Intern Spotlight: Samantha Issa

Special thanks to Learning Life intern, Ehvyn McDaniels, for helping to draft Samantha’s profile.

Explore.  Connect.  Learn.  These three verbs could describe what Learning Life is about, but they also define the passion of our intern, Samantha Issa.

Samantha IssaBorn in New Jersey of an American mother and a Lebanese father, you might say that Samantha was born to explore, connect and learn.  “My desire to travel, explore, and learn informs most of my decisions. Traveling has fueled a passion for connecting with the people around me, and I have come to value human relationships over almost anything else.”  These passions to explore, connect and learn help explain why Samantha has studied Spanish in Spain; taught children reading, writing and math; tutors English to immigrants in Washington D.C.; and serves as an admissions assistant fielding inquiries and applications from the diverse students applying to George Washington University.

As a senior at GWU, Samantha majors in Organizational Sciences and aims to work for an enterprise with a social conscience.  “I would love to work for a social enterprise or other socially impactful business where I could use my communication skills and travel experience to make a difference.”  To this end, she has volunteered with Serengetee, a fast-growing clothing company founded by college students that uses a portion of its proceeds to support local designers and causes around the world, with Lush, a cosmetics company that makes uses natural, ethically-sourced ingredients, and most recently with Learning Life.

This summer, Samantha interned with Learning Life from her home in New Jersey.  Employing her developing research, design and social media skills, Samantha diligently carried out a variety of projects for Learning Life.  She started by proposing ways for Learning Life to grow its audience via social media, then helped expand our audience on Facebook, and spurred us to create a Facebook group for volunteers, interns and supporters.  Samantha also compiled a list of one hundred valuable informational resources online for our social media page readers; produced an initial list of placemat and poster makers that Learning Life might partner with; gathered facts about metro Washington D.C. for Learning Life’s (former) “Weekly Learn” launched in September; updated news media advertising rates in metro D.C. to compare with Learning Life pricing for our upcoming napkin education initiative; created a number of promotional posters and educational infographics (click on the example of her work to the right); and drafted a guide to search engine optimization (SEO) to improve Learning Life’s online search rankings.  Importantly, this last project helped move Learning Life to first and second place in Google searches of the name “Learning Life.”

When asked why she decided to volunteer with Learning Life, Samantha responded, “I feel invested in the cause. The amount of information available to us is valuable but intimidating, and Learning Life can help make that information less unapproachable and more learnable.”  Learning Life is happy and thankful for Samantha’s investment as we have benefited substantially from her careful and conscientious work this summer.

We congratulate Samantha in advance on her graduation from GWU, and wish her the best as she pursues her passions to explore the world, connect and learn.

To learn more about interning or volunteering with Learning Life, contact us at email@learninglife.info.     

Five Facts on Climate Change

The nature, pace and causes of climate change (of which global warming is a part) have been the subject of research and debate for many years, but the clear scientific consensus is now that climate change is happening, and that human activities are the cause.  Further, there are disturbing signs that climate change is happening rapidly, especially with the melting of polar ice. Learning Life offers the following five facts to help better understand the pace and severity of this global threat.

1) 97%

The percentage of climate scientists worldwide who agree that the climate warming trend is very likely due to human activities. Nearly 200 scientific organizations worldwide have come to this conclusion, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Amazon Environmental Research Institute, European Science Foundation, and the Japanese Meteorological Agency.

2) 9 out of 10 of the warmest years since the year 2000

Since climate temperature recording began in 1880, 9 of the 10 warmest years have occurred in the 21st century, including 2013.  Each of the last three decades has been warmer than the last, and the current warming is unprecedented in the last 1,300 years, as ice cores and other historical evidence show.

Sources:

3) 1,141 lives and $175 billion

The number of lives lost and the total economic cost of weather-related disasters caused by climate change in the United States over just the past two years. These costs are from 25 separate climate- and weather-related disasters.  Note: While any given weather disaster may not be due to climate change, climate change may have increased the number and severity of weather disasters.

4) 6.6 feet

The maximum level scientists expect the sea level to rise by the year 2100. Sea levels have been rising for decades.  Climate scientists are 90% certain that sea levels by this time will rise a minimum of 8 inches and a maximum of 6.6 feet.  In the U.S. alone, over eight million people live on coasts at risk of flooding. The 8-inch minimum is based on past sea level rising rates. The 6.6 feet maximum is based on ocean warming and “maximum plausible” loss of polar ice sheets and glaciers.

5) 400 parts per million (ppm)

The highest concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere in the last 800,000 years, according to data gathered from studying ice core records. That record reading was taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii on May 9, 2013, and matched readings from other sites in the Northern Hemisphere that year.

Carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere contributes to global warming. Before the Industrial Revolution began in the mid-1700s, CO2 in the atmosphere is estimated to have been about 280 ppm, and had never exceeded 300 ppm in 800,000 years, until the early 20th century.  The excess 120 ppm trap up to 1.88 watts of energy per square meter of the Earth’s surface. This equates to 23 billion megawatts of energy trapped in the atmosphere every day, the same amount of energy produced in the United States in all of 2013.  As the U.S. Government’s climate.gov website notes, “we are in uncharted territory.”

