Mattalyst

scientificvisuals:

Stemonitis fusca growing and releasing spores. Original here.

mindblowingscience:

This Truculent Duck Evolved The Bodily Equivalent Of Brass Knuckles

Everyone, meet the steamer duck. The steamer duck is one bad mother. See those orange nubbins on its wings? Those are keratinized spurs, which the steamer duck has evolved to wallop the living cuss out of any creature hapless enough to cross its path. (See that red stuff on the duck’s head? Yeah. That’s blood.)

Photos featured by kind permission of Arthur Grosset. See more of his photography here

Over at Absurd Creature of the Week, Matt Simon recounts a disturbing instance of duck-on-duck violence, involving a pugnacious male steamer duck, an unfortunate shoveler duck, and an onlooking female steamer:

From time to time the steamer would drag the shoveler under, then resurface and continue beating the tar out of it as the female watched. At one point he shuffled over to her, but after 30 seconds returned to his victim and punched the poor critter 15 to 20 more times. “He then released the limp body of the shoveler,” wrote Nuechterlein, “pecked at it, and released it again.” At last he returned to the female for good, calling to her while she stretched, and the two flew off together. The shoveler eventually regained consciousness, and though seriously crippled, struggled to shore. It died 15 minutes later.

This is the avian version of Bloodsport, only without all of the terrible yet somehow endearing acting. The four species of steamer duck (so named for their penchant for flapping and running along the surface, kicking up water like steamboats) in South America are famous—at least in ornithological circles—for their brutality, getting all up in the grills of not just other steamers, but also other species in scrums lasting as long as 20 minutes.

Why the ducks are so aggressive is unclear, but one hypothesis is that steamers have evolved to be violent not only to chase off threats and competition, but to make an example of them:

Says Nuechterlein in the paper describing the fight between the steamer and the shoveler: “Possibly observational learning is important, and holding a ‘public beating’ enhances the effectiveness of territorial displays.” And that, my friends, may be the only time “public beating” has ever appeared in a scientific paper.

Much more on this badass bird over at Wired.

Amazing new sculpture by Ellen Jewett, ‘Lybica Trotting’
http://creaturesfromel.deviantart.com/

Dress by chaamal

kateordie:

jxninjv:

viajeremy:

hit like a brick

o

I’ve posted this before but god, I love this comic.

poignantperfume:

icalledyoudumb:

myideaoffuniskillingeveryone:

Danny Galieote

I would frame and hang these in my house in a heartbeat.

YES

tentakrule:

sixpenceee:

Metalosis Maligna is a fake disease invented by award-winning Dutch filmmaker Floris Kaayk.

According to the mockumentary, Metalosis Maligna occurs when a metal implant has a bad interaction with human body tissues, causing the metal to grow tendrils that eventually puncture the skin from within and destroy it.

I was skimming through the video at first not knowing it was a mockumentary and landed on the part of the man in bed. I nearly died. 

WATCH VIDEO

Here’s an alternative link to watch it on vimeo, in higher resolution, from the creator’s channel.

beatnikdaddio:

the bionic woman. 1976.

Our eventual cession of global dominance to giant spiders came one step closer this month when a scientist detailed his encounter with a spider that weighs roughly as much as a puppy. The South American Goliath birdeater (real name!) has a footlong legspan and two-inch fangs. Its body is about the size of a fist and it is the largest spider in the world—that we know of.

Read more...

jamesfactscalvin:

magieundfreiheit:

micdotcom:

Alarming Whispers reveal the ridiculous sex ed lessons schools give teens

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WHEN WE WERE LITTLE SOME TEACHER TOLD US, THE GIRLS, THAT WE WERE LIKE FLOWERS, AND EVERY MAN WE HAD TOOK A PETAL WITH THEM. IF WE HAD TOO MANY WE WOULD END UP LIKE AN UGLY, WITHERED FLOWER AND NO ONE WOULD WANT US

Oh my God, these people are horrible!

Frozach Submitted

fezwhatfez:

thequietpagan:

bywandandsword:

Fucking shit

This is simultaneously cool-looking and absolutely terrifying.

i was like, ohhhh what adorable little - AHHHHHH NO

smilesandvials:

This always cracks me up and I just want a giant poster of it in every lab.

buzzfeed:

29 Photos That Prove Everybody Cosplays

boosmygod:

shamblingshitpickle:

shakypigment:

Viktor Vasnetsov - The princess who never smiled

and why would she

look at all this bullshit she’s putting up with

who painted this picture of me

Read 30 remaining paragraphs | Comments

sizvideos:

Video

Andy Baio covers Gamergate's bewilderment and frustration as gamer heroes "disappear one by one into their blacklists." You'd think it might cause a little self-reflection, but that's not how the mob mind works.

staceythinx:

Breaking Wave is a kinetic sculpture designed by Plebian Design and Hypersonic for the biotechnology company Biogen-Idec’s new headquarters in Cambridge, MA.

