Showing of Results

Everything That Rises: A Climate Change Memoir

08/14/2024
Unknown Author

Title: Everything That Rises: A Climate Change Memoir. 

Author: Brianna Craft. 

Publication info: Chicago : Lawrence Hill Books. 2023. eBook. 

Location: Academic eBook Collection. 

Description: One of Ms. Magazine's 'Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2023.' Authentic and inspiring, Everything That Rises personalizes the realities of climate change by paralleling our relationship to the planet with the way we interact within our own homes. Nineteen-year-old Brianna Craft is having a panic attack. A professor's matter-of-fact explanation of the phenomenon known as 'climate change' has her white-knuckling the table in her first environmental studies lecture. Out of her father's house, she was supposed to be safe. This moment changed everything for Brianna. For her first internship, she jumped at the chance to assist the Least Developed Countries Group at the United Nations' negotiations meant to produce a new climate treaty. While working for those most ignored yet most impacted by the climate crisis, she grappled with the negligent indifference of those who hold the most power. This dynamic painfully reminded her of growing up in a house where the loudest voice always won and violence silenced those in need. Four years later, Brianna witnessed the adoption of the first universal climate treaty, the Paris Agreement. In this memoir that blends the political with the personal, Brianna dives into what it means to advocate for the future, and for the people and places you love, all while ensuring your own voice doesn't get lost in the process. It will take all of us to protect our home.

This post has no comments.
Field is required.
No Tags

Similar Posts

View All Posts
Anna Atkins: First female photographer?
03/21/2023
Unknown Author
0 Comments

                  

Left: Anna Atkins. Middle left: Alaria esculenta. Middle right: Cystoceira granulata. Right: Ferns, specimen of genotype. 

Check out Anna Atkins's cyanotypes! Anna is often credited as the first female photographer, although this is not definitively proven. A family friend of hers, John Herschel, invented the cyanotype method of photography in 1842. Anna then published three volumes of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions between 1843 and 1853. 

One copy of this book is at the Natural History Museum in London. You can view the original book and flip through its pages on their website.  

It's difficult to say for certain that Anna is the first female photographer. However, her publication has left a lasting impression on botany as a scientific field, and her use of both art and science uniquely captures the beauty of botany.

Read more:

 

Biology, Ecology, History
Dr. Charles Henry Turner & his bees
02/07/2023
Unknown Author
0 Comments

Watch these videos for more insight to Charles Henry Turner's life:  

 


Charles Henry Turner taught high school and college science classes for over 30 years. During this time, he studied insect behavior using his background in biology and psychology. Turner's work changed the way that insect behavior was understood and studied. This quote from Encyclopedia Britannica summarizes this change well: "[in the early 1900s], the study of insect behaviour was dominated by 19th-century concepts of taxis and kinesis, in which social insects are seen to alter their behaviour in specific responses to specific stimuli. Through his observations Turner was able to establish that insects can modify their behaviour as a result of experience."

More on the specific contributions Dr. Turner made to insect behavior research: "During his 33-year career, Turner published more than 70 papers, many of them written while he confronted numerous challenges, including restrictions on his access to laboratories and research libraries and restrictions on his time due to a heavy teaching load at Sumner [High School]. Furthermore, Turner received meagre pay and was not given the opportunity to train research students at either the undergraduate or the graduate level. Despite these challenges, he published several morphological studies of vertebrates and invertebrates. Turner also designed apparatuses (such as mazes for ants and cockroaches and coloured disks and boxes for testing the visual abilities of honeybees), conducted naturalistic observations, and performed experiments on insect navigation, death feigning, and basic problems in invertebrate learning...He developed novel procedures to study pattern and colour recognition in honeybees (Apis), and he discovered that cockroaches trained to avoid a dark chamber in one apparatus retained the behaviour when transferred to a differently shaped apparatus" (Encyclopedia Britannica). 

Read more: 

Psychology, Biology, History
How Braille was invented
01/05/2023
Unknown Author
0 Comments

     

Left: A portrait of Louis Braille. 

Right: The Braille alphabet.

Louis Braille was accidentally blinded in both eyes after an accident in his father's shop when he was three years old. He attended the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in France, where he excelled in his school work and started creating a new communication system for the blind and visually impaired. At the time, there were some resources for the visually impaired that made reading possible, including those made by Valentin Haüy, the founder of Louis Braille's school. However, these resources did not make writing and unspoken communication possible. These resources were also fragile, incredibly large and heavy (especially for youth), and expensive.  

By the age of fifteen, Louis Braille created the communication system that we know as Braille. He spent most of his life improving this system. Initially, he used both dots and dashes, but eliminated the dashes for simplicity. A passionate musician himself, Braille later added music symbols and syntax. 

Instructors and staff at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth effectively banned the use of Braille until 1854, two years after Louis Braille's death. Slowly, Braille was used throughout France, then Europe, and by 1916, the United States. It has since been improved and adapted to new technology, allowing the visually impaired to browse the Internet, complete homework and professional tasks, use computer software applications, and more. 

January 4th is celebrated as World Braille Day (for Louis Braille's birthday). 

Read more:  

Medicine, Health sciences, Biology, Social science, Education, History, Technology, Literature