The Reason Why

Biological Evolution
STEM
Environmental and Science Education
Nature of Science
History of Science
Edward Hessler

THE REASON WHY THERE WAS NO FIRST HUMAN

Inspired by Richard Dawkins's The Magic of Reality, PBS produced a short video--an excellent teaching tool--which explains why there was no first human.  It is nicely done and includes most of the major species along the way, from way back to present.

--550 fifty years of human evolution (animation)

(< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkYD3wEuKbY >)

--From the book site

( < http://evoboek.nl/en/#prettyPhoto[3425-EVO animation]/0/ >)

EVO is a book on the evolution of human generations displayed in a single 30 m long page--folded in a zig-zag pattern that traces human history back through 153 generations. Father, grandfather, great grandfather, great,-great grandfather all the way down to the beginning.

( < http://evoboek.nl/en/ >)

Brains on Art (Dance)

Brain
Biological Evolution
STEM
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

I intended to post this a while back when I first found it.

I was reminded of that intention when I noticed it recently on another blog (Diane Ravitch). Neuroscientists are exploring everything these days including art.

"Some of the answers to art's mysteries can be found in the realm of science. Art is considered the domain of the heart, but its transporting effects start in the brain, where intricate systems perceive and interpret it with dazzling speed. Using brain-imaging and other tools of neuroscience, the new field of neuroaestheticsis is probing the relationship between art and the brain."

The article by Sarah L. Kaufman, Dani Player, Jayne Ornstein, May-Ying Lam, Elizabeth Hart and Shelly Tan is from The Washington Post. It is embedded in an interactive video with the discussion occurring next to the images.

Scroll and turn up the sound. It is dazzling, the article, the music, the dancing, and, of course, the brain that makes all this possible.

The music is "Swan Lake" by Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky with dancers Sara Mearns as Odette/Odile and Jared Angle as Prince Siegfried.

SEEK

STEM
Environmental and Science Education
Sustainability
Sustainability Energy & Transportation
Water and Watersheds
Edward Hessler

I've never promoted one of my favoriteeducational resource links in Minnesota: SEEK.

If you are interested in quality environmental education resources, professional development opportunities for educators, environmental events and environmentally related jobs, SEEK is an important place to shop.

The site, long housed and maintained by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MNPCA) is moving to the Minnesota Association for Environmental Education (MAEE).

You can learn more about SEEK as well as become a subscriber by visiting the MNPCA page announcing this transition.

Thanks to MNPCA for starting and hosting SEEK and MAEE for continuing this important and valued service.

Squid: Coming to Life

Biological Evolution
STEM
Environmental & Science Education
Biodiversity

The Patel Lab, University of California-Berkeley, studies embryonic pattern formation at the genetic, molecular, and cellular levels. Relative spatial positions within the developing embryo ensure that an embryo's tissues and organs develop in the correct place and orientation. It includes the process by which cells acquire different identities depending on their relative positions in the developing embryo.

A video, "Squid: Coming to Life,"was awarded Runner Up for the Scientific Merit Award at the Imagine Science Films festival. The goal of the Science/AAAS Scientist award "is to encourage more scientists to create films that let us into their minds, labs, and lifestyle." The video includes images and video footage from an embryology course

You can check out the details of the awards, view the short video, and learn more about the embryology course here.

Nipam Patel is co-chair of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC-Berkeley

The Windshield Phenomenon

Biodiversity
Extinction
Sustainability
STEM
Environmental and Science Education

I found a couple of newspaper reports this fall on windshield surveys, an informal measure of the abundance and diversity of bugs, splattered of course.  The numbers are remembered by those who look as more when observers were kids and fewer now.

Some of you may remember summer trips when stopping for gasoline included washing and scraping car windshields, of bug guts and topping up windshield washer fluid was a standard part of the stop.  This has become a much more uncommon practice.

But how do we know that numbers and kinds have declined. Maybe it has something to do with the aerodynamic changes in car design, from boxes to round, aerodynamic surfaces.

