Sporting my snappy orange coat, I recently joined Peter Ralston and Brian Shinoda, two of our veteran docents, for a tour of duty on the public floor. We started at Human Odyssey, advanced to Claude and the Swamp, then off to Earthquake, with the finale on the living roof. It was fascinating. First, my two companions really knew what they were doing, in contrast to the rookie. When a visitor asked us, “What should I see?”, I replied exuberantly, “Everything of course!” Fortunately, my colleagues rescued the moment and provided the visitor with a very sensible way of organizing his day.
 

Then there were the dozens of questions about all sorts of issues, practical and scientific. I decided to watch and listen.
 

I discovered that the orange coat really changed my relationship with the people on the public floor. First, I slowed down. I wasn’t just getting from one point to another; I was lingering and looking eager to conversation. Then, the orange coat sent the message, “I’m here for you. Ask me for information, advice, help, anything.”
 

I came away having had a great hour on the floor. I came away admiring even more just how important our docent corps is to the success of this institution. They put a human face on all of our other wonders. They make the Academy welcoming, warm, inviting, friendly—AND they provide a lot of scientific information that amplifies what’s in the exhibits.
 

So, thank a docent when you see one. They really matter to the success of this place. And thank you from me to Peter and Brian—my two expert guides in my first foray into docent-dom.

New and improved web portals for our biodiversity collections are now online. The basic functions are working, while the specific configurations are being refined. New features and content are being added weekly. Check out the links on this page marked as “New Portal”.

While our basic collections data have been publicly available on the web for a decade, the new portals mark the first time that we have provided data, images, and mapping capabilities in a single integrated website. We have now published more than 1.28 million specimen records via the collection portals, and more than 700,000 of these can be mapped using latitude-longitude data. The map below, for example, shows the collecting localities from our fish collections using a “heat map,” where darker red means more data from that spot.

The 1.28 million records we are publishing are just the first of our estimated 28 million to represent the Academy in the digital world. They represent years of work by Academy staff, and will help us document species distributions and monitor the potential effects of climate change on biodiversity.

Since its founding in 1853, the Academy’s central focus has been on exploring the Earth’s remarkable diversity of life and sharing those wonders with the public.
 

More recently, it has become obvious that the daily activities of the 7 billion humans who now live on Earth present unprecedented challenges to the sustainability of life on this planet, our only home in the universe, particularly human life.
 

These two issues are now the central themes of today’s Academy: How did we get here? How will we find a way to stay?
 

In order to engage these issues head-on, the Academy is taking steps to more clearly define its role in addressing the challenge of sustainability, in a way that grows naturally and organically out of the existing strengths of the institution—specifically the Academy’s programs of exploration, research, education, and public engagement.
 

I am pleased to announce that a new chapter in the Academy’s history has begun with the creation of the Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability. This new institute includes all of the Academy’s current research and collections staff and activities, and it will also develop an expanded portfolio of activities that includes leadership of the Academy’s sustainability initiatives, integration of Academy Fellows more closely into the life of this institution, and engagement of Academy scientists in new and creative programs of public outreach.
 

Stay tuned for further news and updates about this new Institute at the Academy.

The Academy’s collaboration with the Gladstone Institutes, Brilliant!Science: Decoding Human Health, ended last week with a sold-out event at the Herbst Theatre featuring Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor in conversation with Thomas Goetz. In fact, all of the events that were part of Brilliant!Science were highly attended, including the art mingle at the Intersection for the Arts on January 25 and the weekend festival at the Academy on January 26-27. The piazza was packed with scientists from the Gladstone and the Academy, and it was packed with visitors engaging with them.
 

Science is fascinating. The people who do it all their lives, real scientists, are fascinated by the problems they are working on. Otherwise they would do something else. They also can be really effective in sharing their fascination, in telling others the stories they themselves are writing through their work. When they discover people who are interested in what they are doing, they light up and are eager to share their excitement. It works. Everyone wins. People are the best engagers, especially those who are eager to talk and listen, to capture the imagination and share what fascinates them.
 

The Bay Area is a world center for scientific creativity. We are surrounded by amazing laboratories working at the forefront of so many fields, life and sustainability in particular. Most are closed to the public. They must be. But the Academy is a public stage that welcomes everyone. One of our most important challenges is to bridge the closed and the public worlds, and bring fascinating people who are working on some of the most important problems of our day onto our stage and share them with everyone else.
 

That is the core concept of Brilliant!Science. It’s the Academy playing the role of a Public Stage for Science. Our first experiment worked splendidly. Stay tuned for the next one.

At the request of a loyal reader, here are some book recommendations you might want to look into. You can even access them on that historic information storage technology known as paper. Imagine, no batteries. No switches. You can read a paper book during take-off and landing. It’s remarkable when you think about it and soooo retro. For the record, Mrs. Penguin provided most (not all, but most) of this content.
 

Spine of the Continent by Mary Ellen Hannibal. Mary Ellen wrote the text for Evidence of Evolution about the Academy’s specimen collections, and her new book details the ambitious project to create connected wildlife preserves from Alaska to Mexico through the Rockies.
 

If you saw Daniel Day Lewis’ stupendous performance as Abraham Lincoln in the film Lincoln, you might be intrigued enough to want to read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, about Seward and Lincoln and others in his cabinet.
 

