Hannah Hoag

Category: news

  • Living Machines

    Living Machines

    Verdant Art-Tech Contraption Descends Upon France

    This spring, a War of the Worlds-scale tripod carrying verdant laboratories on suspended platforms showed up in Nantes in western France. It was just the latest massive art-tech project from street theater company La Machine, which has been startling Europeans with giant robots for more than a decade. Before the “flying greenhouse,” there was the 50-foot-tall spider on the side of a building in Liverpool.

    All of these creatures are members of the Order of Intelligent Machines, a growing mechanical menagerie that La Machine has been assembling since 1999. “We want to fill people with wonder and have them look at their cities differently,” says François Delarozière, La Machine’s artistic director.

    Keep reading this story at Wired.

    You can also follow La Machine on Facebook.

  • Q&A with Earth director Alastair Fothergill

    Green Living

    Polar bears and prophecies from the director of Earth.

    Earth, the hotly anticipated new film from Disneynature—in theatres on Earth Day (April 22)—follows three families of mammals. It captures the spectacle of the animal kingdom on the Arctic sea ice, in the tropics and Kalahari Desert, and at the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean. Green Living caught up with Emmy Award-winning wildlife filmmaker and Earth’s co-director Alastair Fothergill (best known for producing and directing the BBC series Planet Earth) for a chat about climate, camera angles and the thrill of the chase.

    Green Living: What do you hope people will take away from this type of film?

    :: Read more at Green Living ::

  • Dying trees could exacerbate climate change

    Dying trees could exacerbate climate change

    forestForests could emit more carbon than they store if temperatures rise.

    Forestry experts have again warned that climate change could transform forests from sinks to sources of carbon. The carbon storing capacity of global forests could be lost entirely if the earth heats up 2.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to a new report.

    The analysis by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) is a synthesis of existing information. “This is the first time it has been put together on a global scale,” says Alexander Buck, IUFRO deputy executive director, in Vienna. “It is the most thorough assessment of the negative and positive effects of climate change on the world’s forests.”

    :: Read more at Nature ::

  • Muslim students weigh in on evolution

    In Indonesia and Pakistan, questions about how science and faith can be reconciled.

    In the first large study of its kind, a survey of 3,800 high-school students in Indonesia and Pakistan has found that teachers are delivering conflicting messages about evolution.

    The Can$250,000 Islam and Evolution research project is the first large study of students, teachers and scientists in countries with significant Muslim populations to examine their understanding and acceptance of evolution. Some results from the three-year project were presented at a symposium at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, this week.

    “We now have empirical data for how Muslim students, teachers and scientists think about the subject,” says Brian Alters, the study’s lead investigator and director of the Evolution Education Research Center, a joint project between McGill and Harvard universities. “It was pretty much a black hole prior to this.”

    :: Read more at Nature ::

  • Canadian science minister under fire

    Comments on evolution spark fierce criticism.

    It’s been a rough month for Canada’s minister of science and technology. Gary Goodyear, who was appointed to the new position in October 2008, has been roundly criticized in the media for an outburst during a meeting with a university teachers’ group and for his comments on evolution.

    Some Canadian researchers say the criticism is unreasonable, but others say it suggests that Goodyear, a chiropractor by training, is not in tune with the community whose portfolio he oversees.

    :: Keep reading in Nature ::