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Wildfires can boost ozone pollution to levels that violate U.S. health standards, a new study concludes.

The research, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., focused on California wildfires in 2007, finding that they repeatedly caused ground-level ozone to spike to unhealthy levels across a broad area, including much of rural California as well as neighboring Nevada.

Results of the study are published today in the journal ...
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The stickleback fish, Gasterosteus aculeatus, is one of the most thoroughly studied organisms in the wild, and has been a particularly useful model for understanding variation in physiology, behavior, life history and morphology caused by different ecological situations in the wild.

On biological levels from molecular and genetic to developmental and morphological, and finally ending with the population level, it has proven far more complex than even imagined.

Studies of ...
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Researchers are homing in on the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea to assess the likely changes, between now and the middle of the century, in the frequency, intensity, and tracks of these powerful storms. Initial results are expected early next year.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., working with federal agencies as well as the insurance and energy industries, has launched an intensive study to examine how global warming will ...
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) announces the establishment of five new NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) for the development of interdisciplinary research and education programs in partnership with industry. The NSF ERCs share the goal of advancing knowledge, technology, and innovations that address significant societal problems and provide the workforce and technical foundation for economic competitiveness. NSF will invest approximately $92.5 million in the centers over the ...
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To better understand the interactions between humans and their environment, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Forest Service have awarded 10 grants to scientists, engineers and educators across the country to study coupled natural and human systems.

Research conducted through NSF's Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program, in its second year as a multi-directorate NSF program, will provide a better understanding of natural processes and cycles, human ...
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In recent years, public discussion of climate change has included concerns that increased levels of carbon dioxide will contribute to global warming, which in turn may change the circulation in the earth's oceans, with potentially disastrous consequences.

In a paper published today in the journal Science, researchers presented new data from their analysis of ice core samples and ocean deposits dating as far back as 90,000 years ago and suggest that warming, carbon dioxide ...
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Humans living in communities often rely on friends to help get what they need and, according to researchers in the lab of Cameron Currie at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, many microbes, plants and animals benefit from 'friendly' associations too.

The Currie team's study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published in the Oct. 3, 2008, issue of the journal Science, describes the complex relationship between a beetle, two types of tree fungus ...
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) has announced 12 grants for fiscal year 2008, awarding a total of $23,779,056 over four years to 54 investigators representing 20 institutions.

Interdisciplinary teams will pursue transformative, fundamental research in two areas of great promise: understanding the brain and how its abilities may be used through cognitive optimization and prediction; and developing ways to make complex, ...
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As the world looks for more energy, the oil industry will need more refined tools for discoveries in places where searches have never before taken place, geologists say.

One such tool is a new sediment curve (which shows where sediment-on-the-move is deposited), derived from sediments of the Paleozoic Era 542 to 251 million years ago, scientists report in this week's issue of the journal Science. The sediment curve covers the entire Paleozoic Era.

"The new Paleozoic ...
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A new series of CubeSats, small satellites in the shapes of cubes, will soon take to the skies. Using the CubeSats, scientists will conduct space weather research impossible with other instruments.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a grant to SRI International, an independent non-profit research and development organization based in Menlo Park, Calif., to carry out the first space weather CubeSat mission.

CubeSats are tiny satellites with dimensions of ...
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) announces 14 Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs) awarded as a result of the 2008 MRSEC competition (solicitation NSF 07-563).

MRSECs support outstanding multi- and inter-disciplinary materials research and education addressing fundamental problems in science and engineering. These centers investigate complex problems that benefit from the scope and level of interactions provided by a center. They foster active collaboration ...
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President George W. Bush awarded the National Medals of Science and National Medals of Technology, honoring the nation's leading researchers, inventors and innovators, at a ceremony in the East Room at the White House at 10 a.m. on Monday, September 29, 2008.

