Environmental Research Advocates

Team ERAscience is once again honored to partner with the brilliant team at UCLA California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI at UCLA) on Nanovation Competition, a three month long Shark Tank like competition for high school students. Teams from 11 Los Angeles-area high schools each developed and pitched their ideas for science-based product concepts presented at the finals. The entries were reviewed by a jury of Los Angeles venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, along with UCLA fa...culty members and ERAscience. The first place team earned $2,000 worth of science classroom supplies for its winning proposal: dissolvable contact lenses that use pharmacosomes molecules that act as a drug delivery system for patients to use after Lasik surgery. Nanovation was a dream concept that’s now a reality and is revealing many great young science minds! Huge congrats once again to the winning teams! See more

Remember the first time you read Sagan's words or the last time, or perhaps you never have. Well on this Earth Day enjoy: Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creat...or and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. -Carl Sagan-

Our hearts are with our wonderful partners and friends at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics @perimeterinstitute on the great loss of Distinguished Chair and faculty member Stephen Hawking #stephenhawking. His work lives on through yours, in PI’s Stephen Hawking Centre research, and certainly through your life changing Education Outreach! Bottom photo is from last month’s PI/CNSI/ERAscience education outreach collaboration at CNSI UCLA @cnsiatucla Top photo is Professor Hawking surrounded by loving colleagues at Perimeter. @perimeterinstitute #perimeterinstitute #indomitablespirit #universethroughhiseyes #gratitude #unstoppablepassion #limitlesscuriosity #awe

The United Nations marks 11 October as the 'International Day of the Girl Child" Team ERAscience applauds all the great young female science minds who's creativity and potential can not be stopped. Congratulations again to the phenomenal group of middle school girls (image) who tied for 1st place in the UCLA CNSI/ERAscience 2017 Nanovation Competition They competed against high schools across Los Angeles winning for their project aimed at saving lives through use of nano materials in PICC line safety. #internationaldayofthegirl #girlpower #dayofthegirl #science #future #futureisbright

How did you spend World Environment Day 2017? World Environment Day (WED) is observed every year on June 5 to raise global awareness to take positive environmental action to protect nature and the planet Earth. It is run by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). "World Environment Day (WED) is the United Nations’ most important day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment. Since it began in 1974, it has grown to become a global platform for public outreach that is widely celebrated in over 100 countries. #worldenvironmentday #united #humanity #future #makeourplanetgreatagain #wereallinthistogether