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 “Ali was a 16-year-old boy. How could he steal the weapons and uniforms from an entire police patrol?“ Ali’s only crime appears to be supporting nonviolent, pro-democracy protests. Quotes from U.S. Uncut article: “The father of the Saudi boy awaiting execution wants you to know one thing” by Paul Gottinger and Ken Klippenstein | September 30, 2015

http://usuncut.com/world/ali-mohammed-al-nimr-father-speaks-out/

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missing Ethan

#ethananthonynicosia I just miss my Ethan.

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#ethananthonynicosia

#ethananthonynicosia

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forthefarawayboy

I worry. #ethananthonynicosia Can you feel it? How can you not???

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Friendly Bacteria Cheer Up Anxious Mice

A happy stomach leads to a happy mood? While some of us may have already experienced the wonders of a full stomach, these neuroscientists have shown why that is.

Most everyone knows that stress can cause a clenched, gurgling, unhappy stomach. What’s less well known is that the relationship goes both ways.

Beneficial gut bacteria, or probiotics, have been shown in the past to alleviate symptoms of stress and anxiety, but it wasn’t clear whether the bugs could have an impact on the brains of healthy animals. Now, John Cryan, a pharmacologist with the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Center at University College Cork, Ireland, and colleagues have found that probiotics have a direct impact on mood neurotransmitters in mice1. The findings further support the idea that one way to heal problems of the mind might be through the stomach.

Cryan’s group fed a strain of Lactobacillus rhamnosus — a species found in some yoghurts — to 16 healthy mice. The dose they used was roughly the same as the amount of probiotic cultures claimed to be in a pot of Actimel yoghurt.

The team then ran the mice, along with 20 mice fed a bacteria-free broth, through a battery of stress tests. In negotiating a maze, the mice that received probiotics ventured out into open spaces more than twice as often as the control mice, suggesting that they were less anxious. And when forced to swim, the bacteria-fed mice were slightly more prone to struggle — rather than give up — than their broth-fed brethren. “These mice were more chilled out,” says Cryan, adding that the effects of the probiotics were similar in magnitude to those seen in mice for antidepressant drugs. Cryan and his colleagues report their results in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

Read More

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Because mushrooms rock!

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how bout you go fuck yourself, foursquare. I'm a vegetarian sick of seeing your corpses on my tl! Go the fuck away!

Find the best places to eat, drink, shop, or visit — in any city in the world. Access over 75 million short reviews from local experts.

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Researchers Control Embryonic Stem Cells With Light

UC San Francisco researchers have for the first time developed a method to precisely control embryonic stem cell differentiation with beams of light, enabling them to be transformed into neurons in response to a precise external cue.

The technique also revealed an internal timer within stem cells that lets them tune out extraneous biological noise but transform rapidly into mature cells when they detect a consistent, appropriate molecular signal, the authors report in a study published online Aug. 26 in Cell Systems.

“We’ve discovered a basic mechanism the cell uses to decide whether to pay attention to a developmental cue or to ignore it,” said senior author Matthew Thomson, PhD, a researcher in the department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology and the Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology at UCSF.

During embryonic development, stem cells perform an elaborately timed dance as they transform from their neutral, undifferentiated form to construct all the major organ systems of the body. Researchers have identified many different molecular cues that signal stem cells when to transform into their mature form, whether it be brain or liver or muscle, at just the right time.

These discoveries have raised hopes that taking control of stem cells could let scientists repair damaged and aging tissues using the body’s own potential for regeneration. But so far, getting stem cells to follow instructions en masse has proven far more difficult than researchers once expected.

Looking at the Length of the Signal

In recent years, scientists have found that many of the genes encoding these developmental cues constantly flip on and off in undifferentiated stem cells. How the cells manage to ignore these noisy fluctuations but then respond quickly and decisively to authentic developmental cues has remained a mystery.

“These cells receive so many varied inputs,” said lead author Cameron Sokolik, a Thomson laboratory research assistant at the time of the study. “The question is how does the cell decide when to differentiate?”

To test how stem cells interpret developmental cues as either crucial signals or mere noise, Thomson and colleagues engineered cultured mouse embryonic stem cells in which the researchers could use a pulse of blue light to switch on the Brn2 gene, a potent neural differentiation cue. By adjusting the strength and duration of the light pulses, the researchers could precisely control the Brn2 dosage and watch how the cells respond.

