In their new book, Lois Gresh and her coauthor Robert Weinberg use the stories of horror master Stephen King as a jumping-off point to share principles of science. The mayhem caused by psychic abilities in Carrie, Firestarter, and The Dead Zone paves the way for a discussion of human consciousness and modern neuroscience; The Stand provokes a look at fictional and real plagues; while the parallel worlds and alternate histories at the heart of The Dark Tower bring up theoretical physics from relativity to wormholes.

Gresh will sign copies of her book and talk about the “science” in science fiction at a Science & the City @ NYAS event on November 29.

Click here for more information about the event.

A paper just published in The Lancet reports on an encouraging result in a clinical trial of an experimental malaria vaccine called RTS,S. Previous trials had shown that the vaccine provides protection for children aged 1-4, but this new trial showed that it is both safe and effective in very young infants. Although further investigation remains to be done, the result is heartening because these babies are among the most vulnerable to infection with malaria. According to Nature magazine, “The latest trial raises hopes that the malaria vaccine riddle has been cracked, and that babies can now be protected for the first two years of their lives: a strategy that could prevent millions of deaths.”

On Wednesday October 24, the New York Academy of Sciences will host a symposium organized in cooperation with the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health titled Progress Against Malaria: Developments on the Horizon. Among presentations by nearly a dozen top malaria researchers, the event will feature a talk by Christian Loucq, director of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which sponsored the successful trial of RTS,S. The meeting will also include discussion of new diagnostic tests, prevention and treatment strategies, and malaria-resistant mosquitoes, as well as recent work in Macha, Zambia, where malaria research is conducted in a unique rural setting. To register or to learn more about the event, visit the NYAS Web site.

Click here to listen to a Science & the City podcast with Angelique Corthals, a biological anthropologist who—in addition to her work on the genetics of ancient mummies—studies the social and landscape processes underlying endemism of malaria in the peruvian Amazon.

Have you ever been plagued by an earworm—an insidiously catchy tune trapped in your head? The pervasive and distracting way that the Jeopardy theme song can permeate consciousness demonstrates the powerful influence of music on the human brain. In his new book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, neurologist Oliver Sacks, the author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and many other books, shares his patients’ experiences with music. From the man who was suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two after being struck by lightning, to the way in which music can calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer’s or amnesia, Sacks will discuss how music can be both a neurological symptom and a tool for healing.

Listen to Science & the City’s podcast interview with Oliver Sacks or read an interview with him in the current edition of the New York Academy of Sciences Member Magazine.

Sacks will speak Tuesday, October 16, at 6 pm at The New York Academy of Sciences, 250 Greenwich St., 7 World Trade Center, in lower Manhattan. The event is part of the Science & the City Author Series.

For the past three summers, the rich, the powerful, and the just plain curious have converged on the former mining town of Aspen, Colorado for a weeklong bit of intellectual prospecting. In between informal conversations with celebrities like Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, Karl Rove, Lance Armstrong, and Jessye Norman, this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival featured a special program track focusing on some exciting recent developments in neuroscience.

Invited by the William A. Haseltine Foundation for Medical Sciences and the Arts, prominent researchers explained why technologies like positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have not only revolutionized how scientists gather information about how the brain works, but also call into question some very fundamental ways in which we understand ourselves and organize our society. The New York Academy of Sciences was there, and has just published an online eBriefing documenting the event.

Perhaps the most startling presentation on the program came from Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian neurophysiologist now based at Duke University. He and his team are developing brain–machine interfaces consisting of electrodes implanted in the brain connected to sophisticated computer programs that can analyze firing patterns of individual neurons. In one series of experiments, Nicolelis used this approach to teach monkeys to play a video game purely by thinking. His work won’t just benefit couch potatoes, though. Nicolelis hopes one day that such a technology could enable people with paralysis to move and to physically manipulate their environments.

