Latest Posts by our-cosy-library - Page 2

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When are Pterotrachea finally going to go viral? How does anyone look at this animal and not flip their shit? I first saw them in a BBC documentary when I was a toddler and I still can’t believe a real thing evolved like this, but somehow as soon as I’m done thinking about them they just quietly retire to the background of my memory. Multiple divers say that they have a tendency to follow you around when they see you. :) :) :)

Elysia chlorotica, also called the “Eastern Emerald Elysia” is a bright green sacoglossa found along the Atlantic coast of North America that's earned the title of “solar-powered sea slug” for its ability to produce its own energy with sunlight and the chloroplasts that it sucks off of algae.

This unusual process, which is similar to photosynthesis, is known as kleptoplasty. Except for a select number of creatures like the adorable “leaf sheep” Costasiella kuroshimae nudibranch, very few non-plant organisms are capable of the phenomenon.

Still Life with Roses, c. 1860. Adelheid Dietrich (German, 1827 - 1891)

“Never forget how far you’ve come. Everything you have gotten through. All the times you have pushed on even when you felt you couldn’t. All the mornings you got out of bed no matter how hard it was. All the times you wanted to give up but you got through another day. Never forget how much strength you have learned and developed along the way.”

— Unknown

if you ever feel like you're not "smart enough" for STEM or didn't do that great in school, i just wanna let you know that i failed algebra 2 THREE TIMES and dropped my high school physics class the FIRST WEEK...

and NASA chose me to student research with them.

so what i'm trying to say is that STEM is for EVERYONE. if school wasn't the easiest for you and you're not the strongest in math, don't let that stop you from pursuing STEM. working hard for goals makes you a great scientist.

screw that stereotype that all STEM majors are geniuses who were building robots and knew how to work a microscope at 3 years old.

STEM IS FOR EVERYONE! BECOME A FREAKING SCIENTIST! YOU CAN DO IT!

Kestrel-dad not sure how to dad but he’s trying his best.

it’s time to look at some photos of pikas carrying plants and flowers in their mouths

This is a free coupon/excuse for you to infodump on the current topic you’re obsessed with. Take some time away from internet discourse and share with us something you find interesting.

Today I read about Precambrian animals!

The above one is Thectardis, which is an animal so weird we have almost no inclination of how to categorize it. We know it was alive and it was cone shaped. That’s it.

The thing about fossil life from 500+ million years ago is that there often aren’t really any living analogs for it? Many of the animals from that time were sessile, many filter feeders, without much in common with what comes to mind when we think “Animal”—something that moves around and has a brain and thinks. The strata that preserve these animals are very rarely accessible, and these glimpses we have are hard to interpret.

Many of these creatures are known from a single fossil. Many are too weird to interpret or classify even tentatively.

Here’s another organism from that time, Eoandromeda:

Look at this thing. I can’t explain why, but Eoandromeda makes me feel some kind of deep dread. Like...we don’t know what this thing was. We don’t even know if it was an animal. I look at that shape and I want someone to tell me what that thing is. But we don’t know. We don’t have the words for What That Thing Is.

Imagine something so alien, so divergent from the paths life took to the present day, that we can’t look at it and say “That’s a worm” or “That’s a sponge” or “that’s a jellyfish” or...anything. The words for it literally don’t exist, because nothing like it now exists, and we know nothing about it. We’re not looking at different versions of the same categories of creature we have now. We’re looking at something that is too obscure to have a category. We can guess what it might have looked like. But it is so utterly unlike anything that exists now that we know nothing—except that undeniably, it existed.

Namacalathus. Be honest, doesn’t this make you scream inside? Or is it just me? This was a real animal that existed. It doesn’t know or give a fuck what a “snail” or “bird” is.

Learning about dinosaurs is DIFFERENT. We know what bones are. We have them! When we say that sauropod dinosaurs ate plants, we can imagine those plants. We can describe dinosaurs as having a “neck” and “claws” and “legs.” And I think that’s comforting because whatever I feel when I look at Namacalathus is not that.