As a test of this idea, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) conducted its Big Bug Count in 2004. Participants, some 40,000 drivers, cleaned their number plates and then drove for a specified number of miles (20 and 80). At the end, they were asked to count the insects using a grid referred to as the "splatometer" to make the counting easier and more accurate. They found an average of 1 bug every 5 miles. It was the first mass study into possible causes of insect decline. Unfortunately, the study was not repeated. You may see the splatometer used in this study here. There is also an earlier version here. It was used in a trial study.

In October 2017 PLOS One published a research paper by Caspar A. Hallmann and 11 other scientists that provides a much more accurate measure of the decline noted informally by windshield observers. It uses a standardized procedures--trap construction, size and design, trap orientation, slope of the location, netting type and ground sealing. The research is also relatively long-term (27 years, 1989 - 2016). The paper is ominously titled "More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying biomass in protected areas." The research was conducted in protected nature areas in Germany. Here is the abstract.

Global declines in insects have sparked wide interest among scientists, politicians, and the general public. Loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading effects on food webs and to jeopardize ecosystem services. Our understanding of the extent and underlying causes of this decline is based on the abundance of single species or taxonomic groups only, rather than changes in insect biomass which is more relevant for ecological functioning. Here, we used a standardized protocol to measure total insect biomass using Malaise traps, deployed over 27 years in 63 nature protection areas in Germany (96 unique location-year combinations) to infer on the status and trend of local entomofauna. Our analysis estimates a seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82% in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study. We show that this decline is apparent regardless of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain this overall decline. This yet unrecognized loss of insect biomass must be taken into account in evaluating declines in abundance of species depending on insects as a food source, and ecosystem functioning in the European landscape.

There is much more research to do, e.g., causation, geographical extent and the possible cascade of effects throughout ecosystem. Hallman et. al., paid attention to weather/climate and noted that the temperatures observed during the study should have favored flying insects. They didn't.

The news article in the Washington Post by Ben Guarino may be found here. The report in the Ottawa Citizen by Tom Speer is found here.

Warning to Humanity: Second Notice

Sustainability
Pollution
Climate Change
Biodiversity
Water & Watersheds
Disaster
Edward Hessler

It was twenty-five years ago, that "the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists...wrote the 1992 'World Scientists' Warning to Humanity." They expressed concern about ozone depletion, availability of freshwater, depletion of marine life, ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change and continued human population growth.

It was a manifesto that called attention to a then coming collision: humans and the natural world.

So, on the twenty-fifth anniversary this study was re-examined and our response was evaluated using "available time-series data." It is appropriately titled World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice.What do you think was found?

Not only have we failed but with one notable exception, the stabilization of the atmospheric ozone layer, most of the concerns have gotten worse and appears to be a downward trend.

The current statement was published in a ViewPoint in the journal Bioscience and has been signed by more than 15,000 independent scientists world wide. The supplemental files for both the 1992 and 2017 report are available. I could open them and hope you can as well. The Oxford University Press link, BIOSCI, is not functional but may be by the time you read this.

The Alliance of World Scientists provides another link where you may read the article, view the signers/endorsers and learn about the Alliance, a new, international assembly of scientists.

This may be the final bell. It seems unlikely that there will be a third call. Either progress will have been made or that humanity has slipped too far down the slope.

Friday Poem

Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

When I was a kid there were three root vegetables that I didn't much like. They were, not in order (there is no order), rutabagas, parsnips and turnips. They had a redeeming virtue: being able to last through winter in the root cellar. The second virtue for my Mom and Dad is that they were great meal extenders. My Mom had a way of mashing them up with potatoes, including them in stews and soups that made eating them easier.

Today, I like all of them. And I'm glad I gave them a reluctant try when I was growing up.

Today's poem is about one of them, the rutabaga.

This poem was posted on 3QuarksDaily, as Jim Culleny's selection for his Friday poem (November 17, 2017.  I liked it at first reading and hope you do, too.

You may read about the poem's author, Laura Grade Weldon here.

