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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

So, might you ask, what is the Anthropocene? First, the etymology. The Ancient Greek [anthropos] means "human being" while [kainos] means "new, current." The Anthropocene would thus be best defined as the new human-dominated period of the Earth's history. The term was proposed in 2000 by Paul J. Crutzen, Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on atmospheric chemistry and his research on stratospheric ozone depletion (the so-called "hole"), and by Eugene F. Stoermer in a publication (p. 17) of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. But the concept itself, the idea that human activity affects the Earth to the point where it can cross a new age, is not new and dates back to the late nineteenth century. Different terms were proposed over the decades, such as Anthropozoic (Stoppani, 1873), Noosphere (de Chardin, 1922; Vernadsky, 1936), Eremozoic (Wilson, 1992), and Anthrocene (Revkin, 1992). It seems that the success of the term chosen by Crutzen and Stoermer is due to the luck of having been made at the appropriate time, when humankind became more than ever aware of the extent of its impact on global environment. It should be noted that Edward O. Wilson (who suggested Eremozoic, "the age of loneliness") popularized the terms "biodiversity" and "biophilia." Technically, the Anthropocene is the most recent period of the Quaternary, succeding to the Holocene. The Quaternary is a period of the Earth's history characterized by numerous and cyclical glaciations, starting 2,588,000 years ago (2.588 Ma). The Quaternary is divided into three epochs: the Pleistocene, the Holocene, and now the Anthropocene.

"This free web site presents ongoing research and recent discoveries in the fields of astrophysics, Earth sciences, biodiversity, and human biology and evolution. Videos of documentary feature stories, data visualizations, and weekly reports can be played online or downloaded to your computer. Educational resources on the site help teachers use these stories in the classroom."

"Welcome to the Penguin Science Education Page! Here you will find fun and educational activities to help students learn about many interesting aspects of Adelie penguin life, history and their relationship to climate change. Students can also send questions to the researchers who study penguins, check the nests of penguins as they look today, and (if the season is right) even receive a postcard from Antarctica! Adelie Penguin's existence in the far south region of our planet is a fascinating subject. The average day in the life of a penguin is filled with adventure and drama, as they struggle to live and thrive in a challenging environment and changing climate. "

Ocean Today Kiosk Online This website provides access to current and archived videos of the Ocean Today kiosk at the Sant Ocean Hall in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. The Ocean Today Kiosk is a dynamic, visitor-friendly multi-media experience that illustrates both the ocean's influence on humans and their influence upon the ocean. The website offers a transcript of the video along with links for more information.

Webcast: 'We Sea Change,' a Climate Change Education Video 0 What is climate change, and how is it affecting coastal Carolina? That is the question that a group of teens from Isaac Bear Early College High School set out to answer for their Third National Student Summit on the Ocean & Coasts project. Representing the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher, four teens spent months researching climate change issues such as salt water intrusion in rivers, changes to barrier islands, disappearing beaches, and habitat loss in longleaf pine forests in the Wilmington, N.C., region. The students presented a video documenting this research during the National Student Summit on February 15, 2011 at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. After the Summit, the team broadened the project's scope to include climate change education through the production of a second video. This film, We Sea Change, aims to give their local community in Wilmington an understanding of climate change, impacts on the coastal Carolina region, and how people can be part of the climate change solution. We Sea Change will be broadcast live to the Ocean Portal from the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher on Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 7pm. There will be a panel discussion on climate change immediately following the 7pm screening. Meet the team! The Cape Fear Beach Bears: Sandy Paws for a Cause team members include students Jessica Lama, Keela Sweeney, Evan Lucas, and Dustin Chambers. They have conducted research and produced their videos under the guidance of teachers Bryan Bishop from Isaac Bear Early College High School and Megan Ennes from the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher.