The National Science and Technology Medals Foundation, together with the Director of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, Secretary of Commerce and Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) held a gala ...
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Visuals can communicate research results and scientific phenomena in ways that words cannot. That's why NSF cosponsors this international contest to recognize outstanding achievements in this area.
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/index.jsp?govDel=USNSF_51

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Canadian bedrock more than 4 billion years old may be the oldest known section of the Earth's early crust.

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and McGill University in Montreal used geochemical methods to obtain an age of 4.28 billion years for samples of the rock, making it 250 million years more ancient than any previously discovered rocks.

The findings, which offer scientists clues to earliest stages of our planet's evolution, are published in this week's ...
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) along with the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), today announced the winners of their sixth annual International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.

The winning entries included breathtaking photographs and graphics that reveal intricate details of our world--the three-dimensional path made by a rapidly spinning string cutting through space and the unique anatomy of ...
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Grow your own greens, get kids to eat greens, get OUT in the green, turn people green, live green, teach green, plant trees to game green and even SEED green in virtual worlds, yep, I’d say the healthy kids movement is fully underway…

My inbox today has the Healthy Kids Expo in Canada taking exhibitor apps, the Women’s Fund hosting the kickoff of Bioneers by the Bay (w/coolness king Van Jones of Green for All, and ever-awesome CNBC green journalist Simran Sethi) and yours truly of Shaping Youth headed to hear author Richard Louv, 2008 Audubon Medalist, as keynote for the Growing Greener School Grounds Conference! (walk-ins are welcome, last-minute greenies!) Last Child in the Woods is near and dear to me, for I’ve observed more than my fair share of media savvy kids with “nature-deficit disorder” in my own hands-on work with kids.

Louv has succeeded in skyrocketing media awareness of this cultural phenom, using media and marketing itself as a channel for change…(big fan of same, as regular readers know)

Over 300 green educators promoting ecological schoolyards and sustainable school gardens will be at this massive networking and resource fair, so I’ll report best practices and new research findings after tonight…

S.F. Green Schoolyard Alliance is showcasing established greening projects (like this cool site, REAL school gardens) along with kids’ wellness and whole food displays, and all kinds of fun classroom ideas and eco-community ventures…

The Green Schoolyard Alliance offers a wealth of ‘how-to’ knowledge and resources for ANY neighborhood to build community via local ecology, environmental stewardship, innovation for education, and creative ways to nurture kids’ academic mindfulness in health sciences.

The whole ‘inter-connected’ concept of well-being for the planet and the body has been a long-standing ‘given’  to me. It’s one of our core content layers when Shaping Youth lifts the veil on the ‘junk food for the mind and body’ approach…The type and imbalance of media and marketing we’re choosing to consume in our mind, body, and meals is what impacts the total physical and emotional well-being of children…Junk in, junk out. Quite simple, really…

Wonder what kind of fun No Child Left INSIDE enrichment I’ll walk away with…I’m counting on all kinds of new ideas for ways to ‘get ‘em outdoors’ on both the wellness AND eco front.

I plan on covering this event over on EcoChilds Play too, where I just wrote a piece on GreenRaising (school fundraising ideas that aren’t the usual wrap-n-read catalog offerings) Everything from seed packets to organic herb gardens…fair trade chocolate, pretty cool stuff for getting ‘how-tos’ for ‘greening your school’ early on!

Meanwhile, here’s the workshop line-up …from S.F. Green Schools.org…And:

Here’s Richard Louv’s recent Today Show interview about ways to help your kids experience nature, and his local segment on KGO along with a smidge of his national print and broadcast coverage.

I should add that both Richard Louv & Joseph Cornell are mainstays for my baby shower baskets of green/healthy/outdoor themes for new parents. Even though my personal books are dog-eared and battered from backpack use, they’ve both freshened their multiple editions with expanded offerings…so I’d put them on the wish list for the holidays…

If you’re unfamiliar with Cornell, here’s his site: ‘Sharing Nature with Children.’ Highly recommend both these gents for getting kids to engage with mother Earth for a greener future.

