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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦

@secondnaturemb.bsky.social

23K followers 600 following 8K posts

Naturalist, writer, artist, and educator with a Ph.D. in Ecology. I make interpretive signs, illustrations, murals, and books. Sometimes, I chase polar bears and belugas. #scicomm #sciart http://www.discoversecondnature.ca

www.discoversecondnature.ca

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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · Mar 7

Hi Everyone!
I'm Heather. A lot of new people have joined me in the last 24 hours so I thought I'd answer some frequently-asked questions.

1. Where do you live? - I live in Manitoba, Canada in a provincial park on Lake Winnipeg. It is a wild area of the boreal forest, but not remote. 1/

A white woman wearing glasses, a red toque and a scarf with a green parka smiles at the camera. A snowy forest can be seen behind her.

A small cottage sits quietly on a moonlit night in the snowy boreal forest. Smoke rises placidly from the chimney while the windows glow with warm light. It's a cold clear night with lots of snow.

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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1h

Nice! I had a few yesterday.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 18h

You could call it cobbler 😉

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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 19h

My bones are actually quite mad at me right now 😆

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 19h

Thanks, Karen. I appreciate your help. It was a struggle to come up with an analogy that made sense. My friend used to use a hockey analogy, but it didn’t quite work.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 20h

I’m very sore, but feeling accomplished. My friend and I got 2/3 of my one and a half cords of poplar stacked this afternoon. It would’ve been nice to get it all done at once, but it’s a very tiring job.

A very large pile of split firewood, lying on a gravel driveway in the sun in front of a green and white cottage

A stack of split firewood, two rows deep and about 5 feet tall sits on a row of pallets up against the forest and a shed in the sun.

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Reposted by Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦

Coleen Murphy @ctmurphy1.bsky.social · 1d

Begging scientists (and media posts about science) to stop using ChatGPT-generated images

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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks, Mom. I rewrote the whole thing.

An infographic using chocolate milk to explain the progression of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia. It uses the analogy of adding chocolate syrup to milk to explain having too many lymphocytes in the blood.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

Well, I've gone through everything with a fine-toothed comb and I think I've made progress. Thoughts? :)

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

There’s a few for sale in Grindstone if you want to be my neighbour 😊 not many though, and I think most of the good ones might be taken. I’ll keep my eye open.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

What a cutey pie! I’m glad everybody got through that encounter safely.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

I know the challenge well. I’ve been doing this for a while. However, it’s always good to get a second set of eyes to catch the stuff I miss on the first few rounds.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks, Karen. They’ve been through a few reviews, but we’ll keep going over them.

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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks. I'm glad it made sense to you.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

Not at all. I just feel the need to put it out there from time to time :)

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

I've been working on a fun challenge, my first venture into medical science communication. I was commissioned by a client to help them come up with a new way to explain Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia to their patients. This is what I came up with and I think it works fairly well.

A infographic explaining How is CLL like Chocolate Milk?
It starts with a bottle of normal milk as an analogue to normal blood. Next to it is a blood smear showing the normal amount of lymphocytes to red blood cells.

The second row shows a bottle of milk tinted with a few drops of chocolate syrup. You can't taste it, but it has fundamentally changed the milk in a way that can't go back. This is like Monoclonal B Lymphocytosis (MBL the precursor to Chronic Lymphocytic Leukamia (CLL). The blood smear shows more lymphocytes than before.

The third row shows a bottle of chocolate milk. The amount of syrup added has passed the threshold where you can taste it and it is chocolate milk. CLL happens when the amount of lymphocytes passes a threshold to call it cancer. Like the milk, you can't go backwards.

The last row shows the same milk in a jug instead of a bottle. Just like milk can be in a different container, this cancer can live in the lymph nodes instead of the blood/bone marrow. It's the same cancer, just a different location, so it has a different name - Small Lymphocytic Lymphoma.

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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks, Alex :)

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

Icelanders really love their coffee. I don't know the provenance of this thing, but it's possible it belonged to the store.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

I've never done anything quite like this and would be nervous at first, but I would be interested in being considered.

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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks, guys. I know I'm very lucky, but I also worked hard to get to this point.

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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 2d

And that’s why we love the stuff you make 😊 I get a lot of bizarre scams, but that’s a new one and so very specific but at the same time not.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 2d

Me three.

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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 2d

I know, right? It makes me laugh every time I see it.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 2d

Icelanders love their coffee, so I’m pretty sure it’s what it was used for.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 2d

When I used to give walking tours of Hecla Village (an Icelandic settlement on Hecla Island in Lake Winnipeg), this was always a source of fascination and humour. I'm not of Icelandic descent, nor a coffee drinker, so I have a hard time seeing the need for a belt-driven coffee grinder. 😁☕

An ornate iron machine with two wheels on either side to attach to an engine belt. On top is a metal funnel for the coffee beans and in the middle is a green box to catch the grounds. It stands inside a repurposed wooded ice house with a collection of other tools and machines.

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Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦 @secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 2d

If you want to register for the course, you can find it here: www.mcnallyrobinson.com/classes It's online, just search my name under instructors.