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Oh, how I love futuristic cityscapes :D

Artist: Jonathan Lucero | Artstation

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Mice regrow brain tissue after stroke with bioengineered gel: Replacement neurons, blood vessels fill in stroke cavity; gel provides scaffolding 

In a first-of-its-kind finding, a new stroke-healing gel helped regrow neurons and blood vessels in mice with stroke-damaged brains, UCLA researchers report in the May 21 issue of Nature Materials.

L ina R. Nih, Shiva Gojgini, S. Thomas Carmichael, Tatiana Segura. Dual-function injectable angiogenic biomaterial for the repair of brain tissue following stroke. Nature Materials, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41563-018-0083-8

This is a photomicrograph of tissue that has grown into the stroke cavity in the stroke-healing gel. The red tubes are blood vessels. They are growing into the site of the stroke in the center of the image. The green filaments are axons. These grow along the blood vessels as they enter the gel and infarct area. The blue ovoids are cell nuclei in the tissue.Credit: UCLA Health

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The titan arum, or corpse plant! It gets its name from the foul odor its flower produces, which has been described as very similar to rotten meat. This enormous plant (one of the largest flowers in the world standing at 10 feet high) produces the stench in order to attract decomposers such as flies and beetles. The reddish-purple color of the spathe also helps the plant create the illusion of being a rotting carcass. Pretty metal for a flower, huh?

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Ok, so I was scrolling through the parasitic plant side of Wikipedia and stumbled across this interesting bit of information about albino redwood trees. Here are the highlights: An 'albino'[a] redwood is a redwood tree which is unable to produce chlorophyll, and so has white needles instead of the normal green. It survives by obtaining sugar through the connections between its roots and those of neighboring normal redwood(s), usually the parent tree from whose base it has sprouted.[(Sap exchange through roots is a general phenomenon among redwoods.) About 400 are known. Here’s the full page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albino_redwood

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Aww, I used to keep a tank of these little guys ^_^ Great pets, never had the change the water and just gave them a few daphnia here and there. 

Look at this chubby baby! 

What you’re looking at is a freshwater hydra (Hydra viridissima) that forms a symbiotic relationship with algae. It gets some of its energy through photosynthesis, and the rest of it from snaring small prey with those stinging tentacles. 

And it’s biologically immortal. This one I found is only a few weeks old, but it may end up outliving me, or all of human civilization. Not likely, but I’d like to imagine it might happen. 

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This Ammonite half is the all-time best 2 in 1 specimen! look closely at those internal pockets, see anything special? During the permineralization process, this Fossil developed a ton of tiny Calcite crystals! Is there anything better than a beautiful Ammonite Fossil AND a bunch of Calcite crystals?! I don’t think so🐚 #doitfortheGRAM (at Geology Rocks & Minerals)

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Dolly Setton - Human Body Ingredients, “The Cosmic Recipe for Earthlings”, 2013. “The Nitrogen in our DNA, the Calcium in our Teeth, the Iron in our Blood, were made in the interiors of Collapsing Stars. We are made of Star Stuff.” - Carl Sagan