A team of researchers from London’s Royal College of Art (RCA) have discovered that the stones used to construct Stonehenge hold musical properties and when struck, sound like bells, drums and gongs.
Some ancient mysteries capture the imagination and Stonehenge has always been that great unknown. This might explain why the builders worked so hard to bring the stones over 150 miles to this location.
See on www.ancient-origins.net
Island biogeography operates on different principles than we see on the continents. Some extraordinary creatures such as the komodo dragon and thylacine can be found in isolated places removed interactions with more generalist species. Alfred Russel Wallace made some extraordinary discoveries combining biology and spatial thinking.
Island biogeography is pertinent today since habitat fragmentation (from urbanization and agricultural land uses) has rendered ‘islands’ out of the wilderness that isn’t being used by humanity. Some animals such as the cougar are locally extinct from their historic ranges (extirpation).
Tags: biogeography, environment, ecology, Australia, Oceania.
Some of the greatest discoveries in biology began as spatial discoveries. Alfred Russel Wallace made some amazing advances in biogeography and discovered the appropriately named Wallace Line. The video above is a paper-puppet animation celebrates the life of Alfred Russel Wallace, who is co-credited with Charles Darwin for the theory of natural selection. Read the New York Times story here.
Fury, anarchy, martyrdom: Why the youth of Brazil are (forever) protesting, and how their anger may consume the World Cup.
Protests in public spaces are colliding with the Brazil’s World Cup/Olympic dreams. The government wants to show the world the best that the country has to offer and protestors are using this moment to highlight the social ills in their country and some of the collateral damages of these major sporting events. This may not seem like a sports issue per se, but one of social unrest that happens to be more highly publicized because of the coming international sporting events to Brazil. Many see the money that went to constructing massive stadiums as money that bypassed those that needed it most and the poor neighborhoods (favelas) that were demolished to make way for an ‘ideal city’ that the world would see. The world’s eye is on Brazil and both sides know it.
See on espn.go.com
“How many islands are in Rhode Island?”
I recently received this question and immediately thought that this is a great geographic question, but one that geographic tools can be used to find the answer. I downloaded all the Rhode Island toponymns (place names) listed by the United States Board on Geographic Names and filtered out all the listed Islands (108 is the answer!!). A spreadsheet of the data didn’t help to visualize this data so I created this interactive map. Only 1 of the locations didn’t have coordinates, some are scarcely more than rocks, and this is only according to the the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, but this is the most complete map of islands in the state of Rhode Island that I could produce. Additionally, here is an article about some sailors who sought to explore every island of the Narragansett Bay.
See on www.arcgis.com
With five satellites scanning the globe, DigitalGlobe has collected impressive imagery of planet Earth this year. Check out their top 20 images here.
See on news.discovery.com
This paper-puppet animation celebrates the life of Alfred Russel Wallace, who is co-credited with Charles Darwin for the theory of natural selection. Read the story here: http://nyti.ms/1fhBbGw
Some of the greatest discoveries in biology began as spatial discoveries. Alfred Russel Wallace made some amazing advances in biogeography and discovered appropriately named Wallace Line.
Tags: biogeography, environment, ecology, historical.
See on www.youtube.com
I had the shapefiles with the various neighborhoods of Providence and the good folks at “Click that ‘Hood” were gracious enough to upload it and make a local quiz based on the the 25 neighborhoods of Providence (as defined by the city government officials). In addition to city neighborhood quizzes, they also have quizzes for regions such as Africa, South America and Europe. This is a crowd-sourced database, so if you have the right data, you can help them to create more online quizzes.
See on click-that-hood.com
“Muslims call it the Noble Sanctuary. Jews and Christians call it the Temple Mount.”
What happens when various religious groups claim the same territory as their own?
See on apps.washingtonpost.com
A computer game wants you to map the world’s cropland so farmers can get more out of each harvest.
NPR has recently highlighted Crop Capture; Crop Capture is a game that uses Google Earth imagery to crowd-source agricultural data. From a pedagogical standpoint, this is a great way to visually introduce students the variety of agricultural landscapes that can be found around the world. This is an example of what many refer to as citizen science games which provides an alternative rationale for playing the game.
Tags: agriculture, food production, mapping, geospatial, edtech.
See on www.npr.org
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 