Putting young Americans to work

October 5, 2012

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The garage door is up and the cacophonous whine of building equipment is in full throttle. Students, supplies and tools spill out of the classroom and onto the patio. Some are using circular saws to cut plywood, others are grinding away spurs with corded grinders, and a few are even welding, making aquarium racks out of wrought steel. It’s just another day in Chris Morissette’s Environmental Engineering class.

I’ve been teaching at High Tech High North County for only a few weeks now and I’m already gaining an appreciation for the project-based ethos. The students come in to class excited, and many use their free time for extra work or to get trained on new equipment. Each is shown the right way to use the tools and handed the accompanying outfit of safety equipment, then they go to work under close supervision.

The racks they’re fashioning will hold a single ten-gallon aquarium tank. Groups of four will have their own tank, a mini-ecosystem, which they will maintain throughout the year. All in all we will have fifteen aquaria, thanks to funding from SDG&E and the San Diego Foundation, and each will hold live coral from the Pacific and the Caribbean. Our overarching scientific goal is for the students to investigate how human activities—pollution runoff, warming of the oceans, and others—influence coral health. But there is much more to be gained from this project.

My classroom lesson topics thus far have ranged from the biology of corals to the tools of professional aquarists. Just last week we took our sixty students on a field trip to Birch Aquarium. While there I was able to give small tours behind-the-scenes, but it wasn’t to show off the animals. Instead, the students observed the complexity of engineering that goes into keeping the myriad marine systems functioning.

The students learned first-hand about protein skimmers, sumps, calcium reactors, filter socks, chillers, and algae refugia, all tools they will put to use in aquaria at the school. The field trip highlighted the line this project is straddling: science and engineering. The scientific questions are important, but they won’t be answered unless the engineering and maintenance of the systems is impeccable.

One of the only topics agreed upon during the first presidential debate was that America needs to bolster training in hands-on skills in order to put citizens back to work. When this came up I couldn’t help but think of the students in Chris’ class and our underlying motivation for the coral project: establish something for which a wide range of skills—academic and functional—are required, then allow students to pursue the skills with which they most align. And by providing the leeway for exploration, we hope to not just grow the students’ skill sets, but also help them find their passion.

Note: This will be the last Science Minded post on UT-San Diego. I would like to offer a sincere thanks to my editor, Mike Lee, for the great opportunity to blog on the Science and Environment page and wish him all the best in his next endeavor. Science Minded will continue, though, and can be found at http://www.scienceminded.net. Thanks for reading.

Blending art and science

September 3, 2012

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Editor’s note: This week, Aaron Hartmann is preparing for coral spawning in the Caribbean. He arranged for a guest post from Nayantara Jain, a masters student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

When I was in high school, I thought science was all about memorizing the order of elements I would never see, figuring out the difference between direct and alternating currents and finding the boiling points of random liquids.

In a physics class once, I was asked to find the boiling point of one such highly-flammable liquid – toluene – and I nearly set my hand on fire. I ran out with a test tube ablaze in my hand. I doused the flame in the toilet outside and never fully entered a lab again.

More than ten years after that unfortunate incident I find myself in a masters program at Scripps.

I have always thought of myself as a humanities sort of person. I never even liked to be referred to as a “social sciences” student, because I thought philosophy – which was the focus of my bachelor’s degree – was about the mind and analytical thought rather than some method-based science involving hypothesis, lab experiments and disproving with a margin of statistical uncertainty.

This was my error, and I think many people share the same. So what changed?

Curiosity. It may have killed the cat, but it gave birth to a scientist. A series of events after my undergraduate degree led to me living and working as a scuba diving instructor in the Andaman Islands. Inspired by the beauty around me, my writing flourished.

I wrote about the different fish I’d see, about interesting dives, about amusing guests I encountered. I worked for a year assisting biologists collecting underwater data at an island ecology research base called the Andaman & Nicobar Environmental Team, and I began asking questions.

I wondered why nudibranches were so colourful. I wondered why the coral was dying in some places but thriving in others. I wondered why sometimes the ocean was murky, and why sometimes the currents were strong. I wondered why the surface was sometimes still as glass, and sometimes frothing and rough. I realized that the questions inspired art, and that the answers were found in science.

