s00005aa55yah:

let my people go

(via technicolorrelays)

thesciencellama:

Velvet Worm - Slime Guns

The velvet worm - among the phylum, Onychophora - hunts by shooting fast drying adhesive at its prey and yes, I know what you’re thinking. The segmented worm-like organism can range from 0.5 to 20cm long and slime glands are located in the center region of the body making up about 11% of the total body weight in slime which is made mostly of water and some proteins.

In order to detect prey it senses slight changes in air currents with bumps on its skin and chemical sensors on its antennae to let them essentially taste something to determine if its food. When a prey item is eventually encountered, the slime is forcefully squirted through oral papillae near the head and launched up to 30cm in a sort of spray-and-pray manner. Once the slime contacts the victim, it quickly dries ensnaring it, where now the worm then seeks to eat the organism by injecting its saliva and digestive enzymes turning the innards into a slurpee. Mmm delicious.

The velvet worm are primarily nocturnal ambush predators and their senses and locomotion allow them to hunt. They move silently and fluidly with pneumatically inflated sets of valves to inflate/deflate their legs, meaning they don’t really rely on muscles for movement and is why it looks so cool as they glide along the ground. Another awesome thing about them is they have a tubular heart that extends almost the entire length of the body creating an open circulatory system.

Here is a diagram of the velvet worm anatomy

Video source

(via blamoscience)

scienceyoucanlove:

BIG NEWS: The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that human genes cannot be patented. This means previous U.S. patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which cause breast cancer when mutated, will be discarded, and diagnostic tests will become cheaper and more accessible. However the court ruled that synthetic DNA sequences could potentially be patented.

Read more: http://bit.ly/196Q6QK via The Scientist 

yay! Source

(via anthrocentric)

theguntogirl:

breakfastatbequiettiffany:

ricksanscrotum:

saying that evolution is a theory and it hasn’t really been proven yet is sort of like saying gravity is a theory and it hasn’t really been proven yet

Objects fall because they refuse to raise themselves up to the power of Christ 

amen

(via vinny-and-the-ghostbutt)

drarna:

the reason why people are so hard to read is because they are composed of the letters a, t, c, and g in random sequences and as im sure you know, that doesn’t spell anything

(via essenceofdaylight)

withthedevilonmyback:

how to pick up patrick stump by me

(via thefutureoffalloutboystartsnow)

nybg:

fastcompany:

Plastics like styrofoam currently take up between 25%-30% of our landfill space, and a single cubic foot of styrofoam has the same energy content as about one and a half liters of gasoline. 

College pals Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre established Ecovative, which grows cost-effective alternatives to plastic insulation and packaging. While they were students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Bayer and McIntyre experimented with mycelium, the network of vegetative filaments in mushrooms, and realized that it could be used to form incredibly strong bonds. Essentially, the substance functions like a glue that you can grow and use to form agricultural byproducts like plant stalks and seed husks into natural alternatives to styrofoam packaging and insulation. 

Our “mushroom guy” Roy Halling brought me samples of this stuff a few months back when a story about an artist using mycelium to make furniture was making the Tumblr rounds. It feels a little funny, but is unquestionably strong and versatile and a fantastic way forward towards replacing plastics. ~AR

(via theolduvaigorge)

jtotheizzoe:

climateadaptation:

These channels are failing the spirit of conservationism and education. They are failing inspiring awe in young people. Failing much needed inspiration in a very confused and conflicted world.

These shows are failing their core values, their main purpose, which is leadership in environmentalism and cultural education. Far worse, they are failing millions of young people - millions - who look up to them.

Please join me in asking Discovery, Animal Planet, and the History Channels to stop, apologize, and correct.

That’s an important read up there, folks. These “reality” shows are feeding an outdated and unscientific view of predator species. These are channels founded on principles of education and conservation (TLC, of course, left the building years ago). Are they willing to sacrifice that for what appears to be gratuitous bloodsport?

Like any media, you can vote with your eyeballs. And if you support any kind of rights for wild animals and natural spaces, you can not support these programs. If the account above is true, shame on these networks.

It speaks to part of a larger issue with nature films. The amazing footage we see in shows like Africa, Planet Earth, and Frozen Planet is rarely the result of serendipity. It involves years of careful research and preparation to maximize the chances of capturing nature’s majesty on camera, and what is captured is highly edited to create story, drama and emotion. These are uniquely human interests, and nature doesn’t include them in her original script.

That’s not to say we are being fleeced all the time. People like Sir David Attenborough take these concerns very seriously, and constantly strive to find the balance between entertainment and true nature in every varying instance. What we watch is real. But is it REAL?

