Alan Rabinowitz, 1953-2018

Photo of Alan Rabinowitz speaking in 2010 courtesy of Kris Krüg via Wikimedia Commons It was with great sadness that I learned that Alan Rabinowitz died of cancer on August 5th. There’s a great tribute to him on the National Geographic site: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/08/alan-rabinowitz-big-cat-champion-news/ A Brooklyn-born kid who used frequent Bronx Zoo visits to overcome a severe stuttering Read More

“Mount H-Index”: I never made it to base camp, and I have still had some great adventures

The Chronicle of Higher Education “Rethinking the Scientific Career” What a fantastic article, one that feels very validating from the vantage-point of my own non-conventional scientific/academic career! I love the metaphor used here: academic science has been set up to honor those with summit fever, to the exclusion of those who might slow down and Read More

Who was the first to catalog color? Hint: it wasn’t designers!

Pantone color book image courtesy of Carlos Paes via Wikimedia Commons Allison Meier has a very illuminating short piece on where the Pantone color system came from: Hyperallergic “The Bird-Based Color System that Eventually Became Pantone“ What I find interesting about this history is the convergent need of people in vastly different areas of science Read More

BK BioReactor visualizes Gowanus Canal microbial communities

Gowanus Canal images courtesy All-Nite Images via Wikimedia Commons My colleague Romie Littrell referred me to a really interesting project of the BK BioReactor group that visualizes microbial community diversity in the Gowanus Canal: http://www.bkbioreactor.com/visualization/ For those who are not familiar with the Gowanus Canal, an historically-important Brooklyn shipping lane that is now a Superfund Read More

Pratt News features short piece on Dr. Roland Kays’s campus visit

Want to know where NYC’s water supply stands? There’s a DEP page for that!

I recently discovered this page on the NYC.gov Environmental Protection site. It’s pretty cool: if you are worried about NYC’s water supply, you can get up-to-date information on where our reservoirs stand. When I ask my students to cite sustainability issues, they often point to how water is wasted in NYC on things like spraying Read More

My article on adolescence featured in the This View of Life culture series

I am very excited to have an article that I wrote on the adaptive nature of adolescent behavior featured in a new culture series in the This View of Life (TVoL) online magazine. My piece, entitled “Adolescent behavior doesn’t make sense (except in the light of cultural evolution)” summarizes an argument that has been rolling around in Read More

Pratt students make the potential trip to Mars better designed

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

Biophotovoltaics: a promising design innovation, or a great example of lack of quantitative design?

Moss image courtesy Dick Mudde via Wikimedia Commons GreenFabLab Barcelona “Moss Voltaics” A student in my Ecology for Architects class pointed me towards this design project, which creates a building facade system designed to pull electrical current from small growth chambers containing moss. The technology — dubbed a biophotovoltaic — turns the energy captured by photosynthesis Read More

Is New York City a “sustainable” metropolis?

Brooklyn garbage bag photo courtesy of Tom W. Sulcer via Wikimedia Commons New York City has endured a pretty bad environmental reputation for decades. If you find yourself on a Manhattan street on the right warm summer night, it is hard not to feel that the place is an environmental nightmare. Those piles of garbage Read More