The Sounds of California Air Pollution

Using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, environmental science, policy, and management doctoral student Gabriel Isaacman and a colleague from Yale have created sounds from air samples collected around California by UC Berkeley air pollution researchers. The results are sonic representations of air quality in the Caldecott Tunnel, Bakersfield, Pasadena, and the Sierras. The pair co-authored an article published in the Atlantic Monthly on September 10.

Listen:

http://soundcloud.com/theatlantictech/tunnel

http://soundcloud.com/theatlantictech/soundsofsmog-bakersfield

http://soundcloud.com/theatlantictech/pasadena

http://soundcloud.com/theatlantictech/sierras

GARDEN STATE: Carolyn Merchant, a professor of environmental history, philosophy, and ethics, will be at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., in fall 2012. She will be working on the project “Ideas of Nature in the Scientific Revolution,” a study for which she received an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship this year.