James Watson, a UA anthropologist, has published chapters describing how long-term environmental trends encourage stable adaptations within local environments.
Human/environment interactions have a history as long as the existence of our species on the planet.
Hominid ancestors began polluting their environment nearly 700,000 years ago with the control of fire, and humans have not looked back since.
The modern phenomenon of global warming is very likely the direct result of human pollution and destruction of the environment, said James Watson, a University of Arizona assistant professor in the School of Anthropology. (more…)
Hosted by world-renowned astrophotographer Adam Block at the UA’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, a group of sky and astronomy enthusiasts watched Venus cross the sun from the highest vantage point in Southern Arizona.
On Nov. 24, 1639, in the tiny village of Much Hoole not far from Liverpool, England, a poor farmer’s son and self-taught astronomer affixed a sheet of paper in front of a makeshift telescope pointed at the sun and waited.
Thirty-five minutes before sunset, a dark, round spot appeared right next to the bright disc that was the sun’s face projected on the paper, and made Jeremiah Horrocks, only 20 years old at the time, the first known human to predict, observe and record a transit – the passage of a planet across the sun as seen from Earth.
Almost 373 years later, a group of sky enthusiasts is gathered beneath the dome of one of the University of Arizona’s observatories on Mount Lemmon just north of Tucson, Ariz. (more…)
*UA researchers have uncovered evidence in ant colonies suggesting that social networks may function differently than previously assumed.*
Be it through the Internet, Facebook, the local grapevine or the spread of disease, interaction networks influence nearly every part of our lives.
Scientists previously assumed that interaction networks without central control, known as self-directed networks, have universal properties that make them efficient at spreading information. Just think of the local grapevine: Let something slip, and it seems like no time at all before nearly everyone knows. (more…)
