Tag: environmental science
-
How Pregnancy Tests Led to the Decimation of Frog Populations
With readily available pregnancy tests stocked across drugstore shelves, it is hard to imagine a time when determining pregnancy was not so simple a task. Instead of the easy-to-use plastic cartridge we commonly imagine, the earliest reliable pregnancy tests utilised Xenopus laevis, also known as the African clawed frog (Nuwer, 2013). This method for identifying…
-
Sun’s Out, Sunscreen’s Out
Sunscreen contains compounds that contribute to marine ecosystem degradation. It is for this reason that in 2021, Hawaii banned sunscreens containing the chemicals oxybenzone (BP-3) and octinoxate (Suh, et al., 2020). These two chemicals are damaging to coral reefs, which are already compromised due to anthropogenic factors, like pollution. This discussion is centred around BP-3…
-
It Was an Accident, I Swear! The Scientific Discovery of Conductive Polymers
Some of the most revolutionary scientific discoveries have occurred accidentally; luck is sometimes the most important factor leading to new discoveries (Donald, 2013). Conductive polymers were an accidental finding by scientists Shirakawa, MacDiarmid and Heeger in 1977 (Guo and Facchetti, 2020). These organic polymers were found to have high conductive properties typically associated with metals.…
-
Whale Watching With Two Eyes
As human activity surges, biodiverse ecosystems become increasingly susceptible to anthropogenically induced collapse: rising carbon emissions are acidifying the oceans, amplifying forest fires, and disrupting seasonal patterns. Even whales, the largest mammals on Earth, cannot escape these vicissitudes (Nicol, et al., 2020). Luckily, research-based wildlife stewardship is making significant advances to conserve whale species by…
-
Frankly, Fridges
Fridges are appliances with a range of utility, from personal use in homes to commercial use in laboratories. The key component within these machines is refrigerant, a fluid which uses properties of the ideal gas law to allow heat to dissipate away from stored contents (McLinden and Huber, 2020). Despite contributing immensely towards efficient storage,…