Thursday, January 25, 2018

Candy-covered Science

Posted by Richard B. Primack

“There are innumerable avenues to a perception of the truth.”
-Thoreau in his Journal, 1851

The Biogeoscience program, which brings together researchers from BU's Biology and Earth & Environment Departments, recently held its Annual Symposium and Winterfest. The event featured short research talks, mostly by grad students, and afterwards grad students enjoyed designing replicas of their research projects using gingerbread, candy, frosting and sprinkles.

Sarabeth Buckley (Earth and Environment) describes her project on the ecosystem ecology of rooftop gardens. 

Mustafa Saifuddin (Biology) uses gingerbread to model fungi and root dynamics in forest soils.

I-Fang Hsieh (Biology) investigates how soil warming (black cable) and the elevation of CO2 levels (from yellow towers) will impact ecosystem processes in Minnesota peatlands. 

Here is a close-up of I-Fang’s project.

Our own Lucy Zipf (Biology) is developing citizen science methods to investigate how noise pollution impacts parks and cities, as shown by this candy-filled model of an iPhone app.

No comments:

Post a Comment