The UC Davis Department of Chemistry's own Professor Jared Shaw will host the Science Café at DeVere's Pub in Downtown Davis on Aug. 13 at 5:30 p.m. This outreach, entitled "Big City Life: of Urban Flamingoes and Coral Reef Villages," is just one of many monthly gatherings that encourage casual, open-forum scientific discussion. Professor Shaw's research is focused in organic chemistry, developing new reactions, and synthesizing natural products. His research team is in the works of developing exhibits that will highlight natural plant products in partnership with the UC Davis Arboretum.

These are not your urban lawn flamingos! This pair dancing in the low tide in Mumbai’s busy harbor are Lesser Flamingos, considered near-threatened species due to declining populations in Africa and India. Yet, over the past decade, some 10-25 thousand of them have been turning up in Mumbai’s Thane Creek to spend the winter right in the middle of a megacity of over 20 million people. I photographed this pair just a year ago at Sewri Port, an industrial dockyard area known more for repairing boats than harboring such wildlife, which now teems in the creek’s recovering mangroves. Credit, Madhusudan Katti.