Category: Uncategorized
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Happy Wojak Day
Happy Groundhog Day! This Yellow-bellied Marmot is one I photographed up the “Old Fall River Road” in Rocky Mountain National Park. Marmots are also known as groundhogs and woodchucks. Different species of Marmots are found across North America, eastern Europe, Siberia and some of the alpine regions in western Europe. In the movie “Groundhog Day”,…
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Lake Effect Snow and Mesovortices On Lake Michigan
Lake Effect Snow and Mesovortices On Lake Michigan Lake Effect Snow took a rare form last week. Canadian Whirlwinds or mesovortices formed over Lake Michigan Jan 19 2024 as it “cooled” or gave up some of its stored heat because just the right ingredients of weather converged. Cold air from more than one direction blowing…
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Lake Erie and a Seiche
Lake Erie will probably experience a rare strong “Seiche” this weekend (Jan 13 2024). Fetch is a measurement of distance that wind can travel across water more-or-less uninterrupted. If the fetch is long, the effects are greater. Sustained winds traveling southwest to northeast produce a long fetch across Lake Erie. The sustained winds cause water…
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OLLI Class 1 Summary
OLLI Class 1 Summary Water exists in three states on planet earth: solid, liquid and gas. What allows this is water’s “hydrogen bonds” which are very short-lived attractions between adjacent water molecules. Water is a polar covalent bonded molecule. The Oxygen does not share electrons with the two hydrogens equally, resulting in the oxygen side…
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Lake Effect Snow
Lake Effect Snow Why do North America’s “Lake Effect Snows” seem most severe in December and January? “Lake Effect Snowstorms” occur mostly around the Great Lakes in the United States during the months of December and January. The meteorological ingredients needed are cold air blowing across a large volume of “relatively” warm water. Lakes Superior,…
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Species and Speciation Part 3 – Dingos and Painted Dogs of Africa
Species and Speciation Part 3 – Dingos and Painted Dogs of Africa All that is left out so far in this discussion are Dingos of Australia and Africa’s Wild Dogs (or Painted Dogs). All the DNA evidence suggests Dingos are descendants of domestic dogs which the first persons (probably Indonesians) to colonize Australia brought with…
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Species, Speciation, Coyotes and Wolves. Part 2 of 2.
Species, Speciation, Coyotes and Wolves. Part 2 of 2. Now back to Coyotes and Wolves. Evolutionary biologists measure statistical differences between closely related populations with the “Fixation Index” (FST). It is a measure of population differentiation due to genetic structure. FST values range from 0.0 to 1.0. Modern genomic sequencing of DNA allows very precise examination…
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Species, Speciation, Coyotes and Wolves.
Species, Speciation, Coyotes and Wolves. Part 1 of 2. Teaching “Speciation” to Undergraduate Biology majors was always challenging, especially when teaching non-majors. I used the Species Versus Speciation approach. Think of a “Species” as a photograph and “Speciation” (the process by which new species arise) as a motion picture. Since the dawn of classification of living…
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Your Dog’s Floppy Ears… Embryogenesis and Genetics
Your Dog’s Floppy Ears… Embryogenesis and Genetics Several published studies summarized here show how embryology and modern genetics begin to answer the biological basis of selective breeding of modern dogs. It is well established that Australian Dingos and domesticated dogs are all descended from Wolves. The only questions are how and when. Archeology and cave drawings…