Jeffrey Rosen, a legal scholar at George Washington University, and Michael Gazzaniga, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara both focused on the approaching collision between neuroscience and the law. They pointed out that lawyers are already invoking information from brain scans in defense of criminal behavior, arguing in effect that abnormalities like brain lesions can cause certain antisocial behaviors. Although juries have been skeptical, it is clear that new knowledge about how the brain works could have important implications for basic concepts of free will and responsibility upon which American legal practice relies. Gazzaniga is now helping to direct the Law and Neuroscience Project, a new initiative sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation that is bringing neuroscientists, judges, philosophers, and other scholars together to explore when neuroscience belongs in the courtroom, and when it doesn’t.

The conference also included a personal talk by Bob Woodruff of ABC News, who suffered traumatic brain injury when he was struck by a bomb while covering the war in Iraq in January 2006. He described the experience in harrowing detail, including his long recovery and how the experience has changed him. Other participants included National Medal of Science award-winner Nancy Andreasen on what imaging technologies tell us about individual differences, PET pioneer Marcus Raichle on some vast unexplored areas of brain activity, and former Disney Imagineer Eric Haseltine on some experiments you can do to catch your brain tricking you.

In addition to a meeting summary, the eBriefing also includes complete audio/slides/video of the speakers’ talks, a video introduction with interviews, and a printable e-book consisting of edited transcripts.

According to a study conducted at Johns Hopkins University, students in the U.S. lose on average approximately 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in math computation over the summer months, while loss in reading varies depending on family income.

The study also found that students who attend summer camps and enrichment programs displayed increased self-esteem, leadership skills, and improved peer relationships. Luckily, you can fight the summertime learning lull by bringing your child to some of the many science-related activities happening this month.

Rather than hire a babysitter, working parents can enroll their child in drop-off programs this August at the New York Hall of Science, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and many more.

Week-long camps are still open for registration, including two at the New York Aquarium that start August 13: Aquatic Adventures for ages 6 to 8 and Marine Explorers for ages 9 to 12.

The Brooklyn Botanical Garden offers children’s summer classes that look at nature through poetry, painting, and even culinary arts.

This Saturday, children as young as pre-K and kindergarten can learn about animals and their adaptations at the Staten Island Zoo’s Kids and Critters program, which explores a new topic each month.

Or, families can join the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for nature walks, environmental games, crafts, and cake in celebration of Smokey Bear’s 63rd birthday this Saturday.

Check out more science events for kids going on this week including Family Science Workshop: Volcanoes Rock!, Greenhouse Exploration, and Larry Cat in Space by searching for “Kids & Families” events in the Science and the City Events Calendar.

Like the progressive and ever-changing nature of scientific research, artistic expression is an eclectic and technologically expanding field. Last April, The New York Academy of Sciences embraced the many connections between science and art with an event entitled Biology and Art Symposium: Two Worlds or One? at which nine scientists and artists presented their interpretations of life science through visual representation. If you missed the event, you can read about it here or take advantage of the many opportunities to explore the link between science and art at the city’s galleries and museums this summer.

On display until November 30, at The New York Hall of Science, is an exhibit entitled BioScapes, which shows the winners of last year’s Olympus International Digital Imaging Competition, a contest to find the best images of life science specimens captured through light microscopes.

The Hall of Science is also currently exhibiting deep water photography of microscopic marine ecology by Michael S. Maurer and is preparing for their September 29 opening of Digital ’07, the 9th Annual International digital print exhibition that “utilizes the structures and patterns of the universe to create art.”

If photography is not your interest, you might prefer learning about the intersection of art and technology in the many design exhibits at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The museum houses an exhibit showcasing the progress of technology and design through an artifact timeline and currently hosts Design Life Now, 2006, an exhibit which curators say “brings together the experimental designs and emerging ideas—including animation, new media, and fashion, robotics, architecture, product, medical, and graphic design—at the center of American culture from 2003 to 2006.”

Or, learn how design can be not just beautiful but extremely useful at Design for the other 90%, an exhibit featuring technologies used for natural disaster recovery and poverty alleviation throughout the world.