About the project:

Breaking Wave tells the story of the search for patterns, and the surprising results that come by changing our point of view. 804 suspended spheres move in a wave-like formation. When the wave crests and breaks, the balls hover momentarily in a cloud. From almost anywhere in the room, this cloud is purely chaotic, but step into one of two hidden spots, and this apparent chaos shows a hidden pattern. From the first, a labyrinth hints at the search for knowledge, and from the second, a Fibonacci spiral inspired flower reminds us of the natural order and patterns found in nature.

Scientists search through billions of experimental data points in order to find patterns to develop new drugs, to treat Multiple Sclerosis, Cancer, and other diseases. Without a particular framework or perspective, these are just 0’s and 1’s, with no form or information. But with the perspective of an understanding of molecular dynamics, these data points create a clear picture about the hidden dynamics within the body, and allow scientists to craft drugs to successfully treat these diseases.

Above the sculpture lies the mechanism that drives its motion. A motor drives a large rotating stainless steel cam. 36 rollers follow the contour of the cam, which traces out the overall waveform. Each roller slides on a linear track, pulling a cable that spins one of the 36 output shafts. Distributed along each shaft are different sized drums from which the wooden sphere (coated in zinc and steel, and then rusted chemically) are hung. As the shafts rotate, the drums pull the balls up and down – larger drums pull balls higher. In this way, the size of the 804 drums mechanically programs the images hidden in the cloud of balls.

See it in motion in this video:

Breaking Wave from PLEBIAN DESIGN on Vimeo.

For years, dog and cat owners have been bickering over the relative merits of each type of pet.

But in recent years, scientific researchers have started to weigh in — and most of their findings so far come down firmly on the side of dogs.

cats don't have the same sort of emotional attachment to their owners

Compared to dogs, scientists have found, cats don't seem to have the same sort of emotional attachment to their owners, and show genuine affection far less often than you might think. Further, they're an environmental disaster, killing literally billions of birds in the US every year — many of them from endangered species.

Most alarmingly (and as explained in this 2012 Atlantic article), there's compelling evidence that a parasite often found in cat feces can subtly change people's personalities over time, increasing rates of neuroticism, schizophrenia, and perhaps even suicide.

In other words, research is telling us that cats are selfish, unfeeling, environmentally devastating creatures. If you need to convince someone not to get a cat, here's the research you need to show them.

Your cat probably doesn't love you

(opethpainter)

Daniel Mills, a veterinary researcher at the UK's University of Lincoln, is a cat lover. You can see his cat in the photo on his faculty page on the university's website. But experiments he and colleagues have conducted at the university's Animal Behaviour Clinic suggest that cats, as a whole, do not love their owners back — at least not in the same way that dogs do.

The researchers adapted a classic child psychology experiment called "the strange situation," in which a parent slips out of a room while a baby or young child is playing and then later returns. The child's behavior upon being abandoned and reunited with the parent is observed and analyzed. This sort of thing has been also done with dogs several times (including by Mills), and the experiments have found that dogs demonstrate an attachment with their owner — compared to a stranger, the dogs become more disturbed when their owners leave, and interact with them more when they return.

By contrast, Mills' cat experiments — which are still ongoing and haven't yet been published, but were featured in a BBC special last year — haven't come to the same conclusion. On the whole, the cats seem disinterested both when their owners depart and return. "Owners invest a lot emotionally in the cat relationship," Mills told the BBC. "That doesn’t mean that the cat’s investing in the same sort of emotional relationship." At the time, he said the results were inconclusive, but at the very least, it's safe to say that they haven't yielded the same obvious results that the dog studies have.

Cats, aloof as ever. (Tom Wicker)

Meanwhile, other experiments carried out by a pair of Japanese researchers have provided evidence for a fact already known to most cat owners: they can hear you calling their name, but just don't really care. As detailed in a study published last year, the researchers gathered 20 cats (one at a time) and played them recordings of three different people calling their name — two strangers, plus their owners.

Regardless of the order, the cats consistently reacted differently upon hearing their owner's voice (in terms of ear and head movement, as graded by independent raters who didn't know which voice belonged to the owner). However, none of them meowed or actually approached the speaker, as though they'd be interested in seeing the person.

Why are cats so different from dogs in this way? The researchers speculate that the difference can be explained by evolutionary history: dogs were domesticated an estimated 15,000 years ago, compared to just 9,500 years for cats. Additionally, it's believed that dogs were actively selected by humans (to guard and herd animals), whereas cats likely selected themselves, spending time near people simply to eat the rats consuming grain stores. This difference — along with the extra evolutionary time — could explain why dogs are so much more interested in responding to the human voice.

Your cat isn't really showing you affection

A cat feigns affection to mark its territory. (Erik Tjallinks)

Cat lovers will probably respond here that their pets do show affection, purring and rubbing up against their legs. But there's good reason to believe that, much of the time, these sorts of behaviors that look like affection are conducted with entirely different goals in mind.

