I dream of Saturn

Had a dream that I was peering into my telescope to look at Saturn. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I brought Matt and Josh to look at Saturn from the Astro club’s viewing evening. Seeing another planet gives perspective. It makes one feel that there is a wider realm about and makes things feel less significant in kind of a good way. Trivial problems just melt away at the sight of a planet that is 9.609 AU (Astronomical Units) away from us. Hey I found a way to use wolframalpha meaningfully. Which is 893.21 million miles away from Earth. (Another good use of wolframalpha!).

Nudibranchs and the power of the sun in their tentacles

Saw this cutie at Sentosa today – Polka-dot nudibranch (Jorunna funebris)

Besides nudibranchs, there were a few other people from the seashore groups that were there brought in by the low tide today.

Then I happened to see this slug or is it a nudibranch (someone please) and this dude who happened to be there mentioned that it was a slug that could photosynthesize. I can’t verify the species but the nugget about slugs photosynthesizing brought to mind an article I read. But first the pictures of this fair creature… I hope this is really a slug of some sort! I thought they were a cluster of mollusc eggs. I am not sure if this slug really photosynthesizes though.

But anyway, more about photosynthesizing slugs! Well they don’t really but they do collect the plastids (chloroplasts basically) by feeding on the algae (they one that this slug is feeding on is presumably Bryopsis). Collecting the plastids is already quite amazing since the slugs selectively do not digest this organelle. Another most profound aspect of this ability to harness photosynthetic machinery is a gene that is co-opted by the slug in its co-evolutionary history… so baby slugs are born with one photosynthetic gene that helps maintain the ingested plastids for at least 9 months… cool.

Solar-powered Sea-slugs Live Like Plants

ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2008) — The lowly sea slug, “Elysia chlorotica,” may not seem like the most exciting of creatures, but don’t be fooled

“Photosynthesis needs around 2,000 to 3,000 genes, and animals do not have many of the critical genes,” says Manhart. So Manhart and his co-workers looked into how the plastids consumed by the slug can continue photosynthesizing.

“We found that the slug has at least one gene required for photosynthesis in its nuclear genome, which has never been found in any animal,” says Manhart. “The critical thing is the plastids come from the alga, but the slug nucleus contains at least one, and probably more of the genes required for plastid functioning,” he adds.

People you meet on an early morning ride

Set off at 7am
Down Yio Chu Kang – A 100men peloton whizz past me on the other side of the road, those racers are a beautiful blur down the road against the backdrop of the old kampong forest.
to Old Upper Thomson Road – Friendly cyclist nods at me, its like sesame street when you are cycling.
Along Upper Pierce, meet squirrel, listen to cicadas cacophony, brought me back to days of skipping school to go to the reservoir.
Along Thomson Road, meet cyclist on hybrid bike, tried to outpace him but kept on getting held up at traffic lights so decide to chat with him. We cycle through Seletar Dam exchanged numbers and he smsed “Till we ride again”.
Back home at 815 am

And I thought it would be a lonely ride

Whispers to a leaf – I

The world seems safer because I am here to protect you
You were the perfect solution
A love for plants transplanted to a
Creature I call Leea

First song for the year: Stroke of Midnight

[Copied from Ivan's post on the new song Stroke of Midnight. I like the arrangement and the leads by Ivan. It must be the nicest mash-up we did so I am posting it here as well.]

Our first song for 2009, titled:
STROKE OF MIDNIGHT

Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

• First conceived by Adrian Loo. Arrangement by Ivan Chew.
• Adrian Loo: Drums and distortion guitars.
• Ivan Chew: Lead guitar, bass, additional percussion, sound engineering.
• Stroke Of Midnight (2009) by Starfish Stories :: The Band is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Singapore License. Based on a work at starfishstories.wordpress.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://starfishstories.wordpress.com/contact-the-band/.

Training – 5th week

Mon – Short 3.5k run (recovery run from last weeks 21k)
Tues – Cycle 21k
Wed – Rest
Thurs – 10k run at MacR

its been a long time since I ran the Macritchie route but I realised after having trained on the road for such a long time, the slopes make for a good cardio. The air was super fresh and it was good to be in the forest.

I got this training schedule and adapted it a bit from Runner’s World – from “The Rookie Plan” for marathon training.

today’s run

Ran to my parents place today (where the dog sign is), had a conversation with them and my younger sis. My younger sis suggested that when I run, I should impact the ground with my metatarsals and not the heel. this should help reduce the stress on the knee. It worked.

Special Gandhi issue in India Perspectives

The link below is a special issue of the journal India Perspectives. It’s dedicated to Gandhi and his non-violent way. Almost all were familiar to me but what was really new to me was the American perspective and an insight into how Martin Luther King Jr developed non-violence from the Rosa Sparks incident… King used to sleep with a revolver beneath his pillow but after being advised by a fellow american who was a Gandhi disciple, and got rid of it. He fully embraced non-violence and began to immerse himself in Gandhi’s philosophies… On a vist to Delhi, he said to Nehru, – with other countries, I am a tourist, in India he was a pilgrim.

http://www.meaindia.nic.in/secframe.php?sec=ip
a series of PDFs

The one with the Martin Luther King write up is in this pdf
http://www.meaindia.nic.in/indiaperspective/2008/032008-8.pdf

Evening run to shrug off the tedium of a hectic 2 weeks

Final fieldtrip for the 2008 Biophilia programme

Here’s a little summary from the final fieldtrip to sentosa for the biophilia programme (24th May 2008). The students have been great to work with thanks to their initiative and level of enthusiasm. (hmmm but why haven’t they contributed to this blog?!?). Fellow colleagues that came for the fieldtrips made the programme successful in its own way.

We’ve been lucky with the tides this year and all the saturdays low tides were around 9 am so we could schedule those saturday fieldtrips.

For me again, there were new things to see (as with every fieldtrip to this spot) and this school of catfish was one. It was a tight ball and they were swimming around each other and moving as a school.

I chanced upon another school of smaller catfish later and demonstrated to the students the fountain effect of how a school of fish move away from an incoming predator. See embedded video. Here, I wade towards the school of fish and through the school. Note how the school doesn’t swim away but split into 2 and swim around me by first swimming away and doing a flanking turn to the outside and around me and regrouping behind me. That’s apparently optimal evasion tactics from a predator… cool. I got the chance to gather the students to demonstrate this in situ, something I had learnt from Prof Munroe in Animal Behaviour class when I was in year 2 or 3 when I was an undergraduate. Those are just some of the biodiversity lessons that I never forgot. It was nice to demonstrate this to a bunch of students who may not take any Biodiversity modules as undergraduates. In fact its hard to imagine that with the ever changing syllabus to molecular biology that students will ever learn this.

Here’s a mermaid’s purse or more informatively, the egg that is laid by a shark, stingray and attached to seawead. The eggcase is usually washed to shore after the baby shark emerges. There are plenty of this around at the sentosa beach.

And finally, a picture of students working at the site. Its nice to see that they have learnt much from this experience. It has been a fulfilling programme and one that the teachers and I have found exciting, refreshing and something we looked forward to. Its definitely a different pedagogy, the open classroom. Some students have remarked that they enjoyed the freedom to explore and craft their own projects. Will post some reflections below as they are nice (I have omitted some parts)

~”The most memorable part of Biophilia will definitely be the day on the beach when for the first time in my life I watched 2 ‘blue-blooded’ horseshoe crabs mate. I was really surprised to be able to find such amazing creatures in Singapore, because all along I saw Singapore as a place with minimal biodiversity. This programme has thus taught me not to underestimate the biodiversity of creatures in Singapore.”~

~I really enjoyed every single session of the Biophilia programme as I was working with what I enjoy and am interested in most. The fieldtrips really heightened my interest towards marine organisms and I really learnt a lot about Singapore’s shores during the trips. I have also started to fully appreciate Singapore’s biodiversity after seeing such a huge variety of organisms living on such a small stretch of beach. I used to think that Singapore does not have any sea anemones or coral reefs but I realized was very much mistaken after seeing the beautiful sea anemones on the Sentosa beach. I’m glad to know that there are such programmes to let me learn more about Singapore’s biodiversity as I feel that our biodiversity is just as important as the developments in our country. Our biodiversity is part of our environment as well as our heritage so we should treasure it as well and not cast it aside as something less important. If I have a chance I would want to go for this programme again and I hope that it will be for a longer period of time as I feel that the time period this time is too short.~

~From the fieldtrip I attended, the experience and new discoveries I made gave me a great sense of achievement. I think it is wonderful that I have had this opportunity to observe and even touch some of the organisms we found. Wading in the water and sometimes mud in search of fish, crab and whatever else we could find was truly a great experience. I am glad to have been selected to participate in this program. I never realized that the area behind underwater world had so many cool organisms despite all the times I have been to Sentosa. The thought that that little ecosystem will most likely be destroyed in the future with the ongoing construction around that area is rather depressing. As unlikely as it is, I hope that the short video that my group has produced throughout this program will achieve its purpose in increasing the awareness about the ecological value of that area, and perhaps more might learn to value this more than the monetary profits it could bring. ~