The Star-Ledger reports that 95% of NJ bats died off this winter from a fungal infection known as “white-nose syndrome.” That sounds pretty damned scary, until you read the article and find that the headline was taken from a single reported hibernaculum (cool word meaning place where critters hibernate), the Hibernia Mine in Rockaway Township. Still, that doesn’t mean this isn’t serious. While Hibernia Mine might be an exceptional case, who knows (yet) how often this is repeating?
Hibernia Mine doesn’t appear to be an active spelunking site, but you never know what desperate cavers might do in New Jersey. The Star-Ledger report fails to mention that the Fish and Wildlife Service has asked for a voluntary moratorium in the northeast to prevent the further spread of the disease.
So, like the frogs and bees, we have another fungal infection at the root of an animal die-off. With the bats, however, it seems decidedly linked to human activity, but there still could be a climate connection. (After all, why are people suddenly carrying fungi?) This press release from Cardiff University suggests climate change is causing fungi to grow more rapidly and “fruit” more frequently.
So, if you are doing math at home, is it:
warmer/wetter climate = more fungi + disease + accelerated decay (fungi hasten wood rot) = more CO2 = climate change
Personally, I abhor top 10 lists as gimmicky click bait (for shame Newsweek, that trick works for Cracked, but it is unseemly for you), but I’ll forgive IEEE Spectrum for this list of Kim Stanley Robinson favorite Mars-related SF novels. There are at least three novels on this list I’ve never heard of, let alone read. Hunting them down might be a challenge.
I’m still in awe of Robinson, and deeply regret not being able to string two sentences together when I met him while interning at NSF.
He is in the top two of the all-time list of great SF writers named Robinson.
The Telegraph reports finding a 600ft jellyfish crop circle found in an Oxfordshire field.
Kill it!!! Oh, wait…
At the end of the article, the writer oddly refers to an entirely different crop circle from last year, and reuses the quotes from a retired astrophysicist on how THAT crop circle encodes pi.
I had to re-read it to figure out the this reference really had nothing to do with the jellyfish. Bizarre.
The latter event — where a Russian satellite took out an Iridium satellite — is what supposedly caused the debris that made for a dramatic Friday morning for twitterers and ISS crew alike. Especially the crew, of course.
So, this article in Russia Today, says that the Japanese are developing microsatellites to grab debris, presumably, some of the medium-sized pieces, and fall back to earth. The tether idea sounds neat (but the headline sounds vaguely inappropriate).
Japan’s space agency (JAXA) is planning to use microsatellites to clear orbits from space junk. The robotic cleaner grabs debris with a robotic arm and then lunges down to force the dangerous pieces back into atmosphere.
The 140-kilogram device uses electrodynamics tethers to drag down the debris. The tethers are conductive wires with lengths of up to several kilometres, which can be used to generate propulsion.
The Japanese cleaner approaches debris, attaches itself to it with a robotic arm, and then moves to a lower orbit, unwinding the tether from a reel. An electric current is generated in the tether, which interacts with Earth’s magnetic field to create drag, which slows down the debris making it re-enter the atmosphere and subsequently burn up. The satellite, of course, is destroyed in the process as well.
*OK, how cool is it that Iridium had backups parked in orbit already?
Tiny, lightweight fruit flies need to know when it’s windy out so they can steady themselves and avoid being knocked off their feet or blown off course. But how do they figure out that it’s time to hunker down? According to a team led by California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists reporting in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, the flies have evolved a specialized population of neurons in their antennae that let them know not only when the wind is blowing, but also the direction from which it is coming.
The behavior of fruit flies in the face of a stiff breeze is remarkable in and of itself, notes David J. Anderson, the Roger W. Sperry Professor of Biology at Caltech, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. “We discovered that you can stop a fly dead in its tracks by blowing a gentle stream of air over it,” he explains, adding that the flies’ immobility is so complete, you could pick one up with a pair of chopsticks as long as a steady stream of wind was passing over the insect. Once the wind stops blowing, however, the flies immediately start walking around again.
The Franklin Institute was lucky enough to have a pair of Red-tailed Hawks take up residence in a webcam-friendly spot.
I think they might be reading the Philadelphia Metro, judging by the current view. More bad news for the Inquirer, I fear. They could be losing the bird of prey demographic, who are probably looking for a just a quick peck at the news.
Two Red-tailed Hawks have built a nest on a window ledge at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The nest sits just outside a window where a camera has been positioned to create this video stream. The camera looks through the glass window pane which is 24 inches wide (~61 cm). No artificial lighting has been added, so the nest is only visible during daylight hours.
I believe they’re monogamous, so there might be some hawk chicks in the near future. Or they could just be roommates and we’ll have to see about emerging sexual tensions later on in the season. Worth keeping an eye on, I’m sure.
The Red-tailed Hawk (aka chickenhawk, I think) is becoming a common sight around here. A few years back you’d only see these guys on occasion, but out here in the inner burbs, they’ve become a regular sight. (We caught them fishing in my neighbor’s goldfish pond last summer.) Now you can’t drive down an interstate without seeing one on a lightpost.
Cornell’s Ornithology Lab has a good site for bird browsing, in general. Here’s their Red-tailed Hawk entry.
… actually it is advice from Paul Orselli’s ExhibiTricks blog. This might make a nice follow-up to my previous post on unsolicited advice for The Franklin, and it touches on similar themes…
A science museum, indeed every type of museum, is all about stories (human interaction) and stuff (interesting objects and materials.) Working with cool items or seeing interesting objects or devices while having an opportunity to interact with other people is what makes museums special, and incidentally different and more marketable, than on-line experiences or other types of for-profit entertainment centers.
At the end of the day, providing interesting opportunities for visitors and museum staff to interact with “stuff” (and each other) is a sure way for visitors to leave your museum NOT feeling stupid.
And that’s just a smart way to run a museum.
It reminds me of two rules I learned in grad school: 1) if your reader doesn’t understand something, you were probably unclear; and 2) you can please more than one type of reader at a time.
The first is obvious, to me at any rate. Anything that can be said, can be said simply enough to appeal to a person of reasonable intelligence. It really depends on being able to get a concept across without piling on confusing terminology, whether that concept is evolution or celestial physics. I don’t believe you can get someone to completely grok quantum physics in five seconds, but they might get the gist that regular old physics doesn’t work so well in explaining how things atom-sized and smaller behave, which is where quantum mechanics comes in. People tend to understand things when you break them down into digestible chunks (or quanta — ha!) of information.
The second, I think, applies to science museums, in particular. I’m not an exhibit designer — and I know nothing about museum pedagogy — but I would think a good exhibit is like a an old Warner Bros. cartoon: the kids don’t get the dirtier jokes, but the adults do. (Good example here in “An Itch In Time,” at the seven minute mark below. It went over my head as kid.) Likewise, I can see where it would be necessary to design an exhibit — to create an “experience” — that appeals kids, adults and science geeks alike. I think you would do that by engaging people in the process. Like Paul, I was impressed with how interactive the recent Star Wars exhibit was. Even my three year-old got into creating LEGO landspeeders.
A 15 meter-long 
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