|
Stories from a Changing Planet
Dr. George Divoky, Dr. David Harwood, Dr. Ralph Harvey and Dr. Christine Foreman, polar researchers
Fri, Sep 12, 2008, 7:30 pm
Find out what Earth’s polar regions can tell us about how and why our global climate is changing from scientists who’ve lived and worked in these icy, remote places. Ornithologist Dr. George Divoky of Friends of Cooper Island, geologist Dr. David Harwood of University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Antarctic Drilling Program, planetary geologist Dr. Ralph Harvey of Case Western Reserve University, and microbiologist Christine Foreman of Montana State University share what they’ve seen and learned in compelling presentations that use authentic artifacts and dramatic high-definition video clips. Discover why the poles matter to Cleveland.
This event kicks off POLAR-PALOOZA, two days of programming about the poles
sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA.
|
|
Co-sponsored by The Native Plant Society of Northeastern Ohio
Ecological design means using every aspect of the planning, design, construction and management of metropolitan landscapes to benefit long-term ecological health and ecosystem services. One of its fundamental requirements is cultural sustainability: ensuring that people enjoy and appreciate landscapes that are patterned and managed to benefit ecological health. Joan Iverson Nassauer, professor of landscape architecture at the University of Michigan, describes culturally sustainable ecological designs for road corridors, vacant urban properties, brownfields, greenfield subdivisions and home landscapes. She also discusses on-the-ground experiments and Web surveys that demonstrate how and why these designs work.
|
|
Co-sponsored by
the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology and the Seismological Society of America
The cultures and political conflicts of the Middle East have been shaped by a diverse and youthful landscape dominated by the Dead Sea rift valley. Thanks to recent peace agreements, scientists have been able to cooperate on large-scale geophysical projects to study this feature, a fault system sunk between the western highlands of Israel and the Palestinian territories and the eastern highlands of Jordan. Dr. Uri S. ten Brink, geophysicist at the USGS Woods Hole Field Center, describes three such projects, which have yielded important scientific information and generated peace and friendship among the many people involved.
Don’t miss the Earth Science Evening exhibits before this lecture!
|
|
While medical science acknowledges that the history of biomedical research is replete with instances where, “long ago,” it was deeply influenced by the dominant social and political concerns of an era, there has been an overwhelming tendency to treat the present as if it transcends such concerns. It is notable, then, that the last five years have witnessed a self-conscious, unusually sharp debate about the roles of race and ethnicity in research protocols, selection of subjects and targeted populations for pharmacological treatments. Dr. Troy Duster, professor of sociology at New York University, uses history as a guide to understanding this debate and its significance.
|
|
In 1931, Sir Hubert Wilkins was determined to be the first to use a submarine to cross the Arctic Ocean by way of the North Pole. At the pole, he planned to drill up through the ice and rendezvous with the German airship Graf Zeppelin. His submarine, christened the Nautilus, eventually reached the icepack, but suspected sabotage by some crew members forced an end to the enterprise. The Nautilus was scuttled in a Norwegian fjord. In 2005, oceanographer Dr. Stewart Nelson located the vessel with a manned submersible. He recounts both the ill-fated 1931 expedition and the Nautilus’ rediscovery.
Please join this speaker for a book-signing session after the presentation. All books are available for purchase in the Museum Store.
|
|
Modern birds (Neornithes) are today’s most diverse group of land-living vertebrates. Nevertheless, their origins among their toothy, long-tailed ancestors during the Cretaceous Period remain poorly understood. Recent expeditions led by Dr. Matthew C. Lamanna, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and colleagues have uncovered exquisitely preserved fossils of Gansus yumenensis, a 115 million-year-old amphibious bird from China that, despite its great antiquity, is thought to be closely related to the Neornithes. Lamanna chronicles his team’s discoveries of Gansus and explains its implications for the rise of modern avians.
|
|
In the lifetime of a child born today, 20 to 30 percent of species worldwide will face increased risk of extinction if we do not stabilize global temperatures. Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of National Wildlife Federation, reviews the urgency of the rapidly unfolding climate crisis. He discusses how NWF and others are recasting the climate crisis from an environmental issue to a societal one. He shows that by bringing new messages and messengers to the table, we can reduce global warming pollution, recharge America’s economy and protect America’s natural resources.
|
|
Claudia Stevens performs her one-person play, which brings to life the remarkable fossil hunter Mary Anning, a colorful figure of Victorian England. Blue Lias is set in the present within an imaginary convention of scientists. The audience takes on the role of the scientists, who are being entertained by a play about Anning. Stevens’ Anning is at once playful, wistful, sardonic and angry as she reviews her life and times, the indignity of her position within the all-male scientific community, and the conflict emerging between science and religion. With music by Allen Shearer.
|
|
The William and Nancy Klamm Memorial Lecture
Make Way for Plovers: Reversing Coastal Bird Declines in America
Scott Hecker, coastal bird conservationist
Fri, Apr 24, 2009, 7:30 pm
For more than 20 years, Scott Hecker has loved plovers. As a CMNH Future Scientist and a boy starting his birder’s life list along Lake Erie, he searched for these shorefront residents. But he didn’t see his first until the launch of his postgraduate career at the Massachusetts Audubon Society. What came next is the history he presents in this lecture. Hecker, now executive director of the Goldenrod Foundation, describes the recovery of the Piping Plover, how one species is saving the barrier beach ecosystem, and his plan to conserve beach-nesting birds and migratory shorebirds throughout America’s coastal playground.
|
|
At noon on May 28, 585 B.C., a solar eclipse spread darkness across the Greek island of Miletus. Such events had always terrified those who witnessed them, but this eclipse had been predicted by the Milesian philosopher Thales. Every physical event, Thales explained, has a physical cause. Causality marked the birth of science; it should also have been the death of superstition. Physics professor Dr. Bob Park of the University of Maryland explores why people today still cling to superstitious beliefs, accepting the words of prophets and seers over the experiments of science.
Please join this speaker for a book-signing session after the presentation. All books are available for purchase in the Museum Store.
|
| Amplification devices for the hearing impaired are available at no charge in the lobby. |