Here’s  Expiscor -some discoveries I stumbled upon this week… (past versions can be found here)

• Why not eat insects?  This was a theme over the past week.  I learned that a group of McGill MBA students are up for the prestigious Hult Prize for a project about feeding the world, one cricket at a time!  And yesterday Radiolab posted a piece about eating Cicadas (Cicada-Rhubarb pie, anyone?)

• World’s Biggest Butterfly Collection.  This video explores the amazing collection at London’s Natural History Museum.

• Spiders, spiders, lovely spiders.  How about this image of a spitting spider by Chris Ruijter – STUNNING (thanks Alex Wild for directing me to Chris’ photos…)

A spitting spider, photo by Chris Ruijter (reproduced here, with permission)

• The trees are speaking… this story describes how scientists listen to ultrasonic noise made by bubbles forming inside water-stressed trees (thanks Carly Ziter for that link)

• The trees will be played…  a fascinating read about Stradivarius trees (thanks Malcolm Campbell for that link!)

• More on the links between Art and Science.  The debate about “E.O. Wilson versus Math” inspired a discussion in my ecology class, but coincidentally, a friend of mine also pointed me to this truly lovely writing about Mathematics and the Arts (starts on page 55), written by Marston Morse in1959. Here is a quote from that piece:

            “…mathematics is the sister as well as the servant of the arts and is touched by the same madness and genius. This must be known.”

• John Snow (not Jon Snow from Game of Thrones) changed the world with his discoveries about Cholera.  The Lancelet published a proper obituary for him, since the one from 1858 was, well, pretty lame.  (thanks to Linda Campbell for that link!)

• A passion for beetles: a retired researcher from Germany’s Federal Center for Meat Research in Bavaria has a lovely collection of Coleoptera, 6,000 species at over 30,000 individuals. Now that’s a hobby! (thanks Bug Girl for the tweet about that story)

• Want to be a Professor at Harvard?  You may wish to read this article about how to get tenure at that institution…

• Dead bears… VERY cool video that takes you from the field to the lab, exploring bear bones (stink water and all!).  I just love Emily‘s enthusiasm. (thanks Morgan Jackson for pointing me to that video, thoroughly enjoyable)

• Flush it.  What happens when you hear that whooshing sound in the tiny airplane bathrooms. Interesting video! (thanks Andreas Warburton for posting that link!)

• To finish, glad to see that Entomologists are out there correcting bad taxonomy.  Here, Ainsley Seago (aka @AmericanBeetles) does some fine work (and it was given a stamp of approval by Taxonomy Hulk – yes, we do need him, too!)