So I applied to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD, where scientists were answering questions like mine. I arrived in San Diego only the night before my program began. Compared to a remote island with no running water, scarce electricity and sporadic dial-up internet, San Diego was an enormous change.

And yet what scared me most was not any of the lifestyle changes, but the fact that I was about to be surrounded by, compared to and working with scientists. I had a picture of science in my head, I guess, and while I wanted to know what they did, I was still wary.

What did I find? I found that science was all about finding out more about what you loved. I met a surfer doing a doctoral work on waves. I met a long-haired professor who has the most intriguing coral facts and looks just like a fellow diving instructor (missing only a tan).

I met a guy who has the immensely envious job of flying a small aircraft low over the ocean to photograph whales. I met a professor who tells the most beautiful stories about how life diversified, and knows more about worms than I thought there was to know.

I went on research ships where I held fish that had been brought up from thousands of metres under the sea and saw mola-molas and dolphins and whales at the surface.

The first time I looked under a microscope I saw a teeny-tiny little crustacean, replete with all his arms and legs and organs and colours. When I picked him out of the petridish with tweezers he looked no different than a grain of sand. Yet here he was, from hundreds of meters below the surface, a fully functioning living being with stories of his own to tell.

Stories — one of the main reasons why I am here. I think for every question that is thought of while looking at something dramatic in nature, there is a story waiting to be told. And the best stories are fantastical ones, based on true life. So while I am not quite ready to trade in my pen and my creativity for a Bunsen burner and a data chart, science is helping me bridge the gap between fact and fantasy.

I am working on an educational app for children, where different reef fish will talk to them about their lives, their habits and their threats. I write a blog where I hope to share lessons about life from the deep. I intend to go back to teaching people to scuba dive – and to teach in a way that introduces not only the colourful sights of the sea, but also its deep mysteries.

Science is not about absent-minded, grey-haired, short-trousered professors looking at obscure particles and measuring them in units we’ve never heard of. Well, at least, it’s not all about them.

It is also about incredible creatures, adaptations to extreme conditions, winds, storms, oceans and the atmosphere in which we all live and must all protect. And this is what I hope most to share.

Exploring close to home

August 2, 2012

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Click here to read and comment on UT-San Diego or read on…

Marine scientists, myself included, often cite exotic travel as one of the many perks of our job. While it certainly is, there is much to be said for making discoveries in our own backyard. And that’s exactly what twenty of my Scripps peers did this past month.

A core group of graduate students planned and executed a research trip that became known as the San Diego Coastal Expedition. Their purpose was to venture into the Pacific in search of extraordinary ecosystems on the ocean floor called methane seeps, all the while tracking interesting marine life and ocean conditions off our very own coast. As they did, the team communicated what they discovered via the internet, making their findings readily accessible to everyone back home.

As Gary Robbins reported in the UT San Diego last Thursday, the San Diego Coastal Expedition was a success. The team found clear traces of methane in sediment cores, strong evidence for a previously unknown methane seep just twenty miles off of Del Mar.

At these seeps, the chemical methane can naturally flow upward through cracks, or faults, in the ocean floor. Being that it is rich in carbon, the backbone of all life on earth, methane serves as the basic unit of food in these extremely unique ecosystems.

The team’s discovery required interdisciplinary science: geologists examined the structure of the ocean bottom, biologists identified creatures common to seeps, and chemists detected chemical signatures in sediment cores.

While finding the seep was hard, getting the opportunity to be there in the first place may have been even harder. Traveling to exotic locales for research is expensive, and while this trip was local, the need for a ship changed the game. Research vessels, such as the 279-foot R/V Melville used by my peers, are expensive to operate, leaving few opportunities for student use even when exploring our local waters.

Fortunately the team was able to apply to UC Ship Funds, a program specifically set up to provide student time on ships. Through the experience, which was overseen by a faculty adviser at Scripps, the student group went through a very similar process to that of senior scientists: applying for funds with a plan and budget, and after receiving funding, organizing and completing their sea-going research goals.

