The Gympie-Gympie. Perhaps the worst choice of natural buttwipe....

Gympie Gympie: Once stung, never forgotten

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MARINA HURLEY'S DEDICATION TO science was sorely tested during the three years she spent in Queensland’s Atherton Tableland studying stinging trees. The entomologist and ecologist’s first encounter with the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree produced a sneezing fit and left her eyes and nose running for hours. Even protective particle masks and welding gloves could not spare her several subsequent stings – one requiring hospitalisation – but that was nothing compared with the severe allergy she developed.

“Being stung is the worst kind of pain you can imagine - like being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time,” said Marina, who at the time was a postgraduate student at James Cook University investigating the herbivores that eat stinging trees. “The allergic reaction developed over time, causing extreme itching and huge hives that eventually required steroid treatment. At that point my doctor advised that I should have no further contact with the plant and I didn’t object.”

She is not alone in her allergic reaction to this innocent-looking plant – one of six stinging-tree species found in Australia, and one of the most poisonous plants here – or her dramatic accounts. Proliferating in rainforest clearings, along creek-lines and small tracks, the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree (Dendrocnide excelsa) has long been a hazard for foresters, surveyors and timber workers – some of whom are today supplied with respirators, thick gloves and anti-histamine tablets as a precaution. More recently, the hairs covering the plant’s stems, leaves and fruits have also posed a danger to scientists and bushwalkers.

Gympie-Gympie stinging tree history

North Queensland road surveyor A.C. Macmillan was among the first to document the effects of a stinging tree, reporting to his boss in 1866 that his packhorse “was stung, got mad, and died within two hours”. Similar tales abound in local folklore of horses jumping in agony off cliffs and forestry workers drinking themselves silly to dull the intractable pain.

Writing to Marina in 1994, Australian ex-serviceman Cyril Bromley described falling into a stinging tree during mili*tary training on the tableland in World War II. Strapped to a hospital bed for three weeks and administered all manner of unsuccessful treatments, he was sent “as mad as a cut snake” by the pain. Cyril also told of an officer shooting himself after using a stinging-tree leaf for “toilet purposes”.

He’s had too many stings to count but Ernie Rider will never forget the day in 1963 that he was slapped in the face, arms and chest by a stinging tree. “I remember it feeling like there were giant hands trying to squash my chest,” he said. “For two or three days the pain was almost unbearable; I couldn’t work or sleep, then it was pretty bad pain for another fortnight or so. The stinging persisted for two years and recurred every time I had a cold shower.”

Now a senior conservation officer with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Ernie said he’s not experienced anything like the pain during 44 years work in the bush. “There’s nothing to rival it; it’s 10 times worse than anything else – scrub ticks, scrub itch and itchy-jack sting included. Stinging trees are a real and present danger.”

Gympie-Gympie: stings like acid

So swollen was Les Moore after being stung across the face several years ago that he said he resembled Mr Potato Head.

“I think I went into anaphylactic shock and it took days for my sight to recover,” said Les, a scientific officer with the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology in Queensland, who was near Bartle Frere (North Peak) studying cassowaries when disaster struck. “Within minutes the initial stinging and burning intensified and the pain in my eyes was like someone had poured acid on them. My mouth and tongue swelled up so much that I had trouble breathing. It was debilitating and I had to blunder my way out of the bush.”

It was perhaps this rapid and savage reaction that inspired the British Army’s interest in the more sinister applications of the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree in 1968. That year, the Chemical Defence Establishment at Porton Down (a top-secret laboratory that developed chemical weapons) contracted Alan Seawright, then a Professor of Pathology at the University of Queensland, to dispatch stinging-tree specimens.

“Chemical warfare is their work, so I could only assume that they were investigating its potential as a biological weapon,” said Alan, now an honorary research consultant to the University of Queensland’s National Research Centre in Environmental Toxicology. “I never heard anything more, so I guess we’ll never know.”

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^ **** that noise

So...... that mystery Mars rock? Some dumbshit is suing NASA over it....

Lawsuit Alleges NASA Is Failing To Investigate Alien Life

You may recall, NASA recently announced that a strange rock had somehow "appeared" in front of its Mars Opportunity rover. The explanations for the mystery rock were straight-forward: maybe some kind of nearby impact sent a rock toward the rover, or, more likely, the rover knocked the rock out of the ground and no one noticed until later.

Not so, says self-described scientist Rhawn Joseph, an author of trade books on topics ranging from alien life to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. (Sample article: "Dreams and Hallucinations: Lifting the Veil to Multiple Perceptual Realities.") The rock was a living thing, and he's filed a lawsuit to compel NASA to examine the rock more closely. Joseph is involved with the Journal of Cosmology, online publisher of some very controversial papers. In fact, this isn't the first report of alien life to come out of the journal.

For the record: NASA has identified it as a rock. A very special rock, with rare properties, even. But definitely a rock.

Okay? Good.

The lawsuit, filed yesterday in a California court, is aimed at NASA and its Administrator, Charles Bolden, requesting that the agency "perform a public, scientific, and statutory duty which is to closely photograph and thoroughly scientifically examine and investigate a putative biological organism." Joseph is disputing the rock theory, since, "when examined by Petitioner the same structure in miniature was clearly visible upon magnification and appears to have just germinated from spores." (Joseph is the Petitioner.) The "rock," according to the lawsuit, was there the whole time, it just grew until it became visible. "The refusal to take close up photos from various angles, the refusal to take microscopicimages of the specimen, the refusal to release high resolution photos, is inexplicable, recklessly negligent, and bizarre," according to the suit.

Joseph has contacted multiple NASA employees and provided them with said evidence, according to the lawsuit, but they have failed to respond. Outrage. Here are his requests of NASA:

Petitioner has specifically requested and has demanded in writing the following of NASA, NASA’s chief administrator Bolden, and NASA’s rover team: A) take 100 high resolution close-up infocus photos of the specimen identified in Sol 3540, at various angles, from all sides, and from above down into the "bowl" of the specimen, and under appropriate lighting conditions which minimize glare. B) Take a minimum of 24 microscopic in-focus images of the exterior, lip, walls, and interior of the specimen under appropriate lighting conditions. C) NASA, and the rover team must make public and supply Petitioner with all high resolution photos and images of that specimen as demanded in A and B.

Enjoy the full suit embedded below:

http://www.popsci.com/article/scienc...src=SOC&dom=fb

I kind of want to plant a gympie gympie plant next to the sidewalk in my front yard. I wonder if they would grow here.

Note to self: Future housewarming gift for any shitty neighbors.

2nd Note to Self:
Send gift baskets with said plant to the entire Broncos organization, roster, and coaches with a tiny gift message stating these are a rare and exotic Asian plant that has been known to bestow luck and divine fortune.

Stating for all who have rubbed the leaf on their hands, feet, and forehead to signify being 1 with the all the major elements as well as the mind, and then ingesting 1 of the leaves as a sign of being consumed by your mission and drive to victory.

FYP...

Of course... just dip the cells in acid. Why wasn't that the first thing we tried?

Stem cell breakthrough could be a game changer for personalized medicine

One of the biggest drawbacks to stem cells is that creating them is a bit of a process. There is so much potential to solve a variety of physical ailments with stem cells, but it is not yet a simple, practical solution. However, a new method generates stem cells faster and cheaper than normal and could revolutionize personal medicine. The results come from Haruko Obokata from Japan’s Riken Center for Developmental Biology and were published in Nature.

When the body is developing, certain cells have the ability to be stimulated into differentiating into a number of different cells. While these are abundant in embryos and umbilical cords, they are more rare in adults. A great deal of research has gone into transforming differentiated cells back into their stem cell state, known as induced pluripotent stem cells. There has been considerable success on this front, but it takes many months to complete and is a fairly expensive process.

In this new technique, blood cells are exposed to acid, which shocks them back to their stem cell state. Obokata’s method is so easy, some researchers did not believe her results. In fact, there was such a lack of support, she nearly abandoned her project. Luckily, she stuck with it and developmental biologists herald the technique as “remarkable” and “a game changer” for personalized medicine that eliminates rejection, because they already come from each patient’s body.

So far, the technique has only been demonstrated with mouse blood. Future trials will explore how the method works with human blood. If all goes well and the technology works well on human cells, this could represent a new source of cells that can be used in regenerative applications following trauma and also in treatment of diseases like Parkinson’s disease and cancer. They could also be used to generate replacement organs, which would alleviate much of the strain on the organ donation wait list.

There is still a large amount of research to be done with using stem cells as an effective treatment, and Dr. Obokata’s induction method will not change that. Also, it remains to be seen how the low pH affects the integrity of the cells as they differentiate into bone, skin, nerve, and muscle cells. However, creating a cheaper, more efficient means of creating the stem cells could expedite some aspects of that research and help pave the way for stem cells to become a mainstream method of individualized treatment.

UPDATE:

Fun Science projects to do with the kids!

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A Gympie Gympie tree, VX poison gas, and a black widow all walk into a bar...

How much would it take for you to use a condom made entirely out of gympie gympie leaves?

It would have to be a Romeo & Juliet scenario.

Giant Crystal Caves Yield New "Ice Palace," More

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It looks like Superman's Fortress of Solitude and is nearly as hard to get into, but that hasn't stopped explorers from uncovering new secrets in and around Mexico's deep, deadly hot Cave of Crystals.

Outfitted with ice-cooled suits, teams have found biological mysteries, parallels with other planets, and the "Ice Palace," an unexplored cavern lined with rare crystal formations—and just in time too. Parts of the complex may soon be returned to their natural, submerged states.

A thousand feet (304 meter) underground, the Cave of Crystals (pictures) is just one of a series of glittering caverns beneath the Chihuahuan Desert's Naica mountain (map). Much of the complex would naturally be filled with scorching water, were it not for industrial pumps that facilitate the mining of silver, zinc, lead, and other minerals in the caves.

In the two-story-tall, football-field-size Cave of Crystals, enormous beams of gypsum—among the largest freestanding crystals in the world—sprout haphazardly from the ceiling, floor, and walls. Individually, though, the crystals appear anything but haphazard, sporting the sharp, geometric appearance that scientists call euhedral.
This jewel-like effect makes the giant crystals truly unique, according to John Rakovan, a mineralogist at Miami University in Ohio, who was not involved in the project.

"When crystals get larger and larger, they become less euhedral, typically"—and more rocklike. "Scientists didn't think it was possible to get large crystals that are so morphologically perfect" before the Cave of Crystals discovery, Rakovan said.
The translucent columns also resemble giant pillars of ice but are warmed by superheated air leaking up from underground magma chambers.

The combination of 90 percent humidity and a temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) inside the cave can kill an unprepared human in just 30 minutes.

"It's a terrible and magical environment all at the same time," said Penelope Boston, an astrobiologist and cave scientist who appears in the new documentary Into the Lost Crystal Caves, which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel.

Beyond the Cave of Crystals

Discovered by miners in 2000, the Cave of Crystals is just one chamber in what appears to be a network of subterranean caverns beneath Naica—some well known and evocatively named: the Cave of Swords, the Queen's Eye, the Cave of Sails.

In 2009 a video camera attached to a drill bit found hints of one more crystal-lined cave during the creation of the Robin Hole, a 2,000-foot-deep (600-meter-deep) ventilation shaft meant to cool mining tunnels below.

Descending into the hole months later, in December 2009, a scientific team confirmed the new, naturally dry crystal cave about 500 feet (150 meters) below the surface.

Dubbed the Ice Palace, the new cave lacks giant pillars, but sparkles with rare crystal formations, including minerals resembling cauliflower and fiber-optic-like filaments.

The mysteries of the Ice Palace will likely remain unsolved, however. The Industrias Peñoles mining company has decided to cover the Robin Hole and has also hinted that it may shut down the expensive water pumps that keep the Cave of Crystals dry, according to the documentary.

