CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-24 19:25:21 (2 comments, 4 reshares, 22 +1s)

Cat needs a hand. Smart kitty! [GIF]

2013-05-24 19:23:40 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Infographic: The Neurobiology of Alzheimer's Disease.

2013-05-24 19:19:22 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 7 +1s)

8 Things We’ve Learned Lately about Thunder and Lightning
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/ideas/2013/05/8-things-weve-learned-lately-about-thunder-and-lightning/

Be sure to check out the four videos at the end. Wow!

2013-05-23 11:07:50 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 9 +1s)

NASA: Shuttle dismount from flight.

2013-05-23 02:28:25 (8 comments, 6 reshares, 22 +1s)

Nickel | Manfred Herz
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45965343@N05/8755830028/

Scanning electron micrograph of nickel (Ni).

2013-05-23 02:24:32 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 10 +1s)

Shooting star. [GIF]

2013-05-23 02:09:59 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 10 +1s)

Three Possible Futures for the Universe

This illustration shows three possible futures for the Universe, depending on the behavior of dark energy, by showing how the scale of the Universe may change with time. If dark energy is constant, as the new Chandra results suggest, the expansion should continue accelerating forever. If dark energy increases, the acceleration may happen so quickly that galaxies, stars, and eventually atoms will be torn apart, in the so-called Big Rip. Dark energy may also lead to a recollapse of the Universe, in the Big Crunch. The illustration also shows the early decelerating expansion of the Universe, followed by the accelerating phase that started about 6 billion years ago. 
(Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss)

Related Link: http://chandra.si.edu/xray_astro/dark_energy/index.html

2013-05-22 15:47:05 (8 comments, 5 reshares, 40 +1s)

Night Light... Donner Lake, 1am, Truckee, California

A good night light makes you feel safer. Lets you see in the dark. Is discreet and doesn't sear your eyeballs out of their sockets if you have to get up in the middle of the night and don't want to run into the door frame.

A good night light kisses you on the forehead and says quite tenderly; "It's time to sleep, sweet thing. Good night." And you always reply "'Night, light. Sweet dreams."

A good night light is timeless.

2013-05-22 13:00:28 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 9 +1s)

World’s Largest Aqueducts, Moving Billions Of Gallons Of Water Daily
http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-largest-aqueducts-moving-billions-of-gallons-of-water-daily/3525

Two of the more interesting tunnels that humans build are transportation tunnels for trains and cars and water aqueducts supplying large cities.

The largest existing aqueduct in the world is the Thirlmere Aqueduct in North West England built between 1890 and 1925 and running 96 miles over and through hill and dale of the English countryside in pipes, streams, tunnels dams and aqueducts.

2013-05-22 12:54:08 (7 comments, 6 reshares, 17 +1s)

Infographic: 56 Years of America’s Most Terrifying Tornadoes
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669925/infographic-56-years-of-americas-most-terrifying-tornadoes

Each glowing etch on this map represents the path of a tornado tracked in the last 56 years by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

2013-05-22 12:48:57 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 14 +1s)

A big list of whales, at the least the ones that are left.
http://goo.gl/2oNmm

2013-05-22 12:44:01 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Roberto Bolle under the Barre.
http://mariadoval.wordpress.com/category/imagenes/page/3/

2013-05-22 12:42:54 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

and this happened in Arizona!!! There's actual real thinking people in Arizona!! I'll be damned   :)

2013-05-22 11:47:49 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Drive that train by mobius cycle
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobiuscycle/8717038346/in/pool-52239725460@N01/

2013-05-22 11:43:36 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 8 +1s)

Ernst Haeckel
Kunstformen der Natur (1899)
SLIME MOLD FRUITING BODIES
http://lichencolony.wordpress.com/2006/05/04/slime-molds/

Myxomycete plasmodia are generally from as small as a few centimeters to several meters square in size (among the largest).

There are two types:
- acellular, consisting of multiple nuclei encased in a single cell wall, and
- cellular, which are composites of multiple, individual cells.

Slime molds are thought to be one of the first organisms formed as a collective of individual cells. After slime molds become plasmodial they roam and devour bacteria, fungi, and detritus, moving at a rate of about 1/25th of an inch per hour, or 2 cm per min. among the quicker. At the end of its career as a plasmodium the slime mold settles in a place where there is a draft that can carry aloft its spores, which it... more »

2013-05-21 16:20:44 (10 comments, 6 reshares, 35 +1s)

The end of the world - Australia

These are the Nullabor Cliffs that stretch between Western and South Australia. Makes up most of the Great Australian Bight

2013-05-21 14:18:55 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 11 +1s)

Language Does Not Shape Thought
Cognition causes language, not the other way around.
Correlations between changes in thought with changes in language abound. But the arguments are very weak for causality from language to cognition in this context.
http://www.science20.com/eye_brainstorm/blog/language_does_not_shape_thought-112409

2013-05-21 13:54:32 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Far-reaching, microvascular damage found in uninjured side of brain after stroke http://ow.ly/2x1p8W

2013-05-21 13:52:58 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Daphne Zbaeren-Colbourn, Bern, Switzerland
http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/techniques/image/brightfield/211
Subject Matter: Strand of grass (Spinifex littoreus) (400x)
Technique: Brightfield

2013-05-21 13:42:38 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

“Whodunnit” of Irish potato famine solved
An international team of scientists reveals that a unique strain of potato blight they call HERB-1 triggered the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century
http://www.mpg.de/7258079/potato_blight

It is the first time scientists have decoded the genome of a plant pathogen and its plant host from dried herbarium samples. This opens up a new area of research to understand how pathogens evolve and how human activity impacts the spread of plant disease.