Thanks, Mr. Culleny for your deep knowledge of the literature of poetry and for making it available to others.

Maths in The Met

Mathematics Education
STEM
History of Science
Art and Environment
Environmental and Science Education
Edward Hessler


The Metropolitan Museum of Art--one of "the Mets"--in New York City is the largest art museum in the United States. It is in the top ten art museums and galleries in the world. The Met's holdings include some two million works of art. Some of the art includes maths content.

You can take a guided tour of the Met's mathematical content, numerals, shapes, perspective, astronomy, time and games here. Your tour guides are Joseph Dauben and Marjorie Senechal. A second tour is planned (patterns, symmetries and mathematical matterials.)

Dauben is distinguished Professor of History and History of Science at City College of New York and Senechal is the Louise Wolff Kahn Professor Emerita in Maths and History of Science and Technology at Smith College.

Professor Senechal's page includes a link to Smith College's "Ancient Inventions."

Invention
STEM

Environmental and Science Education
In this New Yorker video kid inventors, ages 6-12, talk about their inventions and innovation.

These inventions are large and small, real-world problems that young inventors cared about and wanted to find a solution.

One of them is the Chemothera Pop. Take a look to find out what this is and how it helped a patient undergoing chemotherapy.

The advice is spot-on. It reminded me of advice found in Andrea Beaty's Rosie Revere, Engineer, The only true failure can come if you quit.

Raven: In Words and In Art

Art and Environment
Edward Hessler


Dribble. Splash. Scratch. Smear. Sweeping brushstrokes. Drops.Drips.

These are words associated with action painting, instinctive and spontaneous painting on a large, flat canvas.

Film maker Jan van Uken produced a short film based on a reading of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven by George Snow and the making of the painting of The Raven by Theo Zwinderman.

Microbiomes

Environmental & Science Education
Biological Evolution
STEM
Edward Hessler


On May 13, 2016, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced the launch of the National Microbiome Initiative (NMI). The two-year budget is a mix of federal dollars ($121 M) and universities, companies and not-for-profits ($400 M),

The NMI initiative is held together by three strands. They are:

--Supporting interdisciplinary research to answer basic questions about the nature of microbiomes.
--Developing tools (platform technologies, including adaptations) for the study of microbiomes.
--The variability as well as the world-wide range (everywhere organisms)of microorganisms requires an expansion of "the microbiome workforce."  This workforce will include citizen scientists, college students and others found and recruited through public engagement.

The study of the earth's vegetation led to their mapping into biomes. Biomes are classified by the predominant vegetation of an area and characterized by the adaptations of organisms living there to them. Minnesota, for example, has four: coniferous forest, deciduous forest, tall grass aspen parkland, and priairie grassland.

Microbiomes are the communities of microorganisms that live on/in animals (including us, of course), plants, soil, water, ice, the atmosphere, oceans. 

The study of microbiomes will lead to a similar and likely much more complicated cartography. A preview of what is ahead may be found in a feature news article in Nature.

Pieter Dorrestein is a microbiologist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).  His use of mass-spectrometry while in graduate school hooked-him and since then that use has become more and more sophisticated.  Mass spectrometry (often shortened as mass-spec) is a tool that fragments complex molecules and measures their mass. Following this, the composition of the molecules is then calculated.

At UCSD, Dorrestein, now uses a mass spec--the MALDI-TOF--that allows imaging.  This shows where the molecules are in a sample. This research tool is used in the study cancer.   In the article linked above, Paul Tullis writes that Dorrestein "wondered whether he could take colonies of bacteria on a Petri dish and scan them directly to see the" chemicals they produce.

The process worked. This was quickly followed by a collaboration with microbiologist Paul Straight at Texas A&M University, College Station to study competition in two different bacterial species. Modern science if often data-rich but these data are sometimes messy. He now works with a computational biologist to make sense of the data.

This work led to a repository and data-analysis tool known as the Global Natural Product Social Molecular Networking website. There you can find videos explaining what mass spec is and how mass spec techniques are being used in a variety of ways.

