This is our ocean on acid

A new study led by Chicago ecologists J. Timothy Wootten and Cathy Pfister shows that the ocean’s acidity is increasing ten times faster than previously thought. The increase correlates with growing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and, says Wootten, “will have a severe impact on marine food webs.”

Listen to an NPR report on the study.

Location, location, location

In Out of Reach: Place, Poverty, and the New American Welfare State, the SSA’s Scott Allard reports that about 70 percent of the nation’s high-poverty neighborhoods have low levels of social-service provision.

Nobel moment

In a December 10 campus ceremony, the Swedish ambassador to the United States will present the medal and diploma for the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics to Chicago professor emeritus Yochiro Nambu.

A link to a live Webcast of the Wednesday ceremony, which begins at 1 p.m. CST, will be available at http://news.uchicago.edu/nobel08/nobel.ceremony.php.

Before Saddam

Middle Eastern historian Orit Bashkin has written a book about Iraq’s short, happy life as a pluralist society with democratic freedoms.

CONNECT

Wednesday, Jan. 7

Death and the City: Recent Work at Tell Brak, Syria

Chicago
7 p.m.

Sunday, Jan. 11
Joslyn Art Museum Tour

Diego Rivera: Masterworks from the Museo de Arte del Estado de Veracruz

Omaha
2 p.m.

View all events

LISTEN

Music to their
(and your) ears

Chicago student group Voices in Your Head’s cover of Ben Fold’s “Magic” has been chosen for Folds’s upcoming cappella album.

It also made writer Nick Hornsby’s 2008 Playlist.

Listen to Voices in Your Head perform “Magic.”

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