This blog is at its heart a science blog, and we’ve mostly
limited it to natural sciences in Hawaii.
But perhaps we haven’t sufficiently described our deep love
for science, and how important it is to our lives.
We could not understand our world, our bodies, out universe
and all the rest in the sophisticated way we do without this remarkable system
of inquiry.
Science is a systematic way of observing, compiling
information and explaining what you’re seeing.
Some of this stuff has no immediate usefulness that most
people can see. Some of it does. Some is a building block to later useful
discoveries. Some builds tools that can be used to beneficial effect later. Some
may never have any direct application.
But there’s even value in satisfying curiosity, solving
mysteries.
I went through just one day’s supply of new science stuff.
Not sure how useful this is to anyone, but some scientists have been able to make suppositions about the habitats of dinosaurs from the
coloring of the big lizards.
“These studies suggest that Psittacosaurus sp. inhabited a closed habitat such as a forest with
a relatively dense canopy,” the authors wrote.
Here, researchers looking at meteorites—or a class or
meteorites called chondrites—posit about the Earth’s formation from some
complex chemistry on these astral travelers.
That stuff is all very nice, but there’s also research that
has direct beneficial effect.
Like a study that suggests a diet that will reduce ovarian
cancer.
And while all sorts of government agencies are beginning to
regulate the use of e-cigarettes, there are a couple of new studies that
suggests electronic smokes actually do help people quit smoking. They are here
and here.
Here’s one. It’s some scientific work that suggests that the droughts of California in the past couple of decades are something Californians
will need to get used to, in a world of changing climate.
You might scoff at researchers taking core samples in
ancient lake beds, but they can provide useful clues about how our behavior
today can impact the lives of our grandchildren.
In this case, scientists
compared lake sediments in the Sierra Nevada mountains with marine sediments in
the Pacific. They found relationships between periods when the planet was
warmer and when California dried up.
“These data provide evidence of a persistent relationship
between past climate warming, Pacific sea surface temperature shifts and
centennial to millennial episodes of California aridity,” the paper says.
Some of those dry spells lasted several decades, and some
lasted thousands of years. UCLA professor Glen MacDonald, quoted in ScienceDaily, said that given the progress of climate change, there are some
California predictions you can make:
"In a century or so, we might see a retreat of forest
lands, and an expansion of sagebrush, grasslands and deserts. We would expect
temperatures to get higher, and rainfall and snowfall would decrease. Fire
activity could increase, and lakes would get shallower, with some becoming
marshy or drying up."
Finally, because we are a Hawai`i science blog, an odd
little piece from Hawaii research that suggests introduced Kalij pheasants
behave in interesting ways when overcrowded.
While pheasants are not normally known to do
this, researchers found that in Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park, both male and
female pheasants—even unrelated birds—participate in raising chicks.
The study was published in The Auk, a publication of the American Ornithologists’ Union,n by
Lijin Zeng, John T. Rotenberry, Marlene Zuk, Thane K. Pratt and Zhengwang
Zhang. The reseachers are from Hawai`i, Texas, Minnesota, California and China.
Pheasants don’t normally display this behavior but at the
park, they seem to form communities, and individual birds conduct activities
that support the community.
“All adults exhibited cooperative behavior, including caring
for chicks, agonistic behaviors against conspecific intruders, and vigilance
against predators,” the authors wrote.
They suggest that the behavior may not be as rare among
pheasants and other similar birds as previously assumed, and that overcrowding
may help promote the communal behavior.
© Jan TenBruggencate 2016
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