Hey there fellow nerds! Carnival of the Blue #30 is now up at Oh For The Love Of Science!. Be sure to swing by and get your feet wet.And if you're blogging some salty news yourself, be sure to submit your posts for the next Carnival of the Blue to... ME! December's Carnival of the Blue will be hosted right here at Observations of a Nerd.They've got this new handy-dandy BlogCarnival submission form you can use now to submit your posts! If you have any trouble, feel free to e-mail me at NerdyCh... Read Full Story
Weighing in at around 10 lbs with a wingspan of up to 8 feet, the brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) is an impressive bird. Sure, it's the smallest of the pelican species, but it hardly lacks in size. Along the shores of Florida and the Gulf Coast, these birds are common. They swarm docks and piers wherever fish are being caught and cleaned, and their acrobatic fishing techniques often catch the eyes of tourists and locals alike.But it wasn't always so easy to see these large birds in act... Read Full Story
Sci-Fi authors will tell you that the next big breakthrough in medical technology will be the ability to grow our own organs for transplants. In the idealized future, you'll have a heart or kidney cultured from your own cells on hand for whatever emergency might come up. Well, scientists have taken another step closer to creating functional replacement tissues, detailing the creation fully-functional penis part replacements in rabbits in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the Nati... Read Full Story
Sci-Fi authors will tell you that the next big breakthrough in medical technology will be the ability to grow our own organs for transplants. In the idealized future, you'll have a heart or kidney cultured from your own cells on hand for whatever emergency might come up. Well, scientists have taken another step closer to creating functional replacement tissues, detailing the creation fully-functional penis part replacements in rabbits in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the Nati... Read Full Story
Living in a world of sunshine and electricity, we tend to take light for granted. Heck, we complain when clouds diminish our bright sunny rays. But dip just beneath the surface of the ocean and light becomes a rare commodity. More than half of the light that penetrates the ocean surface is absorbed in the first three feet. As you go deeper, different colors disappear. Red is the first to go, followed by yellow and green, until you're truly immersed in murky blue. At about 200 m deep, there is... Read Full Story
Living in a world of sunshine and electricity, we tend to take light for granted. Heck, we complain when clouds diminish our bright sunny rays. But dip just beneath the surface of the ocean and light becomes a rare commodity. More than half of the light that penetrates the ocean surface is absorbed in the first three feet. As you go deeper, different colors disappear. Red is the first to go, followed by yellow and green, until you're truly immersed in murky blue. At about 200 m deep, there is... Read Full Story
No, not the small little drums. I'm talking about Bongos, the vibrant antelopes:c/o the Houston Zoo and ZooBornsBongos are a kind of large antelope native to the lowlands and some mountains of Africa. They're at least two different subspecies: Tragelaphus eurycerus eurycerus (the lowland bongo) and Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci (the eastern or mountain bongo). Both subspecies are facing constant threats; the lowland bongo is listed as near-threatened by the IUCN and the mountain bongo is enda... Read Full Story
No, not the small little drums. I'm talking about Bongos, the vibrant antelopes:c/o the Houston Zoo and ZooBornsBongos are a kind of large antelope native to the lowlands and some mountains of Africa. They're at least two different subspecies: Tragelaphus eurycerus eurycerus (the lowland bongo) and Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci (the eastern or mountain bongo). Both subspecies are facing constant threats; the lowland bongo is listed as near-threatened by the IUCN and the mountain bongo is enda... Read Full Story
