This month in science: James Webb Space Telescope nears launch, mammoth tusk found deep in the ocean, Pradip Mascharak named Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, job opportunities, and more...
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch in December from the European Spaceport in French Guiana, is the largest, most powerful and complex telescope ever launched into space. The $10 billion infrared telescope will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, providing greater sensitivity with its much larger primary mirror and capturing longer wavelengths of light.
The University Library at UC Santa Cruz has accepted an invitation to join the Association of Research Libraries, effective January 1, 2022. The UCSC University Library is one of the smallest general libraries in the UC system, but it has shown itself to be a research innovator.
Fifty thousand years ago, most continents hosted a menagerie of massive mammals—mammoths and mastodons, hippo-sized wombats, giant sloths, saber toothed cats, and many more. By 10,000 years ago, land animals this size were gone nearly everywhere except Africa and South Asia. Join a conversation between biology professor Beth Shapiro and professor of earth sciences Paul Koch, moderated by associate professor of biomolecular engineering Ed Green, exploring why the cause of this recent extinction remains a scientific controversy, and why the answer to this question could be important for the future of the biosphere.