They discovered that if the Brn2 signal was strong enough and long enough, stem cells would quickly begin to transform into neurons. But if the signal was too weak or too brief, the cells ignored it completely.

“The cells are looking at the length of the signal,” Thomson said. “That was a big surprise.”

To learn how stem cells were able to weed out fleeting Brn2 signals but respond to persistent ones, co-senior author Stanley Qi, PhD, and co-author Yanxia Liu, PhD, both now at Stanford University, used the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system to add a fluorescent tag to the transcription factor Nanog, which normally acts as a brake on differentiation. This protein could then be used as a read-out on the cells’ decision-making.

The team discovered that Nanog itself is actually key to the cells’ impeccable sense of timing. When the Brn2 signal turns on, it disrupts a molecular feedback loop that keeps the cell stable and undifferentiated. In response, Nanog protein levels start to drop. However, the protein takes about four hours to dissipate completely, which makes Nanog an excellent internal stopwatch. If the Brn2 signal is a fluke, Nanog levels can quickly rebound and the cell will do nothing. On the other hand, if Nanog runs out and the Brn2 signal is still on, “it’s like a buzzer goes off,” Thomson said. “And once it goes, it really goes – the cells rapidly start converting into neurons.”

Applying to Other Tissues

Thomson believes that similar timer mechanisms may govern stem cell differentiation into many different tissues.

“It’s hard for a cell to be both tolerant and fast, to reject minor fluctuations, but respond very precisely and sharply when it sees a signal,” he said. “This mechanism is able to do that.”

Thomson is a fellow in the UCSF Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology, part of a program to recruit young scientists with non-traditional backgrounds, such as physics, engineering, math and computer science into biological research. The fellowship is modeled on the wildly successful Sandler Fellows, a program that for the past 15 years has enabled UCSF to recruit young researchers straight out of graduate school to pursue ambitious high-risk, high-reward science with support from the Sandler Foundation.

Thomson’s ambitious big idea is to use the light-inducible differentiation technology his group has developed to study how stem cells produce complex tissues in three dimensions. He imagines a day when researchers can illuminate a bath of undifferentiated stem cells with a pattern of different colors of light and come back the next day to find a complex pattern of blood and nerve and liver tissue forming an organ that can be transplanted into a patient.

“There’s lots of promise that we can do these miraculous things like tissue repair or even growing new organs, but in practice, manipulating stem cells has been notoriously noisy, inefficient, and difficult to control,” Thomson said. “I think it’s because the cell is not a puppet. It’s an agent that is constantly interpreting information, like a brain. If we want to precisely manipulate cell fate, we have to understand the information-processing mechanisms in the cell that control how it responds to the things we’re trying to do to it.”

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there is no Zoo in Zoology

The curiosities of the Blue dragon nudibranch

Commonly referred to as the Blue dragon nudibranch, Pteraeolidia ianthina (Nudibranchia - Facelinidae), is a remarkable species of sea slug native to the Indo-Pacific region.

This is an extremely elongate species up to 5cm long, with large, curved arches of cerata (the projections on the upper surfaces of the body) along the length of the body. The cephalic tentacles have two distinctive dark purple (or blue) bands.

Although the body color of this nudibranch is translucent tan, the cerata, which are mostly blue or dark purple, lavender or golden brown, give the nudibranch most of its apparent color.

The Blue dragon nudibranch has many amazing survival strategies. When touched, the nudibranch will “flare” its cerata and the nematocysts will discharge on contact (it is one of the few nudibranchs with a sting strong enough to be felt by humans though usually not in areas with thicker skin such as the palm of the hand).

It is also able to autotomize (lose or detach) the posterior part of its body in order to distract, or free itself from, a potential predator. Later, the missing portion can be regenerated.

Another curiosity of this species is that the cerata contain zooxanthellae of the genus Symbiodinium that exhibit the capacity for photosynthesis, and they grow while reside in the sea slug. This symbiotic relationship with the algae helps the adult nudibranch to overcome a period of food shortage by getting photosynthetic products.

References: [1] - [2] - [3] - [4]

Photo credit: ©Sylke Rohrlach

Locality: New South Wales, Australia

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Strawberry Lime Cooler - a delicious, refreshing juice made of Apples, Strawberries and Fresh Lime. The full simple recipe here!

