A Case for Compassion
Science Whys
by James Morris
3y ago
by James Morris Last week, the United Nations reported that one million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction. The high rate of extinction we are currently experiencing is a result of all kinds of human activities, notably climate change, pollution, hunting, over-harvesting, deforestation, land use changes, and the like. This is not the first time that the Earth has experienced massive die-offs. Five times in the last half billion years, the Earth has seen what scientists call mass extinctions. The most recent occurred when a meteor slammed into the Earth, wreaking global hav ..read more
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Blue’s Clues
Science Whys
by James Morris
4y ago
by James Morris Animals sport a rich palette of colors. Think of a bright red cardinal, orange monarch butterfly, yellow warbler, green grasshopper, brown snake, or black-and-white striped zebra. Blue is less common. In fact, blue is one of the rarest colors in the animal world. Of course, there are blue eyes, peacock feathers, and butterflies. But these blues are not made in the same way that other colors in animals are commonly produced. Most of the colors we see in nature are made from pigments. Pigments are colored chemicals. They absorb certain wavelengths of light, but not others. The co ..read more
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Others’ Shoes
Science Whys
by James Morris
4y ago
by James Morris At a time of increasing political division, it’s worth asking ourselves – can we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes? In Free Solo, Alex Honnold impossibly scales the vertical face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without ropes or harnesses, scampering up the wall like a gecko or ibex. He is a member of the same human species as all of us, but his abilities, focus, and fearlessness are so far outside of what most of us can even imagine that it encourages us to ask – how similar and different are we? We can answer this question genetically. We are 99.9% identical at the ..read more
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Two Tails
Science Whys
by James Morris
4y ago
by James Morris “Fish tails go sideways. Whale tails go up and down.” I read this on a piece of paper on the wall of my wife’s kindergarten classroom. It says a lot about teaching and evolution. First, teaching. It was Flex Week. This is a time that occurs once a year when the students and teachers throughout school stop doing what they have been doing, and instead take a week and do something different. They typically focus on a particular topic, such as giraffes or robots, go on field trips, or do a service learning project. One year, the kindergartners studied the ocean. They made an ocean ..read more
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Can Caterpillars Forecast the Weather?
Science Whys
by James Morris
4y ago
by Bram de Veer This week, we have a guest blogger! Bram de Veer looks at signs we can use (or can’t use?) to tell if we will have a long, snowy winter. Growing up in New England, I learned that a big crop of acorns in the fall (and a sudden proliferation of squirrels) were a sure sign that Mother Nature was preparing for a long, cold, and snowy winter. I wasn’t sure if this was an ancient legend or folklore, but it made sense. My schoolmates and I also learned that the “Woolly Bear” caterpillar with its distinctive black and brown stripes was another harbinger of the winter ahead. These adora ..read more
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The Ears Have It
Science Whys
by James Morris
4y ago
by James Morris Your ears, which allow you to hear sounds – from the babbling of a brook to the wail of a siren to the song of a bird to the words of a friend – also have the remarkable ability to make sounds. That’s right – your ears actually produce sounds. These sounds can be detected and used for many practical and sometimes surprising purposes. “It is almost as astonishing as if the eye could produce light or the nose produce odors,” said Dr. William E. Brownell of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Called otoacoustic emissions, or OAEs, these sounds were first predicted by ..read more
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Lesson Plans
Science Whys
by James Morris
4y ago
by James Morris Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is frequently cited, often celebrated, sometimes debated, occasionally rejected, but seldom read. I decided to do something about that. For several years, I taught a first-year seminar at Brandeis focusing on the Origin. It fits perfectly into a 14-week semester, the same number of chapters in the Origin. This allowed us to read the book slowly and deliberately. We were able to take our time with the ideas, language, and historical context, in the same way that Darwin took time to amass his evidence and build his argument. Darwin’s sea ..read more
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Balancing Act
Science Whys
by James Morris
5y ago
by James Morris William Happer, a retired Princeton University physicist and Deputy Assistant for Emerging Technologies on the National Security Council, recently stated that carbon dioxide is beneficial to humanity and therefore should not be regulated in any way. In biology, however, the idea that things are “good” or “bad” is simply a lot of hot air. Let’s take Happer’s example of carbon dioxide. Is it beneficial or harmful? The answer is – it depends. There are many ways in which carbon dioxide is certainly beneficial. Plants (and algae and bacteria) take in carbon dioxide and water to pr ..read more
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What’s the Difference?
Science Whys
by James Morris
5y ago
by James Morris What’s the difference between a … Frog and Toad? A toad is a type of frog. So, all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. Frogs and toads both belong to a group of animals called Anura (from the Greek “without tail” because frogs are tailless). What we typically call frogs live in water; toads live on land, but near water. The skin of frogs is wet and smooth, while the skin of toads is dry and bumpy. Finally, frogs have teeth, but toads don’t. In total, there are about 7,000 species of frogs (frogs + toads), of which about 500 are true toads. So, this is not unlike an ..read more
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It’s Not About You
Science Whys
by James Morris
5y ago
by James Morris Last week, the United Nations reported that one million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction. The high rate of extinction we are currently experiencing is a result of all kinds of human activities, notably climate change, pollution, hunting, over-harvesting, deforestation, land use changes, and the like. This is not the first time that the Earth has experienced massive die-offs. Five times in the last half billion years, the Earth has seen what scientists call mass extinctions. The most recent occurred when a meteor slammed into the Earth, wreaking global hav ..read more
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