The pattern between winter weather and bird migration seems to be common knowledge: birds fly south for the winter. But how does climate really limit bird distributions and what changes have scientists seen as global climate patterns continue to fluctuate?

While most students were packing up in preparation for Fall Break, 1,000 ticket-holders joined National Public Radio’s Ira Flatow in Bailey auditorium for a live broadcast of Science Friday to millions of listeners across hundreds of NPR affiliate stations. Science Friday is a weekly science talk radio program entering its 19th year of hosting expert panel discussions and listener call-ins on current issues in science, nature and technology.

Note: The author of this column is not an economist, a financier, an expert on how universities spend money or even majoring in a field related to anything presented in the following work. Even worse, he’s a physics major, which means people like him caused the recent financial debacle and thus should be the VERY LAST person you should take advice from. To compensate for this lack of expertise, he has attempted to include academic footnotes to make him sound smarter1.