Pittsburgh Native/College Student to Copenhagen Climate Conference

All will be looking to  Copenhagen this month, and Mt. Lebanon resident Christa Owens will be there covering the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) as a new media reporter.

Chirsta was selected by the Sierra Student Coalition to serve as a youth delegate to COP 15.  She is a political science major at Carleton College in Minnesota, and  one of 18 college-aged students in the delegation traveling to Denmark next week along with Sierra Club volunteers and staff.

What do you think about including college students in this conference?

Science Has Gotten Complex – Who Needs to Understand it?

The discussion of Darwin’s theories was primarily conducted among the intelligentsia of the day because books were pretty expensive.
However, the fraction of people who figured that they could and should keep more or less up to date with what was happening in geology, in botany, in zoology, even in physics and mathematics was a much bigger fraction than it is today.
Science has gotten a lot more technical and specialized… and no one can really stay up with every field of research.  Many of us hear about scientific claims, in fact a very large fraction of the population now knows, through electronic media, about Dolly the [cloned] sheep, about the human genome and about what’s going on in the latest finding with climate change.

However, the proportion of people that can evaluate new research and follow along with these ideas  is quite small. 

Are we looking to know – Who to rely on? Who is speaking the truth?

What do you want/need to know?

License to Wonder

“One of my favorite things to do is to take a set of facts and use them to imagine how the world might work. In writing about some of these ideas, my aim is not to be correct — how can I be, when the answer isn’t known? — but to be thought-provoking, to ask questions, to make people wonder. ” Olivia Judson on the influence of science and biology on modern life – NY Time online opinions

…Among the most famous stories – of not wondering – is  that of Rosalind Franklin and her non-discovery of the structure of DNA.

What part does wondering take in your life?

Jellyfish swarm northward in warming world!

This year’s jellyfish swarm is one of the worst seen. Once considered a rarity occurring every 40 years, they are now an almost annual occurrence along several thousand kilometers (miles) of Japanese coast, and far beyond Japan.
The venom of the Nomura, the world’s largest jellyfish, a creature up to 6 feet in diameter, can ruin a whole day’s catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets.
Addressing the surge in jellyfish blooms in most places will require long-term fixes, such as introducing fishing quotas and pollution controls, as well as capping greenhouse gas emissions to control global warming.
What do you think should be done?

United Nations picks Pittsburgh to host World Environment Day in 2010

In what may be the first tangible proof that the G-20 did, in fact, lead to international exposure and opportunity for the Pittsburgh region, the United Nations announced Thursday that the Steel City will play host to World Environment Day in 2010.

Scheduled for June 5, World Environment Day was created by the UN Environment Programme in 1972 to stimulate environmental awareness and action. The theme for 2010 is “Biodiversity: Connecting with Nature.”

How cool is that?

Transparent aluminium is ‘new state of matter’

‘Transparent aluminium’  only existed in science fiction, for ex.  in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.

Picture: Experimental set-up at the FLASH laser used to discover the new state of matter.

Your thoughts?

Students Embed Stem Cells in Sutures to Enhance Healing

Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering students  have demonstrated a practical way to embed a patient’s own adult stem cells in the surgical thread that doctors use to repair serious (orthopedic) injuries such as ruptured tendons. The goal  is to enhance healing and reduce the likelihood of re-injury with no change to the surgical procedure itself!

Pretty amazing?

Driven to Distraction? IT tries to help.

caption – At 60 miles an hour on a Missouri highway, a 16-year-old driver texts with a friend as a 17-year-old takes the wheel. (NY Times)

New studies show that drivers overestimate their ability to multitask. We are 8 times more likely to have an accident when texting as we drive.

Check this out – information technology (IT) makes possible this

behind the wheel game gauging your distraction! 

 

 

 This video including eye tracking of individuals - texting and driving! Some more IT at work!

How did you do at the game?

Robot on the Catwalk

Check her out! Looking like a stormtrooper from Star Wars…she  opened the fashion season in Japan.

And also check out ‘Her’? , STAIR, also pictured left.

 “STAIR, please fetch the stapler from the lab,” says a researcher in a recent video. “I will go get the stapler for you,” replies STAIR. Avoiding obstacles, STAIR wheels into the next room and scans it looking for the stapler. Grabbing the stapler, it returns to the researcher. “Here is your stapler,” says STAIR, “Have a nice day.”

…What do you think?

Cool Roofs

Do you want to save energy and combat global warming on a massive scale? Just go ahead and paint all the flat roofs in the world white!

This was the U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu’s recent suggestion (during a London conference).

So…get a ‘cool roof’ with “Cool Roofs” an innovative roofing product made by Pittsburgh-based Bayer Material Science.

Seem pretty simple?