astronomy

John Ascher

John Ascher is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John Ascher rather than just read about it. In short: John S. Ascher is an American entomologist.

Key takeaways

John Ascher belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John Ascher to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John Ascher from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

John S. Ascher is an American entomologist. He specializes in the study of Apoidea (bees as well as sphecid wasps) and has been described as "one of the world's leading native bee taxonomists."

Career Ascher is an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore and is the senior project manager of the Bee Database at the American Museum of Natural History. Ascher has compiled an index of all known bee species in our biosphere, which as of 2008 totaled 19,200 types of bees. Ascher told NPR’s Talk of the Nation in 2013, “We know that this is a big underestimate because there are vast numbers of new species…waiting in our collections for a taxonomist to have the resources to describe them.” He led the data-collection effort on one project that determined “that declining bee species tend to have larger body sizes, restricted diets, and shorter flight seasons [and] ‘southern’ bees reaching their northern distributional limits in the Northeast are increasing, a finding that could reflect a response to climate change.” His data was also used to generate a map of bee diversity worldwide that determined bees prefer dry, treeless landscapes in temperate zones rather than dense, humid forests, which is an “unusual distribution.” Daniel Cariveau of the University of Minnesota’s Cariveau Native Bee Lab described the creators of the map project as “really some of the best taxonomists in the world.” Ascher found the newly identified bee species Lasioglossum gotham in a New York City botanic garden.

References

Data related to John Ascher at Wikispecies

External links John Ascher publications indexed by Google Scholar BugGuide Contributing Editor Biography

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John Ascher

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John Ascher claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John Ascher before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John Ascher ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John Ascher

In research: John Ascher appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John Ascher in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John Ascher is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century births, 21st-century American zoologists, Academic staff of the National University of Singapore, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John Ascher outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study John Ascher in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John Ascher means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John Ascher out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John Ascher in simple terms?

John S. Ascher is an American entomologist.

Why does John Ascher matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John Ascher?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John Ascher.