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Sean Nash

Model Organisms - HSR 2025 - Google Docs - 3 views

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    This is a crowd-sourced document I created for a session with high school research teachers in Washington D.C. in 2022. SAVE this document and use it to explore some of the more commonly-used model organisms for all sorts of biological research. There is a TON to explore here!
Sean Nash

Microwaving an insecticide restores its mosquito-killing power - 1 views

  • Heating an insecticide can give it new life.
    • Sean Nash
       
      Wait... what?
  • Microwaving the insecticide deltamethrin rearranges its crystal structure but doesn’t change its chemical composition. The rearrangement renews deltamethrin’s ability to kill mosquitoes that have become resistant to the insecticide, researchers report April 21 in Malaria Journal.
    • Sean Nash
       
      Seems like potential feasibility
  • The microwave worked just as well, but Kahr cautions that people shouldn’t use the same microwave for heating food and insecticides.
    • Sean Nash
       
      Ha! Oh really??
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • insecticide resistance is a growing problem
  • “There are all kinds of social and cultural things that you could propose from a scientific perspective that wouldn’t be welcomed by a community of homeowners.”
    • Sean Nash
       
      Another positive...
  • It’s not certain that the heat-treated deltamethrin would retain its more potent crystal structure through the net-making process.
  • Kahr’s team is working on incorporating the heat-treated crystal into nets.
  • It is encouraging that heated insecticide killed highly resistant mosquitoes, says Hemingway, who directs the Infection Innovation Consortium, a public-private effort to find new ways to combat infectious diseases. But, she says, “this is not something we can take and use that tomorrow.”
    • Sean Nash
       
      OK.... this is how you can find an opening (not saying THIS ONE is necessarily, but, when you see language like: "we can't really do it just yet," that is a screaming opportunity to see what we MIGHT be able to add to that. We would just want to get early approval from the fair re: hazardous substances. I think we could.
  • Kahr and colleagues previously discovered that heating deltamethrin changed its crystal structure, which let it work faster
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    "Wait, what? Do say more....."
Sean Nash

Mysterious Underwater Acoustic World of British Ponds Revealed in New Study | Current S... - 1 views

  • The previously hidden and diverse underwater acoustic world in British ponds has been revealed by a team of researchers at the University of Bristol.
    • Sean Nash
       
      So... my immediate thought is: How cool would it be to do this here? One thing we DO have: PONDS. See if this *sounds* interesting. Get it? ;)
  • Acoustic monitoring has been shown to effectively survey birds and monkeys in rainforests, and marine mammals in the oceans. However, freshwater environments have remained largely unexplored despite their diverse soundscapes.
    • Sean Nash
       
      BOOM. Again, "relatively unexplored" is super exciting verbiage to me. Acoustics. Hydrophones. Is this feasible? Is the equipment affordable? If not, could we borrow one? Dig into it. What are the possibilities?
  • analysis of the audio files revealed clear daily acoustic activity cycles in each pond
    • Sean Nash
       
      Aside from the exploratory surveys you would do just to see "what's out there" and assess what we CAN learn from listening to a pond, you could make it experimental by comparing ponds you've assessed the health of by other means. In other words, do acoustic comparisons between two ponds correlate with what you find by doing a macroinvertebrate sampling? I really LIKE the possibilities in this one!
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Typically, a nocturnal chorus is made by aquatic insects that compete to attract mates by producing strange scratching sounds as they rub their genitals against their abdomens. During the daytime, however, aquatic plants dominate the underwater orchestra with rhythmic whining and ticking sounds produced as tiny oxygen bubbles are released by plants respiring in the hot sun.
  • Using this acoustic method, the presence of species, and a determination of ecological health, can be inferred simply by listening to the natural world without disturbing the environment or harming the plants and animals within it.
    • Sean Nash
       
