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cmcclain | December 18, 2006American supermarket chain Whole Foods Market has decided to stop marketing Icelandic products because of Iceland resuming commercial whaling.
cmcclain | December 18, 2006You ask and we deliver! And if you have ever had any doubt we are the baddest blog ever, we have carnivorous sponge video! Bolstered by a commenter about the mechansism of flesh eating sponges, I asked Dr. Vacelet to give some more insight into this process.
I was pointed to Vacelet & Duport (2004) Prey capture and digestion in the carnivorous sponge Asbestopluma hypogea (Porifera: Demospongiae). Zoomorphology 123: 179-190). Dr. Vacelet was also kind enough to provide this description.
The prey, mostly small crustaceans and other invertebrates provided with setae or thin appendages, is…
neurotopia | December 18, 2006Got a bunch of work to finish up and I'll get to posting it this afternoon. Keep your eyes peeled. Next one won't be for almost a month so there's no rush!
cmcclain | December 18, 2006 Click here if you want to know why this is the weirdest Christmas present ever.
petnoyer | December 18, 2006Jack Well, Great White, Thunder Horse, Tobago, and Silvertip. These are the names of the next frontier in oil exploration. Petroleum engineers call them "ultradeep discoveries", and they are happening here and now in the Gulf of Mexico. Together, these deep reservoirs promise to quench the American thirst for oil for up to ... five years. Read the New York Times story here.
"Five years?" you say, "Is that all?" Let's put it in perspective. The United States consumes about 20 million barrels a day. The current estimate for Gulf of Mexico reserves is 40 billion barrels of oil. The mean…
cmcclain | December 18, 2006A team under the Deep Atlantic Stepping Stones project possibly has unofficially discovered a new species of deep-sea eel. According to the explorers, numerous underwater sea mountains were also discovered, separated from each other by deep water and unexpectedly shaped like squares and triangles rather than cones. The highest seamount recorded by the expedition was 14,100 feet, and was 16,400 feet below the surface. The team plans to name the seamounts after science luminaries. The team members also report they have discovered a significant piece of the reproductive puzzle of deep-sea dumbo…
tqa | December 17, 2006As you can tell by looking at the main page, I haven't been blogging much (again) lately. It's been a long semester, and I've had a lot of catching up to do at school. Between grading papers and trying to catch up on my own work, I haven't had very much time to spend here. And, of course, now that the semester is over, I'm going out of town - to Europe - and I don't know how much internet access I'll have. Access permitting, I'm going to try to post at least a few things from the road, and I'm going to put a few things into the hopper right now to make sure that I'll have at least a few posts…
grrlscientist | December 17, 2006The Mothership posted a picture of all of her sciencebloggers here -- can you find me?
grrlscientist | December 17, 2006Well, I surprised myself by volunteering to host this upcoming issue of the Carnival of the Liberals. Since this will be the first issue of this carnival's second year, let's start with some important issues. According to the rules, I am allowed to choose the ten best recent blog essays that discuss liberal issues. Even though I am interested in what you have to say about any liberal issue, what can be more important than your opinion for what Democrats should do to win this upcoming national election, besides hold their collective breaths and hope that no one screws up? How can dems get back…
sb admin | December 17, 2006by Revere and cross-posted at Effect Measure on October 24, 2006
An urgent communication from the World Health Organization (WHO) expresses concisely how far behind we are in being prepared for a global pandemic of influenza. Currently there are a number of vaccines under development, some of which might protect against an H5N1 virus that has become readily transmissible from person to person. But none are in production, and even if some were found adequate (not the case) and large scale production begun (far from the case), we, the world, would still be in a fix:
"We are presently several…
cmcclain | December 17, 2006What country as an American would you prefer to take residence in, Iran or Iceland? Sure you said Iceland...with high literacy rates and polar hotties there may even be a science fiction reading honey*. But maybe you should go with Iran.
A recent article in the Mehr News titled Bottom trawl, most destructive form of fishing must be abandoned makes these comments...
Referring to bottom trawl fishing [an Iranian expert} said the method must be abandoned because it leads to the extinction of many species of maritime creatures. Ninety-five percent of the material caught in deep sea bottom…
tlambert | December 17, 2006Seed has published a group portrait of all the ScienceBloggers. I'm hiding at the back somewhere.
cmcclain | December 17, 2006
It had been assumed for a century before that the deep-sea fauna was depauperate, and prior to then that the great depths were essentially sterile. These ideas were largely a carry over from Edward Forbes in the late 1800's, who proposed the azoic hypothesis for the deep sea. Interestingly, his idea was largely based on samples from the Aegean Sea now known to have relatively low densities of organisms compared to other deep-sea areas. The lack of deep-sea life was overturned by several later reports of deep-sea species attached to sounding lines and the dredging cruises of the H.M.S.…
purepedantry | December 16, 2006Check out the caricature of all the ScienceBloggers in the new issue of Seed. I would be the one in the top right with the tie -- the only with a tie. That will teach me to send them a nice photo...
cortex | December 16, 2006Is inflation really so bad? The great scourge of the American economy - and the economic phenomenon that gives Greenspan and Bernanke nightmares - turns out to have some pretty progressive side-effects. This paper is from the December 2006 issue of the Journal of Political Economy:
This study quantitatively assesses the effects of inflation through changes in the value of nominal assets. It documents nominal asset positions in the United States across sectors and groups of households and estimates the wealth redistribution caused by a moderate inflation episode. The main losers from…
grrlscientist | December 16, 2006Copy Cat, the world's first cloned cat had three kittens (pictured) in September -- and she even did it the natural way. Copy Cat was cloned by Texas A&M University researchers in 2001. Mother and kittens are doing well, said Duane Kraemer, an A&M veterinary medicine professor who helped clone her and has been taking care of her since.
"They're cute and we thought people ought to know about the birth," Kraemer said. "But we're hoping it doesn't cause the same frenzy CC did."
Cited story and photo source.
cmcclain | December 16, 2006Although the earliest interest and sampling in the deep sea occurred in the late 1800's, a majority of deep-sea exploration did not occur until after the 1960's. The current amount of sampling and exploration of this great environment is without precedent. Despite this, new species and new habitats are constantly being found (e.g. Roxanne...You Don't Have to Put on the Red Light!). Hydrothermal vents were not discovered until 1976. So how much of the deep sea has actually been explored or sampled? This is indeed a tough question to answer. To derive an exact answer we would have to…
grrlscientist | December 15, 2006
Ben Morris stands next to the espresso stand he owns near Seaside, Ore., on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2006. The stand avoided the fall of a 60-foot tree during the storm. As an aside, I have purchased a latte from this espresso stand when I was out birding. They had decent coffee, especially in the opinion of a freezing birder from Seattle (me), so I hope they survive this setback.
Image: Lori Assa, AP/The Daily Astorian.
Wow, I thought I was having some mighty rough times, but the Pacific Northwest has also had more than its fair share of rough times recently. First, a snowstorm and then,…
grrlscientist | December 15, 2006
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Chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system; a few ounces will kill a small sized dog.
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tags: chocolate, dog. weird facts
cmcclain | December 15, 2006The World Conservation Union as released Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas and you can download your own copy! Excellent information and pictures. Print them up and give them as presents for the holidays. Sure everyone for the next year will talk about how much a geek you are but on the upside your LIVING THE CAUSE. Desea vivo la revolucion profunda del mar!