Evolution: Education and Outreach

For those EE&O readers who will be in Cambridge and who like crocheting or who want to learn how, there’s an even at the Fitzwilliam musuem that you might want to attend. Reposted from the Fitzwilliam’s web events listing:

Two sessions 11.00 – 13.00 & 14.00 – 16.00

Join the international crochet colony. The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef (created and developed by Margaret and Christine Wettheim, of the Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles) fuses science with mathematics and fine art. The reef is constantly updated by an ever expanding group of participants from around the world. The Fitzwilliam’s reef will be growing during Endless Forms, eventually becoming part of the UK reef.

Learn to crochet, or help others get started, find out about Darwin’s work on coral and discover what coral and hyperbolic space have in common. Wool and hooks provided or bring your own.

FREE with support from The Crafts Council.

Sat 4 July 2009 | 11:00 to 16:00
Free – no booking required

Patrizia Martellini called my attention to this event by way of a facebook post. Thanks Patrizia!

The National Institutes of Health, Office of Science Education has online videos of the 2009 series of lectures on the importance of evolution for understanding human health. On the same page as the 2009 lectures’ videos, you can find videos from past years. The NIH says:

NIH is partnering with the National Academy of Sciences to present the annual lecture series, Evolution and Medicine. An outstanding group of scientists will present lectures on evolution as it applies to their area of scientific expertise. A reception will be held immediately following each lecture. The program is free and open to everyone.

Topics for this year include “Brain evolution: Lessons from Birds and Humans Who Sing and Talk” (Erick Jarvis, Duke); “Your Inner Fish” (Neil Shubin, U Chicago); “Communicating About Evolution” (Matthew Nisbet, American University) and “Evolution Matters” (David Hillis, U of Texas).

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) has recently (15 June 2009) posted the papers presented at the Sackler Colloquium meeting “In the Light of Evolution III: 200 Years of Darwin.” The papers are available free of charge.

The Sackler Colloquium home page describes the colloquium:

The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four to six such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Each colloquium is organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. These colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.

Information about completed colloquia—I don’t know if there are papers or presentations there—can also be found on the PNAS web site. I feel confident in asserting that an afternoon’s investment in browsing will pay handsomely.

OK, I will have to look over this later—now that it’s on the blog, at least, I can’t lose track of the web address.

I am grateful to the NCSE’s news feed on facebook for calling my attention to this excellent resource.

Hello all

As reported by Bug Girl, it’s National Pollinator Week, which is coordinated by the Pollinator Partnership, which says the following about itself in the “About Us” section of its web site:

The Pollinator Partnership (P2) is the D.B.A. for the 501(c)(3) non-profit Coevolution Institute. P2 works to protect the health of managed and native pollinating animals vital to our North American ecosystems and agriculture. Our website is a premiere source of information for consumers, gardeners, land managers, educators, resource managers, producers, and farmers to help pollinators, essential components for all of life.

As one of it’s many projects, P2 manages the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) a collaborative group of over 120 organizations and individuals that promote and implement a continent-wide Action Plan to encourage activities to protect the numbers and health of all pollinating animals.

Readers of Darwin will recall that some of his most compelling work was about the pollination of orchids. You can read the complete text of the first edition of On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects (London, 1862), where you can also find its second edition (London, 1877).

You can read a recent National Academies [of Science] report on the current state of pollinators and pollination for free, online.

I take this opportunity to point out that I am sure they mean “its” (first line, second paragraph in the block quote abve) which means “belongs to it,” rather than “it’s”, which means “it is.” I don’t mean to be pedantic but I have seen this error so many times that I am starting to make it myself. I am worried that the apostrophe is fading from our language.

A new online publication about evolution and evolution education is now up. You can find the first issue for the first volume at http://evostudies.org/vol1.html. If you write about evolution education, consider submitting a paper.

From the Consortium’s home page:

The Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) Consortium is designed to facilitate the development and implementation of Evolutionary Studies Programs at colleges and universities across the United States. An Evolutionary Studies Program introduces students from all majors to evolutionary theory early in their academic careers, emphasizes human-related subjects in addition to biological, promotes the continuation of evolutionary training throughout the undergraduate education, and promotes faculty training and collaborative research related to evolution.

