Whether it’s the 110-plus-degree days being reported out West, severe flooding events in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, or the 100-degree water temperatures being measured off the coast of Florida, it’s hard not to wonder if these extreme weather events are just a fluke of nature, part of a cyclical weather pattern or a harbinger of something more concerning. If anyone could make a well-educated guess on the matter, it would be Cameron Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor of geography at Kent State University, who specializes in climate and weather change. “It’s unequivocal that the climate is wa...

Brian James Baer, Ph.D., a professor of Russian and Translation Studies at Kent State University, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to Estonia for the 2023-2024 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. He will be teaching and conducting research on the relationship between semiotics and translation theory at the University of Tartu. Founded in 1632, the University of Tartu is the oldest university in Estonia and home to the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School and the archives of Juri Lotman, whose works Baer has translated.&nbsp...

KENT STATE UNIVERSITY TENURE-TRACK FACULTY POSITION IN THE EARTH SCIENCES  The Department of Earth Sciences at Kent State University (http://www.kent.edu/earth-sciences) invites applications for a tenure-track open-rank faculty member whose research focuses on interactions between the hydrosphere and other aspects of the earth sciences (lithosphere, biosphere, cryosphere and/or atmosphere). The position starts August 2024. The successful candidate will hold a Ph.D. in the Earth or Marine Sciences, and be able to interface well with faculty working at the nexus of environmental a...

So, this summer has been a doozy for those of us who live in the upper Midwest and Northeast. The wildfires raging in Canadian forests have been generating massive amounts of smoke. As 2023 saw the start of an El Niño, wind patterns shifted to allow pressure systems to draw air masses from where those fires were occurring. There are two major variables at work here; the lack of precipitation in Canada over the winter creating dry conditions conducive to wildfires and the El Niño wind patterns drawing that smoke our way. Had either of these things not occurred, we would be enjoying our norma...