We are FINALLY turning the corner to Spring!

I don't know about you, but this winter has felt like it's gone on forever!  Where I live in SE Idaho, it's been dark, gray and COLD!  In fact, it's been so cold that the average high temperature in my town was 5o below normal, and the average low temperatures were even lower than that.  And we've had snow, snow, SNOW!  The snow at the top of my driveway (where snow gets tossed from the driveway and sidewalk) is nearly 6-feet tall!  So, whenever there is a sign of Spring, or at least Spring to come, it's cause to celebrate!  And that news came today from the far north...the Arctic Ocean.  

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, it looks like we have finally turned the corner from this year's maximum sea ice extent, and we may be headed back toward summer.

On top of that, I'm currently visiting family in Montana, and the melt here appears to be on!  This doesn't mean that it won't snow again...it probably will...but it does my heart so much good to see temperatures above freezing, melt water dripping down icicles, and puddles of water here and there during midday.  Plus, I've started hearing black-capped chickadees calling.  These are non-migratory birds, but they don't start calling until they are ready to start seeking out mates...and this means Springtime!

I say bring it on!  We have had snow on the ground constantly since before Thanksgiving where I live, and I'll be happy to see grass (albeit brown) again!     

NSIDC Reports The Smallest Maximum Arctic Sea Ice Extent

The National Snow and Ice Data Center just announced a news release, that the winter of 2014-15 had the lowest maximum sea ice extent since satellite records were started in 1979.

So what? This is yet another indicator of the effects of ongoing warming of the planet as part of the current trend in global climate change.  If you look at the map above you may not think that the difference between the 1981-2010 average is that compelling, but the bottom line is that the winter maximum sea ice extents and the summer minimum sea ice extents in the Arctic continue to drop as the years go on.  

This means that we continue to slide farther and farther down the climate change chute - impacts have always been predicted to be most extreme and obvious in the Arctic than anywhere else on the planet.  But if this is happening in the Arctic we should not be surprised to see other effects elsewhere...increasing temperatures, increasing intensities of storms, shifting weather and precipitation patterns, sea level rise, etc.

Oh, and a few more tidbits of information...the first time the Arctic maximum winter sea ice extent dropped below the 1981-2010 average was in 1995, and the last year the Arctic maximum sea ice extent matched or exceeded the 1981-2010 average was in 2003.  Every year since 2004 has had Arctic maximum winter sea ice extents below the long-term average...that's 11 years running! 

Click on the link below for more detailed information from the NSIDC:

Lowest Maximum Arctic Sea Ice Extent in Recorded History

One of the coolest things I've seen in a long time - animation of the break up of Pangea

Tectonic forces (plate tectonics) move plates of Earth's crust around slowly but constantly.  Occasionally all of the continents are shoved together forming a supercontinent.  Earth scientists conclude that this has happened a handful of times throughout history, and the most recent supercontinent was called Pangea.  It formed around 300 million years ago which geologically speaking was only just before the appearance of dinosaurs.  The map below shows the relative positions of the modern continents within Pangea.

("Pangaea continents" image courtesy of Kieff - File:Pangaea continents.png. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pangaea_continents.svg#/media/File:Pangaea_continents.svg)

Pangea persisted as a supercontinent until about 200 million years ago when tectonic forces caused the continental plates to be shoved around and apart and moved them to their current locations.

There are many maps available that show where the different continents were at different times before, during, and after Pangea, but geoscientists recently released an extremely cool computer animation that shows the break-up of Pangea in one million year time increments.  You can run this animation by clicking the link below which will take you to the AAAS Science web site where there is also a short, readable article that explains what the animation shows.

Animation of the break-up of Pangea

Short readable article about the animation and the break-up of Pangea

My personal favorite part of the animation is at the very end where the Indian sub-continent collides with southern Asia - this is what formed the Himalayas...a mountain range that is still building.

Science rocks!

