[cleanbutter]

[nursemochi-deactivated20200611]

♡

[autistic--rory-blog]

even if someone doesnt understand what is being said to them that doesnt make it ok for you to be mean or rude to them

[pooldrain]

[freshchemicals]

[freshchemicals]

[1o9]

[currentsinbiology]

Great white sharks have suddenly disappeared from one of their favorite hangouts

Sightings of white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) have crashed this year in False Bay near Cape Town, South Africa—one of the best-known hot spots of the predators in the world—and scientists aren’t sure why. Orcas, which love to dine on shark liver, may have scared them off, researchers say, but human activities could also play a role.

Shark Spotters, a local charity that monitors the city’s beaches daily and warns swimmers if sharks are near, has not recorded a single confirmed white shark sighting this year—not even during the summer months, from January to April, when the fish usually come close to shore.

[sciencenewsforstudents]

Mystery disease is killing Caribbean corals

Scientists are racing to pin down a new coral disease that’s “annihilating” whole species from Caribbean reefs.

Last January, divers were studying Caribbean reefs off the U.S. Virgin Islands. Suddenly, they noticed something alarming on one reef. Lesions were eating into the colorful tissues of hundreds of corals. By the next day, some were dead. Only stark white skeletons remained. Others took two weeks to die. Within four months, more than half of the reef near the island of St. Thomas was dead.

The prime suspect is a disease first discovered off Florida in 2014. Known as stony coral tissue loss disease, scientists have nicknamed it “skittle-D” — like the candy. But skittle-D is far from sweet. It is responsible for one of the deadliest coral disease outbreaks on record.

Stony corals are the building blocks of reefs. Skittle-D is now ravaging one third of the Caribbean’s 65 stony coral species. Scientists don’t know if the infection is due to a virus, bacterium or some mix of microbes.

Whatever the cause, “it’s annihilating whole species,” says coral ecologist Marilyn Brandt. She works at the St. Thomas campus of the University of the Virgin Islands. There, she heads a science team investigating the outbreak from many angles.

Other coral diseases near St. Thomas have cut coral cover by up to half within a year, she notes. But this new epidemic has done the same damage in half that time. It is spreading faster and killing more corals than any past outbreaks here.

“It marches along the reef and rarely leaves corals behind,” Brandt says. “We’re pretty scared.”

Stony coral tissue loss disease, nicknamed skittle-D, can kill corals in just days or weeks. Here, a lesion eats away at a large brain coral over six weeks. CREDIT: Sonora Meiling

[scientist-ian-blog]

The way we’re treating the struggling people in our community isn’t okay. There are many, many lgbt+ folk who are struggling with anti-lgbt rhetoric. There are many of us who have been mistreated, harassed, physically assaulted for being lgbt. There are many people in our community that have depression, ptsd, or any other mental illness. Lgbt+ phobia is wrong because it hurts us. We need people to accept and support us because we need to feel safe. That’s why telling lgbt+ folk who are struggling with the oppression we face to shut up or just get help is anti-progressive. You are hurting our community. You are contributing to the shame, hurt, self hatred, self harm, and even suicide that has been a major problem among other lgbt+ folk. We’re not going to move forward until the accepted members of our community shift out of their comfort zone and listen to us.

[scientist-ian-blog]

The entire point of the lgbtq community is to form a group for queer people to feel safe and share their experiences with other queer people. Being queer isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. We’re still dealing with oppression. It’s good to spread positivity, but we seriously need to acknowledge the massive amount of people in our community that are facing homophobia, transphobia, ect.

4 in 10 lgbt youth (42%) say the community in which they live is not accepting of lgbt folk

Lgbtq folk are twice as likely to be physically assaulted

Lgb youth are almost five times as likely to attempt suicide compared to heterosexual youth 

40% of transgender adults reported having made a suicide attempt 

Bullying and harassment against lgbtq students is at a unprecedented high

Have some compassion. Having the basic decency to treat other queer people with kindness and respect when they’re struggling isn’t self-defeating. Stop ignoring the problems our community as a whole and individual members are still facing.

[singmu]

wooloo~~~

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Making more plastics recyclable

Whether multi-layered food packaging, power cable sheathing or a toothbrush: Many plastic products cannot be recycled. This is the case, for example, when products are made of multiple materials that cannot be separated at all or only insufficiently.

Only 16 percent of plastic waste produced in Germany is also recycled here. This figure is quoted by the Plastikatlas 2019 published by the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) and the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The majority of plastic waste is thus burnt in waste incineration plants to generate energy or is used as alternative fuel.

Design and recycling—worlds apart

Making more plastics recyclable: The Chair of Business Administration and Business Information Systems at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, has been working towards this goal since July 2019 together with the German Plastics Centre SKZ and two partners from the Bavarian plastics industry. Their project is funded by the Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection.

Read more.

[eartharchives]

What If There Were No Sharks?

What would the oceans look like if all of the sharks disappeared?

Sharks have a reputation for aggressiveness toward people, shaped by decades of terrifying portrayals in movies. In fact, these fearful pop-culture portraits of great whites are so pervasive that they might lead some people to wonder if the world would be better off with no sharks at all.

[freshchemicals]

[scientist-ian-blog]

Everyone was saying Swirlix and Slurpuff are dumb because they look too much like food, but Alcremie is literally made out of meringue, and no one seems to have a problem with it? 

[watersurge-blog1]

Swirlix and Slurpuff are adorable doggos, and Alcremie is a horrifying nightmare.

[scientist-ian-blog]

Alcremie is so bad.

[scientist-ian-blog]

Everyone was saying Swirlix and Slurpuff are dumb because they look too much like food, but Alcremie is literally made out of meringue, and no one seems to have a problem with it?