How fast does the average temperature change on Earth?
Check out this amazing comic strip.
It’s pretty mind-blowing stuff.
Food for thought:
Munroe, Randall. “Earth Temperature Timeline.” Xkcd. http://xkcd.com/1732/.
What’s the best way to understand the reality of antibiotic resistance developing in bacteria? Set it up in a mega-sized petri dish.
A team of scientists at Harvard University have set up an elegant way to visualize the antibiotic resistance that bacteria develop as they are exposed to antibiotics over time.
The team created a giant (really: it was 2′ x 4′!) petri dish with bands of increasing levels of antibiotic. The lowest levels of antibiotic were along the edges of the plate, while the center had 1,000 times the amount of antibiotic that the bacteria can typically survive.
Over the span of just 10 days, the initially drug-susceptible bacteria conquered each successive level of antibiotic concentration. You can watch their beautifully dangerous progression across the plate in the video above.
Food for thought:
Read more about the experiment, set-up, and results in the original article.
Pesheva, Ekaterina. “A Cinematic Approach to Drug Resistance.” Harvard Gazette. Harvard University, 8 Sept. 2016. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/09/a-cinematic-approach-to-drug-resistance.
Want to be part of conservation wildlife biologists’ efforts to monitor the recovery of animal populations at Gorongosa National Park?
Teams of conservation biologists have set up a network of over 50 motion activated cameras all over the park. These cameras take dozens of pictures a day, and have been active for a few years. Here’s where you step in.
Instead of spending thousands of hours categorizing the animals found in each photo, the biologists are outsourcing it to citizens all over the world. Anyone (including you!) can logon to https://www.wildcamgorongosa.org/ and start categorizing the animals you see in each photo.
The website will teach you how to identify species from the massive list of native animals. If you find a particularly awesome (or confusing) photo, you can even open up a chat with other volunteers.
I’m keeping track of the animals I’ve seen. My goal is to identify one of each animal on the species list! So far I’ve seen:
Have fun identifying animals!
A team of researchers from the University of Florida have just identified a key example of protective biodiversity. They noticed that during a drought, while most salt marsh grasses quickly die off some small patches of grass remain.
When they examined the surviving patches of grass, they found that the patches were heavily surrounded (“paved”) with ribbed mussels. The community of mussels is able to trap water effectively around the base of the salt marsh grasses, protecting it from the effects of drought.
In fact, when the drought is over, the patches of surviving salt marsh grass are able to quickly repopulate the area. The salt marsh is able to return to their health it had prior to the drought.
Food for thought:
What are the mussels getting out of this relationship?
Does this mean we should transplant mussels into other drought affected salt marshes?
Leave your thoughts in the comments!
Article adapted from: “Biodiversity in Salt Marshes Builds Climate Resilience.” NSF News. National Science Foundation. http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=189416&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click.
Lassar Science 