Posted 06 Sep 2018 / 0
Science News “Artificial intelligence spots obesity from space” Wow, if you are the kind of person who tends to put a lot of stock in “personal responsibility”, maybe you don’t want to read the brief article above. Because it is an amazing piece of evidence that individual human behaviors are highly influenced by the environments that Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Environmental Justice, Gene by Environment Interactions, Health & Medicine, Urban Ecology, Urban Planning
Posted 06 Sep 2018 / 0
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Decreasing fire season precipitation increased recent western US forest wildfire activity” There’s a little bit of a “choose your climate change poison” to this study, but it is interesting to be able to isolate the specific climate-driven effects that are causing more wildfires to crop up.
A Minor Post, Climate Change, Urban Ecology, Urban Planning
Posted 22 Aug 2018 / 0
Welcome to Brooklyn: it’s a great place to cycle if you know how to do so safely. In August of 2018 I was asked to give a one-hour workshop on urban cycling as part of Pratt’s new student orientation program. I figured that I should condense my thoughts on the why, how, when, where, and Read More
A Major Post, Altruism, Pollution, Pratt Institute, Sustainability, Sustainable Transportation, Urban Planning
Posted 20 Oct 2017 / 0
I am very excited to announce that artist Ellie Irons will speak at Pratt Institute on November 9th, 2017 at 6 pm in ARC Building Room E-02. Her talk is entitled Public Fieldwork & Weedy Resistance: Practicing Social-Ecological Art in the (so-called) Anthropocene and will provide a tour of her diverse individual and collaborative works of Read More
A Major Post, Activism, Adaptation, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Commensalism, Community Ecology, Competition, Department of Mathematics & Science, Ecological Restoration, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Grasslands, Habitat Destruction, Habitat Fragmentation, Invasive Species, Mutualism, Pollination, Pollution, Pratt Academic Senate, Public Art, Public Outreach, Resilience, Science in Art & Design, Sustainability, Sustainable Urban Design, Temperate Forest, Urban Ecology, Urban Planning
Posted 14 Aug 2017 / 0
This year around, I put most of my impression of the Ecological Society of America annual meeting into a single summary post [link pending]. But one element of the meeting was so valuable that I wanted to highlight it in a separate post. A field trip led by Charlie Nilon and co-facilitated by Paige Warren, Myla Aronson, Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Cultural Anthropology, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Sustainability, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Planning
Posted 03 Apr 2017 / 0
At the end of every academic year, Pratt highlights the best work done by graduating students in its undergraduate and graduate programs. Much of this work used to be housed “under one roof” at a space in Manhattan, but in recent times the shows have spread out to different places at different times. This made Read More
A Minor Post, Architecture, Art & Design, Pratt Institute
Posted 04 Nov 2016 / 0
The EPA’s AirNow site allows you to see real-time indices of air pollution in your area The section in Josh Fox’s How to Let Go of the World film about Chinese air pollution got me thinking about the air that I expose myself to in New York City. There are so many ways in which Read More
A Minor Post, Pollution, Public Outreach, Sustainability, Urban Planning
Posted 24 Jun 2016 / 0
Mars landscape image courtesy of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory via Wikimedia Commons Scientific American “Home Sweet Habitat: Students Help NASA Design Mars Spacecraft Living Quarters” Anyone who has regularly read my posts on the subject knows that I am a space exploration grump, particularly regarding the idea that humans ought to try to venture out Read More
A Minor Post, Architecture, Evolutionary Psychology, Human limits, Industrial Design, Mismatch theory, Pratt Institute, Psychology, Space Travel, Web
Posted 11 Apr 2016 / 0
The Pratt Institute Chemistry, Machinery, and Engineering buildings in 1950 (image courtesy of Pratt@125) A colleague of mine (Daniel Wright) sent around this image from Pratt Institute’s 125th Anniversary photo time line collection. It’s a pretty amazing testament to how quickly things can change in a culturally-evolving environment. These buildings still stand at Pratt: in Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Architecture, Climate Change, Cultural Evolution, Pratt Institute, Science in Art & Design, Sustainability, Sustainable Pratt, Sustainable Urban Design
Posted 09 Apr 2016 / 0
A student in my Ecology for Architects course sent me the link to this TED Talk by Neri Oxman about some of her projects at the intersection of design and biology. I think that my student meant for me to watch it, and perhaps might have been interested in my thoughts, but the talk struck such a Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Architecture, Closed Loop Systems, Fashion, Film, Television, & Video, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Science in Art & Design, Sustainability
