from here I see everything

an-animal-imagined-by-poe:

Albertus Seba’s The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. Seba, a 17th century Dutch apothecary, spend decades collecting and illustrating thousands of specimens.

(via scientificillustration)

189 notes | 3 months ago

326

biomedicalephemera:

Lower extremity of newborn, under running water for several months - formation of “adipocere”
One of the most interesting things to find in a cadaver is when adipocere forms. This so-called “grave wax” shows that a body is at least several months old, as it takes a while for the biochemical reactions to take place that form this substance.
While most cadavers go through the full decomposition process and are rotted away by bacteria and other organisms, bodies that form adipocere begin a process of anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis at the start of the putrefaction stage of decomposition. As most of the proteins in the body are digested, the fat in the body racidifies, and instead of being digested with everything else, breaks down into glycerine, fatty solids (saturated fats), and fluid fatty acids (unsaturated fat). The glycerine and fluid fatty acids are washed away or dissolved, and the solid fat remains behind, forming a cast of the body.
Adipocere is white or gray, and very much like thick cottage cheese in its crumbly texture. It’s very hardy and preservative in quality, and cadavers over 700 years old have been found to have easily-discernible fine facial structures because of it. However, the formation of the substance requires very specific conditions to be met, the most important of which is a body with a relatively high fat content (though there are occasional exceptions). Because of this, infants, young women, and the obese are most likely to be found in this state.
Atlas of Legal Medicine. Dr. Eduard von Hofmann, 1898.

jtotheizzoe:

medicalschool:

Anatomical Flipbook, L.W. Yaggy & James J. West, 1885

*Don’t try this at home.

**Except maybe the lower right one, but only if you’ve already shaved your head … and don’t use permanent markers.

(via fuckyeahmedicalstuff)

2,314 notes | 3 months ago

235

neurosciencestuff:

The empathy machine
…Let’s dwell for a moment on ‘Silver Blaze’ (1892), Arthur Conan Doyle’s story of the gallant racehorse who disappeared, and his trainer who was found dead, just days before a big race. The hapless police are stumped, and Sherlock Holmes is called in to save the day. And save the day he does — by putting himself in the position of both the dead trainer and the missing horse. Holmes speculates that the horse is ‘a very gregarious creature’. Surmising that, in the absence of its trainer, it would have been drawn to the nearest town, he finds horse tracks, and tells Watson which mental faculty led him there. ‘See the value of imagination… We imagined what might have happened, acted upon that supposition, and find ourselves justified.’
Holmes takes an imaginative leap, not only into another human mind, but into the mind of an animal. This perspective-taking, being able to see the world from the point of view of another, is one of the central elements of empathy, and Holmes raises it to the status of an art.
Usually, when we think of empathy, it evokes feelings of warmth and comfort, of being intrinsically an emotional phenomenon. But perhaps our very idea of empathy is flawed. The worth of empathy might lie as much in the ‘value of imagination’ that Holmes employs as it does in the mere feeling of vicarious emotion. Perhaps that cold rationalist Sherlock Holmes can help us reconsider our preconceptions about what empathy is and what it does.
Though the scientific literature on empathy is complex, a recent review in Nature Neuroscience by a team of researchers from Harvard and Columbia including Jamil Zaki and Kevin Ochsner has distilled the phenomenon into three central stages. The first stage is ‘experience sharing’, or feeling someone else’s emotions as if they were your own — scared when they are scared, happy when they are happy, and so on. The second stage is ‘mentalising’, or consciously considering those states and their sources, and trying to work through understanding them. The final stage is ‘prosocial concern’, or being motivated to act — wanting, for example, to reach out to someone in pain. However, you don’t need all three to experience empathy. Instead, you can view these as three points on an empathetic continuum: first, you feel; then, you feel and you understand; and finally, you feel, understand, and are compelled to act on your understanding. It seems that the defining thing here is the feeling that accompanies all those stages.
Full article

moshita:

An atlas of topographical anatomy : after plane sections of frozen bodies (1877)

Wilhelm Braune

(Source: moshita)

351 notes | 5 months ago

dailyfossil:

Melittosphex

When: Cretaceous (~100 million years ago)

Where: Myanmar

What: Melittosphex is a fossil bee. It is the oldest bee fossil ever found, and this tiny tiny (only 3 millimeters long!) specimen, beautifully preserved in amber, can tell us much about the evolution of this amazing group of social insects. The closest relatives to living bees are the wasps, and some wasps are more closely related to bees than they are to other groups of wasps. The crabronid wasps (the digger-wasps) are the wasps most closely related to bees. These wasps are solitary and while the adults feed on nectar, the young larva feed on a spider or insect that mom-wasp procures for them.

