Rule #32

odditiesoflife:

Giant Pink Slugs on the Rampage

According to park rangers in New South Wales, Australia, dozens of giant, fluorescent pink slugs have been popping up on a mountaintop there. Hundreds of these eight-inch creatures have been spotted only on Mount Kaputar, a 5,000-foot peak in the Nandewar Range in northern New South Wales. Scientists believe the eye-catching organisms are survivors from an era when Australia was home to rainforests.

(via neil-gaiman)

kayolomayram:

jacobtheloofah:

pervertedhypocrisy:

SCIENCE

i’ve said it once and i’ll say it again: if you ever say you don’t like science, you just aren’t learning it right

SPECIAL BEAM CANNON

(Source: cineraria, via sarcastickd)

girlwhowaspoe:

Earth from a different angle.

(via followthattrail)

Gross? No this isn’t gross, what are you talking about.

(Source: means2anend, via dorkvader)

doctorwho:

Time Lord Man with two hearts survives double-sized attack

At first there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about the man who, in 2010, reported to a Verona, Italy emergency room. He was short of breath, sweating, and had low blood pressure – cardiovascular trouble, no doubt. E.R. doctors see similar symptoms all the time.

But this man was very different indeed. He had two hearts.

“We haven’t ever seen anything similar to this case before,” Dr. Giacomo Mugnai said in an email.

It turned out that a few years earlier, the man had undergone a procedure known as a heterotopic heart transplant. Unlike an orthotopic transplant, in which one organ is removed and another put in its place, a heterotopic transplant pairs a new organ with a diseased one.

“We see this in cardiac patients or kidney patients, sometimes,” explained Dr. Rade Vukmir, professor of emergency medicine at Temple University and a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. “Surgeons might leave a kidney in place if it’s too much trouble to take out, or if there is hope for recovery of a kidney, or a heart, after a period of time” of being helped by the new organ.

In the case of the ailing Italian, reported in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, the transplant team had mated his new heart with his malfunctioning old one. Chambers and blood vessels of the two hearts were married so that the new heart could support the old one…. 

Researchers have discovered a new species of frog in Borneo which only grows to the size of a pea. Finding the mini frogs, named Microhyla nepenthicola, proved to be a challenge due to their size.

Adult males range in length from 10.6 to 12.8 millimeters. Drs. Indraneil Das and Alexander Haas of the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, and Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum of Hamburg, respectively, tracked the amphibians by their call.

The frogs normally start singing around dusk, making a series of harsh rasping notes that last for a few minutes, followed by brief intervals of silence. This “amphibian symphony” goes on from sundown until peaking in early evening. The researchers located the frogs on the side of a road leading to the summit of Gunung Serapi mountain, which lies within Kubah National Park.

The researchers then prompted the frogs to jump onto a piece of white cloth for closer examination. It turns out that the tiny frogs had been found before, but were always assumed to be juveniles. “I saw some specimens in museum collections that are over 100 years old. Scientists presumably thought they were juveniles of other species, but it turns out they are adults of this newly-discovered micro species,” Dr. Das said in a press release.

The new species was named after the pitcher plant, Nepenthes ampullaria, which it depends on to live. The frogs deposit their eggs on the sides of the pitcher, and tadpoles grow in the liquid that accumulates inside the plant. Das and Haas published a report about the find in the taxonomy journal Zootaxa.

Photos: Prof. Indraneil Das/ Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation

that. is. tiny.

(Source: aaronpauled, via oheyyyimtimi)

lickypickysticky:

The above picture is how your brain looks when you masturbate.

It was only matter of time after the invention of fMRI scanning machines — which track blood flow in the brain — that scientists would start having people pleasure themselves while strapped into one. And so it was that New Scientist writer Kayt Sukel ended up with this scan of her brain at the moment of orgasm:

With a click and a whirr, I am pulled into the scanner. My head is strapped down and I have been draped with a blanket so that I may touch my nether regions - my clitoris in particular - with a certain degree of modesty. I am here neither for a medical procedure nor an adult movie. Rather, I am about to stimulate myself to orgasm while an fMRI scanner tracks the blood flow in my brain.

Sukel worked with Rutgers University researcher Barry Komisaruk, who’s studying brain response during arousal and orgasm. Komisaruk has found that when many women achieve climax, their prefrontal cortexes (which are thought to govern “executive function” like decision-making) see increased activity. Its involvement, in particular when touches are imagined rather than felt, may indicate the use of “imagination or fantasy,” as well as the ability of the brain to perform so-called “top-down” control over the body.

But the PFC isn’t the only part of the brain that’s active — as you can see, Sukel’s brain saw activity in some 30 areas, “including those involved in touch, memory, reward and even pain.” Interestingly, another study of orgasm examined by fMRI showed decreased activity in the PFC. The difference between the two studies? Komisaruk’s investigated orgasm by self-stimulation, while the other featured subjects brought to climax by their partners — indicating that their may be a difference in how the brain functions in those difference scenarios.

I know… but its still kind of interesting how it affects the brain. This kind of stuff fascinates me.

(via dorkvader)

ohscience:

This pregnant frog with translucent skin is one of five “lost” amphibian species recently rediscovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

pregnant? does that mean i’m looking at little froggy fetuses?

don’t watch this. you’ll be mesmerized like I was for about two minutes.

(via dorkvader)