organization:university of oregon

We Are Nowhere Close to the Limits of Athletic Performance - Issue 51: Limits
▻http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/we-are-nowhere-close-to-the-limits-of-athletic-performance-rp

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For many years I lived in Eugene, Oregon, also known as “track-town USA” for its long tradition in track and field. Each summer high-profile meets like the United States National Championships or Olympic Trials would bring world-class competitors to the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field. It was exciting to bump into great athletes at the local cafe or ice cream shop, or even find myself lifting weights or running on a track next to them. One morning I was shocked to be passed as if standing still by a woman running 400-meter repeats. Her training pace was as fast as I could run a flat out sprint over a much shorter distance. The simple fact was that she was an extreme outlier, and I wasn’t. Athletic performance follows a normal distribution, like many other quantities in nature. That (...)

Is Consciousness Fractal? - Issue 47: Consciousness
▻http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-consciousness-fractal

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In one way, Jackson Pollock’s mathematics was ahead of its time. When the reclusive artist poured paint from cans onto vast canvases laid out across the floor of his barn in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he created splatters of paint that seemed completely random. Some interpretations saw them as a statement about the futility of World War II, others as a commentary on art as experience rather than representation. As Pollock refined his technique over the years, critics became increasingly receptive to his work, launching him into the public eye. “We have a deliberate disorder of hypothetical hidden orders,” one critic wrote, “or ‘multiple labyrinths.’ ” In 1999, Richard Taylor, a physicist at the University of Oregon, expressed the “hidden orders” of Pollock’s work in a very different way. (...)

We Are Nowhere Close to the Limits of Athletic Performance - Issue 39: Sport
▻http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/we-are-nowhere-close-to-the-limits-of-athletic-performance

http://static.nautil.us/10107_c4b8bb990423f770dd7f26ff79168416.jpg

For many years I lived in Eugene, Oregon, also known as “track-town USA” for its long tradition in track and field. Each summer high-profile meets like the United States National Championships or Olympic Trials would bring world-class competitors to the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field. It was exciting to bump into great athletes at the local cafe or ice cream shop, or even find myself lifting weights or running on a track next to them. One morning I was shocked to be passed as if standing still by a woman running 400-meter repeats. Her training pace was as fast as I could run a flat out sprint over a much shorter distance. The simple fact was that she was an extreme outlier, and I wasn’t. Athletic performance follows a normal distribution, like many other quantities in nature. That (...)

Visualizing Risk and Potential: Migrants in Zones of Transit

This month, Youth Circulations features a series of conversations between two migration scholars, Heide Castañeda (University of South Florida) and Kristin Yarris (University of Oregon). Drs. Castañeda and Yarris creatively and critically examine representations of the circulation of Central American and Mexican migrants through what they describe as a zone of transit in Western Mexico. Their research is funded by The Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and is a collaboration with Dr. Juan Manuel Mendoza, of the Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa.

This is why photography is a powerful medium: It permits not only the documentation of the risks and desperations associated with migration, but in offering a human portrait of the journey, can provoke a sense of obligation to respond in meaningful ways. As the Department of Homeland Security currently enacts a series of raids targeting hundreds of Central American families, this issue must not be a convenient pawn in the political games of an election year. The circumstances spurring migration have not changed. People must be treated as refugees seeking protection and given meaningful access to due process provisions that exist under U.S. and international refugee law.

▻http://www.youthcirculations.com/blog/2016/1/25/visualizing-risk-and-potential-migrants-in-zones-of-transit

#Mexique #Amérique_centrale #migrations #photographie #critique_photographique #analyse_d'images
cc @albertocampiphoto

Youths sue U.S. government over climate inaction | Al Jazeera America
▻http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/4/youth-sue-governmentforclimateinaction.html

Supported by more than 30 environmental and constitutional professors, the young plaintiffs name six federal agencies in their suit — the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Defense departments.

“The welfare of youth is directly affected by the failure of government to confront human-made climate change, and unless the government acts immediately to rapidly reduce carbon emissions ... youth will face irrevocable harm: the collapse of natural resource systems and a largely uninhabitable nation,” reads the complaint.

In addition to the federal suit, actions were filed in all 50 states, with help from Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit that supports young people through legal efforts.

The scale of the campaign is unprecedented, according to law professor Mary Wood, faculty director at the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program at the University of Oregon.

“Never before in the history of our laws have we seen a coordinated set of legal actions on this scale,” she said.

The monumental campaign matches the magnitude of the problem, supporters say.