      Here is the obvious value proposition if you could work this out.
  • Publication: Jack A. Greenhalgh, et al., Diel variation in insect-dominated temperate pond soundscapes and guidelines for survey design, Freshwater Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1111/fwb.14092.
    • Sean Nash
       
      BEST THING YET: Here is the FULL TEXT of the actual research paper!
    • Sean Nash
       
      Here is the FULL TEXT of the actual research paper!
Sean Nash

Regeneron ISEF 2023 - Finalist Project Portal - 0 views

  • Choose a category to begin
    • Sean Nash
       
      This is a really good way to dive into specific categories and explore the projects that made it to this year's ISEF. What I would do is start with what immediately interests you for now... and pick up some tips. You might get ideas for areas/topics to research. You might see creative methods used in various studies. Pay particular attention to the fact that some utilize equipment only available at a university or corporate lab, but... many also feature creative methods done by students at home or in school labs as well! Once you get inside projects that you get ideas from, feel free to save them in Diigo for later, or share really interesting ones with others you think might benefit from seeing it. One final thing: you might also get some tips for elements of their presentation that appeal to you.
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    This is a digital version of a fair- almost like being there
Sean Nash

Race car drivers tend to blink at the same places in each lap - 2 views

  • The world goes dark for about one-fifth of a second every time you blink, a fraction of an instant that’s hardly noticeable to most people. But for a Formula One race car driver traveling up to 354 kilometers per hour, that one-fifth means almost 20 meters of lost vision
  • People are often thought to blink at random intervals, but researchers found that wasn’t the case for three Formula drivers.
  • the drivers tended to blink at the same parts of the course during each lap, cognitive neuroscientist Ryota Nishizono and colleagues report in the May 19 iScience
    • Sean Nash
       
      Interesting. So, do we do the same thing while driving around town? Could you design a method to record eye blinks as people drive known routes around town? We could simultaneously use the Arduino Science Journal app on the iPhone to also correlate physical data in a moving car like acceleration/deceleration, motion in X, Y, Z directions, etc. I wonder if we could find a correlation in everyday driving that could help from a safety perspective?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • He was surprised to find almost no literature on blinking behavior in active humans even though under extreme conditions like motor racing or cycling
    • Sean Nash
       
      Ok.... this screams "potential research idea."
  • “We think of blinking as this nothing behavior,” he says, “but it’s not just wiping the eyes. Blinking is a part of our visual system.”
  • Where the drivers blinked was surprisingly predictable, the team found. The drivers had a shared pattern of blinking that had a strong connection with acceleration, such that drivers tended not to blink while changing speed or direction — like while on a curve in the track — but did blink while on relatively safer straightaways.
    • Sean Nash
       
      What sort of implications does this have for driving in key, known, busy interchanges in KC? Could we potentially provide data to show certain stretches of highway need more signage, etc? That could have civil engineering implications.
  • Nishizono and colleagues mounted eye trackers on the helmets of three drivers and had them drive three Formula circuits
  • Nishizono next wants to explore what processes in the brain allow or inhibit blinking in a given moment, he says, and is also interested in how blinking behavior varies among the general population.
    • Sean Nash
       
      While the "brain" part might move beyond our feasibility, the potential of finding real correlations to driving patterns or routes is a completely different spin-off and one that could have really practical suggestive applications for city planners, etc.
emmarrogers

Bumblebees use Lego blocks to build science and recognise the value of teamwork | Unive... - 1 views

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    Interesting. The video clips are especially valuable for understanding their methods. So, these tests have been done... but what other sorts of learning tests might be possible? Are there any that might even show value in this species beyond just "what is possible for the bee nervous system to accomplish?"
nataliegomes