Another collaboration has led to combining mass spectrometry and sequencing. In this study, swabs were taken from 400 places on a male and female volunteer--two swabs at each spot. A surprising finding was that "the samples were overwhelmed by chemicals from beauty and hygiene products.

Dorrestein has also worked with another microbiologist, Maria Dominguez-Bello of New York University, New York City to study the microbial diversity of people who do not grow up in the developed world.  It turns out that their skin is both more diverse in microbes and chemistry than those of us living a more modern lifestyle.

You will find a picture of a 3D rendering of Dorrestein's office with three colleagues seated at a table in Tullis's article. The various surfaces--office and people--are gaily colored.  These are the microbial and chemical signatures of all of them.

This research features (foreshadows) two of the NMI strands: collaboration (to understand processes and interactions) and tool-use (identifying the microbes and determining what they are doing).

Cultures of Garbage

Pollution
Sustainability
Water and Watersheds
Edward Hessler


First a few stats about garbage.

--World production: 3.5 million tons of solid waste/day
--Growth of waste by end of the century: 11 million tons of solid waste/day
--NYC produces the most solid waste
--Dumps produce noticeable amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas
--The burning of trash leads to air pollution with health effects
--The composition of waste has changed over time with less organic material and more packaging, electronic components, and appliances
--300 million tons of plastic is produced each year
--There are 5.25 trillion plastic particles floating in the oceans of the world
--One-third of the world's food is thrown away
--Most waste in Africa, the United States go to dumps
--Europe's waste tends to be incinerated
--Etc.
--Etc.
--Etc.

Stunning stories, videos and photographs from the Washington Post by Kadir van Lohuizen are the result of  visits to wastelands in six major cities, Jakarta, Tokyo, Lagos, New York City, Sao Paulo, and Amsterdam. There are buttons at the end of the main story with photographs, videos and a story showing each place he visited.

van Lohuizen raises a question heard before but which has not yet taken hold. Is waste garbage or a resource?

Right now, the world is drowning in garbage.

P. S. Another culture of garbage? I just finished Margaret Atwood's novel, The Robber Bride (If you've not read it do yourself a favor. I don't read many or enough novels so it has taken me a while to get here although I am a Margaret Atwood fan.). The book opens with one of three friends from college, Tony, a college professor grading papers in the morning (There is another classmate, Zenia,  menancing, amoral, destructive o relationships, a genuine nasty.).

"Sunlight floods the room, made golden by the yellow leaves outside;  a jet flies over, the garbage truck approaches along the street, clanking like a tank. Tony hears it, slippers hastily down the stairs and into the kitchen, lifts the plastic sack from its bin, twist-ties it, runs to the front door with it, and scampers down the porch steps, hiking up her dressing gown. She has to spring only a short distance before catchng up with the truck. The men grin at her: they've seen her in her dressing gown before. West  is supposed to do the garbage but he forgets" (Husband, real name Stewart. Tony writes backward from time-to-time, not always faithfully. Stew becomes West.).

This aspect of relationships between men and women goes directly to basics. 

Moths that Go Bump in the Day.

Biodiversity
Biological Evolution
Environmental and Science Eduction
Edward Hessler


Hummingbird moths (Ireland).

I've never seen one and hope you have.

So, butterfly or moth, what is a humming bird moth, really?

Well according to one analysis," the research showed that insects known as hedylids, commonly known as butterfly-moths are in fact true butterflies, not moths at all."

Read more about this finding.

In the News

Health
STEM
Environmental and Science Education

Miscellaneous
Edward Hessler


The Hamline University Toilet Tribune, an 8.5" sheet of paper, black print on paper of varying color, is a single-side monthly which lists events and happenings, some local, others planetary. It is posted in toilets throughout the campus, at eye level for our reading convenience. I've not checked all the HU "facilities/restrooms" as they say, only a few so I might be wrong on where it can be read.

The November issue announced that November 13 was National Random Acts of Kindness Day.  How odd. Random on schedule!?

