Matilda's Lab Newsletter #51
This week, our family grows and we have VR for flies, a very big fish, guns'n'fingers, spiders working together to hide and the recreation of a process that hasn't happened in billions of years.
What we’ve been up to
Finally! We had some time where it stopped raining and the sun came out. I live in the UK, I’m used to wet and windy weather but the sheer persistent miserable weather has been grinding me down. So I was delighted when we were able to meet up with friends for a dog walk in the sun. It was only the other week when I covered a news story that said how spending time in nature changes our perception of time; making us feel like we have more time available to us. Maybe that was why I was so exhausted by the end of the day that I fell asleep shortly after putting Nathaniel to bed.
And so it was, that I was expecting a week much like any other until Tuesday night. That evening I was greeted home to the words: “Before you say no…”. What I was being prepared for was that there was an abandoned puppy in need of a home. We already have one dog, and we have discussed a second. Those discussion usually go something like: Cat, “We could have a second dog, couldn’t we?”, Me, “No!”. Because we are good friends with the local dog-walker, we usually hear about all the local dogs that are in need of a home. Now there was another one.
But this time it was different. It was a puppy, about 10 to 12 weeks old (we could take an older dog with a 3 year old in the house). The puppy was a she, which was Cat’s preference, and a boarder collie (my preference, having had 2 before and knowing that breed works for us). We have no big holidays coming up, the weather looks like it’s finally starting to turn and Cassini is now 7. How much older could she get before she wouldn’t tolerate a younger dog coming into our home?
So the bullet has been bitten and there are 4 more paws in our home. We’ve had Darwin, we still have Cassini and we’re keeping the naming convention alive, so meet Edison.
It’s been a busy week, so there’s been a lot of tiredness in the house.
New Blog content
I promised and now I deliver. There is a new Matilda’s Lab track available on the streaming platforms. Burning Fossils has been drafted in from my existing back catalogue of written songs. Whilst I’ve never recorded it before, the song is actually 15 years old and is all about climate change and perceptions of it. It contrasts the realities of climate change against the dismissive attitudes displayed by people who don’t really understand what it all really means. There are people who don’t mind the idea of global warming as they like warm weather but somewhat overlook all the really serious implications of raising the temperature of the world. There’s recognition of the types who simply don’t believe that burning fossil fuels causes climate change. The anti-science sentiment is embodied in the reference to burning T-rex. These aren’t the fossils that we burn, but you’d have to listen to science boffin’s to know that. The sad thing is that not a lot has changed in the 15 years since I wrote this song. There’s a lot more talk about doing something, but very little progress in the actual doing.
I usually try to sidestep the darker stories in science, because I’m trying to enthuse, not depress. I probably wouldn’t write this song today, but there is nothing dark about the delivery. The message is largely in the subtext. The tone is mostly one of optimistic denial; or in other words: in keeping with the popular opinion of certain demographics.
From the Archive
Yes! I’ve got back on it this week.
We went prehistoric and looked at a very big fish:
And we had lesson that compares bands with hands:
Science News
Let’s see what non-depressing science news has been breaking this week:
If you thought that you had to study the arts to be able to be imaginative with language and argue over the meaning of things, then prepare to be corrected. Scientists in Pennsylvania successfully managed to justify, and secure funding for a study where they made virtual reality for flies! It appears that this wasn’t just for fun. Flies appear to perceive the environment in a different way than many other animals, and lack the ability to adapt to changes to sensory inputs.
For some people, spiders are scary. So I’d imagine that these people would find camouflaged spiders would be even more terrifying. I imagine what they’d think of the crab spiders that have just been found to work together to create the first known example of co-operative camouflagein spiders. The picture below show a smaller male spider seated atop a larger female spider, presumable protecting a potentially mating pair from predation.
Stonehenge is literally thousands of years old, so you make think that we’ve learnt about as much as we can from the site itself. Of course not. Stonehenge is about to be examined for a potential lunar alignment. Major lunar standstills occur when the distance between moonrise and moonfall on the horizon are at their furthest. This only happens every 18.6 years, and we’re due the next this year.
Endosymbiosis, where a micro-organism is consumed by a larger one and then becomes an organ within the larger one, is thought to have generated all complex life. It’s never been seen as it’s not happened in billions of years. Now endosymbiosis has been observed in laboratory conditions.
Kicking back
Now…….fun!
This accuracy of this data is flawless
Working at ground level with dogs? What could go wrong?
Some dark sides are darker than others
That’s it for this week.
Please feel free to get in contact with any questions, suggestions or comments either via Substack or at matildaslab@gmail.com.
Please share this with anyone who you think will appreciate it. And remember to share with me any cool sciencey stuff that you find to make sure that I can pack this newsletter with best new science content each week.
Until next time, remember that one person’s old news is another’s revelation; so explore. Sometimes it’s not about being the first up the hill. The view’s still going to be breath-taking, no matter how many people have seen it before you.