Small Things Considered

Teachers Corner: Chalks Talks vs PowerPoints

by Elio  
Two years ago today, Christopher Waters from Michigan State University posted a preprint in bioRxiv entitled "Rock the Chalk: A five-year comparative analysis of a large microbiology lecture course reveals improved outcomes of chalk-talk compared to PowerPoint." It is a good read... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: The Biological Pump

by Roberto  
Quick, without much think­ing, what image came to mind when you read "bio­lo­gi­cal pump" in to­day's title? If you are like me, pre­dis­posed to think in cel­lu­lar and mo­le­cu­lar terms, you might have thought of an in­te­gral mem­brane pro­tein that pumps mo­le­cules in­to or out the cell. Per­haps any of... Read more →

Pictures Considered #52 : Streptomyces stacks Z-rings...

by Christoph  
Streptomyces stacks Z-rings... into lad­ders in­side its aeri­al/spo­ro­gen­ic hy­phae. If this sen­tence strikes you as a bar­rage of jar­gon or just gib­ber­ish, don't des­pair, help is coming. First, en­joy the "light show" in the 20‑se­cond video clip on the right side. It runs in loop, so you can fol­low more than... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Alpha, Beta, Gamma Diversities

by Elio  
In ecology, these terms refer to various le­vels of species diversities... Read more →

Antibiotics and the Foods We Eat

by Roberto  
When it comes to the ani­mals that hu­mans raise to eat, a quick look at their num­bers proves sober­ing. World­wide, there are some 650 mill­ion pigs, 1 bill­ion heads of cattle and 26 bill­ion chickens. Such numbers ca­not be achieved by tra­di­tio­nal ani­mal rear­ing pract­ices that use ex­ten­sive surface areas. Rather, most of these ani­mals are grown... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Sympatry and Allopatry

by Elio  
Sympatry means that two species coexist in the same physical area, allopatry that they don't. The etymology of the suffix patris, helps. It comes from the Latin for 'fatherland,' as in 'patriot' (or, for those who remember the Marseillaise, "Alons enfants de la Patrie"). Read more →

Retrospective, June to December 2020

by Elio
Here is a list of our posts from the last half year − which felt significantly longer than usual, right? − briefly annotated... Read more →

A Whiff of Taxonomy – the genus Psychrobacter

by Christoph | What could be more chill­ing than to de­viate for once from our mot­to to "...em­pha­size the un­usual and the un­ex­pected phe­no­mena" and ta­king a look at a, well, slightly bor­ing group of psy­chro­phil­ic bac­te­ria? The ge­nus Psy­chro­bac­ter − the pre­fix psychro- comes from the an­cient Greek ψυχρός for cold, frozen − con­tains about 40 de­scribed spe­cies of... Read more →

A Short History of Yogurt

by Roberto | Rumor has it that the combina­tion of yogurt and honey is the "food of the gods." I can't vouch for that since I have not had the chance to query the gods about their diets. Yet just the other day, while en­joying ar­ti­sanal Greek-style yogurt top­ped with local raw honey, I closed my eyes and was imme­dia­tely trans­ported... Read more →

Teachers Corner: material collections we recommend

by Christoph | We at STC are happy to take care of the interests of teachers. We most often do this by choosing and treating topics in our articles in a way that is suitable for teaching (check our category "Teachers Corner".) Today we would like to draw the attention of the teachers among you to collections of materials... Read more →