Tag Archives: taylor edwards

UA Researcher Discovers New Species of Tortoise

UA geneticist Taylor Edwards used CyVerse’s data-sharing capabilities to coordinate with his research partners and decipher the data that led to the discovery of the new species.

Shakespeare’s Juliet once famously pondered “what’s in a name,” and the answer would be $100,000 in the case of the recently discovered Goode’s Thornscrub Tortoise (or Gopherus evgoodei in the Latin), a species native to the area of southern Sonora, western Chihuahua and northern Sinaloa, Mexico. A description of the species was published in the journal ZooKeys. (more…)

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New book explores ‘frontier’ metaphor in science

Leah Ceccarelli is a professor of communication and author of the book “On the Frontier of Science: An American Rhetoric of Exploration and Exploitation.” She answered a few questions about the book for UW Today.

Q: What’s the concept behind this book? Why did you write it?

A: I kept seeing appeals to the American frontier spirit in the public arguments of scientists. That rhetoric was often inspiring, giving scientists an exciting image of their work across the metaphorical “boundaries” of knowledge. But it was also troubling in the expectations it set out about the manifest destiny of scientists to push forward at all costs, and in the way it reinforced their separation from a public that funds their endeavors. (more…)

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