Science on Saturday // can science be silly?

On this glorious Saturday, I thought you should have a bit of silliness and science in your life.  As a demonstration of my personal philosophy to promote the unknown, the unappreciated and the understudied in a context of supreme goofiness and lightheartedness, I give you, Science UnSilenced: The Story of the Sponge.

This video was created in an effort to promote the public awareness of science via a mini-course that I and several of my friends took this past January term.  During the creation of this film, we learned that it is very challenging to present scientific information to a broad audience while also getting the facts straight.  In the scientific community, we rely on peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts to tell our laboratory tales, but I am one to believe that while science journals are essential to ensuring the transmission of high quality data, they are not the appropriate story-telling media for a wider audience.  

This, however, is just my own hypothesis.  But as a scientist, I would be curious to collect some data on the matter.  Thus, if you have a few seconds to spare, I would be really interested to know the following...

1. Would you characterize yourself as a scientist?

2. Have you ever read an article in a journal such as PlosOne, Integrative and Comparative Biology, Journal of Experimental Zoology, or any other source of primary literature?

3. Did you watch the video?  What were your thoughts?

The Science UnSilenced team greatly appreciates any and all comments :)

NYC finale // Science on Saturday

The entirety of Earth's biospheres from the present day to 700 million years ago.  A Darwinian dream.  Need I say more?

The American Museum of Natural History is, 'ehem, really freakin' cool.  You can walk through giant Red Wood forests and explore African savanas, see polar bears in the Arctic, and penguins in the Antarctic (or is it the other way around?).  Go hunting with Neanderthals, wave-riding with whales, and even explore the K-T boundary.  No need to mourn any dinos, though, there's piles of bones for weeks worth of viewing.  Forget those ill-evolved reptiles when Earth's most ancient animals are still very much living.  Some might call them simple, but you try fending off invaders at 30 meters below sea level. without. any. arms.  

A beautiful display case with romantic, warm lighting showed off some sponges in all of their glory.  The Cambrian explosion looked like a pretty rad time.

>>>> Thanks NYC for being kind to us!<<<<

Science on Saturday

I know you all are at the edge of your seats, yearning for more information about bacteria in sponges, well here you go!  My first official peer review paper can be found here.  It is all kind of silly, but I am proud :)

science at its best

It was not the white tipped reef shark, or the school of barracuda, nor even the sea turtles that caught my attention this past weekend (though they were all fabulous as well).  Rather, it was this little guy, about three inches long, two inches wide, and hiding so cryptically in my sponges, that really stole the show.

That's right, it is a nudibranch!  I haven't the slightest clue what kind of slug this guy is, but he sure seems to like to hang out in sponge.  My mind is a buzz... who is this guy, why is he in my sponge, what is he doing there?  

Nature is always feeding me more questions.  I am hungry :)

sponges, thoughts, and more

So the reason that I went to Germany was for the Sponge Symposium. If you hadn't already figured out that I am a huge nerd, I am sure that you now know it... I mean its a select few that appreciate the beauty and complexity of the microbial community living in sea sponges! After two days, and fifty talks on everything from using NanoSIMS to look at how sponges eat bacteria, to global diversity of sponge microbes, to modeling sponge- microbe networks, and many more equally nerdy topics! We had a great gathering of all of scientists from Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, the UK, Portugal, Spain, France, South Africa, and everywhere in between. It was really an impressive showing of people doing some top notch science. I am so grateful that I have an awesome boss that feels that it is worthwhile to send me to these sorts of gatherings... if there was one thing that I really came away with from the conference it is that if science is to really bring about advancements and novel work, collaboration is key. Often scientists are very possessive of their work, and rightfully so as it takes painstaking efforts and time to gather data, but really if we are relying on science to bring about such discoveries as clean energy production, new pharmaceuticals to combat the rising number of diseases, ways to increase food production, etc., cooperation and collaboration are essential.