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Tag: Carpobrotus edulis

The Ugly Side of Malta’s Kaffir Figs

These pretty flowers have an ugly side. Carpobrotus edulis is one of Europe’s top 100 invasive alien species.

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🦇If you spot these flowers, chances are there a

🦇If you spot these flowers, chances are there are bats about.
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❓Why? Because this species is mainly pollinated by bats, which feed on their nectar after dark. As the bats fly from one flower to the next, sucking up nectar, pollen sticks to their hairs in one and unsticks in another. The pattern repeats throughout the night, leading to fertilization of one flower from the pollen of another.

The following characteristics of the plant are thought to be evolutionary adaptations to attract bats:
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👃🏻a sweet banana-like scent released at night,
🌼the large size of its flowers,
🌘their yellow coloration which stands out against the night sky better than other colours would.
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Scientific name: Solandra maxima
Common name: Golden Chalice Vine
Native of: South America
Spotted in: Paceville
Other random fact: Traditionally used by Mexican tribes in sacred ceremonies due to hallucinogenic properties. This use is thought to date back to the Aztecs.
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#solandra #solandramaxima #goldenchalicevine #cupofgold #batpollination #bats #flowersofinstagram #flowerpower #whatawonderfulworld #biophilia #evolution #maltagram #scienceblogger #pollination #hallucinogen #hallucinogenicplants #botany #scicomm

Changes afoot! 👣 . On 2nd January 2020 I found

Changes afoot! 👣
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On 2nd January 2020 I found out I was going to be a mum, and knew I was in for a very different year ahead. Little did I know how different!😆
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Luckily, I can say my 2020 was quite a mixed bag - many negatives, but many positives as well. Besides this cutie, I’ll be taking into 2021:
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1️⃣A deeper understanding of how you can’t take anything at all for granted. Not even the ability to walk out your front door or hug your family
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2️⃣A massive feeling of empowerment from what my body managed to accomplish. I knew biology is awesome, but it’s another level to grow and push out a tiny human, and then watch my body slowly bounce back as if hardly anything happened.
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3️⃣A much greater appreciation for my passport, which until last year allowed me to travel unhindered around the globe. Many others aren’t so lucky and 2020 gave me a taste of what that must be like. My traveling whilst preggo plans went up in smoke, but hopefully my travel plans will get back on track in the later half of 2021, with my new tiny travel buddy in tow.
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❓What will happen to this account in the meantime? I’ll continue posting from Malta and my archives, as I’ve been doing this year (lots left!) I’d also like to branch out a little, so stay tuned. Though, for this I may need to discover the 25th hour in a day once my maternity leave is up. Amazing how much time poopy nappies hoover up.

🥂In the meantime, I’d like to thank all of you who continued or started following me last year. Whatever shape your 2020 took, may your 2021 be much better. And if you have any tips for travel with kids please drop them here👇
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#womeninstem #stemsquad #thisiswhatascientistlookslike #2020recap #happynewyear2021 #mothersinscience #newmummy #travelwithkids #imisssleep #covidpregnancy

Is colour an illusion? And are the colours you see

Is colour an illusion? And are the colours you see dependent on the language you speak?
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Various studies have indicated that language and colour vision go hand in hand. The remote Himba tribe in Namibia have no word for blue and members of the tribe couldn’t spot any odd colour out when shown a circle made up of 11 green squares and one bright blue one. Kind of similar to this: 💚💚💚💚💚💙💚💚💚💚💚
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Conversely English speakers couldn’t spot a difference in a circle of green squares, where one was a slightly different shade. The Himba tribe could spot it with ease, as their language is more green centered.
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🍷🌊In Homer’s Odyssey, the ocean is famously described as “wine-dark”. A weird choice that makes scholars believe the Ancient Greeks also didn’t distinguish the colour blue. It’s quite uncommon in nature besides the sky and sea, and blue dyes hadn’t yet been invented. It’s thought that only after the invention of blue dye and its accompanying name that people started distinguishing other blues in the world around them. The concept ‘blue’ trained the brain to make further similar distinctions, whereas previously it would have only seen different shades of black.
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🎇This pic is a current installation that represents the Maltese festa (feast) and its accompanying colourful fireworks. But it turns out the colours that we see may be more relative than we think. I wonder how many Homer would have seen. How many do you see?
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#colour #colourperception #valletta #maltagram #streetsofmalta #fireworks #kuluripawlini #scienceblogger #travelgram #anthropology

If you were a bird, would you be able to resist th

If you were a bird, would you be able to resist these seeds? 🐣
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There’s some cool chemistry and biology happening here. 👇
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🐾Biology: The bright red coloring attracts birds and other animals, who eat the seeds and then poop them out in various locations. This allows the next generation to grow far away from the parent, and is known as exozoochory. It maximizes a species chance of surviving over time.
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🎨Chemistry: The red coloring also acts as a natural sunblock. It’s thanks to a group of chemicals called carotenoids. These start off yellow, but once the seed capsule opens, the carotenoids transform to red.
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This happens in a two step chemical process. 1️⃣First, the sun’s UV rays break up oxygen molecules in the air around the seeds, forming highly reactive oxygen atoms (known as radicals). 2️⃣The carotenoids mop up these radicals by reacting with them. Otherwise, the oxygen radicals would react with other parts of the seeds, damaging them in the process- most important among these is their DNA, which holds the blueprint for the next generation.
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Species: Pittosporum tobira
Common name: Japanese Cheesewood
Spotted in: St. Julians
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#pittosporum #pittosporumtobira #maltagram #stem #stemeducation #stemsquad #botany #chemistry #whatawonderfulworld #biophilia #stjulians #exozoochory #naturalsunscreen #carotenoids #floralgram #fruit #fruitsofinstagram #maltesescience #malteseblogger #japanesecheesewood #seeddispersal
#survivalofthefittest #staycurious #learnsomethingneweveryday #outdoorclassroom #exploring #malta

💉There’s a vaccine race going on, but it’s

💉There’s a vaccine race going on, but it’s not the first one.

💊One good that may come out of this pandemic is a harsh reminder of the importance of vaccines. Pre-2020 these lifesavers were pretty much taken for granted. Fast forward to today and we’re all on tenterhooks, awaiting each vaccine milestone. (And thankfully so far so good! Vaccines showing up to 95% efficacy, full safety results still to come)
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📚This book was published pre Covid-19 and follows the history of the vaccines that came before. The fights that have allowed us to forget about rubella, polio, tetanus, and more, and also paved the way for the Covid vaccines being made today.
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An engrossing read, which should be mandatory reading for vaccine skeptics. 😆
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🦠We owe a lot to a handful of people and just one cell line. I wonder if Meredith Wadman will write an updated edition.
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#vaccines #vaccinerace #amreading #amreadingscience #bookstagram #bookworm #sciencewriting #sciencebook #scienceblogger #stemsquad #instascience #cellculture #womeninscience #womeninstem

Seek and you shall find! 🍂 . One of the things

Seek and you shall find! 🍂
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One of the things I’m missing most about not traveling at the moment is dramatic Autumn foliage. Thanks to Malta’s mild Mediterranean climate, abundant sunshine, and general tree poorness, leaf colour changes are barely visible across the island. 😞
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But I couldn’t spend a year without seeing this, so I went on a foliage hunt. And where better to find this than Buskett - Malta’s largest woodland?
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And in a small, secluded corner I found these 🧡
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Leaf colour chemistry below 👇
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A leaf’s normal green colour is due to chlorophyll, which is a group of green chemicals that allow a leaf to photosynthesize. 🍃
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In autumn, chlorophyll is broken down in each leaf. This allows deciduous trees to reabsorb and repurpose important building blocks of chlorophyll, before leaves fall off for winter.🍂
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The removal of chlorophyll unmasks other previously hidden chemicals. These include xantophylls (yellow pigments) and carotenoids (orange). The colder temperatures also stimulate the production of protective anthocyanins (red to purple). It’s the proportion of each of these chemicals within a leaf that leads to its particular colour.🍁 .
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#buskett #autumn #autumnfoliage #autumninmalta #maltagram #scicomm #sciencetravel #maltesescience #colourchemistry #instachemistry #outdoorchemistry #staycation #whatawonderfulworld #scientistsofinstagram #thegreatoutdoors #hiketheworld #travelgram #stemsquad #seekandyoushallfind #malta #mediterranean #mediterraneanclimate #fall #fallfoliage #treelover #biophilia #forestbathing

