Posted 12 Oct 2015 / 4
If you look at who I am as an academic, you would think that I should be among the most ardent supporters of Open Access publishing. After all, the proliferation of open access would solve a lot of problems for me. As a scientist who teaches at a school of art, design, and architecture, access Read More
A Major Post, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ethics, Grants & Funding, Higher Education, Periodicals, Public Policy, Publication, Science as a career, Social Media
Posted 08 Oct 2015 / 0
I am excited to announce that I am scheduled to speak about the tension between biological and cultural evolution at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn Heights. The title of my talk is “Highly-creative baby-breeding idea propagators: what human (re)productive choices mean for the future of our species“, and it will provide a partial overview of Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Behavior, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Carrying Capacity, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Parenting, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Psychology, Public Outreach, Reproductive Fitness, Resource Consumption, Sex and Reproduction, Sustainability
Posted 07 Oct 2015 / 0
NPR Morning Edition “New Dietary Guidelines Will Not Include Sustainability Goal” Man, this is a bummer. If our dietary guidelines are simply aimed at maximizing our bodily health but not the long-term health of our civilization and the planet upon which we depend, what’s the point of these guidelines? I love how the meat industry Read More
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Food, Freshwater Ecosystems, Habitat Destruction, Habitat Fragmentation, Marine Ecosystems, Pollution, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture, Terrestrial, Vegetarianism
Posted 06 Oct 2015 / 0
Urban Wildlife Podcast “Episode 3: Timbers on a Boston Island” I love this episode because it captures the two major human impacts of urban ecology: the creation of commensal niches for some species while other species are isolated to islands of small remaining habitat. We learn about a variety of organisms from birds to bugs Read More
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Birds, Commensalism, Habitat Destruction, Habitat Fragmentation, Mutualism, Parthenogenesis, Radio & Podcasts, Reptiles, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Ecology
Posted 06 Oct 2015 / 0
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution “A deal with Japan on whaling?” Having been a fan of Whale Wars for awhile, and being predisposed to thinking that we ought to protect large, social, cooperative, cognitively-advanced animals, it is a bit hard for me to accept legal whaling of any kind. But as this article points out Read More
A Minor Post, Activism, Articles, Belief, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Cooperation, Economics, Ethics, Public Policy, Social Norms, Sustainable Harvesting
Posted 29 Sep 2015 / 0
The Guardian “Activists occupy British Museum over BP sponsorship” I really like that idea expressed by these activists that BP’s sponsorship of big art exhibits is not philanthropy. They are basically paying to mainstream their own presence, to obscure their true identity as a corporation that profits from threatening the future of our species. A Read More
A Minor Post, Activism, Anthropogenic Change, Art & Design, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Greenwashing, Habitat Destruction, Pollution, Sustainability, Web
Posted 17 Aug 2015 / 0
Ecosphere “Characterizing demographic parameters across environmental gradients: a case study with Ontario moose (Alces alces)” What I find interesting about this study — besides its unprecedented investigation of something that would seem pretty critical to basic conservation efforts — is what was and was not intuitive in its findings. Moose have higher carrying capacities where Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Carrying Capacity, Community Ecology, Conservation Biology, Ecological Modeling, Habitat Destruction, Intrinsic Growth Rate, Parasitism, Population Growth, Sustainable Harvesting
Posted 15 Aug 2015 / 0
The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Great Extinction” I agree with this article’s overall perspective, which is that it is a bit weird to view humans as unnatural. What we are is unprecedented as a single species that defines a geologic time period (albeit what is likely to be a very short one). I also Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Commensalism, Population Growth, Subsistence, Survival, Sustainability
Posted 05 Aug 2015 / 0
BMC Ecology “Commonness and ecology, but not bigger brains, predict urban living in birds” What makes this study smart is that it compares the birds that live successfully in urban areas with the birds that actually have the potential to colonize cities. This makes for a much more meaningful comparison than simply comparing urban species Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Behavior, Birds, Brain size, Coevolution, Cognitive Ability, Commensalism, Conservation Biology, Habitat Destruction, Resilience, Urban Ecology
Posted 22 Jul 2015 / 0
National Geographic “Sins of the Aral Sea” National Geographic “Last Rites for the Jade Sea?” These recent National Geographic issues both feature articles on threatened bodies of water and the role that over-exploitation of feeder rivers plays in these threats. In both the case of the Aral Sea, which has already been largely ‘disappeared’ by Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Deserts, Environmental Justice, Freshwater Ecosystems, Habitat Destruction, Marine Ecosystems, Water Supply