Just as art can be found in science, so can science be found in art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art employs advances in science to protect its ancient collection of visual work. Dr. Eleonora Del Federico, a professor at the Pratt Institute who is on sabbatical working as part of the Met’s Art Department of Scientific Research, is studying how Mobile Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (Spectroscopy) can help assess the degradation of mural paintings and manuscripts. Del Federico, along with her colleague and fellow chemist Alexej Jerschow of New York University, were the first to publish an account of why ultramarine — a color of royalty and wealth that was used in the frescoes paintings such as the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel — fades over time.

Jerschow said in a Science Daily interview:

Apart from the scientific interest in this work, these activities have created an exciting opportunity for both science and arts students to transcend discipline boundaries. These unique investigations promise to have tremendous impact on our understanding and prevention of the chemical processes that underlie the slow–often irreversible–decay of our cultural heirlooms.

For more science and nature art exhibits in the New York Tristate Area, search Art Exhibits in the Science & the City Calendar of Events.

After almost two years and $109 million of renovations, the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City will reopen Thursday, debuting new exhibits, refurbished old favorites, and the unprecedented Jennifer A. Chalsty Center for Science Learning and Teaching.

The new exhibit Skyscrapers! allows guests to explore a model skyline revealing the careful planning of these giant buildings, while kids and adults alike can join the action in a video game battle between invading germs and the immune system in Infection Connection. Just next door, Eat and Be Eaten houses some of the latest additions to the center’s family—leaf-tailed geckos, snapping turtles, mantids and many more exotic reptiles and insects.

The Communications exhibit features “The Eye Gaze,” a motion tracking device that allows visitors to use a computer without their hands. Instead of a keyboard and mouse, the users direct their eyes at an onscreen control to play music or turn on a light. The exhibit also looks at the history of writing. Guests can engrave clay, explore calligraphy, and even take the journey of a text message through fiber optic cable and radio waves.

Visitors should prepare to spend at least four hours if they want to catch most exhibits but should still save time for an IMAX show. The museum’s Dome Theater hasn’t changed and is still the largest in the world. Opening week will feature daily showings of Hurricane on the Bayou, Roving Mars, and Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs, which features the first scientists to extract DNA from ancient Egyptian pharaohs.

The Chalsty Center invites students and teachers from around the area to take part in hands-on labs. The popular Live From… lab will continue in the new center so that 7-12 grade students can once again watch live cardiac, neuro, or robotic surgeries while participating in on-site discussions with the surgeons and nurses as they work! As part of the museum’s refurbishment, handheld keypads were integrated into the exhibit so that students can respond to questions from the instructors and see how their answers compare to those of other students.

Also new to the center is the sophisticated Global Microscope, which shows digital images of global warming indicators, atmospheric changes, and other occurrences on earth’s surface as well as other planets in our solar system.

Best of all, the Liberty Science experience doesn’t end when you walk out the door. The Center has developed the Science Now, Science Everywhere program which allows guests to use their cell phones to download exhibit information not only while they’re in the Center but also long after they leave. To check out more information on exhibits, IMAX show times, and Learning Center activities, visit www.lsc.org and the Science & the City events calendar.

A scientific illustrator and entomologist, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) created portraits of insects and butterflies that are not just beautiful, but are also empirically accurate. Merian was an avid naturalist and raised butterflies to study the stages of their development. Many of her paintings feature insects in their various stages of metamorphosis alongside the plants upon which they feed.

Metamorphosis was a theme of Merian’s life as well as her work. After stints as an art teacher, business owner, and insect collector, in 1699, Merian transformed herself into a field biologist, and left her husband behind to travel with her youngest teenage daughter from the Netherlands to Surinam, where she spent two years sketching and observing tropical flora and fauna. Her paintings from this period became the book, The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam, published in 1705.

Images from that book are shown in the newest Science & the City online art gallery, published with the permission of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

The gallery is accompanied by an excerpt from the new biography of the naturalist, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, called “spellbinding” by the New Yorker. The book is authored by science writer Kim Todd, who spoke recently at the Explorer’s Club in New York.

In the foreword to her masterwork, Merian explained how friends’ insect collections provoked her curiosity and inspired her to travel to the tropics, writing:

In these collections I had found innumerable other insects, but finally if here their origin and their reproduction is unknown, it begs the question as to how they transform, starting from caterpillars and chrysalises and so on. All this has, at the same time, led me to undertake a long dreamed of journey to Suriname.

