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More Rotiferology!

I truly love these little guys!  This is an awesome video!

How beauty was found in a slimeball

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Facebook: Tiny Peacock spider 

This is such a beautiful tiny spider (that's a fingernail on the left). I can't see how even spider haters couldn't love the way this little guy looks.

Credit: Jurgen Ott

Octavious Pickard-Cambridge noted in his original description that "it is difficult to describe adequately the great beauty of the colouring of this spider".

The red, blue and black colored males have flap-like extensions of the abdomen with white hairs that can be folded down. They are used for display during mating: the male raises his abdomen, then expands and raises the flaps so that the abdomen forms a white-fringed, circular field of color. The species, and indeed the whole genus Maratus have been compared to peacocks in this respect. The third pair of legs is also raised for display, showing a brush of black hairs and white tips. While approaching the female, the male will vibrate his abdomen while waving raised legs and tail, and dance from side to side.

Both sexes reach about 5 mm in body length. Females and immatures of both sexes are brown but have colour patterns by which they can be distinguished from related species

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Printed robot moves with a beat | Technology | Science News

Printed robot moves with a beat | Technology | Science News:

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Ok - is this a robot at all? Or is it some sort of between life and machine? It's pretty interesting if you ask me.

Hey there - where's my suet???

This afternoon I heard a fussing noise on the front porch. It didn't sound like a squirrel and it sure wasn't a chickadee or a chipmunk. So I went and peaked out. There was a pileated woodpecker standing on the railing making all kinds of racket - not the usual jungle-bird call they make - but a really fussy fuss. Then it hopped up the post, looked at the window, pounded on the post, looked again and pounded again. I understood perfectly. The suet container that we fill throughout the winter was empty and he was letting us know. I didn't get a chance to get a picture this time. However, the suet is now filled.

Pileated woodpeckers are very large birds and are very gregarious (you can tell from the story above). They are common in the Upper Peninsula and are responsible for the square holes on trees. 

Can you literally throw away unwanted thoughts?

I'm going to try this!  Not that I have lots of negative thoughts but I do have some and this might just be a good way to dump those forever!

Can you literally throw away unwanted thoughts?:



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NASA - NASA Researchers Discover Ancient Microbes in Antarctic Lake

NASA - NASA Researchers Discover Ancient Microbes in Antarctic Lake:

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Maybe there IS life out there. Of course, the chance there isn't is pretty minuscule give the amount of galaxies, stars and planets out there. But here in our own solar system? Maybe there's a whole evolved group of advanced chemosynthetic critters living under the ice of Europa. Hmmmm...

Jumping Spiders are Watching You!

http://news.discovery.com/animals/spiders-watching-eyes-121016.html

I loved this article. In particular I have always loved to watch these little guys and I always thought they were looking at me - "you lookin at me???" And lo and behold, they were!  I'll have to take them in my living room (in a container of course) to watch TV - or the cats. Watching the cats should be interesting. Watching the cats watch the spider might be even more interesting.

Classification of Archaea

The first thing I learned is that I chose a very confusing topic. Archaea classification is somewhat up in the air. A recent report of an international meeting (http://ezpolson.nmu.edu:5296/10.1016/j.resmic.2010.11.007)  it was pointed out again and again that Archaeans are more like Eukaryotes (multi-celled organisms) than they are like true bacteria. This is true in many aspects of cell function and structure/chemical makeup. Another thing I learned is that some researchers refer to groups of archeans as Phyla and others as Kingdoms.

Some of the ways Archeans differ from other bacteria are in the cell wall chemicals; DNA replication, transcription and translation; cell division; vesicle formation; and other aspects and in all these the Archaeans are very similar to Eukaryotes.

My thought: maybe bacteria are the aliens and Archeans and Eukaryotes were here first.

Archaea: I've got friends in LOW places

This is my first Archaea entry. The questions I want to know the answers to are:
1. What exactly makes them unique among living things?
2. What about the genetics - how many genes, how many are shared with other bacteria, how much variation, etc.
3. Morphology - physical characteristics
4. Respiration -how do they get their energy?
5. How do they survive such extreme environments?
6. What environments are they found in and are there vast differences between those from the different environments?
7. Did they come from outer space?
8. What do we NOT know about them?
9. What research is being done currently?

Rotiferology?

One of my favorite animals - maybe my very favorite - is a rotifer.  Rotifers are tiny  animals about the size of many single-cell organisms. But these little creatures are very complex with complete organ systems.  They live in almost any environment where moisture is available, from the oceans to moist moss.This year the first place prize for the Olympus BioScape competition went to Charles Krebs for his photo of a rotifer. The image can be seen at http://www.olympusbioscapes.com/gallery/2011/.

My image - not nearly so amazing, is, nevertheless, amazing to me. A rotifer has cilia (hair-like fibers) that wave to bring food into its mouth. When these wave it often looks like wheels turning, thus giving them the old name "wheel animalcules".  Inside the rotifer's body are trophi, or jaws which, when looking at them under a microscope, can often be seen chomping away on whatever miniscule flotsam they are devouring.

