October 23, 2012
News Digest: First “Scientific Lens” talk is Wednesday, libraries mark Open Access Week, Evans school’s Ideas for Action awards, Johnston on sustainability board
Imaging deep-water, extreme environments is first in series
University of Washington scientists are using advanced photography to reveal the world in ways unimaginable generations ago. The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture presents four opportunities to learn about how they’re investigating the natural world. Talks in the series “The Scientific Lens: Research and Photography” will be at 7 p.m. at the museum. Admission is free for UW faculty, staff and students; others pay $5 at the door. Pre-registration is recommended.
- Oct. 24: “Volcanoes: Supporting Life Under the Sea.”Debbie Kelley, UW professor of oceanography, will discuss how imaging seafloor hot springs reveals biological communities thriving in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, and helps us understand the underwater volcanoes that form the largest mountain chain on the planet.
- Oct. 30: “Imaging Greenland’s Ice from Earth and Space.” Using high-resolution spaceborne cameras, helicopters, and a GPS-enabled camera, UW’s Ian Joughin of the Applied Physics Laboratory and International League of Conservation photographer Chris Linder are working to reveal and document changes to the vast ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, which are shrinking as the climate warms and sea levels rise.
- Nov. 7: “Wildflowers, Climate Change, and Citizen Scientists.”Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, UW professor of biology, and doctoral candidate Elinore Theobald will discuss the power of crowd-sourcing in documenting flowers, pollinators and the entire Alpine and Montane ecosystems.
- Nov. 14: “Orcas in Puget Sound.”Senior vessel captain and field biologist Dave Ellifrit helped build and curate the photographic library of orcas in Puget Sound and will share highlights from the photo library, what it has revealed about orcas, and how it affects policy and research.
UW Libraries events mark Open Access Week
This week marks the sixth annual observation of Open Access Week. An alternative to the traditional, expensive and restrictive system of academic publication, open access to information involves the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as needed.
In support of International Open Access Week, the UW Libraries is conducting a number of events.
- “Open Data = Open Research,” Thursday, Oct. 25, 1:30-3 p.m., Room Green A, Research Commons, Allen Library – Following the philosophy of Open Access, Open Data is data that is openly available – with some exceptions – for discovery, access, and re-use. Join us for an interdisciplinary look at examples of open data at UW, how open data can facilitate research, and which UW services are available to support making data more discoverable and accessible.
- “Sharing Ideas, Expanding Knowledge: Open Access as a Scholarly Publishing Alternative for the Future” – This exhibit will be installed later in October in the library at UW Bothell. Selected slides from the exhibit are available online.
Ideas for Action, Evans School-sponsored project, announces grants
Cash awards from an innovation contest partly sponsored by the Evans School of Public Affairs are going to programs providing job training, financial education and mentoring and support services for women.
The competition, called Ideas for Action, offered grants to expand promising poverty-reducation. It was sponsored by the Evans School’s Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits & Philanthropy, with the Northwest Area Foundation and the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
Awards of $10,000 each will go to Arkansas Career Pathways, which connects people with community college job retraining; and The Financial Clinic, which provides financial education and mentoring. Awards of $5,000 each will go to the Crittenten Women’s Union, which supports women struggling with poverty or domestic abuse; and the Iowa Credit Union Foundation, which helps families build savings.
David S. Harrison, the Evans school senior lecturer who co-chaired Ideas for Action, said its aim was “to shine a light on imaginative and concerted efforts pushing back against historically high poverty levels in America.”
Ruth Johnston on board of sustainability association
Ruth A. Johnston, associate vice president for finance and facilities, has been elected to a three-year term with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. The association, with 860 campus members, helps coordinate and strengthen campus sustainability efforts and is the first North American professional association for those interested in advancing campus sustainability.
