The Technical Research Centre of Finland LTD (VTT) and the University of Turku, Finland are developing a simple, do-it-yourself test for detecting the presence of toxic blue-green algae in water:
http://www.utu.fi/en/news/articles/Pages/Novel-Testing-Device-for-Blue-green-Algae.aspx
At the moment it looks like this:
Picture: Pirjo Hakkarainen VTT
Now this should be taken to th next lev...
Plankton
3D data from FEI
Hmm... I wonder if this can be used to 3dimensionate algae? http://www.fei.com/products/sem/teneo-vs-sem-for-life-sciences/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonv6vKZKXonjHpfsX57essXaGg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YIET8J0aPyQAgobGp5I5FENTrjYTK1jt6QMUw%3D%3DIt would make approaching the wonderful world of alge so much easier to all the people who now have to live - on a daily basis - without this precious flavouring their ...
The importance of microscopical analyse of algae
What a pleasure to read the article "Resolving variability of phytoplankton species composition and blooms in coastal ecosystems" of Riina Klais, James E. Cloern and Paul J. Harrison in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, where they point out the importance of microscopical analysis of phytoplankton in the following way: "Despite of the preliminary difficulties in using the existing phytoplankto...
Bullseye
Or two actually. That is what I see here - a young bull running around on the green, green grass of his first spring, looking curiously around for the wonders of the world: But then again, not many people have told me I lack imagination. Others just call this algae Mesostigma viride. Me too, when counting. The young bull expression comes from the two pyrenoids on each side of the cell ...
Foldscope
Foldscope is coming!Soon the microscopic world is within reach to everybody. And not only for fun, but for the benefit of all mankind. I'm happy to be involved in this project.Like they say:"Finally, we are as excited about scaling up this project as you are about using and sharing the microscopic world with everyone. We hope to build a community that grows with time, is passionate about teaching ...
Nephrochlamys allanthoidea Korshikov 1953
In two samples a lot Nephrochlamys-cells. Were they really N. allanthoidea instead of the more common N. subsolitaria (nowadays N. rostrata, according to Nygaard, Komárek, J.Kristiansen & O.M.Skulberg 1986 (which I have not yet had the pleasure of reading - you can throw a copy this way, if you are passing by))?If all goes well, N. allanthoidea very easy to identify. One can see the short, blunt w...
Enrique Balech’s articles
are now available on the net: http://www.ioc-unesco.org/hab/index.php?option=com_oe&task=viewDoclistRecord&doclistID=135. Wonderful!Except that I don't speak Spanish. But I mean, in priciple, great that articles are available in this easy way. More, please.
What a wonderful feeling…
... to be able to see the whole chamber bottom with the magnificent oil immersion objectives while counting algae with the Utermöhl method! Most of the chambers on the market are made for dry objectives. An oil immersion objective is so close to the bottom of the chamber that it bumps into the thin piece of metal that is holding the bottom glas before you can see the edge.Well, not any more! I dev...
The most slender Closterium
Suddenly a whole bunch of Closterium -algae in several water samples. Normally you only see one or two per sample. And what would it be? It did not fit perfectly anywhere. It resembled very much Closterium aciculare, but both Coesel & Meesters (2007) en Ruzicka (1977) and also John & Williamson (2009) state that the width should be at least 4 µm. These were way under (3-3,9 µm). And ver...
Fauna Europaea
What a nice site!Information about - yes - Fauna Europaea. Works fast, quite clear to my opinion, nice taxonomic trees and maps - and a bunch of links to other on-line databases. I was looking for a link to the Dutch taxa-database, the TWN-list, but it isn't there. Perhaps because it's in Dutch. At least what the phytoplankton concerns, it's quite wondeful. When do they go international?