- Author: Blake Hihara
Comics – a category that includes ancient graffiti, woodblocks, political cartoons, and zines – have a long history as communication and education tools. As a lifelong comics and manga nerd, I was excited to learn that health science and medical researchers, practitioners, and patients have pioneered the use of comics as teaching tools. For example, researchers have found that comics instructing medical students about ethics or patients about the signs...
- Author: Marianne Bird
A group of 4th and 5th graders sat in a line on the floor of the school cafeteria, quietly waiting for the guest to set up his model. “Hello, everyone,” Dr. Sandoval began. “¡Hola! ¿Cómo están?," he continued, and immediately a boy sprang to his knees. “You speak Spanish?” the boy asked, both with surprise and delight. “Sí,” Sam responded, “yo hablo español.”
So began Samuel Sandoval's presentation on groundwater science to students at Sierra Enterprise Elementary School's afterschool program. The youth, guided by their afterschool program leader,...
- Author: Faith Kearns
Valerie Olson, assistant professor, and Emily Brooks, post-doctoral researcher, are environmental anthropologists at UC Irvine. They have a new project aimed at getting a better understanding of how communities, particularly the underserved, think about and use their water, and how the agencies that provide water can better serve them.
Can you talk a bit about how your project working with underserved communities and how they use water came about?
Our...
- Author: Faith Kearns
Maryam Kia-Keating, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at UC Santa Barbara and a Licensed Clinical Psychologist. Her work focuses on coping and resilience in the context of adverse childhood experiences, trauma, and stress, particularly for vulnerable and understudied populations. She is on Twitter @drkiakeating.
You have done research related to resilience and trauma in the wake of disasters in California. What have you learned?
It's important to pay attention to the psychological impact of disasters. Oftentimes, there is an initial, understandable focus on basic needs...
- Author: Faith Kearns
When it comes to using climate change science to help guide decisions, researchers have found that California water managers fall into three fairly distinct groups based on how they work with scientific information and how they think about the future. While some water managers are actively using climate change science, others are not using it at all. In between these two extremes is a group that uses some climate information, but tends to defer to politics in decision-making.
As part of a research team, Zeke Baker...