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ORBIT – Seán Doran (2018)

December 23, 2019 at 8:33 pm / Global Patterns

ORBIT compiled by Seán Doran is a wonderfully poetic “out of the world” representation of global patterns based on observations from the International Space Station. The film leverages NASA’s Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth program. NatureDocumentaries.org always endorses the motto “Science can be beautiful and art can be informative”. The International Space Station experiences on average 16 sunrises in a typical 24 hour period. It circles the Earth in between 92-93 minutes. You can learn more about the travel […]

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In Nomine Terra Calens: In the Name of a Warming Earth – Lucy Jones (2019)

October 9, 2019 at 2:33 pm / Global Patterns, Human Nature, Video

Science can be beautiful. Art can be informative. The urgency of climate change is a pressing issue of our time. Scientists have done their job superbly demonstrating causes for why and how our planet is warming due to Human activities. They have done it by making long term measurements of atmospheric CO2 levels and deep drilling of polar ice cores. The scientific facts are all very clear indicating excessive fossil fuel use must end. However the message is clearly not […]

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The Making of Silent Running (1972) – Douglas Trumbull

October 1, 2019 at 5:30 pm / Human Nature, Technical Notes, Video

Silent Running is a landmark 1972 film directed by Douglas Trumbull. Over the years, it became a cult sci-fi classic and is seen as one of the most pivotal philosophical movies for environmental movement. Recall that Greenpeace was started in 1971 and the spirit of the times was chiming with anti-nuclear sentiment. Obliteration of humankind was indeed an apocalyptic possibility under Cold War. Rachel Carson’s hugely influential 1962 book Silent Spring which showed the global impact of the pesticide DDT […]

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Film Grammar – Khan Academy (2017)

September 28, 2019 at 9:22 am / Human Nature, Technical Notes, Video

This collaboration between Khan Academy and Pixar is a wonderful demonstration of building tool kits for self learning. Psychologists argue that an important cognitive function known as working memory is what made us into modern humans. As the highly inspirational illustrator Beatrix Potter put it, one cannot truly study anything without drawing it. Drawing is an effective working memory exercise that helps reinforce information by converting a short term memory into a long term one. That could be one reason […]

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The Queen of Trees – PBS (2006)

September 27, 2019 at 10:22 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, PBS Nature, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Queen of Trees is now viewable on the official YouTube Channel of Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble. Veteran wildlife filmmakers Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble once again put out a marvelous work by compiling observations on a community centered around a sycamore fig tree. The success of the documentary comes from their long-term observations in a particular filming spot in Kenya where they camped on location for more than two years. A thorough understanding of the landscape with it’s inhabitants […]

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Protein Degradation through Ubiquitination – Oxford University Press (2014)

September 26, 2019 at 2:08 pm / Molecular Nature, Video

What happens when a protein is “done” and must be taken care of? The companion animation to the Oxford University Press text book Molecular Biology- Principles of Genome Function, encapsulates the basics of ubiquitination through E1>E2>E3 cascade and the molecular components involved. Ubiquitin is a small protein that can be covalently linked to lysine residues of proteins targeted for degradation by proteosomes inside the cell. E1 activating enzyme E2 conjugating enzyme E3 ligase complex The combinatorial diversity of E3 complexes […]

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MOSAiC Expedition: An Arctic Odyssey of Climate Scientists

September 25, 2019 at 5:14 pm / Global Patterns, Video

Since Captain Cook’s time (the collier bark Endeavor was the first scientific research vessel in history) ship expeditions have been extremely influential to understand our world. In an age of anthropogenic climate change the Arctic has remained the most understudied component of the global circulation system. Human induced global warming is exerting its effects on both poles of the planet. Now the time has come and the international Arctic drift expedition known as MOSAiC Expedition (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the […]

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When Plants Fight Back – bioGraphic (2017)

September 25, 2019 at 12:50 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Even Aristotle got it wrong. He thought plant roots convert soil into wood and grow that way. Plants resemble bizarre upside down animals. Their superior mouth parts (roots) are located in an inferior position. According to Aristotle, plants are ‘lower’ level living things. They are the first basic steps in procession of life from the inanimate to the animate (animals). Plants don’t move and are without ‘sensory soul’ but still have ‘souls’. Plants do not have any excrement, do not […]

