June 2008 Archives

The Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies is holding a forum this Tuesday, 8 July, from 9:00am - 3:00pm designed to provide undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to learn more about the career paths open to those who are trained in ecology. In the morning, speakers will discuss the rewards and motivations of their work. In the afternoon, speakers will join small groups of students for informal discussions.

The forum is open to all students without charge. Those interested in the afternoon program should register by calling Pat Zolnik, REU Program Coordinator, at (845) 677-7600 ext. 326.

The forum flyer and a schedule of speakers are available here in Microsoft Word format.

In January I wrote about European birds and climate change. The paper I summarized there projected how the distribution of European birds might change over the next century in response to changes in the European climate. But we don't have to wait to see the effects of climate change. Plant hardiness zones in the United States have moved northward in the last sixteen years, and today there's a paper in Science showing that European plants are moving up the mountains as the climate in Europe gets warmer.

Lenoir and colleagues collated data from almost 4000 floristic surveys in western Europe, spanning the full elevational range from 0 to 2600m above sea level. Using these data they used statistical methods to determine the elevation at which each species was most likely to occur in surveys conducted between 1905 and 1985 (the x-axis in the plot to the left) and in surveys conducted since 1985 (the y-axis). Of the 171 species included in their sample, 46 showed statistically significant shifts in the elevation at which they were most likely to occur. Of those 46, 41 showed an upward shift in elevation. Only 5 showed a downward shift.  "More than two-thirds (118/171) of the species shifted their optima upward, whereas only one-third (53/171) shifted their optima downward." Overall, the elevation at which these species were most likely to occur shifted upward almost 30m per decade - the length of an American football field since 1985.

COP 9¹ finished over three weeks ago. I'm just learning now that the European Commission presented a report titled "The economics of ecosystems & biodiversity" to the conference. The Guardian summarized the report this way:

The steeply accelerating decline of the natural world is already costing hundreds of billions of pounds a year, say leading economists, in a review of the costs and benefits of forests, rivers and marine life. The losses will increase dramatically over the next generation unless urgent remedial action is taken, they say.

The full report is available on-line. Hie thee forth and read it.²

I don't know much about psychology,¹ but I've always been fascinated by what psychologists are able to tell us about ourselves and the way we think. Now there's a paper from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that the activities we engage influence our cognitive styles. Specifically, the authors show that members of farming and fishing communities in eastern Turkey have a more "holistic" cognitive style than members of herding communities in the same area who have a more "analytic" style of thought. They assert that farming and fishing communities "emphasize harmonious social interdependence" and that herding communities "emphasize individual decision making and foster social independence."

Holistic thought is characterized by attention to the whole perceptual field. Objects or events are explained by their relationships to the whole field.

Analytic thought is characterized by attention to the characteristics of objects and events. Objects or events are explained by generic rules about the category to which they belong and by generic rules associated with those categories.²

The authors argue that "these culturally divergent modes of thought are encouraged by the degree to which the culture's social practices reinforce either independence of the self from others or interdependence of the self with others."
How did they reach these conclusions? Well, they performed a surprisingly simple experiment.

The Joint Committee on Quantitative Assessment of Research of the International Mathematical Union, the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Institutes of Statistics has just released a report on citation statistics.¹ As academic readers are well aware, Thomson Scientific (formerly the Institute for Scientific Information) has for many years used its database to provide rankings of journals (impact factors) and even of scientists (see, for example, http://isihighlycited.com/). Many authors have criticized impact factors and simple citation counts. Some have proposed other indices based on the same statistics. Here's what the authors conclude.

We do not dismiss citation statistics as a tool for assessing the quality of research--citation data and statistics can provide some valuable information. We recognize that assessment must be practical, and for this reason easily‐derived citation statistics almost surely will be part of the process. But citation data provide only a limited and incomplete view of research quality, and the statistics derived from citation data are sometimes poorly understood and misused. Research is too important to measure its value with only a single coarse tool.

Remember how the State of California sued the Environmental Protection Agency last November to force a decision on whether it could get a waiver to impose CO₂ emissions standards on cars and light trucks?

The EPA initially refused to act on California's application, saying the agency did not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant. That changed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that the EPA did indeed have that right.

As a result, the EPA is now developing greenhouse gas regulations that are scheduled to be released by the end of the year. Environmental groups say those regulations are unlikely to be stronger than California standards.

