Turtle-egg predators subjected to Carolina Reaper
Posted by mark in Nature, Uncategorized on December 23, 2021
Wednesday’s Venice Gondolier featured a report on an experiment by a volunteer beach patrol to deter predation of endangered sea-turtle eggs by coyotes and armadillos. With the blessing of Florida’s Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), they sprinkled varying amounts of Carolina Reaper pepper (one of the hottest known to humanity) atop four beach-nests over a range of time (with a nearby one being the control–no deterrent):
- 2 tablespoons (tbsp) every 5 days
- 4 tbsp every 5 days
- 2 tbsp every 10 days
- 4 tbsp every 10 days
This forms a full, two-level factorial. That is good thinking. However, they would have done well to replicate it to provide some statistical power for not only the main effects of amount and time-spacing, but also the possible interaction of these factors (maybe a particular combination works best). In any case, these innovative volunteers discovered that the hot pepper kept the coyotes away, but, unfortunately not the armadillos, who quickly learned how to dig under the deterrent and get at the eggs. On the brighter side, the pepper put off an inundation of fire ants—to the great relief of the experimenters going in to inspect the nests.
The FWC is now reviewing these findings to consider modifying the advice they laid out in this 2010 Sea Turtle Nest Predator Control Plan, which focuses only on raccoons and ghost crabs. The Floridian authorities do not go gentle into the night: They trap and/or shoot to kill the cravenly critters.
PS: I’ve never seen a sea turtle, but landlocked terrapins abound in the Venice area, where my wife and I winter. Earlier this month I overheard some tourists discussing what to do with a Gopher tortoise (like the one pictured below) under a beach-way boardwalk—put it directly back in the ocean or just leave by the edge. Luckily for the tortoise they finally decided to let it be, ha ha.
The perfect condiment from the Red Planet: Martian ketchup!
Astrobiologists at Florida Tech’s Aldrin Space Institute recently teamed up with Kraft Heinz to make ketchup from tomatoes grown in Mars-like conditions. Never mind Pillsbury’s Space Food Sticks or Tang—my favorite foods growing up in awe of astronauts: Bring on the Martian ketchup!
The Florida Tech News Bureau provides these fascinating facts and figures on this unearthly food-science development:
- A team of more than a dozen students, scientists, and technicians worked in a greenhouse, known as the Red House, to grow the Martian tomatoes
- Powerful LED lighting on 7,800 pounds of soil from the Mohave Desert provided Martian conditions for the 450 experimental tomato plants grown over a period of two years
- A bottle of “Marz” ketchup survived a 23-mile-altitude balloon-flight that reduced its temperature to minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit.
Here’s another amazing statistic cited widely on the internet: The average American eats 71 pounds of ketchup per year, which Google data supports—it being the condiment of choice in nearly half of USA’s states.*
For more details on the HEINZ Ketchup Marz Edition and a picture of a Martian-like tomato see this November 9 report by the Space Coast Daily.
“Working with the tomato masters at Heinz has allowed us to see what the possibilities are for long term food production beyond Earth.”
Andrew Palmer, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Aldrin Space Institute
*(BestLife, 4/28/21, This Is the Most Popular Condiment in Your State, According to Data)
Glow sticks—bright full (not frightful) for fun, safe Halloweening
The daylight here in Minnesota continues to dwindle depressingly, going from nearly 12 hours on the first of October to about 10 hours on the 31st. Therefore, it will be welcome, albeit brief, relief to see glow-stick-waving trick-or-treaters coming by on Halloween night. These colorful light-emitting wands add a lot of pizzazz to the celebration, but most importantly, they make it far safer, especially along my sidewalk-less suburban street.
For the history of this chemiluminescent invention and the science behind it see this week’s feature by Chemical and Engineering News detailing “What are glow sticks, and what’s the chemical reaction that makes them light up?”.
Glow sticks flare out far too fast—only lasting for about 8 to 12 hours, which makes the annual Halloween far more precious. Now we must contend with several weeks of increasingly dark, cold and dreary days (I dislike November very much!) until relief comes with Thanksgiving and the full-on display of holiday lights. However, glow sticks can be bought cheaply just after Halloween. Why not break one out on a nightly basis to bridge the holiday gap? Brighten up!