The core organizers, led by chief scientist Christina Frieder, seized upon this rare opportunity. They recruited scientific colleagues, undergraduates and volunteers from a number of nations, conducted great science and got the word out about their work.

This final point—their desire to communicate their findings—was a powerful and somewhat unique endeavor. The San Diego Coastal Expedition team created a blog and a Facebook page, and coined a Twitter hashtag. Before, during and after the trip they posted pictures and blogged often in order to keep anyone with an interest informed about their discoveries.

Through the combination of research, outreach and rapid communication the team is actively advancing an important new trajectory in science, and one that is a priority of the National Science Foundation.

In recent years, additional impetus has been put on science communication. A majority of our research is funded with federal and state dollars, thus we owe it to everyone to provide glimpses into our work. What’s more, engaging the public is an important vehicle for gaining interest in science. With a science-educated public, we can all enjoy and understand the fascination and fragility of ecosystems in our own backyard.

In December the San Diego Coastal Expedition team will return to the newly discovered methane seep to further unravel its mysteries. Stay tuned for later posts about their ongoing discoveries.

 

Reaching into the classroom

June 27, 2012

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During the coming school year I’ll be part of an NSF GK-12 program at UCSD, which teams Ph.D. students with K-12 teachers in classrooms throughout the county.

We’re in the throes of a four-week course that preps the grad students and teachers for our collaboration in the classroom. We began with simple communication: the grad students had to strip jargon from our research explanations while the teachers had to clarify the array of acronyms used in education. Then we, the grad students, began our training to be effective teachers.

The program’s aim isn’t solely to make us better at presenting Powerpoints to a general audience. We’re pushed to dig deeper and make our research both intellectually and physically accessible to our high school students.

With the help of my mentors, I’ll develop a series of lessons drawing on coral ecology and biology, using coral reefs to teach ecosystem interconnectedness, coral energy reserves to discuss macromolecules, and coral skeletons and tissue elements to talk about isotope chemistry.

On top of that, my teaching team plans to implement a full-scale scientific experiment in the classroom, guiding, but not instructing, our students through the process of defining questions, developing hypotheses, and planning experiments, then implementing and collecting data, and finally analyzing and interpreting findings.

I’ll have the privilege of working with a team at High Tech High North County— environmental engineering teacher Chris Morissette and biology teachers Matt Leader and Parag Chowdhury — along with fellow Ph.D. student Mike Lovci. Because High Tech High is a project-based school, we have the flexibility to tackle the ambitious undertaking of studying coral health in the classroom as we attempt to build a bridge between professional science and high school education.

Our project will challenge everyone, students and teachers alike. Through the process I’m certain that the students will learn critical truths about science, such as the importance of working together, the value of detailed planning and the necessity of problem solving on the fly.

One of the major themes I’ve tried to thread into Science Minded is that science can be best learned by doing. When students have to combine book smarts and hands-on ability they have the potential to advance rapidly, and in doing so realize both their strengths and weaknesses.

To conduct the project our students will have to read and engineer, write and design, and interpret and build; it’s unlikely that any are skilled in all of these areas, but through the diversity of roles necessary to complete the project we hope that each student will find their niche.

Throughout the year I’ll use Science Minded to communicate our progress—conveying what I’m learning from the students and my mentors—both scientifically and as a budding educator. On a broader scale, I hope that our hands-on approach will engage high school students and push them to be science-literate citizens.

I’m certain that there are multitudinous teachers out there using interactive lessons in and out of the classroom. My exposure to the array of such strategies is only in its infancy and my team could certainly use your help. So please offer feedback, thoughts and suggestions as we navigate this ambitious and exciting project.

Marine collector finds it all

April 30, 2012

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Phil Zerofski has two of the greatest jobs in the world.

Phil and his wife Amy own SEACAMP San Diego, a program that hosts students from all over the world at their facility on Mission Bay. Putting their hearts and souls into the program, they have built it into one of the country’s preeminent education centers for teaching hands-on marine science to elementary through high school students.

But even with SEACAMP’s success, Phil couldn’t pass up on a new opportunity: Marine collector at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, part of UC San Diego.

“It was my dream job,” Phil told me when I asked about his reaction to learning that the position was available. “But I would have been just as happy to stay at camp because I love it there, too.”

This past summer I huddled around a window at Scripps with a group of undergrads. Out on the ocean we saw whale spouts and “oohed” and “aahed” with each one. Phil happened to pass by and we pointed them out to him.

“I was just out collecting kelp with (a masters student) and we passed them in the boat on our way back,” he said, taking a moment to talk with the students. “They’re blues. Mothers and calves.”

The students’ mouths dropped, and their reactions reminded Phil of a time he passed blue whales surface feeding off the San Diego coast with a boat full of SEACAMP campers.

As marine collector, Phil is asked to collect everything from tiny plankton to sharks for science and teaching at SIO. He also oversees the experimental aquarium facility, where he helps grad students and faculty design and implement experiments that teach us more about the critters that live in our watery backyard. Phil sees many parallels with SEACAMP San Diego, where students learn about the ocean by interacting with animals in labs and observing them in the wild via snorkel or boat.

Phil’s own love for the ocean dates back to when, at age four, his mom gave him a book about being an ichthyologist (a.k.a. a fish scientist); after that he proudly proclaimed it as his future job to anyone who would listen.

In middle school, Phil took on a marine science internship at the Woods Hole Aquarium and in high school Phil earned his SCUBA diving certification. When it came time to attend college Phil chose Roger Williams in Rhode Island because they offered a degree in marine biology. He put himself through school thanks in part to working construction, where he learned the wide array of techniques that he put to use years later at SEACAMP and Scripps.

Phil’s love of the ocean took him to the Florida Keys, where he landed a job as a handyman at a marine science camp for kids. He spent the first summer living in a tent, battling mosquitoes and working as hard as he could at his new job.

His perseverance and array of skills led to a promotion to harbormaster for the camp. In his new position he began learning from the more experienced boatmen at the local marina who taught him how to build boats from scratch.

While the camp’s facility managers loved Phil’s construction abilities, the camp’s teachers quickly learned that he was a vast source of information about marine life, turning to him when they were stumped by students’ questions. Before long Phil started teaching at the camp and leading students on dives.

After meeting in the Keys, Phil and Amy moved to San Diego where, fourteen years ago, they purchased SEACAMP San Diego. With total control to provide a hands-on marine science education, the blending of Phil’s expertise and passions—the ocean and building things—was complete. The camp now welcomes over four thousand students a year, coming from all fifty states as well as dozens of countries.

Today Phil has more on his plate than ever—especially with his three-year-old daughter Delilah—but he says it’s easy to get up in the morning.

When I arrive at Scripps for work around 9 a.m., I often see Phil, already hours into his day, suited up to dive, fixing a plumbing leak, or transporting animals. He’s usually smiling, and I can only imagine that each day is a new adventure, each new task an exciting problem to solve

Teacher spurs curiosity

April 30, 2012

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My dad is a teacher, so naturally the idea for this week’s post came from him: Write about the teacher that inspired you to get into science.

The concept of having one inspiration may sound cliché, but I have such a person and I think that many of my peers do as well.

For me it was my AP biology teacher Karen Smereka at Montpelier High School in Vermont.

High schoolers are good at spotting a fake—a teacher can’t act overly enthusiastic about their subject because kids just won’t buy it. But when I was in high school my trained eyes told me that Karen was no fake: she was chronically enthusiastic and entirely genuine.

Karen’s lectures were speckled with insights into natural phenomena that she found fascinating, which helped enliven the compulsory curriculum. She treated us like adults, allowing us to work through complex concepts with her in an open dialogue, rather than learning through silent listening.

Karen was also good at admitting when there were questions she couldn’t answer (which wasn’t very often). Instead of getting flustered or defensive, she would get even more excited. Mid-lecture Karen would pull books off the shelf to search for the answer, or follow up by looking into a question after class.

Sometimes she’d find the answer and sometimes it just wasn’t known. When this happened we students saw that there was much left for us to sort out in the world, and this gave us a glimpse into the source of her enthusiasm.

Karen was up for researching anything, no matter how crazy it sounded. Thus, it was no surprise when she immediately agreed to help with my unique independent study proposal: I wanted to figure out what made people hungry.

