Marvelous Medusae

The first picture most people have in mind when they think of jellyfish is probably a gelatinous, transparent mass being flushed on the beach or a pink creature buzzing around in the popular animated TV series "Spongebob". Unfortunately hardly anyone knows what jellyfish really are, how they live, eat and reproduce. As some of you might know, I have chosen a lot of elective subjects this semestre in order to obtain the required amount of ECTS, and one of these subjects is zoology. I would love to give you a more scientific view on these mysterious creatures.

Let's start with the classification. Jellyfish actually aren't true fish, they are invertebrates. Like hydro polyps and corals, jellyfish are part of the phylum Cnidaria. The term for true jellyfish is "medusa". Medusae only have one single body orifice which opens into the gastrovascular cavity where digestion takes place and nutrients are absorbed. They do not need a respiratory system since their skin is thin enough that the body is oxygenated by diffusion. The only body orifice, the "mouth", which is located in the centre of the underside of the umbrella, is surrounded by stinging tentacles, which are used to catch prey and to defend themselves. Jellyfish sting their prey using nematocysts. These stinging structures are located in specialized cells called cnidocysts, which are characteristic of all Cnidaria. When a nematocyst is triggered by contact by predator or prey, pressure builds up rapidly inside it until it bursts. A lance inside the nematocyst pierces the victim's skin, and poison flows through into the victim. 

Medusae do not have a central nervous system, therefore they do not have a brain, but they have nervous cells distributed all over their body, which form a "nerve net". This "nerve net" allows the jellyfish to detect various stimuli in its environment e.g. the touch of other animals.

Jellyfish are found in every ocean, from the surface to the deep sea. Some species even live in freshwater, like the Cassiopea (upside-down jellyfish), which is found in warmer coastal regions around the world, including shallow mangrove swamps where it usually lives upside-down on the bottom. Depending on the species, the body contains between 95 and 98% water.

Reproduction

The reproduction might be the most fascinating and unusual fact about Jellyfish because it involves several different stages. In the adult, or medusa stage of a jellyfish, they can reproduce sexually by releasing sperm and eggs into the water, forming a planula. In this larval stage, the planula hooks on to the bottom of a smooth rock or other structure and grows into another stage of jellyfish life, the polyp, which resembles a miniature sea anemone. During this stage, which can last for several months or years, asexual reproduction occurs. The polyps clone themselves and bud, or strobilate, into another stage, called ephyra. This form grows into the adult medusa jellyfish.

Motivation

Let's talk about motivation :)! I think all students sometimes have problems to force themselves to study, to prepare presentations or to do their homework. You are not allone! 

Like everyone else I often feel like doing nothing, am just tired and can't motivate myself to start doing something productive. Unfortunately I didn't pass the last semestre's course, but it enabled me to learn a lot about my behavior when it comes to studying, I discovered most of my weaknesses and even developed some tricks to keep myself motivated even when having a lot of work to do. So I thought why not sharing my experiences, maybe there might be something useful for you too.

The worst thing you can do when it comes to studying is expecting too much. For example, you won't be able to write a whole presentation in one single evening. Take yourself time and do your work decent and properly. If you are preparing for an exam, try to set up some kind of learning schedule and divide the whole amount of work into managable, daily sections, leaving free the last day for revising what you have learnt. Some people recommend not to study the last day before the exam, but for me revising everything the day before the exam is quite important because the information I read shortly before the exam tends to remain in short term memory.

It is also important to calculate enough time for everything. Sometimes it is hard to believe how much time you actually need for completing something. At the beginning of my time at university I often thought I could finish homework in less than an hour while in reality I spent several hours on it.

Another advise I can give you is that you should include breaks regularly in order to keep yourself motivated and to give your brain time to relax as well.

You could:

- do some sport (my favourite option)

- go for a walk

- take a shower

- meet friends

- listen to some music

- eat something

.... choose something that you enjoy, that makes you feel relaxed and ,of course, that fits your time frame.

Something I like is having a special ritual before starting to work. In my case, I get myself a huge cup of tea and listen to my favourite song before sitting down at my desk.

What distracts me most is if my room is messy. Keeping your room tidy is also important to make yourself feel comfortable in the environment you are studying at. Fresh air is also very beneficial when demanding a lot of effort from you brain.

And last but not least, don't be disappointed if you didn't manage to do much. Disappointment will only demotivate you even more. I believe it is natural that some days you just feel tired and do nothing productive. Relax, recharge you batteries and start off the next day.

