NatureVolve Issue 10

At NatureVolve, we are an international community uniting to share our ideas in science and art with the world, through the common appreciation of nature’s wondrous workings. While sharing diverse fields within science to conservation and art, we especially emphasise the wonder of water and the oceans in this edition. Meanwhile, this does not leave out interesting discoveries and illustrations in the life sciences. We begin the Science section by looking at what is behind chevron geological structures, and then on the much smaller scale, peer upon a microfossil, and the eye of a zebrafish. In Conservation, we are introduced to some species needing further protection, and the true value of fresh water to our society. Some extremely diverse science communication projects are presented in the Scicomm section, from a…

Chevrons are a type of wedge-shaped sediment deposit, that can be seen on coastlines and continental interiors. They were originally reported by scholars as large, V-shaped, sub-linear to parabolic landforms seen in south west Egypt and islands of the Bahamas. These bed forms are most commonly described to be parabolic generated dunes, with most being sculpted by the wind. Yet, the origins of these structures have been widely debated among researchers. We speak with sedimentologist Lucas Vimpere about his team’s investigation of how chevrons form, armed with his geological and outdoor skills. Photo by N. Del Piero. All rights reserved. Q & A - Lucas Vimpere Please tell us about your background and current PhD studies I started my studies at the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department of the University…

Organic microfossil of Palynodinium grallator (below) Image taken by Sandy McLachlan. Scale bar = 10 μm. © Sandy McLachlan. All rights reserved. Organic microfossils of Palynodinium grallator, preserved resting cysts of a taxon belonging to a group of extinct dinoflagellate phytoplankton, reached their acme in the fossil record 66 million years ago. This species’ Cretaceous crescendo is used to demarcate the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary in marine settings throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The specimen featured here was recovered from the sedimentary rocks of the Oyster Bay Formation, which overlies strata of the Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group along eastern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. It was among the microfossils which enabled the recent discovery of the first K–Pg event record in the northeast Pacific. About Sandy McLachlan is an invertebrate paleontologist and…

Credit:Image acquired by Dr. Ryan MacDonald, processed by Dr. Elisabeth Kugler. The importance of vision research The eye is the sensory organ that relays visual information from the outside world to our brain via the light-sensitive retina. The human retina is only about 250 micrometers in thickness, which is about a third of a credit card or an eighth of a spaghetti noodle. Yet, it is formed by 9 cell types (5 neurons, 3 glia, and blood vessels), with over 60 subtypes existing for neurons alone, highlighting the intricacy and complexity of the retina. In our body, cells can generally be constantly renewed (like your skin for example), but this is not the case in the retina, where cells that are lost will be lost forever. So the retinal cells…

Winter can get grim in the heights of Scotland. To make power supply more reliable, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) wanted to understand more about ice formation on its power lines. A tailored solution by OTT HydroMet monitors the microclimate surrounding the power pylons and automatically sends alerts when the lines are about to freeze. Now, it faces its second winter season. Overhead transmission lines are the cheapest and most common way to provide electric energy from one place to another. Being exposed to wind and weather, the metal conductors are prone to elongation causing the lines to sag. Low hanging lines can be a significant safety risk, especially if they span roads. Power suppliers have to ensure they reduce the power capacity or even shut down power transmission…

NON-PROFIT Water is life, without it we are nothing. Worryingly, it’s an increasingly scarce and threatened natural resource with global freshwater biodiversity declining at twice the rate of oceans or forests. Whilst Earth is often described as the ‘blue planet’, perhaps surprisingly, only 2.5% is fresh water. Of this, no more than 1% of the world’s fresh water is available for human use. Alarmingly, this 1% is in rapidly declining health. Abstraction, urbanisation, climate-change and pollution have all caused dramatic declines in freshwater biodiversity and habitats within the past 50 years. ‘Chemical cocktails’ To our shame, this issue is especially acute within the UK. England’s rivers, in particular, are again the focus of media coverage (January 2022), as MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee warn of a ‘chemical cocktail’ of…