Moisture and motorcycles - a new reality

It's late January in eastern Idaho - the heart of winter.  Historically this meant snow, ice, and COLD.  My first experience with Idaho winters was in January 1977 when I rolled into Rexburg Idaho to attend Ricks College (since renamed BYU-Idaho).  I got off the bus and started the 6-block hike up the hill to campus.  The roads were literally sheet ice.  I remember this because when my suitcases got too heavy to carry I just leaned down and slid them along the ice all the way to campus (this was in the days before suitcases with wheels - what a great invention!).  Roads and sidewalks around here were usually snow/ice covered from after Thanksgiving through March.  There was so much snow in fact that some of the more adventurous (i.e., crazy/stupid) guys in the dorm would jump from the second floor landing into the deep snow below.  My roommates and I also used to get together at the end of the day and share the ice-related wipe-outs we saw during the day, and they happened every day on campus.

There is, however, a new climate reality.

There are of course still times when streets and sidewalks are snow/ice covered, but for the most part the streets and sidewalks are now mainly dry and bare for most of the winter.  This is even in a year where we are currently over 130% of our annual precipitation to date.  So, if the climate was as cold as it used to be we should have mountains of snow, but we don't.  Sure you can see snow around, but it's nothing extreme at all.  The reason we don't have much on the ground is that it keeps melting off.

I was surprised yesterday afternoon (1/26/2015) when I noticed someone zip by on a motorcycle.  I saw another person on a motorcycle this morning.  Motorcycles in January in Rexburg, Idaho!?  In days past you'd take a motorcycle out in January only if you had some kind of death wish.  Now, however, the roads are bare so if you bundle up it's completely doable.  I was doubly surprised yesterday when I saw that the weather forecast for today is RAIN (!!!???).  We are slated to reach temps in the low 40sF today and it may not even reach freezing overnight.  Now THAT'S CRAZY!

Welcome to the new reality.

Students and professors, how to use Ratemyprofessors.com

Ratemyprofessors.com?  

According to Wikipedia.com...

"RateMyProfessors.com (RMP) is a review site, founded in May 1999 by John Swapceinski, a software engineer from Menlo Park, California, which allows college and university students to assign ratings to professors and campuses of American, Canadian, and United Kingdom institutions. The site was originally launched as TeacherRatings.com and converted to RateMyProfessors in 2001. RateMyProfessors.com was acquired in 2005 by Patrick Nagle and William DeSantis.^[1] Nagle and DeSantis later resold RateMyProfessors.com in 2007 to Viacom's mtvU, MTV’s College channel.^[2]

RateMyProfessors.com is the largest online destination for professor ratings. The site has 8,000+ schools and over 1,000,000 ratings^[3]".

If you are a student:

RMP is a great source of information about schools and professors.  The postings you will find there are from other students who have attended these schools or had these professors, and their experiences can help you decide which school to attend or which professor to take classes from.

When you select a professor you will see a page that includes this information at the top (this is my page):

Each page shows a professor's name and institution.  It also gives an overall summary of students' perception of their quality as a teacher in three areas: 1) helpfulness, 2) clarity, and 3) easiness.  These scores are on a scale of 0-5 (5 being best).  There is also a Hotness rating which is, well, how hot students think a professor is.  I am obviously not hot...ha!  Oh well, luckily my life doesn't center on how hot my students think I am.

Below this summary is a listing of all the summaries posted to date for the professor.  These reviews look like this (this happens to be the review at the top of the list as of this writing):

Each review indicates the class they took, how they thought the professor did in each of the three main areas listed above, as well as some additional comments if entered.

A word of warning:  

If you are a student you should always check to see many reviews the professor has.  If there are fewer than about 50 reviews I'd be wary of the summary data.  Even 50 postings may be too small a sample to get a statistically meaningful idea of a professor's quality.  Why do I say this?  In my experience there are primarily two groups of students who post to RMP on their own: Group 1 absolutely loves the professor, and Group 2 are students who hate the professor's guts.  For this reason small numbers of reviews for a professor can be heavily influenced by only a few very high or a few very low reviews...so be careful.

A second word of warning:

The other thing to be aware of when you check out a professor is that RMP is an unmoderated site.  That is, there is no process that verifies that someone who has posted actually had that professor, that class, or even attends that school.  There are, believe it or not, web trolls who spend their time visiting sites like this and posting fraudulent reviews.  So again, even though summary data look convincing, take all information at unmoderated sites like this with a grain of salt.

