Satellites hovering hundreds of miles above earth; underwater autonomous vehicles traveling through the ocean; drones collecting snot above whales; and robots that move like fish; what do all of these things have in common (other than sounding like some futuristic world where robots and computers have completely taken over)?? Turns out, all of these things … Continue reading
This summer UnderTheC alum, Kelsey Ellis, and I joined the Cassar Lab from Duke University for a research cruise out of Bermuda. This was our cruise track which has striking resemblance to the Bermuda Triangle so naturally we were a little concerned about returning: The ship was the R/V Atlantic Explorer owned by the Bermuda … Continue reading
This post is a sort of follow-up to an earlier post, “Getting Started with Bioinformatics”. Two years ago, if I were to read that post, I would’ve thought that while bioinformatics if obviously powerful, it is not that relevant to me as someone more inclined in “classic field-based wildlife biology”. In such a profession, I … Continue reading
Virtual Reality (VR) has had an arduous and disheartening history over the past several decades, but things have recently been looking up. There are many reasons you aren’t currently able to play Fallout 4 in a computer generated landscape projected right onto your eyes, but the foremost probably comes down to limitations in technology. VR … Continue reading
This guest post was written by Ben Maxie. Ben is an undergraduate researcher at Old Dominion University who studies zooxanthellae genetics with Dan Barshis. Aside from marine biology, he is interested in beer brewing, car modification, and hiking. It’s estimated that 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic ends up in the oceans per … Continue reading
What comes to mind when you think of the word Drone? If you are a science fiction nerd like me, maybe you think of an awesome novel or movie set hundreds of years into the future. Maybe you are more linked in to history, politics or the news and think of unmanned aerial vehicles used by … Continue reading
Oceanographic field work has to take place in – you guessed it – the ocean. Most of the time, I sit at my computer and play with Matlab scripts and gigantic stores of data, but every so often one of my fellow Seim lab graduate students (and researcher at the Coastal Studies Institute) Mike Muglia … Continue reading
It seemed the South remained the last holdout, but with the news that its first industrial scale wind project* will also be producing electricity by 2016 in North Carolina, America’s embrace of the industry seems to be growing. Continue reading
In the past year or so, the idea of drone robots filling our skies has captured our collective imagination. Drones have already been used for not-so-great things, such as the U.S’s drone strikes, but they have also been used to collect scientific data, in filmmaking, as a part of search and rescue operations, to prevent … Continue reading
Even if you are interested in wind energy in North Carolina (this blogger), and even if you attempt to feign interest in local policy matters (again, this blogger), the news last week that our governor’s office has requested an extended buffer against offshore wind farms may have flown under your radar. The NC Department of … Continue reading
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