A Great Ally, Or Perhaps A Great Threat.

Jelly donut anyone? These “dinner plate” jellies usually live in the deep sea, but were recently spotted closer to the surface around Monterey Bay. 

Local diver Dave Smith captured this video of one snacking on doliolids (the gelatinous things floating around in the water and also in the jelly’s pink gut tissue). Just in time for National Donut Day!

I remembering being at the Monterey aquarium a few times and I recall it's repurposed from a cannery. Does the aquarium have a book of the building's history? I'd love to buy it and read up on the local history.

It’s true! The Aquarium stands on the site of the former Hovden and Sea Pride canneries. Here’s a brief history of the Aquarium. For a longer read, this book delves into the history of Monterey Bay, including the Aquarium!

The canneries are an important part of Monterey Bay history and you can find  tributes to them throughout the Aquarium, including the smokestacks on the roof and the boiler exhibit in the atrium. 

The smokestacks! They’re now sealed and primarily used as a perch by peregrine falcons searching for prey.

Restored boilers—fish would be cooked in these as part of the canning process.

Old Hovden Cannery building as seen from Hopkins Beach in the late 60′s. (📷: Mark Silberstein)

Same spot today! The Aquarium building incorporates some of the original structures and style of the canneries. You can read more about the architectural design of the Aquarium here. 

Correction: even cooler than we thought!

Apparently Ethiopian Baboons are starting to domesticate wolves, which is giving scientists new insights about what it might have been like when early humans did that. That’s cool pretty cool!

Can we talk? Starting a career in science communication

“Here is how science is relevant and has an impact on your life, and more importantly, here is how it can empower you.” ~ Mónica Feliú-Mójer

In this week’s featured podcast, “Sci on the Fly,” our own AAAS Science and Technology Policy fellow Allyson Kennedy interviews neurobiologist Mónica Feliú-Mójer, communications and science outreach director at Ciencia Puerto Rico. 

We’ll let them take it from here: bit.ly/2ITDur3   

Above:  Mónica I. Feliú-Mójer delivering the keynote talk at the University of North Carolina STEM Diversity conference,  Credit: Katherine Gale Stember Feliú-Mójer is also associate director for diversity and communication training at NSF-funded iBiology, where she produced a series of videos that is rethinking the narrative of “diversity in science”: https://goo.gl/3xmTET Below:  Allyson Kennedy, Ph.D., a developmental biologist and 2017-18 Science & Technology Policy fellow at NSF, in The Dickinson Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she did her graduate and postdoctoral work,  Credit: Allyson Kennedy, Ph.D.   

https://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/activities/aaasfellows/bios/kennedy.jsp

Above: Kennedy at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she led one arm of a multidisciplinary project investigating the effects of e-cigarettes on embryonic development,  Credit: Leah Small, VCU Public Affairs https://www.aaaspolicyfellowships.org/ Below: Feliú-Mójer filming a segment for Univision that featured Latinxs in higher education. She is showing the camera the model organism she used for her PhD research, the nematode C. elegans, Credit: Mónica I. Feliú-Mójer, Ph.D 

Hide the cheese and crackers guys, this raccoon skull is W H I T E!

Seems like heating peroxide to a comfortably warm temperature makes it work twice as fast. This skull now looks like a plastic replica rather than a real skull. Its also 100% complete! My first complete raccoon skull. No cracks, no missing teeth, nothing. Just absolutely perfect. 

derin.goya.fishing on ig 🐙

There’s a megalodon tooth in the nature trade right now and my god do I want it

Isn’t it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most?

Charles Lindbergh (via purplebuddhaquotes)

can’t relate

no seriously at what point do we stop saying dinosaurs and start saying prehistoric birds?? is it a matter of time?? a matter of species??? SCIENCE SIDE OF TUMBLR PLEASE HELP

Chemistry Valentine’s Cards by Nick Uhlig.