4th Floor. Depending on the day the anime kids zone may include the following activities: Video Game Screenings Socializing Trading Anime Collectible Card Gaming and more. Any ideas parents have for the kids zone are welcome Only those 13 and up may become full members of DC Anime Club Parents of the children must stay with them or in the vicinity of their children. (No Leaving your children to come back and pick them up. If you do that child will be asked to not come back due to the parents neglect. )

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation as we discuss ***Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World* by Naomi Klein** Here's the summary: What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self―a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo? Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror. Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times. **Let’s meet at Caboose Commons in Fairfax to enjoy some good discussion and meet new friends.**

DC Anime Club will be hosting an Anime Swap Meet on at Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library 901 G St NW Washington, DC 20001 4th Floor Room 401. A swap meet is where people 'meet' to 'swap' their unwanted items for something else they may want - without paying for anything. The focus will be on anime, manga, comic, and video game related items.

Title: Geometric Machine Learning with Symmetries and Graphs: Applications in Molecular Problems Date: Jan 31 2026 Noon - 14:00 EST Abstract: For geometric problems, symmetry equivariant machine learning has emerged as the modus operandi. In physics, symmetry is treated as the north star, the guiding principle for problem characterization and method optimization. Geometric features are inherently compatible with continuous Lie groups (and therefore symmetries), leading to continuous parametrization and successful training methodologies. The general mapping of a classical embedding and a quantum mechanical embedding will be discussed in terms of group theoretical concepts. In the context of embeddings, graph embedding is also a powerful method for machine learning problems taking better care of inter-relations among nodal variables. Classical and quantum neural networks with different subsets of the concepts mentioned will be defined and learning attempted with. The dataset under study is geometric molecular data (from quantum mechanical models) with varying geometric complexity. Performance comparison will include accuracy metrics, generalizability metrics, and.general remarks about expressivity. Bio: Dr Saumya Biswas completed a Master's degree in electrical engineering from University of California Riverside in 2016, a PhD in Physics from University of Oregon in 2021. He has been serving as a PostDoc at University of Maryland from 2022. He is also active in the technology subspace, working with the companies Apsidal LLC and Sapienly for AI and quantum information innovations. Moderators: Dr. Sebastian Zajac, member of QPoland, Dr. Pawel Gora, CEO of Quantum AI Foundation

Guest Speakers: Liqin and Frank from United Poultry Concerns Post-PAM Animal Action: TBD Chickens and Turkeys: Who Are They and Why Should We Care? This presentation by Liqin Cao and Franklin Wade of United Poultry Concerns will reveal that chickens and turkeys are intelligent, emotional, and social beings with strong family bonds and natural behaviors. It contrasts their rich inner lives with the suffering they endure in modern animal agriculture, urging greater compassion and respect toward them. Join your fellow animal lovers and DC Animal Protection to discuss what’s happening in the animal advocacy scene in DC! This series is a weekly meetup, with guest speakers from all of the major animals rights orgs. We’ll host non-profits such as Pro-Animal Future, International Council for Animal Welfare, DC Voters for Animals, The Humane League, Mercy for Animals and Direct Action Everywhere as well as local grassroots groups like the DC Coalition Against Foie Gras and sanctuaries. We’ll also have special sessions related to health, nutrition and mindfulness! We encourage anyone who is interested in helping animals to attend- no need to be vegan! Come learn about our rich variety of local activism. With protests, outreach, wheat-pasting, signature collecting, leafletting, lobbying, tabling etc. there’s something to match everyone’s comfort level and skill set. Coffee, bagels and community will be provided! Feel free to bring any extra treats to share (no animal products please.) Hope to see you soon! :) Note: Unfortunately, animals are not allowed at our venue. Please leave your furry friends at home.

Join us Saturday, 1/31 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm for an evening at The Cozy at Portia’s Café. Come learn about this local, grassroots animal rights organization and our current campaigns. Whether you want to do more for animals or simply meet other activists and vegans, this is the place for you. Bring your friends — all animal lovers are welcome. Enjoy games, socializing, and meaningful connections with fellow vegans and animal advocates. Light snacks and drinks will be provided. Feel free to purchase food from Portia’s if you’d like — it’s completely optional. Location: Portia’s Café 3083 Indianola Ave, Columbus, OH 43202 The Cozy is located right next door.

**People Analytics 101: Making Sense of Compensation Data** Compensation data is one of the most widely used and widely misunderstood forms of people analytics. The session will cover where compensation data comes from, including market pricing data, internal payroll data, and benchmarking sources, and how companies think about structuring and analyzing that information. We will explore how compensation data is leveraged to set salary ranges, manage internal equity, support hiring and retention, and align pay with business strategy. A portion of the session will address common data challenges and limitations, such as market noise, inconsistent job matching, and incomplete datasets, while keeping the primary focus on practical use rather than technical depth. The session will also look ahead at where the space is going, including the growing impact of pay transparency laws, expanding pay equity requirements, and emerging regulations in the US and Europe that require organizations to report on gender and pay gaps. The goal is to give attendees a clear mental model for how compensation analytics works today and why getting it right is becoming increasingly critical. (note: we are back at Rev1 this month!) **About Our Speaker** [Alex Moore](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexscottmoore/) is the founder of [Moore Cooperative](https://moorecooperative.com/), where he advises organizations on compensation strategy, pay equity, and people analytics. His work focuses on helping organizations like the Ohio Supreme Court design, analyze, and communicate compensation systems that are data-informed, defensible, and aligned with organizational goals. Alex lives in Granville, Ohio and has three little kiddos. More info at [cbusdaw.com](https://cbusdaw.com)

For January, we’re reading Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy. For fans of Flight Behavior and Station Eleven, a novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world's last birds--and her own final chance for redemption. Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean's tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world's last flock of Arctic terns and track their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his eccentric crew with promises that the birds will lead them to fish. As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny's dark history begins to unspool. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of unsent letters, and obsessed with pursuing the terns at any cost, Franny is full of secrets. When her quest threatens the safety of the entire crew, Franny must ask herself what she is really running toward--and running from. Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is both an ode to our threatened world and a breathtaking page-turner about the lengths we will go for the people we love.

### Tools in your AI's Toolbox : An introduction to MCP Servers The generative AI revolution has unlocked unprecedented capabilities, but the next frontier is agency: empowering models to interact with, query, and act upon the world. The current challenge is the “N x M integration problem,” where every AI model requires a custom, brittle integration for each external tool or data source. This approach simply doesn’t scale. How can we give an AI access to our sales leads, code repositories, or IoT devices in a standardized, secure, and reusable way? This session introduces Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open-source framework designed to solve this challenge and become the universal connector—the USB-C port—for AI. MCP standardizes how AI models discover and use external tools, moving beyond simple function-calling to a robust, client-server architecture. We will dive into how this open protocol is creating a new ecosystem for building powerful, context-aware AI agents. Join this session for a developer-focused introduction where you will learn how to: Understand the core concepts of the open-source Model Context Protocol and its architecture. Utilize pre-built, open-source MCP servers to instantly connect AI to tools like Git, Slack, and databases. Build a custom MCP server to securely expose your own proprietary data and APIs as tools for any compliant AI. Move beyond bespoke integrations and contribute to a standardized, collaborative, and open ecosystem. Stop building one-off connectors and start building intelligent agents. This session will give you the practical knowledge to leverage MCP and create the next generation of AI that doesn’t just talk, but does. Want to be a speaker? submit your talk to our Call for Presenters!!! [https://sessionize.com/azure-cbus-2026/](https://sessionize.com/azure-cbus-2026/)