ScienceNews: Sick tadpoles, and a Moebius transformation is a hit on YouTube

Published: November 28, 2007, 11:24 am

Tags: science stories, environment stories

Dang. The Tracker just gotta remember more often to check in at the site of the venerable Science Service weekly publication Science News. I did remember today and found two particularly eye-catching items. On the news side, Janet Raloff brings word of yet another reason it is dangerous to be an amphibian. Nobody is quite sure why so many genera and orders of these creatures are in trouble world wide. Raloff however reports one specific and rather dreadful-seeming protozoan wreaking havoc among tadpoles of bullfrogs, leapard frogs, and other close kin. On the somewhat more pedantic - but entertaining! - side, Julie J. Rehmeyer describes a mathematical video that is somewhat of a hit on YouTube. It turns out that a certain kind of geometric mapping, called a M bius transform and ordinarily rather hard to visualize in its fundamentals, has been made transparently, colorfully clear in a new video from the University of Minnesota. Rehmeyer’s story includes several links for those

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