This one invented muscles! Muscles are okay! I have muscles! That should make me feel better, right!

...Not really! Put it back!

For millions of years these things existed, living their unknowable lives. There was an entire world of these organisms. This was EARTH, our world.

People mostly haven’t heard of these. I think people care less about these strange early creatures because they seem less charismatic, not having brains or doing anything, but I think there is a lot of charisma to the Unknowable Cone Animal, the Dread Spiral, and all the other unsettling animals of the Precambrian.

That rabbit/hare post is messing me up. I’d thought they were synonyms. Their development and social behavior are all different. They can’t even interbreed. They don’t have the same number of chromosomes. Dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes can mate with each other and have fertile offspring but rabbits and hares cant even make infertile ones bc they just die in the womb. Wack.

The complete ‘Women Who Changed Science - And The World" collection in honor of the 95th Women’s Equality Day.

Purchase Here!

Listen. Do it for the aesthetic. If you want to fill an entire 20 dollar sketchbook with anatomy drawings fucling do it. If you wanna get lost in the woods and come stumbling home with a bag of dried mushrooms and bones you go goblin dude. You aren't alive to go to work and hurt!! You're alive because bumblebees bump into little flowers and dandelions only open up in the sun! You're alive because cats purr when you pet them and coffee keeps you up all night!! Do everything for the aesthetic!!

im majoring in making my life a living hell at idiot university

mental health tips i wish i’d been given before starting university

trying is much more important than succeeding

10 minutes of studying > not studying at all

being a college student is more than academics. it’s also learning how to enjoy your own company, learning and occasionally screwing up meals, wandering outside campus like a tourist, questioning your ideals and presuppositions, discovering new talents and skills for the hell of it, and SO much more. if you feel burnt out in one dimension of college life, that’s a sign to spend some time relishing in another dimension.

if you need more time, take a deep breath and shoot that email to your professor/TA asking for an extension. at worst, they say no. and don’t stress over properly explaining yourself/your situation. hell, just email them: “Hi, Professor. I need your help. Sincerely, y/n.” all it takes is that one initial reach out and the rest will follow.

failure does not reflect character. read that again. remind yourself as often as you see fit because at one point or another, you will feel like you’ve failed. it’s growing pains. once you’ve accepted that, learn to view any setbacks as a hint that you need to try a new method/approach. didn’t do well on that math quiz? don’t beat yourself up over it–instead, regroup with yourself and see which metaphorical gear got stuck in your personal learning process machine. for instance, maybe you used flash cards and that wasn’t really your style. act like a detective, not a bully.

THERE IS NO NORMAL TIMELINE FOR YOUR COLLEGE CAREER(!!!!!!). a lot of people need more than 4 years, a lot of people need 4 years, and a lot of people need less than 4 years. and every single one of those timelines are valid. the worst thing you could do is squeeze the living hell out of yourself into some rigid schedule that is incompatible with who you are and how you learn. trust me when i say u will find yourself doing the best work when u do it at YOUR pace.

January 26 1988 - Burnum Burnum plants the Aboriginal flag at the cliffs of Dover, claiming England for the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, exactly 200 years after Arthur Phillip claimed Australia for the British. [video] The full Burnum Burnum Declaration:

I, Burnum Burnum, being a nobleman of ancient Australia, do hereby take possession of England on behalf of the Aboriginal people. In claiming this colonial outpost, we wish no harm to you natives, but assure you that we are here to bring you good manners, refinement and an opportunity to make a Koompartoo - ‘a fresh start’. Henceforth, an Aboriginal face shall appear on your coins and stamps to signify our sovereignty over this domain. For the more advanced, we bring the complex language of the Pitjantjajara; we will teach you how to have a spiritual relationship with the Earth and show you how to get bush tucker.

