Drip by Takashi Masubuchi
By using petroleum based paint Takashi Masubuchi is able to slowly apply small drops of the acidic paint to gradually eat through a huge styrofoam cube. The result is a magnificently bizarre spectacle that feels almost organic and is kind of disturbing to look at.
Arghhhhhhhh.
Badfuckingass.
(via themamafox)
Skinny Circuits
Rubbed on like a temporary tattoo these ultra-thin electronics bend and stretch with the skin. Their development paves the way for sensors that monitor heart and brain activity to take the place of bulky equipment and taped-on electrodes. Electronic components shrunk to the size of tiny bumps on the skin are connected with serpentine wires that meander like rivers, straightening rather than snapping when stretched. The whole thing is mounted on a rubbery sheet that mimics the elastic properties of skin. Known as epidermal electronics, the technology can even control computer games from voice commands. Worn on the gamer’s throat, the patches detect the electrical charges associated with the muscle movements of speech. The potential applications of linking electronics and biology in this way seem boundless.
Written by Mick Warwicker
(via natkyo)
If we were as close to the Orion Nebula as the nearest star is to us, it would be so bright that we wouldn’t be aware of the dark sky. We wouldn’t see the other stars, we would almost not be aware of other galaxies just because it would be so bright. Our whole world would be the Orion Nebula and the sun.
—The Universe, Season 2 Episode 14: Nebulae
(via 15minutesofpain)
Antarctic icefishes have translucent bodies and blood
The blood of an icefish isn’t red. Instead, its blood runs white.
Kristin O’Brien is a biologist at University of Alaska Fairbanks, who studies an unusual family of fishes called icefishes. They’re found only in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. They are unique because they are the only vertebrates in the world that lack the oxygen-binding protein hemoglobin, which is the protein that transports oxygen throughout the body and gives blood its red color. In other words, the blood of an icefish isn’t red. Instead, its blood runs a cloudy white. “I think these animals are among the most fascinating creatures on Earth,” Dr. O’Brien said
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
(via blamoscience)
thelefthandedwifeisundercover:
Got this from a Neil Gaiman tweet: “I thought I made it up.”
This is unbearably cool.
(via nolongerwtfox-deact)
I just read that link. That’s awful - I’d always assumed Lacks volunteered her cells.
nope! I blogged about this a while back, here’s my longer thoughts on Henrietta lacks
I read this book this past semester, it’s an important story to be told about race, class, gender and science in our country.
From it’s Amazon page:
From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive—even thrive—in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution—and her cells’ strange survival—left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? —Tom Nissley
Just to elaborate on the story
- At the time blacks were in separate hospital wards. She could only afford to be treated at the free clinic colored ward in her home town.
- The ward that treated her mis-diagnosed her and radiated her insides to the point that it was visible to her outsides.
- Because she was an uneducated African American woman, no one really bothered to explain to her what the treatments were doing to her
- After a while, the hospital refused to give her pain pills because she the pain she was in required too many. They also refused to give her bloog transfusions so she had to bring a truck full of family members each time she needed new blood.
- I want to impress upon the fact that the scientist who used her cells got them for free. and her cells created a multi million dollar industry. Her family, TO THIS DAY continues to live in poverty. Her daughter is quoted to say that while she isn’t looking for a handout or money, It’d be nice if her struggling family didn’t have to pay for the expensive medicine her mothers cells helped to create
The most aggravating part of this story is that somehow people, when given all these facts, still believe that race & class had nothing to do with how Lacks was treated. That we can’t be mad at the scientists. That medicine and testing is more important that human dignity. All i want to know is why did history try so hard to hide the fact that the cells that lead to a scientific breakthrough belong to a black woman. So many other people are glorified in history for their role in revolutionizing medicine. But nothing is said when one of the most important mothers of modern medicine happens to also be black…
no one likes asking the hard questions because we don’t like being honest about the answers…
If i haven’t spoiled the book for you already, go out and read it!
These cats have a mutation that means the enzyme responsible for melanin (pigment) production denatures (lose its shape and consequently its function) at the normal core body temperature. Thus pigment is only produced in the fur on the cooler areas of the cat’s body - its tail, its extremities, its ears, and its nose, because of the cool air passing through the nasal passages.
(via englishwood)
stuff like this makes me feel physically ill in the most epic possible way. like i just ate a fucking lion or something.
(via spillingblood)
(via commanderbond)
Here’s a meal that’s as fun to make as it is easy: eggs in purgatory. It’s pretty much just eggs cooked in a mess of tomato, olive oil, garlic, and basil.
But don’t let the simplicity of the dish fool you. As its epically awesome name suggests, eggs in purgatory is epically delicious….
This blog is so deeply awesome. DELICIOUS AND SCIENCEY.
This is absolutely disgusting. Don’t hate on others belief. I am absolutely shocked that this came up on my dash and am utterly heartbroken that someone went to all the effort of creating this image.
This isn’t hating on beliefs. In ALL OTHER ASPECTS OF LIFE, truth seeking is accepted and normal…yet if we apply the same logic to religion, it is somehow considered hate. By this logic, suggesting that the earth isn’t 6 thousand years old is hating on Fundamentalist Christians. Study after study have PROVED that prayer is ineffective. If finding out that something you believe in or support offends you, you should probably take a good, hard look at yourself.
This image doesn’t say a single thing about religious people. It doesn’t call Christians bad, evil, mean, horrible, stupid, etc. It it not offensive at all, nor is it hateful.
Frankly, I am sick of seeing anything that challenges the idea of religion being labeled as such. We are allowed to challenge each other’s political, social, and philosophical ideas. Religion shouldn’t be exempt from this. Imagine what would have happened to this world if scientists stopped researching certain things in the name of “not being offensive to the beliefs of others”.
Can we stop holding religion to some crazy standard and just treat it like another belief system? Something that SHOULD be challenged and explored so long as one is not personally attacking those who believe in it.
As for those “offensive” scientific studies proving that prayer does not work
Power of prayer flunks an unusual test - Health - Heart health …
Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer - New …
Largest Study of Third-Party Prayer Suggests Such Prayer Not …
BBC NEWS | Health | ‘No health benefit’ from prayer
Tumblr. If the truth is offensive to you, you are doing it wrong. If you are so obsessed with your belief system that you attack ANYBODY who disagrees with you, you are doing it wrong.
I couldn’t have said this any better, kudo’s to stickingupforsammy. I’ve had this fight constantly with people.
(via hugyoursadist-deactivated201107)
(by we had the stars)
It’s not a controversy.
Why evolution is not a controversy among scientists and why it shouldn’t be taught as if it is.
Source: youtube.com
One of the greatest ownings, by perhaps the most apathetic narrator I’ve ever heard.
(via justintheallan)
Science Valentines! So cute.
