Saturday September 13, 2008
Keeping Our Cool, Walking Wetas, Father's Nose Best, Scuba Bugs, Impact in Peru
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Keeping Our Cool
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Dr. Andrew Weaver, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria, is one of Canada's most eminent climate scientists, an important contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and in that role, a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. But despite all this professional success, a large part of his career has been spent in the frustrating attempt to ward off the disinformation campaigns of climate change skeptics. Nevertheless, he managed to keep his cool, and has advice for how we can do the same in his new book, Keeping our Cool: Canada in a Warming World. He describes the last fifteen years of the climate change controversy, a controversy he says has been purely political, since the scientific debate about the reality and nature of climate change has been resolved for some time. He also looks to the future, with a new analysis of just how much carbon we can still emit before triggering dangerous climate change, and what we have to do to avoid overdrawing our atmosphere's carbon account.
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Related Links
Keeping Our Cool - Penguin BooksDr. Andrew Weaver's home pageDeSmogBlog - A climate blog mentioned by Dr. WeaverQuirks & Quarks - Canada in 2050 featuring Dr. WeaverWetas Walking
Dr. Gwynne holds a Giant Weta - courtesy D. Gwynne
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The Giant Weta is a huge, cricket-like insect, native to New Zealand, that can reach 10 cm long and 70 grams in weight. These placid nocturnal herbivores used to live all over New Zealand, but were easy prey for mammals like rats and stoats when they were introduced by Europeans. As a result, they remain only on a few islands that don't have predatory mammals. Dr. Darryl Gwynne, Professor of Biology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, and his colleagues, used radio transmitters to track wetas to learn more about their mating behaviour. As a result, they discovered just why the males have such long legs. It has to do with just how far they have to walk to find a female.
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Father's Nose Best
Marmoset father and youngster - Jordana Lenon/WNPRC
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Marmosets are one of the few monkey species in which the male contributes equally to looking after the kids -- and they do an admirable job, often taking on the bulk of the parenting responsibilities. Dr. Toni Ziegler is a Senior Scientist with the Wisconsin Primate Research Center in Madison, Wisconsin. She's been studying marmoset fathers to see what makes them such doting dads. Dr. Ziegler recently discovered that when male marmosets catch a whiff of their own infants, the amount of testosterone in their blood dropped. She suggests that this change in testosterone helps them change their behaviour to take on the challenges of fatherhood.
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Related Links
Dr. Ziegler's web siteDr. Ziegler's article in the journal Biology LettersThe Wisconsin National Primate Research CenterA media release from the University of Wisconsin, MadisonDr Zeigler in a previous appearance on Quirks & QuarksSCUBA Bug
A boatman insect - Morris Flynn/John Bush
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If you've ever been SCUBA diving, then you know how disappointing it is when you finally run out of air and have to come to the surface. Well, for several species of aquatic insects, this isn't an issue - they simply create an air bubble around their body and use it to breath underwater. What's more, several of them use this bubble to pull oxygen out of the water, making it possible to stay submerged indefinitely. Dr. Morris Flynn, an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta, has created a mathematical model in order to study how different species of insects create bubbles that allow them to breath indefinitely at differing depths.
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Related Links
Dr. Flynn's web pageDr. Flynn's article in the Journal of Fluid Dynamics
University of Alberta news releaseA video showing an insect that uses an external lung, (Courtesy Morris Flynn/John Bush)Impact in Peru
Peruvian crater, courtesy L Jackson
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Last year, when a meteorite created a spectacular impact near the shores of Lake Titicaca, in Peru, stories circulated the globe about strange fumes that sickened scores of villagers. Well, Dr. Lionel Jackson, a geoscientist with The Geological Survey of Canada (Natural Resources Canada) happened to be nearby at the time of the impact. Dr. Jackson traveled to the impact site and, though it was impressive, he says the stories of toxic fumes were something of an exaggeration. The meteorite, however, left a large impression, both on Dr. Jackson and in the mud flat where it struck. Dr. Jackson's first-hand observations of the crater are part of a research paper that will be published later this year in the journal Geophysical Research - Planets.
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