biochapbook

[nprmusic]

When Choirs Sing, Many Hearts Beat As One : NPR

[biochapbook-blog]

When members of a choir sing, their heart rates quickly become synchronized, beating in the same rhythm. Researchers think this may be why singing together is a key part of religious rituals around the world, and such a joy for the singers.

[bhagatkapil]

[itsokaytobesmart]

via bhagatkapil:

Women in science!

Honouring Marie Curie, Grace Hopper, Rosalind Franklin, Ada Lovelace, Barbara McClintock and Maria Mitchell

Kapil Baghat is at it again! After his previous round of minimalist typographic tributes to great scientists (which were, admittedly, a bit male-centric) took the interwebs by storm, he’s just added this set of women in science.

These are subtle, but truly awesome. If you’d like to buy prints or other stuff featuring Kapil’s work, visit his store and follow him on Tumblr.

[mucholderthen]

The 56th plate from Ernst Haeckel’s ”Kunstformen der Natur” (1904), depicting organisms classified as Copepoda.  _________________________________

Calanus pavo (Dana) = Calocalanus pavo (Dana, 1852), male

Clytemnestra scutellata (Dana) = Clytemnestra scutellata Dana, 1849, female

Oncaea venusta (Philippi) = Oncaea venusta Philippi, 1843, male

Cryptopontius thorelli (Giesbrecht) = Cryptopontius thorelli Giesbrecht, 1899, female

Acontiophorus scutatus (Brady) = Acontiophorus scutatus (Brady & Robertson D., 1873), female

Corycaeus venustus (Dana) = Corycaeus venustus Dana, 1849, female

Sapphirina Darwinii (Haeckel) = Sapphirina darwini Haeckel, 1864, female

Augaptilus filigerus (Giesbrecht) = Euaugaptilus filigerus (Claus, 1863), male

[biochapbook-blog]

<3 Haeckel

[biochapbook-blog]

Field Biology

The sun, like a word caught in your throat, hitches on the horizon

as the sky fades out. To our backs, the barn sits on stilts, blank on all sides but for

a wry bat symbol. Across the road, reluctant alligators know

their basking day is done; they glide down the banks of the lake to float

eyes-out into the dusk. By night, those eyes throw back a red reflection.

The boom of their mating call could wake the dead.

  We are the bait. You remind me that mosquitoes sense our breath

on the exhale. In our little crowd, hands dart and slap at the first sign of a bite.

  At once, a signal sounds above our ears,

its pitch too high to hear. At first one bat and then a handful

streak across the sky. They swerve over our heads, they wheel and bank,

they navigate the airspace to the lake, and then they dive to take a drink.

  It’s nothing but a myth that bats will tangle in your hair. They give us a wide berth --

there’s hundreds now, charting out a course to their next meal.

They beat their leather wings incessantly. Unlike a bird, it’s hard for them to glide;

they’re heavier, these things without feathers.

[talesofscienceandlove]

Gold atom clusters by Joel Brehm from measurements of the research of University of Nebraska-Lincoln chemist Xiao Cheng Zeng.

[mucholderthen]

I CEPHALOPODI Cephalopods of Naples

From an 1896 monograph by Giuseppe Jatta.  The illustrator is Comingio Merculiano (1845- 1915), a professional watercolor painter hired in 1885 by prof. Anton Dohrn as in-house illustrator for the Naples Zoological Station, and one of the best scientific illustrators to date. This book on cephalopods is his masterpiece.

via BibliOdyssey: Neapolitan Cephalopods

Images hosted by the Biodiversity Heritage Library on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution

[pinnochiooooo]

In honour of term paper season, I fixed up my pattern from last year with simpler stitches and brighter colours. Perfect for passive-aggressively stitching in the grad lounge.

Pattern and finished stitching both available in my new Etsy store.

