http://www.vimeo.com/7457522
After spending numerous meetings with Maya Lin at the Academy and seeing how she distilled the stories told by some of the most venerable figures in the field of conservation biology into a final artwork, it seemed fitting that we should give a voice to someone who took a chance to give a different perspective to science. Shaped like a giant megaphone, the “Listening Cone” unveiled September 17, 2009 on the Academy’s East Terrace is not just an art exhibit, nor is it just a memorial. It is at once a portal to planet Earth and a sounding device to the work that is currently being done to conserve its resources. Take your shoes off and step inside!
The Listening Cone is part of a multi-site memorial called “What is Missing”. To learn more about what others are doing and what you can do to prevent species and habitat loss visit a selection of the institutions and organizations that played an advisory role to the “What is Missing” project.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
National Geographic Society
Conservation International
National Resources Defense Council
World Wildlife Fund
Freedom to Roam
-Lindsay
Science Informing Art:
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http://www.vimeo.com/7223218
Open access is changing the way scientific research is being published. And many say for the better. When people discover they have a serious illness, they often want free and easy access to medical research. Open access allows this. But there’s so much more to it.
Open access allows researchers to build on other research. It allows taxpayers to see what type of research the government is funding. And it allows a larger audience for the researcher’s publication.
So who pays in the open access model? The researcher. Often this can be written into their research grant. In addition, five prominent universities, including UC Berkeley, recently signed a compact promoting open access publishing and a commitment to underwriting publication fees.
PLoS is just one 0pen access publisher. Happily, it seems to be a growing movement.
http://www.vimeo.com/5843246
It started as a design challenge for UC Berkeley Bio-Engineering Professor Dan Fletcher’s class and now it’s known as CellScope– a microscope that fits onto a cell phone. Because it’s mobile and inexpensive to make, this microscope will be a very useful, life-saving tool in developing nations and remote areas.
It was described last week in PLoS ONE and has been making news ever since. The students at CalTV scooped everyone and ran the story last winter.
Impressive work from Berkeley students!
http://www.vimeo.com/5277596
A voyage across the ocean in a plastic boat seems an unlikely way to fight the buildup of plastic in the ocean. Yet that is just what David de Rothschild and team are planning as they build a 60 foot boat made entirely from recycled plastic. Dubbed “Plastiki”, after Thor Hyerdahl’s “Kon-Tiki” that made a similar voyage in 1947, the vessel is being manufactured out of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) - the same material used to make water bottles. Their goal is to change the public view of plastic as a one-use material into one that sees plastic for what it really is - a cheap and versatile raw material that can be reused time and time again.
The voyage calls attention to the toxic soup created from decades of dumping used plastic into the ocean. The mess created by our throw-away society has been consolidated by the winds and currents of the North Pacific Gyre into vast floating garbage patches. Much of the plastic is visible - bottles, toys, bags, netting, etc., but most of what is floating is invisible, because over time, plastic breaks apart into micro-particles. In some areas of the gyre the ratio of plastic to plankton is as high six to one. Birds, fish and mammals choke on and are poisoned by the bigger pieces, while the tiny particles are ingested by small marine life and enter the food chain. To make matters worse, the micro-particles attract and absorb toxic chemicals that are ingested as well.
As de Rothschild likes to say, the solution to pollution is not dilution. We need to change our thinking about the life cycle of plastic. The voyage of Plastiki demonstrates that plastic is not the problem – it’s how we use plastic. We don’t think of steel as a material to be dumped in the ocean after a single use. Steel is melted down and reformed. We can do the same with plastic - it is a matter of changing how we view it.
-Pete
Plastics in our Oceans:
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http://www.vimeo.com/3628882
Atlantis Found?
The biggest news since the launch of Google Ocean was the supposed find of Atlantis.
English aeronautical engineer, Bernie Bamford thought he found the famed city when he viewed what looked like a grid of streets and outlines of a big city on the sea floor 600 miles off the coast of West Africa on the Google software.
However, Google publicly disputed the discovery of Atlantis. The grids are in fact gaps in data collected using sonar technology. A Google spokesperson stated to the press; “The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data. The fact there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world’s oceans. Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor.”
Although, Google Earth has been an effective research and data collection tool, Atlantis will not be added to the list of discoveries. Discoveries by Google Earth also include pristine forest in Mozambique and the remains of an ancient Roman villa. Academy entomologist Brian Fisher even immortalized the name Google in the annals of science by naming a new ant species after it back in 2005. He named the ant Proceratium google because of the incredible support Google gave to creating antweb.com. The Antweb site allowed scientists and ant aficionados to download the Google Earth program in order to plot known ants to Antweb on a three dimensional, interactive globe of satellite images. The technology looked up ants by location, rather than by name. Therefore a team collecting ants could quickly assess if they have found a new species using the website.
With such an incredible tool now delving into the depths of the oceans, it is only a matter of time for yet another spectacular discovery to make it to the list. Who knows? Atlantis might still be out there waiting to be found…
-Cat