Do Invertebrates Have Emotions? | The Scientist Magazine® - 1 views

  • He adds that he doubts that the findings are applicable to other insect species, which still might act purely on instinct.
  • Invertebrate nervous systems, physiology, and sensory experiences are dissimilar to ours, and designing experiments to measure their emotions has been challenging. 
  • If the responses weren’t purely reflexive, it would open up the possibility that the animals could feel pain. 
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • After placing acetic acid—a mild irritant—on the crabs’ antennae, they found that the crabs rubbed their antennae against the glass of their aquarium, seemingly in an attempt to take the acid off.
    • nataliegomes
       
      The use of an invisible irritant rather than a notable injury shows that they can feel the pain, instead of just noticing an injury to their body.
ethanlawr

A teeny device can measure subtle shifts in Earth's gravitational field - 0 views

  • Called gravimeters, such devices can detect tectonic plates shifting, sense the movement of underground water, reveal hidden oil and gas reserves, and track magma within volcanoes to provide data for predicting eruptions, along with many other applications.
    • ethanlawr
       
      How is a Gravimeter able to detect the movement of tectonic plates shifting, does it detect sound waves or vibrations?
nataliegomes

Control of behavioral decisions is similar in insects and mammals | ScienceDaily - 2 views

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    I wonder what sort of electronics were needed to accomplish this. I also wonder how difficult it would be to attach those to a living insect without sacrificing it.
Sean Nash

Study traces an infectious language epidemic | ScienceDaily - 0 views

  • Rho's work is grounded in a social science framework called Fuzzy Trace Theory that was pioneered by Valerie Reyna, a Cornell University professor of psychology and a collaborator on this Virginia Tech project. Reyna has shown that individuals learn and recall information better when it is expressed in a cause and effect relationship, and not just as rote information. This holds true even if the information is inaccurate or the implied connection is weak. Reyna calls this cause-and-effect construction a "gist."
    • Sean Nash
       
      Fuzzy Trace Theory looks interesting for this, and perhaps many other reasons. I want to learn more about this myself, and I'm wondering if this theory could be put to work in other potential behavioral science projects. What do you think?
Sean Nash

Add to the many afterlives of coffee grounds: Toxic cleanup - 0 views

  • The experts selected onion plants to test out this idea, known for their high sensitivity to toxins in the environment. In beakers of water containing bentazone, they grew onion root tissue, called meristems, measuring its cell division and root growth as a sign of health. 
    • Sean Nash
       
      One of the things I want VERY badly for our program... is a set of equipment for histology... where we can take things like onion root tips and lock samples in wax, slice them incredibly thin (microslices), and then be able to mount them onto slides for analysis.
emmarrogers

(PDF) Assessing the effect of different light conditions on crayfish welfare using a da... - 1 views

  • (weak light: 38 lux; bright light: 761 lux) with 3 different light spectrums (cold white (CCT ≈ 5500K), warm white (CCT ≈ 2600 K) and neutral (CCT ≈ 3800 K)) over a period of six months
Sean Nash

Dynamic microvilli sculpt bristles at nanometric scale | Nature Communications - 0 views

  • Scanning electron microscopy/SEM
    • Sean Nash
       
      They had to use scanning electron microscopy to figure this out, yes. BUT... in scaling something like this up, we would not need such a thing!
  • The refractive index tomograms of isolated bristles were obtained by Nanolive 3D Cell Explorer, and raw data were deposited at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10207240.
    • Sean Nash
       
      This might be the way to dial in the measurement ratios to mimick something like this on a larger scale for some purpose. How do the worms use them? If this doesn't get it, we can ALWAYS email the actual scientists to see if they can send us this data to do what we're trying to do. They are usually VERY helpful in such things for creative and hard-working students.
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    I am often thinking about biomimicry. I wonder if something like this process could be 3D printed at a larger scale... for another valuable use of some sort. (?)
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    This one is a LOT of chew through, but it is super interesting to figure out how living things bioengineer such structures over millions of years of evolution. Biomimicry is simply us studying (and then mimicking) the most interesting things in nature... to enhance something in the human world. This article is the original journal article linked to and highlighted by one of the ScienceDaily stories from today.
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