Platynereis abnormis of Saipan

Platynereis abnormis is a nereid polychaete worm.  A congener, P. dumerlii is one of the most studied worms of all.  Ernest Just spent evenings studying them under the lights on the dock at, I think, Woods Hole, and wrote about them.    The following paper by Just is noteworthy:

E E Just. Breeding Habits of the Heteronereis Form of Platynereis megalops at Woods Hole, Mass. Biological Bulletin 27, 201 - 212 (1914). 

This publication is available online.  However, even though Just has been dead for many years, JSTOR places this information over one of his papers on line, probably in violation of the law:

Preview or purchase options are not available

You may be able to access this item through one of the over 9,000 institutions that subscribe to JSTOR. Check the list of participating institutions to log in or find a participating library near you.

You see, the publication I have in mind was published in Biological Bulletin, all volumes of which are available free online.   This angers me, because I have wasted time because of the disingenuous actions of JSTOR, leaving aside the issue of the current unavailability of the author---presumably along with the lawyers who drew up the copyright policies of Biological Bulletin at the time.

On Saipan, these worms are super abundant in the evenings, yet they---like several other small emergent zooplankton---are almost completely unknown.  SCUBA divers report that, when night diving, swarms of these small worms are a nuisance, swarming around dive  lights (? and getting into regulators).  The swarms are of the Heteronereis (reproductive) stage.  What appears odd to me, they swarm almost every night; yet a great deal of interest has been shown in worms of this genus that spawn on a lunar cycle.  Or then again, maybe they do swarm on nights when they do not spawn.  Hardly ever did we see a night when this worm was not to be found, attracted to our flash lights.

For now, I will post this photograph taken when John Furey and I went collecting for plankton for his marine aquarium on Saipan.   (The transparent, larger organism is an eel larva.   The Heteronereids are less than a centimeter long. 

Love-Hate: Body Area Network and Internet of Things

This expresses  my first reaction, from in an article:

 There will be complicated, unintended consequences: ‘We will live in a world where many things won’t work and nobody will know how to fix them.'

1. Internet of things

http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/05/14/internet-of-things/

    2.  Body Area Networks

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/7-things-you-should-know-about-body-area-networks-bans/1946

Important Photography Books

I have studied photography from several points of view.  Even though I studied at Brooks Institute of Photography for several months in 1977, most of my learning was self driven.  I pored over libraries of books, gleaning bits and fragments of photographic wisdom.  But photography is a wealthy man's pursuit; for several years, it hasn't been one I could pursue.  I have a simple Canon PowerShot point and shoot, and that's about it anymore.  Fe and William have newer Canon PowerShots, so I use theirs. 

I am drawn to macro photography, and I have also spent a good amount of time doing photography through a microscope.  I am no good at it.  I admire those who have not only the focus but the equipment to pursue it.  I spent a year or so doing Underwater Photograhpy, and I have a (broken) underwater housing for the Canon SD1100 IS; underwater photography, like fishing, is a pursuit requiring many unproductive hours to produce a single fish, or a single good photography.   The camera of my cell phone is fun to play with, but not a serious tool by any means. 

A few books stand out as exceptional.  For one thing, the techniques they discuss are themselves out of the ordinary.

1. Alfred Blaker's books on Scientific Photography and Field Photography. 
2. Mertens: _In Water Photography_ is a highly technical text delineating a few techniques that are a far cry from the mainstream howto books.  It is worth reading, even if most of us could never even begin to pretend to apply these techniques.
3.  Ansel Adams's books on the Zone System

 Blaker's macro techniques were taught at a workshop I attended many years ago.  The idea was to use two cheap strobes, arranged like lighting in a portrait studio.  A neutral density filter over one would create modelling.  It is possible to take a photograph of a bee on a flower with wings frozen, using such a technique.  


Using Canon PowerShots, the Canon Hacker's Development Kit (CHDK) is interesting and useful.  I have found that my PowerShot is too unsophisticaed to support most of the CHDK features, since it does not have an iris, and is less capable in almost all respects than higher end PowerShot cameras.  

Visualization

 In no particular order, sites with great visualization examples


http://www.wellcometreeoflife.org/interactive/



Also:  http://www.research.att.com/groups/infovis/?fbid=2qAj_nh77F4


An amazing Tree of Life visualization:

 http://yifanhu.net/TOL/tol_9_19_2011.jpg

Favorite photos, on another one of my blogs

Some of my favorite photos taken with the Canon SD1100IS, using a Canon underwater housing.  They were taken on Saipan, and posted previously on my blog at kickstones.blogspot.com. 

The photos were specifically located here.  I want to annotate these shots, so they were copied to this more current blog.

I. Decalcified Bacculogypsina sphaerulata

The first photo is taken through my Zeiss microscope.  It is a decalcified foraminiferan, Bacculogypsina sp. Magnification unknown.

 II. Bacculogypsina sphaerulata 

in situ, at low tide, at Tangke Beach, Saipan.

These foraminiferans are known as Star Sand.  Some of the beaches on Saipan are made up of more than 90% star sand.  These are living organisms with symbiotic diatoms living within them.  (the photo above is one of these).

III and IV..  Boloceroides sp.

 

These swimming sea anemones were taken on the seagrass Halodule sp., on W. Saipan, near World Resort Hotel.  Another great secret gem of the shallow reef platform.  The first shot is an establishing shot, showing pretty much of the situation.  The second one is one of my favorites.  These were taken with the Canon in an underwater housing.  I believe I was using the CHDK firmware enhancement.  Those are my fingers.

