Symposium honoring Socolow looks forward from 48 years of climate action
April 22, 2019 ・ Morgan KellyIn the grand tradition of European academia known as festschrift, colleagues and friends of a retiring academic gather to commemorate the gravity and legacy of the person’s career with papers and talks. Robert Socolow has been to enough festschrifts —…
Plants and microbes shape global biomes through local underground alliances
April 17, 2019 ・ Morgan KellyDense rainforests, maple-blanketed mountains and sweeping coniferous forests demonstrate the growth and proliferation of trees adapted to specific conditions. The regional dominance of tree species we see on the surface, however, might actually have been determined underground long ago. Princeton…
Government subsidies could be key to containing hospital-born infections
April 3, 2019 ・ Morgan KellyHealth care-associated infections — illnesses that people contract while being treated in a hospital or other health care facility — sicken millions of people each year and cost billions of dollars in additional treatment. While there has been some improvement…
Ecologist Henry Horn, founding director of Program in Environmental Studies, dies at 77
March 18, 2019 ・ Denise ValentiHenry Horn, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, emeritus, a scholar and fervent naturalist for whom Princeton’s campus and the surrounding areas provided a rich biosphere for study, died suddenly March 14 at Princeton. He was 77. Horn, who was…
Deike receives NSF CAREER grant to study bubble fragmentation in turbulent liquids
March 3, 2019 ・ Morgan KellyLuc Deike, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Princeton Environmental Institute, has received a five-year, $410,000 CAREER award from the National Science Foundation to study how bubbles break up in moving fluids, or turbulent flows, such as…
Put eggs all in one basket, or spread them around? Birds know best
March 3, 2019 ・ Catherine ZandonellaIn the tropical jungle of Central America where predators abound, a species of cuckoo has found safety in numbers by building communal nests guarded by two or three breeding pairs. Why then do these agreeable avians sometimes ditch the collaborative…
Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert on the loss of species and need for action
February 26, 2019 ・ Kirtland Snyder“Every species has an independent right to existence that transcends their utility.” With that, journalist and author Elizabeth Kolbert set the tone of her appearance at Princeton University on Feb. 21 — one of deep concern for the fate of…
Resplandy named 2019 Sloan Research Fellow
February 25, 2019 ・ Morgan KellyLaure Resplandy, assistant professor of geosciences and the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI), has received a 2019 Sloan Research Fellowship in the field of ocean sciences from the New York City-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Fellows receive a two-year $70,000 grant to pursue any lines of…
Discerning Experts: Michael Oppenheimer on improving environmental policy
February 22, 2019 ・ B. Rose KellyGovernments around the world rely on scientific assessments to guide environmental policy and action. Yet, these assessments, like those produced by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other organizations, can sometimes exhibit limitations, especially scientific bias and errors…
