UnDisciplined
Thursdays at 10:30 a.m.
Each week, UnDisciplined takes a fun, fascinating and accessible dive into the lives of researchers and explorers working across a wide variety of scientific fields.
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For years, many people have assumed that climate change will send massive waves of “climate refugees” across borders around the world. But Jan Freihardt, a political scientist at ETH Zurich, says the reality is far more complicated. Studying communities along the Jamuna River in Bangladesh—where floods and erosion regularly destroy homes and farmland—Freihardt has followed families trying to decide whether to stay, move a little, or start over somewhere else. Distant migration is the option of last resort — and often not an option at all.
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In 2011, an EF-5 tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri, claiming 161 lives. Almost immediately researchers like Marc Levitan, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, began working to understand why it was so devastating. The results of that investigation are now being implemented into building codes around the world. And the result is that we’re more ready for the next huge twister.
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Historically, an “everyone is a VIP” philosophy made good business sense for Disney amusement parks. But now Disney is embracing tiered services. Daniel Currell explains why and what’s to come.
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Again and again, similar patterns show up in nature in different creatures at different times in their evolutionary histories—even when those life forms have evolved on much different paths for hundreds of millions of years. And when they show up, as it turns out, we often perceive them as beautiful. So, the question is: Why?
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Again and again, similar patterns show up in nature in different creatures at different times in their evolutionary histories. And when they show up, we often perceive them as beautiful. Why?
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Deep in the ocean, jellyfish, shrimp, fireworms and other creatures use multi–colored lights for defense, luring food, attracting mates, and communication. In their new book, Steven Haddock and Sönke Johnsen explore the nature of underwater light—investigating the varieties of transparency, pigmentation, iridescence, bioluminescence, and fluorescence found in the watery beyond.
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The Trump administration is seeking an across-the-board 20% cut to NASA's total funding, and nearly all of that reduction is concentrated in science mission directorate.
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Emerging research suggests that human attention spans are getting shorter. That’s a problem for people who want to make change in a world in which the issues we’re facing are growing ever more complicated. So now, perhaps more than ever, it’s important to understand the art and science of giving a good speech — and few people in Canada do that better than David Shepherd. But Shepherd says none of this came naturally to him.
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Dan McClellan loves the Bible. He doesn’t always love what it says. But he works hard not to try to mold it into something that he wants it to be — to meet it, he says, on its own terms.
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Just about 60% of Americans say they identify as Christian. And just about 20% of Americans say they have read the entire Bible.