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Gwen Noda

A Watered Down Topographic Map Lesson - 0 views

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    NOAA Ocean Explorer A Watered-down Topographic Map Submarine Ring of Fire Expedition FOCUS: Topographic and bathymetric maps GRADE LEVEL: 6-8 FOCUS QUESTION: How does one create a topographic map and what are the differences between topographic maps and bathymetric charts?
Gwen Noda

Rebuilding Wetlands by Managing the Muddy Mississippi - 0 views

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    Science 3 February 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6068 pp. 520-521 DOI: 10.1126/science.335.6068.520 News Focus Ecology Rebuilding Wetlands by Managing the Muddy Mississippi Carolyn Gramling Coastal managers and scientists have struggled to find ways to restore water flow through the wetlands of the Mississippi delta and bring back the sediment, supply of which has been cut in half by humanmade river channels, levees, and dams intended to control the river and save coastal communities from flooding. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Morganza spillway during the 2011 Mississippi River floods to divert floodwaters, which offered a rare opportunity to conduct a large-scale natural experiment in real time. The floodwaters did carry enough sediment to help rebuild the wetlands, but that material didn't always stay where it could do the most good. However, researchers gained valuable insights-including ideas about how spillway design can help produce more targeted sediment deposits, and what volume of flow through the spillways might be required for effective wetland rebuilding.
Gwen Noda

Time to Adapt to a Warming World, But Where's the Science? - 0 views

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    "Science 25 November 2011: Vol. 334 no. 6059 pp. 1052-1053 DOI: 10.1126/science.334.6059.1052 * News Focus Adaptation to Climate Change Adaptation to Climate Change Time to Adapt to a Warming World, But Where's the Science? 1. Richard A. Kerr With dangerous global warming seemingly inevitable, users of climate information-from water utilities to international aid workers-are turning to climate scientists for guidance. But usable knowledge is in short supply. Figure View larger version: * In this page * In a new window Adapt to that. Climate will change, but decision-makers want to know how, where, and when. "CREDIT: KOOS VAN DER LENDE/NEWSCOM" DENVER, COLORADO-The people who brought us the bad news about climate change are making an effort to help us figure out what to do about it. As climate scientists have shown, continuing to spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will surely bring sweeping changes to the world-changes that humans will find it difficult or impossible to adapt to. But beyond general warnings, there is another sort of vital climate research to be done, speakers told 1800 attendees at a meeting here last month. And so far, they warned, researchers have delivered precious little of the essential new science. At the meeting, subtitled "Climate Research in Service to Society,"* the new buzzword was "actionable": actionable science, actionable information, actionable knowledge. "There's an urgent need for actionable climate information based on sound science," said Ghassem Asrar, director of the World Climate Research Programme, the meeting's organizer based in Geneva, Switzerland. What's needed is not simply data but processed information that an engineer sizing a storm-water pipe to serve for the next 50 years or a farmer in Uganda considering irrigating his fields can use to make better decisions in a warming world. Researchers preparing for the next international climate assessment, due in 2013, delive
Gwen Noda

Aquarium of the Pacific Event | Flotsametrics and the Floating World - 0 views

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    Aquarium Event Flotsametrics and the Floating World Curtis Ebbesmeyer As an oceanographer for Mobil/Standard Oil, Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer was fascinated by sea currents and eddies and began to focus on beaches and the debris deposited on them.
Gwen Noda

Want to Be a Good Researcher? Try Teaching - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

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    Graduate students in the sciences who both teach and conduct research show greater improvement in their research skills than do those who focus exclusively on laboratory work, says a report to be published in the August 19 issue of Science.
Gwen Noda

Project Kaisei - Capturing the Plastic Vortex - 0 views

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    "Project Kaisei is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco and Hong Kong, established to increase the understanding and the scale of marine debris, its impact on our ocean environment, and how we can introduce solutions for both prevention and clean-up. \n\nOur main focus is on the North Pacific Gyre, which constitutes a large accumulation of debris in one of the largest and most remote ecosystems on the planet. To accomplish these objectives, Project Kaisei is serving as a catalyst to bring together public and private collaborators to design, test and implement break-throughs in science, prevention and remediation.\n\nKaisei means "Ocean Planet" in Japanese, and is the name of the iconic tall ship that was one of the two research vessels in the August expedition."
Gwen Noda

Could East Antarctica Be Headed for Big Melt? - 0 views

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    "The Orangeburg Scarp, a band of hard, crusty sediment teeming with tiny plankton fossils that runs from Florida to Virginia, marks an ancient shoreline where waves eroded bedrock 3 million years ago. That period, the middle Pliocene, saw carbon dioxide levels and temperatures that many scientists say could recur by 2100. The question is: Could those conditions also result in Pliocene-epoch sea levels within the next 10 to 20 centuries, sea levels that may have been as much as 35 meters higher than they are today? The answer, say climate scientists, may lie 17,000 kilometers away in East Antarctica. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is the world's largest, a formation up to 4 km thick and 11 million km2 in area that covers three-quarters of the southernmost continent. Its glaciers were thought to sit mostly above sea level, protecting them from the type of ocean-induced losses that are affecting the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. But studies of ancient sea levels that focus on the Orangeburg Scarp and other sites challenge that long-held assumption. Not everybody believes the records from Orangeburg. But combined with several other new lines of evidence, they support the idea that parts of East Antarctica could indeed be more prone to melting than expected. "
Gwen Noda

Bounds and Vision - 0 views

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    Information Science Bounds and Vision Atlas of Science Visualizing What We Know by Katy Börner MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010. 266 pp. $$29.95, £22.95. ISBN 9780262014458. 1. Mason A. Porter + Author Affiliations 1. The reviewer is at the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3LB, UK, and at the CABDyN Complexity Centre and Somerville College, University of Oxford. 1. E-mail: porterm@maths.ox.ac.uk Visualization is a crucial but underappreciated part of science. As venues like the American Physical Society's Gallery of Fluid Motion and Gallery of Nonlinear Images illustrate every year, good visuals can make science more beautiful, more artistic, more tangible, and often more discernible. Katy Börner's continuing exhibition Places & Spaces: Mapping Science (1) and her book Atlas of Science: Visualizing What We Know arise from a similar spirit but are much more ambitious. Visualization is one of the most compelling aspects of science. Breathtaking visuals from sources like fractals and Disneyland's long-dead "Adventure Thru Inner Space" ride are what originally inspired me toward my personal scientific path, so I welcome any resource that promises to bring the visual joys of discovery to a wide audience. Importantly, Börner's exhibition and book are not mere artistic manifestations, although they would be impressive accomplishments even if that were her only goal. Some scientists have occasionally had great success in the visual arts; for example, physicist Eric Heller has long exhibited the gorgeous fruits of his research on quantum chaos and other topics (2). To fully appreciate Börner's efforts, however, one must be conscious that she is deeply concerned not just with visualization itself but with the science of visualization. Accordingly, her book discusses the history of the science of visualization, where it is now, and where she thinks it can go. Atlas of Scie
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