Three weeks into my trip to Rwanda this summer, I checked in to my last Airbnb. It was a lovely home in Kimihurura, a popular neighborhood for expats in the capital city, Kigali. My host greeted me and invited me to sit out on the back porch of the home as the late afternoon sun streamed through the trees surrounding us. He was a middle-aged French Canadian who worked in…
Conversations about the weather fill the small, cozy room in Pingo Bakery and Seafood café. The weather is never far from an Alaskan’s mind. Here in Nome, an outpost of the Seward Peninsula on the Bering Sea, everyone has noticed the striking pace of the weather’s change over the years, from later snows to earlier thaws to more dramatic rains.
金盆村 (Jinpen village) is a spectacularly beautiful place in the lush forested hills of Western China, with freshly paved mountain roads winding through steep terraced fields. The fields are filled with all types of crops – ranging from rice and corn, to radishes, greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, sunflowers, lotus, and even crayfish.
The northern lights outside Barrow. Photo credit: Ori Chafe. A few weeks ago, ERG Professor Margaret Torn sent a cryptic department-wide email inquiring if anyone would like to assist in ecological research in northern Alaska as part of the Next Generation Emerging Ecosystems – Arctic project. I thought for a few moments about how disruptive and inconvenient this would be: two days lost in transit, foregone work time with deadlines…
A quick summary of my recent trip to the Galapagos could read like a line from Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction.”
“We need to jibe now!” I yell as an animal the size of our 39-foot sailboat crashes into the water a few feet off our starboard beam.
hese people I’ve been surrounded by this past summer have taught me to believe in my goals for the future. “How’re you gonna have a dream come true if you don’t have a dream?” my farmer Doug likes to say.
You’ll soon find out that your Berkeley education and prior experiences mean very little once your project “breaks ground”
As Ian tiptoes his way in ski boots up the granite crack above the ledge I’m standing on, cascades of snow rumble down the couloir* 50 feet to our right. The fog amplifies the sound so it sounds more like a big wave crashing than snow sliding. Shrouding our views, the fog also creates spatial ambiguity. Where exactly are these slides being released from and where are they going? Are we in the slide path? As if mocking us, another deep rumble of snow starts cascading over the granite wall a few hundred feet to our left.
Can an innovation in charging vehicles turn into the vehicle for more innovation?