TED演讲-NaliniNadkarni-LifeScienceInPrison.docVIP

Nalini Nadkarni-Life Science In Prison About this talkNalini Nadkarni challenges our perspective on trees and prisons -- she says both can be more dynamic than we think. Through a partnership with the state of Washington, she brings science classes and conservation programs to inmates, with unexpected results. About Nalini NadkarniCalled the queen of canopy research, Nalini Nadkarni explores the rich, vital world found in the tops of trees. She communicates what she finds to non-scientists -- with the help of poets, preachers and prisoners. Trees epitomize stasis. Trees are rooted in the ground in one place for many human generations. But if we shift our perspective from the trunk to the twigs, trees become very dynamic entities, moving and growing. And I decided to explore this movement by turning trees into artists. I simply tied the end of a paintbrush onto a twig. I waited for the wind to come up and held up a canvas. And that produced art. The piece of art you see on your left is painted by a western red cedar, and that on your right by a Douglas fir. And what I learned was that different species have different signatures, like a Picasso versus a Monet.But I was also interested in the movement of trees and how this art might let me capture that and quantify it. So to measure the distance that a single vine maple tree -- which produced this painting -- moved in a single year, I simply measured and summed each of those lines. I multiplied them by the number of twigs per branch and the number of branches per tree and then divided that by the number of minutes per year. And so I was able to calculate how far a single tree moved in a single year. You might have a guess. The answer is actually 186,540 miles, or seven times around the globe. And so simply by shifting our perspective from a single trunk to the many dynamic twigs, we are able to see that trees are not simply static entities, but rather extremely dynamic.And I began to think about ways that we migh