Archive for September, 2010

Citrus is a Berry and More

So, I learned yesterday that citrus is a hesperidium, which in turn is a berry with a leathery skin. Furthermore, the pulp bits of citrus – the fluid filled sacs – are called “vesicles”, while the triangular segments are call carpels. All this and much here can be found here.

 

 

The U.S. has Freshwater Jellyfish

I learned today that there are freshwater jellyfish in the United States. They are apparently mysterious creatures which do not appear according to any particular seasonal schedule. While they can sting, people generally are unaffected by them.

They discovered a jellyfish bloom in Walden Pond in Massachusetts this week.

See this story in the Boston Globe for more details.

 

 

MLA Style for Scholarly Works

I learned today that there are a number of official styles for documenting citations in scholarly works, as well as formatting such works. The style that I am presently trying to better understand and apply is the MLA style.

MLA stands for “Modern Language Association”. Here’s an excerpt from the MLA web site about their style:

All fields of research agree on the need to document scholarly borrowings, but documentation conventions vary because of the different needs of scholarly disciplines. MLA style for documentation is widely used in the humanities, especially in writing on language and literature. Generally simpler and more concise than other styles, MLA style features brief parenthetical citations in the text keyed to an alphabetical list of works cited that appears at the end of the work.