On poverty and pronunciation in academia

Oh.

Why I never mock or even bring attention to mispronunciation in a conversation, and will snap down anyone who tries to

Besides poverty, for many peoplevEnglish is a second (or third+) language and has weird rules too. Most of the time, even when words are mispronounced, they’re still understandable if you make an effort. Just be patient and don’t look down on people who mispronounce!

most online dictionaries (and Google translate) now have audio clips so you can hear the pronunciation of a word without asking someone

The Krebs Cycle Cycle

(Inspired by the very first CranquisMail ever.)

:O

Best tweet I’ve ever read.

PREACH

See, she took the first picture ever of dna and these two guys had the audacity to steal it from her and take all the credit.

Scientists have discovered a previously unknown family of viruses that dominate the ocean and can’t be detected by standard lab tests.

Don’t use “thusly” because your committee will call you out on it in front of everyone.

I WILL SURVIVE

it’s time to talk about a weird animal again here at bunjywunjy dot tumblr dot com (my house), and what better way to begin the new year than with an inspirational survivor to motivate us all with its sheer bullheaded tenacity?

you see, this animal has been around a very, very, very, VERY long time. 

it’s called the Coelacanth, and it’s your grandma.

SEE-la-kanth. say it right sonny, my ears aren’t what they used to be

Coelacanths are the oldest form of lobe-finned fishes on the planet. their  relatives first appeared 400 million years ago, and immediately made themselves famous by being the very first vertebrates to wiggle onto dry land. (they immediately wiggled right the fuck back into the water, as they had forgotten to evolve lungs first)

these fishes later evolved those weirdly buff fins into actual legs and developed into the first true land animals, though tragically they lack the Coelacanth’s roguish sense of style.

there’s a lot of stumpy little legs in this picture

while these lobe-finned fish did go on to become literally all land-dwelling vertebrates ever INCLUDING YOU, the Coelacanth was content to retain its fishy shape and continue on as it always had. for 400 fucking million years. 

they probably barely even noticed all those major extinction events. meteor who?

it’s coelaCAN, not coelaCAN’T.

today, Coelacanths are still more closely related to you than they are to most other fish. think of it as the weird cousin that never gets invited to the mammal family reunion.

the Coelacanth’s relationship to land vertebrates has long been known from fossils, but Science believed it had gone extinct sometime in the Cretaceous period more than 60 million years ago. so imagine Science’s surprise when a live Coelacanth was pulled up by a fishing trawler in 1938, off the coast of South Africa.

surpriiiiiiise! bet you thought you’d seen the last of me

this makes them the first ever example of a Lazarus Taxon (which is an absolutely badass phrase that would make a damn good name for a rock band), meaning it’s an evolutionary line we thought was extinct but they lived, bitch.

today, the Coelacanth is known to live in the Indian and South African oceans, where they thrive in deep water far away from the prying eyes of their nosy hairless ape relatives. 

they are mostly active at night and can grow to be 6 and a half feet long, and live more than 60 years. they don’t have much personality, but BOY are they tenacious.

I make up for it with my stunning good looks

Coelacanths mostly drift with the current, eating whatever happens to pass by that’s smaller than they are. this just goes to show that laziness does pay off in the long run! 

it’s a valid survival strategy, MOM.

Coelacanths don’t have many natural predators, as they taste completely disgusting. sharks are pretty much the only predator who will give it a try, but sharks also eat outboard motors and license plates so that’s really not saying much.

all that aside, these ancient fish can motivate us to face the challenges of the new year. just remember, if a weird fish with demi-legs can survive for 400 million years on the benefits of laziness and just being kind of weird and disgusting, so can you!

coelaCAN, AND SO CAN YOU!

This is the humanities version of that spoof about scientists reminding the world that clean energy is ready to go whenever.

Sympathy Cards for Scientists 

by Tom Gauld (https://www.tomgauld.com/)

if you read in a frog paper “specimen was released in the field immediately after capture” chances are very good that what it actually means is

“i dropped the damn frog and despite the fact that we fell all over each other no one could recapture it”

sometimes when i am sad i go read through the tags on this post, because they are 70% other biologists saying things like “AND ALSO FUCK FIELD MICE” and “THAT CRAB ALMOST BROKE MY FINGER” and I am reassured that I am not the only one who has bobbled a wood frog right into their cleavage.

plus six or seven people who just….can’t figure out what a frog paper could possibly be. (guys it’s…a scientific paper. about frogs.)

and this one

which made me laugh despairingly because i mean

bro you don’t even know.

what is the code entomologists use for “i stepped on it, i’m so sorry, it was dark out and the specimen was very small”

“Impromptu dissection was performed under less-than-optimal lighting conditions.”

‘impromptu dissection’ is an alarming phrase in any context and i thank you for it

For the environmental microbiology/water resources papers: “samples site used approximate GPS coordinates for consistency from season to season” which is code for “the undergrad who did this that last 3 seasons graduated and all we have are the GPS flags so the sample site could be any place on this river for 50 yards”

Why the fuck would you taste it?!

you’ve clearly never talked to someone who excavates bones for a living

Well since the quickest way to find out if something you pulled out of the ground is a fossile or a rock is to lick it, they may have been pleasantly surprised by the taste.

Strange Antarctic bacteria that live off air alone could be key to finding alien life

Scientists have discovered a new type of bacterium, that most hardy of organisms, which can survive solely off the chemicals in air – and the discovery could change the way we think about life living on other planets.

The microbes have been found in Antarctica and can exist off a diet of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, staying alive in the most extreme conditions where other food and energy sources are scarce.

Could low-level life forms on other planets be living off nothing but the gases in the atmosphere? It’s a possibility we’re now going to have to consider, according to the team from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

The findings have been published in Nature.

Science wasn’t actually certain how fungi like cordyceps “hijacked” their host’s behavior, and we always kind of assumed it was causing some simplistic damage to the brain.

As it turns out, it works much more elaborately and much MORE like the dramatized sci-fi horror parasites constantly inspired by it.

These fungi integrate themselves on the cellular level with the host’s tissues, actually seem to send signals to the host’s muscles and even alter the host’s genes with their own.

All the while, THE BRAIN ISN’T INVADED AT ALL.

These fungi, all along, have been converting their hosts into animal-fungal hybrids they control while the host’s brain and consciousness remain helplessly alive and largely unaltered.

noooooooOOPE

Cymothoa exigua is a parasite that is also know by the name the ‘Tongue-eating louse’. It is an isopod with the unique identifiable feature of being the only known parasite that functionally replaces a host’s organ. The louse enters the fish’s body through the gills, attaches to fish’s tongue and extracts blood, causing it to shrivel and eventually fall off. Once this has been achieved the louse attaches to the remaining stub and acts as a replacement tongue, receiving nutrients by feeding on the fish’s blood and mucus. While the majority of fish found with these parasite’s are underweight, there is no evidence that this parasite causes a significant amount of harm to its host. 

These parasites, while aesthetically disturbing, are also not harmful to humans. While a person has brought a lawsuit against a supermarket chain after finding cymothoa exigua in fish they had eaten, the legal case was dropped. This was a result of there being no evidence that these parasites were in any way unhealthy for humans, they are not poisonous and can be incorporated into a healthy diet. 

The story of an invasive species.

Poison-ivy an unlikely hero in warding off exotic invaders?

Dozens of studies have looked at the effects of Japanese knotweed on natural communities in Europe and North America. Yet Bucknell University professor Chris Martine still felt there was something important to learn about what the plant was doing along the river in his own backyard.

What Martine noticed was similar to what local nature lovers and biologists with the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program were also starting to see: these forests, specifically those classified as Silver Maple Floodplain Forests, were not regenerating themselves where knotweed had taken a foothold.

In a new study published in the open access Biodiversity Data Journal, Martine and two recent Bucknell alumni conclude that Japanese knotweed has not only excluded nearly all of the native understory plant species in these forests, but it has prevented the trees already established in the canopy from leaving behind more of themselves.

For bugs, there will likely never be any such thing as a housing shortage. Many set up shop in the strangest places—including us.

Shhhh!

One of the most interesting deep sea creatures.

The barreleye fish  The barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) has extremely light-sensitive eyes that can rotate within a transparent, fluid-filled shield on its head.

Most animals with a well-known white morph (lions, tigers, domestic cats, peacocks) are leucistic, not albinistic. True albinos are much rarer and are usually only bred-for in indoor pets (mice, rats, snakes).

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Fun statistical fact: Cows are about 300 times more likely to kill you than coyotes.

Minor sidenote to statistical fact: If it was common for people to keep several hundred coyotes on their property and routinely chase them into a corral and handle them, this statistic would be different.

Data representation/context matters