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Weekly Changes in Arctic Sea Ice Age During 1984 – 2019 | NASA/SVS (2019)

September 24, 2019 at 10:02 pm / Global Patterns, Video

NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) has produced an animation showing the sea ice dynamics in the Arctic. The diminishing ratio of multi-year sea ice is staggering. Human contribution to global warming is well documented. The response of the polar regions to heating especially in the Arctic is extremely fast. While scientists are rushing to predict future temperature and precipitation using exceedingly complex climate models, the behavior of the cryosphere is a curious one. We are already witnessing rather large glacial […]

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Bluefish – Prince of The Bosphorus

September 23, 2019 at 2:10 pm / Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

You can now watch the documentary with English subtitles by entering the following code “yavrubalıkyemeyizbiz”. LÜFER (Bluefish) is a glitter in people’s eyes, big time money for the small & big fisherman. When the seasonal migration starts lüfer fishing becomes an addictive daily routine for the retired, unemployed and off time employer/hobbyists across Bosporus. If you have a chance to travel around Istanbul’s coastline on a day in October, you can count close to ten thousand active fishing rods, day […]

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Whack! Jab! Crack! It’s a Blackback Land Crab Smackdown – Deep Look – PBS/KQED (2019)

August 23, 2019 at 9:50 pm / Natural history, PBS Nature, Short Observations, Video

DEEP LOOK is an award-winning PBS program produced by KQED. Here’s another cool story from season 5 Episode 13. Shred a sponge into thousands of pieces but the cells can still rearrange and organize themselves in a surprisingly rapid manner. Here we are shown a snapshot of another example of limb regeneration from the crustacean blackback land crab (Gecarcinus ruricola) native to the Caribbean. Human tissue and organ regeneration is a curious goal for medicine. However in order to achieve […]

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Perpetual Ocean from NASA

July 27, 2019 at 1:49 pm / Global Patterns, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video

Understanding large-scale global climate and local weather patterns is life saving. Majority of our planet is covered by oceans therefore understanding ocean dynamics is key for making climatic forecasts. Here you can watch four interrelated animations produced by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio in a single video. All animations are based on simulations of high resolution satellite data on an impressively realistic General Circulation Model (GCMs) that NASA uses called ECCO2 (Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean Phase II). […]

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Annotated Features of Moon Surface – Kaguya/JAXA

July 23, 2019 at 11:32 am / Cosmological, Video

Some astrobiologists consider that having a satellite as big as The Moon could be one of the prerequisites of life on a planet. Satellites with sufficient mass can exert a stabilizing effect on the rotation axis of its planet preventing erratic wobbles like a top loosing its speed. In fact, our Earth experiences such wobbles known as the Milankovich Cycles but thanks to our moon the effects are dampened. 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing […]

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A Shark Swallowed Whole by a Wreckfish | Okeanos Explorer/NOAA (2019)

July 12, 2019 at 4:03 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Short Observations

The remotely operated vehicle Deep Discoverer (D2) and the telepresence capabilities of NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, brought a quite rare biological occurrence for Humans to observe. During the Dive 07 of the Windows to the Deep 2019 expedition viewers watching live have witnessed this fascinating predation in action taking place in the deep ocean. D2 was following a straight-line on a small topographic rise originally thought to be a shipwreck at about 450 meters (1,476 feet) of depth. As D2 […]

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Wallace in Borneo – Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero – BBC (2013)

June 27, 2019 at 2:35 pm / BBC documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video

The theory of evolution was co-discovered independently by two biologists that lived within the same time period. Darwin and Wallace were well known in their time but Wallace’s name gradually has been overshadowed by Darwin. Today we rarely (almost never) hear the name Alfred Russell Wallace. In the past there have been a few documentaries making a rare attempt to focus on the biography of this very influential biologist including an episode in Jacob Bronowski’s 1973 The Ascent of Man […]

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