There’re different ways to study anatomy, mine is not efficient but I love it.
A reminder that the inside of the cell is as beautiful as outer space.
Digital Renders by Evan Ingersoll & Gael McGill
Paintings by David Goodsell
When you broke but you woke
Wait… Guys what?
Is this what you guys think it means when GMO comes up in conversation?
Do you know what else is a GMO?
Dogs. Literally ALL dogs have had their genetics modified to make them more docile, loyal, trusting, energetic, obedient ect.
Ears of corn used to be the size of your thumb. Through selective ‘breeding’ we chose the strains of corn that were the biggest, fastest growing, most resilient ect. Ect.
THAT is a GMO. I don’t know where the idea that genetic modification meant they’re injecting your food stuffs with chemicals to change its DNA. That’s not how it works.
However, they ARE spraying your veggies with pesticides and that is something you should be worried about.
Companies like Monsanto are evil. But not because they are breeding crops to feed more people. But because they’re monopolizing the farming market, sueing farmers who share a geographic area and have some of the same strains of crops in their fields because of unavoidable cross pollination and lying about their business practices.
bolded.
The Gem-Like Turquoise Ice Found on Lake Baikal
Russian photographer Alexey Trofimov calls Lake Baikal “the gem that does not need to be cut.” It’s the oldest, largest, deepest, and clearest freshwater lake in the world. Every winter, as temperatures plummet to well below zero, the crystal clear lake water forms brilliant gem-like ice that glimmers in the sunlight.
The beautiful structures are formed as the lake freezes unevenly across its surface, causing some blocks to be pushed up onto the surface of the frozen lake. Trofimov has made a number of trips out to the lake to capture these “gems” in all their beauty.
Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor
New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.
What is the genetic mutation
“Originally, we all had brown eyes,” said Professor Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. “But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a "switch,” which literally “turned off” the ability to produce brown eyes.“ The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives colour to our hair, eyes and skin. The "switch,” which is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 does not, however, turn off the gene entirely, but rather limits its action to reducing the production of melanin in the iris — effectively “diluting” brown eyes to blue. The switch’s effect on OCA2 is very specific therefore. If the OCA2 gene had been completely destroyed or turned off, human beings would be without melanin in their hair, eyes or skin colour — a condition known as albinism.
Limited genetic variation
Variation in the colour of the eyes from brown to green can all be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes. “From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” says Professor Eiberg. “They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.” Brown-eyed individuals, by contrast, have considerable individual variation in the area of their DNA that controls melanin production.
Professor Eiberg and his team examined mitochondrial DNA and compared the eye colour of blue-eyed individuals in countries as diverse as Jordan, Denmark and Turkey. His findings are the latest in a decade of genetic research, which began in 1996, when Professor Eiberg first implicated the OCA2 gene as being responsible for eye colour.
Nature shuffles our genes
The mutation of brown eyes to blue represents neither a positive nor a negative mutation. It is one of several mutations such as hair colour, baldness, freckles and beauty spots, which neither increases nor reduces a human’s chance of survival. As Professor Eiberg says, “it simply shows that nature is constantly shuffling the human genome, creating a genetic cocktail of human chromosomes and trying out different changes as it does so.”
Please do not hate me for posting this - but phage and bacterial pick up lines just get me every time!
Last year, people came up with some pretty great #ScienceValentines - let’s keep that rolling! How would you express your love for that special scientist in your life? Tweet @nprscience or message me, and I’ll collect the best ones.
Science themed gifts
Image sources: ‘zombie’ plant growing kit, Cookie cutters, mini beaker stamps, mushroom growing kit, 3d printing pen, Opticks journal, Krebs cycle lunch bag, Sucrose and sodium chloride jars, fold out periodic table pen, and benzene structure stamp.
buy me all of these, please and thank you <3
Twilight phenomena
Twilight phenomenon is produced when unburned particles of missile or rocket propellant and water left in the vapor trail of a launch vehicle condenses, freezes and then expands in the less dense upper atmosphere. The exhaust plume, which is suspended against a dark sky is then illuminated by reflective high altitude sunlight, which produces a spectacular, colorful effect when seen at ground level. The phenomenon typically occurs with launches that take place either 30 to 60 minutes before sunrise or after sunset when a booster rocket or missile rises out of the darkness and into a sunlit area, relative to an observer’s perspective on the ground.
This phenomenon usually produces a cloud of green, blue, white and rose colored hues which takes on a corkscrew appearance as it is whipped around by wind currents. It is seen within two to three minutes after a launch has occurred. Depending on weather conditions, it could remain in the sky for up to half an hour before dispersing.
Pre-dawn launches are probably less spectacular than their dusk counterparts. During dusk launches, the sunlight shines through the exhaust plume. Pre-dawn launches, on the other hand, produce a more subtle display because the sunlight directly reflects off the plume.
The Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness*
On this day of July 7, 2012, a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge to reassess the neurobiological substrates of conscious experience and related behaviors in human and non-human animals. While comparative research on this topic is naturally hampered by the inability of non-human animals, and often humans, to clearly and readily communicate about their internal states, the following observations can be stated unequivocally:
- The field of Consciousness research is rapidly evolving. Abundant new techniques and strategies for human and non-human animal research have been developed. Consequently, more data is becoming readily available, and this calls for a periodic reevaluation of previously held preconceptions in this field. Studies of non-human animals have shown that homologous brain circuits correlated with conscious experience and perception can be selectively facilitated and disrupted to assess whether they are in fact necessary for those experiences. Moreover, in humans, new non-invasive techniques are readily available to survey the correlates of consciousness.
- The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures. In fact, subcortical neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals. Artificial arousal of the same brain regions generates corresponding behavior and feeling states in both humans and non-human animals. Wherever in the brain one evokes instinctual emotional behaviors in non-human animals, many of the ensuing behaviors are consistent with experienced feeling states, including those internal states that are rewarding and punishing. Deep brain stimulation of these systems in humans can also generate similar affective states. Systems associated with affect are concentrated in subcortical regions where neural homologies abound. Young human and non-human animals without neocroticies retain these brain-mind functions. Furthermore, neural circuits supporting behavioral/electrophysiological states of attentiveness, sleep and decision making appear to have arisen in evolution as early as the invertebrate radiation, being evident in insects and cephalopod molluscks (e.g., octopus).
- Birds appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness. Evidence of near human-like levels of consciousness has been most dramatically observed in African grey parrots. Mammalian and avian emotional networks and cognitive microcircuitries appear to be far more homologous than previously thought. Moreover, certain species of birds have been found to exhibit neural sleep patterns similar to those of mammals, including REM sleep and, as was demonstrated in zebra finches, neurophysiological patterns, previously thought to require a mammalian neocortex. Magpies in particular have been shown to exhibit striking similarities to humans, great apes, dolphins, and elephants in studies of mirror self-recognition.
- In humans, the effect of certain hallucinogens appears to be associated with a disruption in cortical feedforward and feedback processing. Pharmacological interventions in non-human animals with compounds known to affect conscious behavior in humans can lead to similar perturbations in behavior in non-human animals. In humans, there is evidence to suggest that awareness is correlated with cortical activity, which does not exclude possible contributions by subcortical or early cortical processing, as in visual awareness. Evidence that human animal emotional feelings arise from homologous subcortical brain networks provide compelling evidence for evolutionarily shared primal affective qualia.
We declare the following “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”
* The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness was written by Philip Low and edited by Jaak Panksepp, Diana Reiss, David Edelman, Bruno Van Swinderen, Philip Low and Christof Koch. The Declaration was publicly proclaimed in Cambridge, UK, on July 7, 2012, at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals, at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, by Low, Edelman and Koch. The Declaration was signed by the conference participants that very evening, in the presence of Stephen Hawking, in the Balfour Room at the Hotel du Vin in Cambridge, UK. The signing ceremony was memorialized by CBS 60 Minutes.
In lay terms:
Comparative research in animals is extremely difficult because we do not know what the animals are thinking and what they are feeling. Even so, the following observations can be stated:
- The field studying non-human consciousness is growing thanks to increased technological advances along with increasing understanding of animal behavior, neuroanatomy, and the functions of neuroanatomical structures and neurochemicals. There is previous research on that have established the relationship between particular neural structures with specific behaviors that can be generalized across similar species, making comparative research a bit easier.
- Emotions are not confined to particular neural structures. There’s no one structure for sadness, happiness, anger, etc. It seems that subcortical features are more influential in facilitating and regulating emotions. Studies on deep brain simulations and artificial arousal suggest the there are similar subcortical pathways that regulate emotions that can be seen across taxa.
- Birds give the most striking example of parallel evolution for consciousness. The brains of birds are extremely different from mammals, yet they exhibit near human-like levels of consciousness. (if you’re interested, you should definitely read more on birds because their neuroanatomy is extremely interesting! and their cognition is amazing! parallel evolution is so cool).
- Certain drugs and hallucinogens influence subcortical pathways rather than just neural structures. This suggest that while awareness is related to cortical activity, does not exclude other subcortical influences. These subcortical pathways most likely play a major role in species specific qualia.
So they are declaring that the absence of a neocortex (think birds and insects) does not mean that the animal may not have any levels of consciousness. And that through convergent evolution, animals have developed particular cortical and subcortical structures and pathways that are tailored for their perceptions (umwelt). Also, humans are not the only ones with our particular subcortical pathways that may influence consciousness — it is found in other animals including all mammals and birds along with octopuses.
