Category: science
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Persistent Food Myths
We live in a time when the concept of famine is distant. It happens to someone else, far away, and we collect pennies at school to help the poor starving children we can’t quite identify with. I am an American, and my culture is one of plenty. The cornucopia of what is available to me…
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Hydrostatic Skeletons: Or, why don’t we have ten foot tall slugs?
In a recent post I mentioned my childhood battle with slugs, and John in Philly commented, infecting me with the delightful mental image of a small girl holding a ten-foot tall slug at bay with her salt sprayer. So why don’t we have ten-foot slugs? Elephants can get that big. Whales get even bigger, although…
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Science Experiment: Yeast
My son decided he wanted to take part in the science fair at his school. The Little Man is in 6th grade this year, and they had just been discussing cell structure in classes, so when he asked me a few weeks ago for help with ideas on what to do, I suggested yeast among…
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At the junction of Science and Motherhood
One of life’s little joys – and there are many such joys in my life, even the small, strange ones I can’t explain – is talking to my children about what I’m doing, and learning. I anticipate that continuing even when I’m not actively in classes. Learning doesn’t end when school does. Which is why…
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Water is wet, the Sky is Blue, I’m Busy…
I should probably have tried to make that rhyme, but instead I’ll leave you with some photos. I have to run the girls to school, and then make my boy his breakfast and pack his lunch and… and later today I have a quiz over the last 40+ trees we identified recently. Her quizzes are…
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Myth-Busting: Bacteriophage
#ForScience You can find the first myth-posting here. This one is so egregiously wrong I’ve corrected it in several places… and it finally exasperated me enough to put the effort into creating this post, so I have one link that I can toss in a comment when I see the meme float across facebook again.…
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Myth-Busting: Daddy Longlegs
As my readers know, I do hang out on FB, with all the pitfalls that entails. I really enjoy the ability to instantly interact with friends and family that live around the globe. It’s great for that. But I’m constantly tripping over stuff that is just… not true. Most of the time I just scroll…
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Grist for the Mill
As a writer, I find that if I am not constantly feeding my brain, the creative well will run dry. Right now, life has been busy enough that even with school starting, the brain has been starving. This will change quickly, I know, as next week all my classes will be in session and in…
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Cute and Animated
I know I’m among the rare few who really think some spiders are cute. I think all of them serve a vital ecological purpose, and try not to kill them just because I can see them (I draw the line at the bathroom and bedroom, they aren’t allowed there). Last night sitting in the backyard…
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Curmudgeon’s Corner: 6 Zillion Dollar Man
Written by Sanford Begley I was at the grocery a few days ago and a number of things ran through my mind and coalesced into a thought that bothers me. When is a disability an advantage? I’m not talking about a living off taxpayer money and claiming victim status advantage. I’m talking about a real…
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Science Blogs
I decided recently that I need to be reading in the field that I plan to work in. I have been doing this, for school, research, and pleasure, but usually with books and papers I picked up for specific points. I follow Derek Lowe’s blog with pleasure, and have for years, but it’s unlikely I’ll…
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Kidney Function
So, it’s finals week. I’d planned a book review, but instead I needed to rehearse an essay for the physiology exam today. Which I thought I’d share here. Because… oh, no reason. More than most of you ever wanted to know about what does, and doesn’t, go into your pee. If you want fun animations…