Horses Inside Out

Have you ever wondered what the world would look like if you had x-ray vision? If so, then have a look at these guys:

The name of this unique educational service is "Horses Inside Out". Its purpose is to show riders, trainers and therapists how the musculo-skeletal system works. Understanding the anatomy, biomechanics and physiology of the horse enables them to improve performance and to maintain top physiological condition. Also optimum muscular health is essential to reduce the risk of injury. For a better understanding, the horses’ bones, tendons and ligaments, or the digestion system are painted onto the animal's body. While observing different movements, dressage and jumping for example, the audience gets to understand how the skeleton and the muscles are linked and how they work together. Even the  rider is wearing
a skeleton body suit, so that spectators can see clearly the interaction between horse and rider. This knowledge allows riders and carers to ride and train their horses efficiently while at the same time peventing injuries.

The Truth about Blue Methamphetamine

Everyone who has seen the tv series "Breaking Bad" knows what I am talking about: Walter White aka Heisenberg's "product". For those who don't know the series: The protagonist, Walter White is a genius chemist that works as a teacher at high school. When he gets diagnosed with lung cancer he decides to disobey all his moral believes and starts living a second, secret life as a drug dealer who produces methamphetamine. His code name is Heisenberg, in relation to the German physicist an Nobel prize laureate Werner Karl Heisenberg. Due to his outstanding knowledge about chemistry he is able to develop a new technique to produce methamphetamine from phenyl acetone instead of extracting it from pharmaceutical drugs which are hard to obtain. And because Walter is such a talented chemist, he manages to "cook" meth which is so pure that it develops a blue colour during the fabrication process.

But is this how it really works? I am very into science, biology and chemistry in particular, so I wanted to find out if this is a fact or just fiction, and did some research....

... and I am sorry, but I have to disappoint you - even the purest meth is not blue, pure methamphetamine is transparent and looks like ice or glass. But that doesn't mean that blue meth doesn't exist! There are several cases of blue meth reported, but chemical analysis showed that the blue colour came from ... blue colour. The drug had been coloured using blue dye, which is even more toxic and harmful than the drug itself.

Shia LaBeouf Embroiled in Pedophilia Controversy

As soon as the new music video of Sia's new song "Elastic Heart" had been released, the comment section was bombarded with negative comments. The video clip features Shia LaBeouf, 28, and 12-yearold Maddie Ziegler, who became famous with the American reality television series "Dance Moms". She was also starring Sia's latest music video "Chandelier". Both Shia and Maddie are wearing nothing but nude underwear/ a nude leotard while they are dancing, eyeing, chasing each other and mocking fighting movements during which they sometimes touch each other. Although there isn't any hint of sexual interaction in the five minutes that the clip lasts, critics were quick to deem the video as promoting pedophilia.

 

When I first saw the video I was on the bus and didn't have headphones with me. But since I love watching Dance Moms, had been following Maddie's career and had been quite impressed by Shia LaBeouf's acting in his latest movie "Fury", I was so curious that I couldn't wait to see them both together in one video. So I watched it without listening to the song. 

If you had asked for my interpretation of the video, I would have said that Shia and Maddie represent a father and his daughter. They have a difficult relationship, the father seems to be mentally ill, a drug addict or alcoholic that is caught in his own world. His daughter at first doesn't know how to behave in this situation. On the one hand she is somehow afraid of him, she wants to run away, but on the other hand she still loves her father and doesn't want to loose him. After some time she finds out how to deal with the situation; how to escape from the "cage". She could leave, but her strong feelings for father keep pulling her back. So she tries to release him from his "cage", get him out of his disease into the real world, but he simply isn't strong enough to break free.

I neither see any sexual, nor pedophilic action in the whole clip, all I see is a marvelous performance by two incredible dancers (even though Shia actually isn't a dancer). For me it is nothing but pure art. I find it rather sad that nowadays every physical interaction between an adult and a child is immediately declared as pedophilia, but that's another topic to talk about.

When I came home that day I couldn't wait to watch the video again, but this time with sound. While I was listening to the lyrics I noticed that Sia maybe had something other in mind than representing a father and his daughter, so I did some research and found out what Sia herself said about it. She refers to the two persons as being two warring 'Sia' self states.

"The video plays with Shia, representing adulthood and reason, and Maddie, as wild and at times vicious as a child or animal. Maddie plays the subconscious, our imagination, capable of attacking without cause, but also falling asleep in innocence. Shia seems wiser, but he can't control Maddie... and neither can he leave the cage of his own limits. The video makes us question who we like or hate more: reasoning or wild subconscious. And at the end, our dreams are trying to tug us free, but reason just can't get out."

If you want to form your own opinion to the video to Sia's new song
"Elastic Heart", here it is! Enjoy :)

My First Experience with Etsy

Have you ever tried Etsy? If not, you now might ask, "What is Etsy?"

Clicking on the website's button "About Etsy" leads you to the following description:

"Etsy is a marketplace where people around the world connect, both online and offline, to make, sell and buy unique goods.

