Locally Sourced Science

• Dr. Chelsea Specht
• Rosemary Glos
• Rosemary Glos

In today’s show, you’ll hear an interview from Cornell undergraduate Rosemary Glos.  She spoke with Cornell Professor Chelsea Specht, the Barbara McClintock Professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science, where she studies the evolutionary biology of plants. In this interview, Dr. Specht talks about the value of the many natural history collections at Cornell.

Later in the show, you’ll hear a report on Ithaca College’s annual Women in Math day.  Esther Racoosin covered the February 8th event, where female high school students learned about the many reasons why they might want to consider majoring in math in college.

Janani Harihanan presents a profile of Dr. Janaki Ammal, the first woman scientist to receive a Ph.D. in Botany in the United States.

And Liz Mahood presents the Science News.

Image Credits: Cornell University, image of Dr. Chelsea Specht. Esther Racoosin, image of Ithaca College Women in Math publicity.

Show Producer: Esther Racoosin

Interview of Cornell Professor Dr. Chelsea Specht: Rosemary Glos

Profile of Dr. Janaki Ammal: Janani Harihanan

Science News: Liz Mahood

Each year, around the time of Charles Darwin’s birthday on February 12, the Paleontological Research Institution, also known as PRI, presents a week-long festival of events called “Darwin Days”.  The theme of this year’s celebration was “The Power of Pollination”!   

To learn more about Darwin’s observations of flowers and the insects that pollinate them, Locally Sourced Science contributor Esther Racoosin attended one of the Darwin Days events.  It was a presentation, titled “Pollination and Coevolution:  Love Story or Arms race” by Cornell Professor Anurag Agrawal.  At the beginning of today’s show, you’ll hear about Darwin’s thoughts on co-evolution and Dr. Agrawal’s research on the topic.

Later in the show, you’ll hear an interview produced by Cornell undergraduate Alejandro Schmieder.  He spoke with Cornell Assistant Professor Esther Angert about her research on a type of bacteria, Epulopiscium, that lives inside the gut of tropical surgeonfish.  Angert talks about how those two organisms have perhaps co-evolved to develop a symbiotic relationship that allows them to survive changing conditions in the ocean.

And, lastly, you’ll hear our science events calendar for the week.

Image Credits: Paleontological Research Institution, Anurag Agrawal, Cornell University Dept. of Microbiology

Show Producer: Esther Racoosin

Interview of Cornell Professor Esther Angert: Alejandro Schmieder

Science Calendar: Esther Racoosin

In this episode, we celebrate two significant anniversaries! This month is the 3rd anniversary of Locally Sourced Science, and we celebrate it with a new music and voice introduction by Joe Lewis. We also celebrate the 30th anniversary of the famous photograph of planet Earth taken from the farthest point ever. This photo that Carl Sagan titled “The Pale Blue Dot” was taken by Voyager I on February 14, 1990.

To celebrate this anniversary, Mark Sarvary spoke with Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute, and with writer and director Nick Sagan, Carl Sagan’s son. Kaltenegger talks about the Voyager 1 mission, the Pale Blue Dot picture, and the Carl Sagan Institute. Nick Sagan spoke to us about the legacy of his father, who was both a scientist and a storyteller.

Sagan wrote in his “Pale Blue Dot” book: “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. … There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.”

Image Caption

This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed ‘Pale Blue Dot’, is a part of the first ever ‘portrait’ of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager’s great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters — violet, blue and green — and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Producer: Esther Racoosin

Interviews: Mark Sarvary

Science News: Liz Mahood

Science Events Calendar: Esther Racoosin

The health of our Oceans is important, even to us, at the Finger Lakes.

Guest contributor, Vivian Lee interviewed professor Drew Harvell from Cornell University about the health of our oceans. Dr. Harvell has recently published a book titled Ocean Outbreak.

Guest contributor Zach Bellido spoke to Cornell’s Shoals Marine Laboratory Island coordinator Collin Love about marine parasitology.

Science News: Liz Mahood

Science Events: Esther Racoosin

Producer: Mark Sarvary

The first show of the year brought us a report from the Christmas bird count conducted by the Cayuga bird club, predictions of scientific discoveries for the new decade, and information about the Tompkins County SciHub.

Interviews: Esther Racoosin

On January 1st, 2020, about 150 volunteers ventured out to count as many local birds as possible.  The birders participated in the Christmas Bird Count sponsored by Audubon and organized locally by the Cayuga Bird Club.

To find out more, Locally-Sourced Science contributor Esther Racoosin spoke with Diane Morton, president of the Cayuga Bird club, as well as with other birders. 

——————————-

A group at Cornell University is working on developing the Tompkins County Science Hub.

To learn more about Sci Hub, I spoke to Dr. Bruce Lewenstein, Professor of Communications in the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.  Lewenstein, project leader Norman Porticella, lecturer in the department of communications, and experts at the Cornell Cooperative Extension, are doing research on what a local science hub would look like.

