Science Connected, Author at Science Connected Magazine

An observation of a Great Horned Owl from the NHM’s iNaturalist account. Credit: NHMLA Community Science Program, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)

Cultural Heritage and Citizen Science

December 6, 2019December 4, 2019 Science Connectedcitizen science, cultural heritage, libraries, museums

Citizen science for your ears The latest episode of Citizen Science, the podcast from SciStarter, is the first of two episodes about how regular people help cultural heritage institutions like archives, libraries, and museums do scientific research, like uploading photographs to iNaturalist or eBird, or volunteering with a local water organization to monitor stream and river quality. Co-host Justin Schell shares how natural history museums and libraries encourage everyday people to take part in local, national, and global science projects. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County In the…

Botany

Genome Revelations: How Green Plants Evolved

December 4, 2019December 4, 2019 Science Connectedbiodiversity, evolution, genome, green plants, phylogenomics

By Jacqueline Mattos (@mattosjacq) Plants are ancestral organisms that have evolved over millions of years, leading to the broad diversity we see today. Green plants evolved from a common ancestor into approximately 450,000–500,000 species today. There are many gaps in understanding of their diversification that scientists still struggle to fill. In a recent paper published in Nature, researchers from the One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative reviewed and analyzed genomic data from 1,124 plant species and provided the most complete evolutionary relationship tree for green plants to date. Genomes, transcriptomes, and…

Animals Citizen Science Citizen Science Connected Blog

Caterpillars Count

November 22, 2019November 20, 2019 Science Connectedarthropods, caterpillars, citizen science projects, data collection, insects

From big to small, we all count. Even caterpillars. Caterpillars are important Caterpillars are familiar to us. When a butterfly flutters past you, you know that it was once a caterpillar. Now it’s time to count the caterpillars and arthropods (creatures, like insects, with segmented bodies) that you see to help scientists understand how their populations are changing. You can get started today with the Caterpillars Count! project. Even though this project doesn’t just focus on caterpillars, who can resist a good alliteration? In 2015, Dr. Allen Hurlbert of North…

Engineering Technology

Emerging Battery Tech for Energy Industry

November 18, 2019November 19, 2019 Science Connectedbattery technology, energy industry, lithium batteries, renewable energy

By Emily Folk, @EmilySFolk Advances in battery technology are transforming one of the most promising movements in the modern energy industry: the push toward renewable energy power solutions. Solar, wind, geothermal, and even hydro energy sources have a lot to offer besides near-limitless energy generation. They are clean in the sense that they have little to no impact on the surrounding environment, and they are generally inexpensive to produce under the right conditions. The problem with most renewable energy sources is that they tend to come with a glaring limitation.…

Figure Five: Forum participants choosing where to allocate resources. Image Credit: Museum of Science, Boston

Citizen Science Citizen Science Connected Blog Climate Environment

Boston is Wicked Hot: Here’s What They’re Doing About It

November 15, 2019November 13, 2019 Science ConnectedBoston, resilience, urban heat, urban heat islands, Wicked Hot Boston

Want to learn more about this initiative? Check out the Wicked Hot Boston series, Parts One and Two. Want to address climate hazards in your community? Head over to SciStarter.org/NOAA to find a citizen science project. Wicked Hot Boston It’s true: the world is getting hotter, and Boston is becoming WICKED hot. This past summer, the Museum of Science, Boston (MOS) team and local citizen scientists began to measure extreme temperatures. They used sensors provided by CAPA Strategies to make an ambient air temperature map of Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline,…

Biota Project Opinion

Data Literacy in South Asia: From Outsourced to a Lead in Tech

November 12, 2019November 12, 2019 Science Connectedculture, data literacy, South ASia, Women in STEM, women in tech

Opinion By Sabah Ul-Hasan (@sabahzero) on behalf of The Biota Project Blog (@thebiotaproject) What is outsourcing? Reverberating effects from British colonization of South Asia and the ‘modern’ world I live in the United States, and I was recently in a room full of scientists when someone made a wonderfully distasteful joke about receiving a call from customer support and that the person on the other end of the phone line had a “funny accent.” If you’re unfamiliar with the term “outsourcing,” fear not. There’s an entire NBC television series about…

Book Reviews Citizen Science Connected Blog

Seeking the Sasquatch

November 8, 2019November 6, 2019 Science ConnectedBigfoot, myths and legends, pseudoscience, Sasquatch

Book Review: When the Sasquatch Legend Teaches Us About Critical Thinking By Patricia Balbon (@watscicomm) Gordon, David George. The Sasquatch Seeker’s Field Manual: Using Citizen Science to Uncover North America’s Most Elusive Creature. Mountaineers Books, 2015. 176 pages. Paperback US$12.26. It’s late, and you’re seeking shelter for the night after a long hike. Something’s lurking among the shadows; pungent wafts of musk barrage your nostrils. In the soft mud, you glimpse a fresh footprint with claw contours. The fronds of a nearby fern are in shreds—could it be a bear?…

Environment

Anthropocene mass extinction: are we there yet?

November 4, 2019November 1, 2019 Science Connectedbiodiversity, biodiversity loss, climate change, ecological crisis, mass extinction

By Jacqueline Mattos (@mattosjacq) In the last few decades, scientific observations have highlighted that we are now facing a mass extinction, caused in major part by human activity: habitat fragmentation, invasive species, spread of pathogens and diseases, climate changes leading to global warming, and, of course, direct killing of endangered species. However, this is still a debated topic among scientists. Some say that we are not in a mass extinction event, and that if we were, conservation biology and all the efforts we have been putting into conserving animal species…

Biota Project Climate Environment

Community Perspectives Strengthen Hurricane Preparedness

October 30, 2019October 29, 2019 Science Connectedcommunities, hurricane, preparedness, resilience, tropical cyclone, visualizations, weather

By Helen Cheng (@ms_helenc / @thebiotaproject) For those who live along the United States East Coast, October is the height of the hurricane season. According to the National Hurricane Center, the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30. The peak of the season is mid-August to late October, as shown in the graph below, with the number of storms increasing during this time of year. However, deadly hurricanes can occur anytime in the hurricane season. Understanding communities’ past experiences of hurricanes and how they perceive forecasts for…

Marine Biology Oceanography

Marine Mammals Need a Voice in the Fishing Industry

October 28, 2019October 28, 2019 Science Connectedbycatch, dolphin, entanglement, fishing, marine mammals, oceans, seafood, whale

By Neha Jain (@lifesciexplore) You might feel satisfied with your consumer choice after buying fish with a “dolphin-friendly” label. But you might want to look closer. It is likely that your tuna fishery is not actually friendly to dolphins, because most “sustainable” fishing labels do not consider the welfare of marine mammals, an issue that has long been neglected from fishing policies. The well-being of marine mammals such as whales, dolphins, and porpoises—considered highly sentient animals—concerns more than how many are killed as a result of being caught accidentally in…