Hedwig Pöllöläinen
grrlscientist
Posts by this author
February 18, 2007
Tuberculosis is a stubborn infection that takes takes six months to treat effectively. As a result, this is the source of many problems in developing countries and when dealing with the homeless. However, doctors from London's St George's Medical School will test a combination of two antibiotics on…
February 18, 2007
A research team from the University of Arizona found that the average office desktop harbours 400 times more bacteria than the average office toilet seat. Additionally, they also discovered that, on average, women have three to four times the amount of germs in, on, and around their work area.…
February 17, 2007
Located in the Andes Mountains of South America, the Quelccaya Ice Cap is the largest tropical body of ice in the world. According to recent research, one of the glaciers in this ice cap, the Peruvian Qori Kalis (pictured), is rapidly melting and could soon vanish completely, providing the clearest…
February 17, 2007
Knockdown of the kinesin Eg5 leads to mitotic defects. Knockdown of Eg5 levels by treatment with siRNA results in cells with monopolar spindles and a mitotic delay (right hand cell). Microtubule staining is shown in green, Eg5 in red and DNA in blue.
Image: BMC Developmental Biology. [Archives…
February 17, 2007
When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, 10 tons of sulfur were blasted into the stratosphere, which is 10-40 kilometers above the earth's surface. As a result of this eruption, earth's average surface temperature decreased by 0.6 degrees celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit) for two years afterwards.
The…
February 17, 2007
Japanese firm Fujitsu is perfecting a technology that can hide information in plain sight by encoding data into a picture that is invisible to the human eye but can be decoded by a cell phone camera. Fujitsu believes this technology will have important uses in the publishing industry.
"The concept…
February 17, 2007
The second edition of the new blog carnival, Oekologie, is now available. For those who are not familiar with Oekologie, it is the the carnival of the finest ecology and environmental science writing in the blogosphere.
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tags: blog carnival, Oekologie, nature
February 16, 2007
Carolina Wrens, Thryothorus ludovicianus,
on the photographer's front porch light puffed up to keep warm.
Note the polka dots -- a pattern not seen when the plumage is normally laid down.
Image: John Schukman
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall…
February 16, 2007
The Panamanian golden frog, Atelopus zeteki,
is one of roughly 110 species of harlequin frog (Atelopus),
many of which are dying out. Although this species still survives, its
numbers have fallen significantly.
Image source.
Zoos around the world are collecting thousands of threatened species of…
February 16, 2007
Born after just 24 weeks of gestation and weighing only 1lb 8oz., Lewis Goodfellow was a premature baby. Worse, one of his lungs failed so he was unable to get enough oxygen into his bloodstream. Things became so dire for this infant that the family began to make funeral arrangements.
However,…
February 16, 2007
Brenthia hexaselena, a species of metalmark moth,
flares its hind wings (HW) and spreads its forewings (FW) to mimic a jumping spider.
In lab trials, spiders caught 6 percent of the metalmark moths presented to them, as opposed to 62 percent of other moth species. What's more, the spiders…
February 16, 2007
This list of 20 amazing facts about voting in America should make you think hard about the "moderinization" of voting machines and how easy it is to steal an election with them.
80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
There is no federal agency with…
February 16, 2007
Normally I do not review books that have been out for longer than a year or so, but while I was in the hospital, I decided to celebrate Columbus Day by reading a book that was sent to me by my blog pal, Tara. This book, Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis by Deborah Hayden (New York…
February 15, 2007
Awhile ago, I linked to an article about acetaldehyde (pictured), which is the toxic ethanol metabolite that gives people a hangover when they drink too much. This week, I read an article in the New Scientist about acetaldehyde. It turns out that acetaldehyde is found in more substances than you…
February 15, 2007
This is one of a series of photos of these animals making the rounds on the internet ..
The odds of seeing an albino moose are astronomical and to see [them] in the upper peninsula of Michigan, near Wisconsin, is even greater than astronomical. To see two of them together is nearly impossible.…
February 15, 2007
Snow Moon.
Here's a picture that David took on 2 February 2007 of the full moon, this one known as the Snow Moon because it is the first full moon in February. The photo was taken with a new Pentax K100D DSLR, attached at the prime focus of a Celestron C-8 telescope via an f/6.3 focal reducer,…
February 15, 2007
NYC is the first city in the world to sanction its own brand of condom. To introduce them to the public, more than 150,000 of these condoms were handed out free to subway riders across the five boroughs on Valentine's Day.
The condoms' basic black plastic wrapper simply says "NYC condom" on the…
February 15, 2007
A seed that was discovered in the 1970s in an archaeological site and was found to be 2,000 years old has sprouted, making it the oldest fertile seed known. This seed produced a date palm that was plentiful in Roman times -- a plant that has since disappeared.
"People tell me the tree I'm raising…
February 15, 2007
The book this picture came from said some of the paint jobs cost $15,000 and had to be repeated every 3 months as the cat's hair grows out? It must be nice to have $60,000 a year just to keep your cat painted!
I think I found my new job.
February 15, 2007
The Bush administration has made no secret of its disdain for science, especially science that pertains to global warming, stem-cell research and endangered animals and plants. The chilling effect this has on science, public health and on the public good is documented in Chris Mooney's book, The…
February 14, 2007
The Valentine's Day/Darwin Day edition of Tangled Bank is now available for your reading pleasure. Curiously, they did not link to the dozen or so stories I did send to them, but instead, chose to link to the latest edition of Birds in the News, a link I had not submitted for consideration. Hrm.
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February 14, 2007
River kingfisher, Alcedo atthis.
Orphaned image. Contact me to receive proper credit.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural…
February 14, 2007
Madagascar blind snake, Xenotyphlops mocquardi.
A rare blind snake has been rediscovered in Madagascar a century after its last sighting. The snake, which looks like a long, skinny pink worm, was only known from two other specimens, both discovered in 1905.
"They're really rare because they're…
February 14, 2007
Villagers in southwestern China are puzzled by a county government's decision to paint an entire barren mountainside green.
Workers who began spraying Laoshou mountain in August told villagers that they were doing so on orders of the county government but were not told why, media reports said…
February 14, 2007
The film captured the squid, Taningia danae, in action: 1 The squid swims towards the bait; 2 It spreads its arms wide; 3 It swims around the bait, twisting its body; 4 It grabs the bait with its eight arms.
Japanese scientists have discovered that large deep-sea squids produce flashes of…
February 13, 2007
Stones excavated from a forest in the Ivory Coast.
They are 4,300 years old and have use patterns consistent with what is seen in modern chimpanzee sites.
People like to believe they are somehow more special than animals, that we are set apart from other animals in some mysterious way. For quite…
February 13, 2007
Citheronia splendens sinaloe,
a member of the family Saturnidae, a species on limited range in the SW USA and extending down into Mexico. This was photographed at Tierra de los Suenos in southeast Arizona. The photographer set up a sheet with moth lights behind and to the side of the main…
February 13, 2007
Helix Nebula,
photographed by the Spitzer Space Telescope Nasa/JPL-Caltech/K. Su (University of Arizona)
The Helix Nebula is a cloud of gas with the dead star appearing as a red dot in the middle of the nebula, like a red pupil in a green monster's eye. What created this nebula?
This has…
February 13, 2007
I stumbled across this video spoof and thought you would enjoy it too.
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tags: streaming video, politics, humor, satire
February 12, 2007
Western honeybee, Apis mellifera.
Image: William Connolley.
When I was in graduate school, I nearly decided to study social bees for my dissertation work, but in the end, I decided to pursue my greatest passion, birds. However, despite this, bees have long been a favorite animal of mine, and if…