December 16th, 2011

love at first bite

Photo: David Paul/Mark Norman.

Neatorama has a round-up of the most bizarre mating mechanisms in the animal kingdom. That of the Anglerfish seems so impossibly beyond our reality that it’s spine-chilling and awe-inspiring at once…

Anglerfish, a deep sea fish named for the spiny appendage on its head that it uses as bait to “fish” its prey, has an unusual mating habit. As it spends its time in the bottom of the ocean, finding a mate is a problem – but the species solved this evolutionary challenge beautifully.

At first, scientists were perplexed because they’ve never caught a male anglerfish. Also, all female anglerfish have a lump on their body that looks like a parasite. Only later did scientists discover that the lump is the remain of the male fish.

The tiny male anglerfish are born without any digestive system, so once they hatch, they have to find a female quickly. When a male finds a female, he quickly bites her body and releases an enzyme that digests his skin and her body to fuse the two in an eternal embrace. The male then wastes away, becoming nothing but a lump on the female anglerfish’s body!

When the female is ready to spawn, her “male appendage” is there, ready to release sperms to fertilize her egg.

More at Neatorama

December 11th, 2011

yeti farmers/farming yetis

The yeti crab is self-sufficient beyond belief when it comes to it’s dietary requirements.

The bristles that cover the crab’s claws and body are coated in gardens of symbiotic bacteria, which derive energy from the inorganic gases of the seeps. The crab eats the bacteria, using comb-like mouthparts to harvest them from its bristles (see a video of this on our YouTube Channel).

The bacteria in K. puravida gardens are closely related to species that live in other cold seeps and hot hydrothermal vents all over the world. “It looks like the bacteria may use the seeps as stepping stones, to create this global connected population that consumes the energy coming out of seeps and vents,” says Thurber.

Thurber thinks that K. puravida waves its claws to actively farm its bacterial gardens: movements stir up the water around the bacteria, ensuring that fresh supplies of oxygen and sulphide wash over them and helping them to grow. “This ‘dance’ is extraordinary and comical,” says Van Dover. “We’ve never seen this strategy before.”

More at Nature

November 17th, 2011

life on the inside

So far the Catalogue of Life has indexed over 1,368,009 species and the latest edition features a database from Jeya Kathirithamby of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology detailing Strepsiptera, a strange order of parasitic insect.

Strepsiptera are endoparasites – they live inside their host – with almost all females spending their entire lives inside the body of other insects and males emerging as free-living adults to mate before they die, just five or six hours later.

‘The females are totally endoparasitic for their entire life history (except in one family) and all that is visible of an adult female is an extruded cephalothorax,’ Jeya tells me. ‘The female is nothing more than a “bag of eggs”, having lost all structures such as eyes, antennae, mouthparts, legs, wings and external genitalia any other insect would possess.

‘This dramatic difference between male and female makes Strepsiptera interesting model organisms for studying such aspects as mating and reproduction.’

Jeya is a world authority on these parasites where males and females can have such different lives that they even choose entirely different hosts:

‘There is a family where the males parasitize ants and the females parasitize grasshoppers, crickets or mantids. Due to the extreme sexual dimorphism and dual hosts, the sexes could not be matched until recently. We have achieved this using molecular data.’

Surprisingly, although Strepsiptera can infect and live inside the host insect for almost its entire life, the host seems unaffected and can even have its lifespan extended.

More on Physorg: Parasite lives ‘double life’

November 13th, 2011

the joy of spigots

I saw a distasteful facebook page and thought “bigot, bigot, bigot”, which evolved into “spigots spigots spigots”. A happy learning opportunity:

Water spigot; also known as a valve, hose hydrant, hose bibb, or sillcock.

A tap (also called spigot and faucet in the U.S.) is a valve controlling release of liquids or gas. In the British Isles and most of the Commonwealth, the word is used for any everyday type of valve, particularly the fittings that control water supply to bathtubs and sinks. In the U.S., the term “tap” is more often used for beer taps, cut-in connections, or wiretapping. “Spigot” or “faucet” are more often used to refer to water valves, although this sense of “tap” is not uncommon, and the term “tap water” is the standard name for water from the faucet.

And the joy of tap mechanics:

Ecstasy courtesy of wikipedia.

November 5th, 2011

the bear’s ethereal grace

My Fancy by Lewis Caroll.

