All posts tagged: droppings

Middle school students discover cancer-fighting compound in goose droppings

Middle school students discover cancer-fighting compound in goose droppings

Published by skeptic

A Chicago-based science initiative recently turned middle school students into bona fide biomedical scientists, blending hands-on learning with groundbreaking research. These students uncovered a novel compound with the potential to slow melanoma and ovarian cancer growth, demonstrating the transformative power of STEM education when paired with real-world research. The discovery emerged from a 14-week program at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), designed to address educational inequities in STEM fields. Led by researcher Brian Murphy and his team, the program partnered with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago to immerse students in antibiotic discovery research. Through this collaboration, young learners collected and analyzed environmental samples from their neighborhoods, exploring science as active contributors rather than passive learners. Canada Goose droppings. (CREDIT: CC BY-SA 4.0) Hands-On Science with Local Roots The program’s unique structure placed students at the center of high-level research. Participants conducted fieldwork, applied science experiments, and environmental studies, guided by graduate and postdoctoral mentors. Using UIC’s cutting-edge robotic tools, the students safely grew bacterial cultures and tested for bioactive compounds. One …

Fossilised droppings tell the story of dinosaurs’ rise to power

Fossilised droppings tell the story of dinosaurs’ rise to power

Published by skeptic

Sauropodomorph dinosaurs feeding on newly evolved plants in a wet early Jurassic environment Marcin Ambrozik The contents of 200-million-year-old faeces and vomit are helping show how dinosaurs took over the world at the start of the Jurassic Period. Well-preserved plants, bones, fish parts and even whole insects embedded in widely varying shapes and sizes of ancient animal droppings suggest that dinosaurs’ broad diets made them survivors in a changing ecosystem, compared with other groups of animals. That then led them to grow larger and ultimately establish their “dynasty on land”, says Martin Qvarnström at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. Fossil evidence shows that the first dinosaurs – marked notably by hip joints that position the legs under the body like mammals, rather than sprawled out to the sides like lizards – appeared more than 230 million years ago during the Triassic Period. For tens of millions of years, these early dinosaurs blended into a landscape filled with many other kinds of reptiles. By about 200 million years ago, however, dinosaurs had essentially taken over the …