Click here to see some of her paintings from Surinam.

Maria Sibylla Merian died in 1717. Six plants, nine butterflies, and two beetles are named for her.

For more about the contributions of female scientists, you might enjoy this podcast of a roundtable discussion at the American Museum of Natural History, held in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rachel Carson, entitled Remembering Silent Spring.

The arrival of summer couldn’t be more pleasant in the city this week, with sunny skies, sailboats on the Hudson, and breezes rustling the trees. But summer solstice also marks the beginning of the terrifying smog season for asthma sufferers, and, as a meeting on new research on air pollution’s role in asthma held earlier this year at the New York Academy of Sciences noted, there’s an inordinate number of them in the Bronx. A report on the meeting posted earlier this month, and available unabridged to NYAS members, explains:

In the Bronx, rates of asthma, while somewhat lower than they’ve been, are still so high that asthma constitutes a chronic epidemic. The City’s Asthma Initiative reports that rates tend to be highest in the lowest-income neighborhoods; hospitalization rates are highest for children. New York City ranks third on a list of the 50 U.S. cities with the largest numbers of children exposed to dirty air.

Experts blame the major highways that carry asthma-exacerbating diesel trucks through the Bronx and a large number of facilities that emit other known air pollutants there.

In one step in the right direction, the EPA yesterday announced plans to strengthen air quality standards for ground level ozone for the first time in 10 years.

But ironically, today’s news revealed that one of Mayor Bloomberg’s initiatives aimed at cleaning up the city air, Congestion Pricing, was killed in Albany yesterday.

If asthma is a concern to you or your family, the Asthma Initiative at the city’s Department of Health is a great resource. In New York, you can also request brochures and other materials by dialing 311. And you can keep a daily eye on air quality in New York at the EPA Region 2 Air Quality Index online.

As Natalie Angier’s New York Times tribute to the splendiferous sperm attests, Father’s Day is a true celebration of basic science. Then there’s anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s essay today in Time Magazine, The Psychology of Fatherhood, which points out that “Father’s Day salutes the world’s greatest dads, but it takes science to explain why some aren’t so great.” With no disrespect to all the fellas who’ve heroically taken on parenting of another’s offspring with little concern for what Angier calls “the central verity of paternity — that it’s a lot more fun to become a father than to be one,” we think Sunday seems the perfect holiday for a science outing.

Here are some fun ways to spend time with Dad, in New York or elsewhere this weekend:

• Check out Dad’s Day Out at the Bronx Zoo, 10:00-5:30, Saturday and Sunday. Enjoy games, storytelling, and music while zookeepers demonstrate the toys that help animals stay as physically fit and mentally stimulated as dear old Dad.

• Stay up superlate Saturday night and greet the dawn on Father’s Day watching the sky with Dad and the New York Amateur Astronomers Association at Bear Mountain or at Great Kills in Staten Island

• If you’re in the Boston area, take in Father’s Day brunch at the Boston Museum of Science.

• In Avon, Ohio, a weekend-long fair pays tribute to Dad’s favorite quick fix tool. The Duct Tape Festival promises lots of low tech educational entertainment.

• In Oakland, Calif., Dads can take a mission to Mars at the Chabot Space Center.

• If Dad has more fun tinkering around the garage, check out Make Magazine’s guide to DIY gifts for Dad. If you happen to be a Dad yourself, you’ll find plenty of projects here you can rope the kids into.

This week is the International Conference on the Biology, Ecology, and Conservation of Horseshoe Crabs at Dowling College on Long Island.

Horseshoe crabs, so named because they resemble the shape of a horse hoof, are not crabs at all. One of the oldest species still alive today, horseshoe crabs evolved about 300 million years ago — predating dinosaurs by some 100 million years.

If you’re on the water this summer, you can participate in a horseshoe crab monitoring study organized by the Long Island Horseshoe Crab Network and headed by Dr. John T. Tanacredi. The group says:

Anyone sighting a horseshoe crab, along the coast of Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, is asked to make report through this form from May 1st. The information to be collected includes name, address, telephone number and e-mail of the reporter, date, time, location and condition of tide, number of Horseshoe Crabs, number living and dead, male, and female at sighting. Instructions are available for determining sex and measuring size by clicking this link.

