Caffeine
Via: Homeowners Insurance
The biology teacher
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Hermit crabs will use whatever shell they can find, including this blown glass shell by robert dugrenier.
(via ackerfors)
There are 73 known mangrove species. The findings suggest that the trees shield the coastline by reducing the height and energy of ocean waves and offer hard evidence that deforestation could result in increased coastal damage from storms.”
A fifth of the world’s mangrove ecosystems have been lost since 1980. (Source)
(via alecologia)
Mimiviruses } James L. Van Etten, American Scientist
Most giant viruses have only been discovered and characterized in the past few years. There are several reasons why these striking biological entities remained undetected for so long. Among the most consequential is that the classic tool for isolating virus particles is filtration through filters with pores of 200 nanometers. With viruses all but defined as replicating particles that occur in the filtrate of this treatment, giant viruses were undetected over generations of virology research. (Mimivirus disrupted this evasion tactic by being so large it was visible under a light microscope.)
(via microculture)
Saw this, thought it was cute, thought I’d share a fact about this thing so that it fits in with the rest of my blog.
For the majority of the year (if this is an area not permanently covered in snow) this wee mustelid is in fact brown in color and it’s fur only changes to white for the winter months.
(Source: letmetastey0u)
Like humans, Dogs too have blood types. In fact, 8 to 12 have been recognized by scientists under a DEA (Dog Erythrocyte Antigen) System.
Cats however, have A, B and AB blood groups, with A being the most common in Short-Haired breeds.
X-ray of a gravid kiwi. Kiwis are known to lay the largest eggs relative to their body size of any living bird.
Bone Clones Osteological Reproductions
As women get more education, childhood mortality declines
Health researchers have found that, across the world, women’s education and declining child mortality rates correlate strongly. Education accounts for a massive 51% of global reduced mortality, according to the study.
Award for the Coolest Science Story I Have Read This Week. And of course, Ed Yong wrote it.
Humans have a magnetic sensor in our eyes, but can we detect magnetic fields?
A short summary: Birds have long been known to use magnetic fields to navigate immense distances across the Earth. They can likely see the magnetic patterns that surround the globe using special proteins in their eyes called cryptochromes. It turns out that humans (and many other animals) express these proteins, too. We just don’t know what they do in our bodies.
Well, someone decided to take some fruit flies (who are known to sense magnetic fields as birds do) and delete their own version of cryptochromes, leaving them without the protein and unable to sense magnetism. When that protein was replaced by the human cryptochrome, the flies could sense magnetic fields again. So our protein can sense magnetic fields, in a fly. This doesn’t tell us much about what it does in our bodies, though.
Decades ago, there was fresh interest in whether humans could sense these same magnetic influences, but a few inconclusive and controversial studies shunned magnetic biology to the fringes of accepted science. We certainly don’t use it for navigation, as Robert Krulwich discussed when showing that people are useless blind direction finders, so maybe it’s just an artifact of evolution? Whatever the case, it’s there, and hopefully this new finding in flies stimulates someone to keep asking the question …
(via Discover Magazine)
The faith healers who claim they can cure cancer
A group of faith healers who claim they have miracle cures for cancer and HIV have been condemned as “irresponsible, even criminal” by a professor of complementary medicine, following a BBC Newsnight investigation.
The group of healers, collectively known as ThetaHealing, claim that their technique - which focuses on thought and prayer - can teach people to use their natural intuition and “brain wave cycle” to “create instantaneous physical and emotional healing.”
ThetaHealing have about 600 practitioners in the UK who charge up to £100 per session.
But the healers’ claims have been called “criminal” and “not supported by any kind of evidence” by Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, whose unit not only carry out their own studies but also assess those done by other researchers.
Newsnight recorded Warrington-based ThetaHealing practitioner Jenny Johnstone - who charges £30 for a telephone call or £400 for a course - making a number of claims about the technique, including:
“There was a baby I worked on over the telephone and from one day to the next the cancer in his stomach had just disappeared.”
Professor Ernst says such claims are “irresponsible, even criminal”.
He believes that the ThetaHealing group try to distinguish themselves from the other 20,000 faith healers in the UK by applying a “veneer of science”, but says “it’s still nonsense”.