At seventeen I was extremely thin. No matter what I did I couldn’t gain weight. But I thought that if I could figure out how the brain controlled hunger I could learn how to trick myself into eating more.

Karen could have scoffed at such an idea and pointed me towards a more traditional topic. Instead, she saw how interested I was, and was all in. We looked in books, sent emails and read articles, amassing as much information as we could about the brain and appetite.

I tried a few strategies, like drinking less milk with meals, but nothing seemed to work. In the end we found that the communication signals between the brain and stomach are complex, and certain aspects are poorly understood. Seizing a teaching moment, Karen pushed me to learn how multiple structures of the brain interact with the rest of the body.

The following year she helped me secure community based learning credits for shadowing neurosurgeons at our local hospital. And from there I was on my way.

Even though I eventually switched from an interest in medicine to marine biology, it was Karen’s infectious curiosity for science that pushed me towards this profession. She showed me that science can explain much of the natural world, but at the edges — when we hit the limit of what we know — is where things get most interesting.

And that’s where there’s work to do.

National Ocean Sciences Bowl

April 30, 2012

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While many people are familiar with high school academic competitions, I bet few know there’s one exclusive to the ocean.

Well, that’s the focus of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl, an annual competition of young marine scientists. Our regional competition will take place Saturday, when more than eighty students from 11 local high schools will vie for a spot in the national finals in Baltimore.

Educators at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps work tirelessly throughout the year to oversee the success of the program, while teachers volunteer as team coaches and Scripps grad students, such as myself, act as mentors. Together, we help our students get excited about marine science and prepare for competition day.

I’m now in the midst of my fifth year with the program, and the students I’ve interacted with over my time with the sciences bowl are part of my inspiration for the Science Minded blog.

Early on at San Ysidro High, I worked with students like Elvida who is currently pursing a degree in marine biology. Currently, I mentor the “Grunting Garibaldi” at Escondido Charter High School, a group whose passion for all things marine led them to make an inspiring video pleading for ocean stewardship.

Each year I’m astounded by the students’ knowledge and dedication, a welcome reminder of the wonder that the oceans inspire in young adults.

This idea of bringing professional scientists into high school classrooms is highly encouraged by the National Science Foundation, the primary federal science-funding agency. In all grant applications, scientists must describe how their study will achieve a “broader impact” beyond the scope of their proposed work. Researchers can often satisfy this requirement by participating in programs like the sciences bowl.

The science foundation even formalized these connections through a program called GK-12. In it, grad students are paired with teachers to develop lessons related to their dissertation topics, which they then implement in K-12 classrooms. UCSD has two highly successful GK-12 programs that have connected grad students with more than 20 local schools in the past four years.

Despite the program’s success, the National Science Foundation has discontinuedGK-12, severing this critical link between scientists and hundreds of students here in San Diego.

In its absence, the importance of programs like the sciences bowl grows larger. The middle- and high-school years are a make-or-break point for kids’ interest in the sciences. Without exposure to science, many students are at risk of missing out or turning away.

The sciences bowl provides a free means for students to learn about marine science in a fun yet organized framework. Teams usually meet after school like a club and the program is open to any local high school.

While it takes a little extra effort, I’ve never spoken with a student who wasn’t ecstatic they joined. On a broader scale, participation in programs such as this will continue to bring the world of science into San Diego classrooms even as we lose key federal programs.

How I became a marine biologist

April 30, 2012

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One of the most common questions students ask me is how I became a marine biologist. This week I focus on five lessons drawn from my own experiences.

1) Do what’s fun. If what you are doing is not fun, find something you like more.

I had a number of surgeries as a teenager, and my understanding of what patients feel lead me to believe that I’d make a good doctor. So, in high school I shadowed a brain surgery team and during college I worked as a research assistant studying multiple sclerosis. While I liked that the research benefited people, I felt confined by the lab and hospital. Eventually I realized that medicine just wasn’t for me.

As a high school or college student, many of you have the time and freedom to intern or volunteer in different work settings that seem interesting. By doing so you’ll learn what you like, as well as what you don’t. That’s valuable information to gain early when your life has some flexibility.

2) Keep an open mind.