This season will be the second year of data collection for this multi-year study. The data collected will be used to identify horseshoe crab population trends and to target sites for future research.

In honor of a creature who has evolved very little, check out Creatures of Accident, a Science & the City podcast with zoologist Wallace Arthur explaining how simple creatures evolved into complex ones via the accidental processes of duplication and divergence.

Last month the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative brokered an agreement with leading pharmaceutical companies to bring down the price of 16 medicines critical to fighting HIV/AIDS. The deal represents major progress on the foundation’s goal of making high-quality treatment equally available to people in need and represents the kind of good that non-governmental humanitarian organizations can achieve.

In a panel discussion with Bill Gates at the XVI International AIDS Conference, Bill Clinton discussed the importance of public-private partnernships, saying:

I think one of the things we try to do is make sure that we are all working together because any other option is crazy, it’s ego over people’s lives. I mean, people will die insofar as we waste money rowing our own boat when we could be working together. People will stay alive, more likely, if we squeeze every last impact out of every last dollar we spend.

But the collaboration between governments and NGOs is not always easy. Several events taking place in New York this week highlight the recent successes and ongoing challenges faced by global humanitarian organizations.

Today, an event entitled Public Private Partnerships in HIV/AIDS: Are They Working? Lessons from Botswana and the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships offered a panel discussion on the lessons learned from The African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships, an organization that aims to achieve an AIDS-free generation in Botswanna by 2016 — a potentially daunting goal as recent estimates suggest 17.1% of Botswana’s 1.7 million people are HIV-positive.

Also this week, A Conversation With Doctors Without Borders: The Struggle for Humanitarian Space, a panel discussion with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières aid workers, will address the challenges of delivering humanitarian assistance to people caught in the world’s most dangerous conflicts.

For more on AIDS and public health, check out these podcasts:

• The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative — a Science & the City interview with public health expert Seth Berkley

• Doctors Without Borders Frontline Report for May 2006 — which includes a discussion of the struggle to improve access in developing countries to critical new AIDS drugs.

Also check out:

• A Long and Winding Road: A Search for the AIDS Vaccine — summaries and audio recordings of presentations from the 2005 conference sponsored by NYAS and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.

It’s a sorry state of affairs when two young bloggers can draw crowds on a national speaking tour about America’s crisis communicating about science. Are scientists and the public really so inept at understanding each other?

Journalist Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, and strategic communication expert Matthew Nisbet, a professor of communications at American University, offer help.

They’ve teamed up to give a presentation that aims to help scientists better communicate with the public. Drawing on case studies from the battles over stem cell research, evolution, global warming, hurricanes, and other subjects, and by exposing public opinion and media coverage of science issues, they coach scientists to frame old science stories in new ways, and to use the media to target specific audiences.

Mooney and Nisbet laid out the simple idea behind their speaking tour— “…scientists should package their research to resonate with specific segments of the public”—in a Washington Post article published in April. Perhaps more interesting than their essay is the stream of comments following it —evidence that the public is upholding their end of the conversation.

Catch Mooney and Nisbet live on Monday evening, June 4, at the Academy as they present Framing Science: The Road to 2008 and Beyond.

“Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons; for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.”

Ellen Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, explained yesterday that the museum has ignored the warning above and chosen to meddle in the affairs of dragons — and those of unicorns, griffins, sea monsters, and other fantastic beasts — to create the new exhibit, Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns and Mermaids, which traces the cultural and natural history roots of some of the world’s most enduring mythological creatures.

The exhibit displays sculptures, paintings, textiles, and cultural objects from around the world alongside fossils and preserved specimens. The collection suggests that legendary beasts may have arisen from imaginative misidentification of physical artifacts. A narwhal tusk looks just like the horn of the unicorns depicted in ancient drawings, while a fossil of the beaked dinosaur Protoceratops (above) looks uncannily like the griffin depicted on Greek coins and Egyptian statuettes.