Predictions for the next decade: Liz Mahood

Events: Patricia Waldron

Producer: Mark Sarvary

In this episode LSS contributors pick and discuss their favorite stories, and interviews from 2019.

In this show Liz Mahood interviews Dr. Peter McMahon,

Later in the show, Esther Racoosin speaks with Dr. David

He talks about his recent research article, “Analytics and Bikes: Riding Tandem with Motivate to Improve Mobility.” https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/inte.2019.1005

Producer:  Cecil Barnett-Neefs

Interview of Dr. Peter McMahon:  Liz Mahood

Interview of Dr. David Shmoys:  Esther Racoosin

Science News:  Patricia Waldron

Science Events Calendar:  Luisa Torres

Music:  Show Theme by Joe Lewis, Cêcê Giannotti.

Photo:   Dr. David Shmoys, Dr. Eoin O’Mahony, (courtesy of Dr. David Shmoys, Cornell University).

With the season’s chilly weather requiring people to wrap up warm, it seems like a good time to talk about fibers and fabric. In this episode, first, you’ll hear Liz Mahood present a history of the creation and production of synthetic fibers. To learn more about this intriguing science history, see the links below.

Later in the show, Esther Racoosin interviews Dr. Mike Haaf, Professor of Chemistry at Ithaca College. Dr. Haaf recently published a research article in the journal Coloration Tech. It is titled, “In situ fabric coloration with indigo synthesized in flow”. The co-authors of the paper are Ithaca College graduate Katrina Piemonte, Dr. Tyler McQuade of Virginia Commonwealth University, and Lucy Cotton and Richard Blackburn of the University of Leeds in the UK.

In his paper, Dr. Haaf  and collaborators describe a new method for synthesizing indigo dyes. The method allows for direct coloration of cotton fabrics without using a typical vat dyeing process that is used in the garment industry to dye denim jeans.

Finally, we hear Meaghan McElroy present the science events calendar for the week.

Links to articles about the history of synthetic fibers:
https://www.herculite.com/blog/the-history-of-synthetic-fabrics
https://startupfashion.com/fashion-archives-history-synthetic-fiber
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-fabrics-4072209
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fabric
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandex

Producer: Esther Racoosin

Interview of Dr. Mike Haaf: Esther Racoosin

History of the creation of synthetic fibers: Liz Mahood

Science Events Calendar: Meaghan McElroy

Music: Show Theme by Joe Lewis, Cêcê Giannotti.

First, you’ll hear Patricia Waldron’s interview of Denise Nicole Green, Assistant Professor in the Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design and Director of the  Cornell Costume and Textile Collection .
Green talks about the “Fashion & Feathers” exhibit currently on display in the Human Ecology Building. The collection features fashions constructing using feathers, designs inspired by birds, as well as matching bird specimens from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates. The exhibit can be seen in the Human Ecology Building, level T display cases. For more information see the Fashion & Feathers event website.

Various Fashion & Feathers exhibits (Photos: Patricia Waldron)

Next, Esther Racoosin speaks with Bryan Danforth, Chair and Professor in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University, about the exhibit Bees: Diversity, Evolution, Conservation, currently on display at the Museum of the Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca. Danforth and Dr. Robert Ross of PRI are the curators of the exhibit. Helaina Blume of PRI is the designer and creator of the exhibit. Bees! Diversity, Evolution and Conservation was created with grant support from the National Science Foundation, or NSF and the Tompkins County Tourism Program. For more information, go to: the Paleontological Research Institute website.

Finally, we hear Liz Mahood’s presentation of the Science News for the week. Patricia Waldron produced the interview of Dr. Denise Green; Liz Mahood produced the science news, and Esther Racoosin produced the interview of Dr. Bryan Danforth.

Contributors: Patricia Waldron | Esther Racoosin | Liz Mahood

Producer: Esther Racoosin

Music: Show Theme by Joe Lewis, Cêcê Giannotti.

In today’s show, we speak with Dr. Kenneth Rosenberg, Applied Conservation Scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and American Bird Conservancy. He talks about his study, published on October 4 in the journal Science, “Decline of the North American Avifauna”. The paper describes the cumulative loss of billions of breeding individuals across a wide range of species and habitats. For more information, go to www.3billionbirds.org.

Later in the show, you’ll hear about our visit to some of the science exhibits that took place Saturday, October 26 at Wizarding Weekend in Downtown Ithaca. We will also check in with Dr. Gina Mason, a former member of the Locally-Sourced Science team, who is a post-doctoral fellow in developmental psychobiology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. And, finally, you’ll hear from Dr. Luisa Torres, who has this week’s science events calendar.

Producer: Esther Racoosin

Co-host: Cecil Barnett-Neefs

Science Events Calendar Producer: Luisa Torres