By the way, if you have ever been tempted to crack open a tube of chemiluminescent fluid, first watch this YouTube video by TKOR (The King of Random). Do not try this at home, especially rubbing the contents on your teeth to make them glow.
Banging my head against the wall about concussions in football
Posted by mark in sports, Uncategorized on October 17, 2021
Being a big fan of football at all levels—grade school (oldest grandson Archer, pictured, going good on the gridiron), high school, college (season-ticket holder for Golden Gophers) and NFL (long-suffering Vikings fan), I hate to see players going down with concussions and their long-term effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). I suffered several sports-related concussions myself, which makes me even more keen to see advancements in their prevention. Therefore, I was excited to see this report by ESPN on soft-shelled helmets being tested by NFL players.
Unfortunately, however, the statistics on impact reduction, less than 10%, do not appear to warrant putting on a comically squishy covering over a hard-shell football helmet. The advantage is just too marginal. On the other hand, when doing anything involving an appreciable risk without a helmet, for example, riding a bicycle, wearing one becomes essential for concussion reduction. According to this 2017 article in the Journal of Neurosurgery on helmet efficacy they provide significant protection against “devastating intracranial injury”—skull fractures and the like.
Therefore, I am pleased that, unlike most of his teammates, Archer wears his unglamorous helmet.
However, the bad news from neuroscientists is that helmets are “not efficacious” for protection against concussions.
Heads up!
Fly often, fail often, test often
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized on September 27, 2021
Being addicted to experimenting, I greatly admire the “fly often, fail often, test often” spirit of the University of Minnesota Rocket Team. On Thursday these student rocketeers updated us engineering and other U Mn alums on their latest exploits, including a win and Overall Award in the 30k bracket of the Spaceport America Cup 2021.
Having grown up during the Space Race and celebrated my golden 16th birthday the day Apollo 11 launched off to put the first man on the Moon, I am keen to see such great leaps in technology for amateur rocketry. It astounds me that a group comprised mainly of undergrad aeronautical engineers can design and build an aircraft reaching 30,000 feet (and much higher if not prohibited by the FAA). That beats my personal-best for rocketry by 29,970 feet or so, ha ha.
“It all looked so easy when you did it on paper — where valves never froze, gyros never drifted, and rocket motors did not blow up in your face.”
Milton W. Rosen, rocket engineer and project manager in the US space program between the end of World War II and the early days of the Apollo Program.
With such great “can do” spirit, willingness to fail, and the high-tech resources of our College of Science and Engineering, the flying Gophers will go far in future, I feel sure.
Our nest emptying out again with grandkids going back to school
After raising 5 children, my wife and I never imagined that we would again experience the bittersweet beginning of a school year and the ambivalent feelings about the coming peace and quiet. However, the pandemic brought a surprising year-plus of us hosting school for a kindergartener (pictured) and a third grader. On Tuesday these two will advance to their next levels—in person once again.
It seems to me that our at-home school kids did well academically—possibly even better at a distance than in class. But they will do well for overall development by getting back in touch with their peers and teachers…no doubt.
Unfortunately, based on Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, the disruption in State-wide education caused by the pandemic caused an alarming downturn in students meeting their grade standards, particularly in math and science.* The hit on math education (relative to reading) extended nation-wide as graphically illustrated in this August 15th post by The 74. Alarming!
Let’s hope that our students and teachers can withstand the Delta and newer Covid-19 variants until vaccines become available for all school age children. Now is the time to go full STEAM ahead (not overlooking “arts” in the quest for more science, engineering and math).
*See this 8/27/21 report by MPR News: MN state test scores reveal deep impact to child learning during pandemic
Tomatoes may turn you into a zombie
Posted by mark in Nature, Uncategorized on August 24, 2021
The latest issue of Chemical & Engineering News reports alerted me to the discovery by a team of Brazilian botanists that tomatoes communicate sensory information back to their parent plant. The scientists worked this out by letting a hungry caterpillar gorge on wired-up Micro Toms much like my ripening cherry tomatoes (pictured). This seems a bit callous to me from the perspective of a plant. However, it is sweet for the sake of science (and the future butterfly).
