Get ready for custom eyeball transplants for people who absolutely must have eyes in the backs of their heads — or pretty much anywhere on their bodies. Researchers at Tufts University just published a paper where they report transplanting working eyes onto the tail of a blind tadpole. Here’s how they did it.
Xenopus tadpoles arise from a genus of frogs native to Sub-Saharan Africa. Within this genus of aquatic frogs is Xenopus laevis,better known as the African clawed frog. To carry out the study, researchers at Tufts removed the eyes from several Xenopustadpoles used in testing. Then they transplanted a primordial eye harvested from an embryonic tadpole onto the tail of the newly-blind tadpoles. Positioning the eye on the tail was important, because it contains the nerve-heavy spine.
Using a set of blinded tadpoles with eyes attached to their tails, the researchers color-coded a tank to determine if the “tail eyes” would function.
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The asexual man who had surgically removed his penis and testicles and proceeded to cooked and served them up to diners at a Japanese restaurant has been charged with indecent exposure.
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A 38-year-old woman from UK coughed up a tumor a year ago and has been told that she is now free of cancer.
Claire Osborn was stunned when a 2cm lump flew out of her mouth as she was coughing. When the mother of six children took the lump to her doctor, she was told that it was an aggressive type of throat and mouth cancer called metastatic adenocarcinoma.
Doctors had initially diagnosed her with a 50 percent chance of survival and she had to undergo an operation to see if there were still cancer cells in her body. The first scan in February revealed that there were no other tumors in Osborn’s body, and after a scan last week, doctors told her that she is entirely free of cancer.
“The consultant turned round to me and said, ‘It appears you have coughed up your cancer. Congratulations,’” she said, according to the Daily Mail.
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(Photo found here)
The googly-eyed glass squid (Teuthowenia pellucida) is a rare, slightly blue and transparent deep-sea squid. It gets its name from its disproportionately large eyes. It has eight short tentacles and one slightly longer pair. Its internal digestive organs and the females eggs can be visible through its transparent body. It is able to engorge itself with surrounding water to dramatically increase in size, portraying a more intimidating appearance to potential predators. Like most squid, it can also escape predators using jet propulsion. The cells of its eyes and tentacles form small light-emitting organs (bioluminescent photophores). This array of small lights is used to mask the true identity of the googly-eyed squid to others in the dark. For more on glass squid, see this post.
(Source)
Proscopia spp, Ecuadorian Walking Stick Mimic
South America
*This is actually a grasshopper (orthopteran)
After first looking at this photo, I thought “What am I looking at”?. After reading the text, I’m still thinking “What am I looking at”?
You are a strange one
Just what are you doing Razzle? :P
Taken on Denman Island, BC, Canada on April 13th, 2010.
Via TheKoopaBros (me)
Strange Places on Mars
#1. The image above shows a dune field on the floor of a crater made by an asteroid impact.
#2. This image of layered deposits on a plateau in the Valles Marineris region of Mars was taken in 2007 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image shows about three-fourths of a mile across. Scientists think the layers contain opaline silica and iron sulfates formed through alteration by acidic water.
#3. This image is of the carbon dioxide ice cap at the south pole of Mars. The pattern is formed by the ice vaporizing. Scientists think that as the ice cap melts from the bottom up, the carbon dioxide turns directly into gas. It flows beneath the ice to openings, eroding the ground below into a spiderlike network of troughs. The flowing gas also carries dust that escapes with it and settles into fan-shaped deposits on top of the ice.
#4. The stripes in this image are linear dunes on the floor of a crater in the Noachis Terra region of Mars. The dark areas are the dunes, and the lighter boulder-strewn lines are between the dunes. This image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Dec. 28, 2009.
#5. This image looks remarkably like groves of trees growing among Martian dunes. But, the trees are an optical illusion. They are actually dark streaks of sediment on the downwind side of the dunes. They were created by escaping gas from the evaporating carbon dioxide ice below. The bottom of the ice melts into vapor and moves toward holes in the ice, carrying dark sediment along with it that is then deposited when the gas escapes.
#6. Scientists have found evidence of iron-bearing sulfates and clay minerals in the exposed areas of this region of the Noctis Labyrinthus formation. A dune field covers some of the ground.
#7. This false-color image looks like it could be of the desert southwest in North America. These gully channels running from a cliff area near the crater rim show typical shapes made by water-carved streams on Earth. The image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
#8. This image shows an area within Proctor Crater that has both dunes and ripples. The smaller, brighter ridges are ripples made of very fine sand. The larger, darker forms are dunes made of dust from dark volcanic rocks. This image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in February 2009.
Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
I had to do part of an oral presentation today for my research project.
Most people when they’re nervous have some sort of nervous twitch, they pace, etc.
Not me. I have the uncontrollable urge to smile, smirk and laugh at everything. It was like trying to hold in a laugh for 2 hours when I wasn’t even amused.
Yeah, I’m pretty weird.
Earth and Super-Earth
This artists concept contrasts our familiar Earth with the exceptionally strange planet known as 55 Cancri e. Astronomers first discovered 55 Cancri e in 2004, and continued investigation of the exoplanet has shown it to be a truly bizarre place. The new observations with Spitzer reveal 55 Cancri e to have a mass 7.8 times and a radius just over twice that of Earth.
The world revolves around its sun-like star in the shortest time period of all known exoplanets just 17 hours and 40 minutes. (In other words, a year on 55 Cancri e lasts less than 18 hours.) The exoplanet orbits about 26 times closer to its star than Mercury. Such proximity means that 55 Cancri e’s surface roasts at a minimum of 3,200 °F (1,760 °C).
What makes this world so remarkable is the resulting low density derived from these measurements. About a fifth of the planet’s mass must be made of light elements and compounds, including water. In the intense heat of 55 Cancri e’s terribly close sun, those light materials would exist in a “supercritical” state, between that of a liquid and a gas, and might sizzle out of the planet’s surface.
Only a handful of known super-Earths, however, cross the face of their stars as viewed from our vantage point in the cosmos. At just 40 light years away, 55 Cancri e stands as the smallest transiting super-Earth in our stellar neighborhood. In fact, 55 Cancri is so bright and close that it can be seen with the naked eye on a clear, dark night.
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