Melittosphex is assuredly more closely related to bees than any wasp, with a great deal of anatomical features found only in bees today, such as the morphology of its hindlimbs and the presence of intricately branching hairs on body. Melittosphex also has features reminiscent of its wasp ancestry that are not seen in any living bee species today; specific spurs on its middle pair of legs and a very slender rear most ‘foot’. This combination of features shows that Melittosphex is an excellent example of a transitional fossil, falling between the crabronid wasps and all living species of bees.

Knowledge of Melittosphex and its kin is critically important for determining how the solitary carnivorous (as larva) wasps gave rise to the eusocial herbivorous bees. But that is not all! These ancient bees also help inform us to how the modern plant biota was established. Today’s flora is dominated by angiosperms - the flowering plants, but this is a relatively recent state of things. The earliest known fossils of angiosperms date to only the Jurassic period, and it is not until the early Cretaceous that body fossils are known. It is at about 100 million years ago that the great angiosperm radiation can be seen, and shortly after this the flowering plants begin to dominate. The one specimen of Melittosphex known preserves minute pollen grains between the branching hairs on its body, showing that even 100 million years ago bees were involved in pollination of these flowing plants. It has long been thought that bees and angiosperms evolved in tandem, that each group depends on the other for its success, and little Melittosphex offers more support for this view.

(via scientificillustration)

115 notes | 7 months ago

reliquatory:

Maria Sibylla Merian was a fine painter and superb naturalist, one of the first woman scientists we know of. Her observations of insects and their relationships with plants revolutionized botany and zoology. Maria Sibylla revealed, for the first time in print, the mystery of metamorphosis. Before her work, the prevailing opinion was that flies and worms came to life by spontaneous generation. Maria was one of the very first scientists who observed living animals and plants rather than dead specimens preserved in alcohol.

Maria Sibylla was a painter of great power at a time when in Germany, women were not permitted to earn a living as painters. But they could publish “models” for embroidery, which she did in her first book, Flowerbook, in her twenties.

Maria kept a journal of nature observations for 53 years, from age 16 to age 69. Her journal was rediscovered and published in German in 1976.

At 13, she wrote,

“I collected all the caterpillars I could find in order to study their metamorphosis. I therefore withdrew from society and devoted myself to these investigations.”

Understanding animals and their plant connections became the focus of her life, and from 1660 on she collected insects, recording and painting everything she could observe about their life cycles and behavior.

In 1699, at the age of 52 years, Maria and her daughter Dorothea set sail for the Dutch colony of Surinam in South America. In those days such a voyage took three months. It was shocking for women, especially an old woman of 52, to undertake such a voyage.

For two years the two women explored Surinam, painting insects and plants as they traveled. When Maria became ill with malaria she returned to Amsterdam, but her daughter stayed five years, continuing her mother’s insect studies.

In 1705, Maria Sibylla published Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam (Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium), lavishly illustrated with colored plates. The book earned wide acclaim and some financial success. However, her work was derided as fantasy by some naturalists for describing bird-eating spiders, (later confirmed) and found offensive by colonial officials who did not like her comments on the treatment of the indigenous Indians and African slaves. This book brought her work to the attention of the great scientist Carl Linneaus, and established her reputation.

Maria Sibyyla died from stroke in 1717. Just weeks before her death, Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, purchased all of her original works. When Peter died, they were displayed in a museum, the first in Russia, where they remain.

Text & Flower image via Morning Earth.

(via scientificillustration)

436 notes | 8 months ago

kissedbyflame:

commodore-sparklebutt:

nicoception:

couryielle:

thatwasyoursoupipoisoned:

brokenhighway:

tenshiryuu:

bloodredorion-science:

Alkali metals are soft metals that can be cut with a knife. The air makes the metal corrode- so sometimes they are kept under oil to stop them from corroding. Their chemical reactions with water can be violent.

