Tag: biology

Insects

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
October 13, 1993
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You know, if I were an aphid or an ant, or even a cockroach, I’d be pretty annoyed. Over the summer, as usual, mosquitoes got all the press. They were even featured in Jurassic Park. When was the last time you saw an aphid in the movies? In an effort to redress this injustice, I offer …

Migration

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
February 24, 1993
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You know what it’s like: the alarm goes off, it’s dark, the wind’s howling, your nose is cold, there’s a snow drift on the windowsill, the radio is talking about icy streets and flesh freezing in 30 seconds, and you just want to pack up and get out of town. Yes, I know I wrote …

Hibernation

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
February 10, 1993
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It’s finally spring (despite the fact that as I write this there’s as much snow on the ground as there has been all winter) and that means that many lucky creatures are just now waking up from their long winter sleep. Deep in burrows or caves, various ground squirrels, marmots, woodchucks, shrews, hedgehogs and bats …

Biological control of leafy spurge

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
October 14, 1992
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In 1987, when I was news editor of the Weyburn Review, I journeyed to a small lake near Maxim to photograph beetles infesting the pretty yellow-flowered plants growing on its steep banks (hey, the news business isn’t all politicians and other disasters!). Today, I’m told (though I haven’t had the opportunity to go see for myself), …

Space tomatoes

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
September 23, 1992
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In 1984 NASA put into orbit a schoolbus-sized vehicle called the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), which exposed various materials to space for six years. NASA should have asked Heinz to sponsor it, because not only were there 57 kinds of materials on board, one of those materials was 12.5 million tomato seeds. Those seeds …

The Human Genome Project

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
May 5, 1992
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I’ve written before about the genetic code and how it writes a description of each of us using an alphabet of only four letters: the four bases that are contained in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T). Every organism has different proportions of these four bases. Two strands of …

Bats

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
March 11, 1992
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In medieval paintings, both angels and demons have wings–but angels have birds’ wings, and demons have bats’ wings. Bats have suffered a serious image problem throughout most of western history. (They fare better in the Orient, where they are often considered a symbol of good luck.) It’s probably got a lot to do with their …

Locomotion

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
February 26, 1992
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Walking, crawling, hopping, slithering, creeping, gliding, leaping–the ways animals (and people) get from place to place are endlessly diverse. This ability to move is one of the main differences between most animals and most plants, and has a definite survival value, because when the glaciers start pushing south or food or water fails, species that …

Snakes

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
February 19, 1992
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There are few creatures that evoke such violent reactions from people as snakes. Some people are fascinated by them; at lot more are terrified by them. However you feel about them, I hope you’ll at least agree they’re interesting, because they’re what I want to talk about this week. Here at the Saskatchewan Science …

Luminescence

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
January 8, 1992
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Glow, little glow-worm, shimmer, shimmer . . . Have you ever wondered why glow-worms shimmer? Probably not, especially if, like me, you wouldn’t know a glow-worm from a tapeworm and wouldn’t care to meet either one. But maybe you’ve seen fireflies dancing in the dark, or, on a more practical note, been thankful for the …

How Does Your Garden Grow?

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
November 27, 1991
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Part of the Saskatchewan Science Centre’s mandate is to demonstrate that it is possible to excel in the world of science “even” in Saskatchewan. The quotation marks are intentional: it’s the attitude embodied in the use of that word we would like to dispel. The fact is, top-notch, world-class science and Saskatchewan are not mutually …

Soil

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
September 4, 1991
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Most of us think of soil as something to be washed out of clothes, swept off floors, or avoided after a rainfall. We use expressions such as “dirt cheap,” indicating a pretty low regard for the stuff. But that’s just because we think of soil as boring and unimportant. It’s actually an amazing substance …