flower exposed to radiation from Fukushima nuclear facility Japan
this makes me incredibly uncomfortable
eesh
fack
Creepy! “flower exposed to radiation from Fukushima nuclear facility Japan”
Reblogged from Canaries + Nachos
[TW: domestic violence]
The other question everybody asks is, why doesn’t she just leave? Why didn’t I walk out? I could have left any time. To me, this is the saddest and most painful question that people ask, because we victims know something you usually don’t: It’s incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser. Because the final step in the domestic violence pattern is kill her. Over 70 percent of domestic violence murders happen after the victim has ended the relationship, after she’s gotten out, because then the abuser has nothing left to lose. Other outcomes include long-term stalking, even after the abuser remarries; denial of financial resources; and manipulation of the family court system to terrify the victim and her children, who are regularly forced by family court judges to spend unsupervised time with the man who beat their mother. And still we ask, why doesn’t she just leave?
Reblogged from Canaries + Nachos
Starting Blogging 101- need help
I’ve been having some good ideas lately that I think would be useful to put into writing. Useful for work, for people looking for work, for people looking for mildly informative distractions, etc. The problem is that these ideas often flash through my mind at a time when I cannot afford to sit down and write them out.
My question is to all of you out there that manage this process within yourself: How do you catalog and easily keep track of these thoughts for later expansion? I feel that if I type them into my phone’s notes, I’ll just forget about ‘em.
Cleveland Clinic researchers discover new link between heart disease and red meat
A compound abundant in red meat and added as a supplement to popular energy drinks has been found to promote atherosclerosis — or the hardening or clogging of the arteries — according to Cleveland Clinic research published online this week in the journal Nature Medicine. The study shows that bacteria living in the human digestive tract metabolize the compound carnitine, turning it into trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), a metabolite the researchers previously linked in a 2011 study to the promotion of atherosclerosis in humans. Further, the research finds that a diet high in carnitine promotes the growth of the bacteria that metabolize carnitine, compounding the problem by producing even more of the artery-clogging TMAO.
Reblogged from Current Biology
The Secret Life of Cats: What You Can Learn By Putting a GPS on Your Kitty
A new book documents one family’s quest to understand their pet with the aid of technology.
Read more. [Images: Wendy MacNaughton]
Thinking of my husband as I read these Spy Store Notes. Have you seen his wishlist?
Reblogged from The Atlantic
Everybody’s moonlighting these days.
[via Dave Barry’s blog]
Reblogged from Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me
Margaret Thatcher’s Trailblazing Career, in Photos
[Images: AP, MargaretThatcher.org]
Reblogged from The Atlantic
What Do Support For Gay Marriage and the Decline of Marriage Have to Do With Each Other?
The relationship between gay marriage and unwed moms isn’t a thing. Let’s stop trying to make it a thing.
Reblogged from The Atlantic
No joke here- it’s April 1st and the trees are still naked in DC. A few Cherry Blossoms, and few budding plants, but still as stark looking as winter. The birds are out and about today and that gives me hope of Spring. It’s also 94% humidity, which has to mean warmth is on the horizon.
I was by myself for a pretty long time. I needed to do that. I think everyone that I know has wanted to do that or needed to do that at some point. I think when you spend enough time when it’s quiet around you and you don’t open your mouth for three or four days, there’s parts of your brain that can kind of rest. I think when we’re out in the world and we have to talk to people, we edit ourselves. You know, we have to like, act a little bit. As honest as we may be as humans, when we’re out here, we’re all kind of wearing mirrors on our faces. You know, constantly reacting to how to react to the people around you. And I think when you’re alone for a long enough time, you can feel a lot more peace.
Reblogged from Canaries + Nachos
I don’t do well being “in between” things in life.
Want to Make an Alligator Angrier Than Normal? Make It Use a Treadmill (Wired)
Alligators, crocodiles, and gharials aren’t known for their easygoing nature—and they get even less friendly when you force them to run on a treadmill. But it’s worth it, because watching crocodilians exercise might teach us how dinosaurs breathed. Crocs and dinos are distant cousins and likely share some physiology.
Poor Croc. Clearly it would have been happier to just fall off and then lie still on the floor below.
Reblogged from Current Biology
Study indicates reverse impulses clear useless information, prime brain for learning
When the mind is at rest, the electrical signals by which brain cells communicate appear to travel in reverse, wiping out unimportant information in the process, but sensitizing the cells for future sensory learning, according to a study of rats conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health.
The finding has implications not only for studies seeking to help people learn more efficiently, but also for attempts to understand and treat post-traumatic stress disorder—in which the mind has difficulty moving beyond a disturbing experience.
During waking hours, brain cells, or neurons, communicate via high-speed electrical signals that travel the length of the cell. These communications are the foundation for learning. As learning progresses, these signals travel across groups of neurons with increasing rapidity, forming circuits that work together to recall a memory.
It was previously known that, during sleep, these impulses were reversed, arising from waves of electrical activity originating deep within the brain. In the current study, the researchers found that these reverse signals weakened circuits formed during waking hours, apparently so that unimportant information could be erased from the brain. But the reverse signals also appeared to prime the brain to relearn at least some of the forgotten information. If the animals encountered the same information upon awakening, the circuits re-formed much more rapidly than when they originally encountered the information.
“The brain doesn’t store all the information it encounters, so there must be a mechanism for discarding what isn’t important,” said senior author R. Douglas Fields, Ph.D., head of the Section on Nervous System Development and Plasticity at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the NIH institute where the research was conducted. “These reverse brain signals appear to be the mechanism by which the brain clears itself of unimportant information.”
Their findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers studied the activity of rats’ brain cells from the hippocampus, a tube-like structure deep in the brain. The hippocampus relays information to and from many other regions of the brain. It plays an important role in memory, orientation, and navigation.
The classic understanding of brain cell activity is that electrical signals travel from dendrites—antenna-like projections at one end of the cell—through the cell body. From the cell body, they then travel the length of the axon, a single long projection at the other end of the cell. This electrical signal stimulates the release of chemicals at the end of the axon, which bind to dendrites on adjacent cells, stimulating these recipient cells to fire electrical signals, and so on. When groups of cells repeatedly fire in this way, the electrical signals increase in intensity.
Dr. Bukalo and her team examined electrical signals that traveled in reverse—from the cell’s axon, to the cell body, and out its many dendrites. This reverse firing happens during sleep and at rest, appearing to reset the cell, the researchers found.
After first stimulating the cells with reverse electrical impulses, the researchers next stimulated the dendrites again with electrical impulses traveling in the forward direction. In response, the neurons generated a stronger signal, with the connections appearing to strengthen with repeated electrical stimulation.
This pattern appears to underlie the formation of new memories. A connection that is reset but never stimulated again may simply fade from use over time, Dr. Bukalo explained. But when a cell is stimulated again, it fires a stronger signal and may be more easily synchronized to the reinforced signals of other brain cells, all of which act in concert over time.
What a brilliant brain have we!
This might explain why I am terrible at remembering moments or what people call “making memories”. It’s something that only happens once, and if erased at night, would not be reformed and become stronger because the moment doesn’t happen again…hmmmm.
Reblogged from Current Biology