That was November. In this morning's New York Times we read this:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency's conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.'s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

Senior officials at the E.P.A., speaking on condition of anonymity, say that the document referred to above

"showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy, to reduce greenhouse gases," one of the senior E.P.A. officials said. "That's not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can't work."

There is room for disagreement about how the government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and it is appropriate for political values to play a role in making policy choices. Indeed, political values have to play a role in making policy choices.¹ But...

The annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Evolution, the American Society of Naturalists, and the Society of Systematic Biologists are happening right now in Minneapolis -- Evolution 2008. I'm really sorry not to be there. I've only missed the Evolution meetings three or four times in the last 20 years. I always learn a lot. I'm especially sorry to miss the meetings this year, because one of my students, Rachel Prunier, is giving a talk this morning (in about an hour and a half). She's put a lot of work into her talk, and I'm sure it will be great. I'm sorry I can't be there to support her.

If you happen to be reading this from Minneapolis and haven't decided what you're going to see this morning (or even if you have), get yourself over to Anderson 270 for the 8:00am talk entitled "Genetic differentiation of white proteas in the western Cape, South Africa." You won't be disappointed. After that you're free to see whatever talks interest you. 

In 2009 the world will celebrate the bicentennial of Darwin's birth, the 150 anniversary of the publication of <em>On the Origin of Species</em>, the 400th anniversary of the publication of Kepler's first two laws of planetary motion, and many other significant events in the history of science. In recognition, the Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science, an informal coalition involving more than 260 scientific societies and institutions, is coordinating the Year of Science 2009 -- a national year-long celebration of science to engage the public in science and improve public understanding about how science works, why it matters, and who scientists are. 2009 will also be the International Year of Astronomy and the International Year for Planet Earth. And now the city of Philadelphia is planning a Year of Evolution.

Nine academic, scientific and cultural institutions around the city are holding a Year of Evolution, a series of exhibitions, seminars and lectures to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin next February, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, "The Origin of Species."

It looks as if 2009 is going to be a very exciting year.

I've written before about the "academic freedom" bill in Louisiana. It's now sitting on the desk of Louisiana's governor awaiting his signature. Barbara Forrest has released a letter asking for help convincing the governor asking him to veto the bill. Click through for the text of Barbara's letter and contact information.

I mentioned the bad news in Louisiana earlier today. Greg Laden links to the story from FOX news. What he doesn't mention is that the "news" story from FOX News appears to be a verbatim copy of the press release on the Discovery Institute website.¹

The clue? This footer at the bottom of the FOX News article:

SOURCE Discovery Institute

http://www.discovery.org 
Copyright (C:  20.03, +0.82, +4.26%) 2008 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Don't you think it would be a good idea for FOX News to label press releases as press releases?

I am sorry to report that the Louisiana House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 733 yesterday.¹ As the American Institute of Biological Sciences pointed out in a letter distributed to all Louisiana legislators

SB 733 would require that teachers consider and accept non-scientific explanations for natural phenomena, including evolution, the origins of life, and global warming.  Supernatural explanations for these phenomena are not scientifically testable and are not science.

The vote in the House was 94-3.

A couple of weeks ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a statement calling on "U.S. policy makers to put our nation onto a path today to reduce emissions on the order of 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050. The first step on this path should be reductions on the order of 15-20 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, which is achievable and consistent with sound economic policy."

On Tuesday, "the academies of the Group of 8 industrialized countries -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- and of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa called on the industrialized countries to lead a 'transition to a low-carbon society' and aggressively move to limit impacts from changes in climate that are already under way and impossible to stop" (source).

Too bad Congress isn't listening.

You've probably heard of heirloom tomatoes. They're becoming increasingly popular because they offer interesting alternatives to the typical beefsteak tomato.¹ Heirloom varieties are just one example of the interest gardeners increasingly show in conserving some of the great variety of fruits and vegetables that have been grown. But gardeners' efforts are only a small part of the story.

