Fun Science Friday | Southern Fried Science

Fun Science FRIEDay – Shark Daycare

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Kersey Sturdivant

A great white shark nursery in the North Atlantic that was discovered in 1985 south of Cape Cod in the waters off Montauk, New York has received renewed attention due to the increased activity of white sharks off cape cod in recent years. The nursery was first documented in 1985 by Casey and Pratt who deduced the presence of a nursery based on the number of juvenile sightings and landings in the area. This work was followed up recently by OCEARCH (an organization dedicated to generating scientific data related to tracking/telemetry and biological studies of keystone marine species such as great white sharks), which tagged and tracked nine infant great whites to the nursery, located a few miles off Montauk.

Great White Shark. Image courtesy animals.NationalGeographic.com

Photo of a great white shark in Mexico by Terry Goss, WikiMedia Commons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:White_shark.jpg

Fun Science FRIEDay – Open-Acess Science for the Masses

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Kersey Sturdivant

The oceans belong to all of us. With this simple statement in mind, the Oceanography for Everyone (OfE) project was launched with the goal of making ocean science more accessible. One of the biggest hurdles in conducting ocean science is instrumentation costs, and 4 years ago the OfE team began trying to make one of the most basic ocean science tools, the CTD (a water quality sensor that measures Conductivity-Temperature-Depth), cheaper… much, much cheaper!

Fun Science FRIEDay – The worlds largest sponge.

Posted on June 3, 2016 by Kersey Sturdivant

Recently a team of scientists on a deep sea expedition in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands aboard the R/V Okeanos Explorer made a monumental discovery… pun intended. While exploring the depths of the seafloor in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, with their remotely operated vehicles (ROV) Seirios and Deep Discover, they discovered and documented the largest sponge ever observed on this planet… or any planet for that matter.

Large hexactinellid sponge found in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (Photo credit: NOAA’s Office of Exploration and Research)

Lateral view of a large hexactinellid sponge found in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
(Photo credit: NOAA’s Office of Exploration and Research)

Fun Science FRIEDay – Osprey Version of the Truman Show #ospreycam

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Kersey Sturdivant

Do you ever get that feeling that you are being watched? I imagine that is what the ospreys at the nesting platform at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) must feel, if they notice at all. These birds have a camera that is trained on their nest 24/7 during the osprey breeding season (generally from mid-March to October).

Osprey in a nest on the campus of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (Photo Credit: VIMS)

Ospreys are unique among North American raptors for their diet of live fish and ability to dive into the water to catch them. As a result of their life history strategies, osprey nests occur around nearly any body of water: saltmarshes, rivers, ponds, reservoirs, estuaries, and even coral reefs. The placement of OspreyCam at VIMS provides us with an around-the-clock window into the world and “family” dynamics of these amazing birds. We are able to watch as a mating pair cohabit their nest and use it to rear their young. As you can imagine, once the chickies hatch, things get quite interesting in the osprey nest!

Checkout the addictive live feed below, and happy FSF!!

Fun Science FRIEDay – The Universe Sings a Song, and Humans Can Finally Listen

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Kersey Sturdivant

(Photo Credit: Underwood & Underwood / Corbis / Kara Gordon / The Atlantic)

The interwebs have been going crazy the past few days with the recent announcement that scientists have for the first time detected gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. In terms of scientific advancement, to quote Joe Biden, “This is a big fucking deal!” Bigger than the discovery of the subatomic Higgs boson particle (i.e., the god particle), and it has been suggested this discovery is comparable only to “Galileo taking up the telescope and looking at the planets.” – Penn State physics theorist Abhay Ashtekar

Photo credit: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory

Fun Science FRIEDay – Bionic Eye

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Kersey Sturdivant

Every year modern medicine brings more and more surprises. It really does seem that the limitations of man’s achievements are solely limited to our creative ability to dream what is possible. This week we bring you the bionic eye. As part of an ongoing trial at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital surgeons implanted a micro electric chip into a patients eye restoring part of her sight.

Human eye.

Fun Science FRIEDay – Theory of Relative… easiness??

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Kersey Sturdivant

This week’s FSF is a bit different. Instead of talking about some relatively new discovery or research endeavor, we are going to focus on an old adage, the Theory of Relativity. The Theory of Relativity is one of those concepts that is hugely important but very poorly understood outside of the physics community. Instead of me befuddling this really important concept, I am going to share one of the more concise and readily understandable explanations to Einsteins hugely important Theory.

This kid and his explanation is already blowing up the inter-webs, and he does an amazing job of taking a really complicated concept and making it easily digestible, so I needn’t say anymore. Enjoy!

HAPPY FSF!!!

Fun Science FRIEDay – Virus be good!

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Kersey Sturdivant

“The era of the oncolytic virus is… here.” Stephen Russell, Cancer researcher and haematologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnessota

…. and let me be the first to welcome our new virus overlords!

Viral-based cancer therapy: T cells (orange) are recruited to attack malignant cells (purple). (Photo credit: Dr. Andrejs Liepins/SPL)

Last week the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made a decision that received little fanfare, but has huge implications for modern medicine and how we approach cancer treatment in the US. That decision? The FDA granted their approval for a genetically engineered virus to be used to treat cancer. That virus was the herpesvirus called talimogene laherparepvec, and its use is for the treatment of melanoma lesions in the skin and lymph nodes. This huge decision makes it the first oncolytic virus to receive market approval and could pave the way for more oncolytic viruses to enter the “market.”

Fun Science FRIEDay – Dude, I’m Glowing!

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Kersey Sturdivant

Happy Fun Science FRIEDay! After a brief hiatus, due to life, hoping this installment represents the regular…err, semi-regular, occurrence of FSF.

So this hit the interwebs pretty big earlier this week, the first documented reptile to glow. That honor belongs to the Hawksbill a sea turtle, observed first by David Gruber, of City University of New York.

Fluorescing hawksbill sea turtle. (Photo credit: David Gruber, of City University of New York)

Lets get one thing out of the way before we delve into the glowing version of Crusher (for my finding Nemo aficionados). The sea turtle is not glowing, its fluorescing… there is a difference. In the ocean lots of organisms fluoresce at longer wavelengths (green, yellow, red) in response to shorter wavelengths (UV, blue, violet). It is a typical property of many biological materials and is noticeable if viewed through restrictive long pass filters, as is the case here.

That being said, documenting a sea turtle fluorescing is still pretty freaking cool! Like many scientific discoveries this was totally by happenstance. David was in the Solomon Islands to film biofluorescence in small sharks and coral reefs. And during his observations of sharks and corals glowing Crusher just swims by like, “Dude, I’m all glowing and stuff.”

Checkout the awesome video of it below, and Happy FSF!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kmE7D5ulSA

Fun Science FRIEDay – “A cold-water fish with a warm heart!”

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Kersey Sturdivant

OPAH, OPAH, OPAH!

Recently scientists at NOAA’s South West Fisheries Science Center made a stunning discovery, the worlds first known warm-blooded fish, the moonfish, opah (Lampris guttatus). Until this recent discovery all fish were considered cold-blooded ectotherms – allowing their body temperature to fluctuate with the change in ambient ocean temperature. However, opah’s are different, in that these largely solitary fish regulate their internal body temperature above the ambient temperature of their environment like mammals and birds (other warm-blooded animals).

Opah off the coast of southern California. (Photo credit: Ralph Pace Photography)