Science Fare

A “Zoomify” panorama is here.

(Image courtesy of the University of Minnesota.)

As a paddlefish fan, I take heart when I hear of exciting news about any of the Chondrostian fishes. According to KELO news, the Gavins Point Fish Hatchery in Yankton, SD, has successfully bred the endangered Pallid Sturgeon entirely in captivity. Previously, they would harvest gametes from wild adults for the hatchery program.

I did much of the research for my master’s degree program at Gavins Point Hatchery. They have a nice facility for raising paddlefish, sturgeon, and also walleye.

And I know two times as much about RNA-binding proteins as I do about pyrimidines. DNA and RNA are composed of two classes of nucleic acids: pyrimidines and purines. But don’t ask me about purines, I know nothing about those.

Funny, it doesn’t mention Lua, Lightroom, web design…

One Day At A Time and I went for a four-hour bike ride on Sunday. We headed north to view an island on the river which was reported to have a few great blue heron nests on it. Wowie Zowie! The island was nearly flooded out of existence by the high water — but the trees were still standing. Which was all the herons cared about. We stopped and gawked for a good long time, capturing a few decent pictures. The coolest part was watching the parents feed the young. The youngsters looks nearly old enough to fly.

We then came back via the stone arch bridge, pausing to admire the rush of water over St Anthony Falls, and to have an ice cream at the Stone Arch Art Festival, which happened to be going on.

I noticed a cool feature of the bleeding heart flower. As it matures, each blossom undergoes a two-stage opening of its interestingly shaped petals.

The young blossom, shown upper left, doesn’t have any openings to either its pistil (the pollen-receiving structure) nor the anther (the pollen-producing structure).

Upper right shows a middle-aged blossom which has unfurled the first set of petals. This provides an opening that an insect could enter the flower to gain access to the pistils (containd inside the “heart” of the flower).

As the flower ages futher, another set of petals open, revealing the anthers (lower left). At lower right is another shot of the same blossom, taken from the side to illustrate the exposed anthers.

I theorize that this approach gives the bleeding heart plant an evolutionary reproductive advantage. By exposing each part of the flower in series, it encourages cross-plant pollination. An insect visiting a young blossom may carry pollen from another plant, but can’t pick up pollen from the self-same blossom. This grants an advantage to the offspring, which will have a more genetic variation, and will therefore be more likely to weather future selective pressures. Should this plant be out of range of any other individuals, self pollination is still possible (either from one older blossom to a younger one) or via one older blossom to itself.

Given this morphology I’d further hypothesize that the blossom might have two sources of nectar (one in each compartment) to encourage pollinators to visit both the anthers and the pistils.

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Update: I was feeling guilty, as I hadn’t actually dissected a flower when I wrote the above text. I wasn’t really sure where the pistil was. Well, I think that it is right next to the anthers (in the “drop”), not inside the “heart” of the flower as I’d speculated — at least in a mature flower. So my hypothesis may be invalid, or only partially correct (if, for example, the pistil elongates as the flower matures. It is rather a puzzle… why would the flower partially open, but keep the anther and pistil under wraps? I may have to do more investigation.)

if you have a few minutes, this is a great story about Richard Feynman — one of my heros.

snapd outside before work

Cooking some potato salad, listening to the latest Rahn Ramblings mix cd…. of which I”m the only recipient (because I haven’t sent them out yet… oops).

Up comes Tami’s song — “so you had a bad day” is one of the lyrics.

I did not have a bad day. Had one of the best days of my life yesterday.

I had a good day at work.

Walked the dog.

And then… I played the Bach concerto for oboe and violin with Jim. I didn’t think I could do it (but I never admitted that). Jim is also our music director, and he new I could do it. Thank you, Jim!

The orchestra sounded great! Thank you! Thank you everyone who said I did well!

My friends John and Jen and Jen’s date Zachary came. Thank you!

Of course Becka was there! Thank you! Afterwards JZB & I went to Jasmine 26. It’s a Thai restaurant that rocks — might be as good as Chez Thuy. Of course we had Jasmine tea.

And then today we slept late (and sneezed a lot — spring allergies are here), got fresh mango for breakfast, then walked the dog to the neighborhood Indian deli and got two fresh curries for lunch.

What a great start to a weekend!

(speaking of allergies — they didn’t bother me yesterday due to my theory that “you don’t sneeze while being chased by a bear”. Where “being chased by a bear” is anything that makes you excited. The stress hormones–cortizol, epinephrine and norepinephrine–suppress the immune system. Of course the next day, when the bear isn’t chasing you any more… well, you start sneezing again. That’s what sudephed is for!)