Web cookies (also called HTTP cookies, browser cookies, or simply cookies) are small pieces of data that websites store on your device (computer, phone, etc.) through your web browser. They are used to remember information about you and your interactions with the site.
Purpose of Cookies:
Session Management:
Keeping you logged in
Remembering items in a shopping cart
Saving language or theme preferences
Personalization:
Tailoring content or ads based on your previous activity
Tracking & Analytics:
Monitoring browsing behavior for analytics or marketing purposes
Types of Cookies:
Session Cookies:
Temporary; deleted when you close your browser
Used for things like keeping you logged in during a single session
Persistent Cookies:
Stored on your device until they expire or are manually deleted
Used for remembering login credentials, settings, etc.
First-Party Cookies:
Set by the website you're visiting directly
Third-Party Cookies:
Set by other domains (usually advertisers) embedded in the website
Commonly used for tracking across multiple sites
Authentication cookies are a special type of web cookie used to identify and verify a user after they log in to a website or web application.
What They Do:
Once you log in to a site, the server creates an authentication cookie and sends it to your browser. This cookie:
Proves to the website that you're logged in
Prevents you from having to log in again on every page you visit
Can persist across sessions if you select "Remember me"
What's Inside an Authentication Cookie?
Typically, it contains:
A unique session ID (not your actual password)
Optional metadata (e.g., expiration time, security flags)
Analytics cookies are cookies used to collect data about how visitors interact with a website. Their primary purpose is to help website owners understand and improve user experience by analyzing things like:
How users navigate the site
Which pages are most/least visited
How long users stay on each page
What device, browser, or location the user is from
What They Track:
Some examples of data analytics cookies may collect:
Page views and time spent on pages
Click paths (how users move from page to page)
Bounce rate (users who leave without interacting)
User demographics (location, language, device)
Referring websites (how users arrived at the site)
Here’s how you can disable cookies in common browsers:
1. Google Chrome
Open Chrome and click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy and security > Cookies and other site data.
Choose your preferred option:
Block all cookies (not recommended, can break most websites).
Block third-party cookies (can block ads and tracking cookies).
2. Mozilla Firefox
Open Firefox and click the three horizontal lines in the top-right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy & Security.
Under the Enhanced Tracking Protection section, choose Strict to block most cookies or Custom to manually choose which cookies to block.
3. Safari
Open Safari and click Safari in the top-left corner of the screen.
Go to Preferences > Privacy.
Check Block all cookies to stop all cookies, or select options to block third-party cookies.
4. Microsoft Edge
Open Edge and click the three horizontal dots in the top-right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy, search, and services > Cookies and site permissions.
Select your cookie settings from there, including blocking all cookies or blocking third-party cookies.
5. On Mobile (iOS/Android)
For Safari on iOS: Go to Settings > Safari > Privacy & Security > Block All Cookies.
For Chrome on Android: Open the app, tap the three dots, go to Settings > Privacy and security > Cookies.
Be Aware:
Disabling cookies can make your online experience more difficult. Some websites may not load properly, or you may be logged out frequently. Also, certain features may not work as expected.
28 November 2018. Hannes, Emma, and Chris are happy to announce that Biology Letters just published our latest study, a meta-analysis of 20 standard CO2 exposure experiments conducted on Atlantic silverside offspring between 2012-2017. All these years of sustained experimental work resulted in the most robustly constrained estimates of overall CO2 effect sizes for a marine organism to date.
The study demonstrated:
A general tolerance of Atlantic silverside early life stages to pCO2 levels of ~2,000 µatm
A significant overall CO2 induced reduction of embryo and overall survival by -9% and -13%, respectively
The seasonal change in early life CO2 sensitivity in this species
The value of serial experimentation to detect and robustly estimate CO2 effects in marine organisms
This figure shows the summary of early life responses to high CO2 conditions in Atlantic silversides across all experiments conducted between 2012-2017. Effect size was estimated using the log-transformed response ratio (A-D). Error bars are 95% confidence intervals. The responses are considered significant if the confidence interval does not include zero. Panels E-F: seasonal decomposition of response ratios, showing that silverside early life stages are most sensitive to high CO2 at the beginning and end of their spawning season.
15 November 2018. After a stretch of foul weather kept us from going out to Stellwagen Bank last week, this time all the stars aligned for Emma and Mackenzie. Due to their success in catching spawning ripe Northern sandlance, we are now embarking on our third year of CO2 x temperature experiments on this species!
Here is how Mackenzie Blanusa experienced her first trip to these enigmatic waters:
“This particular sandlance cruise was a day filled with firsts and is definitely a trip to remember. I accompanied Emma, Hannes’ postdoc, up to Scituate the night before the cruise and was given a rundown of what needed to be accomplished. I was a bit overwhelmed at first, because I’ve never dealt with sandlances before and did not know a lot about these fish. Nevertheless, I was eager to learn something new and was ready to help out wherever needed.
The goal of the sandlance cruise was to collect running ripe males and females to do a fertilization via strip spawning. Emma and I were a bit doubtful at first because we got less than 10 sandlance on the first two trolls. However, things got much better by the afternoon, and our most successful trawl caught 147 sand lance. I helped out with the fertilization and deploying the trawl, two things I have never done before. The most exciting part of the day was getting to see humpback whales. Usually they are in the distance but today they were right next to the boat. Everyone on board said that this never happens and it was very unusual so I felt very lucky to have seen whales at such a close proximity.”
Overall, the trip was a huge success and it was very refreshing to see everything go as planned. The only downside to the day was driving back home through a snowstorm. I later found out that there was a 73% fertilization success and we got 27,000 embryos for Emma’s experiment. I am very grateful to have gotten the opportunity to help out on this sampling cruise and am looking forward to doing this again in the future!
Emma on the makeshift spawning station for sand lance on board the RV Auk
Mackenzie strip-spawning sand lance on the ship
Added perks of doing research on Stellwagen Bank …
Exactly 0.5ml of sand lance eggs (~ 600) were distributed into each replicate per treatment
