As a coral biologist/physiologist, the ethics of specimen collection for scientific research has been on my mind since day one. We do a lot of destructive sampling in this field. In order to make physiological measurements on a coral, the organism most often be sacrificed. I have seen many a freezer full of collected coral … Continue reading
We just hit 100 posts here at UndertheCblog and we couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you all very much for reading and for supporting us on Twitter and Facebook. We started this blog about 9 months ago with the goal of learning how to effectively communicate science to broader audiences. We spend so … Continue reading
This is the third and final installment of our guest blog by Kevin Wolfe, a PhD student at TAMUCC How marine science benefits by studying a simple brain The biomedical benefits of studying Aplysia are fairly obvious; learning about the human brain is easy using a simpler analogue. Parkinson’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, and … Continue reading
Part II of III in a series of guest posts by TAMUCC grad student Kevin Wolfe! How a marine snail became a cornerstone in learning and memory research I cannot emphasize enough how important Aplysia has been for the fields of learning and memory. Though the structure and function of the neuron itself was obtained … Continue reading
Today we have another guest post. This time from Maya, a fellow graduate student at UNC. Hello there, readers of UndertheC!! My name is Maya Nadimpalli, and I’m a PhD student in Environmental Microbiology at UNC’s School of Public Health. I’ve been taking a great Science Communication class this past semester with some of the … Continue reading
With the release of the most recent IPCC report, comes science-backed news that we have all been expecting. Climate change is occurring at an alarming rate and lifestyle changes must be made to avoid catastrophe. If you need confirmation of this, read the report, or this great story from the New York Times instead. The … Continue reading
Scientists at The UNC Institute of Marine Sciences, the UNCW Center for Marine Science, the North Carolina Wildlife Commission, NC State CMAST, the National Parks Service, and the North Carolina Aquariums have been collaborating for quite a while to coordinate a sea turtle release. The day finally came last week, as members of the Peterson lab … Continue reading
Despite the human race perceiving the seas as the ‘first frontier’ since the establishment of our species, NOAA estimates that 95% of the world’s oceans remain unexplored. From what you know of satellite capabilities and many of the resources you’ve seen on this very blog, this statement might be confusing and even unbelievable. But I … Continue reading
Are the oceans a limitless resource? No. Clearly not, but we still have policies intact that treat them as such. We are overfishing down the food chain. Blue fin tuna is worth a small fortune and we dredge the deep sea to catch a fish called the Patagonian Toothfish to sell at market. Perhaps you … Continue reading
The new Game of Thrones season is right around the corner, and I know one UndertheC blogger who is really excited! It’s me. I’m really excited. One of the driving plot points through the entire series is the season differential that George Martin’s world has to deal with. Unlike the annual cycle that our Earth … Continue reading
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