Congress established a system of repositories after World War II to maintain and distribute plant genetic resources. This resource has now grown into the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS; http://www.csrees.usda.gov/nea/plants/in_focus/pbgg_if_npgs.html) and consists of 26 repositories with approximately half a million individual collections. The NPGS functions to maintain agricultural biodiversity and ensure the preservation of the genetic resources needed for food security and environmental restoration.
...
There is little doubt that plant genetic resources are needed to address today's problems. Yet the erosion of plant biodiversity continues a decline that had already begun even as Frank Meyer traveled the globe in search of botanical resources to benefit society. Seed bank collections serve as insurance against unanticipated future threats to food security, the degradation of our environment, and the loss of plant biodiversity. The WRPIS, as part of the US network of plant gene banks, provides a vital link in an emerging world system aimed at maintaining, conserving, and utilizing these precious plant genetic resources, the seeds of our future. (R.C. Johnson, PloS Biology)

Last fall the the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado reported that sea ice around the North Pole reached a low of 4.24 million square kilometers (source). Today Andy Revkin reports in DotEarth that

Fourteen research teams studying the impacts of warming on the Arctic Ocean have issued independent projections of how the sea ice will behave this summer, and 11 of them foresee an ice retreat at least as extraordinary as last year's or even more dramatic. The other three groups that issued a numerical estimate see the ice extent heading back toward, but not equaling, the average minimum for summers since satellites began tracking the comings and goings of Arctic sea ice in 1979. Five other groups chose not to issue a numerical estimate.

This is an example of legitimate scientific debate about the consequences of global climate change. Some experts think the extent of the decline (illustrated in the animation from NASA below) has been misstated. A single season won't be enough to settle the dispute, but it will provide data to the investigators involved that help them better to understand the forces that affect the extent of sea ice around the North Pole.

The Louisana House may vote tomorrow or Wednesday on a bill that would permit teaching non-scientific material in science classes. The American Institute of Biological Sciences sent a letter to all members of the Louisiana House this morning explaining what a grave mistake that would be.

Quoting from the letter:

SB 733 would require that teachers consider and accept non-scientific explanations for natural phenomena, including evolution, the origins of life, and global warming.  Supernatural explanations for these phenomena are not scientifically testable and are not science.

If you live in Louisiana or know people who do, please urge them to call their representatives and urge them to vote against SB 733.

I mentioned Brian Greene's op-ed in the Sunday New York Times yesterday. On Tuesday there was a report about the World Science Festival he and Tracy Day organized in New York.

That was the World Science Festival in New York City this past weekend: 46 shows, debates, demonstrations and parties spread over five days and 22 sites between Harlem and Greenwich Village, organized by Dr. Greene, the Columbia physicist and author, and his wife, Ms. Day, a former ABC-TV producer. Jugglers and philosophers, magicians and biologists, musicians and dancers -- a feast one couldn't hope to sample fairly.

Year of Science 2009 hopes to create the same type of excitement nationwide, and we have some interesting things planned at UConn. Stay tuned!

Here's what yesterday's AAAS Policy Alert had to say:

Administration Releases Major Report on Climate Change Impacts. On May 29 the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) released the latest version of its periodic scientific assessment, which describes the current and potential impacts of climate change. The law requires a report to be issued at least every 4 years; but, the last report was issued in 2000. The current report was only issued after an order from a federal district court judge.

In the Summary and Findings the report notes that "Studies that rigorously quantify the effect of different external influences on observed changes (attribution studies) conclude that most of the recent global warming is very likely due to human-generated increases in greenhouse gas concentrations." The summary admits that tying increases in North American surface temperature directly to human activities is difficult, but concludes that "it is likely that there has been a substantial human contribution to surface temperature increases in North America."

Wow! Brian Greene nailed it in a New York Times op-ed piece on Sunday. You should read the whole thing, but here are a few choice bits.

To be able to think through and grasp explanations -- for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth -- not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.
...
Like a life without music, art or literature, a life without science is bereft of something that gives experience a rich and otherwise inaccessible dimension.
...
As every parent knows, children begin life as uninhibited, unabashed explorers of the unknown. From the time we can walk and talk, we want to know what things are and how they work -- we begin life as little scientists. But most of us quickly lose our intrinsic scientific passion. And it's a profound loss.
...

But science is so much more than its technical details. And with careful attention to presentation, cutting-edge insights and discoveries can be clearly and faithfully communicated to students independent of those details; in fact, those insights and discoveries are precisely the ones that can drive a young student to want to learn the details. We rob science education of life when we focus solely on results and seek to train students to solve problems and recite facts without a commensurate emphasis on transporting them out beyond the stars.

Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that's been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings. Science needs to be taught to the young and communicated to the mature in a manner that captures this drama. We must embark on a cultural shift that places science in its rightful place alongside music, art and literature as an indispensable part of what makes life worth living.

(Thanks to Orac for pointing this out. Image from bighugelabs.com)