Based on statistical analysis of the variation in signals*, the researchers concluded that the tomato plant sensed its fruit being eaten. Therefore, they hypothesized that the parent could fight back by emitting chemicals such as this one discovered by a University of Wisconsin biologist that makes attacking caterpillars eat each other .
Be careful the next time you squeeze tomatoes on the vine to check their ripeness—they might not like it and take revenge by turning you into a zombie. (Wow, that took a dark turn!)
* For experimental details, see Fruit Herbivory Alters Plant Electrome: Evidence for Fruit-Shoot Long-Distance Electrical Signaling in Tomato Plants, Frontiers of Sustainable Food Systems, 20 July 2021.
Squirrels best Olympian gymnasts and jumpers for acrobatics
As reported by the New York Times on Thursday, this month’s Science features amazing experimental results that illustrate how squirrels learn to leap and land on tree branches without falling. Cognitive scientists and biomechanics experts at the University of California, Berkeley, put wild fox squirrels to a test that varied distance and flexibility of branches for a payoff of peanuts.
The wily rodents adapted to challenging conditions by bouncing off walls like parkour athletes, which you can see in this video posted by Independent.
The researchers concluded that “the squirrels’ remarkable and consistent success was due to a combination of learned impulse generation when assessing the balance between distance and branch flexibility and the addition of innovative leaps and landings in the face of increasingly difficult challenges.”
By the way, these Berkeley boffins hope to translate their newly discovered squirrely techniques into smarter robots. That is very alarming!
For even more a-maze-ing feats, check out this YouTube video posted recently by Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer, who goes all out to stymie squirrels with ingenious backyard obstacles:
PS: After years of trial and error, I finally defeated my bird-feed thieving backyard squirrels by mounting a Perky-Pet 340 Transparent 16-Inch Squirrel Baffler in wobbly fashion on the metal pole, and placing it away from any nearby branches and structures. : )
Flipping out with frisbees
This weekend I enjoyed a nine-hole round of disc golf—a great way to enliven an outdoor walk via some friendly competition and the satisfying clink of chains when making a shot.
The trick is to control the pitch of the aerodynamic platters. They must be thrown at an angle that better players than me, such as my oldest son Ben, refer to as ‘hyzers’ or ‘anhyzers’. I am not quite sure which is which. All I can think of when he tries to explain the difference is that I really need a six pack of Anheuser-Busch beer when my anhyzer throw goes off into a bush, which happens far too often.
Check out this greatest shot (an anhyzer?) in disc golf history by World Champion James Conrad earlier this month.
Getting back to beer, this recent report by Ars Technica provides a ‘heads-up’ on why coasters fly so poorly—flipping on average only a half second into their flight. See all the details in Beer Mats make bad Frisbees published by three German physicists last month. Evidently “the crucial effect responsible for the flipping is found to be the lift attacking not in the center of mass but slightly offset to the forward edge”, which “induces a torque leading to a precession towards backspin orientation.” Now you know! It’s not that you are drinking too much due to being quarantined too long during the pandemic. Whew!
Squids out of water seeking escape from vicious double-jawed eels
Posted by mark in Nature, Uncategorized on June 23, 2021
Two science reports on squids caught my eye today. On the one hand, the New York Times informed me that “When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That’s a Moray”. It’s not so funny for the squid who get sucked down off of dry land by creatures with two jaws—an outer one to seize their prey and an inner one that leaps forward to drag it deeper. That’s really creepy. If you have a strong stomach, check out this video by Rita S. Mehta, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She and her colleague report all the gory experimental details in this month’s Journal of Experimental Biology.
The second bit of news about squids—this one from Complex—seems a bit cheerier: NASA Launches Dozens of Baby Squid Into Space for Experiment. Learn more about this mission by University of Florida researcher Jamie Foster here. Check out the video of the cute little baby squids. Far out!
PS: Heads up: Squids can fly, as detailed in this January 2021 TED-Ed video: