Bats!!

Bats species represent ¼ of all species of all mammals on our planet. Really! They do! Pretty freaking cool.. Bats are also responsible for pollinating, planting new rainforest trees and keeping insect populations in balance. They do a great job as bug -eaters, keeping our crops happy and they are freaking CUTE! They are also, as are many species, under threat. There is a great organisation called, Bat Conservation International, that I just recently heard about who have worked diligently and selflessly to help repopulate our bat populations. If you harbor any irrational fear of bats, please learn more about them. Go check them out and learn about the cool bats!

What to do about the car fuel dilemma

It doesn’t look like we have the answer yet, but it is looking more and more like biofuels are a bad idea. Firstly, to use precious agriculture land to run our cars instead of our bodies is very creepy. If there is a drought, which do we sacrifice first? Do we tear up the land and destroy precious topsoil just to be able to drive around? Should we be tying our food to our cars in such a fundamental way?
And now there is a study about the increased risk of crop pests if we were to plant all those crops. Apparently it will increase the amount of pests to the point where our food crops will be affected. By increasing the populations of these pests, we are not only posing harm to our food supply, but to entire ecosystems.

WORMS!

Do we often think of worms? Wriggling away in our soil, eating detritus and pooping our nutrients for our gardens and food crops? Well, if you don’t you really should. Not only are they cute (at least I think they are), but they are a basic and profound part of recycling decaying matter into useful nutrients for our friends the plants. So here is something really cool about worms, Caenorhabditis elegans in particular. They actually have a genetic response to being well fed, changing their body’s metabolic response from merely maintaining, to growth. (unlike humans who just store food away as fat). They grow! Very handy since they spend a lot of their time in scarcity and don’t often get that opportunity. What does this mean for us? Well, now that we know a bit about this worm’s genetic response to being starved or well-fed, we can likely take that knowledge over to the parasitic worms that wreak havoc on human populations to help find a way to deter them from using us as a host.

While you enjoy the picture of the good friends of Ochibos, the cephalopods, as they bask gleefully in the sun in San Luis Obispo, Ca. Check out a bit about our incredibly amazing oceans.

There are large areas in our oceans that are super low of oxygen called "dead zones". They occur naturally and most fish just avoid them. Here is the problem. They are increasing in size and prevalence according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. How? Our oceans suck up most of our atmospheric CO2. As more and more atmospheric CO2 become oceanic CO2, it  is making marine animals need more oxygen, shrinking the space in which they can live (or, if you look at t conversly, growing the dead zones). Just so you know, about 33% of the CO2 being absorbed by the oceans is from human use of fossil fuels. What does this mean for the fish? Deep-sea fish are going to have a harder time breathing and reproducing. And before you start thinking, well, who needs angler fish anyway… Tuna are deep-sea fish. Think about that as you drive your 10 mpg car 3 blocks to the store…

Running through the vetch!

TPCRed out in the field with the foxtails and the vetch. Mmmmmm... Pinocchio (It has to be the original, by Collodi) never liked vetch, but I guess he never tried this vetch, because TPCRed looks really happy in it...

Ochibos in school!

TPC and little Microchibus krabbus are all ready for Biology to begin! They brought their bookbag and are ready to learn.

More from the Science Building at Sierra college

Ride TPC! Ride!!! The Cthulhus are right behind you, RIDE!Scraptopus enjoys playing with her aquatic cousin!

To the Science Museum!

This time, the little guys went to our local and very small science museum. The red toilet paper cozy was kind enough to hold up the scraptopus and the Microchibus orbis so they could look at the neat bird skulls.

The first day out for the toilet paper cozy...

He got to go to a local school and play in the playground. I think the slide was his favorite, but the store provided hours of entertainment as well.