I painted her a gushing thing,
With years about a score;
I little thought to find they were
A least a dozen more;
My fancy gave her eyes of blue,
A curly auburn head:
I came to find the blue a green,
The auburn turned to red.

She boxed my ears this morning,
They tingled very much;
I own that I could wish her
A somewhat lighter touch;
And if you ask me how
Her charms might be improved,
I would not have them added to,
But just a few removed!

She has the bear’s ethereal grace,
The bland hyaena’s laugh,
The footstep of the elephant,
The neck of a giraffe;
I love her still, believe me,
Though my heart its passion hides;
“She’s all my fancy painted her,”
But oh! how much besides.

October 9th, 2011

audible power in skinny fists

October 8th, 2011

gustav mahler

I was reading about Gustav Mahler on wikipedia when… this caricature. 1901.

September 26th, 2011

bornean beards

Borneo is home to the bearded pig. Via Tetrapod Zoology blog

September 14th, 2011

the zeigarnik effect vs procrastination

Psyblog:

One of the simplest methods for beating procrastination in almost any task was inspired by busy waiters.

It’s called the Zeigarnik effect after a Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik (above left), who noticed an odd thing while sitting in a restaurant in Vienna. The waiters seemed only to remember orders which were in the process of being served. When completed, the orders evaporated from their memory.

Zeigarnik went back to the lab to test out a theory about what was going on. She asked participants to do twenty or so simple little tasks in the lab, like solving puzzles and stringing beads (Zeigarnik, 1927). Except some of the time they were interrupted half way through the task. Afterwards she asked them which activities they remembered doing. People were about twice as likely to remember the tasks during which they’d been interrupted than those they completed.

What does this have to do with procrastination? I’ll give you another clue…

Read further at psyblog.

August 21st, 2011

the English are so nice, so awfully nice

D.H. Lawrence trying for the world’s driest poem:

The English are so nice
so awfully nice
they are the nicest people in the world.

And what’s more, they’re very nice about being nice
about your being nice as well!
If you’re not nice they soon make you feel it.

Americans and French and Germans and so on
they’re all very well
but they’re not really nice, you know.
They’re not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?

That’s why one doesn’t have to take them seriously.
We must be nice to them, of course,
of course, naturally—
But it doesn’t really matter what you say to them,
they don’t really understand—
you can just say anything to them:
be nice, you know, just be nice
but you must never take them seriously,
they wouldn’t understand.

Just be nice, you know! Oh, fairly nice,
not too nice of course, they take advantage—
but nice enough, just nice enough
to let them feel they’re not quite
as nice as they might be.

Via the reading by spokenverse on youtube.

August 3rd, 2011

polystyrene foam macaroon of ginger with smoked coconut butter

The restaurant El Bulli is cataloguing its dishes online. I can’t stop looking and marvelling.
Above: ‘polystyrene foam macaroon of ginger with smoked coconut butter’.

More here.

August 2nd, 2011

more playing with food

Far be it from us to destroy anyone’s nerdy fascination with lighting stuff on fire with a microwave—one of the ultimate proofs of commitment to your geekdom—and what better object to show off this dangerous, potentially poisonous exhibit than with a grape?

The experiment is simple. Take a seedless grape and slice it down its length, making sure not to cut all the way through (this part is important!), so you leave just a small amount of skin connecting the two halves. Put it face-up in a microwave, turn it on for 30 seconds, and presto! A ball of flame.

So what the heck is going on in that thing? Grapes are packed full of electrolytes, an ion-rich liquid (also known as “grape juice”) that can conduct electricity. Each grape-part serves as a reservoir of electrolytes, connected together by a thin, weakly conducting path formed by the skin. Microwaves produce the energy that shove the stray ions in the grape back and forth very quickly between the two halves.

As a consequence, the current that’s produced pumps excess energy into the skin bridging the grapes, heating it up to 3000 degrees and eventually bursting into flame. Meanwhile, the traveling electrons arc through the flame and across the gap, which ionizes the air around the grape creating a bright blue burning plasma (phew!).

And what about the poisonous gas tainting your roommate’s dinner? Well, he’s talking about the ozone (O3) generated when the air inside the glass is ionized (think lightning storm). While not directly poisonous, ozone in high doses can cause issues with your lungs and just isn’t the best thing you could breath. And the smell isn’t all that appealing either.

