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Displaying items by tag: Educators
Wednesday, 03 January 2007 18:22
By their eggs you shall know them!
So far, spawning grounds of most Antarctic fish species are not known. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of interest to locate these places and to protect them by international law. Rüdiger Riehl from the Institute of Zoomorpholgy, Cell Biology and Parasitology of the University of Duesseldorf might have found a way to do exactly that.
During his research on fish eggs, which spans over 30 years, he has found that most of these eggs possess microstructures that allow the identification of specimens to the family level, genus level and even species level. The tool of choice is a scanning electron microscope (SEM), which is used to capture minute differences on photographs. He is using differences in the microstructure of the egg surface, for example the presence or absence...
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Sunday, 31 December 2006 03:32
A visit to Tring
Polarstern’s biggest fish catch in 24 years of research in Antarctic waters. New hope for commercial fisheries? Quite the opposite, a good catch doesn’t necessarily mean that depleted stocks have recovered.
Five tons of marbled Antarctic cod (Notothenia rossii), now that was surely a big surprise to scientists and crew alike considering that previous and subsequent hauls barely ever reaped such plentiful harvests. Their shimmering silver and dark blue bodies, which can grow up to 70cm, were piled on the aft deck of Polarstern. In combination with previous stock assessments, fisheries biologists onboard interpreted the catch as a sampling of a discrete, small-scale aggregation of this fish species.
...
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Sunday, 31 December 2006 02:49
Antarctic cod catch
Polarstern’s biggest fish catch in 24 years of research in Antarctic waters. New hope for commercial fisheries? Quite the opposite, a good catch doesn’t necessarily mean that depleted stocks have recovered.
Five tons of marbled Antarctic cod (Notothenia rossii), now that was surely a big surprise to scientists and crew alike considering that previous and subsequent hauls barely ever reaped such plentiful harvests. Their shimmering silver and dark blue bodies, which can grow up to 70cm, were piled on the aft deck of Polarstern. In combination with previous stock assessments, fisheries biologists onboard interpreted the catch as a sampling of a discrete, small-scale aggregation of this fish species.
...
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Saturday, 30 December 2006 21:41
Polar Exploration Art Competition
Young artists around the USA competed this year in a polar art contest: Polar Exploration: Going to Extremes!
In celebration of the International Polar Year, the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) this year challenged young artists explore the Earth's polar regions. Over 1,400 seven to ten year olds submitted pieces to the 2006 contest. For more information, and to see the winners, check out the IGES competition website. If you would like to use this contest as a class or group activity, IGES collected a comprehensive set of resources...
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Wednesday, 20 December 2006 09:24
Polarstern discovers new seabed structure
Aboard Polarstern, bathymetry — the mapping of the seafloor using sonar — is conducted by an international working group. In recent days, they have found a distinct elevation at the seafloor of the Southern Ocean. This structure rises 600 m above ground in an otherwise featureless seascape and is situated about 450 km north of the Antarctic continent. It closely resembles an underwater volcano, presumably still active, which has never been charted on a map. This finding was reported by Elena Pugacheva from the Geographical Institute Moscow and Jan-Hendrik Lott from the University of Karlsruhe.
During the expedition, long distances are covered between the continents of Africa, Antarctica and South America. Mapping of the seafloor takes place throughout the journe...
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Saturday, 23 December 2006 07:27
Stellar Axis: Antarctica
The Stellar Axis land art project is currently being deployed in Antarctica, to be completed for the Southern hemisphere Summer Solstice on 22 December 2006.
Perhaps the largest and most ambitious arts project to take place in Antarctica, Stellar Axis is the work of the internationally known, Los Angeles based artist, Lita Albuquerque, and is sponsored by the US National Science Foundation and US Antarctic Programme.
The concept is to mirror the southern constellations through the placement of 99 blue spheres on th...
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Wednesday, 06 December 2006 05:43
Tara: Matthieu
Matthieu, the subject of today’s log, is our resident scientist. Working for the oceanographic laboratory at Paris-Jussieu University, he is responsible for managing all of the scientific activities on board. Qualified as an engineer in computing and electronics, Matthieu has already spent one year in the polar regions, passing a winter at the French Antarctic base Dumont d’Urville. His tour in the south was as a science technician, responsible for the base computer network administration and the maintenance of various scientific experiments.
When asked what led him to the polar regions Matthieu explains it was for a number of reasons. “Mainly for the scientific interest, but also the fact that the French Polar Institute was next to my engineering school when I was a s...
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Sunday, 24 December 2006 02:50
Introducing the Early Career Polar Scientist Network
Welcome to the first Early Career Polar Scientist blog post. We will be posting stories from our group weekly during the IPY.
The International Early Career Polar Scientist Network has just been created as a way for young polar researchers to network on an international and interdisciplinary basis beginning early in their careers. Currently we have members from over 11 different countries and are growing rapidly with both Antarctic and Arctic researchers.
It has been said that there are two types of people driven to go to Antarctica; the ones that go once for the adventure and the others that once they go, get ice in their veins and keep coming back. This blog entry is not really about science, but about the Ice in my veins and how it got there.
...
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Friday, 22 December 2006 19:30
Winter wonderlands
I thought I was the first Portuguese to study Wandering albatrosses but I was five hundred years too late. When fifteenth-century Portuguese sailors first ventured down the coast of Africa, they encountered large black and white birds with stout bodies, which they called alcatraz, the Portuguese word for large seabirds; English sailors later corrupted alcatraz to albatross. I was studying aspects of their diet and feeding behaviour in ways that could not be done five hundred years ago, information which may help save them from extinction. That made me feel better...
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This is an essay...
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Sunday, 01 October 2006 01:52
El Año Polar - About IPY in Spanish
The IPY logo is available for download in several formats: As a GIF file, 142x142 pixels; as a GIF file, 198x198 pixels; as a ZIPped TIFF file, and as a B/W zipped EPS file.
Here is a PDF version of the logo (248 KB).
For a logo without the '2007-2008' text, useful for legacy applications, use this ...
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