How Breathing Works
Nirvair Kaur examines our most basic living function, and how we do it without thinking. Breathing is about much more than just getting oxygen and ridding our blood of carbon dioxide. A fascinating look at the air in there.
(by TEDEducation)
VERY GOOD!!! :)
Via It's Okay To Be Smart
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
I’ll take my Cosmos “a la mode”.
(Source: bouncingdodecahedrons)
Via It's Okay To Be Smart
A seven-times magnified view of the flow patterns of dyes as they move through a microfluidic device.
Image by Dr. Greg Cooksey, National Institute of Standards and Technology.
A stained section of a rat brain at 600-times magnification.
Image by Thomas J. Deerinck, University of California at San Diego.
Here are the four most common theories to explain the mysterious involuntary action experienced by literally everyone in the world:
The physiological theory: Our bodies are triggered to yawn to draw in more oxygen or release more carbon dioxide. Studies show that during normal, at-rest breathing, very little lung capacity is actually used; just the air sacs known as alveoli. If these alveoli are not receiving fresh oxygen, the lungs will stiffen, which triggers the brain to induce a sigh or a yawn to bring fresh air in.- The evolutionary theory: Some believe that yawning was a tool used by ancestors to show their teeth and intimidate others, or was used as a sign that it was time to switch activities.
- The brain-cooling theory: A recent study has shown that people are more likely to yawn in situations where their brain may be warmer than normal. Therefore, yawning may have been an action developed to keep us cool and alert.
Historic Supercomputer is Retired
A celebration at Sandia’s Computer Science Research Institute wrote finis to Red Storm, the Sandia-designed and Cray Inc.-built supercomputer, one of the most influential machines of its era, with 124 descendants at 70 sites around the world.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Historic-Supercomputer-is-Retired-062812.aspx?xmlmenuid=51
DNA from Cavemen Bones Unlock Pieces of Oldest Human Genome to Date
About 7,000 years ago, high in Spain’s northern Cantabrian mountains, a pair of weary hunters took refuge in a deep cavern, never to emerge again. Until 2006, that is, when these early humans were uncovered by cave explorers.
Dating from pre-agricultural Europe, these remains predate Ötzi the Iceman by nearly two millenia. Recently, scientists were able to piece together about 1% of each caveman’s genome, using techniques right out of CSI: Iceman.
The DNA of these early Iberians does not appear related to modern Spanish and Portuguese, but rather more closely related to Northern Europeans. Certain parts of their DNA show that early Europeans from Poland and Lithuania were brethren of those as far away as Spain … truly nomadic hunter-gatherers!
These represent the earliest genome sequences of modern humans. The percentage of the genome that they sequence should go up as the team continues its work, and we’ll know even more about how the earliest humans in Europe contributed to the world we see today.
(↬ LiveScience)
Northern Lights From Balloon
As part of Project Aether Alaska, watch as these lucky dogs send a weather balloon up to the edge of space, with HD cameras attached, to get a nearly “eye-level” view of the aurora borealis. It’s a good lesson in how these projects are carried out, how difficult they are, and what the beautiful images can teach us.
(by 1veritasium, who I envy for getting to do this)
Via It's Okay To Be Smart
First MRI birth video reveals what childbirth looks like from the inside
(CBS News) Recently released video of a woman giving birth is providing people with their first look at what childbirth looks like from the inside.
Using an cinematical MRI, which takes multiple images of the same body part and then stitches them together to create a movie, German scientists at the Charite University Hospital in Berlin were able to create the first film to show what the interior of the birthing process looks like.
While images of the birth and the study were previously published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and the birth occurred in November 2011, the video wasn’t available for public viewing until today.
Because researchers used an MRI, which is not known to omit ionizing radiation, there was not the same radiation risk for the mother or fetus compared with other scans.
NewScientist reports that the video will give researchers more information about the fetus as it travels through the birth canal. It shows the fetus’ location in regards to the pelvis, and can help doctors learn more about how to deliver and manage labor. For example, videos like this may be able to show doctors when a fetus will need to be delivered by cesarean delivery well before it may be too late. Researchers also hope that this method can be used to make real-time videos that can instruct others through virtual reality about safe birthing methods.
Via I Never Metatarsal I Didn't Like
Stanford Univ. scientists have breathed new life into the nickel-iron battery, a rechargeable technology developed by Thomas Edison more than a century ago.
Designed in the early 1900s to power electric vehicles, the Edison battery largely went out of favor in the mid-1970s. Today only a handful…
Blood From A Stone
Doesn’t that look delicious? No? Where you’re clearly not from Chile. This is Pyura chilensis, a “sea squirt” invertebrate that resides inside of a stone-like outer shell, and a delicacy along certain parts of the South American Pacific coast. Pyura feeds by filtering algae out of seawater, has both male and female gonads, can mate with itself in isolation, and whose meat contains 10 million times the concentration of the rare element vanadium as the ocean around it (maybe as a toxin? Maybe some new chemistry we don’t understand?).
Life doesn’t always look or act how you expect it to, eh?
Nanosized Capsules Treat Disease with DNA
Scientists are reporting an advance toward treating disease with minute capsules containing not drugs — but the DNA and other biological machinery for making the drug. In an article in ACS’ journal Nano Letters, they describe engineering micro- and nanosized capsules that contain the genetically coded instructions, plus the read-out gear and assembly line for protein synthesis that can be switched on with an external signal.
Image: ACS
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Nano-Sized-Capsules-Hold-to-Building-Drugs-in-the-Body-062812.aspx
Univ. of British Columbia scientists, in collaboration with an industry partner, have successfully reversed diabetes in mice using stem cells, paving the way for a breakthrough treatment for the disease.
The research by Timothy Kieffer, a professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological…
Get to Know Your Embryology: Neuroembryology.
The forebrain (prosencephalon) further divides into the telencephalon and diencephalon, and the hindbrain (rhombencephalon) further divides into the metencephalon and and myelencephalon during the 5th week of embryological development. These four vesicles and the midbrain (mesencephalon) are lined by neural tissue bordering fluid-filled cavities known as ventricles.
About me
A Science Blog for us, Science lovers :)My name is Panagiotis, I am 16, I love Internet and science, and I come from Cyprus (another beautiful GREEK island :) )
