Rockefeller University

Program for the Human Environment

News

“Peak Human?” booklet by Ausubel-Curry posted

Based on Jesse’s Nierenberg Prize lecture, Jesse and Alan Curry, who led research on human performance enhancement for the Program for the Human Environment for several years, have created a compact version with about half the visual exhibits in the lecture. We retain the title “Peak Human? Thoughts on the Evolution of the Enhancement of Human Performance.” Thanks to Dale Langford for editorial assistance and the beautiful layout.

News from the Quiet Ocean Experiment

Terry Collins artfully summarizes the progress in this news release about the International Quiet Ocean Experiment.  The news was picked up by

Agencia EFE: Artificial intelligence listens to the habits of marine life (in Spanish)

Independent (London):  Scientists eavesdrop on underwater creatures to gain insights on ocean life

Earth.Com: Monitoring ocean life through underwater soundscapes

Portal R7 (Brazil) Biólogos marinhos captam zumbido não identificado que pode ser uma nova espécie de peixe Marine biologists capture unidentified tinnitus that can be a new species of fish

Vice / Motherboard (USA) Scientists Recording Ocean Sounds Picked Up a Mysterious ‘Buzz’ They Can’t Identify

ORF Online (Austria) Unterwassermikrofone belauschen Fische Underwater microphones eavesdrop on fish

Scientias, Netherlands Moet je horen! Vissen maken fascinerende balts- en eetgeluiden, vooral bij volle maan You have to hear! Fish make fascinating balts and eating noises, especially at full moon

Another prize for eDNA work for high school star Samara Davis

A high school student Mark Stoeckle has mentored, Samara Davis (Ossining High School, Westchester), earned one of the very top prizes in the national Junior Science and Humanities Symposium sponsored by top levels of the Department of Defense.  Samara’s project used eDNA to learn about the presence of animals (rare salamanders in particular) from vernal pools (temporary pools of water).  Very neat DNA forensics!  Congratulations to Mark and to Samara, who will start Yale College in September.

Here’s the tweet from the competition: They will post the winners on this website later.  Here is Samara enjoying the moment:

Passing of Cesare Marchetti

Cesare Marchetti passed away this morning in Tuscany just short of his 96th birthday.  After meeting Cesare in 1978, Jesse Ausubel became fascinated with Cesare’s ideas about the importance and ubiquity of processes of growth and diffusion captured often in simple form by Lotka-Volterra equations and subsequently coded in our Loglet Lab software.  In the early 1980s Jesse began assisting Cesare on some projects and subsequently worked together on subjects ranging from electricity to travel to human populations and empires (see below).  And of course Leonardo Da Vinci.

Cesare is best known for Marchetti’s Constant that posits that the human time budget for travel is a little above one hour per day, since ever and everywhere, because anthropologically rooted in the dangers homo sapiens faces when outside a protected environment.

Cesare was one of the inventors of geoengineering. His most cited paper is On geoengineering and the CO2 problem (1977).

Around 1970 he was also one of the inventors of the hydrogen economy as described in this 1973 paper: Hydrogen and energy.

A bibliography with links to many of Cesare’s papers from 1952 to 2007 is here.  A second list of publications is here.

Cesare’s explorations of Leonardo are here.

Our group at The Rockefeller University always greatly enjoyed hosting Cesare in New York City, and he reciprocated with marvelous hospitality in Monteloro.

Our joint efforts included:

C Marchetti, JH Ausubel. Quantitative Dynamics of Human Empires [Color Booklet Version, 52 pages].  Adapted from Marchetti and Ausubel, International Journal of Anthropology 27(1-2):1-62, 2012. 2013

JH Ausubel, C Marchetti. Science, Conquering Child of the Church . 2003 Draft prepared for Next 1000 Years meeting, 9-10 October 2003

C Marchetti, JH Ausubel. The Next 1000 Years. 2003 Discussion paper for April 2003 Rockefeller U workshop

JH Ausubel, C Marchetti. The Evolution of Transport. The Industrial Physicist 7 (2): 20–24, 2001

JH Ausubel, C Marchetti, PS Meyer. Toward Green Mobility: The Evolution of Transport European Review 6 (2): 143–162, 1998

JH Ausubel, C Marchetti. Elektron: Electrical Systems in Retrospect and Prospect Pp. 110–134 in Technological Trajectories and the Human Environment, J.H. Ausubel and H.D. Langford, (eds.). Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1997 Also appeared in Daedalus 125(3):139-169, Summer 1996.

C Marchetti, PS Meyer, JH Ausubel. Human Population Dynamics Revisited with the Logistic Model: How Much Can Be Modeled and Predicted? Pp. 1–30 in Technological Forecasting and Social Change vol. 53, 1996.

Requiescat in pace.

Mark & Jesse present NOAA ‘Omics seminar on eDNA abundance

Mark Stoeckle and Jesse Ausubel presented in the  NOAA ‘Omics Seminar Series on Marine fish eDNA Metabarcoding: Promising Developments and Early Applications.  The outline:

–eDNA abundance matters (relevant to detection, quantification, field design, laboratory protocols)

–Adding internal standard to metabarcoding PCRs quantifies eDNA (converts relative sequence reads to absolute eDNA copies)

–Current marine fish metabarcoding protocols ready for wider use (reasonably accurate index of fish abundance, especially for more abundant species)

–eDNA metabarcoding can overcome information hurdles for ecosystem-based management

A  recording is here , 40-minute presentation and 20-minute Q&A. Thanks to NOAA’s Katharine Egan and Nicole Miller.