Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University

10/22/2019

Nature has assembled a collection of papers originating under the auspices of the just-concluded ten-year Deep Carbon Observatory project, sponsored by the Sloan Foundation. An interview with two of its leaders is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12747-9

07/15/2019

Our partners at Monmouth University highlight their eDNA work in this article from their campus magazine:

Monmouth University researchers are helping to pioneer a marine life detection technique that holds the promise of being less expensive, more humane, and more revealing than other longstanding scientific methods.

12/03/2018

An article by Steve Leahy for National Geographic about our National Conference on Marine Environmental DNA: New DNA tool ‘changes everything in marine science’

Thanks to every one of the 100 participants. It was thrilling for all!

With eDNA, or environmental DNA, scientists can count fish and other animals just by collecting a small sample of water.

11/26/2018

“Leonardo da Vinci: the faces of the genius,” an exhibition curated by our esteemed colleague in the Leonardo DNA Project, Christian Galvez, opens in Madrid on 30 November. Team members Jose Lorente and Karina Aberg will participate. The exhibition includes a section about our search for his DNA.

Los rostros del genio es una exposición sobre Leonardo da Vinci en Madrid, en la Biblioteca Nacional y el Palacio de las Alhajas, del 29 noviembre al 19 mayo 2019

10/08/2018

William Nordhaus today earned the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his pioneering work on climate change. Hooray for Bill!

Jesse first encountered Bill’s work in the late 1970s, started a magazine file of it, and retains to this day first editions of the classic inventive papers from 1975, Can We Control Carbon Dioxide?, and 1977, Strategies for the Control of Carbon Dioxide, and others that followed (see photo below).

Jesse served as a research assistant to Bill during the 1981-1983 Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee of the National Academy of Sciences and co-authored with him the 1983 paper, JH Ausubel, WD Nordhaus. A review of estimates of future carbon dioxide emissions in Changing climate: Report of the carbon dioxide assessment committee, pp. 153-185, National Academy Press, Washington DC 1983: https://books.google.com/books?id=TkErAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=A+review+of+estimates+of+future+carbon+dioxide+emissions+ausubel+nordhaus

05/21/2018

Mark Stoeckle and David Thaler publish “Why should mitochondria define species?” open-access (DOI: 10.14673/HE2018121037) in the journal Human Evolution following a study of mitochondrial DNA from about 5 million specimens covering about 100,000 animal species. The paper argues that humans are far from special: humanity’s tiny mt DNA differences are “average” in the animal kingdom. Moreover, as with humans, over 90% of animal species today likely originated 100,000–200,000 years ago:
https://phe.rockefeller.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Stoeckle-Thaler-Final-reduced.pdf

RealClearScience runs a good article about Stoeckle-Thaler, “What Can ‘DNA Barcodes’ Tell Us About Evolution and Ourselves?”

Sorting and defining species is a messy process. Dozens of methods exist and all have their benefits and drawbacks. Surely, taxonomy – the science of classifying organisms – would be so much...

10/17/2017

Alan visited the second annual New Harvest conference on cellular agriculture in Red Hook, Brooklyn (http://www.new-harvest.org/nh2017), which included a variety of talks and exhibits on the science and broader implications of manufacturing food in vitro (from cell culture), as opposed to in vivo (from plants and animals). Technological advances have been achieved in growth media, more “lifelike” tissue engineering, and novel bioreactors designed to “brew” meat. Remaining challenges include the ability to successfully match the taste, texture, and cost of conventionally-sourced meat- and plant-based foods, as well as successfully scaling-up production processes. R&D is spread among a variety of corporate startups (e.g., Memphis Meats, Finless Foods), traditional academic labs (e.g., Tufts, NC State), and citizen science efforts (Shojinmeat Project).

04/03/2017

Jesse Ausubel speaks at the U. of Miami on 6 April 2017 about naked DNA in seawater, the subject of a forthcoming paper by PHE’s Mark Stoeckle et al.

04/03/2017

Jesse Ausubel speaks in Houston at the 4 April 2017 session of the centennial meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists on the next 100 years of energy use.

03/23/2017

Version 4 of our LogletLab software has been released and can be accessed at www.logletlab.com. LogletLab software is designed to help users analyze and decompose socio-technical growth processes using a range of sigmoidal functions, S-curves. This decomposition is roughly analogous to wavelet analysis, popular for signal processing and compression.

This latest version of our software offers users numerous new features including an extended selection of sigmoidal fitting functions and advanced statistical analyses. Background information can be found here: https://phe.rockefeller.edu/LogletLab/docs.html

Many thanks to Eyal Schachter and David Burg of the University of Haifa for its development.

05/06/2016

Team members of the project “Using New Anthropological and Biological Tools to Learn about Leonardo da Vinci” with seed money from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation met 2-3 May in Florence, Italy, and have issued a press release about the publication of a set of papers from the project in Human Evolution. Jesse Ausubel mediated the opening seminar on 2 May sponsored by Eugenio Giani, President of the Regional Council of Tuscany. Jesse’s introductory essay is here. The press release earned wide attention, for example,

Gizmodo, USA

The Brilliantly Insane Plan to Reconstruct Leonardo da Vinci’s Genome

http://gizmodo.com/the-brilliantly-insane-plan-to-reconstruct-leonardo-da-1774873148

Daily Telegraph, UK

Leonardo da Vinci paintings analysed for DNA to solve grave mystery

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/05/05/leonardo-da-vinci-paintings-analysed-for-dna-to-solve-grave-myst/

La Repubblica –

Leonardo, alla ricerca del Dna per ricostruire il profilo genetico: prelievi su tombe e dipinti
Jesse Ausubel, vice presidente della Fondazione Richard Lounsbery, che sta finanziando parte del progetto, spiega che dopo aver ricostruito la sequenza del Dna si proverà a ottenere “tracce biologiche che potrebbero essere rimaste nelle pitture o nelle …
Agencia EFE, Spain (Spanish)

INVESTIGADORES QUIEREN EL ADN DE LEONARDO DA VINCI PARA RECONSTRUIR AL GENIO (RESEARCHERS WANT THE DNA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI TO REBUILD THE GENIUS)

http://www.radiointereconomia.com/2016/05/05/investigadores-quieren-el-adn-de-leonardo-da-vinci-para-reconstruir-al-genio/

An international team of scholars has just unveiled plans to science the s**t out of Leonardo da Vinci, the man who gave us the Mona Lisa and envisioned futuristic technologies like helicopters and tanks 500 years ago. Goals of the fledgling “Leonardo Project” include recovering the famous Renaissan...