The exhibit also highlights artifacts and stories that depict less well known mythical creatures like Sedna, (left) the inuit goddess of the sea.

Sedna married a man who was actually a sea bird and she was unhappy. After a year, her sad singing encouraged her father to get in his boat and come rescue her. As Sedna and her father paddled away from the home Sedna shared with her husband, a flock of birds chased them. The sea birds’ flapping wings stirred up waves that threatened to capsize the boat carrying Sedna and her father. Sedna’s father, afraid of drowning, tossed his daughter overboard to save himself. Sedna clung to the side of the boat, but her frightened father chopped off her hands and she fell into the sea. Sedna’s severed fingers became the whales, seals, and polar bears and as Sedna sank, she was transformed into a mystical being who reigns over all the creatures in the ocean.

The exhibit also has an actual FeeJee mermaid and a computer kiosk that lets visitors design their own dragon.

Click here for more information about the exhibit.

Check out our exhibitcast of Gold.

Also running at the American Museum of Natural History is the exihibit Gold, which explains the scientific, historical, cultural and financial significance of one of the world’s most rare and highly prized metals. Science & the City took a guided tour of the exhibit with the co-curator and recorded it for a podcast.

This week the Royal Society 2007 Prize for Science Books was awarded to Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard professor and psychologist Daniel Gilbert. In the book, Gilbert analyzes why we are so terrible at predicting what will make us happy. He points out that rarely can we accurately predict how happy or unhappy an experience will make us feel.

As Malcolm Gladwell puts it in his review of the book on Amazon:

Our imaginations aren’t particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. And our personal experiences aren’t nearly as good at correcting these errors as we might think.

It seems that the notion of happiness is an attractive area of research as there have been several recent books tackling the subject. Economist Eduardo Punset took a stab at it in his recent book, entitled The Happiness Trip, as did geneticist-turned-Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard in his book, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill.

If you enjoyed Stumbling on Happiness you might enjoy a 2006 lecture by Ricard entitled How to Be Happy, which is available as a Science & the City podcast.

Plus, Punset recently spoke at the New York Academy of Sciences as part of the Readers and Writers series and a Science & the City interview with him will also soon be available as a podcast.

Lastly, you might enjoy a Science & the City interview with science writer Daniel Goleman, about his book Social Intelligence which introduces new concepts in neuroscience that reveal how human brains are designed to connect us emotionally with one another.

Can you recommend any other books about happiness?

The three little pigs or Little Red Riding Hood would tell you that wolves are bullies with sharp teeth who prey on those weaker than themselves. But is the fairy tale depiction of wolves really fair? Is the wolf a villain?

Wolves are predators, sure, but they are also pack animals, with a complex social and family structure. Jim and Jamie Dutcher spent six years living in a tented camp with a pack of gray wolves in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains. By unobtrusively living alongside the pack, the Dutchers could document, record, and photograph the intimate lives of the wolves. They explain:

If we were to film an intimate portrait of the wolf, we needed to get close enough to see into their eyes. By socializing with the pack from the time they were pups, we were able to gain the wolves’ trust and observe their behavior in a way that few people ever have.

At one time, wolves were abundant and distributed over much of North America, Eurasia, and the Middle East. But habitat destruction and hunting has, at times, driven the species to the brink of extinction. In the mid-1990’s, wolves were re-introduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. The re-introduction was controversial and opponents of the plan continue to report of economic hardships caused by wolves due to livestock predation or depletion of hunting stocks. For some, the wolf will always be perceived as a villain.

Yet, in the eyes of others, the wolf’s image has been rehabilitated. The reputation of wolves has been boosted by studies such as the Dutcher’s, which show wolves as intelligent, social creatures, that are vital to a natural and viable wild ecosystem.

Tonight, the Greenbelt Nature Center on Staten Island hosts a free screening of the Dutcher’s documentary, Living with Wolves.

Click here for more information about the event.

Also, check out previous Science & the City podcasts on the topic of wildlife conservation:

• Joyce Poole: Elephant Voices
• John Fitzpatrick: Birds Speak for Nature