SCIENCE.

fkasjdfaksdhfl MY FAVORITE VIDEO EVER. I KNEW YOU’D COME BACK, ALKALI METALS.

“You can see things get gradually more terrifying as we go down the line”

YOU THINK?!

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT CESSIUM

Cessium….YOU HAD ONE JOB

The last one is Francium and its molar mass is so huge that in order to have a noticeable reaction you would need a gigantic hunk, and you probably have to dump it in the ocean.

Why did we never do anything cool in my science classes? All we ever did was make stuffed moles with 6.02×10²³written on them. :/

(via mystolenthunder)

22,836 notes | 9 months ago

5628

biomedicalephemera:

science:

Lonesome George is dead. Since being discovered more than forty years ago, he has been the last of his kind, the Pinta Island tortoise. With him, his species dies. Someone on reddit made this comparison of the Wikipedia page for the Pinta Island tortoise. How did we screw George’s species over? First 19th century whalers killed off a bunch for food on their journeys, then in 1959, fishermen introduced goats to the island. The goat population exploded to over 40,000 in just a few years, and the vegetation on the island was seriously harmed. The goats have since been exterminated and a project is underway to restore the Pinta island ecosystem and reintroduce tortoises to the island, but it didn’t come soon enough to save George’s species.

More on Lonesome George

staceythinx:

The Atom Ukulele by Celentano Woodworks

5,181 notes | 11 months ago

$ikenbot: Evidence of a Past Universe? Circular Patterns in the Cosmic Microwave Background Stephen Hawking has said: “We should look for evidence of a collision with another universe in our distant Past.” Some experts believe that what we call the universe may only be one of many. Is there any conceivable way that we could ever detect and study other universes if they exist? Is it even falsifiable? This was a key question Hawking was was asked in an interview with the BBC. “Our best bet for a theory of everything is M-theory —an extension of string theory,” Hawking continued. “One prediction of M-theory is that there are many different universes, with different values for the physical constants. This might explain why the physical constants we measure seem fine-tuned to the values required for life to exist.” It is no surprise that we observe the physical constants to be finely-tuned. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to observe them. One way of testing the theory that we may be one of many universes would be to look for features in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) which would indicate the collision of another universe with ours in the distant past. The circular patterns within the cosmic microwave background shown above suggest that space and time did not come into being at the Big Bang but that our universe in fact continually cycles through a series of “aeons,” according to University of Oxford theoretical physicist Roger Penrose, who says that data collected by NASA’s WMAP satellite supports his idea of “conformal cyclic cosmology”. Penrose made the sensational claim that he had glimpsed a signal originating from before the Big Bang working with Vahe Gurzadyn of the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia. Penrose came to this conclusion after analyzing maps from the Wilkinson Anisotropy Probe. These maps reveal the cosmic microwave background, believed to have been created just 300,000 years after the Big Bang and offering clues to the conditions at that time. Penrose’s finding runs directly counter to the widely accepted inflationary model of cosmology which states that the universe started from a point of infinite density known as the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago, expanded extremely rapidly for a fraction of a second and has continued to expand much more slowly ever since, during which time stars, planets and ultimately humans have emerged. That expansion is now believed to be accelerating due to a scientific X factor called dark energy and is expected to result in a cold, uniform, featureless universe. Penrose, however, reports Physics World, takes issue with the inflationary picture “and in particular believes it cannot account for the very low entropy state in which the universe was believed to have been born – an extremely high degree of order that made complex matter possible. He does not believe that space and time came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang but that the Big Bang was in fact just one in a series of many, with each big bang marking the start of a new “aeon” in the history of the universe.” Full Article$

111

the-daily-robot:

I made this heart image almost a year ago, around Valentine’s Day. Now it’s a poster, in case you don’t know what to get yourself or the person with whom you have made a Valentine’s Day Gift Agreement™

twelvebats:

concludes:

endquestionmark:

urdchama:

e1n:

ihaventeateninthreehours:

geniusbee:

nekoconsulting:

lilywinterwood:

digitalhoarder:

BECAUSE I HAVE NO LIFE AND THIS IS REALLY BOTHERING ME…

The prevailing theory on Tumblr on how Sherlock survived the fall was that he managed to land in a laundry truck.

Benedict Cumberbatch is 1.84 meters tall and by using his body you can measure how far from the building he would have had to jump to make it into the truck. Roughly 7.32 meters.