If you are a professor:

Too many professors look at RMP as the enemy because without additional incentives only students who love them and especially those who hate them tend to post to RMP.

If you are a professor (as I am) there is a way to help students (and yourself) gain meaningful and reliable feedback via RMP.  The only way to do this is to boost the number of reviews you have, and to get them from as many students as possible.  Here's what I do:

I offer students a small amount extra credit to go to RMP at the end of the semester and post a review for me.  I tell them that I don't care what they put in their reviews (they are anonymous anyway) as long as they are honest and their review indicates their experience they had in my class and with me as a professor.  It's amazing what 5 points of extra credit can do.

If you do this you do this you can rapidly increase the number of reviews at your site.  Statistically, the more reviews you have from the entire cross-section of students in your classes, the closer the average scores for each category will reflect reality.  Also, larger numbers of reviews will damp out the effects of students who enter unusually high or unusually low scores.  There will of course still be students who love and hate us, but those extreme students will no longer be able to hold our RMP scores hostage.

At last count I had over 1100 reviews.  Once you reach this level one high or one low score will have no measurable effect on overall averages.  And this can all be yours for 5 points of extra credit!

10 for 10 - Arctic Sea Ice Melt Trend Continues

Every year in October the National Snow and Ice Data Center (www.nsidc.org) releases a report on the minimum sea ice extent for the current year.  This year the NSIDC announced that the minimum summer sea ice extent for 2014 was 5.02 million square kilometers.  OK, so what?

NASA satellites started monitoring sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean back in 1979.  Satellite data are downloaded each day and sent sent to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, for analysis.  Thirty-five years of these data are now painting a sobering picture.  Though there is a significant amount of year-to-year variability among the data, a strong trend is emerging.

Average Monthly Sea Ice Extent September 1979-2014.  

Data courtesy of NSIDC.org

The data show that there is significantly less sea ice in the Arctic now than there was only a few decades ago.  The upper end of the trend line tops out around 7.9 million square kilometers of sea ice, and the bottom end of the line reached about 4.9 million square kilometers of sea ice.  The difference?  About 3 million square kilometers of sea ice gone missing.  How much is that?  That's about the same surface area as India, the 7th largest country in the world.

NSIDC also reports that we are currently losing on average 13.3% of sea ice cover per decade and that the ten Septembers with the lowest extents happened in the last ten years!  

Bottom line?  We are progressively losing more sea ice in the Arctic.  

10 for 10?  The last ten years, the ten lowest sea ice extents, and sadly at this rate it's not likely to get better before it gets even worse.

ACL operation update #4

OK, I'm now 5 weeks post-op.  I had a therapy session this morning and my first post-op follow-up visit with my doctor since I went in and got my Baker's Cyst drained (which happened only once).

There are two pieces of fantastic news to report.  First, I am done with formal physical therapy sessions, so I'm on my own from now on to continue exercising, etc.  The second piece of good news is that I no longer have to wear a knee brace for day-to-day activities.

My doctor was pleased and surprised at how well recovery is going.  He says that I'm a number of months ahead of schedule for range of motion and leg strength...maybe those years of running really are paying off!

There is a down side to this though...my doctor said that the risk of a rapid recovery like this is that there is sometimes a tendency for someone to push their recovering knee too hard too early.  I assured him that I was more than willing to take it easy, i.e., be lazy.  Oh, I don't mean lazy, I mean not doing things I shouldn't do before I get the go ahead to do them.

If you are recovering from this kind of surgery, remember that recovery includes three things: 1) recovery of range of motion; 2) recovery of leg strength and balance; and 3) biological healing and vascularization of the grafted new ACL.  It will take at least 3 months post-op before I will be given the go-ahead to start jogging, etc.  So in the meantime I'll take it easy and give my reconstructed ACL graft a chance to fully attach.

No more brace, no more physical therapy sessions...just exercise on my own.  Woot, woot, woot!