finally, men are getting the attention and praise they deserve.

Way to go, you men! When you all get together, you can make a difference!

Today, the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater will make a real stride toward progress by thinking about the men, for a change.

ellensama:

physicsphysics:

An interesting model of our solar system’s path as it travels through space in the Milky Way.

Certainly a departure from usual models that show the Sun as a static object, which it certainly isn’t

This model is amazing!!

****Don’t do this!!****

shadowkat104:

kellyjacobsbooks:

HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE

Let’s say it’s 6.15pm and you’re going home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day on the job. You’re really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to drag out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home. Unfortunately you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far. You have been trained in CPR, but the guy that taught the course did not tell you how to perform it on yourself..!!

NOW HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE…

Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, without help, the person whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness.

However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously.

A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest.

A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.

Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating.

The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can perhaps buy precious time to get themselves to a phone and dial 911.

Rather than sharing another joke please contribute by broadcasting this which can save a person’s life!

Be prepared and become part of the solution. Get your free next-of-kin notification card today. Click here: https://www.InCaseOfEmergencyCard.com/

major signal boost

Actually, if you do this without first having very specialized training about WHEN to cough, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll do it wrong and turn a mild heart attack into a fatal one.

The more you know.

queensimia:

sylvantage:

cineraria:

My cat can see the rotating snake illusion! - YouTube

Reblogging so I remember to do this to my sister’s cat.

Messin’ with the poor kitty’s head… when I get to a place where I can have a cat, I need to remember this.

Ooooh, this is actually really intriguing!

canadianoftheweek:

Carly Rae Jepsen to Boy Scouts: Don’t call me

More than 60,000 people asked Carly Rae Jepsen to renounce the Boy Scouts of America’s anti-gay policies by canceling her scheduled headlining spot at the Boy Scouts 2013 National Jamboree – and she did.

In a string of three tweets, she wrote:

“As an artist who believes in equality for all people, I will not be participating in the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree this summer. I always have and will continue to support the LGBT community on a global level… and stay informed on the ever changing landscape in the ongoing battle for gay rights in this country and across the globe.”

Also important because the Boy Scouts discriminate by religion, too. Their policy toward atheists is essentially identical, despite the fact that they are publicly funded and legally obliged not to discriminate against either group.

biomedicalephemera:

aspidelaps:

biomedicalephemera:

The Juvenile Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin)

It should first be noted that all birds are dinosaurs (order Saurischia, clade Theropoda), not just descendents of dinosaurs - modern genetic analysis strongly supports this cladistic organization. But given what we’re too often taught in schools, birds and dinosaurs are hard to reconcile in many peoples’ minds.

The juvenile hoatzin, however, makes it easy to see the reptilian traits that once dominated the early birds, and displays the unused genetic codes that lurk in the genome of modern avians. When they hatch, they’re equipped with lizard-like claws in front of their wings. Their use is described here, but in short, they use them to return to their nest and avoid predators. Their claws disappear by the time they leave the nest, having grown together into the metacarpals that support the wing structure.

Another fascinating trait of the hoatzins is their vegetarianism and their digestive tract. They have gut flora and fermentation similar to ruminants, which no other bird has. This is actually what leads to their being called “stink birds” - they exude a lot of stench with the fermentation process. The gut fermentation is so important to the hoatzin that the flight muscles attached to their keel are significantly reduced, to allow for more space for the stomach. They are weak flyers because of this. After a large meal, an adult hoatzin can spend up to two days doing almost nothing, allowing the leaves and greenery to have their nutrients released by their symbiotic gut flora.

Images:

Top: Attitudes of the juvenile hoatzin while climbing
Second row, left: Hoatzin nest with two eggs - Note proximity to water
Second row, right: Two hoatzin chicks preparing to dive, after appearance of threat from above
Third row, left: Hoatzin chick demonstrating strong swimming abilities
Third row, right: Hoatzin chick demonstrating poor locomotion on land
Bottom: Detail of hoatzin chick climbing, using neck, feet, and claws.

Tropical Wild Life in British Guinea, Vol 1. Curated by William Beebe, 1898.

It should be noted that the claws of Hoatzin are not actually simply because they are related to dinosaurs. Their claws actually re-evolved independently - they are not evolutionary leftovers at their core. While it could be considered a re-appearing gene because of their evolutionary history, it’s still something that would have to be selected over time and could have vanished again just as easily, not to mention it’s very unlikely (and impossible to prove) that it is the exact genome coming out of dormancy.

It’s more similar to dinosaurs when one thinks about convergent evolution than when one thinks about descendence, even if they are descendents too.

All of this is true, but I still like the hoatzin as an example of how to start to show people how birds really *are* dinosaurs - it’s a concept that many people don’t even begin to accept easily.

Hoatzin claws aren’t so much elongated talons-turned-wings like the Archaeopteryx seems to have, as they are a set of hooks on the front of a “chicken wing” structure. Note too, that Archaeopteryx and the hoatzin are not closely related at all (also the archaeopteryx may not even be a bird or bird relative/ancestor, but that’s a whole different matter).

Either way, the hoatzin (btw, if anyone’s wondering, that’s basically pronounced “Watsin”) is an interesting bird. The morphological changes in the wing bones as it matures are interesting enough, but the fact that it’s got such a weird digestive system are what really intrigue me.

It should be noted that while the hoatzin is a poor flyer, it’s not because it’s “primitive” or anything - it’s completely because they have a huge gut, and smaller flight muscles because of that. While their gut is a characteristic that some pretty ancient ancestors of theirs had (at least back to the Eocene), the species as a whole isn’t some evolutionary throwback, like some of the Crocodilians. The “hook-hands” of the hoatzin are relatively recent developments, as was noted. But their morphological similarities to the extinct Therapods still helps to remind people that dinosaurs and birds aren’t so different, after all.

Actually, while the claws are indeed probably re-evolved, that doesn’t at all mean that they aren’t still built from the same ancestral genes as those of dinosaurs. Because embryonic development is such a fragile process, changes tend to be added onto the end as new stages, which is why you can see ancestral structures in embryos that are later re-absorbed (like primordial gill structures and tails in human embryos). Much of evolution happens by sliding around the precise timing of developmental events, such as limb creation and bone formation.

This makes sense when you consider the Hoatzin because while the claws of its embryo are well-developed, the hand of an adult much more closely resemble the fused fingers of any other bird. While I haven’t been able to find any recent scholarly articles on Hoatzin development, I strongly suspect that it’s not so much a case of the Hoatzin adding on a set of claws as that the genes regulating claw formation in the hand are allowed to express for longer than usual, resulting in a more distinct claw until the modern avian genes for bone fusion finally kick in during adolescence, concluding development. So it is not convergent, but atavistic.

Guess who has two thumbs and was accepted into grad school?

@kae -
My PI upon receiving it: “Ahahaha awwwww-oh hey, that’s actually really accurate!”

c:

I parasitic nematode you too, valentine.