As we manage the COVID-19 catastrophe, we need to remember that in a world with an increasing global population, migrations, climate change and dramatic increases in global travel, such events are likely to occur more frequently. We need to consider the level of societal resources we’re prepared to spend to prevent future pandemics and identify […]
According to the World Health Organization, almost one-third of women in the world have been victims of intimate or domestic partner violence. This public health problem has increased during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis due to the lockdown restrictions that have extended the time that family members spend in close proximity to one another. Though many […]
Scientific American May 2020 Those who doubt the planet is spherical often wind up subscribing to a host of other nonsensical notions On February 22 “Mad” Mike Hughes died when his self-built steam rocket crashed shortly after takeoff. Hughes was a famous flat-earther, one of a growing group who do not accept that Earth is […]
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On a recent episode of our podcast My Favorite Theorem, my cohost Kevin Knudson and I had the opportunity to talk with Ben Orlin, a math educator and author of the popular blog Math With Bad Drawings as well as two books, Math With Bad Drawings and Change Is the Only Constant. You can listen to the episode here or at kpknudson.com, […]
“To learn how to listen to the delicate vibrations of my soul, to be incorruptibly true to myself and fair to others, to find in this way the right measure of my own worth.” — Karen Horney’s New Year’s Eve resolution in 1904 at the age of 18 (from Adolescent Diaries of […]
Roots of Unity | Opinion Here are resources for students, parents and other learners Origami is one way to create and discover mathematics outside of school. Credit: fdecomite Flickr (CC BY 2.0) Advertisement COVID-19 has turned our usual routines on their heads, and we are all scrambling to figure out how to live in this new […]
The transition from winter to spring always brings out a curious mixture of emotions in me. For years, April had meant the end of a field season, weeks of cold and discomfort spent with my local colleagues in the Russian woods, sometimes a hundred or more kilometers from the nearest human settlement, sleeping in a […]
Back in the pre-pandemic era, I was really looking forward to April 8. On that date, Carl Zimmer was going to give a talk at my school, Stevens Institute of Technology, about his latest book, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh. For decades, Zimmer has reported on biology in The New York Times and other publications and in books, 13 […]
Bats get a bad rap. From horror films to tabloid pages to Halloween, media and cultural depictions of our planet’s only volant, or flying, mammals have long generated and reinforced unfounded fear. Their evident role as original source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that produced the COVID-19 epidemic has exacerbated their unfortunate public image and even […]
NOAA is lending technical support to the United Nations in its battle against a massive locust infestation that’s spread from Africa into the Middle East and Asia. NOAA’s assistance is helping officials control the spread of the pests, but the U.N. says new desert locust swarms are advancing into India, threatening food supplies there. Meanwhile, […]