Blience Tuesday #6: Amphibians

     This is the six of the my blience (blog/science) series. Today's topic is amphibians, the class of animals that live on land as well as in the water. Amphibians start their life in the water, and finish their life on land. This post will be divided into three sections, like the last five posts. The first of the three sections will be ab
out the evolution of amphibians, as well as extinct spices of amphibians. The second section will interesting amphibian information. The third section will be about caecilians, an order of amphibians that are so obscure that blogger is putting a nasty red line under it. So, enjoy!

     Amphibians were the first vertebrates on land, using their lungs and nostrils to let them breath. They evolved from legged fish that let them crawl along the sea floor. To live on land, they had to evolve their muscles, spine, and limbs had to grow stronger to hold them up. Their skin had to thicken to protect them from harmful UV rays. The amphibians, once evolved to live on land, still had to return to the water to lay their eggs. Reptiles could lay their eggs on land, which enabled them to eventually dominate over amphibians. About 250 million years ago, the three orders of amphibians are thought to have diverged from each other. Eventually, because reptiles became dominant, amphibians grew smaller.

     The class amphibia contains some diverse and fascinating species. For example, Wallace's flying frog can jump from trees when threatened and glide with it's large webbed feet for up to 50 feet. The poison dart frogs of central and south america have poison on their skins, with some species being so poisonous they could kill ten to twenty humans. Their is one species of salamanders that live only in a small part of Mexico that live only in the water, even though they have lungs. The largest species of amphibians is the Chinese giant salamander, reaching up to 6 feet long.

    Caecilians are an order of amphibians who resemble earthworms. They live mainly underground, in Central America, South America, Africa, and South Asia. They have no limbs. Their vision is limited to light-or-dark. Most caecilians have lungs. Mature adults eat mostly insects. Not much is known about their behavior.


Thanks for reading, and any ideas can go in the comments!

My Opinion about Good and Bad User Interface

   

     For anything electronic, a visually nice-looking user interface is key. I have encountered many websites, games etc. that are targeted to children. Some of them do fine, and make me want to look at them, whereas others, while trying to appeal to kids, are cheesy and seem to think we are idiots. The latter of those two ends up irritating me and making me not want to use the webpage, game, or whatever else it is.  So for every one making something fun-looking for kids, here are some tips.

     First of all, Kids can read fonts other than comic sans! It drives me crazy when comic sans is used to make something look appealing, fun or friendly. Sure, maybe comic sans was the most appealing font for children at some point, but all "fun!" webpages use it. Another tip, which I think applies to any UI, youth directed or otherwise, is that white backgrounds are not always the best. light text on a dark background is fine, so is a light colored (but not necessarily white) background with dark text. A third tip, when designing for kids, don't use buttons that look like "bubbles" or cartoony round-cornered rectangles. I, at least, don't like clip art (cartoony pictures) scattered across a website, but that's just me. To sum up, I would like to show a User Interface that I like, and one that I don't. Here's the link for the good one: click here!. And, here's the bad one: other link here!



Thanks for reading, and ideas can go in the comments!