@laminda@mastodon.social
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laminda

@laminda@mastodon.social

Science writer, editor and producer, previously with Live Science and the American Museum of Natural History. Pro-union (WGAE member) and anti-fascist. Cynical girl.

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laminda, to Eurovision
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Meanwhile, in Eurovision land: Dutch finalist Joost Klein's rehearsals have been suspended "until further notice" over a remark he made at a press conference with Israeli contestant Eden Golan.

A journalist asked Golan if her participation in the competition risked the safety of other performers. She was told she didn't have to answer the question, to which Klein responded with a loud, "Why not?"

https://esctoday.com/194911/eurovision-2024-dutch-entry-joost-klein-under-investigation-barred-from-rehearsals/

laminda, to history
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On May 6, 1937, the German airship Hindenburg burst into flames over Lakehurst, NJ. You've probably seen the iconic film & photos of the disaster.

But a few years ago, footage from a different angle—filmed by amateur photographer Howard Schenck on an 8mm camera—was released for the first time. Schenck began filming earlier than the newsreel photographers did, capturing the early moments of the fire and showing the entire length of the airship as it burned.

https://www.livescience.com/hindenburg-disaster-newfound-footage.htm

laminda, to science
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North America folks: A total solar eclipse is one week away (April 8)! After that, the continental U.S. won't see another one until 2044.

During the last total eclipse (Aug. 21, 2017) the family and I were midair, flying from LAX to EWR. Naturally, I was curious about what we'd see! To help figure that out, my awesome husband @monospace coded a JavaScript "calculator" to find where our flight path would cross the path of totality.

https://www.livescience.com/60229-how-to-calculate-where-eclipse-airplane-intersect.html

laminda, to science
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When the ancestor of all terrestrial vertebrates crawled from the sea onto land, she had a tail. Our primate ancestors had tails. In fact, many primates still do. So where did our tails go?

In my latest for @CNN I spoke with the scientists who recently identified the genetic crossroads where hominoids—humans and great apes—took one route, and our tails took another.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/23/world/humans-tails-genetic-mutation-junk-dna-scn/index.html

laminda, to science
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Lots of folks are talking about and its stars, but let's talk about star dunes! These enormous dunes look star-shaped from above, their radiating ridges shaped by winds blowing from different directions.

Scientists pinged a star dune with radio waves to peer at its internal structure, freed trapped energy from inside sand grains to learn its age (13,000 years old), and found clues about why star dunes are rare in the geological record.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/04/world/star-sand-dune-ancient-mystery-erg-chebbi-scn

laminda, to queer
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Nex Benedict was a trans and nonbinary high school student in Oklahoma. They died on Feb. 8 after a group of students assaulted them in a school bathroom. They were 16 years old.

This is the world that anti-trans Republican legislators, administrators and influencers have built, with their dangerous rhetoric and their bottomless wells of hate. They weaponize kids against kids. They stole Nex's safety and they stole Nex's life.

Nex deserved so much better.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nex-benedict-dead-oklahoma-b2499332.html

laminda, to science
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Today is Penguin Awareness Day, so please be aware that penguins are capable of projectile pooping, and can eject poo to distances twice their body lengths.

Even better: scientists did a deep dive into the physical forces in penguin guts and rectums that make this awesome achievement possible.

https://www.livescience.com/pengins-projectile-poo.html

laminda, to science
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Some fossils make you go WHOA at first sight and this is one of them: an ancient grasshopper nest pod with 50 intact eggs. It's the first fossil grasshopper nest ever found!

Discovered at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (part of the National Park Service) in Oregon, it offers a peek at insect reproduction 29 million years ago. There are 28 ellipsoid eggs visible on the surface, and CT scans revealed about two dozen more.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/16/world/fossil-grasshopper-nest-eggs-scn/index.html

laminda, to science
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Oh hey, it's my last CNN article for 2023! Did you know that fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field were preserved in baked mud bricks from the days of Nebuchadnezzar II?

Archaeomagnetic analysis linked stamped, dated bricks to a power surge in the magnetosphere over Mesopotamia, about 3000 years ago.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/27/world/ancient-bricks-magnetic-field-anomaly-scn/index.html

laminda, to science
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Knitting friends! This may align with your interests— @scifri did a deep dive on the science of why today's mass-produced sweaters are kind of garbage compared to those of a few decades ago.

Of course, this only confirms what we already knew: Handknit sweaters are the best sweaters.

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/sweater-bad-quality-science/

laminda, to science
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In my latest for CNN I take a step back into the past to look at ancient, birdlike footprints from southern Africa, dating to more than 210 million years ago (much older than the oldest skeletal evidence of the earliest birds).

Fossil tracks blow my mind because they preserve impressions of the animal's ACTUAL FEET, and they often provide unique clues about body morphology and the animal's behavior.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/29/world/birdlike-footprints-triassic-mystery-fossils-scn/index.html

laminda, to random
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Having health insurance in the US means that you also have a part-time job haggling with your insurance company and advocating for your own healthcare.

To that end, here's a useful tool that can help with filing claims to contest denial of coverage, created by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica.

https://projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

laminda, to science
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In my latest for CNN, I spoke to experts from Denmark & the U.K. about solving a runestone puzzle more than 1,000 years in the making.

Viking queen Thyra was hailed on runestones as "Denmark's strength/salvation" (possibly "Denmark's adornment," translations vary). New analysis of carvings links previously unrelated stones & suggests that Thyra held considerable power—she was mentioned on more monuments than any Viking-era king.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/13/europe/viking-queen-thyra-runestones-denmark-scn/index.html

laminda, to SciComm
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It's that magical time of year when the Alaska Peninsula brown bears (Ursus arctos gyas) at Brooks River in Katmai National Park and Preserve are so very round that the park holds a contest (Oct 4-10) where you can vote on who's the heftiest.

