Category: News

Featured in the Washington Post, CNS researcher examines how we talk about crises and offers tips to better our narratives and inspire change Images of overcrowded hospitals, maps of wildfire destruction, real-time twitter updates of political upheaval. It seems that over the past year, stories of crisis and catastrophe follow us everywhere we go— so much so that the term “doomscrolling” (the act of almost obsessively consuming news of suffering and injustice on social media) gained global popularity. Many of us feel overwhelmed, not knowing how to create positive change.    Ezra Markowitz, Environmental Conservation, recently published an article in the Washington Post discussing what decades of social-science research tell us about the effectiveness of different approaches to catastrophe story-telling. In particular, he details four ways to improve how we talk about crises and encourage powerful action.  From "After 2020, we need to talk about how we talk about catastrophe:"   First, avoiding overt crisis and catastrophe frames does not mean playing down the urgency of...

Danylchuk Lab joins the first-ever regional collaboration to deepen our understanding of the white sharks that pass through New England waters UMass Amherst fisheries biologist Andy Danylchuk, environmental conservation, and his Ph.D. student Bryan Legare recently joined other shark research groups and government agencies from the northeastern United States and Canada in the New England White Shark Research Consortium (NEWSRC). It provides the first-ever collaboration to jointly study the white shark (Carchardon carcharias) throughout its entire northeast range.    With increased white shark sightings from Rhode Island to Canada, NEWSRC says, “this is the perfect time to create a unique consortium to increase our understanding of white shark life history, including their migration, residency, habitat use, reproduction and predatory behavior – factors that drive human-shark interactions, and broader perceptions of white sharks by coastal communities.”  Danylchuk and Greg Skomal of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries are co-advisors to Legare in his doctoral work. The three will collaborate with the Provincetown-based Center for Coastal Studies to study the near-shore movements...

For the second year in a row, the Best Global Universities guide published by U.S. News and World Report ranks the University of Massachusetts Amherst No. 4 in the comprehensive subject area of Agricultural Sciences for 2021, and first among U.S. universities in that subject area. The rankings consider the top 1,500 universities across 81 countries.  U.S. News notes that, “These are the world’s best universities for agricultural sciences based on their reputation and research in the field.” The rankings can be viewed at https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/agricultural-s... Agricultural sciences as reviewed for this survey includes a wide range of subjects related to how humans use and develop natural resources for their benefit, including horticulture, food science and nutrition, dairy science and agronomy. At UMass Amherst, several schools, departments and programs contribute to this global reputation.  In the College of Natural Sciences (CNS), these include the Stockbridge School of Agriculture, the School of Earth & Sustainability (SES), the Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (CAFE), food...