discovery! (ok, old news)

(Not my finger...sadly)

Has everyone met Brookesia micra?? This little dude is the newly discovered world's tiniest chameleon. What a winner.

Apart from the fact that he is just too cute, his discovery also coincides very nicely with our current topic of discussion in biology (you guessed it! evolution!). The researchers who discovered him have written a fabulously interesting report, the gist of which points to the idea of "island dwarfism" which basically means that if you are on an island and the resources are limited, it's much better to be tiny than huge.

I mostly think he's cute, but also, it astounds me that he was ever discovered: he is both teeny teeny tiny, AND a chameleon!! What are the chances of finding him in the middle of a jungle? Someone was bored, huh? It does add another reason to my list of "why to visit Madagascar",ok, in truth, this is the beginning of said list, but now it seems necessary.

(It kills me...look how tiny he is)

There are tons of other too cute images of him floating around the web or in the links above, I highly recommend checking them out. Also, if it interests you and you don't have other work/commitments read more about insular dwarfism, it's fascinating and you can learn about dwarf elephants (who, despite significant decrease in size, are unable to walk on the tip of your finger...).

c'est tout!

alina

great success!

Well, I haven't been very good at balancing the blogging thing with all my other time commitments.
School, homework, work, occasionally running and even less often sleeping seem to take up SO MUCH TIME. I've found it really difficult to fit in creative projects like fun cooking or sewing. It's gotten to the point where I actually put hot dogs in our dinner last night. (I'm embarrassed...nay, appalled...but it's true).

So I've come up with at least a partial solution:

(Chemistry Baking!)

Sometimes I'm so clever that it surprises even me.

I'm taking an "Honors" Chemistry course, which means very little except that we have longer and more advanced labs. This semester we were told to choose an independent study project for the majority of our lab time (Yea, the lab is from 1-5 every Wednesday. Brutal). When the independent study was announced I think we were all a little hesitant, our prof gave examples from previous years of growing algaes and doing little chem demos for kids, which is fun, but not thrilling.

That's when I happened to discover this:

(you clicked to look inside, didn't you)

I happened upon this book entirely by chance when I was doing research for my croissant paper, and I decided right then and there that I would clearly be doing a chemistry project revolving around baking. This may not sound so exciting, but when other groups in my class have chosen to do water purification experiments (I just use a brita, ha!), baking sounds pretty awesome.

The book is laid out like a chemistry course. There are textual explanations and then questions for thought, and then...the best part: Experiments!

This week I learned about the different processes that the dough undergoes, from the addition of fluid, through the order of mixing, and up through baking. The experiment then was to make the same recipe, using the same ingredients and quantities, but using two different mixing techniques- the muffin technique, and the creaming technique. The two are baked for the same amount of time and at the same temperature and then you test them. They taste COMPLETELY different, it's crazy! both texture and taste were affected by only changing the way we added the ingredients together. I would get into the technicalities of why...but I'm procrastinating, and a deadline is coming up, so that will be in the next post.

(sorry for the messy kitchen and crummy photography- I have limited counter space, and a very dark kitchen)

(in order to be experimental we had to weight the amount of dough in each muffin, 2.00 oz)

(I also bought an oven thermometer so I would find out just how wonky my oven is...again, experimental accuracy, etc)

(Checking the differences in: Height, crust, texture, color, and taste. Very technical, very scientific)

The point of all this was simply to say: I have found a way to get some baking into my life again, which is so exciting, especially since it means that Wednesday afternoons can be spent in my kitchen...and not in a lab (we also have a really awful lab director guy- who will find any reason to tell us off, so this is a nice escape! he must be turning purple thinking of us baking for our project- his big thing is no eating or drinking anywhere CLOSE TO the chem lab, he will tell you to throw out your lunch if he catches you in the hallway eating... aw poor guy.)



c'est tout!

alina

This post is dedicated to my lab partner, who thinks I am crazy, but goes along with it. Thanks!

hiatus

My apologies on the brief hiatus.

My days have been filled with lovely, (not so) fun things like limits and regressions, freezing point depressions, plant phylogeny, etc. Yes. That's right. Not only has this semester begun in full force, I already have exams in some of my courses! EXAMS! Seriously, I feel like the semester started yesterday, but in fact, I had a biology exam yesterday, and I have a chemistry exam tomorrow. Thrills.

(OMG! so exciting! It's like watching water freeze...oh wait, it is watching water freeze)

Unfortunately, what this this means is less time for blogging, and more time set for analyzing graphs and numbers, and memorizing plant life cycles. Hurrah! It also means I have had NO time for any kind of fun projects.

(Good old Bryophytes...much more interesting than you would think, but not as fun as the sewing project waiting for me...)

However, I did start running again this week (finally!). I'm signed up for the C'ville 10 miler at the end of March, and decided that just about right now would be a good time to start training. Woops. So far I've run 3 days in a row, tomorrow will be a day off...

In other news, my upstairs neighbors have a child who WILL NOT stop crying. This isn't your average colicky baby, he's way past a year old and can cry for hours without stop. It makes it difficult for us to work or sleep in our apartment, which is pretty miserable. Anyone have tips for how to very kindly mention to his parents that they should probably give him some attention, or possibly learn how to be care for him?! In the meantime I'm seriously considering calling child protective services. It is miserable.

I will get back to posting more often once this nightmare of a week is over. I'm simply much too busy writing a million other things for my English class...which I love, but still, it takes up so much time and energy.

c'est tout.

alina