environment

Chris Kelty’s Labyrinth Project Podcast explores L.A.’s urban ecosystem

Chris Kelty’s Labyrinth Project Podcast explores L.A.’s urban ecosystem

Photo by ISG Senior Artist Amisha Gadani ISG Faculty member Chris Kelty‘s new UCLA podcast, “The Labyrinth Project,” captures the complexity of the urban ecosystem.  Faithful to the production of this project, five UCLA undergraduates and graduates assisted Kelty in exploring various ecological problems, such as the relationship between people’s attempts to battle one species, rats, while preserving another, mountain…

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Bharat Venkat’s students reflect on completing their research at UCLA Library while learning remotely

Bharat Venkat’s students reflect on completing their research at UCLA Library while learning remotely

Photo credit to UCLA Library During a time of campus closure and remote learning, UCLA Library reimagined its services critical for students to carry out their research and academic coursework. Two students of ISG Faculty member, Bharat Venkat‘s “Red Hot LA” class, Alexandra Nechaev (’21) and Alice Lu (’21),  shared their reflections on the invaluable support, ingenuity and dedication that…

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ISG Professor Nicholas Shapiro’s collaborative research cited in the 2020 Vice Presidential Debate

ISG Professor Nicholas Shapiro’s collaborative research cited in the 2020 Vice Presidential Debate

Image Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP In November of 2016 ISG Professor Nicholas Shapiro emailed a dozen colleagues initiating a collective conversation on how they might be able to leverage their research skills in anticipation of the new administration’s likely dismantlement of federal environmental and climate protections. This email led to the creation of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), which…

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ISG Professor Nicholas Shapiro inspires conversation of ‘Chemo-ethnography’ in his interview with “Chemistry World”

ISG Professor Nicholas Shapiro inspires conversation of ‘Chemo-ethnography’ in his interview with “Chemistry World”

In his interview with Chemistry World, a publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry, ISG Professor Nicholas Shapiro discusses his research and analysis in an emerging subfield ‘Chemo-ethnography,’ which probes how chemistry impacts human culture. Additionally, Shapiro utilizes his research to support that an issue involves examining both the chemical and cultural context.   ‘Chemo-ethnography is simply anthropology recognising that…

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Under Poaching Pressure, Elephants Are Evolving To Lose Their Tusks

Written by Dina Fine Maron for National Geographic. [Excerpt] “Their goal is to uncover more information about how these animals move, eat, and what their genomes look like. Long hopes to detail how elephants without the benefit of tusks as tools may alter their behavior to get access to nutrients. Rob Pringle, at Princeton University, plans to look at dung…

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How teeth became tusks, and tusks became liabilities

“The persistence of elephant poaching has prompted researchers to wonder whether elephants really needed their tusks, and whether they might not be better off if the tuskless trait were to spread more widely through the African population.  Shane Campbell-Staton, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues have begun systematically…

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