The heart and soul of Etsy is our global community: the creative entrepreneurs who use Etsy to sell what they make or curate, the shoppers looking for things they can’t find anywhere else, the manufacturers who partner with Etsy sellers to help them grow, and the Etsy employees who maintain and nurture our marketplace."

So Etsy basically is a place where professional as well as amateur designers sell their own manufactured, often hand-made goods. You can find the most unique and creative things there. I first came in touch with this market place when I was looking for a birthday present for my grandmother. After my grandparents had retired, they realised their dream of buying and restoring an old farmhouse. They don't keep any animals (except for a big black dog) but they own a huge orchard with hundreds of fruit trees, which they lovingly care for. There is another thing my grandmother is really proud of: her homegrown vegetables, her tomatoes and pumpkins in particular. When I was searching for a special birthday present I discovered a shop on Etsy that is owned by a woman from Philadelphia who manufactures jewelry from real fruit and vegetables. So I thought why not just trying it? ... and ordered a necklace made from a tomato.

And I wasn't disappointed :)

Two Climbers Reach Top of "El Capitan"

El Capitan in Yosemite National Park is the largest granite monolith in the world. When you first see the impressive 917 meter high stone wall, which is also known as the "Dawn Wall" you wouldn't believe that it was even possible to climb this huge vertical rock. Two climbers from the US, Kevin Jorges and Tommy Caldwell managed to prove the opposite. "Free Climbing" the wall, they did not use any tools or climb aids, they used nothing but their hands and feet to reach the top of the wall. For safety reasons the two climbers were attached to safety ropes to prevent deadly falls. It was an extremely tough journey; during the climb they had to battle bloody fingers and due to the warm weather the two climbers often had no other choice than climbing with head lamps at night in order to prevent their fingers from sweating and slipping. If they did not climb at night, they slept in portaledges, tents that are attached to the face of the wall.
After 19 days, 5 days more than they had expected, Kevin Jorges and Tommy Caldwell reached the top of the wall together. Both had trained for this special moment for almost six years, in which they had built a "deep, abiding, lifelong friendship" as they sad.

The two climbers even received congratulations from President Barack Obama, who congratulated them via the White House Twitter account, saying that these two men "remind us that anything is possible".

Amazing Facts about Fungi

Hey guys,
I know it has been I while since I wrote my last post and I am very sorry for that. But I will try to compensate for that with today's topic: Fungi!!! Ok, that maybe doesn't sound like an interesting topic at first, but believe me, fungi are definitely one of the most fascinating and underestimated organisms and there are plenty of astonishing things I would love to tell you about them. As some of you might know I chose botany as one of my elective subjects and I actually enjoyed it a lot. I did not only learn about plants in general but also about fungi, which brings me to the first amazing fact:

Classification

Although the vast majority of people believe that fungi are plants, they are actually not. Fungi form an independent kingdom, just like plants and animals do. While I think it is clear for everyone that fungi aren't animals, the fact that they aren't plants maybe seems to be illogical. But I can tell you it is not. There is one important thing that distinguishes them from plants: Fungi are unable to do photosynthesis because their cell structure neither features chloroplasts, nor chlorophyll.

Cell structure

As I already mentioned before, the fungi's cell structure is special in many ways, but did you know that their cell walls features one main substance, namely chitin? I am sure you have heard about that substance before - Right! It is the same substance that the insect's shell uses for stabilization.

Mycorrhizae

Did you know that the majority of basidiomycetes, which we all know as "mushrooms", live in symbiosis with trees? The scientific term for these mushrooms is "mycorrhizae fungi". This union of mushroom and tree is very beneficial for both sides. The tree receives nitrogen and phosphor from the fungus while the fungus gets glucose from the tree. This explains a lot of things, e.g. why mushrooms mostly grow in forests, or why the best season to collect them is autumn. It is quite simple: In spring and summer the tree needs a lot of glucose as fuel to grow and to form new leaves. In autumn the tree stops growing and starts to store the glucose in its roots. That means that there is a lot of glucose available for the mushroom to grow.

Penicillin 

I believe everyone has taken penicillin at least once in their life, even if you didn't know. Penicillin is the most important antibiotic used in medical treatments. It is formed by a fungi that exists in two different forms: penicillium and talaromyces. But did you know how its ability to destroy bacteria had been discovered?
The first man to discover the antimicrobial qualities of penicillium was Ernest Duchesne in the late 19th century. At a military hospital he noticed that the ostlers stored saddles in dark, humid rooms, where mould started to grow on the saddles. When he asked them why they did that, they responded that if they put these saddles on the back of horses with chafe marks, the wounds would heal better. Duchesne then prepared a solution from these fungi and tested it on sick guinea pigs. Every single guinea pig recovered after the injection.

I could continue writing for pages about how fascinating fungi are, but I don't want to bore you with too much science (hope I didn't already ...).

See you soon,
Anja