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Girl, are you a noble gas? Cause it looks like you really don't wanna interact

Are you an alkali metal? Cause I’m H2O and I can make you explode.

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Baby-cry sumo contest | See full gallery

In Japan, parents believe that sumo wrestlers can help make babies cry out a wish to grow up with good health. In the contest, two wrestlers each hold a baby while a referee makes faces and loud noises to make them cry – and the baby who cries the loudest wins. 

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omg

Lake Twenty Two, Cascade Mountains, Washington

http://shevyvision.tumblr.com/

http://www.shevaunwilliams.com/

http://instagram.com/shevyvision

Thank you for the susmission.

matthew

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I just like things that fit together.

Interesting Mechanisms

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Awww.

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storm witch YUP.

The Signs as Witches

Aries: uses bodily ingredients such as hair or teeth or nails, wild and free and howling at the moon, fire tells them what they want to know, embraces all but does not tolerate betrayal, gifted in the use of poppets and curses, full of energy and static and power

Taurus: a collector of many things, uses crystals and herbs, proficient in kitchen magic, has an inner strength that knows no bounds and no true master, a home full of colored glass and jars filled with anything you could ever need, rooted and able, wears robes with many many pockets

Gemini: a card reader and game changer, spoken spells fill the very air with magic and potential, an avid learner and sharer of their craft, books and tomes and candles fill their space, knows the power of words and names, tattoos sigils and spells all over their body and they seem to move when you aren’t looking, vast and uncontainable

Cancer: rests under the moon and whispers magic in their sleep, uses astral projection to explore and learn and play with ghosts, elaborate and detailed dream diary, deep understanding of astrology, somehow already knows what you’re going to say, mysterious and soft but only on the surface, a knower of secrets, sleepy eyes, lives in a tree in a misty forest and makes friends with the plants and spirits there

Leo: strongest in the day and has eyes that light up the night, mighty voice and skilled hands, breath carries a spark, animalistic energy you can feel when they look at you, makes their own spells borrows their own power, incredible visualization makes their dreams realities, difficult to look at directly for reasons you don’t really understand, wild hair and adorned in gems

Virgo: techno witch, weaves magic into code and text, keeps a blog as their book of shadows and altar, urban magic, has a restless mind and busy hands, deletes negativity out of their life, has much information to share despite their hollow look, eyes are lit from the inside, their phone is full of pictures that keep moving and notes only they can read

Libra: covered in veils and breathes perfume to hide themselves and confuse you, summons creatures and demons to do their bidding so their hands remain clean, almost transparent at times like a ghost or vision, is stronger than they look and delights in you not knowing their power, their mouth is almost always moving but you can’t hear what they say, soft to the touch but their skin is cold, trinkets and charms and chains adorn them and their home

Scorpio: eyes and nails are dark and caked in black, frequents graveyards and learns from the ghosts and crows, solitary witch who makes friends with bones, will help you learn what you want to know for a price, is afraid to sleep, quiet and haunted, is reborn each new moon, is full of knowing and fog and promise, takes a lock of hair from all they help, you feel them in your core

Sagittarius: rides their broom with reckless abandon, plays with the children on Halloween and shows them magic is real, their home has legs and never stays still, keeps many familiars and most are birds, gifted in charms and potions and sells their work with a smile, you can hear them laughing with the moon at night, chapped lips and wide eyes, magic is erratic and spontaneous and they couldn’t control it if they wanted to

Capricorn: loose black and gray clothing that flows when they walk, keeps a pouch of salt around their neck at all times, face is often covered or hard to see, protection spells and sigils are their innate ability, the floor trembles when they are angry, always watching watching watching, lives in a stone cottage covered with moss and scrawlings and carvings, other witches are silent around them out of fear and awe

Aquarius: hermit, storm witch, plays with rain and dances with lightning and shouts thunder, keeps trinkets and mementos in small jars around their bed, asks favors and learns from the clouds, raw and swift and ready to act, soft as a summer rain and cold as hail, hair is full of leaves and wind, feet are dirty but their mind is clean and sharp

Pisces: smells of salt and dressed in rags and burlap and pearls, misty eyes that look through you and deep deep down in you, water witch with a soft face and an ocean for a heart, thing of the sea, empath who sometimes knows you better than you do, bottles own tears and keeps them for spells, witch of all trades master of none, head is full of crashing waves, overflowing with magic and wonder