News — Page 8

On May 19, 2015, an oil pipeline ruptured releasing up to 105,000 gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean near the pristine Refugio State Beach located in Santa Barbara County. The oil spill area stretches over 9 miles of the California coastline. Refugio State Beach and fisheries for both fish and shellfish are closed.

Sustaining Biological Infrastructure training course, 9-11 June 2015 Living stocks, field stations, museum collections, data archives – a wealth of material and data infrastructure support the everyday activities of biologists. Collections and tools require steady funding to maintain materials and services and infrastructure managers must also be able to innovate, developing their resources to get the most value for users….

In December 2015, the Ecological Society of America will celebrate a big birthday: 100 years since the first group of botanists and zoologists, parasitologists, geologists, physiologists, and marine biologists gathered in Columbus, Ohio, to unite their shared interest in the relationships of the great diversity of living organisms to each other and their surroundings. To kick off our centennial year,…

Between 1980 and 2004, extreme weather cost the world an estimated US$1.4 trillion and much loss of life. Climate change is expected to exacerbate flooding, drought, and other weather hazards. Population growth in regions expected to be hard hit by extreme weather will expose more people to risk. Communities can take steps to build resiliency, say scientists in a Royal…

Plant biology PhD student Uma Nagendra of the University of Georgia, Athens, wins the 2014 Dance Your PhD competion, sponsored by Science, AAAS, and HighWire Press. Floating on trapeze wires, young white pine seedlings unfurl and reach for light. But lurking in the roots of the parent tree are dangerous fungi that creep forth to strike at the young scions. The sprouts…

The US National Zoo stunned butterfly, cuttlefish, coral, and giant clam fans when it announced Monday, June 16, that the zoo’s Invertebrate Exhibit would close within the week.

Whelp, they look like they’re having fun.
Masaaki Yuasa has some thoughts to share about what makes learning fun, even when it has a gross, bitter taste, in season 6, episode 7 of the animated series Adventure Time.

Today’s Google doodle celebrates Dorothy Hodgkin, neé Crowfoot, a founder of protein crystallography who famously solved the 3-dimentional molecular structure of of the protein hormone insulin in 1969. The project took 35 years. She won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 for her structure of vitamin B12. The doodle depicts Hodgkin’s 1945 model of penicillin. She used a Hollerith…

Third US National Climate Assessment released today.

Me and milkweed fruit – my #NatureSelfie for #EarthDay. Nash Turley, a naturalist, photographer, musician, and PhD student in evolutionary ecology at the University of Toronto, snapped this shot in Ithaca, NY, in 2011. He tweeted, “Everyday is Earth Day; the fact that the calendar says today is ‘Earth Day’ doesn’t really mean anything to me. Sort of like how aboriginal cultures don’t have a word for ‘nature’ because they didn’t see themselves as separate from nature….the fact that we have a day for the Earth shows how disconnected modern societies are from ‘nature’.”
Earth Day started as a grassroots protest movement in 1970 and has solidified into an annual event. What does Earth Day mean in 2014?

A well-publicized depiction of wolves revitalizing Yellowstone’s ecosystem is a myth, said writers for the NY Times’ op-ed page and a Nature news feature last week.

“Can we expand Mandela’s vision of reconciliation to our own planet, to offer ourselves a shot at redemption from Nature, just as he offered his oppressors?”