Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
Citizen science: a little birdie told me…
Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 11:34 am
Female northern cardinal, N.C.'s state bird, and the most-reported bird for the Great Backyard Bird Count, a citizen science project. (Wikki Commons image)
The Great Backyard Bird Count is perhaps one of North America’s most popular citizen science projects. It’s been on-going since 1998, and uses the power of citizen’s eyes and interest to create a snapshot of what kinds of birds are where, and in what abundance, in mid-February.
The 2010 four-day count wrapped up last week on Feb. 15th with citizens across the nation reporting 90,898 checklists tallying 10,587,907 individual birds representing 597 species.* The most frequently reported bird was our state bird, the Northern Cardinal. North Carolinian’s sent in 4,722 checklists, resulting in our state ranking third among total number of checklists submitted. (Mine was among them.) Visit this map of N.C. state results to see species tallies for what your fellow citizens reported.
But one thing the checklists did not capture was a rare winter migrant wandering south through The Triangle. Rick Bonney, director of program development and evaluation at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology visited Sigma Xi in Research Triangle Park on Tuesday and imparted hard-won words of advice to the Science Communicators of North Carolina about developing citizen science projects, Read more…
Megalodon and other sharks at Darwin Day
Saturday, February 13, 2010, 8:44 amLast night, braving horrible traffic on the way there, and snow on the way back, I made my way to the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences for the Darwin Day shark lecture co-organized by NESCent and the sneak preview of the Megalodon exhibit which officially opens today.
International climate scientist visits UNC
Tuesday, February 2, 2010, 9:20 am
Dr. James Hansen
Just as the snow was beginning to melt after one of the worst winter storms to hit the Triangle in recent memory passed, climate scientist James Hansen visited the Univ. of N.C. at Chapel Hill to talk about – you guessed it – global warming.
It’s probably not the first time he’s delivered a speech during wacky weather, and it likely won’t be the last.
Hansen directs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and he is an adjunct professor in the department of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. His visit to the Triangle was courtesy of UNC’s Frey Foundation distinguished visiting professor lecture series. Read more…
Ecology, conservation, and restoration of oyster reefs in North Carolina
Thursday, January 28, 2010, 9:10 pmOn Tuesday I went to the monthly pizza lunch at Sigma Xi, featuring a guest lecture by Dr. David B. Eggleston, Professor of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Science at North Carolina State University and the Director of Center for Marine Sciences and Technology (CMAST).
While Dr.Eggleston conducts research in several areas (and several geographic locationa), in this talk he focused on the ecology, conservation, and restoration of oyster reefs in North Carolina.
N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences: a jewel in The Triangle
Saturday, January 16, 2010, 7:02 am
NC Museum of Science whale skeletons. (Photo courtesy of NCMNS)
The decision to build Research Triangle Park was made about 230 million years ago in the Triassic period. At least, it was according to the director of exhibits at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. Roy Campbell, leading a tour of participants in the ScienceOnline 2010 conference, pointed to a satellite image of the state and swept his hand across a swath of green that ran from Asheboro northeast to RTP. “The soil here is just awful, you can’t farm it,” he said. “This is the Triassic Basin, it used to be the poorest part of the state.” He pointed to breaks in the green canopy of land cover, noting where RTP was located as well as Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC State University. “Today there is a think-tank here, here, here and here,” he said pointing out each university. “And now this is the richest part of the state, and one of the richest areas of the nation.” Read more…
Deep sea paradox: little food, tons of life
Wednesday, December 16, 2009, 7:31 pmWhen Craig McClain was a young boy he dreamt of piloting the NASA space shuttle into unknown corners of the Milky Way. As an adult, he explores a different unknown — one that lies in an opposite direction from the space shuttle’s launch trajectory: the deep sea.
McClain is a marine biologist with the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in Durham, N.C. where he is associate director of science. He spends his days mulling over ecological and evolutionary conundrums of the deep, like why the nearly food-barren deep sea floor is riddled with pockets of biodiversity rivaling that of coral reefs and terrestrial rain forests. Read more…
RTP Weekahead 12/14
Monday, December 14, 2009, 12:04 amEvents taking place the week of Dec. 14 in the Research Triangle area that are open to the public: Read more…
Hibernation devastation: White-nose syndrome and our bats
Thursday, December 10, 2009, 12:53 pm
Little brown bat showing characteristic fungus growth associated with WNS. (Credit: USGS)
A video camera pans the mouth of Aeolus Cave in Vermont. Limestone rock slabs angle downward into knee-deep snow pack. It zooms in on a handful of bats huddled in a crevice, then descends into the cave. Leaf litter is piled up in drifts on the cave floor. The camera zooms in, and suddenly you realize these are not leaves… they are bats: hundreds and hundreds of dead bats. The footage is all the sadder because this cave houses the largest colony of hibernating bats in the northeast.
This video clip, filmed by CBS news on a Nature Conservancy property last February, was shown at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences yesterday during a public lecture on white nose syndrome, an emerging pathogen affecting northeastern cave-hibernating bats. Lisa Gatens, curator of mammals at the museum spoke to colleagues, students and interested public about the documented occurrences of WNS and the extent of current research. Read more…
Tomorrow’s free energy vision
Thursday, December 3, 2009, 9:54 pmEnergy woes are pervasive in the news and loom heavy in people’s minds these days. Even though grass-root supports exists for alternative energy development throughout the nation, significant and vast change is slow to gain inertia. So it was with interest and an open mind that I attended a lecture last Tuesday at Sigma Xi in Research Triangle Park where Alex Huang, director of the Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems (FREEDM Systems), discussed what his group was working on to mitigate what he called “the looming energy crisis.” Read more…
RTP Weekahead 11/30
Sunday, November 29, 2009, 4:17 pmEvents taking place the week of Dec. 30 in the Research Triangle area that are open to the public:
