Professor Blue

Here’s a clue: It all starts out with just one of them.

One who spots trou­ble from a dis­tance and mem­o­rizes faces of those peo­ple who cause him or his friends trou­ble.  He passes along the descrip­tion to his tribe so that they all quickly know that the guy with the brown, thin­ning hair and the mole near his left nos­tril and the weird scar in between his eye­brows is a threat.

Not like that other bald­ing guy who’s eat­ing ice cream on a park bench.

Once the news spreads to the oth­ers, through a spe­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion, they gather together to heckle and pester the trou­ble­maker, and defend their friend.

Who exactly are they?  Guys with iphones and an app that can map out and track peo­ple by the shapes of their faces?

No.

They’re called a mur­der of crows.  And sci­en­tists have been dis­cov­er­ing just how tough it is to out­smart them.

don’t mess with these crows

Check out these videos on the recent find­ings by scientists.

If you’re in Canada, you’ll want to check this out…

A Mur­der of Crows – CBC video with David Suzuki

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_Nature_of_Things/1242300217/ID=1385855962

If you’re in the US, check this out…

A Mur­der of Crows – PBS US video

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/full-episode/5977/

–>If you’re try­ing to look at the videos from another coun­try, please let me know which link worked or didn’t work for you and what coun­try you’re in.

Here’s an arti­cle to read more about crows.

Angry Birds: Crows never for­get a face

http://news.discovery.com/animals/angry-crows-memory-life-threatening-behavior-110628.html

Bon­jour kids!  I have a ques­tion. What year is this?

a)  Some peo­ple call it 2011.

let me guess, 2011 is going to offer a bunch of Happy Meal toys

b)  But other peo­ple call it the Year of the Tur­tle.

a lit­tle elbow grease to get outta here…if only I had elbows

c)  Some peo­ple call it the Year of the Rab­bit.

you should see my brother with my father’s bowl­ing ball

d) What kind of quiz is this?

e) all of the above

Which answer is correct?

Answer: e. all of the above

2011 also looks like it’s a tug of war between two ani­mals.  Rab­bit and turtle.

In China, as well as many other coun­tries in Asia, the year 2011 is the Year of the Rab­bit.  The Chi­nese have 12 ani­mals that mark their cal­en­dar, one ani­mal for one par­tic­u­lar year.  Being born in a par­tic­u­lar year is believed to give that baby cer­tain qual­i­ties like the ani­mal.  Peo­ple who were born in the year of the rab­bit believe this:

Rab­bit is a shy and friendly ani­mal and doesn’t have too many ene­mies, except for Chicken . There­fore, for those peo­ple who born in the year of Chicken, their peo­ple rela­tion­ship or social con­nec­tion will be poor in the year of 2011.

But con­ser­va­tion­ists call 2011 to be the year of the tur­tle.  Two ani­mals and one year.  Does it remind you of any­thing?  Have you ever heard about the race between the rab­bit and the tur­tle (also called the hare and the tortoise)?

It’s a famous story.  Hap­pened so long ago, in a time where things might or might not have hap­pened but no one can really prove it.  Peo­ple write books about the race. Peo­ple put videos on You Tuber about it. That girl, Nancy, the one who was in your 2nd grade class last year? The one who eats only the bologna inside her sand­wiches? She said some­thing just the other day about it.  It seems as if you can’t get away from that story, and now it looks as if the story is com­ing back!  Are the rab­bit and tur­tle about to meet again for another race for 2011?

A tur­tle chal­lenges a rab­bit to a race after being made fun of by the rab­bit for being slow.

It seems like an unfair race is a race, since the tur­tle has a well-deserved rep­u­ta­tion for being, well, slow.  And the rab­bit for being swift.  But it’s the tur­tle who has made the race hap­pen in the first place.  The race begins.  The rab­bit zooms past the tur­tle, and decides that he, the rab­bit, is so far ahead, that he’ll be able to take a lit­tle nap and wake up in time to still beat the tur­tle.  But you know what hap­pens next, right?  The tur­tle, slow and steady, passes the sleep­ing rab­bit.  The rab­bit doesn’t wake up in time to catch up with the tur­tle, and the tur­tle wins the race.

Maybe it’s a good thing that PARC has decided to enter the tur­tle into the pic­ture for this year.  They say:

“Tur­tles are dis­ap­pear­ing from the planet faster than any other group of animal…However, it’s not too late for our tur­tle her­itage to be salvaged.”

Time to slow the tur­tles down so that they can win.

But maybe the race is actu­ally between us Planet Earth­lings and time.

inter­ac­tive game for kids for ipad avail­able at itunes

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id391149031?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

race with rab­bit – free game online

http://www.gamesclub.com/race-with-rabbit.htm

The cre­ator of Pro­fes­sor Blue shows up live on this inter­view.  Plus, Pro­fes­sor Blue makes a quick appearance!

I’m re-posting this so that it stands out on its own.  The Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion in Con­necti­cut is hav­ing an art con­test for kids!  You don’t even have to live in Con­necti­cut to enter the contest!

All chil­dren from kinder­garten through fifth grade are eli­gi­ble to enter an orig­i­nal draw­ing, paint­ing, or sketch of a tur­tle native to Connecticut.

• Entries will be judged in three cat­e­gories: K-1st grade, 2nd-3rd grade, and 4th-5th grade.
• Prizes will be awarded in each cat­e­gory for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and hon­or­able mention.
• All entries will be dis­played at the Ses­sions Woods Con­ser­va­tion Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter, in Burling­ton, for Year of the Tur­tle Day, sched­uled for June 26, 2011, from 1:00–4:00 PM.
• Full details and entry infor­ma­tion are avail­able on the offi­cial entry form (PDF) or by call­ing the Wildlife Divi­sion at 860–675-8130 (Mon-Fri, 8:30 AM-4:30 PM).

More info here:

http://www.ct.gov/dep/cwp/view.asp?a=2723&q=473472&depNav_GID=1655

This dia­mond­back ter­rapin is a native Con­necti­cut resident

What do we know about tur­tles?  Hard shell to pro­tect the body.  Check.  Four legs that don’t move so fast.  Check.  Able to retreat into the shell for pro­tec­tion from out­side forces that wish to do it hard.  Check.  Un-check?

Well, PARC — Part­ners in Amphib­ian and Rep­tile Con­ser­va­tion  – has called this year – 2011 — the Year of the Tur­tle because they would like peo­ple to pay close atten­tion to tur­tles.  Why?   They “…are dis­ap­pear­ing from the planet faster than any other group of ani­mal. Today, nearly 50% of tur­tle species are iden­ti­fied as threat­ened with extinction. “

Their hard shells can­not pro­tect them from loss of their habi­tats, inva­sive dis­eases, cars run­ning them over, peo­ple tak­ing them as pets, and so much more.

There are things we can do to slow down the loss of the tur­tle pop­u­la­tion like not tak­ing tur­tles out in the wild as pets, and not destroy­ing their nests.

We have to not behave like a tur­tle to help pro­tect the turtle!

Read more here: http://parcplace.org/news-a-events/year-of-the-turtle.html

Also the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion in Con­necti­cut is hav­ing an art con­test for kids.  You don’t even have to live in Con­necti­cut to enter the contest!

All chil­dren from kinder­garten through fifth grade are eli­gi­ble to enter an orig­i­nal draw­ing, paint­ing, or sketch of a tur­tle native to Connecticut.

• Entries will be judged in three cat­e­gories: K-1st grade, 2nd-3rd grade, and 4th-5th grade.
• Prizes will be awarded in each cat­e­gory for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and hon­or­able mention.
• All entries will be dis­played at the Ses­sions Woods Con­ser­va­tion Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter, in Burling­ton, for Year of the Tur­tle Day, sched­uled for June 26, 2011, from 1:00–4:00 PM.
• Full details and entry infor­ma­tion are avail­able on the offi­cial entry form (PDF) or by call­ing the Wildlife Divi­sion at 860–675-8130 (Mon-Fri, 8:30 AM-4:30 PM).

More info here:

http://www.ct.gov/dep/cwp/view.asp?a=2723&q=473472&depNav_GID=1655

This You Tube® video shows how oil on your hands is no good for fog.  Water and oil do not mix!

how many cheese­burg­ers does your tree com­pete with?

Hug a tree and what do you get?  Splin­ters from the bark?  A happy feel­ing?

Maybe.

But if you hug a tree while hold­ing a Tree-Tape, you can get both the happy feel­ing of splin­ters and also a mea­sure­ment of how much car­bon the tree is remov­ing from the atmos­phere!  Bonus!

What is car­bon?  Car­bon is an ele­ment that is present in every liv­ing thing.  Sci­en­tists call Car­bon “C”.  Think of it this way.  Your par­ents named you James, but call you Jim.  Or Gertrude but call you Trudy.  Jim, James, Gertrude, Trudy, Car­bon, C, right?

When C gets changed into a gas state, it becomes car­bon diox­ide.  Car­bon diox­ide is also known as CO2.  Sci­en­tists believe that we humans are putting too much CO2 in the atmos­phere by chang­ing the state of C from things like coal and petro­leum, burn­ing it to pro­duce elec­tric­ity and power cars, planes, and so on, and releas­ing the CO2 into the atmosphere.

So many activ­i­ties cre­ate CO2. Mak­ing cheese­burg­ers. Eat­ing candy bars. They require car­bon to be burnt and released, because so much effort is required to make candy, make a burger.

CO2 and C are nec­es­sary to live. But too much CO2 is a waste. It is trou­ble!
Here is an inter­ac­tive map to see more about CO2 on the planet:

http://www.breathingearth.net/

But trees, ah trees!  Trees use pho­to­syn­the­sis to take CO2 out of the atmos­phere.  They pro­duce oxy­gen as their waste gas, which is no waste for us.  But they store C in their trunks.  There it stays until some­thing like a for­est fire burns the tree, and then C is released back into the atmos­phere as CO2.

Impress your friends. Use the tree tape to mea­sure how much CO2 that tree in your back yard bal­ances out the C that is used to make a cheese­burger. Tell them, “I am con­duct­ing a very impor­tant study and need to get data about the junk in the trunks.”

Hey Kids!

Learn about marine biol­ogy, coastal ecol­ogy, oceanog­ra­phy, con­ser­va­tion and more at BOAT CAMP in New­bury­port Mass­a­chu­setts this sum­mer, 2011.

BOAT CAMP’s week long pro­gram aboard the Erica Lee explores the coastal ecol­ogy of Ipswich Bay and the Gulf of Maine through a vari­ety of fun daily activ­i­ties, all of which are decided upon the day’s best weather pre­dic­tions and con­ducted accord­ing observed weather, tide and sea states. Above all else, we focus on keep­ing kids warm (or cool!), safe and happy, and we uti­lize both the Erica Lee and BOAT CAMP Inc.’s ocean edu­ca­tion cen­ter to make the best of New England’s change­able weather in order for kids to expe­ri­ence a fun, pos­i­tive boat-based sum­mer program.

They’ve got 3 spots avail­able for kids 9–12 for August  15 — 19.

http://www.boatcamp.org/programs/kids-9–12/

What would you call this?

In some places, like Chicago or St Louis, peo­ple call this pop.  In other places like Philadel­phia, peo­ple would call it a soda.  We’ve even heard peo­ple in Mass­a­chu­setts call this tonic.

There’s no risk hav­ing dif­fer­ent ways of nam­ing some­thing like soda pop.  It’s no big deal when you buy some­thing to drink to go with your sand­wich while you’re vis­it­ing the museum of sci­ence.  “Pop? You mean soda?” the lady at the cash reg­is­ter asks.  “OK, that’ll be $1.25.”

See?  Easy.

But talk­ing about using mea­sure­ments can be tricky.

Your mom goes to the gas sta­tion and fills up the car with 10 gal­lons of gas.  Your father puts a 12 ounce sir­loin steak on the grill.  Gal­lons and ounces are a cou­ple of exam­ples of how we mea­sure stuff in the US.  We use a sys­tem that was based on the Impe­r­ial sys­tem from Eng­land but changed slightly.

Here’s how Amer­i­cans used mea­sure­ments in the time of Thomas Jefferson:

Two mouth­fuls are a jig­ger; two jig­gers are a jack; two jacks are a jill; two jills are a cup; two cups are a pint; two pints are a quart; two quarts are a pot­tle; two pot­tles are gal­lon; two gal­lons are a pail; two pails are a peck; two pecks are a bushel; two bushels are a strike; two strikes are a coomb; two coombs are a cask; two casks are a bar­rel; two bar­rels are a hogshead; two hog­head are a pipe; two pipes are a tun-and there my story is done!

from http://library.thinkquest.org/J002831/missionmetric.htm

We need to be able to have a stan­dard of mea­sure so that if a gro­cery store buys a bushel of corn from Iowa, and it gets deliv­ered to Wash­ing­ton State, that every­one will know exactly how much corn they’ll be get­ting, as long as it’s in the US.

The same is true at a hos­pi­tal.  The doc­tor tells the nurse to give you 10 ccs of some med­i­cine.  CC means cubic cen­time­ter, which is part of the met­ric sys­tem, or SI, the Inter­na­tional Sys­tem of Units.  It’s a com­pletely dif­fer­ent way of mea­sur­ing than the Amer­i­can stan­dard.  So the doc­tor has two ways of mea­sur­ing inside his or her head.  At the gas pump?  Amer­i­can.  At the hos­pi­tal?  Metric.

If you’re a sci­en­tist, you, too, work in the met­ric sys­tem.  It does not mat­ter if you’re a sci­en­tist in Brazil, Bangladesh, Spain, Canada, or the US.  Sci­en­tists use the same sys­tem.  But Amer­i­cans who have other jobs like car­pen­ter, recep­tion­ist, police offi­cer, all use the Amer­i­can sys­tem of mea­sure­ment.  Right now there are only three coun­tries in the world that do not use the met­ric sys­tem for everything.

which coun­tries do not use the met­ric system?

The coun­tries on this map (cour­tesy of Kate Sedg­wick at Mata­dor Nights) in pink are the United States, Liberia, and Burma.  Every­body else uses the met­ric sys­tem for every­thing, steaks and gaso­line, included.

Will this ever change?

The You Tube® video Once Upon a Tide presents a dif­fer­ent kind of fairy tale.

Lis­ten­ing to the sound a seashell makes, a real liv­ing girl enters into a sad and beau­ti­ful car­toon world of the ocean.  The sto­ry­teller in the video says, “you might find it hard to believe but I assure you it’s true.”

You see under­wa­ter that there is a huge world we do not know much about.  The oceans have pop­u­la­tions of dif­fer­ent ani­mals, loca­tions, light, its own kind of envi­ron­ment.  It is dif­fer­ent than what we human live above ground.  But what we do on land and how we behave directly affects the oceans.  And what goes on in the oceans directly affects the weather.  Which then directly affects us humans on land.  So if the oceans suf­fer, so will we.

Click here to see –>Once Upon A Tide

Oceans cover more of the earth’s sur­face than rocks and dirt do.  When you look at a map of the world, notice how much water there is, com­pared to the land.

Oceans are very deep.  The lower you go into the water, the darker it gets because the sun­light from above can no longer penetrate.

Morn­ing Earth explains:

Life in the ocean that lives below the sun­light pen­e­tra­tion lives in a three dimen­sional black­ness. They can move in any dimen­sion, but have few clues about where because there are zero land­marks, or bet­ter, signs to tell them where they are. It is hard for gravity-bound beings like us to imag­ine free float­ing all the time. No autotrophs (self-feeders) live here–there is no light to photosynthesize.

When we scuba dive to explore this com­plex world, we are lim­ited by our bod­ies, even if we have very good oxy­gen tanks to breath.  We expe­ri­ence lim­its that we don’t have when we’re out of the water.  The lower we swim down and down into the ocean, the more our bod­ies feel pres­sure on our organs.  And at some point our bod­ies sim­ply can­not dive lower because the pres­sure is too much.

So, sci­en­tists employ other meth­ods to go fur­ther down to explore, using robots and sub­marines with cam­eras, and are able to find the small­est of organ­isms that you can­not see with­out the help of a micro­scope.  You might take a look at drops of water taken from these depths and not be able to see any­thing with just your eyes.  Look at the water using  a micro­scope, and you will truly see life where you could not see it before.

I bet you have never thought of a fairy tale as a micro­scope before, right?