Sources

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

http://www.noaa.gov/climate.html

http://opr.ca.gov/s_listoforganizations.php

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/13http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

http://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/why-did-earth%E2%80%99s-surface-temperature-stop-rising-past-decade

http://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/2013-state-climate-carbon-dioxide-tops-400-ppm

http://cpo.noaa.gov/Home/AllNews/TabId/315/ArtMID/668/ArticleID/80/Global-Sea-Level-Rise-Scenarios-for-the-United-States-National-Climate-Assessment.aspx

Intern Spotlight: Sabrina Pines

Special thanks to Learning Life intern, Ehvyn McDaniels, for helping to draft Sabrina’s profile.

Hailing from sunny and beautiful La Jolla, California (we’re jealous!), Learning Life summer intern Sabrina Pines is a George Washington University student with a penchant for helping people.

This penchant has taken many forms, but starts with her family.  “Coming from a big Persian and Jewish family, I have learned the importance of making time for family no matter how busy I may be.”  She has for several years worked in her family’s law and jewelry businesses, and helps prepare healthy family meals at home.  Beyond her family, Sabrina has assisted children at a preschool; fundraised for and engaged toddlers and teenagers diagnosed with mental and physical disabilities; counseled pre-teens in summer camps; aided patients at a surgical center; fundraised to send medical supplies to developing nations; and helped carry out medical research at a hospital.  Throughout, Sabrina has greatly enjoyed “meeting and conversing with different people, helping those in need, and working as a problem solver.”

Sabrina PinesSabrina is currently majoring in psychology at George Washington University.  For many years, her penchant to help people inclined her to become a doctor.  Yet Sabrina’s coursework at GWU and her experiences working at a hospital and surgical center turned her on to organizational psychology as a means to empower organizations to achieve their goals, and help their customers, employees and communities.

Interning with Learning Life this summer from her home in La Jolla, Sabrina helped gather well more than one hundred Twitter-sized “tweets” (messages of 140 characters or less) on everything from sleep disorders to the birthdays of famous U.S. and world figures past and present, each with a link to more information online for further learning.  Learning Life disseminates 2-4 messages via our social media pages on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin seven days a week.  Most of these messages are educational, whether they be facts or questions inviting readers to learn more via our quizzes, five facts, or big questions pages on Learning Life’s website, or at other educational sites on the internet.  All this educational content takes time to research, draft and edit, so we are thankful to have volunteers and interns like Sabrina to help.

Sabrina also helped increase Learning Life’s Facebook likes, gathered notable quotes about learning, and researched facts about the D.C. metro area in preparation for Learning Life’s (former) “Weekly Learn” email offering D.C. area residents a free way to learn something about the history, economy, politics or demographics of their metropolitan community every week.

When she’s not studying or helping others, Sabrina enjoys cooking, playing tennis and piano.  Every year from 2000 to 2012, she participated in a piano competition of the National Piano Guild that required memorizing and performing challenging classical music pieces before a judge.  Her excellence in those competitions over the years led her to win the Guild’s coveted Paderewski Medal and a scholarship.

Asked why she decided to volunteer with Learning Life, Sabrina responded, “I decided to work for Learning Life because I believe the public needs to be educated on important facts to gain knowledge about world problems that have occurred in the past and present day. Learning Life is so accessible and provides simple, clear statements that any person at any place on the map can understand to form an opinion and use that information to debate, evaluate, and/or reflect on. I also wanted to be a part of an organization that would teach me something new every day to better myself personally, academically, and professionally.”

Sabrina’s research for Learning Life this summer helped us all learn some new and interesting things on varied topics from health to history, and for that we are grateful.  Look for some of Sabrina’s interesting facts on our Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin pages in the weeks and months ahead!

To learn more about interning or volunteering with Learning Life, contact us at email@learninglife.info.     

Is there intelligent life beyond Earth?

As our technology has gotten better at scanning the skies so has serious study of the universe. In this newest addition to our Big Questions Series, Learning Life’s Craig Gusmann interviewed three prominent astronomers — Dr. Seth Shostak of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), Dr. Dick Carrigan of SETI and Fermilab, and Dr. Jason Dworkin, Chief of the Astrochemistry Branch at NASA Goddard — on the big question: is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, beyond Earth?  Their answers below offer stimulating perspectives on the question and the nature of life itself.  

 

Dr. Dick Carrigan: I tend to take the view that the environment around our Sun is not that unique. We’re not a particularly unusual place. In fact, it seems that we’re quite average. Other Solar Systems have planets, so we may eventually stumble on environments that are substantially better for intelligence. There are a lot of stars out there, a lot of galaxies, so there are many, many opportunities for life and intelligence out there.  Further, in the universe, there are some things that run fast and some things that run slowly.  There is probably a wide variety in the amount of time it takes for intelligence to evolve. There may be intelligent life in the universe that is evolving much faster, and if we make contact with such life, we could be dealing with a much higher brand of intelligence than our own.

