Accidents happen all the time and sometimes living cells fail to divide properly. During cell division the genetic material that was supposed to be distributed equally between two cells may all stay in one of the cells. If this happens in body cells a cancerous tumor may develop or the cell may die. If it happens in an embryo at the very early stages of development at rare occasions these individuals may survive to maturity and may even reproduce to […]
2019-2020 breeding season has started! IF YOU SEE a BLACK SCREEN please WAIT until SUNRISE in CALIFORNIA! Bella is sleeping 🙂 Welcome to the busy and productive nest of the hummingbird called Bella from La Verne, southern California located on a branch of a fig tree. Allen’s hummingbirds on average have their breeding season between February and July. Studies done on ringed hummingbirds have shown that they can live up to 12 years. According to Karl Schuchmann, an ornithologist at […]
The footage featured above is an excerpt from the documentary “Chasing Ice”. It is so incredibly impressive that it had to be posted by itself. For the first time a glacier calving event of this massive scale is recorded by the filmmakers. On May 28, 2008, Adam LeWinter and Director Jeff Orlowski filmed a historic breakup at the Ilulissat Glacier in Western Greenland. The calving event lasted for 75 minutes and the glacier retreated a full mile across a calving […]
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution a quarter of the carbon that has been released into the atmosphere was absorbed by the oceans. As a result the acidity of the oceans has increased by %30. Increasing acidity makes it corrosive dissolving the calcium shells of marine organisms. Ocean acidification will affect fisheries by disrupting the very base of the food-webs. Sea urchins, hermit crabs, lobsters, coral polyp prefer ocean water with a pH of about 8.2 in order to […]
Discovered by renowned German archeologist Klaus Schmidt (sadly passed away in 2014), Göbekli Tepe changed our view on how recent cultural evolution of humanity migh have unfolded. Civilization as we hypothesized was a sequential progression in the following manner: Agriculture > Sedentary societies > Religion Early documentaries such as The Ascent of Man by Charles Bronowski is an example of the way our thinking was organized. Göbekli Tepe now suggests the order of religion and agriculture may need a swap: […]
How will rising sea levels affect coastlines? As this is written, rate of sea level rise is about 3 milimeters per year worldwide. The main video above is a quick “snapshot” of the tidal flow in a Georgia salt marsh replete with smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) and marsh fiddler crabs (Uca spp.) scurrying about over the mud. The perspective of the camera, between two and three feet above the marsh sediment, can be thought of as from that of a […]
Welcome to another post of Molecular Nature series highlighting a gene silencing mechanism known as RNA interference. The discovery was made by Craig Mello and Andrew Fire who shared 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Please keep in mind that this video is quite advanced in content and assumes the viewers know about basic molecular biological concepts such as the Central Dogma of Biology. RNA interference (RNAi) is a process used by wide range of organisms to regulate the […]
The Mediterranean monk seal is a critically endangered marine mammal. Only about 100 indididuals (including reproducing adults and juveniles) are left in the wild along the 8500 km long Turkish coast. Dilara and Tina are two orphaned Mediterranean monk seal pups (Monachus monachus) found in December 2010 along Turkish Mediterranean coast. Both pups were immediately taken under ex-situ rehabilitation and care in Foça Monk Seal Rehab Unit by SAD-AFAG. Unlike the previous experiences, SAD-AFAG team tried an innovative feeding technique, […]
Big cats are under threat in every part of the world. Asiatic lions (Panthera leo persica) once roamed all the way up to Europe. Now only 50 left in the wild in Gujarat, India. Pride looks into how rural communities started working with the government to create a protected habitat for the highly endangered Asiatic lions. The documentary was produced by Roshan Patel as a project for masters degree program in the School of Film and Photography of Montana State […]
Ebola virus is threatening to spread out of Africa. Zika virus is evolving and circulating in more than 50 countries. At this stage we must inform ourselves and others about viruses. The Hidden Life of the Cell does just that by illustrating a real scenario of adenovirus infection and while doing that introduces major cellular components. The documentary is quite successful in explaining the biology behind events. However, you might also want to see Inner Life of Cell and the […]
The Inner Life of the Cell is a 3D computer graphics animation by David Bolinsky, former lead medical illustrator at Yale. He collaborated with lead animator John Liebler, and Mike Astrachan at XVIVO for this production. It illustrates the molecular interactions that occur when a white blood cell (Leukocyte) in the blood vessels of the human body is triggered by inflammation. This is also called leukocyte extravasation. It begins with a white blood cell rolling along the inner surface of […]
Evolving Switches, Evolving Bodies is one of the series of educational videos called The Making of the Fittest by Sean Carroll for communicating biological evolution to public with the support of Howard Hughs Medical Institute – HHMI. Evolution is thought to be acting very slow usually over millions of years. However, it can happen suprisingly quick. In this documentary, we look at a fish that evolved to change its body between two states reversibly multiple times over a few thousands […]
A fish caught known as Crocodile fish or icefish in Antarctic waters by the Norwegian expedition in 1927 tells us another fascinating story on evolution of life. Birth and Death of Genes is one of the four educational videos Sean Carroll has produced for communicating biological evolution to public with the support of HHMI. These fishes (called Nothothenoids) are unique for they are the only vertebrates in the world that lack the oxygen-binding protein hemoglobin, which gives blood its red […]
Lionfish are popular aquarium fish native to the Indo-Pacific region. The lionfish invasion in the western Atlantic began in the mid 1980s off the southern coast of Florida, USA. From Florida, lionfish have spread in all possible directions. By 2000, individuals had been sighted off the coast of North Carolina and Bermuda. First lionfish were reported from the Bahamas in 2004, where they quickly dispersed throughout the archipelago by 2007. The range of lionfish has increased further southward. Lionfish now […]
The Brown Wood Rail (Aramides wolfi) is a poorly known bird from western Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Because of extensive habitat loss,it’s considered vulnerable to extinction with less than 4,000 individuals remaining. Here, we recorded an individual singing in front of a motion-activated camera trap at Bilsa Biological Station, one of the largest remaining pieces of ChocĂł forest in western Ecuador. Bilsa is located within Machine-Chindul Ecological Reserve, Esmeraldas province, Ecuador. The Karubian lab at Tulane university has described the […]
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