A random act of kindness is not premeditated or deliberate. It happens. My Whole Earth Catalogs have been recycled as have clippings from the Whole Earth Review (formerly CoEvolution Quarterly so I now longer have a library at the side of my desk to look up when and where I first saw it (See the previous link for infomation.). I miss those thick, often overstuffed manila folders where I kept "stuff." I became a great filer but retrieval was another matter.

But these days there is the Wiki, one of the first places I check after scanning what a search reveals. The original remembered phrase from the Whole Earth Review was longer. It became a Tee Shirt. My preference is the full phrase.

This is what Wiki has to say, The phrase "practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" was written by Anne Herbert on a placemat in Sausalito, California in 1982 ... Herbert's book Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty was published in February 1993 speaking about true stories of acts of kindness."

Herbert also coined another phrase which also became a T-Shirt.  Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries. Isn't this wonderful?  I'm a book guy so this may not mean much to those much more digital than me (or everyone). When I was a graduate student I recall checking out University books that had been checked out by some famous scientists, including one Nobel Laureate, when they were graduate students. I'm glad I didn't nip the card still in its envelope, pasted in the back of the book listing those who had checked it out and when, in real ink with a real pen or pencil. I hope it is saved somewhere, even that it still can be found in the book but I'm doubtful.

There is a Random Acts of Kindness website which lists these dates: World Kindness Day, November 13 2017, Random Acts of Kindness Friday, November 24, 2017, and Random Acts of Kindness Week, February 11-17, 2018. And there you can also watch a short video on the science of kindness (with some citations). You would expect to see/hear the words oxytocin, the love hormone and serotonin, the feel good chemical and you will. Both of these have important physiological functions.

There is a lot more on the WWW including ideas for acts of kindness and random acts of kindness if you come up short for ideas but I'm doubtful this will happen. 

I might not have posted this were it not for this video about Denis Estiman which I watched this morning. My guess is that some of you have seen him before on an earlier report. What an idea, one that has morphed into something much larger.

And I can't leave without one entry on chance and randomness. Click on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It starts with the Common Place thesis: Something is random if it happens by chance. These ideas lead to one thought after another--a rabbit hole of sorts.

Friday Poem

Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler


On November 1 2017, taking a cue from Hope Jahren, I wrote about the tree that I most remember from childhood, a sycamore.

Wendell Berry wrote a poem about this tree that a friend sent.  No choice, it is today's poem.

And here is biography of this poet.

h/t Thanks Molly for sending me the poem.

Dimitri Hvoroskovsky--1962 - 2017

Music
Miscellaneous
Edward Hessler


Dimitri Hvorostovsky, the charismatic, silver-haired Russian baritone died Wednesday in a hospice care facility in London, where he had lived for several years while being treated for brain cancer.

Here is the NPR announcement which includes several videos, including his glorious return after chemotherapy to the Metropolitan Opera Gala 2017, a surprise appearance. And I hoped while watching that he might survive.  His cancer was aggressive.

I include two videos.

The first is Moscow Nights with soprano Anna Netrebko, in a dazzling setting and with a wonderful audience to watch. Soul!  The conductor is Constantin Orbelian, the first American to become the music director of a Russian ensemble.

And Cranes which begins with these lines.

"I sometimes think that the fallen soldiers
Who have not returned from fields of blood
Never lied down to rot beneath our soil
But must have flown off as white cranes..."

Cranes are a symbol of Russian soldiers who died in WWII and you may read about its origin here.

Flat or Round: Still Seeking the Answer

STEM
Environmental and Science Education
Miscellaneous
Edward Hessler


On Saturday, November 25 2017 Mike Hughes hopes to disprove what he believes is a conspiracy.  That conspiracy is the roundness of the earth and involves astronauts. He has either dismissed the history that shows the earth is not flat or does not know it.

Hughes, AKA Mad Mike Hughes, has constructed a steam-powered rocket in which he will ride to gain the evidence he is seeking. He has flown one before and was injured in the landing (parachute assisted) from which he recovered. The launch ramp consists of a modified a used motor-home. Two major parts--launch ramp and the rocket--in the price range of $20,000.


