The Remipede...

Hi. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Today, I just want to post a couple of links to articles on "the remipede". I think I've said before that, as a zoologist, I never know whether to be ashamed of my ignorance each time I learn of a new speices, or astounded at the world and the evolutionary process that genereated all these creatures. Weird animal of the day is the "Remipede": a cave-dwelling relative of the crab, lobster and woodlouse. In the case of this bizarre creature, it was at least fairly recently discovered- in fact the "Speleonectes" species discussed in this article has only been known to mankind for around a year, as the article explains-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090824115813.htm

Coincidentally, this odd little beings also feature in this month's National Geographic magazine, in the feature on diving in the Bahamas' "Blue Holes", where they are described as "living fossil[s] nearly unchanged for 300 million years". Interestingly, these weird troglodytic predators have venomous fangs, which they use to kill their prey (mostly other crustaceans, such as shrimps).

More information on the remipede can be found here-
http://whyfiles.org/2010/remipede/
and
here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remipedia

The Moon is Shrinking?

Hi Welcome to Weirdbeautiful,

Link of the day today is to this bizarre story that the moon may be shrinking (due to internal cooling): the evidence for this comprises images of unusual fault lines on the lunar surface that were captured by a probe. The lines- called "lobate scarps"- have been found in the moon's highlands, as this article explains-

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100819/tsc-moon-may-be-shrinking-say-experts-4b158bc.html

Link of the day- Red Clover and Images of Outerspace

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

First link-of-the-day today is this article on "The Garden Lady"'s blog on the Red Clover- I can't endorse any of the author's comments about the plant's medicinal benefits since I know nothing about the scientific research on this (or even if there have been any studies of its pharmacology), but it's an interesting article none-the-less-

http://www.thegardenlady.org/2010/02/15/red-clover-pink-purifier/

Today's second link is this "dazzling" gallery of images of outerspace released by NASA and other agencies, such as the European Space Agency- they include images of Asteroids, the Sun, Cassiopea and the surface of Mars.

http://news.uk.msn.com/photos/photo-galleries.aspx?cp-documentid=154300290

Third link-of-the-day is to this article in the International Herald Tribune about the activities of the oil-slick degrading bacterium Alcinovorax borkumensis (Alkinovorax- roughly translates as alkane- eater) in digesting the giant oil slick off the coast of Mexico-

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/science/earth/05microbe.html?ref=science

I wrote on this blog back in May that this would be the most likely end result of the spill and that the clean-up process could be speeded up by introducing this bacterium to the water (it exists in very low concentrations in sea water naturally)- you can find the link to that here-
http://victorianeblik.blogspot.com/2010/05/horseshoe-crabs-and-oil-spill-in-gulf.html
so now, at last, it seems to be happening.

Actually, I got the idea for that (no doubt scores of other microbiologists were thinking exactly the same thing, privately) by reading a great research paper by Susan Schneiker and colleagues some time ago. The paper- published in volume 24 (issue 8) of the journal "Nature Biotechnology"- described the sequencing of this amazing bacterium's genome and -essentially- went some way towards explaining some of its remarkable metabolic abilities. For what it is worth, there is a brief summary of the paper here-
http://ezinearticles.com/?Bees-and-Bacteria&id=2883002

Quote of the Week- E. O. Wilson on Insects

Peacock Butterfly, Inachis Io,on Buddleia bush (Buddleja sp.), England.

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Quote-of-the-day/week today is this cheering little gem from the American Scientist,
E. O. Wilson (b. 1929)-

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. "

You can find more information on Prof Wilson's work [here] and in this interview with him in Discover magazine by the Science Writer, Richard Conniff. (Richard Conniff is the author of the excellent book "Spineless Wonders", amongst other things).

Both photographs = Peacock Butterfly, Inachis Io,on Buddleia bush (Buddleja sp.), England, Victoria Neblik, 2010.

Floating Giraffes

Picture of the day-Giraffa camelopardalis,2010, taken atChester Zoo.

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Today, I wanted to share this link-
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/06/giraffe_flotation_dynamics.php to a great blog post by Darren Naish. His post is all about a research paper he produced with Don Henderson called 'Predicting the buoyancy, equilibrium and potential swimming ability of giraffes by computational analysis'; the title says it all, really. Anyway, Darren Naish's post is a great read and certainly fits in the "weird" category of this blog. You can find the full paper in The Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Thanks to Dolev R. for the tip-off to this link.

Links of the day- Diving Tigers, Sponges and "The First Animal".

(Image- "Fish Tank, London Zoo"- by V. Neblik- image not for sale- for more images and prints that are on sale, see: victorianeblik.com)

Hi. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

There are two links-of-the-day today, but first, I've put the "followers" box back on this page, so if you want to be able to find this blog again easily, please scroll down and click on the "follow" button- it's on the right near the bottom of the page. You can follow either publicly, with a picture and link back to your blog, or privately, in which case you'll be listed as an anonymous follower and there'll be no link back to you that anyone can find or follow.

First link-of-the-day today is this popular science book on sponges by former high school teacher, journalist and (present) diver, William Goodwin-

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1469841

- worth the detour for the images alone, there's also a highly readable and informative text to go with them: how educational books should be....

Second of today's links is this great picture of a tiger, diving- tigers are unusual amongst the cat-family for their love of water; however, you'd never guess that from the expression on this tiger's face ....

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1xaE0C/www.zadan.nl/divingtiger/

Diving Tiger link with thanks to StumbleUpon.com

Quote of the week- Henry David Thoreau- the artist and the artisan

"The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected."
-Henry David Thoreau

I think (for what it is worth) that this quote could probably be adapted to science- "the difference between a scientific "artisan" and a scientific genius is that the artisan applies the rules and practical techniques that others have developped to new problems, the genius/true scientific innovator develops new principals or new techniques".

From my own experience, the obvious example of this was the discovery of electron microscopy and its first application to biological samples in 1942: a development that led to a flurry of publications in animal anatomy (or, more accurately, micro-anatomy) as different scientists were able to exploit the technique. There are a great many examples of this in science- pretty much all scientific "fashions" (with the possible exception of the space race in the 1950s and 60s)historically originated in this way- the fascination with genetics in the 1980s was partly fueled by a technical breakthrough by Prof Sir Edwin Southern in 1975; the popularity of hydrocarbon chemistry in the 1960s is another example.