mercutiox:

سنگ نگاره های باستانی ایران

Prehistoric rock art of Iran. The ancient petroglyphs date back 4500 to 17000 years.

(via thissacredheart)

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woanderlust:

Bone Cancer

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zarggg:

Donut mitosis.

(via aoristt)

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science-junkie:

Nineteenth Century Technique Turns Old Mouse Hearts Young

Drawing on an odd experimental technique invented more than a century ago but rarely done now, researchers [of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute] have found that a blood-borne protein makes old mouse hearts appear young and healthy again. It’s not clear yet whether humans would react the same way, but scientists are hopeful that this discovery may help treat one of the heart’s most frustrating ailments…

 As heart muscles get older, they grow thicker. The thickened heart can still pump blood out normally, but it can’t relax enough to refill between pumps. The condition is called diastolic heart failure, named after the heart’s resting, or diastolic, phase. There is currently no treatment to reverse the thickening of the heart and restore normal function.

But researchers continue to look for such a cardiac fountain of youth. One approach has been to apply a 150-year-old technique to infuse young blood into old mice. Called heterochronic parabiosis the method involves surgically linking the circulatory systems of two mice of different ages by opening a flap of skin on each mouse’s side and stitching the two together so that the same blood pumps through both creatures…

This study is a modern validation of 18th-century parabiosis science using 21st century molecular biology, says cardiologist Gerald Dorn of Washington University in St. Louis. However, use of the technique lends the research a gothic, macabre flavor, he says. “I was looking to see whether Tim Burton or Vincent Price were a part of the experimental design.”

Source: sciencemag.org

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kubkelly:

The Venezuelan Poodle Moth is in my opinion one of the coolest moths on the face of the earth.

invaderxan:

Scorpions are probably the only type of animal which can actually creep me out. But they do glow under ultraviolet light, which is pretty cool. One hypothesis suggests that this might be an effect of a scorpion’s entire body being able to act as a light receptor (an eye, basically), to help them stay in the shade.

Painted turtles set to become all-female - New Scientist ›

fyanimaldiversity:

Mutations in Plains Zebra (Equus quagga)

1. Nicknamed Marble, this zebra has an area of small scrambled stripes on it’s back, giving it a marbled look. [x]
2. A reconstructed quagga-like animal, it’s legs clean, and it’s rump and belly nearly free of markings. The stripes it does have are fairly narrow for a plains zebra. It’s tail and mane are much lighter, and has a faint brown wash along it’s back.[x]
3. Two reduced striped animals, the middle with a few stray stripes on it’s rump and legs, the one on the right has a nearly all white body and legs. Both have a fewer number of facial markings as well.[x]
4. A diluted, brown striped adult zebra. Zebra foals are born brown and white, but this one didn’t seem to lose it’s baby colors. [x]
5. An erythristic, gingery-brown striped beauty. [x]
6. Blonde is a term applied to leucistic zebras. Albino is sometimes used for the really light animals, like this blue eyed and creamy tan striped one, however I keep reading that true albinism has not been recorded in equines, so I’m hesitant to use that term.[x]
7. This abundistic has stripes that thicken and meld together on it’s back and neck, forming white spots.[x]
8. Dotted and dashed with white on a black background, this heavily abundistic zebra has a very unique and striking look.[x]
9. The back of this abundistic Burchell’s (E.q. burchellii) is so densely marked, it’s a nearly solid blanket of color ticked with a bit of white. The rest of it’s stripes and brown shadow stripes are jagged and messy.[x] 
10. Unfortunately, without the help of the naturally camouflaged striped coat, this extremely dark abundistic foal was an easier target for predators and didn’t make it into adulthood. Still in it’s dark brown baby coat, it probably would look very similar to number 8 but with a darker face, smaller spots, and wider white stripes on it’s rump.[x]

quantumaniac:

Study reveals potential treatments for Ebola and other deadly viruses

Illnesses caused by many of the world’s most deadly viruses cannot be effectively treated with existing drugs or vaccines. A study published by Cell Press in the March 21 issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology has revealed several compounds that can inhibit multiple viruses, such as highly lethal Ebola virus, as well as pathogens responsible for rabies, mumps, and measles, opening up new therapeutic avenues for combating highly pathogenic viruses.

“The medical field currently does not have ideal antiviral therapies, often no therapeutics at all, and the development of broad-spectrum antivirals is a great way to provide treatment in the future,” says study author Claire Marie Filone of Boston University School of Medicine. “Toward that end, we have identified a drug that targets multiple viruses- and may be developed into an antiviral treatment for known and emerging viruses.”

Many viruses that cause human diseases are nonsegmented, negative-strand (NNS) RNA viruses, which include the highly lethal Ebola virus and other pathogens mentioned above. In contrast to the many antibiotics that work against a wide range of bacteria, there are currently no highly effective or safe broad-spectrum drug treatments for viral diseases.

To address this need, John Connor and John Snyder of Boston University and their team screened thousands of diverse compounds for small molecules that showed strong antiviral activity against multiple NNS viruses. They identified several molecules that inhibited infection in cells exposed to either Ebola or another NNS virus called vesicular stomatitis virus. These molecules, which are related to a class of plant-derived compounds called indoline alkaloids, share a common chemical structure that can be modified to enhance antiviral activity.

The most potent of these compounds turned off NNS viral genes by blocking transcription. “Because our antiviral targets such a critical step in virus replication, we may be able to develop it into a therapeutic that could be used against many different types of viral infections,” Filone says.

Source

We have been conditioned to think of reproductive age as a female-only concern, but it isn’t. For decades, neonatologists have known about birth defects linked to older fathers: dwarfism, Apert syndrome (a bone disorder that may result in an elongated head), Marfan syndrome (a disorder of the connective tissue that results in weirdly tall, skinny bodies), and cleft palates. But the associations between parental age and birth defects were largely speculative until this year, when researchers in Iceland, using radically more powerful ways of looking at genomes, established that men pass on more de novo—that is, non-inherited and spontaneously occurring—genetic mutations to their children as they get older. In the scientists’ study, published in Nature, they concluded that the number of genetic mutations that can be acquired from a father increases by two every year of his life, and doubles every 16, so that a 36-year-old man is twice as likely as a 20-year-old to bequeath de novo mutations to his children.

The romantic critique of antidepressants returns over and over again in art and music. It appears in Garden State, the 2004 film in which the protagonist, Andrew, a twentysomething man played by Zach Braff, uses the occasion of a trip home to New Jersey to go off the battery of antidepressants and mood stabilizers that his psychiatrist father has had him taking for years. He reconnects with his old friends and forms a relationship with a quirky young woman played by Natalie Portman, connections that are vivifying where his medications merely numbed and stifled him.

As the film progresses, Andrew loosens up, finally beginning to smile and laugh. See, the movie says, he doesn’t need pills! He needs love! He needs to feel! He needs Natalie Portman! The love-conquers-all plot builds up toward a cleansing rainstorm and a literal primal scream at the bottom fo a quarry.

The romantic critique is easy to grasp and smugly satisfying, but it’s also a little sophomoric. It portrays recovery as being as easy as being willing to look your problems in the eye, a proposition that most serious chroniclers of depression have understood just isn’t true.