Anne Innis Dagg, Smitten by Giraffe: My Life as a Citizen Scientist, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016. 256 pp. $34.95 hardcover.
Image courtesy of McGill-Queen’s University Press
Smitten by Giraffe: My Life as a Citizen Scientist is a memoir by Anne Innis Dagg. In the text, she describes her pursuits as a citizen scientist, ranging from her first encounter with giraffe (the plural of giraffe used in Smitten By Giraffe is “giraffe”) as a child, thro ...read more
The newly found asteroids circles entirely within Earth's orbit. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Astronomers just found an asteroid circling surprisingly close to our home sun, adding one more sibling to a rare family of space rocks.
Our solar system has a lot of rubble left over from its creation that's strewn haphazardly between and beyond the planets. But there is some order to the mess. At the outer extremes, the Oort Cloud encloses the solar system in a giant sphere made of comets that o ...read more
Mucus (shown in pink) is secreted by a cell in the stomach. (Credit: The Path to Digestion Is Paved with Repair. Underwood J, PLoS Biology Vol. 4/9/2006, e307. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040307)
We know it best as a stringy slime dripping from noses and as viscous, discolored goop hacked up by sickened airways. But it’s so much more than that. Coating the surfaces of guts, eyes, mouth, nasal cavity and ears, mucus plays a range of important physiological roles — hydrating, cleaning ...read more
(Credit: ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao)
Near the north pole of Mars, a dust storm has been ravaging for over a month. The dark clouds have been moving around the ice cap at about 4.5 mph (2 m/s), as observed by The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft. The above image frames make up a timelapse covering about 70 minutes, as dust storms push across the planet's north polar ice cap.
These storms usually last for a few days or weeks but can cover the entire planet when they&r ...read more
A sulfur-crested cockatoo, the same species as Snowball. (Credit: Martin Pelanek/Shutterstock)
Whether it’s doing the twist, the moonwalk or flossing, people love to dance. Moving to music is a universal human phenomenon. But curiously, in the animal kingdom our need to bust a move is nearly unique. Not even primates – our closes evolutionary relatives – dance. Parrots are the only known exception.
The vocal birds have a couple of go-to dance moves. They bob their heads ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine