Strange, Rare, Endangered Species: Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, Mammals and More Rare Animals | WebEcoist
http://webecoist.com/2008/12/02/strange-and-bizarre-endangered-animal-species/

Mexican Walking Fish!

.

Strange and bizarre endangered animal species: mexican walking fish, coconut crab, giant salamander, bird eating spider, komodo, glass frog, kagu and more.

WOW. WOW.

Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

How could bees of little brain come up with anything as complex as a dance language? The answer could lie not in biology but in six-dimensional math and the bizarre world of quantum mechanics.

Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields. wild. must read later.

The Turritopsis Nutricula is able to revert back to a juvenile form once it mates after becoming sexually mature. Marine biologists say the jellyfish numbers are rocketing because they need not die. Dr Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute said: "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion."

if the word swarming were 'taking over'; I'd be worshipping my new tentacle overlords.

ok, this is curious: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4357829/Immortal-jellyfish-swarming-across-the-world.html

So uh... time to figure out how they do that and sequence it into humans. Right?

Blood type distribution shows a different, and more complex genetic history than so-called racial categories.

Whoa, super interesting but not sure I have the patience to try this.

Very insteresting site about biology simulation

This web resource presents an organized directory of cell and molecular animations, as well as a collection of original tutorials for life science professionals learning 3D visualization. The goal is to provide an efficient way for scientists and educators to browse and access existing animations for teaching and communication purposes.

save n share

Wow!

Magenta ain't a colour dude

Software Run the Molecular Workbench to view activities or create your own. Curriculum Browse or search our database of curriculum materials for middle school through high school.

*********************

2.23.2009. "Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute recently solved the half-century-old mystery of a fish with tubular eyes and a transparent head. ..."

I know this has been linked to a million times already in the past week, but nobody told me there was a video of this guy swimming around!

a real jurassic park would rule

"The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain. Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen. ..." Dun dun dun.

Get up close and personal with your innards with these 15 amazing 3D-body shots. Almost all of the following images were captured using a scanning electron microscope (SEM), a type of electron microscope that uses a beam of high-energy electrons to scan surfaces of images. The electron beam of the SEM interacts with atoms near or at the surface of the sample to be viewed, resulting in a very high-resolution, 3D-image. Magnification levels range from x 25 (about the same as a hand lens) to about x 250,000. Incredible details of 1 to 5 nm in size can be detected. Max Knoll was the first person to create an SEM image of silicone steel in 1935; over the next 30 years, a number of scientists worked to further develop the instrument, and in 1965 the first SEM was delivered to DuPont by the Cambridge Instrument Company as the “Stereoscan.” Here you’ll experience the power of SEM in a journey of self-discovery that starts in your head, travels down through the chest and ends in the bowels of

:O

15 kaunista mikroskooppikuvaa ihmisen kehon sisältä.

The Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev provided a very interesting potential explanation. Genetics at the time was preoccupied with easily measurable traits that could be passed on - if you bred dogs, you could pick the biggest puppies, breed them, and they would produce bigger dogs on average. Fine. But that is selection of a single simple trait, something that likely did not require that many genes to “switch” in order for the puppies to be bigger.

Well, designer pets for one. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the project ran into serious financial trouble in the late 1990s. They had to cut down the amount of foxes drastically, and the project survived primarily on funding obtained from selling the tame foxes as exotic pets. Imagine a menagerie of dwarf exotic animals, who crave human attention and form bonds with people. It would be obscenely profitable. And the out there thought for the day? We’re doing this to ourselves. We don’t encourage people to act aggressively all day to everyone they meet. We reward certain behaviours more than other behaviours. My unprovable conjecture? Humanity is selecting itself for certain behaviours, and the traits we think of as fundamentally human (loss of hair, retention of juvenile characteristics relative to primates) are a side effect of this self-selection.

Dmitri Belyaev foxes

via rp

Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves.

bacteria communicate with each other and can tell self from other

"A handful of scientists think that these ultra-marathoners are using their bodies just as our hominid forbears once did, a theory known as the endurance running hypothesis (ER)."

running animals to death

In tests where 15 subjects ran and walked on pressure-sensitive treadmills, Lieberman and Rolian found that toe length had no effect on walking. Yet when the subjects were running, an increase in toe length of just 20 percent doubled the amount of mechanical work, meaning that the longer-toed subjects required more metabolic energy, and each footfall produced more shock.

Running deer to death ...

The endurance running hypothesis, the idea that humans evolved as long-distance runners, may have legs thanks to a new study on toes.

But a handful of scientists think that these ultra-marathoners are using their bodies just as our hominid forbears once did, a theory known as the endurance running hypothesis (ER). ER proponents believe that being able to run for extended lengths of time is an adapted trait, most likely for obtaining food, and was the catalyst that forced Homo erectus to evolve from its apelike ancestors. Over time, the survival of the swift-footed shaped the anatomy of modern humans, giving us a body that is difficult to explain absent a marathoning past.

Endurance running hypothesis

via kottke.org

from New Scientist

this is an awesome article.

Sailors are given 30 seconds to answer or they're kicked out of the program. If they say they want to keep going, they're given another 30 seconds to recover and then they're thrown back into the pool. It may sound sadistic, but the Navy is simply trying to identify who will survive the most dangerous missions and who won't. Through this grueling test, it finds soldiers and sailors who refuse to give up, who can suppress the need to breathe, who trust that they'll be rescued if something goes wrong and who are prepared to lose consciousness—or even die—following orders.

As one of Olivia Judson’s biggest fans, I feel honored and a bit giddy to be filling in for her. But maybe I should confess up front that, unlike Olivia and the previous guest writers, I’m not a biologist, evolutionary or otherwise. In fact, I’m (gasp!) a mathematician. One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise be hidden. This week’s column is about one such pattern. It’s a beautiful law of collective organization that links urban studies to zoology. It reveals Manhattan and a mouse to be variations on a single structural theme. The mathematics of cities was launched in 1949 when George Zipf, a linguist working at Harvard, reported a striking regularity in the size distribution of cities. He noticed that if you tabulate the biggest cities in a given country and rank them according to their populations, the largest city is always about twice as big as the second largest, and three times as big as th

One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise be hidden. This week’s column is about one such pattern. It’s a beautiful law of collective organization that links urban studies to zoology. It reveals Manhattan and a mouse to be variations on a single structural theme. [...] These numerical coincidences seem to be telling us something profound. It appears that Aristotle’s metaphor of a city as a living thing is more than merely poetic. There may be deep laws of collective organization at work here, the same laws for aggregates of people and cells.

Why elephants and cities have the same basic infrastructure

"For instance, if one city is 10 times as populous as another one, does it need 10 times as many gas stations?"

A cure for blindness using stem cells ?

Impressive results

"[T]hree patients had their sight restored in less than a month by contact lenses cultured with stem cells." Holy shit.

Stem Cell Contact Lenses Cure Blindness in Less Than a Month http://bit.ly/KBWEw #feedly [from http://twitter.com/jjjunk/statuses/2038716228]

EYESIGHT HEALED WITH STEMCELLS

architectural conjecture :: urban speculation :: landscape futures

A project proposing to build a 6,000 km wall across the Sahara to stop desertification using bacteria which solidify sand into sandstone and could be used almost like a giant 3d printer. The future is here.

Larsson's project deservedly won first prize last fall at the Holcim Foundation's Awards for Sustainable Construction held in Marrakech, Morocco. One of the most interesting aspects of the project, I think, is that this solidified dunescape is created through a particularly novel form of "sustainable construction" – that is, through a kind of infection of the earth. In other words, Larsson has proposed using bacillus pasteurii, a "microorganism, readily available in marshes and wetlands, [that] solidifies loose sand into sandstone," he explains.

The overall pattern is a spiral shape because our brain likes to fill in missing bits to a pattern. Even though the stripes are not the same color all the way around the spiral , the overlapping spirals makes our brain think they are. The very fact that you have to examine the picture closely to figure out any of this at all shows just how easily we can be fooled.

Richard Wiseman comes one of the best color optical illusions I have ever seen.

うわあああこの緑と青、同じ色だって

a poop-torial

One way scientists learn about animals is by studying their poop -- also called “scat” or "dung." Let’s look at some animal poop and see if you can guess who left it behind.

win

top 50 des animaux les plus degueu

Evolution sometimes go in weird directions...

"Systems on the edge of chaos are said to be in a state of "self-organised criticality". These systems are right on the boundary between stable, orderly behaviour - such as a swinging pendulum - and the unpredictable world of chaos, as exemplified by turbulence... Brain scans used to map the connections between regions of the human brain discovered that they form a "small-world network" - exactly the right architecture to support self-organised criticality. Small-world networks lie somewhere between regular networks, where each node is connected to its nearest neighbours, and random networks, which have no regular structure but many long-distance connections between nodes at opposite sides of the network. Small-world networks take the most useful aspects of both systems. In places, the nodes have many connections with their neighbours, but the network also contains random and often long links between nodes that are very far away from one another. It's the perfect compromise."

Do ideas sometimes pop into your head from, it seems, nowhere? Yes, and it’s because your brain actually operates on the edge of chaos. In fact, your brain is like a pile of sand, but don't worry: that's why it has such remarkable powers

Some of the most entertaining, informative and mind-blowing science videos on the web come from the TED conference. Here are five.

Some of the most entertaining, informative and mind-blowing science videos on the web come from the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference. Here are five.

Some of the most entertaining, informative and mind-blowing science videos on the web come from TED – the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference. Challenged to give the “talk of their lives,” the world’s top scientists and science communicators have been dazzling audiences – many of whom are thought leaders, trend-setters and entertainers – for years now. Most of the best talks are now freely available on the internet, but sifting through hundreds of video clips to find the real gems can be hard going.

Computers are evolving – literally. While the tech world argues netbooks vs notebooks, synthetic biologists are leaving traditional computers behind altogether. A team of US scientists have engineered bacteria that could solve complex mathematical problems faster than anything made from silicon.

Content Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

RT @zaibatsu: Bacterial computers can crack mathematical problems fast than most computers http://su.pr/1DwpiJ [from http://twitter.com/lekahe/statuses/2856248758]

Bacteria Computer! Wa-ow!

I just don't know why they put up with the way men look http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6727710.ece [from http://twitter.com/JacksonATL/statuses/2917669057]

Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.

"The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern." In my opinion, nowhere did they say there were any kind of studies done to analyze images of women from ancient past (as if such images could even be considered to be accurate), compare them to images of modern women, and determine that modern women are objectively more beautiful. Not to mention that beauty is subjective anyway. The whole article is deeply unscientific.

Women are getting more beautifu

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-08/st_best worst 1 wired 2 wiredwired 3

1 Sea mammal blowhole. Any animal that spends appreciable time in the ocean should be able to extract oxygen from water via gills. Enlarging the lungs and moving a nostril to the back of the head is a poor work-around. 2 Hyena clitoris. When engorged, this "pseudopenis," which doubles as the birth canal, becomes so hard it can crush babies to death during exit. 3 Kangaroo teat. In order to nurse, the just-born joey, a frail and squishy jellybean, must clamber up Mom's torso and into her pouch for a nipple. 4 Giraffe birth canal. Mama giraffes stand up while giving birth, so baby's entry into the world is a 5-foot drop. Wheeee! Crack. 5 Goliath bird-eating spider exoskeleton. This giant spider can climb trees to hunt very mobile prey. Yet it has a shell so fragile it practically explodes when it falls? Well, at least it can produce silk to make a sail. Oh, wait — it can't!

Amazing!

Via Marignal Revolution (it has a blog)

What do you think are the odds that you will die during the next year? Try to put a number to it — 1 in 100? 1 in 10,000? Whatever it is, it will be twice as large 8 years from now. This startling fact was first noticed by the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz in 1825 and is now called the “Gompertz Law of human mortality.”

A great article. Every thing is perception. i beleive in it

Review of Biocentrism in the Discover magazine

The farther we peer into space, the more we realize that the nature of the universe cannot be understood fully by inspecting spiral galaxies or watching distant supernovas. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves.

So it takes about 25 kilobits — 3.2 kbytes — of data to code for a virus that has a non-trivial chance of killing a human.

Team of scientists find more than 40 previously unidentified species in remote volcanic crater

Wow, I'm even more jealous of my boy, who's off hiking in PNG with his family.

A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably rich haul from just five weeks of exploration, the biologists discovered 16 frogs which have never before been recorded by science, at least three new fish, a new bat and a giant rat, which may turn out to be the biggest in the world.

Ardi instead shows an unexpected mix of advanced characteristics and of primitive traits seen in much older apes that were unlike chimps or gorillas (interactive: Ardi's key features). As such, the skeleton offers a window on what the last common ancestor of humans and living apes might have been like.

Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago. The centerpiece of a treasure trove of new fossils, the skeleton—assigned to a species called Ardipithecus ramidus—belonged to a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female nicknamed "Ardi." (See pictures of Ardipithecus ramidus.) The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.

Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.

Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past Slope communities http://ow.ly/hoim [from http://twitter.com/KaylinQ/statuses/2662205830]

IT'S NOT OIL: No one in the area can recall seeing anything like it before.

Arctic Goo. (via @djsaki) http://www.adn.com/2835/story/864687.html [from http://twitter.com/vitaminjeff/statuses/2674016789]

Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not. "It's certainly biological," Hasenauer said. "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter. "It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism."

I, for one, welcome our new cubic gelatinous overlords.

"Due to Pandemic H1N1 Influenza (formerly known as Swine Flu) and concerns about the 2009/2010 flu season, the EBSCO Publishing Medical and Nursing editors of DynaMed™, Nursing Reference Center™ (NRC) and Patient Education Reference Center™ (PERC) have made key influenza information from these resources freely available to health care providers worldwide. The editorial teams will monitor the research and update these resources continuously throughout the upcoming flu season."

Due to Pandemic H1N1 Influenza and concerns about the 2009/2010 flu season, the EBSCO Publishing Medical and Nursing editors of DynaMed™, Nursing Reference Center™ (NRC) and Patient Education Reference Center™ (PERC) have made key influenza information from these resources freely available to health care providers worldwide.

Influenza information and resources for clinicians, nurses and patients

Avicennia marina

بهترین عکسهای میکروسکپی درخلال 35 سال گذشته در اینجا گردآوری شده اند

Imagens de coisas que, ainda que estejam a nossa frente, não conseguimos enxergar

Wired Science | Wired.com Beautiful microscopic photos!!!

"35 Years of the World’s Best Microscope Photography"

RT @NMHS_Principal: Hotscience interactive activities from NOVA http://bit.ly/2VlZuv Cool stuff! [from http://twitter.com/MrTRice_Science/statuses/4978995851]

nova interactives archive

great images from microscopes from around the world

This graph helps grasping the infinte smallness of bacteries, molecules ..

On of those "Power of 10" zooms, but for biologicals.

Here's your answer... pretty cool.

New observations from three different spacecraft return what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon. via @Macht_Nichts on Twitter.

Amazing.

A Harvard Psychiatrist Explains Zombie Neurobiology

"Mitra’s team wanted to find out what would happen if an isolated bird raised his own colony. As expected, birds raised in soundproof boxes grew up to sing cacophonous songs. But then scientists let the isolated birds give voice lessons to a new round of hatchlings. They found that the young males imitated the songs — but they tweaked them slightly, bringing the structure closer to that of songs sung in the wild. When these birds grew up and became tutors, their pupils’ song continue to conform, with tweaks. After three to four generations, the teachers were producing strapping young finches that belted out normal-sounding songs."

A very cool study, and a well-written article.

via http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/08/can-culture-be-genetically-encoded-new-research-says-yes.html

GReader: Culture May Be Encoded in DNA [feedly] http://ow.ly/58hy [from http://twitter.com/ChipRiley/statuses/1700727055]

Knowledge is passed down directly from generation to generation in the animal kingdom as parents teach their children the things they will need to survive. But a new study has found that, even when the chain is broken, nature sometimes finds a way. Zebra finches, which normally learn their complex courtship songs from their fathers, spontaneously developed the same songs all on their own after only a few generations.

"a species of jellyfish that can live indefinitely"

Turritopsis nutricula is a small (5mm) species of jellyfish which uses transdifferentiation to become younger after sexual reproduction. This cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it biologically immortal. It originates from the Caribbean sea, but has now spread around the world.

Biologically immortal jellyfish

Creepy!! http://twurl.nl/1dsmw7 [from http://twitter.com/FANLESS/statuses/1024831220]

Cool weird squid

The Site is Now Missing (as of 10 march 2009) But Lucky i annotated most of the part , so click on the Expand and read from ther Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.magazinetimepass.com%2Foddities%2Fmost-bizarre-experiments-of-all-time

Peixe bizarro, transparente

chevere

Animations can be viewed within your web browser (the Macromedia Flash plugin is required) or downloaded for play from your computer.

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's learning center has a nice library of animations demonstrating various biology concepts. Some of the concepts covered in the animations library include DNA restriction and transformation, DNA arrays, and model organisms. The animations can be viewed online or downloaded. In addition to the animations library, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has a library of 3D models. Highlighting the list of 3D models is a model of the human brain. Like the other animations, the 3D models can be viewed online or downloaded for use on your local hard drive.

They look like a breed apart. I moved to Moscow with my family last year and was startled to see so many stray dogs. Watching them over time, I realised that, despite some variation in colour – some were black, others yellowish white or russet – they all shared a certain look. They were medium-sized with thick fur, wedge-shaped heads and almond eyes. Their tails were long and their ears erect.

2-year-old

Moscow’s stray dogs

Evolution explained

There are all sorts of ways to reconstruct the history of life on Earth. Pinning down when specific events occurred is often tricky, though. For this, biologists depend mainly on dating the rocks in which fossils are found, and by looking at the "molecular clocks" in the DNA of living organisms.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2Fdn17453-timeline-the-evolution-of-life.html%3Ffull%3Dtrue

There are all sorts of ways to reconstruct the history of life on Earth. Pinning down when specific events occurred is often tricky, though. For this, biologists depend mainly on dating the rocks in which fossils are found, and by looking at the "molecular clocks" in the DNA of living organisms. There are problems with each of these methods. The fossil record is like a movie with most of the frames cut out. Because it is so incomplete, it can be difficult to establish exactly when particular evolutionary changes happened

A fundamental but elusive step in the early evolution of life on Earth has been replicated in a laboratory. Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients

something Creationists said could never be done or observed

RNAの合成に成功。nature may 13

amazing stuff

Morality in animals

This thinking is another indicator of a change in human assumptions about animal consciousness -- from uncaring reductionism to reflective respect. This is not new. In 1966, Conrad Lorenz made much the same point in On Agression, but noted that humans are the only animals whose moral principles against violence are so often breached in the form of murder and war.

Scientists studying animal behaviour believe they have growing evidence that species ranging from mice to primates are governed by moral codes of conduct in the same way as humans.

Animals possess a sense of morality that allows them to tell the difference between right and wrong, according to a controversial new book.

While few of the scientific offerings formally follow the scientific method or test an explicitly stated hypothesis, even those videos veering more towards demonstrating various principles, theories, and laws still offer visitors a chance to learn something about how the world around them operates. By this point, it should go without saying that many of the following videos contain procedures that may be dangerous to perform at home or without the proper equipment and/or training. Please do not duplicate any of these experiments unless assured that they are entirely safe for amateurs.

DIY at home genetic engineering movement has begun

"Co-founder Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college, said amateurs will probably pursue serious work such as new vaccines and super-efficient biofuels, but they might also try, for example, to use squid genes to create tattoos that glow."

"Many of these amateurs may have studied biology in college but have no advanced degrees and are not earning a living in the biotechnology field. Some proudly call themselves "biohackers" — innovators who push technological boundaries and put the spread of knowledge before profits."

biohackers

If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat.

As if you needed convincing.

From Ann Brandon via Facebook.

No surprise there.

If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat.

Imported from http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/status/2636037970 Cats Do Control Humans, Study Finds http://bit.ly/PFK0w

Duh.

A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Via <a href="http://www.google.com/profiles/interney#buzz">Edney</a>

A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. "The patient is fine," said Dr. Gero Hutter of Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany. "Today, two years after his transplantation, he is still without any signs of HIV disease and without antiretroviral medication." The case was first reported in November, and the new report is the first official publication of the case in a medical journal. Hutter and a team of medical professionals performed the stem cell transplant on the patient, an American living in Germany, to treat the man's leukemia, not the HIV itself.

RT: @rapella {reassuring} So we’re all a bunch of mutants http://bit.ly/a1s6S (I love this, it's made me very happy). [from http://twitter.com/nijay/statuses/3819538334]

'We are all mutants', scientists find http://twurl.nl/li4gus [from http://twitter.com/znth/statuses/3714551195]

I'm a mutant! we are all mutants! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8227442.stm [from http://twitter.com/madguy000/statuses/3712074988]

is how DVDs work: a high res green image and two low-res imag

ure notice when someone tampers with your green!! The difference with red is ce

visual spiral timeline of earth

What other facts are needed to legalize pot at this point?

RT @EHillBurns: Jellyfish "can regenerate its entire body" repeatedly RT @JLVernonPhD: A must tweet! The world's only immortal animal ht ...

Oh, crap... "Worldwide silent invasion" of immortal jellyfish: http://bit.ly/93JXXO. Why didn't something fluffy discover eternal life?

The world's only immortal animal | Yahoo! Green

Bobbie-the-Jean's Journal deviantART:

19.) Because I don’t understand why, if we share common ancestry with chimps, there are still chimps. And when someone with more than three brain cells in their head inevitably replies: “for the same reason Americans share common ancestry with Brits but there are still Brits, I can’t follow the logic. It’s just too big a leap. Who am I, Evil Knievel? 20.) Because my mom dropped me on my head when I was a baby. 21.) Multiple times. 22.) On purpose.

Gyaaarrrrrr!!

lolz

Recently I've been looking at the International Barcode of Life project. The idea is take DNA samples from animals and plants to help identify known species and discover new ones. While other projects strive to identify the complete genome for a few species, such as humans, dogs, red flour beetles and others, the barcoding project looks at a short 650-base sequence from a single gene. The idea is that this short sequence may not tell the whole story of an organism, but it should be enough to identify and distinguish between species. It will be successful as a barcode if (a) all (or most) members of a species have the same (or very similar) sequences and (b) members of different species have very different sequences.

Scientists found way to stop metastasis

"Scientists say they have identified an enzyme that helps cancer spread around the body."

Enzyme promotive of metastasis identified.

Enzyme behind cancer spread found breast cancer Breast cancer cells can spread to other parts of the body Scientists say they have identified an enzyme that helps cancer spread around the body. Cancer metastasis, where the cancer spreads from its original location, is known to be responsible for 90% of cancer-related deaths. Institute of Cancer Research scientists have found that an enzyme called LOX is crucial in promoting metastasis, Cancer Cell journal reports.

This ant is from Madagascar, and is named Eutetramorium mocquerysi. The species is notable for having wingless queens that are indistinguishable from workers. This image is composed of 400 pictures, and it's magnified 400x using a scanning electron microscope. The ant was given to us to image by Brian Fisher (http://www.calacademy.org/science/heroes/bfisher/) an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences.

amazing advances in brain studies

Critical of Paul MacLean

“So-called lower animals, such as fish, reptiles and birds, display a startling array of cognitive capabilities. Goldfish, for instance, have shown they can negotiate watery mazes similar to the way rats do in intelligence tests in the lab…”

# Despite cartoons you may have seen showing a straight line of fish emerging on land to become primates and then humans, evolution is not so linear. The brains of other animals are not merely previous stages that led directly to human intelligence. # Instead—as is the case with many traits—complex brains and sophisticated cognition have arisen multiple times in independent lineages of animals during the earth’s evolutionary history. # With this new understanding comes a new appreciation for intelligence in its many forms. So-called lower animals, such as fish, reptiles and birds, display a startling array of cognitive capabilities. Goldfish, for instance, have shown they can negotiate watery mazes similar to the way rats do in intelligence tests in the lab.

The researchers, led by Associate Professor Ana Maria Cuervo, blocked the ageing process in mice livers by stopping the build-up of harmful proteins inside the organ's cells.

Scientists have stopped the ageing process in an entire organ for the first time, a study released today says.

About 95% of the human genome has once been designated as "junk" DNA. While much of this sequence may be an evolutionary artifact that serves no present-day purpose, some junk DNA may function in ways that are not currently understood. The conservation of some junk DNA over many millions of years of evolution may imply an essential function that has been "turned off." Now scientists say there's a junk gene that fights HIV. And they've discovered how to turn it back on. What these scientists have done could give us the first bulletproof HIV vaccine. They have re-awakened the human genome's latent potential to make us all into HIV-resistant creatures, and hey've published their ground-breaking research in PLoS Biology. A group of scientists led by Nitya Venkataraman and Alexander Colewhether wanted to try a new approach to fighting HIV - one that worked with the body's own immune system. They knew Old World monkeys had a built-in immunity to HIV: a protein called retrocyclin, which c

Darwin's Radio: Prehistoric Gene Reawakens to Battle HIV

This has a lot of interesting stuff, for the most part. (Apparently, hot drinks make you feel more trusting than cold drinks!)

Research also indicates that women's perception of cold varies

New research is suggesting that we all feel the cold differently

Reference for Demand - High vs Low Resolution

The Photographic Eye How Our Eyes See vs. How Our Cameras See

silmä vs. kamera

The human eye, with support from the brain (the fastest CPU on the planet), visually reconstructs our surroundings in real-time as we go about our days and nights. Describing the human eye and how it interprets the world around us in terms of camera optics is a tricky process to explain, and that's before we even get to the 'how does it compare to my camera' part of the story.

Как видят мир глаза и фотокамера

How Our Eyes See vs. How Our Cameras See

Looking at a sexy photo of my wife "activated part of your 'new brain' that represents the sensation of touch in your genital area,"

For me, translating love into biology is actually kind of reassuring. Yes, it takes away some of the mystery — but also the fear. Think of it like a drug: If you're high and feel like you're sliding off the face of the earth, you can tell yourself, Hey, I'm having a horrible chemical reaction, but I'll get over it. I will stabilize.

A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel. It may be the case that organisms like this produced some — maybe not all — but some of the world's crude oil.

A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel, biologists announced today. And the fungus can grow on cellulose, a major component of tree trunks, blades of grass and stalks that is the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth. "When we looked at the gas analysis, I was flabbergasted," said Gary Strobel, a plant scientist at Montana State University, and the lead author of a paper in Microbiology describing the find. "We were looking at the essence of diesel fuel."

humans versus animals

"BBC News - 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists" http://j.mp/cIRoBL

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA. The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms. Some also suggest that the potential benefits of the technology have been over-stated. But the researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases. The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California.

Very cool story about ants and smells.

Whether or not God exists, thinking about Him or Her doesn't require divinely dedicated neurological wiring. Instead, religious thoughts run on brain systems used to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling. The findings, based on brain scans of people contemplating God, don't explain whether a propensity for religion is a neurobiological accident. But at least they give researchers a solid framework for exploring the question. "In a way, this is a very cold look at religious belief," said National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist Jordan Grafman, co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We're only trying to understand where in the brain religious beliefs seem to be modulated."

Whether or not God exists, thinking about Him or Her doesn't require divinely dedicated neurological wiring.

"In a way, this is a very cold look at religious belief," said National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist Jordan Grafman, co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We're only trying to understand where in the brain religious beliefs seem to be modulated."

Whether or not God exists, thinking about Him or Her doesn't require divinely dedicated neurological wiring. Instead, religious thoughts run on brain systems used to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling. The findings, based on brain scans of people contemplating God, don't explain whether a propensity for religion is a neurobiological accident. But at least they give researchers a solid framework for exploring the question.

In research published recently in Neuron, Marcos Frank, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, postdoctoral researcher Sara Aton, PhD, and colleagues describe for the first time how cellular changes in the sleeping brain promote the formation of memories.

The key cellular player is the molecule N-methyl D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR), which acts like a combination listening post & gate-keeper. It both receives extracellular signals in the form of glutamate & regulates the flow of calcium ions into cells. Once the brain is triggered to reorganize its neural networks in wakefulness (by visual deprivation, eg), intra- & intercellular communication pathways engage, setting a series of enzymes into action w/in the reorganizing neurons during sleep. To start the process, NMDAR is primed to open its ion channel after the neuron has been excited. The ion channel then opens when glutamate binds to the receptor, allowing calcium into the cell. In turn, calcium, an intracellular signaling molecule, turns other downstream enzymes on and off. Some neural connections are strengthened as a result of this process, & the result is a reorganized visual cortex. &, this only happens during sleep.

If you ever argued with your mother when she told you to get some sleep after studying for an exam instead of pulling an all-nighter, you owe her an apology, because it turns out she's right. And now, scientists are beginning to understand why.

In research published recently in Neuron, Marcos Frank, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, postdoctoral researcher Sara Aton, PhD, and colleagues describe for the first time how cellular changes in the sleeping brain promote the formation of memories. ... "We find that the biochemical changes are simply not happening in the neurons of animals that are awake," Frank says. "And when the animal goes to sleep it's like you’ve thrown a switch, and all of a sudden, everything is turned on that's necessary for making synaptic changes that form the basis of memory formation. It's very striking." The team used an experimental model of cortical plasticity – the rearrangement of neural connections in response to life experiences. "That's fundamentally what we think the machinery of memory is, the actual making and breaking of connections between neurons,” Frank explains

Our planet may harbour forms of "weird life" unrelated to life as we know it.

When will the BBC get better quality science journos Alien Life my arse - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7893414.stm [from http://twitter.com/AndyBoydnl/statuses/1227806875]

new forms of life on earth, from earth or arrived to it. How to look for them. Definition of life (self sustained and capable of darwinian evolution?). Did life hartch on earth from scratch more than once?

ation of an imag

RT @HoagiesGifted: 'Thirst for knowledge' may be opium craving http://bit.ly/YHoJP [from http://twitter.com/bfwriter/statuses/14961074185]

Whether the new thinking will be reflected in this year's revision of the federal dietary guidelines remains unclear

AndaBien - Evolution Timeline

To scale.

A site full of information about the ocean. Timely--items about the current oil spill are there; just lots to see. Educator section.

The recent catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico compels all of us to turn our attention to the sea. A new website, the Smithsonian Ocean Portal offers teachers, parents and kids best-in-class educational, scientific and intellectual assets from the Smithsonian and more than 20 environmental organizations.

the first cyborg is now the first infected cyborg. TOI esque headline on BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10158517.stm [from http://twitter.com/madguy000/statuses/14764804819]

.

Does anyone know if Gilbert Van Tassel Hamilton's studies were published into a coffee table book? If they were, then my gift shopping for the year just got a whole lot easier.

There must be something in the water here in Lanesboro, Minnesota, because last night I dreamt of an encounter with a very muscular African-American centaur, an orgiastic experience with &ndash; gasp &ndash; drunken members of the opposite sex and (as if