Nature’s reclaiming this one. I wonder what happ

Nature’s reclaiming this one.
I wonder what happened to the owners 🎃 🦇
Swipe to see the beautiful second doorway.
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#reclaimedbynature #abandonedplaces #urbangem #maltesebalcony #happyhalloween
#beautifulfacades #maltesefacades #secretgarden #spookyseason #naturelover #overgrown #maltagram

A great week for #womeninstem ! 🍾 . Nobel priz

A great week for #womeninstem ! 🍾
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Nobel prize laureates in both physics and chemistry. Congratulations to:
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🌟 Andrea Ghez, joint winner of The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020, for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy

🌟Emmanuelle Charpentier, joint winner of The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020⁠, for discovering CRISPR gene editing technology
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🌟Jennifer A. Doudna, joint winner of The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020⁠, for discovering CRISPR gene editing technology

May they inspire future generations of female scientists 🙂
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Celebratory firework photo taken a while back at Malta’s annual fireworks festival. 🥂
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#womeninscience #steminist #nobelprize #nobelprize2020 #fireworks #instascience #thefutureisfemale #scienceblogger
⁠#maltagram

Last in my multicoloured beach series: pink! 💕

Up next in my multicoloured beach series: red! 🖍
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Gozo has two main red sand beaches: Ramla l-Hamra (this pic) and San Blas (swipe to see).
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Depending on the time of day and sand wetness, their colour can vary between a burnt orange to a muddy red. And somewhat ironically, this colour comes from greensand.🧤
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Greensand is one of Gozo’s five rock types, rich in iron and normally found sandwiched between other rock layers. But when exposed to the air, the iron reacts with oxygen, forming red iron oxides. (The same chemical family as rust.) 🌡
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Find out more in my blog post 👇
bit.ly/MulticolouredBeaches
(Link also in bio)
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Next up: pink! 💕 Stay tuned 🙂
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#maltagram #redsand #redsandbeach #beachesofinstagram #sandybeaches #travelgram #ironoxide #chemicalreaction #ramla #ramlalhamra #sanblas #gozo #visitgozo #sciencetravel #maltesescience #geologyrocks #instascience #staycurious #traveldeeper #scicomm #scicommer

Purple sand! 💜 . Continuing my series of multic

Purple sand! 💜
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Continuing my series of multicoloured sandy beaches, this is Pfeiffer Beach in California. This beach is like ice cream ripple - golden sand interrupted by unexpected swirls of purple.
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The purple sand comes from the cliffs above, which contain a group of purple minerals called manganese garnets.
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Find out more in my blog post 👇
bit.ly/MulticolouredBeaches
(Link also in bio)
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And stay tuned for my next beach! This one’s red 🖍
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#purplesand #purplesandbeach #pfeifferbeach #california #californiaroadtrip #offthebeatenpath #geologyrocks #whatawonderfulworld #atlasobscura #scicomm #sciencecommunicator #purplelovers #beachesofinstagram #manganese #manganesegarnet #erosion #travelgram #sciencetravel #instascience #sandybeaches #traveldeeper #seetheworld #staycurious #bythesea #bigsur #bigsurcalifornia #route1

Not a black and white filter❗️This is Reynisfj

Not a black and white filter❗️This is Reynisfjara, Iceland’s most famous black sand beach. Visit on an overcast day and all colour can bleed away.
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🌋Iceland’s coast is full of black sand beaches, which all formed similarly. Hot lava pouring out of one of Iceland’s many volcanoes met the Atlantic Ocean, cooling instantaneously and shattering into basalt pebbles. These have been slowly weathered over time into smaller and smaller pieces, forming sand.
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Find out more in my latest blog post 👇
bit.ly/MulticolouredBeaches
(Link also in bio)
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And stay tuned for the next coloured beach on my list. Coming up: purple! 💜
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#reynisfjara #reynisfjarabeach #blacksand #blacksandbeach #iceland #icelandtravel #travelgram #whatawonderfulworld #naturegram #geologyrocks #naturallyblackandwhite #sciencetravel #scicomm #sciencecommunicator #beachingit #beachesofinstagram #bythesea #atlanticocean #seastacks #basalt #icelandringroad #icelandroadtrip #icelandscape #🇮🇸

