Wednesday, April 30, 2008

What's New?

Hello. Chemistry is still hard. I studied with Amelia today for something like 4 hours and we didn;t finish the practice test. That doesn't seem like its going to work on friday, when I have to take a similar test in an hour and a half. We'll see I guess, when I crash and burn. I also have to finish the loads of chemistry homework that I have to do (all online) which is not only pretty hard, it's also really, really, really boring.

Instead of doing my chemistry more after I came home, since i was pretty burned out on it, i tried to key out a couple of the insects that I found in Peninsula Park for my project. This is also hard, but its much more interesting. I have to look at details like the length of the lobes on the bottom edges of wings and compares them to the length of the Mu + 1 cell. Hard as well, but fun. Thank god I found that microscope. I have to makes flash cards for all of these terms that I am learning for insect biology. I'd list them but there's about a bajillion of them that have no real analogy to human anatomy. Pretty fun though. It's satisfying when you spend over an hour on one specimen, which you know what it is (such as the ground beetle family Caribidae and then actually arrive at the in the key. Beetles have a part on their leg called "the antennae cleaner". It's a spine on their front elbow, and the only part that's easy to remember.

I also found a bee from the family Colletidae, a yellow faced bee. Those live in the dirt in the ground. According to my textbook most bees are solitary, and live in holes in the ground. I also had Apidae, which specifically was Apis mellifera L, which is easy to spot because they are the only honey bees in N. America, and they are not from here, though we depend on them for everything.

Last night I heard a numbers station right before going to be. I posted about it from my phone cause i was in bed already. Totally creepy and fun. It was a woman's voice in spanish and said something like "Cuatro, Cuatro, Ocho, Dos. Cinco." Over and over again. There were 2 groups of numbers. It ended with "Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?" which gave me the heebies jeebies. I just got this new radio from amazon which gets pretty good reception on the attached antenna, but really great reception on the included external antenna that is 12 feet long so you can put it outside while you sit comfortable inside. It also cost about the same as the shitty radio shack one, is smaller, backlit, and can store 1000 stations. A good deal. Its missing a lot of frequencies while you scan, except that since you just type in frequencies, you can get them back. it doesn't block them out when you do that. They might do it because there are rarely things broadcast on the ones it skips (I've read they are for shipping companies and for maritime emergency broadcasts) but also, often numbers stations are found on them. I found mine at 5.901 kHz, at 0843 UTC.

I read about a hack you can do to some autoscan FM radio where you can unmute the autoscan so that you hear all the garbled sound while it scans. While doing this, you can talk to ghosts in the same room as you. They will use the snippets of words on the radio to form their own words through the radio. Sounds like total bullshit. Why do ghosts all of the sudden get special powers to control the airwaves?

Tomorrow: More chemistry studying, as well as Physics lab. I have to do two write ups for my physics lab. I have been neglectful of that class this term. Its not been that hard so far. Its slso not been as interesting as I had hoped. I like learning about simple circuits but its been about what's actually going on inside of them, instead of building little robots. Soon, maybe.

Also, apparently I was mistaken about colony collapse disorder, and the israeli virus is not the cause like i had read. I had read that reasearchers had isolated what turned out to be a bee virus from israel, and that when they tested for that specifically, they had found it in many hives and were quarantining theme. However, articles I read tonight said that the israeli virus, although thought to be a possible cause, does bot account for all of the symptoms they are finding, or rather, not finding. The articles I read tonight, though published in the last few days, still don't seem to have any new information then from what they were saying a year ago.

The bees that I am enjoying in my backyard, the orchard mason bees (Osmia spp.) are native to oregon and reportedly may be a good substitute in the case that CCD continues to ravage Apis mellifera colonies. They are not social so the risk of disease spread is low, and genetic variety is higher, since they don't all come from the same queen. They don't make honey, but it is clincally proven that they are "sweet as sugar." This weekend the ones in my yard didn't get up until around 10:30 or so. Lazy!

Also, the US Dept of Forestry is hiring students for entry level summer jobs. I am applying for those involving biological technicians as well as those in the park service. I might work at a fish hatchery, or perhaps stand in a booth all day handing out park maps and taking money for parking. I really have no idea but figure its an oppurtunity I should take, so I am applying. If i get sent far away (farther away they the columbia river gorge) they give me a place to live. Probably not a very nice place, but some quarters just the same. We'll see how it goes.

1 comment:

Kate said...

How's that field guide project coming?