Beginning in June, the bears gorge on calorie-rich salmon, gaining up to four pounds per day. And the rangers track how big the bears are (by volume) BY PINGING THEM WITH LASERS

https://www.livescience.com/fat-bear-week.html

laminda,
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@kcarruthers I didn't either, until park officials posted about it on Facebook a few years ago!

laminda, (edited ) to random
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Just got my COVID booster and everything hurts. But what hurts worse was the pharmacist telling me that she had to turn away people WHO WANTED THE SHOT because their insurance providers wouldn't cover it (manufacturers are charging ~$120*).

If your insurance provider won't cover this (or if you don't have insurance) the CDC's Bridge Access Program can help! It covers no-cost COVID-19 vaccines until 12/31/24, info here: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/bridge/index.html

*EDITED 10/2: more like $190

laminda, to science
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Happy ! Here's a lovely 🦑 weirdo that showed up to perform inverted balletic contortions for the cameras onboard NOAA's Okeanos Explorer, during a dive in the Gulf of Mexico in 2018.

You gotta love a deep-sea sighting that can make a marine biologist exclaim: "What is THAT?"

https://www.livescience.com/62366-bizarre-twisted-squid.html

laminda, to science
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Three little words you love to hear during a livestream of a RV dive to the seafloor: "It's a dumbo!"

E/V Nautilus researchers spotted three dumbo octopuses (named for their big fins, which resemble Dumbo ears) during a recent dive near Johnston Atoll. There was a big one, a sassy one, and one with "beautiful flap-flaps."

Truly, the best thing about these videos is hearing the scientists squee with joy about what they see. 🦑

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgF5IR_whIE&ab_channel=EVNautilus

laminda, to space
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Writing about moon missions today reminded me that NASA has footage of Apollo 17 astronauts singing as they walk on the moon, and it's pretty much the best thing ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl_VdN6rfrQ&ab_channel=NASAVideo

laminda, to science
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Writing about hammerhead worms meant looking at the history of their US invasion, which is how I learned that the invasive species Bipalium adventitium was identified in NY in 1947 (and in California in 1943) by zoologist Libbie Hyman.

At a time when there were few women in zoological research, Hyman literally wrote the book on invertebrates, producing a 6-volume treatise ("The Invertebrates") and 90 articles from 1940-1967.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hyman-libbie-henrietta

laminda, to science
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The internet is awash in Barbie pink right now, but some shades of pink are only visible in UV light—like the bright pink glow in springhares' brown fur.

There are 2 species of these rodents (Pedetidae capensis and P. surdaster) found in southern Africa, & in Kenya & Tanzania. Both are biofluorescent; the colorful tints come from compounds called porphyrins.

Image: J. Martin and E. Olson, Northland College; from Olson et al. 2021, Scientific Reports

https://www.livescience.com/pink-fluorescent-mammal-springhare.html

laminda, to science
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Walruses have tiny eyes relative to their massive bodies, so you might wonder if they struggle to see what's around them.

Fortunately for us all, in 1993 Rijkent Vleeshouwer created very helpful illustrations for a scientific study on walrus vision.

Paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280615156_The_anatomy_of_the_Walrus_head_Odobenus_rosmarus_Part_3_The_eyes_and_their_function_in_Walrus_ecology

Black and white illustrations in two panels labeled "C" and "D," one on top of the other. "C" shows a pair of walruses, with shaded gray triangles emanating from the eyes of one walrus to indicate its field of vision. "D" shows one walrus foraging on the seafloor, with shaded gray cones indicating where it's looking. Text atop the panels reads "Walrus vision," text below the panels reads "Figure 29C, D." Underneath that is text reading "Figure 29. The estsimated visual field of each walrus eye in 4 situations (A) Looking rearward on land. (B) While threatening or fighting on land. (C) Looking forward on land, and (D) Digging for food in the ocean floor. Note the overlap of the cones, which is the suggested area of stereoscopic vision, and thus the area in which the walcus can estimate distances accurately (Drawings: Rijkent Vleeshouwen)"

laminda, to science
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Be ungovernable, like birds who make nests OUT OF ANTI-BIRD SPIKES. A new study describes resourceful Dutch & Belgian corvids besting evil architecture by stealing metal anti-bird strips and using them like thorny twigs, to construct their homes.

Like thorns, the spikes may protect their nests from predators.

Lead author Auke-Florian Hiemstra wrote an epic 🧵 about his research that's worth a read: https://twitter.com/AukeFlorian/status/1678703433900064773

Paper: https://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/organisatie/publicaties/deinsea/deinsea-21/

A bird's nest in a tree in Antwerp. The nest is made of metal anti-bird spikes.

laminda, to Skeptic
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TIL that there are moths that froth!

This is Amerila astreus, found in India, Sri Lanka and New Guinea, and those yellow spheres next to its head are made up of tiny bubbles. Some species in this "frother" genus release bubbly secretions from glands near their eyes, to warn off predators.

📷 by budak, CC BY-NC

https://uk.inaturalist.org/taxa/126085-Amerila

JenLucPiquant, to random

There’s a huge radioactive slab of volcanic granite buried on the moon https://www.newscientist.com/article/2381498-theres-a-huge-radioactive-slab-of-volcanic-granite-buried-on-the-moon/

laminda,
@laminda@mastodon.social avatar

@JenLucPiquant That hed sounds like a lyric from a B-52s song

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