 

 The second shot is one of my favorites, of the same critters.  

These anemones can sting pretty good.  They move around from site to site, I think.   For a while I would see many of them at a certain haunt, maybe for weeks or months.  Suddenly they are gone, but I see them elsewhere.  Great microscope subjects for classes.  These might even be the same photo.

BBDB: Big Brother Data Base

UPDATE:The information in this post can be summarized with two commands.  

• Emacs:  To download the emacs git repo:

•  # git clone https://github.com/mirrors/emacs.git

• BBDB: to download the BBDB up to date source:
•  # git clone git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/bbdb.git

I.  Some notes about BBDB

    I use bbdb with emacs, in a relatively mundane and non-interesting way: I use it as a basic addressbook.  When I need an address, I just fire up emacs and type M-x bbdb, then respond with a part of the name I am interested in.  Very nice.  From the record that is displayed, I can also write an email message directly, by typing "m".    (I have to have the necessary magic spells in my .emacs file, the configuration file that has followed me around for over 20 years, and grown and changed.)   Also, from the smtp mail composition facility of emacs, when I type a few characters from a required email address or name in the "To:" field, if it is in the bbdb database, it is inserted automagically.  I love thisd.

I have just wrestled with bbdb for an hour or two, and gotten to work on one machine, perfectly well.  I don't have all the bits of bbdb working.  The origin of the name "Big Brother Data Base" comes, I think, from the ability to scavenge all email addresses from all incoming mail.   I don't need that.  I don't want that. 




2.  Installing bbdb with self compiled emacs from git repo

 I have compiled emacs on each of my machines, for one reason so I can use the new eww browser that is included with Emacs 24.4.   Also, for other reasons.  I used this method, which worked on both Archlinux and Ubuntu systems:

      http://ergoemacs.org/emac/building_emacs_from_git_repository.html

And I have my work subdir under git control, so I can save changes to a flashdrive, and push them onto another machine.  Right now, I am doing this with only two machines.  But I need identical files, and identical configurations on these two machines, so I can work out there somewhere (I was looking for an address in my car!), and have the changes reflected in both machines pretty easily.  It's been worth it for years, and I just got ahold of a 64GB flash drive to keep a relatively large subdir with all my important work and etc at my fingertips.   I am writing a letter here, go out there, and can finish it.  (But print later, so far).  I don't need to get fancy with servers.

To get BBDB working right again, after a glitch, I searched and searched all day.  So here's my secret: use the method pointed to by this message:

      http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.bbdb.user/3178

I found this after trying several of the  seemingly dozens of installation instructions all over the Internet.  Only this one worked awesomely.    The new bbdb (3.1.2)  converted  my  old address database more or less automatically, with no problem.  I had to fiddle with it some, but not much. 

Discovery Museums

A few notes about discovery museums.

"Teaching is manipulation of the environment such that

learning happens."    --- Kangichy Welle

When we moved to the West Coast, I immediately joined up with the Exploratorium.  I had been teaching in Micronesia for some 25 years, had been aware of the Exploratorium, even seen many of the cool stuff on the web, but yearned to visit these places of learning.  We also joined up with the California Academy of Sciences.   Eventually, we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and managed to get a membership there.   We have not yet visited Chabot.  We have visited the Lawrence Hall of Science, however, a number of times.  Many more I hope to visit this summer: one of them is the Intel Museum.  I was able to visit the San Franscisco Bay Model: Wow!  

Each of these sites is unique.   Incomparable.

I cannot believe, however, that NONE of these sites has a really nice magnifying glass---a simple loupe---of moderate price, for sale.  All manner of trinkets and scientific curiosities are on sale, some of them for exhorbitant prices, others more reasonable.   Someone is missing the point, here.  Everyone.   In Micronesia, we learned that a simple, high quality magnifying glass can provide hours of exploratory fun.   I have carried a reasonable one, most of the time, and used it for research and the equivalent of web surfing.

Nows the time to ponder: what has happened to these exploratory museums?  To our consciousness?  

Kids

Fe has had several opportunities to observe young children at the Exploratorium.  She has decided not to take them back for a while.  I wondered about her thoughts.   I have thoughts of my own.  I've observed, even for kids a few years older, that scientifically well-thought out demonstrations or exhibits are often lost in a hyperkinetic button pushing mode of exploration.   I'll be the first to admit that I have often sold kids short---I am amazed at how much they pick up along the way, when paying NO ATTENTION AT ALL (as far as I can tell).

Still, I wonder about the layout of the new Exploratorium.  I have been privy to conversations by Adults, in which the new layout is touted as really, really effective.  But how does it work for little ones?

Fe makes the point that the lives of these kids can be greatly enriched by the kinds of learning that is promised by these discovery museums.  But she waxed upon her sense, about the Exploratorium this morning.   Here are some notes:

• kids cannot focus amid the jostling.
• it's too crowded
• parents should be able to relax and watch as the kids explore: they cannot
• the layout is too confining [my word], encourages collisions and interference, and not focus and concentration
• as the kids start to focus, the barrage of other kids and the generally confining conditions turn it into playtime.
• kids are curious, but at young age their concentration is easily interrupted.
• It's like a buffet: all the food is there, but you don't have time to make your selection, or really taste the food.  

She felt the Academy of Sciences is (CAS) more open and welcoming.  The kids really like it.   For my part, I thought the level of many CAS activities is more mature, but there are lots of really amazing things to explore.

Moving on, we need to work on Nature Deficit Syndrome.