Rotifers have one or more "toes" at the bottom that emits a type of glue that enables them to adhere to the substrate then they have the ability to dissolve the glue so they can swim on to a better spot. Some rotifers are able to form a type of protective spore which enables them to live dried out for a very long time - perhaps years.

Below is a picture taken by Damián H. Zanette and obtained from wikimedia Commons.

To my knowledge and based on my research, all known rotifers are free-living: that is they are not parasites or carriers of disease. I really love these little critters. 

Ant Farm Deluxe!

My latest creation is an ant farm made of 2 liter pop bottles, some sand (a combination of soil/sand from our yard and sandbox sand), some tubing laying around the lab (can get that in the pet department),a couple of lids from lab-type water squirt bottles (you can just make a hole in the cap of the popbottle but be sure to seal around it where the tubing goes through). Oh, yes, and of course ants and ant food. The very expensive ant food I've been using is vending-maching Rice Crispie Treats. They seem to like them a lot. I put half the ants in one side and half in the other. They have all moved into one side and keep the food on the other. They do walk across the tubing.

I ordered the ants from Carolina Biological but you can order them from a lot of places. Of course, they don't ship queens. In the summer you can collect ants. These are carpenter ants - big ones. Don't use tiny ones - there's no way to keep them in.

I'm having so much fun watching them.

Why is it so COLD?

This summer has really stunk weather wise in the UP. It has been cold. Really cold. There were three hard freezes in June. By the time people could get a garden growing there wasn't time to harvest in many cases. We did have a couple of warm days but most of the summer has been cold. I guess the idea that the hot get hotter and the cold get colder may have some merit. Given that the temperature of Lake Superior right now (end of August) is running around 56 F or 13 C according to the Michigan Sea Grant Coastwatch program I expect that a cold winter will freeze the lake over. Which means a colder winter since heat from the lake puts heat into our atmosphere and moderates the temperature near the lake. Which also means it will take longer to warm up next year so maybe another cold summer.

It would be different if this was unusual. But it seems that the past few summers have been colder than normal. I'm looking for a graph that would show how we have been deviating from the norm. I'll add that when I find it.

No science in summer? I have another life?

I haven't posted here in a long time. Why? Well, it might be that I really haven't had time although I did some really cool science stuff last summer. I promise to catch up soon. In the mean time check out Second Life, a virtual world (metaverse) with currently over 200 universities, government entities like NASA and NOAA, non-profit organizations, politicians, malls, residential areas, clubs, activist groups, and hands-on educational material. You can get more information from http://secondlife.com. Here is a picture of me in my second life temporary office.
I learned about Second Life from NASA (my next post will be about seeing the shuttle launch) and I was kind of embarrassed that a technonerd like me had never heard of it. Anyway I have now and am introducing my students to it. Over 9 million avatars have been registered (yes some of those probably represent the same person - maybe as many as 1 million of them. So that means only 8 million actual people have experienced Second Life). In the past 30 days over 1 million people have been "in world" and typically, when I check, between 35,000 and 45,000 people are there at any one given time. I am working on it as a teaching/learning tool but yes, I did get a real charge out of visiting the deck of the Enterprise.

Soon to come, a video of my experiences there. By the way, this is an adult world. Some areas are rated "mature" and others are PG. But you have to be 18 to participate. There is another world for teens called Teen Second Life (ages 13-18) and adults are restricted - they have to have a background check, a sponsoring institution like a school, and are limited to one island. Teens have to be validated by a parent. It is likely that a few creeps slip through the cracks but, since the environment is such that there are pretty good controls, apparently they tend to get reported fairly quickly. For little kids who want a virtual experience, try Club Penguin (http://www.clubpenguin.com).

Okapi again

I am posting this picture of one of my favorite animals for a special girl. I took it at the St. Louis, Missouri zoo last week.

Lack of Reality is too Unreal for me.

I wish someone could explain how the physics of subatomic particles can tell me that reality doesn't exist? Maybe this really is the Matrix! The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle has been used by radical constructivists as evidence that reality is all in our own minds. If that is true then what is the point of studying anything? If there is no ecosystem then why study it? If there is no Earth then why try to save it? If there is no fat, then why not just eat chocolate? Sounds like a deal to me (the chocolate thing that is). Now there is a new study that is supposedly backing up this idea. http://www.world-science.net/othernews/070425-reality.htm. I am a relatively bright person but I still don't get this whole idea. Just because something is unstudiable does that mean it doesn't exist? Sounds like a bit of scientific arrogance if you ask me. According to John Wheeler, "No el­e­men­ta­ry phe­nom­e­non is a phe­nom­e­non un­til it is an ob­served phe­nom­e­non". Basically, as I read it, since particle movement and velocity are random and, since position, spin or speed can be observed at a moment but cannot be predicted before or after that moment, if you aren't looking, reality doesn't exist. Little children think that, when they play peek-a-boo the person disappears (or child psychologists and learning theorists think they think this). These theories are like that. If no one is observing then it isn't real. Again, that seems really arrogant.

