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Gimme Some Dihydrogen Monoxide
Birds need water just like the rest of us, but beaks make it harder. They may suck it up like a straw or scoop it up like a bucket, or by leaning back and letting the rain fall in.At some point or...
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Sorry, I Don’t Drink
Biology concepts – water conservation, kidney function, metabolic water, adaptation, water uptake“Koala” in aborigine means “no drink.” The moist eucalyptus leaves are poisonous to most animals, but...
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Keeping Your “Ion” The Ball – Salts and Life
Biology concepts – salts in biology, osmotic potential,action potential, transpirationDietary salt – crucial for survival; Veruca Salt – not so much.In Latin, verruca means wart, so RoaldDahl was...
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Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow
Biology concepts – osmoregulation, tonicity, phytohormones, avian kidney, pinnieds, cetaceansAfrican elephants are larger than asian elephants, but their urine production is similar. A 2007 study found...
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Do You Drink Like A Fish?
Biology concepts – fish osmoregulation, shark osmoregulation, semelparity, iteroparityThe irony of fish drinking is not lost on this café in the Hotel Portofino at Universal Orlando. What I really like...
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I Am Your Density -- Life On Ice
Biology concepts – density of water, latent heat, stratificationErnest Rutherford showed that atoms were mostly space by shooting alpha particles at a sheet of gold foil. Only a few particles struck...
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Water, Water Everywhere, But….
Biology concepts – symbiosis, mutualism, water storage “Gobi” means desert in Ural-Altaic,so when you say, “Gobi Desert,” youare really being redundant.Sometimes the places with the most water are the...
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I’m Likin’ The Lichen
Biology Concepts – symbiosis, mutualism, lichensThe lycan is a subject better relegated a cryptozoology blog. Along with the Loch Ness Monster, vampires, and the Easter Bunny, cryptids are those...
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More Than The Sum Of Its Parts
Biology concepts – symbiosis, lichen products, weathering, pedogenesisDuring the Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps got the idea to have unemployed people earn some money by planting kudzu...
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Cells Are Great Multitaskers
Biology concepts – compartmentalization, organelle function, cellular biochemistryThis chart represents a portion of the cellular reactions that are taking place every second in a mammalian cell. It...
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Cell To Cell Tanning
Biology Concepts – vacuoles, phagocytosis, melanin, cephalopod camouflageSometimes, the name of an item becomes the sameas its function. Have you ever asked for a Puff when youneeded a facial tissue?...
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Simple Ain’t So Simple Anymore
Biology Concepts – prokaryotes, simplicity, complexity, organelles, microcompartmentsNot everything new is better; new doesn’t necessarily mean improved. Remember the “New” Coke debacle?Newer is...
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Extremophiles Are Key, Or Archaea
Biology concepts – archaea, bacteria, domains of life, hydrothermal vent ecosystem, chemosynthesisWhat is a bigger mistake – to overestimate or to underestimate? If you overestimate someone, you may be...
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The Evolution Of Cooperation
Biology concepts – biological timeline, serial endosymbiosis, endocystosis, evolutionTaxonomy, the placing of species in different groups based on their characteristics, changeseveryday – literally...
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On Geometry And Genomes
Biology concepts – linear chromosomes, circular chromosomes, taxonomy, replication, telomereOrganization is helpful in learning and work, and apparently in crafts. But there is a fine line between...
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Life Outside The Chromosome
Biology concepts – plasmid, linear organelle genomes, extrachromosomal circular DNAs, conjugation, Planet of the Apes (1968) – a good movie, but not a great movie.Every ape was a ventriloquist; you...
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A Biological Energy Crisis
Biology concepts – mitochondria, aerobic respiration, anaerobic respiration, glycolysis, fermentation, mitosome@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin:...
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Many Paths To The Top Of The Mountain
Biology concepts – hydrogenosome, FeS cluster protein, loricifera, erythrocyte @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size:...
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It’s A Plant World, We’re Just Living In It
Biology concepts – cell walls, chloroplasts, myco-heterotrophs, holoparasites, Life on Earth is easy. It can be boiled down to three sentences. “The mitochondria and the chloroplasts are, in a...
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The Life Of The Party
Biology concepts – plant adaptations, osmosis, parthenogenesisLast week we discussed the biological implications of an old Christmas carol. Today’s post is a hodgepodge of holiday biology, but we can...
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When Is A Chloroplast Not A Chloroplast?
Biology concepts – gravitropism, plastid, chloroplast, chromoplast, amyloplast, leucoplast, malaria parasiteBelieve it or not, the way plant roots know to grow into the dirt is related to...
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Every Day Should Be Mother’s Day
Biology concepts – inheritance patterns, mitochondria, fertilization, lineage, mitochondrial EveWhat do the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, Mother’s Day, and all your mitochondria all have in...
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The Seeds of Inheritance
Biology Concepts – pollen, plastid inheritance, gymnosperms, angiospermsI am coming to believe that plants are more complex than animals, even more complex than females. Female plants must be the most...
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Biological Fusion Energy
Biology Concepts – mitochondrial dynamics Stars are the largest fusion reactors around, and organisms do use some of the energy our Sun produces by joining two hydrogen atoms into a helium atom -...
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Cellular Self-Sacrifice
Biology Concepts – apoptosis, synthaesthesia, mitochondria We often ascribe human traits to objects that do not have thoughts or feelings of their own. This is called anthropomorphism, and it is hard...
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