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sciencebase

@sciencebase@mastodon.social

Award-winning science writer, prize-winning wildlife photographer, wannabe rock god. Mothing, birding, gardening for wildlife and pondlife

#music #guitar #singing #photography #moths #butterflies #birds #wildlife #science

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sciencebase, to random
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We were camping near The Thames last weekend. Got up in the middle of the night to see radiant bands of light across the sky. Next morning, we learned the Aurora Borealis had been spectactular across the country. This must have been part of it, although we saw none of the curtains of skyborne colours due to ionised gases in the atmosphere.

I did take a photo of the crescent moon the next night while anticipating a second coming that was never to be.

sciencebase, to random
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You're a bird, flying in looking for tasty morsels in the shrubbery. Ooh, what's that, something fluttered by and landed? You investigate...sheeeyit there's a sharp-eyed mammal staring back at you!

Yesterday's Emperor

#teamMoth #mothsMatter

sciencebase,
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If you're wondering why I've posted the moth upside down...think about what angle a bird might first catch a glimpse, it's not necessarily the right way up! If agitated this species will expose a second pair of eyes on its hindwings

sciencebase,
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The details and the subtlety of the "eyes", formally known as ocelli, are quite astonishing when you think about it. They have "irises" and "catchlights" to make them look like real eyes and from this angle eyebrows and a nose below!!!

#pareidolia

sciencebase,
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@SteelFolk Ah, interesting. I assumed there'd be something. Because these surfaces are photonic, the brighter areas will actually glisten and shimmer in sunlight so making them look shiny like real eyes, amazing evolution!

sciencebase,
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Something else to mention. Those enormous feathered antennae are present only on the day-flying males. The largely nocturnal females don't need them. They are there mainly to pick up her sex-attractant pheromone and can detect a few molecules on the wind from up to about ten miles away. The males can then follow the trail to its source and have a good time.

sciencebase,
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Here's me fessing up to a rookie lepidopterist error a few years ago when trying to find out about the sex pheromone made by the "Empress"

https://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/sex-pheromone-for-an-emperor.html

sciencebase,
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@hanny What sort of butterfly was it?

sciencebase,
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@hanny love the Oak Eggar moth :-)

sciencebase, to random
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Also back from Africa to spend the summer here...

Acrocephalus schoenobaenus

There are lots of Sedge Warbler around our local nature reserves - RSPB Berry Fen, Ouse Fen, Fen Drayton etc

Noisy blighrers with a seemingly random, almost scratchy song, they like to perch up on bushes, take to the air briefly and cascade back down into the bush. If they're not doing that, they may well be hidden among the reeds in a reed bed

sciencebase, to random
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The Hobbies are back from the African wintering grounds. This one was way up high so a very cropped photo.

The Hobby is a falcon that sits between the Peregrine and the Kestrel in size and is very similar to each in some ways. I've photographed them taking and eating dragonflies on the wing, but have also witnessed them taking Swift.

Falco subbuteo, which means a falcon "less than", so smaller, than a buzzard (Common Buzzard is Buteo buteo).

sciencebase,
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I say this every year, but the subbuteo bit is where the table footie game gets its name. The inventor wanted to call it "Hobby", but the manufacturers would have none of it, so he sneakily called it Hobby anyway, by using the species component of the bird's scientific binomial.

Caffetino, to random
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Rapidly rising levels of TFA 'forever chemical' alarm experts

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/may/01/rapidly-rising-levels-of-tfa-forever-chemical-alarm-experts?CMP=share_btn_url

sciencebase,
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@Caffetino TFA is a degradation product of some of those compounds we used to replace CFCs #consequences

sciencebase,
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@Caffetino It's a mess

sciencebase, to random
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Numerous Green Longhorn, Adela reaumurella, out again when it was sunny for a second or two on Thursday, I'd seen half a dozen in a different part of the wood the day before.

Those "wires" are the males' antennae, which are about three times as long as his wings.

I used 1/8000s shutter speed, which was about as long as the sun shone

#moths #teamMoth #mothsMatter

sciencebase, to random
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Like a Flame to a Moth

Artwork uses a photo I took of a Gypsy Moth, now known as The Spongy Moth in the US. The flames were from a barbecue on a family holiday in Turkey many years ago, hahaha

https://davebradley.bandcamp.com/track/like-a-flame-to-a-moth

albertcardona, (edited ) to uk
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From Cambridge with love?

sciencebase,
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@albertcardona The way they repair potholes drives me nuts They will only patch the bit that's been marked up and any degraded bits close to it will be ignored and so you get this happening. Also, they never sweep up when they're finished, so there's always bits of gravel and hardcore that are then ground into the surface and cause more damage...and that's if you can get them to fix them in the first place.

x00001, to random
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And in the news, How Long It Would Take A Hacker To Brute Force Your Password In 2024, Ranked: https://digg.com/tech/link/how-long-hack-crack-password-hive-systems-2024 :cch:​

Huh, I don't think my passwords are doing too bad according to this! :cathumbsup:​

sciencebase,
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@x00001 It's worth noting that even a very simple password would essentially be uncrackable if it were long enough. For example:

passworddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

A cracker would have to know how many characters were in your password to stand a chance

Even 123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 would essentially be uncrackable

sciencebase, to random
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Perhaps the archetypal LBJ - Garden Warbler, Sylvia borin. One of numerous singing on our local nature reserve yesterday alongside various other warbler species

https://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/warbler-central-garden-warblers-at-rspb-fen-drayton.html

sciencebase, to random
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Meet Holly, Holly Blue

blogdiva, to random
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PEOPLE, I BEG YOU
post links directly to the source, don't use Apple News or Bitly or other links hijackers. if they decide to change the service or go out of business, we have lost link to the original source.

keep the web as open as possible. say no to link shorteners and traffic hijackers 👍🏾

sciencebase,
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@WilsonSmith @blogdiva I hope somebody has backed up the list of all those millions of DOIs

sciencebase,
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@WilsonSmith @blogdiva Have they got a remote backup that's independent of the organisation?

sciencebase,
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@WilsonSmith Yes, must be, it's been around a long time, of course.I think I first used it when I was editing the first ever online chemistry conference back in 1995

kwirirayi, to random
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NEW ARTICLE: The teen brain doesnt reach maturity until your mid-20s, we now know

https://ift.tt/KbWcFT5

One of the latest to develop is your reasoning capacity

The post The teen brain doesnt reach maturity until your mid-20s, we now know first appeared on Three Men On a Boat.

via Three Men On a Boat https://3-mob.com

April 22, 2024 at 12:11PM

sciencebase,
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@kwirirayi I'll try and find it for you. I wonder whether there's some issue about evidence regarding maturity being later that some people would want to stop teens being able to make important decisions...

I think the debunking was basically saying that just because the brain is still developing until mid-20s, it doesn't mean that younger people are somehow limited in their ability to make sensible and rational decisions.

sciencebase,
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@kwirirayi The mid-20s maturity idea is not new, been around for decades. But, there was a piece in Slate that said it was mostly bunk back in 2022

https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html

It also seems like a lot of the evidence is from fMRI, which as a technique is not without major controversy regarding what its results mean.

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