The aim is to reach an altitude of 1800 feet during which he will take pictures to provide the evidence he is seeking.

The rocket is painted with Rust-Oleum paint in a brilliant red with signage that reads research and flat earth in large bold lettering. This refers to the major group sponsoring the flight.

Of the announcements and stories I've read, there are two I like.

Washington Post's essay by Avi Selk includes a video about the project, the video in which he was injured and a link to a story about Cleveland Cavalier basketball player, Kylie Irving, a kindred spirit.

NPR's Colin Dwyer fills in details and provides additional information. Dwyer also includes a Go-Pro video of the flight in which he was injured.

Urban Bird Mini-Grants

Biodiversity
Art and Environment
Nature

Environmental and Science Education
Edward Hessler


The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology is offering Celebrate Urban Bird Mini-Grants. The aim is to connect communities with nature, birds, arts and citizen science.

No experience with birds is required. The range of the grants is from $100 to $750.

Out-of-the-box (OotB) or out-of-the-nest projects (OotN) are welcomed.  Included in the description are some past programs funded by this grant program. Here are two OotB/OotN projects: an oncology center that encouraged patients to collect data while they waited for appointments; a courthouse that offered outdoor programming for children waiting for their parents.

Information about the program, requirements and timeline may be found here.

Life in a Bubble

Biodiversity
Nature of Science
STEM
Environmental and Science Education
Edward Hessler


Writing for Science, Elizabeth Pennisi summarizes a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

She begins by writing California’s Mono Lake is three times saltier—and much more alkaline—than the ocean, making it inhospitable for most life. Yet the tiny alkali fly (Ephydra hians, pictured) thrives on its surface. It even survives underwater....

Read all about it.

It made me think of Leslie Orgel's most well known rule: Evolution is cleverer than you are. To read about his rules and what they mean see this incomplete Wiki entry.

Leslie Orgel was a noted chemist.

Feedback

STEM
Environmental & Science Education
Edward Hessler


Since this teacher response to a student's answer has been viewed more than a million times and garnered some 200 responses it is likely you've seen it as well.

The worksheet itself is described at the bottom as "reading support and practice," explicitly for "use with pp. 120-133".  The prompt for the student is "Suppose you wanted to build a house on this land and still protect its natural resources.  What could you do?  How would it protect the natural resources?"

The answer: "You can just forget about the house."

The teacher's response in red is "ha-ha!" followed by an emoji (indicating full credit?).  This made me think about feedback.

I know nothing about the teacher but assume they were trying to be useful and helpful under the constant constraints of time and all too often, grinding duties.  

In his book Assessing Student Performance: Exploring the Purpose and Limits of Testing, the late Grant Wiggins devoted a chapter to feedback and ways as well as the need, for improving it.  I think it is too often undervalued in education. He writes "What is wanted is user-friendly information on how I am doing, and how, specifically, I might improve what I am doing."

I'd like to know what the student was thinking.  The student might have been asked a reason or two for the response or to respond to a "what-if" question.

Does this tiny snippet from a student demand more of a response and what kind?  Is the teacher's response at all useful? How? If not, what are your reasons? What would you write on this worksheet so that the student might profit from your comment?   Would you routinely take class time for discussion of student responses (a sample of them)?  Why or why not?                    

World Toilet Day: 7 Toilets from Around the World

Health
Water & Watersheds
Sustainability
Edward Hessler

It is November 19, World Toilet Day.

First, be grateful you have one, e.g., ceramic, sparkling, flushes easily, sanitary, convenient, and low flush.

Greta Jochem of NPR writes, To get a better idea of the range of toilets around the world, take a look at Dollar Street. It's a project that catalogs everyday objects — like toys, soap, stoves and of course, toilets — to provide a snapshot of life at different income levels across the globe.

In her piece on NPR are shown seven toilets from around the world.

And here is Dollar Street.