Many cats, for instance, will rub up against the leg of their owner (or another human) when the person enters a room. It's easy to construe this as a sign of affection. But many researchers interpret this as an attempt, by the cat, to spread his or her scent — as a way to mark territory. Observations of semi-feral cats show that they commonly rub up against trees or other objects in the exact same way, which allows them to deposit pheromone-containing secretions that naturally come out of their skin.

semi-feral cats commonly rub up against trees and other objects to mark territory

Purring, in some cases, also seems to mean something different than what you imagine. As part of 2009 study, researchers at the University of Sussex recorded the purring sounds made by 10 different cats in two types of situations: when they wanted food, and when they didn't.

As it turned out, the food-related purrs were noticeably different: the otherwise low-toned noises had a spike in the 220 to 520-hertz frequency, which is similar to a baby's cry. Human study participants also rated these purrs as more urgent and less pleasant.

What may be going on, the researchers concluded, is that cats have figured out how to purr in a way that triggers humans' parenting instincts. They don't always purr this way, but they do so when they want food, because they know it'll get results.

Finally, there's some evidence, turned up by Mills, that many cats don't actually like being petted by humans at all. In a 2013 study, he and other researchers measured levels of stress hormones in cats, with the intention of figuring out whether having multiple cats in the same household is a bad idea. That didn't turn out to be true, but they did find that the cats who allowed themselves to be petted had higher stress levels afterward than the cats who disliked it so much that they simply ran away.

Cats are an environmental disaster

An invasive cat destroys its local environment. (Etienne Valois)

In the US, domestic cats are an invasive species — they originated in Asia. And research shows that, whenever they're let outside, cats' carnivorous activity has a devastating effect on wild bird and small mammal populations, even if the cats are well-fed.

Of course, dogs are likely a net negative for the environment too. There isn't as much data available, but researchers note that dogs spread diseases (such as rabies) and also prey on various species, including many types of birds, as well.

cats kill somewhere between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds annually in the us

But in terms of raw numbers, it seems unlikely they can match the impact of cats. A study published last year found that cats kill far higher numbers of songbirds and mammals than previously thought: somewhere between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds, and 6.9 and 20.7 billion mammals annually. Many of the mammals might be mice and rats (species that have no problem sustaining their numbers), but the prey also includes many endangered bird species.

This isn't just a symbolic problem — it's a truly significant one. The best data we have on birds killed by other sorts of threats, from the Fish and Wildlife Service, isn't great (it's a little old, and the estimates are rough), but a comparison indicates that cats kill as many birds as collisions with buildings, and kill more birds than collisions with cell phone towers, power lines, cars, and wind turbines combined.

Cat owners can do a few simple things to easily cut down on this threat. Research indicates that leaving cats inside at night, or tying a bell around their neck (so prey hear them coming) means they kill significantly fewer birds and mammals. But right now, few cat owners do this, whether because they want their pets to get the pleasure of killing, or out of sheer laziness.

Your cat might be driving you crazy

A cyst filled with Toxoplasma gondii parasites, as seen in a mouse brain. (Jitinder P. Dubey)

Finally, there's the weird, unsettling connection between cats, a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, and litter boxes.

This parasite can infect pretty much any sort of animal — including humans — but it can only sexually reproduce when inside the intestines of cats. In order to get there, it's been found to alter the behavior of infected rodents, making them less fearful of predators. In other words, when T. gondii gets picked up by a mouse, it increases the chance that the mouse will get eaten by a cat, so the parasite can reproduce once again.

This may seem bizarre enough, but over the past few years, some scientists have begun to suspect that the parasites alter human behavior in a similar way. Humans often pick up T. gondii from handling cats' litter boxes (because the parasites can be found in their feces), and there's an increasing amount of evidence that the resulting long-term, latent infection can subtly change a person's personality over time.

When parasites found in cat litter infect humans, they seem to subtly change personality over time

Of course, we're not rodents, so the parasites aren't successful in getting us eaten by cats. But the actual consequences are just as troubling. People who have been infected have greater rates of neuroticism and schizophrenia, and have slower reflex times in lab experiments. As a result, it seems, they get into traffic accidents more often. There's evidence that they have higher rates of suicide. All this, it seems, are unintended results of the parasite's ability to alter a mouse's brain to increase the chance of predation.

Now, everyone who owns a cat doesn't get infected by T. gondii, and there are other ways of getting the parasite (like eating undercooked meat). And the infection itself doesn't seem to cause these behavioral changes in everyone — they just occur at slightly higher rates among the millions of people worldwide who are infected.

Still, if you needed one more reason not to house an animal that doesn't love you, manipulates your emotions to get food, and helps to eradicate endangered species, it's a pretty damn good one.

Further reading: Kathleen McAuliffe's eye-opening article in the Atlantic: How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy

How do you demonstrate machine learning on a quantum computer? Teach it to recognize a 69 or course. To keep the experiment simple, the team trained their machine to recognize the difference between a handwritten 6 and a handwritten 9. The vectors representing 6s and 9s can then be compared in this feature space to work out how best to distinguish between them. In effect, the computer finds a hyperplane in the feature space that separates the vectors representing 6s from those representing 9s. Comments

I Went to a Nu-Kawaii Cosplay Rave in Brooklyn