Related Growing Greener Grounds Resources

Gardening With Kids Promotes Environmentalism (Eco Child’s Play)

LifeLab Science Based Program: Garden Based Learning for a Sustainable Future

YouTube: CBS: Getting City Kids Into the Outdoors

School Garden Week: Oct. 25-31 CSGN Ca. School Garden Network

Impact of School Environs on Physical Activity & Food Choices (Maine Nutrition–52pp pdf)

Help Get Junk Food Out of School Lunch Programs: Filmmakers Amy Kalafa & Amy Jussel Team Up

Kid-Friendly Vegan Recipe: (ECP Roasted Squash)

DIY: Make and Can Organic Strawberry Jam

Center for EcoLiteracy

Children in Nature Collaborative: Reconnecting with the natural world

And to inspire you, here’s a sweet video of ‘Little Sprouts’ from the Patriot Ledger outside of Boston MA:

Now THIS kind of marketing is right up my alley…Cool the Earth is a fun, free, no-hassle enrichment segue from school to home that blends web-based and real life incentives with friendly competition and a ‘child to parent’ upsell strategy…(that’s marketing-speak for kids as influencers)

At Shaping Youth, we use a similar child-driven empowerment model for counter-marketing junk food, as kids ‘take home’ the message to parents in show-n-tell form…and ‘learn’ better choices from the kids.

Cool the Earth co-founder Carleen Cullen is essentially doing the same thing only to reduce a family’s carbon footprint! “Marketers know that KIDS influence parents, we’re just taking the same dynamic and applying it to global warming.” Ah, great minds…Kids use the dreaded ‘pester power’ to initiate positive change in households (twisty bulbs, power-down computers, turn off the car idling at school drop-off etc.)

So what IS the Cool the Earth program?

Part challenge, part game, part eco-literacy in a box, it’s a fresh, easy way to enable kids to ‘see the change’ firsthand, engage the entire family in reducing their carbon footprint, and learn the basics of climate change at a grassroots level. How cool is THAT?

We’ve all learned the hard way that adapting kid-friendly programs into ‘core curriculum’ is a time sink, whereas schools easily embrace ‘enrichment,’ since it’s student and parent run, ‘apolitical,’ and takes place outside of the classroom with turnkey support materials all set and ready to run.

I brought Cool the Earth materials into our middle-school eco and wellness club planning session to pitch the idea of getting the whole school involved (about 1000 kids) and see if it would ‘play in Peoria’ so to speak…

Teachers and parents donning polar bear heads is inherently funny and effective in getting the attention and some giggles with the K-5 crowd at a kick-off assembly, but in rougher middle-school environs? Hmn…

Then again, humiliation of adults in any capacity is usually worth some grins to tweenagers, and coaches and teachers are usually incredibly good sports so this could fly just fine…Founder Carleen Cullen assured me the programs are completely different (scripts, style, etc.) for the K-5 and 6-8 crowd. I can’t wait to jump into it if we get the go ahead, as I’ll be doing a ‘play by play’ story here as to how it pans out with the upper grades and would love to give it a go at the elementary level too…

It’s got such a universal appeal for all and so important to ‘get ‘em while they’re young’ in terms of initiating positive ‘tread lightly to stand even a smidge of a chance in our ‘buy-buy-baby’ consumerist culture.

Essentially, all it takes is ONE assembly to kick off this grassroots green program for climate change, and if the “powers-that-be” decide not to allow THAT due to time crunches, we’ll probably just piggyback onto an existing event like Science Fair or Earth Day, or move it to lunchtime…

Then the kids can take it from there, bringing home Cool the Earth influences for micro-change into every household!

The screenshot at left is from a moment ago, boosted since my last check-in, so I can see how the kids would smile at the progress!