I can buy the randomness - Einstein apparently had problems with that. Perhaps it is the randomness that keeps it all together. Too much order might result in events of harmonics that would break the universe apart like the Tacoma Narrows bridge or other bridges that suffer due to resonance: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/meetsusp.html#clips.

This is just science according to Carolyn, of course. I am not an atomic physicist but I wonder how they justify studying anything if it isn't there at all?

SCIENCE TEACHING!!!

Hey science teachers! Do I have a deal for you!!! Seriously, we have some great programs going on here at NMU. For all K-12 science teachers, there are two classes offered during July for 2 weeks only - 4 credits in 2 weeks in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan. What a wonderful time and place for a family vacation! One is entitled "The Effective Teaching of Science" and I promise it will be fun and exciting. The other is "Exploring your Environment". E-mail me or visit http://www-instruct.nmu.edu/education/clowe for more information.

For K-8 teachers of all types (ESPECIALLY those who don't know much about science) there is an all-online course in the fall, "The Living World" which is a 4 credit laboratory based life science course. The good thing is that you DO NOT have to know any science or anything about online classes to take it. I will walk you through every step. See the link above or contact me directly for information.

Seriously Big Bugs

Just some catching up. When I was in St. Louis for the National Science Teachers Association, I had the opportunity to handle some seriously big bugs. Both of them are types of walking sticks. These are well-camouflaged insect-eating insects. I am not sure but I wouldn't be surprised if these wouldn't eat a small lizard or other animal. The hands in the picture are not mine although I did get to hold them. I couldn't hold and take a picture at the same time. One of the pictures appeared below as well but I wanted to speak of them again. We talk a lot about how there were huge insects in older times. Well, some of the insects today aren't all that small. There are also very large spiders (tarantulas) and huge centipedes (I once saw one about 13 inches long, about 3/4 inch wide black centipede with orange legs while at girls camp in southern Oklahoma). Goliath beetles can be 4 1/2 inches long, about as long as these bugs, but much heavier thanks to their heavy bodies. There are the Io moths and some butterflies that can have wingspans of almost a foot. So, while most "bugs" are little, some are really pretty big. By the way, there is a such thing as a true bug. A true bug is an insect with a sucking mouth part and wings that make an X on their backs. Stink bugs and weevils are true bugs. And, yes, stink bugs really do stink.

More Birds and Snow

Oh please - not more birds. As my son Curt says, "Why would you want to take pictures of birds? Other people do that and you can just get the ones they took." I suppose so but still - I like taking pictures of birds....MY birds!

Our snowstorm is up to 4 feet - probably a bit more. There was one station with 52 inches of snow this week. That is a record since snow depths were recorded for April in the UP. It is still snowing but is supposed to diminish this evening after dumping another 2-4 inches.

Above is a picture of snow on our oak branches and a fir in the background. To the right are icicles outside my home office window.

Now for the birds. As I mentioned before, there have been sometimes up to 20 birds on our porch and bird feeders. As a result much competition exists. The chickadees and nuthatches seem to lose out the most. I got this humourous picture of birds competing for a spot. The two reddish birds are purple finches and the yellow birds are American goldfinches. My captions, from RIGHT to LEFT, are: "MOVE!" "NO!" "If you're going to fight I'm outta here!" and finally "These guys really annoy me." To the right is a picture of a female purple finch in flight.

To the right is a female purple finch in flight. Besides the purple and gold finches, and chickadees and nuthatches, we have had juncos, hairy woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers (on our suet), and a blue jay or two.

SNOW?????

Well, today is April 4, 2007 and we are in the midst of a blizzard. Yep, not unheard of but not common either. The record for this area was 25 ½ inches in Negaunee in 1977. We are a ways from that but we have at least a foot outside. The snow was nearly completely gone yesterday with only spots in the woods or where the plow had piled it up. It was a “snow day” at school today (which is a pretty rare occasion) and it remains to be seen whether we will have classes tomorrow. Pretty amazing for April I think.

This storm is pretty cool. It is a classic mid-latitude cyclone in which we are sitting in the “comma” and much of the moisture is being brought up from the Gulf of Mexico as you can see in the water vapor satellite image. In addition, the moisture is being augmented water vapor brought in by high winds blowing over Lake Superior.

Many birds have begun arriving from the south and are not adapted to this weather. It is, however, not that cold with current temperatures around 18 degrees F. We have filled both bird feeders in the past 24 hours and one is already empty. In addition, I have been throwing seed out on the ground for the juncos (snow birds). I have seen a white throated sparrow, several purple finches, a lot of gold finches and juncos and, of course, my regular customers, the chickadees and nuthatches.