We do not intend to souvenir, pickle and preserve the heads of 2000 of your people, nor to publicly display the skeletal remains of your Royal Highness, as was done to our Queen Truganinni for 80 years. Neither do we intend to poison your water holes, lace your flour with strychnine or introduce you to highly toxic drugs. Based on our 50,000 year heritage, we acknowledge the need to preserve the Caucasian race as of interest to antiquity, although we may be inclined to conduct experiments by measuring the size of your skulls for levels of intelligence. We pledge not to sterilize your women, nor to separate your children from their families. We give an absolute undertaking that you shall not be placed onto the mentality of government handouts for the next five generations but you will enjoy the full benefits of Aboriginal equality. At the end of two hundred years, we will make a treaty to validate occupation by peaceful means and not by conquest.

Finally, we solemnly promise not to make a quarry of England and export your valuable minerals back to the old country Australia, and we vow never to destroy three-quarters of your trees, but to encourage Earth Repair Action to unite people, communities, religions and nations in a common, productive, peaceful purpose.

Burnum Burnum

some helpful links

for surviving grad school in the life sciences*

*that I’ve personally used and loved, or have heard good things about. This definitely is not meant to be an all-inclusive masterlist created by an omniscient being though not from lack of trying.

Research/Data Analysis

GraphPad Prism - for all your graphing needs! I use this program exclusively for all my data visualizing, and it can also do some basic statistics. It does cost $$, but your institution or lab may already have a subscription.

NIH ImageJ - free image analysis software (eg. cell counting, quantifying western band intensity, etc), and since it’s open source, there are lots of free plug-ins available to download.

R Studio / R Project - free statistical software. It’ll take some time learning (via tutorials or someone showing you), but it’s a pretty awesome program. I don’t personally use it for stats, but I know many colleagues who do.

Dilution Calculator (C1V1=C2V2) and Molarity Calculator and Outlier test - great for double-checking your math (or doing all the work for you if you’re like me and math is just not your brain’s jam).

IHC World - the motherload of everything IHC or antibody-related, including protocols

BioNumbers - helpful repository of any number you may need for biology-related research (eg. how much DNA or RNA is in a mammalian cell)

Statistics for Biologists - collection of articles about statistical issues that biologists should be aware of

Writing

Mendeley Citation Manager - a (free!) way to save and organize papers using a browser plug-in, along with a Word doc plug-in so you can insert in-text citations and automatically build a reference page when writing. 

Academic Writing Resource - provides the “nuts and bolts” for academic writing, from the University of Manchester

Organizing academic research papers - comprehensive guide on organizing and writing academic research papers from Sacred Heart University

Guide on using Word for writing a Dissertation - such as formatting tips, from University of Michigan

Dissertation templates - from Duke University, available for Word and LaTex (note that every graduate program may have different requirements for formatting, so please only use this resource as an example and/or helpful guide)

PubMed Journal Finder - helps you find the most appropriate journal (from PubMed) to publish your paper in (or find new journals related to your research to check out)

BioRender - If you’re a biologist, this thing is a lifesaver when it comes to creating figures/schematics for papers and presentations. Limited access is free to students for private use (like class presentations).

LaTex - a document preparation program that’s very science-friendly. I’ve never used it, but I wish I did after hearing how much easier it would’ve made things.

Organization

Box Sync or Dropbox - to easily share files between computers (like protocols with everyone in the lab, or editing manuscripts with multiple authors). I personally like Dropbox better and am willing to pay for more space (Box Sync sometimes has delays in syncing).

Google calendars, or some sort of electronic calendar - for scheduling your day, because grad school can get hectic!

Bear - a note-taking app for Macs and other Apple products. I don’t personally use it (I like physical notes), but my old lab mate uses it to keep track of all the notes during his meetings with our previous PI. He’s been using it for years and says it works really well.

Labstep - cloud-based documentation for the entire lab–including notebooks, inventories, data collection and downstream analyses, etc. I personally never used it but it sounds amazing, and would streamline so many aspects in lab. Good to keep in mind for anyone planning on becoming a PI!