Aerosols Altered Asian Monsoons Summer monsoons provide much of the water for farming on the Indian subcontinent, but the pattern of rain shifted dramatically during the last half of the 20th century. In a study appearing online 29 September in Science, researchers pin the blame on soot and other aerosols from human activities. From 1951 to 1999, central-northern India became drier while Pakistan, northwestern India, and southern India got wetter. To determine whether these changes were due to natural variability or human interference (greenhouse gases or aerosols), climate scientists Massimo Bollasina, Yi Ming, and V. Ramaswamy of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/NOAA in Princeton, New Jersey, compared the history of rainfall with simulations that singled out each climate "forcing" factor to observe its impact. Although greenhouse gases would have increased rainfall over north-central India, the aerosols, they found, caused the "very pronounced drying trend," Ming says. Here's why: Under normal conditions, the northern hemisphere receives more energy from the sun from June to September; that imbalance drives the ocean-atmosphere circulation that powers the monsoons. But atmospheric aerosols shaded the northern hemisphere relative to the southern hemisphere, altering the energy balance between the two-weakening the circulation and altering where the rain falls.

"A free, searchable catalog of standards-based science teaching materials fro K-12 educators and learners. The database can be browsed by topic or searched by keyword. The site also contains Special Collections - groups of resources organized around themes, such as Climate Change and Mammals."

"The Museum's award-winning online professional development program provides courses in the life, Earth and physical sciences. Designed for K-12 educators, each six-week course is led by an experienced classroom teacher and a research scientist. In-depth readings, assignments, and rich web-based discussions asssure a deeper understanding of both the science and the tools of scientific inquiry. Affordable graduate credit is available from leading institutions."

Science 8 July 2011: Vol. 333 no. 6039 pp. 173-175 Galaxy Zoo Volunteers Share Pain and Glory of Research 1. Daniel Clery A project to "crowdsource" galactic classifications has paid off in ways the astronomers who started it never expected. Figure View larger version: * In this page * In a new window Space oddity. Greenish "voorwerp" spotted by a Dutch volunteer still intrigues scientists. "CREDIT: NASA, ESA, W. KEEL (UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA), AND THE GALAXY ZOO TEAM" The automated surveys that are becoming increasingly common in astronomy are producing an embarrassment of riches for researchers. Projects such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) are generating so much data that, in some cases, astronomers don't know what to do with them all. SDSS has compiled a list of more than 1 million galaxies. To glean information about galaxy evolution, however, astronomers need to know what type of galaxy each one is: spiral, barred spiral, elliptical, or something else. At present, the only reliable way to classify galaxies is to look at each one. But the SDSS list is so long that all the world's astronomers working together couldn't muster enough eyeballs for the task. Enter the "wisdom of crowds." An online effort called Galaxy Zoo, launched in 2007, set a standard for citizen-scientist participation projects. Zealous volunteers astonished the project's organizers by classifying the entire catalog years ahead of schedule. The results have brought real statistical rigor to a field used to samples too small to support firm conclusions. But that's not all. Buoyed by the curiosity and dedication of the volunteers, the Galaxy Zoo team went on to ask more-complicated classification questions that led to studies they hadn't thought possible. And in an online discussion forum on the Galaxy Zoo Web site, volunteers have pointed to anomalies that on closer inspection have turned out to be genuinely new astronomical objects. "I'm incredibly impres

Special: The Tohoku-Oki Earthquake, Japan The 11 March 2011 magnitude-9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan was one of the largest recorded earthquakes in history. It triggered a devastating tsunami that killed more than 20,000 people and an ongoing nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Three research papers in the 17 June 2011 issue (published on 19 May) report on the mechanics of this megaquake and provide insights into the behavior of other very large, rare earthquakes. Science is making these research papers FREE for all site visitors. Also provided is a collection of recent news coverage of the Japan earthquake and nuclear crisis in Science and on our science news and policy blog, ScienceInsider.

"Will Deepwater Horizon Set a New Standard for Catastrophe? 1. Richard Kerr, 2. Eli Kintisch and 3. Erik Stokstad Summary The fiery destruction of an oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April may have triggered one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. The impact of the crisis, which began with the deaths of 11 workers and then simmered for several days before an expanding oil slick grabbed worldwide attention, promises to test the federal government's ability to protect habitat, wildlife, and the economic well-being of a four-state region on a scale never before imagined. "