What gives a sandy beach its colour? 🎨 . I’m

What gives a sandy beach its colour? 🎨
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I’m going to be sharing some of my favourite multicoloured beaches from around the world in my next few posts, together with the story behind their hue.
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Stay tuned for black,red, purple, pink and white beaches! Or skip ahead to my blog post here👇
bit.ly/MulticolouredBeaches
(Link also in bio)
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#sand #sandybeaches #beachesofinstagram #beachesoftheworld #geologyrocks #haheibeach #sciencetravel #travelgram #scicomm #beachbum #beachlife #bythesea #outdoorclassroom #erosion #womeninstem

☠️ Show stopper! ☠️ . Not only beautiful -

☠️ Show stopper! ☠️
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Not only beautiful - the passion flower can stop you in your tracks thanks to another reason. Its leaves contain cyanide, a chemical that’s poisonous to much of the animal and insect world.
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It’s part of a brilliant evolutionary strategy that stops it from being eaten.
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Read more about in my blog post here 👇
bit.ly/PoisonousPassion
(Link also in bio)
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Spotted growing wild in Pembroke
Scientific name: Passiflora caerulea

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#passionflower #poisonousplants #cyanide #flowergram #passiflora #passifloracaerulea #maltagram #maltesescience #botany #scicomm #naturalchemistry #outdoorscience #phytochemicals #womeninstem #whatawonderfulworld #evolution #defensemechanism #pembroke #staycurious #donteatthis

Gold mining step 4️⃣ - the final products! . 1

Gold mining step 4️⃣ - the final products!
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1st pic: Geology on a chain 🙂 - this is a gold nugget, left in its natural form after being mined.

2nd pic: Arrowtown, one of the villages that grew around mining. Many who didn’t strike it rich still carved out a life from the related economy (hotels, restaurants, banking, prostitution) and this mass immigration and thriving economy shaped modern New Zealand. 💰
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3rd pic: Unfortunately racism was alive and well. Chinese miners were ostracized, living on the periphery in each mining village in much worse conditions. 🏚
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Swipe to see each picture, and find out more on New Zealand’s gold rush in my blog post 👇
bit.ly/GoldRushNZ
(Link also in bio)
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#gold #goldmining #goldprospecting #goldrush #goldrushhistory #goldnugget #goldjewellery #sciencejewelry #womeninstem #scicomm #sciencetravel #instascience #newzealand #newzealandroadtrip #traveldeeper #travelgram #geologyrocks #arrowtown #racism

Gold mining step 3️⃣ . Here’s where the chem

Gold mining step 3️⃣
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Here’s where the chemistry comes in ⚗️
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This apparatus was used to extract any gold out of crushed quartz rocks. ⚜️
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Cyanide and water were added in. The basic chemistry behind this is that cyanide in a water solution draws the gold out from the rest of the rock, as this solution takes electrons from the gold atoms. 🤝
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This loss of electrons makes the solid gold dissolve in the water, leaving other rock components stuck behind.💦
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Addition of zinc metal to the separated liquid then causes an inverse process. Gold takes electrons from the zinc, re-becoming a solid and depositing out of solution, ready for the taking. (The zinc dissolves in its place.)💰
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For more on New Zealand’s gold rush follow along with my posts, or visit my blog 👇
bit.ly/GoldRushNZ
(Link also in bio)
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#goldmining #goldmininghistory #goldrush #goldrushhistory #chemistry #gold #scicomm #sciencecommunicator #travelgram #traveldeeper #newzealand #newzealandroadtrip #southislandnz #cyanide #sciencetravel #learnsomethingnew #staycurious #ionicreactions #instascience

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