Girls and whale sharks!

Some beautiful pictures

Chicquero

In an effort to raise awareness about conservation and the environment, marine life photographer Shawn Heinrichs collaborated with fashion photographer Kristian Schmidt on this completely awe-inspiring underwater project. The images feature enchanting combinations where human models swim in sync with whale sharks, the world’s largest fish.

Involved in the project were Italian model Roberta Mancino, underwater model Hannah Fraser, stylist Fazli Krasniqi, and physiologist and artist Taro Smith. As the models and animals worked flawlessly together, the two photographers captured rare moments of natural visual harmony. A strong passion for the preservation and protection of our world is evident in this project, and, through their hard work and creative minds, Heinrichs and Schmidt have brought to us a collection of innovative moments that serve as a constant reminder of the fragility of nature.

“You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.” Edwin Louis Cole

YOU…

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Evolution is a supplement to my faith

In response to my last post of ‘Evolution is not from the devil’ a friend of mine shared a video of Rev. Adam Hamilton giving a sermon entitled ‘Dinosaurs on the Ark: The Bible and Science’. At first I was apprehensive, expecting another Kent Hovind rant on how evolution can’t be true. Oh, how wrong I was.

Adam starts off by explaining that he got asked a question: were there dinosaurs on the ark? To answer this question he first outlines the scientific creation theory as well as the biblical creation story.

Evolution is not from the devil

Unfortunately there are a lot of Christians today who believe that evolution is this absurd evil theory that comes from the lies of Satan. Because of this, these people don’t actually take the time to understand the theory of evolution and they point-blank refuse to accept anything that it says.

This week in Science

Some of the latest and coolest scientific advancements – this is why I love science!

Embryos are doing it for themselves

We as humans are considered as endotherms because we can internally regulate our body temperatures. Ectotherms, on the other hand, are unable to do this and they use external sources of heat to regulate their body temperatures. For example, snakes bask in the sun in the early hours of the morning to warm up their body after the cold night. Ectotherms will also seek shade in the hottest part of the day to keep themselves cool. These behavioural tactics associated with thermo-regulation require the animal to be able to detect differences in temperatures on a small scale and then to be able to move to favourable areas. Because of this, scientists have thought that embryos are thermally passive, meaning that they cannot thermo-regulate behaviourally. It was thought that their body temperatures were dependent on ambient conditions and could only be modified by maternal nest-choice or by maternal thermo-regulation. However, one study has found these assumptions to be false and that in fact, turtle embryos are able to thermo-regulate behaviourally.

Why penguins stopped flying – a biomechanical hypothesis

Wouldn’t it be cool to fly? Flight is not only something that occupies my day-dreams, but evolutionarily it makes a lot of sense. In particular, being able to fly reduces extrinsic mortality by being able to escape predation etc. Despite this advantage, flight has been secondarily lost through evolutionary time in many groups of birds, notably the penguins.  Their ‘wings’ are essentially flippers that have become adapted to diving and swimming. For this change to occur, it was thought that the advantages of being able to dive efficiently would need to be great enough to offset the disadvantage of losing this reduced mortality that comes with flight. This is thought to be most applicable in habitats with low productivity because gaining enough energy for flight, which is very energetically expensive, might be difficult. However, this line of thought is problematic when considering penguins as they exploit habitats with high productivity and are exposed to high predation risks from seals, whales, and sharks. Offsetting this high predation risk would have almost been impossible.

 

The evolution of whales and dolphins – a macroevolutionary story

So we have all heard of the microevolutionary changes that scientists discover, for example when the  digestive enzymes changes in flies with different diets. But studying macroevolution – the large-scale changes like the transitions of animals from water onto land or the evolution of flight – is a whole lot more difficult to study because these changes take place over millions of years. The best we can do is to look at the fossil record to give us information.

The evolution of cetaceans – whales, dolphins, and porpoises – is the darling of macroevolutionary examples, because within the past 20 years there have been the uncovering of fossil skeletons of what scientists think are the ancestors of these modern day cetaceans. Now because cetaceans are mammals, scientists believe that the ancestor of cetceans was a land-dwelling creature that made the transition from living on land to living in the sea. These fossil skeletons allow the scientists to tell the story of how this land-dwelling ancestor made this change, and evolved into the modern cetaceans we see today.

A day in Genesis

Here it comes; the big, scary and controversial word – EVOLUTION. I don’t think any other word has inspired such heated debates as this one. In one
corner you have the creationists who think that scientists are erroneous evil-doers, and in the other corner you have the scientists who think that the creationists are deluded idiots. There are many misunderstandings on both sides, and for some reason people refuse to listen to each other, instead insisting that what they think is right.

 

Now, many of my subsequent posts will be about evolution as I spend a great deal of my time pondering upon it (not to mention I majored in it for my BSc.). However, before I start covering any topics of evolution I need to clarify the whole issue about the age of the earth and the Hebrew word yom in Genesis.

Hyperspectral imaging reveals the clever camouflage of cuttlefish

We all know that many animals use camouflage to hide themselves, and we have all spent time staring at that picture of leaves trying to spot the insect. Camouflage is quite common in the natural world and is important when trying to avoid being eaten by a predator. However, actually trying to quantify how effective camouflage is in the eyes of the predator is difficult both biologically and technologically. A study done by Chuan-Chin Chiao et al attempted to address this issue and they used a novel technique of hyperspectral imaging to visualize the camouflage techniques employed by the common European cuttlefish.

Will you follow Him?

http://www.fallingplates.com/

I watched the above video the other day (if you have 4 minutes to spare I would really recommend it) and it made me realize something that we all know in the back of our minds but I don’t think we fully accept – we need to plug ourselves into God. We need to walk with Him and talk with Him and spend time in His presence.  We were made in His image and we were made to have a relationship with Him. Right from day 1 Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in the Garden of Eden, and even though we cannot see God with our eyes, we still need to do the same.