Rán Science Blog

Smile! It's #TwoTruthsTuesday featuring species on #NationalMarineSanctuariesStamps!

Do you know which of these three statements isn't true about the balloonfish? Let us know in the comments!

1. The dazzling smile of a balloonfish hides a set of powerful teeth that can crush the shells of snails, urchins, and crabs.

2. Balloonfish are often encountered on night dives.

3. Balloonfish swell up like a balloon when trying to attract a mate.

Check out the balloonfish stamp:

Behold the brilliant bloody-belly comb jelly! While you might think this scarlet sensation stands out in the deep sea, it actually blends in beautifully. Red is the first wavelength of light absorbed as you descend into the depths of the ocean, so crimson-colored animals appear black, making them virtually invisible in the darkness of the deep sea. It’s a super-stealthy way to avoid becoming somebody’s snack. 

it needs 1 million signatures by the 25th june, as well as reach a certain threshold in at least seven countries which it only has in three, and it's also still missing so many signatures to reach 1 million and time is running out)

please just do it, it's free, it should be safe cause it's quite literally an official EU site, and literally all you need to do is put your name and address on there (not visible to the public, but they will check if the signatures are legit so please don't fake any signatures, that'll just make it look like the goal was reached when it wasn't)

please just do this, time is running out for this initiative. if there's any reason you haven't signed it yet and won't do it, tell me the reason, maybe i can debunk it

let's do this!

Objectives Our aim is to establish the introduction of unconditional basic incomes throughout the EU which ensure every person’s material existence and opportunity to participate in society as part of its economic policy. This aim shall be reached while remaining within the competences conferred to the EU by the Treaties. We request the EU Commission to make a proposal for unconditional basic incomes throughout the EU, which reduce regional disparities in order to strengthen the economic, social and territorial cohesion in the EU. This shall realize the aim of the joint statement by the European Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission, stated in 2017, that “the EU and its member states will also support efficient, sustainable and equitable social protection systems to guarantee basic income” in order to combat inequality.

Webpage of the initiative in the European Commission's register

Latvia (~73%)

Greece (~68%)

Estonia (~59%)

Hungary (~56%)

WE SHRIMPLY LOVE YOU—so much so that we made you these Shrimp Week Valnetine's day cards to share with *your* very shrimportant person!!

We also made some templates to add your own shrimp art to—can’t wait to sea what you come up with!

Not exactly. As far as I am aware, the idea of lobsters being immortal is a myth that originated in memes at some point. They do get really old though and have an interesting aging concept.

Lobsters, unlike us, don't stop growing once they have reached adulthood and since they need to get a larger shell every time they grow, they shed their old one. This process is energy consuming and grows more energy consuming the longer the lobster lives. At some point, very old lobsters may die from the exhaustion of trying to shed their hard parts (I believe about a tenth goes out this way.) so they certainly do die of old age just like we do when at some point our body stops working.

Another thing a lot of older lobsters die from are shell diseases.

What Lobsters do have though (and what I assume is the reason people call them immortal) is the lack of senescence (deterioration of the body with age) so through their life their body does not weaken over time. There are multiple theories why that is the case but the one I think is most likely is that they are able to endlessly repair their DNA and produce Telomerase in their cells so the cells don't die/age in a sense like ours do.

Do you have a question in the field of nature sciences or diving that you’d like to have answered?

I love Botanic Gardens, here is why:

1: they are beautiful, both the plants and Architecture

Botanic Garden Bonn, Germany

National Botanic Gardens Dublin, Ireland

2. They are educational. You learn something even if you just take a walk.

Recreated Viking House, Dublin

3. They are great for city-kids to learn the beauty of nature. Kids love colourful things. A visit in a botanic garden gives them the opportunity to run around and explore. Many gardes offer exploring guides just for kids.

5. They preserve plants that would otherwise be extinct. Most bigger gardes have research facilities and seed-banks where they freeze seeds of endangered species.

4. It’s a nice and calm place to think. If you need time on your own, the botanic gardens are always quiet and calm, and you can enjoy the silence while looking at beautiful flowers.

What I want to say is: go to your local botanic garden, enjoy the scenery. If you are a poet or writer use it as inspiration. Protect them, they are an island of serenity inside the chaotic hearts of large cities.

6. They provide a small living space for animals within a big city.

7. The admission is mostly free (or very low).

Do you want a guide to writing a research paper but you don't want to scroll a mile on your dash? This post is for you, buddy.

This book (book????) or tidily-laid-out-shitpost or whatever you want to call it is a handy-dandy guide to college-level humanities research methods and paper-writing.

This is a step-by-step follow along of my process as I, a person with a BA in English Lit, navigate writing a paper on George Orwell for my English 101 class.

This is NOT carefully crafted, it is literally a post that I made.

That said, it is a post that I made that is twelve thousand words on how to write a paper and now comes with a table of contents and headers and fancy alt-text and image descriptions and is forty fucking pages.

This document includes:

How to read an academic paper

How to skim a book for a college class

How to prioritize what sources to use

How to write an organized, cohesive research paper with an introduction, support paragraphs, and conclusion

(i managed to only say "fuck" six times in forty pages so I'm not taking them out.)

ANYWAY for a PDF click here.

If you want it in .docx click here.

Free to use for any reason, free to reproduce, give them to whoever, just don't sell them. (if you want to credit me if you do share them, ms-demeanor.tumblr.com is perfectly fine)

The clams are just better at measuring the water quality than any man-made sensors.

Go behind the scenes with our scientists and ROV pilots on June 30!⁠ 

We’ll be streaming #LivefromtheDeep on an MBARI expedition to Sur Ridge—an underwater oasis of deep-sea corals and sponge gardens just off the coast of northern California, near Big Sur. MBARI’s remotely operated vehicles and state-of-the-art cameras let our scientists see the amazing creatures that call Sur Ridge home, and high-resolution mapping tools create stunning images of the seafloor.⁠

Join us on June 30 at 11:00 a.m. (Pacific) and see live footage of the seafloor, ask our scientists and engineers your questions, and find out what it’s like to have a career exploring the deep ocean.⁠ Tune in to the livestream on MBARI’s website,  YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter.

Just a bb two-spot octopus cutethulhu to bless your timeline for Cephalopod Week