Random Thought of the Day

Guam.

I recently educated myself about the interesting plight of Guam. This little island in Micronesia (it's actually petty large) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States. That means it has it's own area code. I mean, really? Think about this for a second; Guam is on the other side of the international date-line. But you can call it toll-free from most landlines... (the area code is 671, btw). If I called Guam right now, it is about 7:00am on SATURDAY MORNING! That's tomorrow!!! Frankly, I'm a mildly appalled but mostly amused at all of the US's unincorporated territories. It seems very silly.

But I digress.

The real reason I wanted to tell you about Guam has to do with a good friend of mine who just spent her whole summer there. I had never really heard anything about Guam before I was first educated by mi amiga, Eleanor. Guam used to be home to a great diversity of birds. But then, in WWII, the US military introduced the brown treesnake to the island. Now Guam has no birds, but has the highest density of snakes in the world.

Here's a picture of Eleanor holding one of the world's LAST Guam Rails.

The majority of Guam's endemic species are now critically endangered or extinct. So sad.

In attempts to improve the plight of Guam's endemics, officials on the island have concocted a PLAN!

Get some dead mice. Stuff them with Tylenol, tie them to cardboard, add some streamers, and drop them from helicopters!

Oh good. Thank goodness someone came up with that idea. The island is saved!

But really, this might actually be a good idea even though it sounds completely absurd. As it turns out, the brown treesnake can not ingest acetaminophen. It's toxic to them. So, the hope is that these hungry little snakes will eat the dead, pill-stuffed mice and then die. Hopefully.

They're trying out this interesting method of snake-control on some small areas of forest first. If these experiments work, they might start dropping dead mice all over the island. The people of Guam really hate these snakes.

You can read the whole article here!

Random Thought of the Day

Have you ever heard of woodworms?

Have you ever heard woodworms?

Neither had I...

http://zimoun.ch/works/2009/woodworms1/woodworms1_mov.html

That's absolutely crazy?! Worms are making those sounds?

GROSS!

Research Symposium!!!

Whoa! I finally presented my research today! My colorful poster got a lot of attention and I was basically talking and explaining my research for all two hours of the symposium! It was GREAT!

Here's what the final product looked like



And that's what I have been researching for the past six months! Hopefully, I will continue this research in grad school and get my PhD working with the people who discovered wing-sounds in the first place. I can't wait!!!

Random Thought of the Day

I was recently assigned a short essay to write for my Mars Exploration class. The prompt was,

"How many people are in space right now?"

So I Googled it: "how many people are in space right now?"

and got this website:

www.HowManyPeopleAreInSpaceRightNow.com

Yup. That's it.
That was an easy essay.

As a side note, Don't you find it sad that we have been sending people into space for more than 50 years, and yet there are only SIX people in space right now... There has been essentially NO progress in space flight/travel/exploration since the mid-seventies. Does anyone even care about this anymore?

I find it very, very sad.

Random Thought of the Day

So, I am sitting here prepping for two different labs focusing on the identification of marine invertebrates and I just had to share some fun information!

Did you know that in some parts of the deep ocean, more than 80% of organisms are bioluminescent?!

That's a crazy high percentage, isn't it?! There's this chica, Edith Widder

who has dedicated her life to studying marine invertebrates of the deep oceans. She invented this brilliant, yet simple method to observe animals of the deep without scaring them off with bright lights and loud engines. With this new method she has discovered tons of new species! Check it out!



This is a video from TED Talks, of course. Once again, gotta love TED.

I just pulled an all-nighter...

Poor life-choice number one for this week: pulling an all-nighter.

I stayed up last night finishing my research poster. Don't worry, it turned out great, it's probably the best research poster you have ever seen. But I didn't go to bed until about 7:30.

Now that I have been up for a full 24 hours without sleep, I just have to wonder...

What would my brain look like on an MRI scan right now?!  I wonder if it's any different than a fully rested brain?!

So I found out!

Dear Internet,
I love you.
Love,
Robert

There was a study conducted in 2007 by Matthew Walker,et al. (The emotional human brain without sleep- a prefontal amygdala disconnect. Current Biology, 17:877-878) that put a whole bunch of well-rested (12) and 35-hour-sleep-deprived individuals (14) into a MRI scanner (not all at the same time, of course!) and showed them images to illicit an emotional response. Then when their brain was responding and showing emotion, the scientists took a picture:

The brain on the left is a normal brain, showing a normal emotional reaction in the amygdala region.

The brain on the right, is a sleep-deprived brain. It is showing an erratic, uncontrolled and over-activated emotional response. This crazy response, as it turns out, closely resembles a much more primitive pattern of activity. The sleep-deprived brain is unable to put emotional experiences into context and cannot produce controlled appropriate responses.

Therefore, sleep-deprived individuals really do turn into....

Zombies! Incapable of appropriate emotional responses to emotional experiences.

Ok, but really, this research suggests that sleep and psychological disorders may be linked. Previous studies have shown that many patients with psychiatric disorders often also suffer from sleep disorders.

So here's the big take-home message: Get plenty of sleep each night, and you really will wake up in a better mood and have a better, less emotionally stressful day! Thanks for the advice, mom! Even though you didn't know it, IT'S SCIENCE!

Now, if we could just work on your fly-catching hypotheses...

Birds Birds Birds Birds Birds Birds Birds Birds Birds Birds Birds

Some days, no matter how hard I try, all I can think about are birds.

This morning I woke up at 5AM to go birding. I spent four hours out and about (or oot and aboot as my marine bio prof would say - which, as a completely off-topic sidenote, can be easily confused with oot in a boot, which is a topic that comes up often in our marine biology conversations, as boats are integral parts of marine bio... Ok, that was a lengthy parenthetical... back to birds!). This particular morning, I brought along my nifty high-speed video camera with 20x optical zoom and had a TON of fun...

I have some really really really great, beautiful, pretty much perfect videos of flight, but I'm saving those to publish. Sorry! If you absolutely HAVE to see these amazing vids before I publish them, you should come to the Student Research Symposium on September 9th on the 2nd floor of Harned! I'll be showing a couple of them there!!! Get excited. 'Cuz I am.