Sherlock is standing on the Pathological Department of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Google Street View shows what appears to be Routemaster double-decker buses which are 4.38 meters tall. The building therefore is roughly 14.6 meters.

You can use Pythagoras’ theorem to calculate the distance which is 16.33 meters. FYI: The World Record for men’s long jump is 8.95 meters and that was done with a running start. Sherlock flopped over the edge with no horizontal directional speed. I don’t think it’s possible for the laundry truck theory.

EDIT: how much time he had to “steer” towards the truck while falling.

Time = √ 2(height)/gravity
Time = √ 2(14.6m)/9.8 m/s²
Time = √ 29.2m/9.8 m/s²
Time = √ 2.98 m/s²
Time = 1.73 seconds

Sherlock was falling for 1.73 seconds.

Question: Can you jump off a 14.6 meter building and land in a truck full of laundry 7.23 meters away in 1.73 seconds?

HOLY SHIT MATH AND PHYSICS

THIS IS LEGIT BECAUSE THEY USED MATHEMATICS

YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID

I am so bad at math but I appreciate it. This is QUALITY and jeez even visual aids YES THIS IS HOW I SHOULD HAVE LEARNED GEOMETRY

Sorry to burst everyone’s bubble but this is not quite right.

People don’t fall in straight lines, they fall in parabolas. So Pythagoras has nothing to do with this. What we need is projectile motion physics.

The dark red is the path he would actually take.

So using these figures it still takes 1.73 seconds to fall vertically 14.6m with an acceleration of 9.8 ms-1.

But travelling horizontally there is no acceleration or deceleration. To travel the 7.32m to the truck Sherlock would only have to take off from the roof at 4.23 ms-1. (Because of air resistance he may have fallen slower and taken a longer time therefore this number may be even lower). Average human walking speed is between 4 to 6 ms-1 (I couldn’t find an exact number) so for Sherlock to have reached the truck in that time he would only have to step off. By falling the way he did it looks like he didn’t push off but there is actually a lot more horizontal velocity than if he had just stepped so he could actually reach the truck.

Also this explains why Sherlock chose such a tall building. If the height wasn’t as large he couldn’t have made it that distance to the truck.

tl;dr: Sherlock could have made it to the truck without any particular effort. The truck theory is still viable.

I’m going to regret jumping on this, but the Parabola theory above is the correct one. You don’t fall in a straight line like what the original theory said.

That said, in order to make 7.32m of horizontal displacement, you need 4.23m/s of horizontal speed, which is NOT walking speed. According to Wikipedia (on Walking), average human walking speed is 3.1mph, or 1.4m/s. 4.23m/s amounts to about 9.5mph, which is a running speed. If you don’t believe me, get on a treadmill and set the “speed” to 9.5. I guarantee you’ll be running like hell.

Taking into account air resistance and all that shit, I’d imagine he’d be pretty lucky to be able to land on the truck. But even if he was that lucky, landing on the back of that truck will really break some shit. There has to be a more elegant solution to this, although it was really really suspicious that the truck just drove by after a person jumped off the building and landed next to it.

I’m more intrigued by this:

The truck went missing in one scene. Then it reappeared and drove away, but in the following cut, the truck was back to where it was when it first started.

Maybe it was just badly edited. But maybe…

Now THIS is some CSI shit I can actually follow and care about! XD ::makes popcorn::

holy god somewhere my physics and maths teachers are simultaneously crying and drowning their sorrows

Clearly the only thing we have to do now is test the hypothesis by sending it to Mythbusters.

And then afterwards they can blow the laundry truck up. FOR SCIENCE!

I love this fandom.

I hate math but I adore people who know their shit and I REALLY want someone to send this to the Mythbusters just for kicks and giggles. I’d love to see that episode.

Question: Not sure if this is relevant but Sherlock didn’t exactly walk off the building right? I mean he stepped off which means he went from a standstill to a freefall right?

I am proud to call myself a member of this fandom.

But seriously I have a lulzy feeling Moffat/Gatiss are gonna troll us with a super simple solution, because as someone else said…

… the last cliffhanger was solved by a ring-tone.

(via ofalldimensions)

35,126 notes | 1 year ago

from here I see everything

326

Anatomical Flipbook, L.W. Yaggy & James J. West, 1885

8800

235

5628

889

111