I wonder how many people realize that, for instance, the famous polar bear birth scene from Frozen Planet was filmed in a zoo? Disney’s adorable Chimpanzee movie was not a documentary, but rather spliced together to create an emotional tale of adoption. Jason Goldman put together a great collection of opinions on the matter.

How far can we take allowances to deliver good edutainment before we are delivering bad science? The “reality” shows surely fail the test. But the others? What do you think?

maybethings:

fenrislorsrai:

river-boy:

kitsunebaba:

g00kie-m0nster:

peacefulvibes:

stonefreedreamer:

This had nothing to do with smoking weed or getting high. This is about our earth. This is about our future. This is about the future of our race as humans. 

I am all for hemp. Hemp is the cure for so many things wrong in this world. Hemp can make such a difference!

kitsunebaba, look what appeared on my dash :D

 IT USES 5 TIMES LESS WATER THAN COTTON

AND PRODUCES LIKE 10 TIMES MORE

AND IT HAS TWO SEASONS IN ONE YEAR AND IT IS STRONGER

WHEN YOU MAKE IT INTO PAPER IT DOESN’T YELLOW

YOU CAN MAKE FREAKING CONCRETE OUT OF IT THAT GETS HARDER OVER TIME AND BREATHES SO IT DOESN’T CRACK

THE OIL IS SUPER GOOD FOR YOU

IT WAS THE ORIGINAL FUEL FOR CARS

YOU CANNOT GET HIGH FROM IT!!!! 

 THEY USED TO MAKE SAILS OUT OF IT

YOU CAN USE 80% OF IT FOR PAPER RATHER THEN 20-30% FOR TREES

IT WAS ONLY BOYCOTTED BECAUSE THE COTTON INDUSTRY WAS GOING DOWNHILL

I used to be so confused by the difference between marijuana and hemp because they’re both cannabis. Apparently, they are different species of the same plant genus, but hemp is bred for its industrial use and is grown in tall stalks to produce more fiber. Hemp has so little THC that you would have to smoke at least ten hemp cigarettes in a row to feel anything, and hemp also contains CBD which blocks the effects of THC. Marijuana is bred for its high THC content, obviously, and is allowed to grow bushy to produce more leaves and flowers.

It’s just like corn.  To the layperson, corn is well CORN.  But you have many different cultivars that look superficially similar, but have very different requirements for how to grow them and very different end uses.  You wouldn’t use popcorn to make chicha or cornmeal!  and if you’re growing it for silage, you’ll plant it and harvest it in a different way than you would if you were growing sweet corn for sale as whole ears.

So to layperson it seems like all cannabis cultivars will get you high because its the only one laypeople know anything about. Plus with the restrictions, the overall number of cultivars has been greatly reduced so the THC ones are the only common ones. If hemp was grown as a regular crop, you’d have loads and load of different cultivars, all bred and planted, to optimize different aspects.  and all the fiber focused ones would be VERY different because they’d be bred for longest fibers.  the majority of smokable marijuana is actually a DWARF variety of the plant! This is why the argument “well if people grew hemp, they’d hide marijuana in it” is silly. If the two cultivars hybridize, they totally ruin each other’s primary use! You’d get weak, shitty smokable variety AND an inferior, unsalable fiber crop. 

anyway, to the other uses.  One of its really AWESOME other uses is that it will take up HEAVY METALS from soil, including radioactive elements.  Normally that’s a really tedious process involving scraping all the topsoil off an area (which can make radioactive dust airborne…) and then burning it to try and extract the heavy metals.  Plant hemp, it uptakes it and stores it in the fiber.  You do have to do multiple crops, but you never actually strip the topsoil.  (plus hemp is a nitrogen fixing crop, so it’s like applying fertilizer!)

well then what the hell do you do with radioactive fibers?  Conveniently mixing hemp fiber into concrete with make it stronger and earthquake resistant.  You can also make it up to 1/3 lighter than you would with just concrete and rebar.  

How do you normally shield radioactive items? entombing it in concrete.  Make the core with radioactive hemp fiber, apply an outer sheathing with non-radioactive fiber to prevent direct contact or fragmenting into dust or coming into contact with ground water. (only a few inches is needed as a shield) Use it in something like skyscraper foundations or subway tunnels where it won’t be directly contacted by people very often.

So you can clean up many old industrial sites that are NOT currently safe AND use it to build infrastructure that’s extra strong and earthquake resistant. Or use it to extract radioactive waste from radioactive water.

It IS in use for that purpose within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.  And remember that earthquake resistant part? I can think of a country that has to remove a lot of radioactive waste from soil and water AND rebuild structures ravaged by an earthquake.

It does a LOT of cool things, but the possibilities with bioremediation are probably the absolutely coolest because there aren’t many other options in that area that are as efficient and cost effective.

I’mma learn today.

(Source: woodwose-radio, via technicolorrelays)