And to continue the political theme, history is made up of personalities. What are presidents like after they are out of office? How do their quirks and foibles manifest themselves when they try to stay involved and be on stage when they should be off? The Presidents Club by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy provides a fascinating angle on American history since WWII.
 

Humans are remarkably resilient and resourceful. Katharine Boo’s portrait of individuals who live in the slum abutting the Mumbai airport is simultaneously painful, haunting and elegantly written. It’s called Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
 

Also on the wish list:
 

Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, Flight Behavior, which purports to tackle climate change.
 

The Yellow Birds, a first novel about soldiers in Iraq, by veteran Kevin Powers.
 

If you want to tuck into a really good read about the history of the Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War from a domestic perspective, you will really love Freedom from Fear by David Kennedy. It won the Pulitizer Prize. You will see why. It’s totally engaging and superbly written.
 

And so, with the warmest greetings to you and your families for the holidays and my hope that you will enjoy a happy and healthy New Year, the Chief Penguin signs off for 2012.

We would have a much smaller Academy in programmatic terms if it were not for our hundreds of volunteers. Since 2008, over 900 volunteers have donated over 300,000 hours of their time and considerable skills to every department and every program. They bring enthusiasm, creativity and a sense of fun to their jobs. They contribute to a better Academy on an ocean of goodwill.
 

We are grateful for their efforts as: orienteers, staff in exhibits and education, library assistants, water quality monitors, living roof horticulturalists, specimen preparators, specimen envelope-makers, divers, husbandry assistants, research generalists, clerks, special events participants, outreach and tabling event participants, and field workers.
 

In addition, our engagement volunteers—the great 360-strong team of docents—are often the first people our visitors meet. They welcome our guests into the world of science, and inspire them with demonstrations of earthquakes, volcanoes, and skulls. Fully 91% of our guests recently surveyed rate their interaction with the docents as excellent.
 

As you know, I believe that people are the best educators—the best inspirers. When I first visited the Academy—anonymously on Howard Street—I spoke with the volunteer docents who were on the public floor and interacting with visitors like me at the time. I felt they were doing such a good job that I became really interested in joining the Academy.
 

Thank you docents. Thank you volunteers. You help bring this place to life.

Here is a piece authored by Neal Lane, former director of the National Science Foundation, that appeared in the New York Times on October 28, 2012. Dr. Lane’s point is that the economic future of the U.S. depends on vigorous and creative scientific research, which in turn depends on robust funding for basic research from the federal government.
 

The direct connection between fundamental research and national economic competitiveness has not been lost on other countries. They are racing to compete—and compete hard—with the U.S. in this critical area of achievement. It’s not a traditional arms race, but rather a creativity and entrepreneurship race that is every bit as important. We ignore reality at our national peril. Science matters. Research matters. Brains matter.
 

www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/opinion/want-to-boost-the-economy-invest-in-science.html

Thomas Jefferson has long been a hero of mine. Besides all his other pursuits, he was a man of science. If you visit the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, America’s first natural history institution, you can see some of the bones that he collected in his role as citizen paleontologist. Here is a piece from Archiving Early America which describes Jefferson’s life as an amateur scientist. As he wrote to Dupont de Nemours, “Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight.”
www.earlyamerica.com/review/2000_fall/jefferson_paleon.html
 

And here’s a blog post on Scientific American about Jefferson’s connection to citizen science:
blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/07/03/life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-data/
 

That’s it for this week. The maples in Golden Gate Park are aflame with autumn’s colors. Roadside farm stands groan with bushels of apples and fresh pumpkins. There’s a chill in the air with flurries of snow to follow soon. Fall is here in all its pageantry.
 

Oops, wrong coast. Outside it’s sunny and green, and the air is delightful. No apples, however.

Did you participate in the Great Shakeout earthquake drill today? We did.

Nearly 200 Academy Fellows and their guests attended the annual meeting and dinner held on October 9. Academy Fellows comprise a governing group of distinguished scientists who have made notable contributions to the natural sciences.
 

The evening included a talk entitled, “Crisis Biology: Can we control a deadly infectious amphibian disease before it is too late?” by Vance Vredenburg of San Francisco State University. Tweet summary? It’s a risky time to be a frog. If you are a frog, choose a Yosemite pond to hang out in.
 

During dinner, David B. Wake, Professor Emeritus at Berkeley, was honored with the Fellows Medal. His tribute to his wife Marvalee, who was an earlier winner of the Fellows Medal, was a heartfelt salute to their life-long professional collaboration and 50 years of marriage. From his comments, it would seem that life really works out well sometimes.
 

George Bell, volunteer diver at the Academy, was awarded the Distinguished Service Award for giving over 1,000 hours each year to the diving program. George was escorted by a duo of divers dressed formally in “drysuits.” Thank you to George and all the other volunteers who help make the Academy work.
 

Connor Lockridge, who obviously has a career as a new Tom Lehrer, serenaded dinner guests with a tribute to amphibians with ukulele accompaniment. You ain’t never heard nothing like it, that’s for sure. You may never again. But just in case, here’s a link the song: http://thewigglytendrils.bandcamp.com/track/7000-kinds-of-amphibians-a7k
 

And finally, ten new Academy Fellows were inducted. It’s a great group. Click here to see their bios.