LabLit.com

☃️ Oh wow - Rubin is in a winter wonderland! ☃️

My northern hemisphere upbringing is making me feel ever so Christmassy just looking at this snow-fest, but do stay safe out there Cerro Pachón colleagues! 🔭

🍻👍

A table with smiling scientists

Belated leaving do for @microberamon.bsky.social at the Dusty Knuckle. We are all still in denial!

I don't very often read horror but I recently read " Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome by Garth Marenghi" which is comedy horror, rather than cosy horror, & quite good fun.

But I agree - lack of imagination from media outlets, & people wanting to catch the coat-tails of a trend while it is hot!

Attaching cosy to every other genre is new to me but should not surprise anyone who follows media & social trends. I agree it is ridiculous, but suppose that in this case it means a read that is comforting, that adheres to traditional (?) horror conventions, books that are comfort-reads.

...that it will be put right, that justice will prevail. Sure you know all this!
😉 However it is now become a fad word for the whole genre of small world murder stories. This matched the fad of Danish 'hygge' which I'd translate as cosiness. I've moaned before that murder is never cosy...

@catcoconut.com‬ Cosy dates from the 18th c possibly Scandinavian. In the UK it was formerly mainly used to mean snug, but also senses like a tea-cosy to keep the pot warm. Somehow this got attached in recent years to crime stories like those of Richard Osman, where even if there is a murder we know

Photo of blue-green sea water coming in from left to right on a wet sandy beach with a blue sky and far way clouds above.

A little CT beach therapy with a good friend.

Day 63 of showing the internet that (jumping) spiders aren't scary, and today we've got someone very special 🧡

Say hello to our new cheeky chappy 🤭 He’s a Phidippus Adumbratus. He's curious, bold, and full of personality… but missing a name!

Drop your best suggestions in the comments 👇 #spider

“On the moorlands crystal clear streams run between boulders. Small waterfalls and rapids empty into pools”
Writer: EL Grant Watson
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe
(What to Look for in Summer, 1960)

Yes ! but I gave all but Prehistoric Mammals away in the mid 1970s! 😔

Sheep are grazing on the open fields of uplands at sunset. The sunset is the star of the show with pinks and purples that look much more luminous in the book than my photo

‘Hill farm at Dusk’
The Farmer, 1963
Artist: John Berry

BBC World Service - Unexpected Elements, Floods, mangroves and rampaging tractors This week, the team discusses the causes of floods and possible solutions.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...
An end to allergic reactions?
Science In Action
[available after 8.30pm BST]
A team of scientists have uncovered the pathway believed to protect some people from allergic reactions even when they sensitive to an allergen.

BBC Radio 4 - Currently, White Coats v the White House Roland Pease looks at how breaking an 80-year-old deal in US science may affect us all.

White Coats v the White House - Sunday 12th
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
Roland Pease asks how the cuts and political strong-arming in US science will affect us all, and how contemporary events sit alongside a landmark vision of 80 years ago.

BBC Radio 4 - BBC Inside Science, What’s the evidence for vaccines? Cuts of $500 million to vaccines research have been announced by the US government.

What’s the evidence for vaccines?
BBC Inside Science

As US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr announces plans to cancel $500 million dollars of funding for mRNA vaccine development, we look at the evidence behind the vaccines. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m... 🧪

I'd say put in a few trees or a hedge there!

In Denmark, farmers are required by law to grow field flowers for bees on 5 % of their land…. 💐🐝
I think that’s a fantastic solution to a big problem, they can do it here too ❤
catharinaweb
aliveonallchannels

If you keep ordering books you will be delighted to find they arrive all the time. Should the frequency seem to drop off, order more.

When dinosaurs hear like barn owls: pitfalls and caveats in assessing hearing in dinosaurs | Biology Letters Computer tomographic scanning is now a standard technique for studying the internal features of fossil structures. This enables comparisons with related modern species and speculation concerning funct...

When dinosaurs hear like barn owls: pitfalls and caveats in assessing hearing in dinosaurs royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

😆

That’s great ⬇️

Simple solar device extracts ammonia from wastewater Technique could provide cheap fertilizer and prevent harmful nutrient runoff

Simple solar device extracts ammonia from wastewater www.science.org/content/arti...

"our reconstruction challenges the hypotheses that the gnathostome shoulder evolved from the gill apparatus."

"the vertebrate jaw [...] evolved instead as a follower to the sensory enhancement, increased cardiac output and greater locomotory control now inferred in the jawless sister group."

It is amazing what all these new technological developments can bring to our understanding of what might be at first glance an anonymous bit of rock! 👍😮🤓
What a time to study palaeontology!

Novel assembly of a head–trunk interface in the sister group of jawed vertebrates - Nature Imaging of a Devonian jawless fish reveals advanced features previously thought to be exclusive to jawed vertebrates, challenging the idea that jaws were the primary driver for the evolution of d...

A specimen of the fossil fish Norselaspis yields a wealth of information on the evolution of the head-trunk interface in vertebrates www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Maybe @britishspiders.bsky.social can answer? [I should probably do a search for the answer!]

So the questions I'd ask here are:
do all the sperm get stored, or are they used straight away?
if a female spider mates more than once in these spiders?
if so, can she select internally somehow which sperm (or from which male?) fertilise the eggs?

The war between the sexes...
Either the male maximises his mating possibilities by keeping out of reach as much as possible, OR the female keeps control by eating the male after collecting sperm

🤔 They must have the data - perhaps they can tell everyone exactly what Della wore?!
😁

Deerhurst Church - Build a stunning creative website with Avada & WordPress. Showcase your creative skills & attract customers with this prebuilt, customizable site design.

They have an excellent annual lecture series too. This year by Robert Walker on the stained glass. Really annoyed I can't be there. deerhurstfriends.co.uk/events/

St. Mary’s, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, is one of England’s greatest Anglo-Saxon churches - with much pre-Conquest fabric - set in a bucolic landscape. #thread