Tuesday, October 15, 2024

The plankton problem

Plankton -- tiny creatures in the sea -- produce half the world's oxygen and bury half our carbon. Friend or foe, they can feed our fish or produce dangerous toxins. Which ones live where and when makes a huge difference to these balances -- and climate change is spurring a sea change to it all.

Read my story for Yale: https://e360.yale.edu/features/plankton-climate-change

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Book award

So pleased to share this news!

Dear Nicola:

As Chair of the 2024 ASJA Awards Committee, it’s my pleasure to inform you that your entry, Saving the Spotted Owl: Zalea’s Story, is the winner in the Children/Young Adult Nonfiction category. 

Here’s what the judges had to say about your work:

Saving the Spotted Owl: Zalea’s Story is densely packed with kid-friendly information that makes scientific data about endangered animals relatable and useful in a classroom. We also appreciate the editing choice to include an Index and Glossary.

Congratulations on your accomplishment and thank you for supporting the 2024 ASJA Awards Competition!

Warmly,

Dara Chadwick

Chair

2024 ASJA Awards Committee

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

AI gets ever better

I have been playing with ChatGPT (it's GPT-4o and 01 models), asking about puzzles that either we invented or amended as a family (so they don't exist online as-is). There are impressive and interesting results... Can you solve it?


May be an image of text 

And here's an interesting experiment: