National Science Foundation in the context of "National Center for Atmospheric Research"

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is a United States information and referral center in support of polar and cryospheric research. NSIDC archives and distributes digital and analog snow and ice data and also maintains information about snow cover, avalanches, glaciers, ice sheets, freshwater ice, sea ice, ground ice, permafrost, atmospheric ice, paleoglaciology, and ice cores.

NSIDC is part of the University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and is affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information through a cooperative agreement. NSIDC serves as one of twelve Distributed Active Archive Centers funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to archive and distribute data from NASA's past and current satellites and field measurement programs. NSIDC also supports the National Science Foundation through the Exchange For Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic (ELOKA) and other scientific research grants. NSIDC is also a member of the ICSU World Data System. sujit Serreze is the director of NSIDC.

The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Last Glacial Coldest Period, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period where ice sheets were at their greatest extent between 26,000 and 20,000 years ago. Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Europe, and Asia and profoundly affected Earth's climate by causing a major expansion of deserts, along with a large drop in sea levels.

Based on changes in position of ice sheet margins dated via terrestrial cosmogenic nuclides and radiocarbon dating, growth of ice sheets in the southern hemisphere commenced 33,000 years ago and maximum coverage has been estimated to have occurred sometime between 26,500 years ago and 20,000 years ago. After this, deglaciation caused an abrupt rise in sea level. Decline of the West Antarctica ice sheet occurred between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago, consistent with evidence for another abrupt rise in the sea level about 14,500 years ago. Glacier fluctuations around the Strait of Magellan suggest the peak in glacial surface area was constrained to between 25,200 and 23,100 years ago.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is an umbrella term used to group together the related technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It represents a broad and interconnected set of fields that are crucial for innovation and technological advancement. These disciplines are often grouped together because they share a common emphasis on critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills. The term is typically used in the context of education policy or curriculum choices in schools. It has implications for workforce development, national security concerns (as a shortage of STEM-educated citizens can reduce effectiveness in this area), and immigration policy, with regard to admitting foreign students and tech workers.

There is no universal agreement on which disciplines are included in STEM; in particular, whether or not the science in STEM includes social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, economics, and political science. In the United States, these are typically included by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Labor's O*Net online database for job seekers, and the Department of Homeland Security. In the United Kingdom, the social sciences are categorized separately and are instead grouped with humanities and arts to form another counterpart acronym HASS (humanities, arts, and social sciences), rebranded in 2020 as SHAPE (social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy). Some sources also use HEAL (health, education, administration, and literacy) as the counterpart of STEM.

Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.

Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B. F. Skinner.

Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American scientist, historian, and author. In 1985 he received a MacArthur Genius Grant, and he has written hundreds of scientific and popular articles and books. His best known is Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), which received multiple awards including the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. In 2005, Diamond was ranked ninth on a poll by Prospect and Foreign Policy of the world's top 100 public intellectuals.

Originally trained in biochemistry and physiology, Diamond has published in many fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography, and evolutionary biology. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Science, an honor bestowed by the President of the United States and the National Science Foundation. He was a professor of geography at UCLA until his retirement in 2024. Anthropologists have criticized his work as “shallow,” saying he overemphasizes geography and climate.

The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado system. CU Boulder is a member of the Association of American Universities, is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and has been referred to as a Public Ivy.

The university consists of nine colleges and schools and offers over 150 academic programs, enrolling more than 35,000 students as of January 2022. In 2021, the university attracted the support of over $634 million for research and spent $536 million on research and development according to the National Science Foundation, ranking it 50th in the nation. It receives the most NASA astrophysics technology grants of all academic institutions and is the only university in the world that has sent instruments to all planets in the Solar System.

The Exchange for Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic, is an Arctic research data management program that combines local traditional knowledge (LTK) and local observations data from Indigenous Arctic residents utilizing effective and appropriate western methods to properly share Arctic Indigenous Knowledge. The LTK data the program stewards consists of observations of sea ice, weather, wildlife and comes in many forms such as written interview transcripts, audio or video tapes and files, photographs, artwork, illustrations and maps.Housed at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences (CIRES), ELOKA is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Arctic Observing Network (AON) research program that came out of the 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY).