The theme of ice gave me a hard time finding a topic to write about. Being the botanist in our group, of course I wanted to write about plants, which made me think about the challenges plants are facing with ice or snow. In areas of constant low temperature, vegetation is generally pretty scarce. Of...
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The unbelievable fact that frogs can survive the freezing of their own body led me to writing this article in the theme session of ice. Frogs are cold-blooded organisms and their body temperature conforms with their immediate surrounding. This feature would normally prevent habitations of cold climate due to the risk of lethal freezing. Nevertheless,...
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For the theme of ice, I am going to talk about ice itself and how it occurs in nature. Ice is one of the phases of water, almost one tenth of our planet is covered with it. Two large sheets of ice are covering almost the entire Antarctic and Greenland, this amounts to approximately 15 million square kilometers,...
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Dear Blogionik readers, The first theme session is done! It is time for another one. In the next month you will get the chance to read and maybe to write articles about the new theme: ICE During a theme session, you have the possibility to participate on our blog. Maybe you write/wrote a bachelor/master thesis...
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The creation of light is for sure one of the most interesting natural phenomena, especially if it occurs by living organisms. Bioluminescence means the emission of light by an organism as a result of a natural chemical reaction [1]. A remarkable variety of marine animals, underground organisms and terrestrial animals are able to produce light by...
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A few months ago I was sharing my car for a road trip. After some minutes of small talk with my fellow passenger it was unavoidable for me to admit that I was a botanist. I am always scared of that moment. It gives your counterpart the unique opportunity to ask this one question, he...
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Greetings Readers, For the theme of light, I am going to discuss how nature harvests light. We have discussed in one of our previous articles, how polar bears use light reflection and scattering (similar to fiber optics) for light absorption, but sophisticated light harvesting strategies this mechanism is not only limited to animals. Light Harvesting in Polar...
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Hello everyone, Last week we started with a new concept to write and publish our articles. This editorial hopefully gave you an idea of what we will try to establish on our blog and how we will try to integrate guests for specific topics. So before I start my run on the topic “Light” I...
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Dear readers, With this article we are starting a new blog concept: – “theme sessions”. Every month a new theme will be defined and every Blogionik author will write an article based on its field of interest or experience. Therefore you can expect articles with different topics – but all related to the same theme....
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Insects, bugs, creepy-crawlies. You either love them or hate them, but one thing is for sure – they are everywhere. Throughout their 480 million years of existence, insects have evolved to thrive in almost every niche imaginable, from the extremely hot Saharan desert (e.g., Saharan silver ants), to the wet aquatic environments (e.g., dragonfly nymphs,...
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