STEMvisions Blog

Happy Pollinator Week! We can all appreciate the beauty of blooming flowers and budding trees, but we don’t always take a minute to be thankful for their silent helpers. Nine years ago the U.S. senate declared a week each June to be National Pollinator Week. This weeklong event is not only to celebrate the pollinators who make summer beautiful but to raise awareness. Populations of pollinators are in decline, and without these pollinators the fragile ecosystems they live in will fall into disarray.

Director Matthew Brown’s newest film, The Man Who Knew Infinity, opened in April to positive reviews from critics and shed light on the life of a little known mathematician: Srinivasa Ramanujan. Born in Erode, India, in 1887, Ramanujan had a veracious love and instinctual understanding of mathematics. Living poor in South India with no college degree, Ramanujan was able to gain recognition for his inventive theorems and began a correspondence with a Fellow, G.H. Hardy, at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge.

It’s an indisputable fact that as a society, we have fallen head-over-heels for pandas. Whether it be at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, or the Wolong National Nature Reserve in China, these furry giants steal hearts wherever they go, except maybe in their own backyards. Giant pandas are an endangered species, with only 1,600 living in their natural habitats in China’s mountain ranges and 300 in captivity around the world.