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

Life’s a beach and then…no. I can’t say it.

top illustration from Histoire naturelle de Lacépède : comprenant les cétacés, les quadrupèdes ovipares, les serpents et les poissons.

bottom illustrations from Whales / Robert Hamilton (1843) 

[raptinawe]

Wings of insects: 1-3.) fly (10x & 20x) (note the moth scale on the 2nd photo), 4.) ground beetle (20x), 5.) moth (10x), 6.) Bumble Bee (6x). Go see more amazing photos by Francis Prior. He explains the technique (focus stacking) and shows his photo setup in the video.

[biochapbook-blog]

"The recent availability of a large Western music dataset, consisting of the historical record condensed as melodic interval counts, has opened new possibilities for data-driven analysis of musical perception. In this context, we present an analytical approach that, based on cognitive theories of music expectation and machine learning techniques, recovers a set of factors that accurately identifies historical trends and stylistic transitions between the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Post-Romantic periods."

[raptinawe]

Two-day-old zebrafish larvae, as seen through a scanning electron microscope. The two holes above the mouth show the developing olfactory system. Photo by Jurgen Berger and Mahendra Sonawane, both employees at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.(via Max Planck: Zebrafish larva wins first prize in science photo contest)

[nprfreshair]

Novelist Carl Hiaasen discusses the Florida wildlife that the average tourist doesn’t see:

I have a small skiff, but I can get back into backcountry and the places where you may not see another boat for a whole day, and if you do, it’s just at a distance. And you’re just out there and there’s dolphins, sawfish and turtles everywhere, and you think, ‘This must be what it looked like when they first got here.’ And that’s a pretty cool thing. That’s not true everywhere, but it also gives you something to fight for. … You don’t give up despite all the madness and insanity and corruption that’s just multiplying with each generation of arrivals.

image via Florida Dolphin Tours

[npr]

Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space. In many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. Where did all the women go? At The Movies, The Women Are Gone : Monkey See

Photo: iStockphoto.com

[biochapbook-blog]

Small fistfuls of green lights hang from your every word An alphabet I can't read Illiterate in sunlight The box turtles stack up one on top of the other like newly minted money balanced above the water I am so happy I would like to take some drugs Some cherry blossoms Dogwoods I would like to chop down my shoulders into flowers A spray of flowers * The blue heron looks back one million years from the muddy bank and is ready for liftoff It lifts off through a shower curtain of dragonflies and pollen It wants to be alone It wants to stand on one leg forever And be a ballerina in curved space and a black crown Everything is so still that I can't breathe The joggers pound the dirt and will never die Fish asleep on the bottom Insects screaming in the trees * Gnats rise as one white-feathered lung and breathe They have nowhere to go Maybe they want to build a little city inside my chest Floor after floor of air-conditioning and glass Why do I keep waiting for something to change when I know that nothing will change? Light crumples against the hammered brass heads of the frogs Two boys carry a snake between them like an extension cord

Michael Dickman, "From the Canal"

The New Yorker, May 6, 2013

[wnycradiolab]

I knew it!

Which Birth Dates Are Most Common, from Matt Stiles’ The Daily Viz

(ht r/dataisbeautiful)

[npr]

I guess this means December is the most magical month…

[raptinawe]

When male superb lyrebirds sing, they often move their bodies to the music in a choreographed way, say researchers who report their findings in: Anastasia H. Dalziell et al., Dance Choreography Is Coordinated with Song Repertoire in a Complex Avian Display. The findings add to evidence from human cultures around the world that music and dance are deeply intertwined activities. Photo credit: Alex Maisey.

Video abstract:

Gif source with lyrebird mimicking many different sounds:

[itsokaytobesmart]

Early developmental stages of Xenopus laevis embryos. This is a frog commonly used in biological labs, and the favorite amphibian of Nobel Prize winner John Gurdon, whose work on these embryos led to this week’s announcement of human embryonic stem cells made from somatic cell nuclear transfer.

Half a century apart, it’s all connected.