 

Dr. Jason Dworkin: The universe is an awfully big place. So, throughout the past and future of the universe and all of time and space it seems likely. Now, is there intelligent life outside the Earth right now elsewhere in the galaxy? Maybe. Elsewhere in a ten light-year radius? Possibly, but the chance seems small. There’s no evidence for or against. Furthermore, if life does exist elsewhere it’s hard to understand how you would even recognize it unless it was microscopic.

Life is actually really hard to define. You know it when you see it, but a good chemical definition of life doesn’t exist. The best definition is a chemical-replicating system capable of Darwinian evolution. So that means you can only know it’s alive if you see it’s reproducing and evolving. There are a few cases where, according to that definition, it’s not clear if a virus is alive or not. Fire is not. Crystals are not, because they don’t evolve. But they do replicate and they do consume energy.

There’s no evidence of life outside of Earth yet.  It may exist.  There are environments where life could exist, but there’s no proof that life is there. We very much want to find it, but right now we only have one example of life and that’s terrestrial life. If we have a second example we’d understand life a whole lot better by being able to compare it against something. All life on Earth is intimately related using all the same biochemistry. You start to wonder, is that the only solution to making life work — using DNA, RNA, protein, carbon bonds, water, membranes, that sort of thing?  Is that the only way to make life?  Is that the best way it works or is that just the way the Earth makes it?

 

Dr. Seth Shostak: We now know, thanks to work of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and others, that most stars have planets.  In addition, roughly one in five stars will have a planet similar in size to Earth, and at a temperature that could support liquid oceans and an atmosphere.  In other words, it could be habitable.  That amounts to tens of billions of “Earth-like” planets just in our galaxy.  It would be extraordinary if our world were the only one to have developed not just life, but intelligent life.  Although just having a lot of planets with life is not sufficient to guarantee that many of them (or any of them!) also develop intelligent creatures, in the last fifty million years many species on Earth have become more clever.  Simians, dolphins, some birds…and of course us.  So, it seems that intelligence has some survival value, and in any Darwinian system, you might then expect intelligence to arise eventually.

 

ABOUT THE EXPERTS

Dr. Seth Shostak developed an interest in extraterrestrial life at the tender age of ten, when he first picked up a book about the solar system. This innocent beginning eventually led to a degree in radio astronomy, and now, as Senior Astronomer, Seth is an enthusiastic participant in the Institute’s SETI observing programs. He also heads up the International Academy of Astronautics’ SETI Permanent Study Group.

In addition, Seth is keen on outreach activities, interesting the public — especially young people — in general science, but particularly astrobiology. He has co-authored a college textbook on astrobiology and continues to write trade books on SETI.  In addition, he’s published nearly 300 popular articles on science, gives many dozens of talks annually, is the editor of the SETI Institute’s Explorer magazine, and host of the Institute’s weekly science radio show, “Big Picture Science”.

Asstronomy1.JasonDworkinDr. Jason Dworkin began research into the origins of life as a high school intern with Professor Joan Oró at the University of Houston, where he helped to investigate the prebiotic syntheses of amino acids and co-enzymes.  He completed his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of California in San Diego, where he investigated pre-RNA nucleobases.  He then carried out postdoctoral research at NASA Ames Exploration Center, studying complex organics from UV processed interstellar and cometary ices in the laboratory.  He founded the Astrobiology Analytical Research Group at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to study extraterrestrial organic compounds relevant for the origin of life via analytical chemistry.  He is currently Chief of the Astrochemistry Branch at NASA Goddard and the Project Scientist for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission, which launches in 2016 to return samples of primitive near-Earth asteroid Bennu in 2023.  For further learning, Dr. Dworkin recommend’s NASA’s graphic novels that explain the evolution of astrobiology with clear prose and engaging illustrations.

Astronomy1.DickCarriganDr. Dick Carrigan is an active physicist and Scientist Emeritus in the Accelerator Division at the Fermi National Accel­era­tor Laboratory (Fermilab) pursuing an on-going physics program there. He is also interested in investigations of the possibility of life and intelligence in the Universe. His major technical interests have included channeling of high energy particles, hyperon physics, the magnetic monopole conjec­ture, high energy scatter­ing, pi and mu mesic atoms, photo production, and facility plann­ing.  He has been associated with several joint USA‑USSR col­laborations studying high energy particle behavior at Fermilab and in Russia.

Dr. Carrigan is the author of more than a hundred scientific publications and the author or editor of a number of books and monographs including Non-Accelerator Astroparticle Physics (World Scientific 2005 with G. Giacomelli, A. Masiero, and N. Paver), Particles and Forces: At the Heart of Matter (Freeman 1990 with W. P. Trower), Particle Physics in the Cosmos (Freeman 1989 with W. P. Trower), Relativistic Channeling  (Ple­num 1986, with J. Ellison), Magnetic Monopoles (Ple­num 1983, with W.P. Trower),  The State of Particle Accelerators and High Energy Physics and Physics of High Energy Particle Accelerators  (AIP 1982, with F. Huson and M. Month).  He is also a member of Sigma Xi, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.