Living Lab

Falmouth voters went to the polls in force yesterday, and delivered a mandate: do NOT take down the wind turbines.

A whopping 41% of registered voters turned out for town elections. And the vast majority voted not to appropriate funds for the removal of Wind-1 and Wind-2, the two town-owned wind turbines at the center of a controversy that pits clean energy advocates against neighbors who say their health is impacted by the turbines. The margin on Question 2 was 2:1, with 6,001 votes against the measure and 2,940 voting for it.

"Green" has become synonymous with "good" in many circles. Not inside the Arctic circle.

Two recent studies - one projecting into the future, and one reconstructing the ancient past - both lead to the same conclusion: The Arctic of the near future will be warmer, wetter, and dramatically greener, with more trees and less snow and ice.

In another sign of the season, the right whales have come and gone. At the height of things, about ten days ago, 113 North Atlantic right whales - fully a quarter of the estimated 470 existing individuals - were sighted in Cape Cod Bay. A week later, Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies posted on Facebook:

Not a single right whale spotted in Cape Cod Bay...

Welcome to the first of what we hope will become a regular feature here on Living Lab. We’re calling it From the Director’s Chair, and it’s a chance to check in with the heads of local research institutions about the news and issues that are on their minds.

On the docket this time:

Later this month on Living Lab, we’ll be talking about Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory. Do you have a story to share?

Usually, there's an audio player at the top of these posts. This one is different. That's a recorder up there. Here's why (and what you should do with it).

Female scientists are a species subject to serious attrition. Women make up more than half of all undergraduate science majors. Approximately 40% of doctoral degree recipients in science and engineering fields are women. At each successive career benchmark, the proportion of women drops. Less than 30% of full-time, tenured or tenure-track scientists are female.

Why? One major factor is motherhood.

Today marks the opening of the 2013 groundfish season. It's a year that could go down in history as the end of New England's oldest fishery - cod.

The groundfish industry is no stranger to cutbacks and hard times. The fleet has been shrinking for over a decade. But cod fishermen are facing drastic reductions in catch limits this season - a 77% reduction in Gulf of Maine quotas, and greater than 50% reduction in Georges Bank allotments. And since cod is usually caught in conjunction with other groundfish, such as haddock or pollock, the restrictions on cod catches could curtail the entire groundfish season.

The Gulf oil spill and Fukushima nuclear crisis have faded from the headlines, but research into the environmental impacts of these disasters is still in its early stages and could continue for decades.

In the past three years we’ve seen two of the worst environmental disasters in history.

As long as there have been fishermen, there has been overfishing. Breaking that cycle is the central challenge facing fishermen, fishery scientists and regulators, and anyone who likes to eat fish or have fishermen as neighbors.

Coastal counties in the United States are home to nearly half the nation's total population, and contributed more than 8 trillion dollars to the nation's economy in 2010. As the weather events of the past six months have made evident, coastal communities are increasingly vulnerable to the forces of nature.