After growing tired of medical research, I read a few books on the natural sciences. What I learned got me excited about the water cycle, leading me to email a geology professor at my school who specialized in a related topic. He had a different idea.

“Do you know about the algae bloom problem in Lake Champlain?” He asked me in our first meeting. I sure did.

I spent summers going to that very lake in northern Vermont. A few times each year I watched as large swaths of the water’s surface turned green, like split pea soup. Later I learned that the culprit was cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, which can be toxic. Seeing an opportunity to get out of the lab while investigating a problem that hit close to home, I decided to help the professor.

As it turned out, taking algae, water and sediment samples from boats got me excited about aquatic research and I haven’t looked back. My time on the lake gave me real experience in science far beyond what I could learn from books. If I’d stuck to my guns—wanting to study the water cycle—I would have missed this fun opportunity that ultimately put me on the path to where I am today.

3) Work to become a better writer.

Unlike many, I enjoy writing. This led me to a job reporting medical discoveries in a newsletter for a cancer research institute. It was a nice change from penning lab reports for school and I enjoyed it so much that I went on to take creative writing classes in college.

Written communication is critical to being successful at most jobs, in particular those in the sciences. We have to produce research articles, and while the form is somewhat rigid, one must have strong writing abilities in order to do it well. I’m forever working to improve my scientific writing and the tools I learned in my English classes are a big help.

4) Learn new skills.

For example: statistics. This sounds boring, I know, but it’s fundamental. Stats provide the grounds on which we as scientists can say what we say, as nearly all hypotheses are formally tested using these tools. I didn’t learn enough about how to use stats during college and I’ve had to catch up. The more you learn early on, the better off you’ll be.

5) Be persistent.

No matter what I was doing, I worked hard at it. If I got to the end of a project and realized that it wasn’t for me I moved on, and if I liked it I kept going.

To get these opportunities I had to be persistent. I checked websites, sent emails and knocked on doors, much like my friend Aly. After I made contact, I provided resumes and writing samples, which I followed up with emails and calls. While you don’t want to pester a potential employer, follow-up shows that you’re serious about the job, whether it’s as a research assistant, an intern or full-time employee.

In the end, I found that grad schools professors liked my diverse resume and I saw that grades alone wouldn’t have gotten me to the next level. A range of experiences can be key to building your resume and make you a strong candidate for an advanced degree or job in any field of science.

 

Marine biologist gives inside look at life, job

April 30, 2012

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It sounded like the perfect opportunity: Tall host needed for a nature television show, knowledge of biology is a plus. Check and check.

I’m a 6-foot 8-inch tall Ph.D. student studying marine biology. After excitedly emailing the show’s producers, I filmed a short clip of myself talking about coral, my research subject, and uploaded it to YouTube per their request. Then I heard crickets. They never wrote me back.

I shrugged it off—I’m no actor and am a bit awkward on camera—and assumed that nothing would ever come of my video “The Life of a Marine Biologist.” But ever so slowly people started watching it, and questions about my unique job started flowing in from students all over the world.

They had general questions: Is marine biology fun? Do you make a lot of money? What jobs are out there? They had specific questions: What should I major in if I want to be a marine biologist? What are the best colleges to go to? Are my grades good enough? They had practical questions: What if I can’t swim? What if I have tattoos?

And then there was my own personal favorite: “I Am Twelve But When I Grow Up I Want To Study Narwhals, Turtles, And Birds. Is That Possible??”

I did my best to answer them all.

The nature of their inquiries made me realize that students are often excited about science but fear getting involved because of grades, a lack of opportunities, or low confidence. It also became apparent that many of the barriers students are concerned with could easily be overcome through exposure to what being a scientist is really like.

With this in mind I’m writing this weekly blog to provide insights into what it means to be a scientist on a day-to-day basis. In addition to highlighting the exciting frontiers of marine research — local and worldwide — I’ll give practical tips on how high school and college students can get involved.

I’ll discuss what it’s like to work at a field station in the tropics, what writing a scientific paper really entails, and whether all marine biologists really are strong swimmers. Through my posts I want to open a discussion, so please leave me comments. With an open dialogue I hope to make the world of science more accessible to students, parents and teachers alike.

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