Cool the Earth has already motivated over 6,000+ families to make over 12,000 environmental changes impacting their carbon emissions, saving more than 10 million pounds of carbon from going into the atmosphere, (the equivalent of taking 860 cars off the road) and championing change in 25 Northern California schools…

Now, their nonprofit is funded well enough to expand its reach with free kits to 100 schools nationally, ramped and ready to roll out. (complete with polar bear and Mr. Carbon funky costumes, a mother nature garland, the works)

They’re hoping to pay it forward from coast to coast as a positive model of environmental change that bridges from school to home to community, to maximize engagement in a ripple effect…

I’m so excited about our similarities in aligned missions and methodology that we’ll probably end up partnering in some capacity. We both firmly believe KIDS can be the conduit for sustainable social change, and we both started as ‘one mom, one voice, one mission’ and we both are implementing cause-marketing via entertainment tactics to make the learning fun!

With the recent Congressional passage of the NCLI Act (No Child Left INSIDE) encouraging students’ eco-literacy by getting kids outdoors for life lessons in applied sciences, I ALSO think Cool the Earth could easily be an ‘E-ticket’ for eco-educators to promote a win-win for the planet while educating kids on ways to rise above global warming! (great kids’ book selections  in that link on EcoChild’s Play!)

So here’s how it works:

Kids are given (recycled) ‘action coupons’ at the assembly to take home, implement, and reward the family’s baby steps by tracking their progress, using peer to peer challenges to instigate competition intra-district, by classroom, by neighborhood, by sports team, however you want to implement change! (here’s a video clip from the local news team)

Then, the parent-coordinator logs in the progress on the main website so kids get to see their ‘big picture’ impact contributing to the others partipating across the country as well…Love it!

Scalable. Doable. Baby steps toward changing people’s stripes, as our partners at Green Zebra would say!

Using education as motivation, kids FEEL the hope and promise of reversing the climate crisis, turning daily deeds and personal choices into actions that are doable, sustainable, and ultimately, they are ‘marketing hope!’

Face it, jaded adults could use a boost of eager enthusiasm, often best recruited to learn these life skills by youth themselves…after all, kids will be around this planet longer than we will, so they’re not only the future stakeholders, they’re the promise for the planet.

Remember the triplet teens that launched Polar Bear Nation? Case in point…Apathy and overwhelm is trumped by activation and doability!

Since influence streams flow both ways between kids and adults, it makes sense that the action cycle spins both ways too.

As David Orr said, “When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves.”

So whether it’s Cool the Earth imparting their nuggets of green, or Shaping Youth counter-marketing nuggets of processed junk food, I say we engage kids as catalysts for household change toward a holistic, healthier, more natural view of the earth as an inter-connected whole.

What do you think? Do kids initiate change in your home?

Do they influence your words, deeds and actions?

This young Junior Reporter, Alex, from the Philippines gives her take on climate change and what kids can do to cool the earth! Look out Barbara Walters! Inspiring…

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New initiative from the Spencer Foundation: Civic Learning and Civic Action.

Blog Post from Global Kids: Crossing the Metaversal Divide: Second Life teens exchange text messages with Ugandan girl on her cell phone.

New collective blog from researchers conducting an international survey of research in the field of new media and learning: Futures of Learning. (See Mimi Ito’s recent Spotlight post.)

Podcast from RezED, the hub for learning in virtual worlds: Episode 10: GLS Conference Overview.

New civic engagement and social networking site from the Seattle Youth Commons: Puget Sound Off. (See our recent post.)

Article from Wired Magazine: Games Without Frontiers: How Videogames Blind Us With Science. (Featuring University of Wisconsin Professor Constance Steinkuehler.)

Video from Edutopia, a project of the George Lucas Educational Foundation: Grading with Games: An Interview with James Paul Gee.

What are we missing? Comment with new sites or stories you think should be added to this list.

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For those who want to read more about MacArthur-supported projects and people that were mentioned in the article, here are a few quick links:

• Last month’s survey findings on “Teens, Games and Civics” from Pew Internet and American Life Project and the Civic Engagement Research Group at Mills College. (See also my blog post from when the survey launched.)
• James Paul Gee – a games researcher and author of “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.”
• Constance Steinkuehler—an assistant professor in the school of education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

You can read the previous article in the NYTimes’ Future of Reading series.