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Free teaching tools
Recent Major Posts
- Pratt Institute holds 124th Commencement, special gallery show
- Rhett Bradbury’s Master’s Thesis explores how gaming can foster political leadership
- Envirolutions asks the Pratt community to identify where there is “room for improvement”
- My review of Railsback and Grimm’s “Agent-based and individual-based modeling” textbook published in Ecology
- Envirolutions club launches its “Room for Improvement” campaign
- Dumb radio ads provide smart insight into the diverse nature of human societies
- Is selective rejection of science really a problem?
- Pratt Envirolutions Students Bring Recycling Bins to Campus
- Concept mapping as a creative tool
- Governor Cuomo makes the connection between natural disasters and climate change, calls for building in resilience
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Recent Minor Posts
- Useful guides for writing good pseudocode
- The benefits of a maintaining a relatively small in-group
- Pratt Professor Ágnes Mócsy releases “Smashing Matters” short film
- NPR piece suggests that economics are pushing us towards nutrient recycling
- Just in case you missed it the first ten times: E.O. Wilson likes group selection, Jerry Coyne does not
- Allen MacNeill predicts resolution of Ev-Coop debates
- Martin Nowak to lecture on the compatibility of god and the evolutionary process
- Understanding kin selection and reciprocity when strategies are culturally propagated
- “Earth Hour” seeks to re-focus our attention on all the earth provides
- Seth Horowitz on our perception of sound
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What I am reading now
Category Archives: Biomes
Quantifying the climate value of that 40-acre woodlot
The New York Times “Tree Power“
Production on marginal lands can meet only 25% of our biofuel mandates
Nature “Bioenergy: Biofuel production on the margins” & “Sustainable bioenergy production from marginal lands in the US Midwest” This is fascinating, and provides further evidence that even the smartest biofuel production methods are not going to be enough to mitigate our … Continue reading
National Geographic feature on penguin propulsion
This month’s National Geographic features a valuable article called “Escape Velocity” that chronicles how Emperor Penguins reach incredible velocities to launch through holes in the ice and out into safety. Mostly a pictorial featuring Paul Nicklen’s amazing underwater photography, the article shows … Continue reading
Lee Alan Dugatkin blesses Slate with a piece on Kropotkin
Slate “The Russian Anarchist Prince Who Challenged Evolution” I really appreciate the fact that Dugatkin uses Kropotkin to bring to light that Darwinian evolution has been — even in the time and work of Darwin — a process that was … Continue reading
Megan Frederickson shares the wonder of ant cooperation with Toronto Library patrons
Toronto Public Library/University of Toronto Exploring Evolution series “The Evolution of Cooperation: Ant-Plant Associations in Peru” We need more scientists out there explaining the wonders of evolutionary biology!
Want to know where the Presidential candidates stand on science? There’s a site for that!
Science Debate dot org “The Top American Science Questions: 2012“
Posted in A Minor Post, Astronomy, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Food, Grants & Funding, Health & Medicine, Marine Ecosystems, Political Science, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Science (General), Space Travel, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Energy, Web
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Rogue iron fertilization? Things have gotten weird!
The New York Times “A Rogue Climate Experiment Outrages Scientists“
Rob Nixon on Rachel Carson’s prescience
The Chronicle of Higher Education “Rachel Carson’s Prescience“
Posted in A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Biography, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Economics, Environmental Justice, Habitat Destruction, Marine Ecosystems, Political Science, Pollution, Public Policy
Tagged Rachel Carson, Rob Nixon, Silent Spring, The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Want a good gauge of how much humans pollute waterways? Just measure for caffeine!
Marine Pollution Bulletin “Occurrence and concentration of caffeine in Oregon coastal waters” Coffee addicts worldwide can be proud of this result: you are leaving a “pissprint” on local waters.
Are the Sentinelese the last untouched hunter-gatherer culture?
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment “A world of their own” This is an absolutely fascinating article. I was not aware that there were any cultures outside of Amazonia that have maintained such isolation. As Burton points out, we need … Continue reading
National Geographic on the yartsa gunbu bubble
National Geographic “Tibetan Gold” This story encapsulates a whole host of unsustainable human behaviors: First, we have people over-harvesting an ecological product in a manner that risks its collapse; Second, the over-harvesting is driven by a cultural superstition that has spread … Continue reading
Posted in A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Belief, Biodiversity Loss, Coevolution, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Ecology, Economic sustainability, Ecosystem Services, Memetic Fitness, Parasitism, Population Growth, Resource Consumption, Sustainable Harvesting, System Stability, Tundra
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ESA 2012 Overall Impressions
What was the ‘big news’ at this year’s Ecological Society of America meeting? Given that this meeting is composed of so many different meetings running concurrently, this just might be an impossible question to answer fairly. But for me, this … Continue reading
Posted in A Major Post, Altruism, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Cooperation, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Group Selection, Marine Ecosystems, Multilevel Selection, Public Policy, Punishment, Resource Consumption, Social Capital, Sustainability, System Stability, Talks & Seminars, Teaching, Teaching Tools, The Evolution of Sustainable Use
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ESA 2012 Symposium #23, Commodifying Nature: The Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Service Valuation in Environmental Decision Making
Friday morning is a tough spot at an ESA meeting. It is the last day of a six-day conference, and there are only morning events, so many people evacuate before this final session. And for those who do drag themselves … Continue reading
Posted in A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Climate Change, Conferences, Conservation Biology, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Freshwater Ecosystems, Habitat Destruction, Interdisciplinarity, Invasive Species, Pollution, Talks & Seminars, Temperate Rainforest, Traditional Ecological Knowledge
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ESA 2012 Thursday afternoon talks
I spent Thursday afternoon once again hustling from one talk to another, with Organized Oral Session #47 (Universal Senescence? New Theories and Experimental Approaches Across the Tree of Life) being my primary focus. The writings of George C. Williams and … Continue reading
Posted in A Major Post, Behavior, Conferences, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecosystem Services, Freshwater Ecosystems, Individual-based Models, Parasitism, Phenotypic Plasticity, Ponds & Lakes, Predation, Senescence, Spatially Explicit Modeling, Sustainable Agriculture, Talks & Seminars, Tropical Forest
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The many ecotones of the Columbia Gorge
Before heading over to spend six twelve-hour days in the Oregon Convention Center, I had the good fortune to go on a backpacking trip along the Eagle Creek, Pacific Crest, and Ruckel Creek trails in the Mount Hood Wilderness Area. … Continue reading
Posted in A Major Post, Temperate Rainforest
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“Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence” exhibit at the American Museum on Natural History
Today I had the pleasure of accompanying my daughter’s fourth grade class to the “Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence” exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. Beyond making sure that all students returned home safely, I was also interested … Continue reading
Molly H. Adams earns top honors from the Critical and Visual Studies program
Me with Molly and B. Ricardo Brown (coordinator of the Critical and Visual Studies program) at Pratt’s Honors Convocation I am proud to report that a student who I have both taught and mentored, Molly H. Adams, has won top … Continue reading
2012 Sustainability Crash Course at Pratt Institute
For the second year in a row I participated in Pratt Institute’s Crash Course in sustainability, sponsored by the Center for Sustainable Design Studies. I once again gave my talk entitled “Ecosystems: Where they came from, how they work, and … Continue reading
Posted in Art & Design, Biomes, Center for Sustainable Design Studies, Conferences, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Green Design, Greenwashing, Life Cycle Analysis, Population Growth, Pratt Institute, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Sustainability, Sustainable Pratt
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