Career Development

LinkedIn - if you haven’t already, create an account (even as a student!) This is a great and common way to keep in touch with your network, look for and apply to jobs, and get noticed by companies.

Research Gate - like LinkedIn but for researchers. Their best feature imo is their forum, where users ask research-related questions that the community of scientists help answer.

NIH Office of Intramural Training and Education (OITE) - they regularly host free and open-to-the-public webinars on career development for science and health majors (college and grad school-level)

Scientists have analyzed earwax to determine that World War II was incredibly stressful – for whales.

Botanic academia

“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”

— Alexander Den Heijer

A Beginner’s Guide to Dark Academia

tips for the baby aesthete’s out there

academia

actually study! study the things you love, the things you like, the things you know nothing about — the pursuit of knowledge lasts a lifetime, and there is so much to learn

visit your professor’s office hours! it always helps to make yourself known to your teachers (i’ve been given grade bumps and had great conversations with my university lecturers)

avoid and check yourself for the pretension that can often accompany academia — it hurts no one to be kind and mindful

delve into the realm of philosophy (for starters: metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics) it will broaden your mind

stay late at your university library studying (if you can do so safely, preferably with a friend). university campuses feel magical in the evening

style

wear darker, muted colours

plaid coats, pants, or skirts

button-up shirts (Peter Pan collars are a bonus)

turtlenecks

tie your hair with a bow

accessorise! a vintage watch adds sophistication to any outfit. try wearing it with a ring or three

practice good posture — standing tall creates an air of elegance, confidence, and if paired with the right amount of nonchalance, mystery

media

films

dead poets society

cracks

the dreamers

thoroughbreds

breathless (à bout de souffle)

cléo from 5 to 7 (cléo de 5 à 7)

handsome devil

tv shows

gilmore girls

chilling adventures of sabrina

black mirror

the good place

the politician

books

the secret history

the picture of dorian gray

the goldfinch

the line of beauty

persuasion

the collected poems of oscar wilde 

ovid’s metamorphoses

music

listen to classical music as you sleep/read/study

you can check out this dark academia playlist for inspiration

aesthetic activities (think of this as a little checklist to get you underway as a fledgling aesthete)

make yourself tea in pretty teacups (you can find plenty in secondhand stores!)

light candles in your bedroom, and read by candlelight 

dry flowers for your room/desk

explore secondhand bookstores for old, pretty editions of novels you may or may not have heard of

give handwritten letters to your lovers/friends/yourself

wake up before the sun rises to watch dawn break

brood during a thunderstorm, and write extravagant, flowery poetry on parchment

join a secret society

exist in the real, with your books and art, and your turtlenecks and plaid coats, as a mystery. social media can give too much of you away

host an unceasing bacchanal for you and your pals

I hope this serves as a nice little guide for some of you wanting to get more into the aesthetic! There’s no real right or wrong way to go about it, these are just my suggestions from my own experience and perception of and within the community. 

Enjoy, 

Juniper x

a chaotic but accurate representation of the little things I love in my day-to-day academic career, aka a moodboard of all the little things I really miss and can’t wait to do/see again once I can go back to my full-time on-campus Arts & Media Student life after this worldwide mess is all over

just goofing off around campus, bc we’re young and nothing matters so why tf not

eyes open to all the wonderful différences in fellow students, noticing and enjoying how unique and awesome and varied their colourful outfits are

also everyone is wearing doc martens, and so are you, bc that’s what everyone at this university wears

high-fiving that friend that you always walk past on a Thursday morning as they hand out fliers, and you won’t see them again until next week doing the same thing, and that’s the extent of your friendship

going to the university bar after we’ve all handed up an assignment, let’s split the bottle between us bc we’re broke uni students but we love a good red

cheap pints and pool tables, arcade games and deep booths, sharing a bowl of mouth-scolding potato chips with your mates

