by Action Advisor on February 27, 2012
Throughout the month of April 2012 and on Earth Day (April 22), Earth Day Network and along with millions of supporters around the world will be reinvesting in our planet on a global scale. But, to truly conceive of the value these small or supreme ‘green gestures’ will have to your neck-of-the-woods, it’s worth checking out the Global Carbon Footprint Infograph designed by Stanford Kay for Miller McCune and featured on Visual.ly – the world’s largest community for sharing infographics and data visualizations.
The final version of this infograph can be viewed here!
As the saying goes, “a picture can paint a thousands words” and infographs do this beautifully. Helping communicate complex ideas in a clear, compact and eye-catching ways – infographs take deep data and present it in visual shorthand.
The site offers a wide range of visuals covering all manner of topics that can be used as reference in support of open-access education and collaboration. With an impressive list of contributory partners including National Geographic, Mashable and the Wall Street Journal, there is an abundance of resources to choose from.
With the ability to explore, share and create your own data visualizations Visual.ly is the ideal way to communicate vital messages and network ideas.
It is free to join and uses a simple ‘plug and play’ interface that applies the stylistic expertise of the world’s top information designers to your designs. So, you don’t need to be a graphic genius to create an interactive visual that tells a compelling story.
Note: The application for creating infographs is not available just yet, but in the meantime users can create a Twitter Visualizer and signup to be notified when the design features go live.
by Action Advisor on February 26, 2012
The Journey to Churchill exhibit at Assiniboine Park Zoo will feature polar bears — as well as other species – in three distinctive zones along a fascinating 10-acre route. In each zone, visitors will experience a variety of landscapes and animal viewing areas. It will be a three-dimensional, four-season, five-sense educational exhibit like none other, inviting exploration, challenging thinking and promoting personal action.
Journey to Churchill is scheduled to open late 2013 and will be the flagship component of the redeveloped Assiniboine Park Zoo, a component of the new exhibit being their International Polar Bear Conservation Centre which opened in January last year, has helped set a new international standard for polar bear exhibits world-wide.
by Action Advisor on February 23, 2012
Gaze upon ‘art of nature’, as artist Sonja Hinrichsen draws circles in the snow using the impression left behind from her snowshoes. This short film captures the creative talents of an eco-artist in the slopes of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Stunning panoramic visuals project in grand scale, an overview of the icy canvas filmed by aerial photographer and filmmaker Cedar Beauregard of Steamboat Aerials.
by Action Advisor on February 22, 2012
The world’s largest pink diamond a 12.76 carat gem to be known as the Argyle Pink Jubilee was found at Rio Tinto’s Argyle mine in the remote east Kimberley region of Western Australia. (1)
The pink diamond is the world’s most rare and valuable diamond. The Argyle mine is the world’s foremost source of unrivalled intense pink diamonds, producing 95% of the world’s supply. However, an extremely small proportion of Argyle Diamonds production is Pink colour, in fact less than one tenth of 1% is classified Pink. (2)
The legend of Argyle pink diamond has grown over the past ten years. At the 1989 Christie’s auction in New York a 3.14 carat Argyle pink sold for $1,510,000. Privately, Argyle has sold pink diamonds for up to $1 million a carat. (2)
Cleaning is expected to take up-to ten days, thereafter the diamond will be shown at international exhibitions around the world before being sold. Pink diamonds attract, on average, twenty times the price of an equivalent white diamond – the Argyle if sold for as much as one million dollars per carat will fetch close to 13 million dollars.
Argyle Pink Diamonds manager Josephine Johnson said a diamond of its calibre was unprecedented.
“It has taken 26 years of Argyle production to unearth this stone and we may never see one like this again,” Ms Johnson said.
Science Insight – How Diamonds Form in Nature
References: (1) AAP News ‘Rio’s Biggest Pink Diamond Gets the Cut’. (2) Costello’s ‘Types of Diamonds’.
by Action Advisor on February 21, 2012
Global warming has forced alpine chipmunks in Yosemite to higher ground, prompting a startling decline in the species’ genetic diversity, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
The study, appeared Sunday, Feb. 19, in the advance online publication of the journal Nature Climate Change, is one of the first to show a hit to the genetic diversity of a species because of a recent climate-induced change in the animals’ geographic range. What’s more, the genetic erosion occurred in the relatively short span of 90 years, highlighting the rapid threat changing climate can pose to a species.
With low genetic diversity a species can be more vulnerable to the effects of inbreeding, disease and other problems that threaten species survival, the researchers said.
“Climate change is implicated as the cause of geographic shifts observed among birds, small mammals and plants, but this new work shows that, particularly for mountain species like the alpine chipmunk, such shifts can result in increasingly fragmented and genetically impoverished populations,” said study lead author Emily Rubidge, who conducted the research while a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. “Under continued warming, the alpine chipmunk could be on the trajectory towards becoming threatened or even extinct.”
Read the Full Report by Sarah Yang, Media Relations for Berkeley News Center.
