Curiosity and culturomics
Posted 18 Jan 2014 / 0The Chronicle of Higher Education “Erez Aiden Contains Multitudes“
A Minor Post, Articles, Cultural EvolutionAre MOOCs just the clunky starting place for a more evolved form of new teaching?
Posted 18 Jan 2014 / 0The Chronicle of Higher Education “Innovation in 2014: Welcome to the Evolution“
A Minor Post, Articles, Higher Education, TeachingCNN tackles climate change by explaining public goods games!
Posted 15 Jan 2014 / 0I almost fell out of my seat when I found this video while searching for a concise source explaining why we don’t have an international climate change agreement. This short television piece is basically trying to explain the dynamics of climate change agreement as depicted by Milinski and colleagues (2008) in their PNAS paper “The collective-risk Read More
A Minor Post, Climate Change, Environmental Justice, Film, Television, & Video, Game Theory, Sustainability, WebNow legal, Northern California’s pot farms join the rest of agriculture in impacting water supply
Posted 14 Jan 2014 / 0NPR The Salt “California’s Pot Farms Could Leave Salmon Runs Truly Smoked” It is funny because as marijuana becomes legalized it joins tobacco and coffee as a potentially high-impact, low-necessity agricultural product. And I know there are a lot of cigarette smokers, coffee fiends, and potheads taking exception to that last sentence.
A Minor Post, Freshwater Ecosystems, Habitat Destruction, Law, Radio & Podcasts, Rivers & Streams, Sustainability, Water SupplyMoney Talking about Janet Yellen and multilevel selection
Posted 10 Jan 2014 / 0WNYC Money Talking “Helping Ordinary Americans Focus Of Fed Under Janet Yellen” Should the economy serve the society as a whole, or only some individuals in that society? Wow is it refreshing to hear a radio segment ask that question!
A Minor Post, Cultural Evolution, Memetic Fitness, Multilevel Selection, Radio & PodcastsNice infographic on global and domestic food waste
Posted 07 Jan 2014 / 0KQED The Lowdown “Rot and Rubbish: The Rancid Truth About How Much Food We Waste“
A Minor Post, Composting, Ethics, Food, Information Design, Political Science, Pollution, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Science in Art & Design, Sustainability, WebScientific American “Tiny Plants” article provides a primer on the inter-relationship between ecological and evolutionary change
Posted 07 Jan 2014 / 0I am always on the lookout for great popular science articles to assign to my students. What makes a popular science article great? Well, to start with it should address concepts that are core to my classes (admittedly, this definition of “greatness” is highly relative to what I decide is important to teach). Concept density Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Coevolution, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Experiments (General), Extinction, Habitat Destruction, Interactions, Macroevolution, Marine Ecosystems, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Pollution, Resilience, Sustainability, TerrestrialCan you replicate the collective adaptive value of religion without god?
Posted 07 Jan 2014 / 0NPR Morning Edition “Sunday Assembly: A Church For The Godless Picks Up Steam” It is interesting to see people explicitly seeking out the benefits of religious community whilst trying to maintain their objective understanding of the material world. Conventional wisdom is that “god” is needed to make religions work, but perhaps just a collective intention Read More
A Minor Post, Belief, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Group Selection, Radio & Podcasts, ReligionWould a different term make us better appreciate ecosystem services?
Posted 04 Jan 2014 / 0The Chronicle of Higher Education “Who Is Conservation For?” This article takes an interesting turn when it suggests that our inability to appreciate and value ecosystem services stems from… well, the term “ecosystem services”. It is common to blame scientists for failing to make their fields appropriately accessible to the general public, and sometimes this Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Ecosystem Services, Habitat DestructionCaterpillars weaponize nicotine
Posted 02 Jan 2014 / 0The Economist “Caterpillars that blow nicotine at their enemy” I love the combination of genetic manipulation and “arena of death” wolf-spider gauntlet that led to these findings.
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Host-Pathogen Evolution, Interactions, Parasitism, Predation, Resistance Evolution in Parasites