Taking a Look at This Land

Art and Environment
Miscellaneous
Edward Hessler

Jack Spencer started looking at America through the lens of a camera in 2003.

The result is a book, This Land (you can take a inside) published this year by the University of Texas Press.

Here are some images he took.

Some potential images overwhelmed him. Washington Post writer May-Ying Lam notes that "On occasion, (Spencer) encountered places where he felt there was no way to do justice to the experience of being there. 'You don't even bother with the camera. You're just completely humbled by how beautiful it is.'"

There is an essay about Mr. Spencer here.

An Award from NABT to Bertha Vazquez

Biological Evolution
STEM
Environmental and Science Education
Edward Hessler

This just in from Glenn Branch, National Center for Science Education.

"Bertha Vazquez received the Evolution Education Award for 2017 from the National Association of
Biology Teachers (NABT). Vazquez received the award at the NABT's recent conference in St. Louis, Missouri.

"The NABT award, sponsored by BEACON and BSCS, 'recognizes innovative classroom teachers and their efforts to promote the accurate understanding of biological evolution with the larger community.'"

"Vazquez teaches at G. W. Carver Middle School in Miami. and directs the Richard Dawkins
Foundation's Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science."

Mr. Branch provided these links:
 
About NABT's awards, visit: https://www.nabt.org/Awards-About

For Vazquez's "Sharing the Passion for Evolution Education," visit:
https://ncse.com/blog/2015/08/sharing-passion-evolution-education-0016580

And for the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science, visit:
https://www.richarddawkins.net/ties/

If you only have time to read one, read the last. Ms. Vazquez is remarkable in many ways. In a note to me in September she told me how TIES started.  

"We kicked off TIES together, Richard Dawkins and I. I met him a few times here locally and then talked to him at length at a private event back in 2014. I told him I had decided to start helping middle school science teachers with evolution workshops in Miami. Just on my own, with the blessing of my district supervisors. He wanted to help so he came to my middle school. We invited teachers from all over the district and I interviewed him in my school auditorium (pic attached). Hundreds of science teachers came. Then he asked me to do this nationally and he would pay me. Almost three years later, we've presented or confirmed 73 workshops in 28 states. I run a very positive project. I feel that the NCSE takes care of the creationist teachers. We focus on the good teachers in the middle, who just want good resources and content knowledge. HHMI is superb but is geared more towards high school and college. Our niche is middle school."

HHMI is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 

h/t: Glenn Branch, NCSE 

Friday Poem

Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler
Today's poem is by Naomi Shibab Nye.

And for some history about the humble onion see this short history from the National Onion Association.

Hurricanes and Aerosols Simulation 2017

Simulations 
Models
Climate Change
STEM
Environmental & Science Education
Pollution
Edward Hessler

NASA has produced a simulation tracking aerosols over land and oceans for the period August 1 to November 1, 2017.

"The first thing that is noticeable," according to the release, "is how far the particles can travel. Smoke from fires in the Pacific Northwest gets caught in a weather pattern and pulled all the way across the US and over to Europe. Hurricanes form off the coast of Africa and travel across the Atlantic to make landfall in the United States. Dust from the Sahara is blown into the Gulf of Mexico. To understand the impacts of aerosols, scientists need to study the process as a global system.
,,,

"During the 2017 hurricane season, the storms are visible because of the sea salt that is captured by the storms. Strong winds at the surface lift the sea salt into the atmosphere and the particles are incorporated into the storm. Hurricane Irma is the first big storm that spawns off the coast of Africa. As the storm spins up, the Saharan dust is absorbed in cloud droplets and washed out of the storm as rain. This process happens with most of the storms, except for Hurricane Ophelia. Forming more northward than most storms, Ophelia traveled to the east picking up dust from the Sahara and smoke from large fires in Portugal. Retaining its tropical storm state farther northward than any system in the Atlantic, Ophelia carried the smoke and dust into Ireland and the UK."

Dust, sea salt and smoke, blowin' in the wind, all used in understanding of atmospheric physics.