The EvoS Consortium is a website that provides the tools and a community space for evolutionary training in institutions of higher education. The Consortium website (affiliated with EvoS Journal: The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium) is a space for both faculty and undergraduate members of Evolutionary Studies Programs, as well as those interested in starting a program. The inaugural consortium members are:

A major goal of the Consortium is growth – we hope to expand the consortium such that EvoS programs replicate widely. As such, we openly welcome other institutions to join. Steps associated with starting an EvoS program and joining the Consortium are described in the pages included in the Membership navigation button to the left.

The EvoS Consortium Website is sponsored by the Expanding Evolutionary Studies in American Higher Education grant from the National Science Foundation (#0817337), awarded jointly to Binghamton University and State University of New York, New Paltz.

So—take a look!

The Inamori Foundation has announce that Peter and Rosemary Grant are the 2009 recipients of the Kyoto prize in Basic Sciences:

“Demonstrating Rapid Evolution Caused by Natural Selection in Response to Environmental Changes”
Peter Raymond Grant
U.K. / October 26, 1936
Evolutionary Biologist
Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

Barbara Rosemary Grant
U.K. / October 8, 1936
Evolutionary Biologist
Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

Through the long-term field study more than 35 years on Darwin’s finches on the Galápagos Islands, the Grants demonstrated that morphology and behavior of organisms are altered rapidly by natural selection in response to recurrent environmental changes. Their work has not only made enormous contributions to evolutionary biology and ecology, but also has had a profound influence on the general public through demonstrating the evolution by natural selection in the field.

The Kyoto Prize is an international award to honor those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind. The Prize is presented annually in each of the following three categories: Advanced Technology, Basic Sciences, and Arts and Philosophy.

(http://www.inamori-f.or.jp/e_topics_090619.html; http://www.inamori-f.or.jp/e_kp_lau_thi.html#b; http://www.inamori-f.or.jp/e_kp_out_out.html)

Indeed, the Grants, whose work was written about in The Beak of the Finch, have conclusively demonstrated natural selection at work among Darwin’s finches, as well as having added to our knowledge of speciation and many other evolutionary phenomena.

Awardees receive prize money in the amount of 50 million Yen (http://www.inamori-f.or.jp/e_kp_out_out.html).

Congratulations, Peter and Rosemary, and thank you for the excellent work which has advanced the study of evolution enormously.

The aim and audience of EE&O was a topic on PZ Meyers’ Pharyngula blog. I put in my $.02:
http://bit.ly/q8IRz

The National Center for Science Education has just added some new resources to its web page. The first is a whole new section on creationism and the law. The link in the sidebar of the NCSE main page is just “legal cases,” but there is more than that here. Also there is a new section on “Academic Freedom” legislation—laws that purport to protect scholars and teachers from having their views suppressed, but are in fact targeted at protecting the views of those such as creationists. It looks like a pretty comprehensive set of resources over there. There’s a list of all the different laws passed, organized by state and also chronologically. Unfortunately, this excellent page is buried in the hierarchy of the site: Main >> Creationism >> Past and Present >> Incidents, and you have to scroll down under “contents” to find the link to the “Academic Freedom” part of the site.

Hello all

Volume 2 Issue 2 of EE&O is complete and online. The special theme this time around is transitional fossils, and this issue is guest-edited by Don Prothero.

Here is the link:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/x1r804782707/?p=9102fc0aba30409d977fb1468416cfb8&pi=0

Most of these papers have been available for some time now—they are published to the web site as they come in, and the issue is finalized so that the print issue comes out on schedule.

Question: how many people subscribe to the hard copy? Answer in the comments section below.

Hi everyone. It looks like there isn’t a problem with comments—you do have to have a Wordpress login, which you can get for free; maybe I should turn off that requirement?

Anyhow, I just found Bug Girl’s blog:

http://membracid.wordpress.com/

and I recommend taking a look. It’s mainly about, well, bugs, and some of the posts are about evolution, though not most. Regardless, it’s intriguing, well-written, fun, and really informative.