Whales – competing with us for food, or helping to sustain the phytoplankton production on which most life in the oceans depends? The story and video at this link make a good case for the latter. Then there's the wolves – their return to Yellowstone Park in the US has led to a whole cascade […]
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presenting on plants at WCeLfest
For the last few years our Centre for e-Learning has run WCeLfest – a day of presentations & discussion around using various technology tools to enhance teaching & learning. I always find these sessions very valuable as there are a lot of people doing some really interesting things in their classrooms, & there's always something […]
Continue readingconcerns & conspiracy theories
Any discussion around water fluoridation will bring up quite a number of concerns, but increasingly – on-line anyway – conspiracy theories also come to the fore. I think the latter need to be addressed, but not at the risk of ignoring or failing to address the former. Worrying about the nature of what's in our […]
Continue readingthe male himalayan monal – an absolutely gorgeous bird
Another for the ‘gosh, isn’t this beautiful?!’ files: the Himalayan Monal (the national bird of Nepal). (Image via Facebook: Tambako the Jaguar; Flickr — with Robin Subba, Sarvesh Wangawad,Jeriko Angue, Roberto Delapisa, Jonas Mgr, Neelesh Suryavanshi, Shashank Asai,Sushant Bhujel and Pabitra Lamichhane.) This stunning bird (Lophophorus impejanus) is a type of pheasant, and like other pheasants the species is strongly sexually dimorphic: the males […]
Continue readingperhaps the most inspiring graduation address i have ever heard
At the recent graduation ceremony for students from Waikato University’s Faculty of Science & Engineering (& those from its sister Faculty, Computing & Mathematical Sciences), we were privileged to hear an absolutely inspirational address from the recipient of an honorary Doctorate at that ceremony: Dr Gordon Stephenson. And I mean, inspirational! After the event I […]
Continue readingthe gastric-brooding frog – not quite back from the dead
I first found out about gastric-brooding frogs (Rheobatrachus silus) when reading Stephen Jay Gould’s essay "Here Goes Nothing" (as published in the 1991 book Bully for Brontosaurus). As he said, these frogs really do live up to their name: the frog swallows its fertilised eggs, broods tadpoles in its stomach, and gives birth to young frogs […]
Continue readingsee-through creatures
This is a 'glass frog' (image from National Geographic): It's one of a number of transparent or translucent creatures featured on the National Geographic's "Weird & Wild" blog. (Actually I take issue with the Monarch butterfly image there, as strictly speaking we're seeing a transparent pupal case; the butterfly inside is definitely not see-through.) Glass […]
Continue readingtool use – even more widespread than you thought
Yesterday my ‘Facebook science feed’ (ie daily browsing) brought me this stunning image (click the picture for the hyperlink). It’s from the book Thinkers of the Jungle: the Orangutan Report (Shuster, Smits & Ullal, 2008) & shows a young orangutan apparently using a long stick in lieu of a spear, copying local fishermen as they […]
Continue readingmoss s*x and springtails
Sexual reproduction in flowering plants is often mediated by the birds & the bees (& other animal agents), but up until now the life cycle has appeared much simpler in plants like the mosses. Until fairly recently it was generally accepted that moss sex was a case of ‘just add water’: this released sperm from […]
Continue readingsingapore’s stupendous supertrees
I’ve just got back from the 2011 International Biology Olympiad. Our team did well – Richard Chou received a silver medal; Sumin Yoon & Evelyn Qian won bronzes, & Eddie McTaggart was awarded a Certificate of Merit. So well done, all round! It was a testing time for our students, who were competing against the […]
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