student discount on art supplies

trips to the next door art gallery to kill time between classes

studying/lunch in the botanic gardens bc theres 4 hours until your next class

naps on the grass, soaking up the watery autumn sunshine with people you love

instant noodles and snacks from at the uni general store, boiling water and vending machines in the student kitchens

cook-ups with friends to last us the week to save $$$ on food, but also buying plenty of beverages with the money we were supposed to save with this exercise

camera comes everywhere around campus, ready to immortalise the moments missed with a blink

a collection of hoodies/rugby jumpers, first years flock the uni-merch store for their jumpers to wear around campus with pride

homework session in the study rooms, actually in in each others company, who knows how much work is actually getting done bc my best friends are sitting across from me as we study together late into the night, we’re hilarious and distract eachother lots but we know we will eventually get it done, and it’s better to be procrastinating together than have the distraction be the interior of your mind in isolation

I say “See ya later”, and it’s true, I will see you later, and I’ll see you tomorrow, and the next day

lecture theatres: full

couples on campus, initially you scrunch your nose at them, but you realise how lovely it is that they can freely share affection, who would have thought it would be taken away like this?

a myriad of evidence that you have consumed caffeine, dishes not done bc you’re glued to your assignment and you love it bc it’s your 2,500 word baby

bumping into a stranger and you don’t immediately run to wash your hands or get tested for a deadly virus - it’s just an awkward funny accident, and you laugh it off and probably see them around campus more now after that circumstantial exchange

practical research, primary sources, touching things, holding things, learning through touch

holding hands, linking arms, greeting and parting hugs, a kiss on the cheek

groups of friends, groups of people, line ups for cafes, huddles of friends around a table, huddling over a project, group assignments but we’re not separated by a wifi connection

texting my friends during class to meet up afterwards at our favourite cafe, it’s a dark and scrumptious overcast day and it’s our main haunt ( @academicinfj )

hugging your friends goodbye, shaking hands of new acquaintances

networking! NETWORKING! NEW PEOPLE! Hiya, how’s it going, what are you all about? Interviews and photoshoots, drawing real people in front of you, learning all about them, writing up an article from scratch but it’s easy bc they’re right in front of you and they’re handing you the words

knocking on your favourite lecturers door for a chat, it’s a meeting you set up with them, rather than dropping by in a video call

greeting your local barista who knows your order bc you’re consistent and has already started on it bc you’re always here at this time, the legend, they see you walk in and smile and ask after you, and you them bc even though you only ever see them in this context, they are in your circle and this exchange is more precious than you’ve ever given it credit for before

your lecturer rolls their eyes at your joke about the course content, but you can see their hidden smile clear as day across the lecture hall bc it was a bloody good joke and they know it, it’s a real-life détail and it’s not lost in a poor wifi connection

Theres $15 pizza and live-jazz nights on Tuesdays in the night-life district not far from campus, we go there every Tuesday after that class thay finishes in the evening, and the band knows who we’re the group in the corner, bc we’re always there with our pizza, and we’ll be there next week to hear the same songs and make a ruckus and cheer them on and dance, keY CHANGE YES LOVE IT!!! ! THAT SOLO!!!! REAL MUSIC BABEY !!

submitting an assignment 3 minutes before it’s due, the EXHILERATION of it

TL;DR: life is all around; no glitches, not delays or lags, we’re smiling and laughing and talking in real time, there’s nothing between us, no screens, just atmosphere

it’s good to be around

Hmm, maybe

“We never discard our childhood. We never escape it completely. We relive fragments of it through others. We live buried layers through others. We live through others’ projections of the unlived selves.”

—

Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin (1944–1947)

BREAKING NEWS

I just learned about a bird species called Golden Plover. Their chicks have an amazing camouflage: their baby fluff resembles MOSS!

LOOK AT THEM! JUST LOOK AT THEM!

...Oh to be a tiny golden plover lying in the moss safe and sound waiting for your mom to bring you some worms...