I attended the launch of the ShorePower Project at the Tidewater Inn in Easton, Maryland on 17 Jan 2014. It was a nice event on the topic of green energy for the Delmarva peninsula. The project is funded by the Town Creek Foundation, based in Easton, Maryland. Four municipal governments - Cambridge, Easton, Salisbury, and Snow Hill - are receiving funding to help them transition to green energy sources.

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'Scientists Who Made a Difference' series … This blog accompanying the biographical sketch of Nicholas Copernicus looks at a selection of his writing as poetry and a selection of his scientific sketches as art. The 'Poetry' uses Copernicus' exact words (translated into English) in prose form, using the title 'The Earth Moves' to focus on the cadence and word choice.

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'Scientists Who Made a Difference' series … Nicholas Copernicus was an interesting renaissance man who overcame the existing paradigm placing earth in the center of the solar system to the new paradigm of a heliocentric view that earth and the planets revolved around the sun. This perspective led to the Copernican revolution which occurred after Copernicus died in 1543 and published his book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres).

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'Environmental Literacy' series … The seven environmental literacy points for Moreton Bay (Australia) are the following:

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Scientists whose work has affected society are noteworthy for their abilities to a) produce good scientific results, b) effectively communicate these results to broad audiences and c) affect decisions and perspectives of society. These noteworthy scientists will be celebrated in this blog series on 'Scientists who made a difference'. Of the four pillars of scholarship defined by Boyer in 1990 (Scholarship Reconsidered:

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Environmental literacy refers to the most basic information necessary for the broadest understanding of a topic that non-experts need to possess to be conversant about the topic. Just as literacy or numeracy refers to the basic ability necessary to read or perform mathematical tasks, environmental literacy provides the basic ability to make informed environmental decisions.

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Science communication using visual elements can convey unambiguous information that words cannot. Words are often used by lawyers and journalists to argue cases or make points - science is an attempt to base arguments on all the facts available, not just the 'convenient' facts used to support an argument. Words can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but data is less ambiguous.

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A well conceived and creatively constructed map can elucidate scientific concepts and effectively communicate important concepts. There are many examples of beautiful maps focusing on various geographic features, but this collection of classic scientific maps is notable for the scientific meaning that they convey. They are presented in chronological order. 1) Gulf Stream:

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We had beautiful views of the Roebling Bridge from our workshop developing a Mississippi River report card in Covington, Kentucky. After the workshop was over, Bill Nuttle and I walked across the Roebling Bridge from Kentucky to Ohio. The Roebling bridge was built during the Civil War and completed in 1866. At this time, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, although now there are 121 longer suspension bridges in the world.

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A large IAN contingent gathered along the banks of the Ohio River for the second in a series of workshops designed to develop a report card for the Mississippi River. Heath Kelsey, Bill Nuttle, Caroline Wicks, Brianne Walsh and I collaborated with our colleagues at America's Watershed Initiative to run a workshop in a Covington, Kentucky hotel with fantastic views of the Ohio River, with the Cincinnati skyline as a backdrop.

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