From here via reddit/askscience

July 30th, 2011

lively cuisine

Odori-don:

A live squid with its head removed is served on top of a bowl of sushi rice, accompanied by sashimi prepared from the head (usually sliced ika (squid) and ika-kimo (squid liver)) as well as other seafood. Seasoned soy sauce is first poured on top of the squid to make it “dance”.

Possibly the creation of a chef who was chastised in childhood for playing with his food.

via kottke

July 27th, 2011

those thingies at the end of power cables

I wanted to make a joule thief (a voltage booster) for an experiment and noticed that I required a ferrite bead. I went to the electronics store but they didn’t have ferrite beads. This led me to google the term, upon which I discovered… that’s what those cylindrical components at the end of commercial electronics cables are! In a little plastic jacket.

In this particular application (power cables) they are just a simple cylinder of ferrite (metal alloy) around the cable, but they have an important and fascinating function.

Computers are fairly noisy devices. The motherboard inside the computer’s case has an oscillator that is running at anywhere from 300 MHz to 1,000 MHz. The keyboard has its own processor and oscillator as well. The video card has its own oscillators to drive the monitor. All of these oscillators have the potential to broadcast radio signals at their given frequencies. Most of this interference can be eliminated by the cases around the motherboard and keyboard.

Another source of noise is the cables connecting the devices. These cables act as nice, long antennae for the signals they carry. They broadcast the signals quite efficiently. The signals they broadcast can interfere with radios and TVs. The cables can also receive signals and transmit them into the case, where they cause problems. A ferrite bead has the property of eliminating the broadcast signals. Essentially, it “chokes” the RFI transmission at that point on the cable — this is why you find the beads at the ends of the cables. Instead of traveling down the cable and transmitting, the RFI signals turn into heat in the bead.

Explanation via howstuffworks.

Imagine how much interference there’d be in an electronics store or computer lab without ferrite beads choking the RFI transmission.

July 19th, 2011

nuke it

Here is a rather creepy web application which, using google maps and some javascript, puts nuclear blasts of varying sizes into context by allowing you to choose a location, upon which the fallout zone of your chosen blast is charted.

Via reddit.

Posted in Ha! | No Comments »
June 19th, 2011

wooden mirror

via 3qd

Posted in Ha!, Video | No Comments »
June 16th, 2011

everyday poetry

I heard the expression “lower than a snake in a wagon track” on the Big Joe Williams rendition of “Rocks in my bed”, and I googled it. Which led me to this page of colourful expressions…

I grew up in the country, on Boggs Run, in Marshall County, West Virginia. My dad, Jack Cunningham, was born and raised there and he helped me with this project in the year preceding his death on May 7, 2000.

The following expressions were used in everyday conversation by my dad, uncles and grandfathers and were a part of our culture. While crude, vulgar and possibly offensive to some, I believe they should somehow be memorialized. I have heard variations of some these old sayings and I fear the originals are being lost…

While these “sayings” are said in all parts of the country, I believe they originated in the populations of the early pioneers…the country people. (Any other facts or theories regarding the origin will be appreciated!)

Some choice examples:

“Handy as a pocketful of paper assholes”
“As full of shit as a cat is frollicks”
“Workin harder than a funeral home fan in July”
“Ugly enough to scare buzzards off a gut wagon”

More here.

June 13th, 2011

seeing red

Nearly all blood is removed from meat during slaughter, which is also why you don’t see blood in raw “white meat”; only an extremely small amount of blood remains within the muscle tissue when you get it from the store.

So what is that red liquid you are seeing in red meat? Red meats, such as beef, are composed of quite a bit of water. This water, mixed with a protein called myoglobin, ends up comprising most of that red liquid.

In fact, red meat is distinguished from white meat primarily based on the levels of myoglobin in the meat. The more myoglobin, the redder the meat. Thus most animals, such as mammals, with a high amount of myoglobin, are considered “red meat”, while animals with low levels of myoglobin, like most poultry, or no myoglobin, like some sea-life, are considered “white meat”.

Myoglobin is a protein, that stores oxygen in muscle cells, very similar to its cousin, hemoglobin, that stores oxygen in red blood cells. This is necessary for muscles which need immediate oxygen for energy during frequent, continual usage. Myoglobin is highly pigmented, specifically red; so the more myoglobin, the redder the meat will look and the darker it will get when you cook it.

misconceptionjuncton via 3qd

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