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Tai Munro

I am passionate about making science, sustainability, and sport accessible through engaging information and activities.
Tai Munro has written 588 posts for Connecting with Science

Music and cats under anaesthesia

There are lots of reasons why finding ways to decrease the amount of medication that is needed is positive. Reducing side effects is obviously important but there’s also resource use and social equity factors. If we need less medications it can decrease the energy and materials necessary to create those medications. Decreased amounts of drugs … Continue reading

Turkey, seratonin, and uncertainty

We just had Canadian Thanksgiving here and aside from my growing discomfort with colonial history it is a good time to recognize the many things that I’m grateful for. It is also as good a time to find the science in the everyday. Turkey is of course connected to the turkey stupor, which it turns … Continue reading

Cat Genetics Activities

I created this activity for an introductory biology class. It covers Mendelian and Non-Mendelian patterns of inheritance and has some suggest activities for practicing the Hardy-Weinberg equation. Since most of the questions ask you to cross a cat that you found there is no answer key. Teachers, please feel free to use this activity in … Continue reading

Sustainability is Social and Cultural

The third in the series of audio posts, created for an Introductory Sustainability course and to discuss what sustainability is. Have you ever thought about how the place you grew up affected you later in your life? What messages did you receive from the places you experienced? Was where you lived or spent time focused … Continue reading

The making of a tabby cat

I’ve found it quite fascinating to look into cat genetics over the past week. I should have my entire planned activity for my bio students to share by next week, but in the meantime I thought I’d write about the agouti and tabby genes. The presence of a dominant agouti gene affects pigment distribution along … Continue reading

What is “The Environment”?

What is “the” environment? Do you know where the border is between environment and not environment? The environment has featured heavily in conversations about sustainability. In fact, most people assume that sustainability is really environmental responsibility and that we need to be better in how we manage natural resources. This, we connect directly to nature. … Continue reading

Cat Genetics

I’m teaching a bio course this term and I’ve been looking for ways to engage students in lab type activities given that we can’t go into a lab. When someone sent me an article about why most of the human genetic traits we like to use in genetics lessons are inaccurate I was, shall we … Continue reading

Reflections on Value and How We Measure Success

Regardless of your opinion of the role of economics in sustainability, it is impossible to argue that the economy does not currently have a large impact on each of our lives and our lives as a community. It is difficult to be concerned about changing light bulbs if I can’t put food on the table, … Continue reading

It’s more than just single use plastics

It’s great to see the increasing range of options to reduce single use plastic use. While reusable water bottles and cloth shopping bags have been around for many years, there is now a growing range of options from stores where you can bring in your own reusable container (at least you could before Covid) and … Continue reading

Why is there green foam on the lake?

I’ve been canoeing a lot this summer, so I’ve also seen a lot of notices about blue-green algal blooms, but this past weekend took it to a whole other level with piles of green foam on the beach and beautifully, but disturbingly coloured banks. While these blooms are relatively common regardless of conditions, warming climates … Continue reading

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