A large blue diagram fills the computer monitor in James Frew's office at the University of California, Santa Barbara; it’s a graphical representation of the life history of data used to create a map of ocean color around the world. Several tightly spaced vertical lines run down the left side of the screen, illustrating the flow of information toward the end product. As he scrolls down, small boxes containing data source labels come into view on the right side. Horizontal lines lead from the boxes to the vertical lines on the left, mapping how each boxed element, or data source, feeds into ... Read More
Saving Whales by Putting a Price on Their Tail?
January 11, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
For decades, whalers and those opposed to whaling have been locked in a pitched battle over the fate of the world’s largest mammals, many species of which are threatened or endangered. Anti-whaling groups, including Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, and the World Wildlife Fund, spend some $25 million every year on efforts ranging from education to dangerous confrontations on the high seas to stop whaling. Yet, the number of whales killed each year continues to grow, having doubled since the early 1990s, according to International Whaling Commission figures. As a staff writer at the Bren School ... Read More
Science Posters Given a New Life Online
July 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Anyone who has spent time in academia or attended a scientific conference has seen them — the big plastic-laminated posters that are an indispensable element of science communication. "Posters are a mass of good information," says Bruce Caron, a social anthropologist and the founder and executive director of the New Media Studio, a nonprofit that uses emerging multimedia technologies to explore the human environment. "They are an entire website, blog or Powerpoint put together on one page by people who are actively involved in research. They're a succinct representation of the most ... Read More
Real Diversity Means We’re Not All the Same
November 9, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
In particularly optimistic moments, it’s possible to conceive of a time when diversity is not divisive, racism is barely remembered and discrimination has gone the way of witch burnings. But 45 years after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, such a day seems infinitely far off. Race relations in the U.S. remain difficult at best. We have the right to drink from the same fountains, ride on the same buses, live in the same neighborhoods, attend the same schools, hold the same jobs and pursue the same dreams, but much still is not right. A great body of law has been ... Read More
A Better Connection for Refugee Plants
July 20, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
When climate changes, plants don’t just sit there and take it. They pack up and move, seeking out new digs by migrating along climate “gradients.” During warming trends, they seek suitable habitat by moving either upslope to cooler altitudes or toward the poles (the South Pole in the Southern Hemisphere and the North Pole in the Northern Hemisphere). As the climate cools, they move downslope or toward the Equator. Such climate-induced migrations were easier before several billion people — along with their farms, cities, roads, and other obstacles — took up residence on the planet, ... Read More
Toxicology of the Tiny
February 4, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Already incorporated into consumer products ranging from baseball bats and clothing to sunscreens and toothpaste, engineered nanoparticles — ENPs — hold great promise in such areas as energy, pollution remediation, medicine and materials science. The nanotechnology industry is projected to be worth $1 trillion by 2015. It is all made possible by the peculiar properties of nanoparticles, which are defined as having at least one dimension measuring 100 nanometers or less (a nanometer being one-billionth of a meter, or about one one-hundred-thousandth the width of a human hair). As the ... Read More
Power to the (Fishing) People
April 1, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
It is no secret that the world's fisheries are in trouble. Separate recent scientific studies found that more than 90 percent of large pelagic fish have been removed from the sea in the past 50 years alone, that more than half of monitored U.S. fish stocks are overfished, and that if fishing practices don't change, all of Earth's fisheries could be exhausted by mid-century. Given those disturbing findings, it would be reasonable to assume that scientists, fishermen and policy makers are hard at work turning the tide to ensure the long-term sustainability of the world's fisheries. But it ... Read More