"I don't think they'll ever be able to preserve those caves," Miami University's Rakovan said. "It'll be economically unfeasible."
But shutting down the caves isn't necessarily a bad thing, Rakovan added. "It might actually preserve the crystals. And if at a later date it becomes important to get in there again, they could repump."
Ice-Cooled Suits Required

Exploring the Naica caves requires more than just industrial strength water pumps. Scientists entering the complex in 2008 and 2009 wore custom-made, 45-pound (25-kilograms) cooling suits that extend mission times from 15 minutes to an hour.

Each suit contains several ice-filled compartments as well as respirators connected to ice-filled backpacks, which send cool air to the wearer's lungs. Masks protect the eyes, which can scorch in the cave's heat.

"It's funny, because when you look at the pictures of us in there in the suits, it looks like we're in an ice chamber, but it's just the reverse," said Boston, of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

Even with the protective gear, the scientists often operated at the edge of safety.


Ontario, Canada-based astrophysicist Sara Poirier said, "We all just kept pushing further and further [into the cave], so by the time you are heading back, you've pushed yourself beyond the limits that are safe"—and that's with the gear operating properly.

At least one piece of equipment offered little protection. The portable Ice Cube—a newly designed, air-cooled, transparent tent designed to allow for two-hour Naica-caves missions—never cooled down enough to bring overheated bodies back to safe levels.

Microbial Mystery in Cave of Crystals

Though the calling card of the horseshoe-shaped Cave of Crystals may be its massive mineral formations, some of its biggest surprises are literally microscopic.

In 2008 a team of scientists, including New Mexico Tech's Boston, investigated the cave and found microbial life living in tiny air pockets in the crystals.

In December 2009 Boston returned to the cave with another team. From pools of water that hadn't been present during her first trip, the scientists collected bacteria as well as viruses that prey on the bacteria—something that was suspected but had not been confirmed on the first expedition.

Viruses, after all, are among the "primary predators of bacteria," explained Danielle Winget, a biologist at the University of British Columbia, in the new documentary.

Sure enough, the team found as many as 200 million viruses in a single drop of Cave of Crystals water.

But the virus finding was perhaps not the expedition's most surprising microbial discovery. Analysis of bacterial DNA from the Cave of Crystals showed that the tiny life-forms are related to microbes living in other extreme environments around the world, including caves in South Africa and Australia as well as hydrothermal vents (video).

"We're picking up these patterns of similarities in places that are geographically widely separated," Boston said.

That similarity and separation adds up to a mystery, according to Curtis Suttle, a biologist at University of British Columbia and a member of the 2009 Cave of Crystals expedition.

"We don't really understand how it is that the organisms in a hydrothermal vent in Greece or a deep gold mine in South Africa are related to organisms that we find in a subsurface cave" at Naica, Suttle said.

"It's hard to imagine some kind of underground [network] connecting South Africa with Mexico."

Alien Underworlds

As mind-boggling as the idea of a possibly globe-spanning, underground bacterial network may be, some scientists see potential links between the Cave of Crystals and even farther-flung hot spots—for example, extreme environments on Mars and other worlds.

Though Martian geology might be more static overall than Earth's, "there may be residual pockets of geothermal activity that could provide a zone where water could be liquid and where chemically reduced gases from below can percolate up and act as a nutrient source," as in the Cave of Crystals, Boston said.

Poirier, the Ontario astrophysicist, agreed.

"For Mars, our best bet of finding life is to look underground," Poirier said. "So there are a lot of parallels between humans exploring subterranean caves looking for microbes and Martian exploration in the future."

If the caves on Mars are anything like the caverns beneath Naica mountain, she said, future Martian explorers will have to be trained to ignore the strange sights surrounding them.

"When you're in the caves, you're overwhelmed by the [harsh] conditions, but you're also overwhelmed by the beauty, and it's really hard to maintain your focus," she said.

Even if scalding water submerges that beauty tomorrow, Boston said, the caves' scientific potential should live on, thanks to the multitude of samples already collected.

"My usual rule of thumb is for every hour you spend in the field, you spend at least a thousand hours on analysis," Boston said. "So we've got our hands full."

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Scientists rest in a cooling tent at an underground base camp outside the Cave of Crystals. That cavern's combination of 90 percent humidity and a temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) can kill an unprepared human in just 30 minutes.

Sugar-powered biobattery has 10 times the energy storage of lithium: Your smartphone might soon run on enzymes

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As you probably know, from sucking down cans of Coke and masticating on candy, sugar — glucose, fructose, sucrose, dextrose — is an excellent source of energy. Biologically speaking, sugar molecules are energy-dense, easy to transport, and cheap to digest. There is a reason why almost every living cell on Earth generates its energy (ATP) from glucose. Now, researchers at Virginia Tech have successfully created a sugar-powered fuel cell that has an energy storage density of 596 amp-hours per kilo — or “one order of magnitude” higher than lithium-ion batteries. This fuel cell is refillable with a solution of maltodextrin, and its only by products are electricity and water. The chief researcher, Y.H. Percival Zhang, says the tech could be commercialized in as soon as three years.

Now, it’s not exactly news that sugar is an excellent energy source. As a culture we’ve probably known about it since before we were Homo sapiens. The problem is, unless you’re a living organism or some kind of incendiary device, extracting that energy is difficult. In nature, an enzymatic pathway is used — a production line of tailor-made enzymes that meddle with the glucose molecules until they become ATP. Because it’s easy enough to produce enzymes in large quantities, researchers have tried to create fuel cells that use artificial “metabolism” to break down glucose into electricity (biobatteries), but it has historically proven very hard to find the right pathway for maximum efficiency and to keep the enzymes in the right place over a long period of time.

Now, however, Zhang and friends at Virginia Tech appear to have built a high-density fuel cell that uses an enzymatic pathway to create a lot of electricity from glucose. There doesn’t seem to be much information on how stable this biobattery is over multiple refills, but if Zhang thinks it could be commercialized in three years, that’s a very good sign. Curiously, the research paper says that the enzymes are non-immobilized — meaning Zhang found a certain battery chemistry that doesn’t require the enzymes to be kept in place… or, alternatively, that it will only work for a very short time.

The Virginia Tech biobattery uses 13 enzymes, plus air (it’s an air-breathing biobattery), to produce nearly 24 electrons from a single glucose unit. This equates to a power output of 0.8 mW/cm, current density of 6 mA/cm, and energy storage density of 596 Ah/kg. This last figure is impressive, at roughly 10 times the energy density of the lithium-ion batteries in your mobile devices. [Research paper: doi:10.1038/ncomms4026 - "A high-energy-density sugar biobattery based on a synthetic enzymatic pathway"]

If Zhang’s biobatteries pan out, you might soon be recharging your smartphone by pouring in a solution of 15% maltodextrin. That battery would not only be very safe (it produces water and electricity), but very cheap to run and very green. This seems to fit in perfectly with Zhang’s homepage, which talks about how his main goals in life are replacing crude oil with sugar, and feeding the world.

The other area in which biobatteries might be useful is powering implanted devices, such as pacemakers — or, in the future, subcutaneous sensors and computers. Such a biobattery could feed on the glucose in your bloodstream, providing an endless supply of safe electricity for the myriad implants that futuristic technocrats will surely have.

Did anybody else see Bill Nye take Ken Ham to the woodshed last night via the topic of Evolution vs Creationism?

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its been all over the internet.


Nye destroyed him.

Not that its hard :/

Depends on who you're friends with on Facebook. I have more than one lunatic and when I first saw some postings this morning I was lead to believe that Mr. Nye threw a curse filled tantrum and gave up.

Truth > superstition.

Fact.

Link?

You know how I know Nye won? There's no thread about it in DC.

I'm not digging back through the comments.

I'd love to see more debates like this.

No, Nye didn't throw a curse filled tantrum. He never even cursed or lost his composure in any way.

I thought he pretty clearly won the debate. Ham didn't really try and put forth any evidence at all.

Plus, when Pat Roberts essentially says quit talking crazy, you're making the rest of us look bad, it's a pretty good indicator as to who won...

Here's a good, yet slightly biased, recap of the debate:

http://guardianlv.com/2014/02/bill-n...s-and-who-won/

You sure as hell won't be using your cell phone very long in NYC if Bloomberg hears about this...

Creationists send messages to people who believe in evolution

Sample image from the 22 of them

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014...91576856-1.jpg

Yeah, this thread is generally pretty cool. So why don't we keep the creation vs evolution debate in the DC thread that already exists.

Wrong use of there, there.

Pretty sure that girl is trolling everyone. She probably is on the other side and tried to think of a question that we might believe would be asked, but would also be idiotic. She went too far, even the Catholic Church is on board with heliocentrism.

Its the beauty of a sunset argument. Heard it a 1000 times. I see god in all the beauty around me. How can you not see a sunset and know god did that?

Pretty cool illustration showing that prime numbers follow a fractal pattern.

http://www.jasondavies.com/primos/

And I'll ask again to please keep the creation vs evolution discussion in the DC thread and not clog up yet another thread with that shit.

Cool drawing! Kinda gave me a headache, but cool just the same...

Thanks that is cool. So I'm not a math guy, squeaked by calculus in College.

How does prime correlate/relate to PI? or does it not?

Heh, don't ask me. I'm in advertising.

I ask because if I remember correctly PI is a perfect circle and that prime graph looked like half of circles.

EDIT Mis-read post.

Yes it does. Generally they always call PI on Optimus.

Kinda bull shit.

I know i have contributed to it in pages past, but can we leave all the creation debating out of this bad ass thread?

Here you don't have to take anyone else's skewed opinion on the matter.
I thought it was rather silly that Hamm kept showing small clips of other scientists introducing themselves that took his position. That's great, but it doesn't bolster your argument really- it may Inform people about others that agree with his Side, but that time is better spent providing evidence and facts to support his position.
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THIS!

It states on the site that the programmer uses a PERIODIC function to produce the curves. So of course they are related to PI and circles as it is a cosine sine or exponential functions. The point of the different curves meeting at a number is to demonstrate the nature of that number as related to being a prime or deficient or abundant numbers; all related to number theory but the curves are arbitrary.

This photograph was taken by the Curiosity rover from the surface of Mars. This is literally a photograph of our planet taken by a nuclear powered remote control car, on the surface of another planet.

Yeah Science!

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Big version: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA17936.jpg

Sometimes we lose perspective, don't we? Wow, that's earth or I have a bad bad pixel on this laptop! Ha!!

So, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it here before. But similar to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, Saturn has a huge storm at its north pole, that's 4 times the size of the Earth. The storm has been swirling for as long as we've been able to see it. And it's shaped like a hexagon.

NASA's Cassini Spacecraft Obtains Best Views of Saturn Hexagon

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has obtained the highest-resolution movie yet of a unique six-sided jet stream, known as the hexagon, around Saturn's north pole.

This is the first hexagon movie of its kind, using color filters, and the first to show a complete view of the top of Saturn down to about 70 degrees latitude. Spanning about 20,000 miles (30,000 kilometers) across, the hexagon is a wavy jet stream of 200-mile-per-hour winds (about 322 kilometers per hour) with a massive, rotating storm at the center. There is no weather feature exactly, consistently like this anywhere else in the solar system.

"The hexagon is just a current of air, and weather features out there that share similarities to this are notoriously turbulent and unstable," said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "A hurricane on Earth typically lasts a week, but this has been here for decades -- and who knows -- maybe centuries."

Weather patterns on Earth are interrupted when they encounter friction from landforms or ice caps. Scientists suspect the stability of the hexagon has something to do with the lack of solid landforms on Saturn, which is essentially a giant ball of gas.

Better views of the hexagon are available now because the sun began to illuminate its interior in late 2012. Cassini captured images of the hexagon over a 10-hour time span with high-resolution cameras, giving scientists a good look at the motion of cloud structures within.

They saw the storm around the pole, as well as small vortices rotating in the opposite direction of the hexagon. Some of the vortices are swept along with the jet stream as if on a racetrack. The largest of these vortices spans about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers), or about twice the size of the largest hurricane recorded on Earth.

Scientists analyzed these images in false color, a rendering method that makes it easier to distinguish differences among the types of particles suspended in the atmosphere -- relatively small particles that make up haze -- inside and outside the hexagon.

"Inside the hexagon, there are fewer large haze particles and a concentration of small haze particles, while outside the hexagon, the opposite is true," said Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate at Hampton University in Virginia. "The hexagonal jet stream is acting like a barrier, which results in something like Earth's Antarctic ozone hole."

The Antarctic ozone hole forms within a region enclosed by a jet stream with similarities to the hexagon. Wintertime conditions enable ozone-destroying chemical processes to occur, and the jet stream prevents a resupply of ozone from the outside. At Saturn, large aerosols cannot cross into the hexagonal jet stream from outside, and large aerosol particles are created when sunlight shines on the atmosphere. Only recently, with the start of Saturn's northern spring in August 2009, did sunlight begin bathing the planet's northern hemisphere.

"As we approach Saturn's summer solstice in 2017, lighting conditions over its north pole will improve, and we are excited to track the changes that occur both inside and outside the hexagon boundary," said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

A black-and-white version of the imaging camera movie and movies obtained by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer are also tools Cassini scientists can use to look at wind speeds and the mini-storms inside the jet stream.

Cassini launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn on July 1, 2004. Its mission is scheduled to end in September 2017. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

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A Scientific Explanation of How Marijuana Causes the Munchies

THC appears to increase our sensitivity to scents and flavors by using naturally occurring neural networks to convince the brain that it's starving

It's one of the most well-known effects of marijuana: the powerful surge in appetite many users feel after smoking or ingesting the drug, colloquially known as "the munchies.

For medicinal users that have trouble eating due to chemotherapy, this can be one of the drug's biggest benefits. For recreational users, this benefit can also be rather enjoyable, if unkind on the waistline. But for years, scientists have struggled to understand how marijuana's active ingredient—tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—stimulates appetite.

A new study published today in Nature Neuroscience brings us a bit closer to solving the mystery. A team of European neuroscientists led by Giovanni Marsicano of the University of Bordeaux has found that, in mice, THC fits into receptors in the brain's olfactory bulb, significantly increasing the animals' ability to smell food and leading them to eat more of it. A big part of the reason why you might eat more food after using marijuana, the research indicates, is simply that you can smell and taste it more acutely.

This effect of THC has to do with the underlying reason why the chemical affects the human brain so potently in the first place. Likely produced by the marijuana plant as a self-defense against herbivores who might feel disorientated after eating the plant and avoid it in the future, THC fits into receptors that are part of the brain's natural endocannabinoid system, which helps to control emotions, memory, pain sensitivity and appetite. Our brains typically produce their own chemicals (called cannabinoids) that fit into these same receptors, so by mimicking their activity, THC can artificially alter the same factors in dramatic ways.

The scientists began by exposing mice (increasingly used in neuroscientific research because of the surprising amount of cognitive similarities they share with humans) to banana and almond oils as a test of sensitivity to scent. When they did so, the mice sniffed the oils extensively at first, then stopped showing interest in them, a well-known phenomenon called olfactory habituation. Mice that were dosed with THC, however, kept on sniffing, demonstrating an enhanced sensitivity to the scents. These THC-dosed mice also ate much more chow when given the chance, showing an increased appetite.

The researchers also genetically engineered some mice to lack a type of cannabinoid receptor in their olfactory bulbs and subjected them to the same experiment. They found that even if these mice were given THC, it had no effect: They still habituated to the scent, showing that the drug's scent-enhancing powers involved activity in this region of the brain. In addition, these mice did not demonstrate an increased appetite when given the drug, showing that the "munchies" effect was dependent on olfactory lobe activity as well.

The upshot of all this: If mice are an accurate model for humans, one of the ways that THC increases appetite is by making us more sensitive to the smells of food. Because scent and taste are so closely related, it likely allows us to better taste flavors as well.

This new finding is likely just a piece of the THC-and-appetite puzzle. Previous research has found that the drug also acts on receptors in a region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, increasing the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine—and the sensation of pleasure—that comes as a result of eating while high. Other work has found that THC additionally interacts with the same sorts of receptors in the hypothalamus, leading to release of the hormone ghrelin, which stimulates hunger.

The one aspect that ties together these disparate mechanisms is that they all involve the brain's natural endocannabinoid systems. THC—and, by consequence, marijuana—does much of its work by manipulating the same pathways that the brain uses to normally regulate the senses.

But perhaps most interesting is that the new study hints at a compelling metaphor for the way THC manipulates this natural system: it mimics sensations felt when we're deprived of food. As a final test, the researchers forced some mice to fast for 24 hours, and found that this drove up levels of natural cannabinoids in the olfactory lobe. Not surprisingly, these starved mice showed greater scent sensitivity and ate much more too.

Most intriguing, the genetically engineered mice with olfactory lobes that lacked cannabinoid receptors did not show increased scent sensitivity or appetite even when they were starved. This indicates that both THC and the natural cannabinoids that result from starvation are acting on the same neural pathway to allow us to smell and taste with greater sensitivity, and thus eat more. In other words, THC appears to give us the munchies by convincing our brains that we're starving.

Sorry if Q, but the pic of the snow from space is just cool...

http://www.livescience.com/43298-sou...rom-space.html

http://i.livescience.com/images/i/00...jpg?1392153240

Damn, look how clear that water is in the Caribbean..

Or you can just look at my avatar. :)

Looks amazing. Where is it?

Turks and Caicos. Specifically Grace Bay. Amazing white sand beaches there as well.

Holy hell, I just Googled it. Incredible.

http://www.turkscaicosluxuryvillas.c...Bay-beachc.jpg

In my opinion, though, nothing beats Tahiti, Bora Bora and those other islands in French Polynesia. I hope I can make it out there to experience them one day.

http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps8220d638.jpg

http://media.expedia.com/media/conte...hiti-44158.jpg

http://www3.hilton.com/resources/med...ion_Center.jpg

My 6 year-old daughter loves the movies "The Time Machine (1960)","Angry Red Planet", "First Men in the Moon", and quite a few other old Sci-Fi movies.


It's awesome. Her imagination is off the charts, and it will serve her well in the future.

Happy Birthday Darwin!

http://imageshack.com/a/img545/3797/ukxo.jpg

Yeah those look amazing. I would definitely love to go there, as I am sure most would. I don't even want to know the cost though. That water is ridiculous and the scenary amazing.

Water flows on Mars?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/10/tech/i...s-water-flows/

CNN) -- The presence of water on Mars is often talked about in the past tense -- as in, billions of years in the past. But researchers have found clues that water could be flowing in the present, at least during warm seasons. Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology are looking at dark features on Martian slopes that are finger-shaped. They appear and disappear seasonally.


These flows represent the best suggestion we know of that Mars has water right now, scientists say. The study is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Nanomotors Steered Inside Living Human Cells For the First Time

http://imageshack.com/a/img829/8082/g15y.jpg

A group of researchers from Penn State have pushed the realm of possibilities for nanotechnology further as they have successfully steered a nanomotor inside of a human cell. This is the first time this feat has been accomplished. The team of chemists, biologist, and engineers was led by Tom Mallouk and has been published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Nanomotors have been studied in vitro more more than a decade now. The hope is that eventually, they could be used inside of human cells for biomedical research. This nanotechnology could revolutionize drug delivery and even perform surgery in order to increase quality of life in the least invasive way possible. The earliest models were nonfunctional in biological fluid due to their fuel source. A huge breakthrough came later when the nanomotors were able to be powered externally via acoustic waves. The nanomotors used inside the human cells for the latest study were controlled by the ultrasonic waves as well as magnets.

The researchers used HeLa cells, derived from a long-lived line of cervical cancer cells, to study the nanomotors. Getting past the cell membrane was easy, as the cells ingested the nanomotors themselves. Once inside, the ultrasound was turned on and the nanomotors began to spin and move around the cell. If the signal was turned up even higher, the nanomotor can spin like a propeller, chopping up the organelles inside the cell. They were even able to puncture the cell membrane, finishing off the death sentence. Used at low powers, the nanomotor was able to move around the cell without causing any damage.

The addition of magnets gave an important advantage: steering. The motors are also able to be controlled individually, allowing the operator to take a much more targeted approach to killing diseased cells.

Ultimately, the researchers hope that one day the rocket-shaped gold nanorods will be able to move in an out of the cells without causing damage. The individual units could communicate with one another to target disease in the body, maximizing the efficacy of the treatment or even making the correct diagnosis. Working toward the goal of creating such advanced nanotechnology will not only push the boundaries of nanoengineering, but will increase our understanding of chemical and biological processes at the cellular level as well.

- See more at: http://www.iflscience.com/technology...erlay-context=

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“The assembly of a rotating HeLa cell/gold rod aggregate at an acoustic nodal line in the xy plane. The video was taken under 500X overall magnification except for 00:23 - 00:32 and 01:16 - 01:42, where a 200X overall magnification was used.” Credit: Mallouk Lab, Penn State

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“Very active gold nanorods internalized inside HeLa cells in an acoustic field. A demonstration of very active gold nanorods internalized inside HeLa cells in an acoustic field. This video was taken under 1000X magnification in the bright field, with most of the incoming light blocked at the aperture.” Credit: Mallouk Lab, Penn State

alright Fish that is the coolest thing I've ever seen

R/C car human cells. Wheeeeee! Seriously.....

Holy ****ing shit fish. That is ****ing amazing. That type of pinpoint precision could be revolutionary in the treatment of diffuse and/or or anatomically unresectable cancers.

Holy shit if we could target nanotech to specific cells.............thats a game changer to say the least

Imagine training a computer to identify cancer cells with specific characteristics unlike normal cells (dense nuclei, increased mitotic activity, highly basophilic/RNA dense cytoplasm, abnormal shape and size, etc), and sending in those bastards to do the dirty work. Totally theoretical, and I don't even know if it's possible, but it sure gets me wet just thinking about it.

I might say something like Science boner, or Research tent, you know something like that. But hey, it's cool girl.

LMAO

Stupid crows....

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Crows could be the key to understanding alien intelligence

Crows are among the planet's most intelligent animals, teaching their young to use tools for foraging and banding together to fight off intruders. Now, the first study of how abstract reasoning works in these birds' brains could shed light on how intelligence works in a truly alien, non-mammal brain.

We've studied brain structure pretty extensively in mammals from humans and apes to whales and mice. But German neuroscientists Lena Veit and Andreas Nieder are the first to watch what happens in crow brains as these birds worked their way through a series of brain-teasers. They actually wired the crows' brains up with electrodes, watching as individual neurons fired when the crows did a test that required abstract reasoning. What Veit and Nieder found reveals a lot about what intelligence looks like in a brain that's nothing like our own.

The Evolution of Intelligence

The crow, and some of its relatives in the corvid family (such as jays and magpies), are among the only intelligent species we've encountered outside the world of mammals. But their brains are utterly different from ours. The mammalian seat of reason is in our prefrontal cortex, a thin layer of nerve-riddled tissue on the outside of the front region of our brains. Birds have no prefrontal cortex (PFC). Instead, they have the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), which is located toward the middle of their brains. You can see the different regions in the image, below.

http://imageshack.com/a/img513/807/8xgy.jpg

The thing that's really interesting about comparing bird and human intelligence is that we did not evolve from a common, intelligent ancestor. Our last common ancestor with birds lived during the Permian period, about 300 million years ago, before the age of dinosaurs. It probably looked like a cross between a reptile and a rodent, and was roughly the size of a big raccoon.

This ancestor's simple brain was ruled by instinct rather than higher-level cognition. Still, lurking inside its rather small skull was a brain part called the pallium, which over millions of years evolved into the PFC in mammals and the NCL in birds. That makes mammal and bird intelligence an excellent example of parallel evolution — both groups of animals developed intelligence independently of one another.

Despite all their differences, the PFC and NCL have a few features in common. Veit and Nieder write in Nature Communications that both regions are involved in "working memory, reversal learning and reward prediction." The areas also "share important properties such as dense innervation by dopaminergic fibres and connectivity patterns with multiple sensory input, limbic and motor output regions." What that means is that the NCL and PFC are both packed with neurons, or nerve cells, that respond to the crucial neurotransmitter dopamine. Its neurons are also connected to the parts of the brain that handle memory, emotion, and body movements. The PFC and NCL are brain command centers, synthesizing information from a vast array of inputs and outputs.

Testing Crows' Ability to Reason

Given that the NCL is the seat of crow intelligence, the researchers decided to see whether they could actually watch in real time as a crow figured out a puzzle. They used crows that had been raised in captivity, and trained to do a test kind of like the Sesame Street "which one doesn't belong?" quiz. The crows had to identify whether two images were different or the same.

First, the researchers put electrodes over the crows' NCL, to watch each neuron firing. Then they would present the crow with an image. Next, the crow would be prompted to choose an image that matched or didn't match that image (they had already been trained to do this with a sound or sign that either meant "match" or "don't match"). Finally, the crow would be presented with two images and have to choose the matching or not matching one.

This is a test that requires abstract reasoning, because the images change all the time and the crows have to apply the abstract idea of "match" or "not match" to a variety of inputs. In addition, this test reveals that the researchers defined intelligence as an ability to do abstract reasoning. Obviously there are many ways to define intelligence, and this is simply one way to do it.

What the researchers found was pretty amazing. They identified what they call "abstract rule neurons" which governed which answer the crows would give. Basically, the birds' brains assigned one rule (match) to one neuron, then the other rule (don't match) to another neuron. When the crows correctly matched an image, the match rule neuron would fire. When the crow gave an incorrect answer, or became confused, the abstract rule neuron fired only very weakly.

Veit and Nieder concluded that this was strong evidence that crows' brains have developed to handle abstract rules, which is why the birds are good at learning and responding to a variety of situations in a flexible way. They note that "the ability to guide behavior by general rules rather than by relying on fixed stimulus-response associations constitutes a survival advantage." This is the same survival advantage conferred on humans due to our intelligence. But our intelligence occupies a very different structure in our brains.

Alien Intelligence on Earth

What this experiment suggests is that two dramatically different species might have similar abstract reasoning abilities — even if their brains are completely unlike each other. If we imagine that intelligence can only dwell in a mammal-like brain, we may miss out on discovering smart life forms elsewhere. The crow brain may be the first truly alien intelligence we've been able to study.

The crow brain may also help us better understand what's required to build an artificial intelligence, too. We can look at what the crow and human brain share in common, and speculate about what it might take to create an intelligence that resides in a non-brain structure. As I mentioned earlier, both the PFC and NCL contain many neurons connected to other parts of the brain, and they work a lot with the neurotransmitter dopamine. These regions also appear to deal in abstract rules.

Most of all, we can find hope in the idea that intelligence isn't just a quirk of one type of brain. Many kinds of brains can become intelligent. We are not alone.

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Crazy ants vs. Fire ants. Ant chemical warfare..

Crazy Ants Dominate Fire Ants By Neutralizing Their Venom

AUSTIN, Texas — Invasive “crazy ants” are rapidly displacing fire ants in areas across the southeastern U.S. by secreting a compound that neutralizes fire ant venom, according to a University of Texas at Austin study published this week in the journal Science Express. It’s the first known example of an insect with the ability to detoxify another insect’s venom.

The crazy ant invasion is the latest in a series of ant invasions from the southern hemisphere and, like its predecessors, will likely have dramatic effects on the region’s ecosystems.

Known for their painful stings on humans and other animals, fire ants dominate most ant species by dabbing them with powerful, usually fatal venom. A topical insecticide, the venom is two to three times as toxic as DDT on a per weight basis.

When a crazy ant is smeared with the venom, however, it begins an elaborate detoxification procedure, described for the first time in this study. The exposed crazy ant secretes formic acid from a specialized gland at the tip of its abdomen, transfers it to its mouth and then smears it on its body.

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In lab experiments, exposed crazy ants that were allowed to detoxify themselves had a 98 percent survival rate. This chemical counter-weapon makes crazy ants nearly invincible in skirmishes with fire ants over food resources and nesting sites.

“As this plays out, unless something new and different happens, crazy ants are going to displace fire ants from much of the southeastern U.S. and become the new ecologically dominant invasive ant species,” said Ed LeBrun, a research associate with the Texas invasive species research program at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory in UT Austin’s College of Natural Sciences.

Last year, the researchers reported that where crazy ants take hold, the numbers and types of arthropods — insects, spiders, centipedes and crustaceans — decrease, which is likely to have ripple effects on ecosystems by reducing food sources for birds, reptiles and other animals. They also nest in people’s homes and damage electrical equipment.

LeBrun described watching a battle for food between red fire ants and crazy ants along the boundary between their two populations at a Texas field site. The fire ants found a dead cricket first and were guarding it in large numbers. Usually when fire ants amass around a food resource, other ants stay clear for fear of their deadly venom.

“The crazy ants charged into the fire ants, spraying venom,” said LeBrun. “When the crazy ants were dabbed with fire ant venom, they would go off and do this odd behavior where they would curl up their gaster [an ant’s modified abdomen] and touch their mouths.”

It was then that LeBrun first suspected the ants were somehow detoxifying the fire ant venom. Experiments back at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory in Austin helped him and his colleagues identify the detoxification agent and measure its effectiveness.

To test the effectiveness of the formic acid, researchers sealed the glands of crazy ants with nail polish and put them in vials with red fire ants. Without the ability to apply the detoxifying compound to themselves, about half of the crazy ants dabbed with fire ant venom died. Among a control group of crazy ants with unsealed glands, on the other hand, 98 percent survived.

Crazy ants and red fire ants are both native to northern Argentina and southern Brazil, where their ranges have overlapped for a very long time. The researchers suggest this newly discovered detoxification behavior is the result of an ancient evolutionary arms race.

It’s still not clear how formic acid renders imported fire ant venom nontoxic. One possibility is that it prevents the venom from penetrating the outer layers of a crazy ant’s exoskeleton.

Apart from human intervention, said LeBrun, the only thing stopping the relentless march of the crazy ants will be natural factors, such as arid soils or severe freezes, that will be too harsh for them to survive. Like the fire ants before them, their range will ultimately be determined by geology and climate.

There is one bright spot for humans. Unlike fire ants, colonies of crazy ants spread very slowly — about 600 feet per year. The only way they can spread long distances is when transported by people in potted plants and recreational vehicles. LeBrun suggested that people not buy plants if they see ants nesting in the pots and that if they live in areas already invaded by crazy ants, they check for stowaways when they move homes or travel long distance.

“If you have an RV, inspect the campgrounds you visit before parking for the night,” said LeBrun. “If you live in infested areas, don’t store food in your vehicles and consider treating your camper with insecticides several days before a trip. Consult with a pest control professional as to the best products to use. Not storing food in any vehicle parked in an infested area is also a good idea.”

Someone who knows twitter needs to tweet this to Adam Corolla, so he can enhance his grand plan for a phalanx of attack crows.

Basically a murder of trained crows who will protect him from muggers and attack people who piss him off.

NSFW occasional language

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Full clip here (embedding disabled!!!) Just funny!

http://youtu.be/OWAQcsMstCc

That crow shit, wow. That's some good shit. Interesting.

Reality turns out to be sort of boring...

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Scientists have solved the mystery of the "jelly doughnut" rock on Mars that appeared to come out of nowhere.

NASA said Friday that a wheel of the rover Opportunity broke it off a larger rock and then kicked it into the field of view.

The Internet was abuzz last month when the space agency released side-by-side images of the same patch of ground. Only one image showed the rock, which was white around the outside and dark red in the middle, and less than 2 inches wide.

Scientists had suspected that one of Opportunity's wheels kicked the rock as it drove. They received confirmation after analyzing recent images of the original piece of rock.

Opportunity recently celebrated 10 years on Mars. Its twin Spirit stopped communicating in 2010.

EDIT: I quoted ****in' Yahoo here, but I'll link to NASA, thankyouverymuch.

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/febru...ughnut-riddle/

This is pretty fantastic.

http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-conte...ry-537x329.jpg

DIY Solar Pocket Factory Machine Can Print a Solar Panel Every 15 Seconds!

Inventors Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein are looking to revolutionize the business of small-scale solar panels with The Solar Pocket Factory, a backyard photovoltaic panel printing system. Successfully funded by a Kickstarter campaign, the two have placed themselves at the forefront of the micro solar movement, which aims to cheaply and quickly produce small PV panels.

Enthusiastic about all things solar, inventors Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein have built everything from lights to USB distribution grids. Through the process of designing and manufacturing their products, they found that the micro solar panels they used to power their devices were brittle, expensive, and poorly made. Taking matters into their own hands, they traveled the world and spent months researching current models. They found that half of the cost of conventional panels lay in their assembly, as many parts of the body are pieced and soldered by hand. They also observed that 15% of panels contained flaws from imperfect soldering, and in many cases, the materials used were cut-rate and disintegrated over the period of a few years.

They figured that if they could automate the production, they could eliminate 25% of the price tag and reducing the number of defects. By using higher quality materials, they could also create panels that are more efficient, gather more light, and last longer. The result of their labor is The Solar Pocket Factory, a small automated machine that can churn out panels on a smaller scale than a sprawling factory. The device resembles a desktop 3D printer, and the team hopes to have a full working model completed by April. When finished, the Solar Pocket Factory will be able to churn out a panel every 15 seconds – that means that just one machine could potentially power 1 million devices each year! Viva la revolucion!

http://inhabitat.com/solar-pocket-fa...ry-15-seconds/

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http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/7qCN6b...ven2/tour.swf/

Is this old?

Vsauce does it again.

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Fur ****s sake!


http://cir.ca/news/sun-revolves-around-earth-survey

One quarter of Americans believe the sun revolves around the Earth
CULTURE - FEBRUARY 14, 2014 7:18PM

A survey conducted by the National Science Foundation published Feb. 14 found 1 in 4 Americans believe the sun revolves around the Earth and not the other way around.

1
The survey is prepared for the president and U.S. lawmakers by the NSF about every two years. The question, which can be found on page 406 of the 600 page report, was answered by 2,200 people in the U.S. in 2012. Only 1 in 3 respondents believe the U.S. should provide more funds toward science.
2
Based on previous reports, the U.S. has made little progress. In 2004, only 71% of the people answered the question correctly-- which was down slightly from 75% in 2001.
3
Americans are not alone in answering the question incorrectly, data available from 2005 for the European Union found only 66% answered the question correctly. Likewise, a 2004 survey of India found 70% were able to answer the question correctly.
4
While a recent Pew survey found one-third of Americans believe in evolution, the NSF had a different result. When asked if "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals" was true, only 48% of respondents said the statement was true.

^

You cant expect these yokels to know shit.

Not to quibble but the earth doesn't revolve around the sun.

Everything has mass and is impacted by gravity. The sun is moving. The earth revolves around the center of the mass of our Solar System. The Sun barrycenter I think its called or something like that.

Split hairs, much?

:)

Those idiots! The world revolves around Gaz!

This talk about smart crows reminds me of the old video where they have cars crack their nuts. It turns out there are lots of interesting videos on YouTube where crows show their intelligence with cracking nuts.

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Which just happens to be our Sun...

LMAO