Environment
Reflections On The Gulf Oil Spill: Conversations With My Grandpa | Observations
Two years ago, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform led to the spilling of almost five million barrels of oil in just a handful of months.
Science Sushi
Real science. Served raw.
Health
Reversing a heart attack: scientists reprogram scar tissue into working muscle
Cardiovascular disease is the world's leading cause of death. Approximately every 25 seconds, an American has a heart attack. One of the vessels to the heart gets blocked, cutting off blood flow to part of the heart...
Evolution
Parasite Insights: Using Lice To Map Socialization
Weighing in at only 40 grams, brown mouse lemurs are one of the smallest species of primate in the world. Their diminutive size as well as their nocturnal, tree-dwelling lifestyle makes them difficult to track and observe...
Environment
Native Hawaiians Provide Lessons In Fisheries Management
Roughly three-quarters of the Earth's surface is covered with water. As I stand on a beach in Hawaii and look out over the vast, blue expanse in front of me, I am overwhelmed by the immensity of the Pacific Ocean...
Evolution
Sexually deprived Drosophila become bar flies
"He caresses every bottle like it's the first one he's had, saying it ain't love, but it ain't bad." - Ani DiFranco Rejection stinks. It literally hurts.
Evolution
Hydra Watch What They Eat
Upon first glance, hydra seem like remarkably simple creatures. The basic description of a hydra would be a tube closed at one end with tentacles surrounding a mouth on the other, made of fragile tissue that can be as slim as two cells thick...
The Sciences
Social Media for Scientists Part 4: On The Road
A couple weeks ago, I braved the freezing north to speak at the University of Washington for a workshop focusing on Social Media for Scientists. The event was co-sponsored by AFSUW, Washington Sea Grant, and COSEE OLC as a part of the Beyond the Ivory Tower series, a set of free public lectures that hopes to provide researchers with tools and techniques to reach audiences and broaden the impacts of their work...
Evolution
The Sweet Taste of Fear
Lots of animals use chemical cues to avoid danger. Mice will run from the smell of cat urine, for example. But one particular instance of chemical fear signaling has been stumping scientists for 70 years; the release of Schreckstoff by schooling fish.For some species of fish, when a predator swoops in and injures one fish in a school, the rest will take off in fear...
Health
Who said cells aren't romantic?
Happy Valentine's Day! From: Heinz Kutzner (2001). For Valentine’s Day: Epithelial Sheath Neuroma Cancer, 91 (4)
Evolution
Darwin's Degenerates - Evolution's Finest | Observations
153 years ago on November 24th a naturalist named Charles Darwin published a book with a rather long and cumbersome title. It was called On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (for its sixth edition in 1872, the title was cut short to simply The Origin of Species , which was found to be much more manageable to say in conversation)...
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