Phytophthora infestans changed the course of history. Even today, the Irish population has still not recovered to pre-famine levels. “We have finally discovered the identity of the exact strain that caused all this havoc”, says Hernán Burbano from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.

For research to be published in eLife, a team of molecularbiologis... more »

2013-05-21 13:34:06 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 15 +1s)

Northern hemisphere losing last dry snow region
A new study shows summer melt events on the Greenland Ice Sheet are increasing in frequency due to rising temperatures.
http://phys.org/news/2013-05-northern-hemisphere-region.html

Last July, something unprecedented in the 34-year satellite record happened: 98 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet's surface melted, compared to roughly 50 percent during an average summer. Snow that usually stays frozen and dry turned wet with melt water. Research led by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences now shows last summer's extreme melt could soon be the new normal.

"Greenland is warming rapidly, and such ice-sheet-wide, surface-melt events will occur more frequently over the next couple of decades," said Dan McGrath, a University of Colorado Boulder doctoral student who works at CIRES.... more »

2013-05-21 13:20:59 (2 comments, 4 reshares, 14 +1s)

RNA was a key ingredient in primordial soup that led to life
http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/scientists-rna-was-a-key-ingredient-in-primordial-soup-that-led-to-life/#ixzz2TvthxLYG

According to scientists, after billions of years during the Earth’s formation, the first living molecule formed in the newly cooled oceans between 3.8 and 3.5 billion years ago. Today, researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology are going back to the Archean Eon to discover the key ingredients that allowed life to form.

The team of researchers re-created predicted conditions on Earth that took place 3 billion years ago in effort to discover if RNA and iron were the perfect concoction to be the makers of life.

Today RNA, the sister molecule of DNA, is most known for being the messenger of genetic code. On the other hand, since the discovery of ribozymes in the 1980s—a RNAmol... more »

2013-05-21 13:13:55 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

When shining a light is a problem in itself
Heisenberg’s uncertainties are starting to cause problems for some very big experiments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/steve-jones/10070165/When-shining-a-light-is-a-problem-in-itself.html

In science, as in life, the old jokes are the best. The physicist Werner Heisenberg was once stopped for speeding. “Professor Heisenberg,” the cop said, “do you know how fast you were going?” “No,” he replied, “but I know exactly where I am!”

That’s the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: that it is impossible simultaneously to measure the velocity and the position of any object. The effect is universal, but was once thought to be unimportant, except on the tiniest of scales.

Imagine that one wants to measure how far away something is by bouncing a beam of light off it and timing when it returns. Just thathas been done to es... more »

2013-05-21 13:07:13 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

I'm a sucker for statistics. Here's another guy who is, too.

2013-05-21 11:50:14 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 9 +1s)

Sunny Winter Day by luthi.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_luthardt/3280902735/in/faves-56193265@N08/

2013-05-21 11:48:22 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 9 +1s)

Adorable little bunhead!

2013-05-20 22:50:24 (0 comments, 5 reshares, 15 +1s)

Mazus-trichome by FEI Company.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fei_company/3930172948/

Four trichomes are on the petal of Mazus fauriei. The image was captured using cryo SEM courtesy of Wann-neng Jane Academia Sinica. Image taken on an FEI Quanta 200/Quorum PP2000TR scanning electron microscope.

2013-05-20 21:57:19 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 7 +1s)

Brian Cox by Alex Lake.
http://www.twoshortdays.com/photography/files/gimgs/61_brian-coxphotographybyalexlaketwoshortdays.jpg

2013-05-20 21:52:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

A set of great images show an early view of NASA.

2013-05-20 21:46:42 (0 comments, 12 reshares, 9 +1s)

360 degree view of Mercury
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/8497927473/?likes_hd=1

This 15-second movie shows Mercury's globe as it rotates. A global color map of Mercury's surface has been created by mosaicking thousands of sets of images obtained by the MESSENGER Wide Angle Camera (WAC). The colors shown here are related to real variations in the spectral reflectance across the planet. This view captures both compositional differences and differences in how long materials have been exposed at Mercury's surface. Young crater rays, arrayed radially around fresh impact craters, appear light blue or white. Medium- and dark-blue areas are a geologic unit of Mercury's crust known as the "low-reflectance material", thought to be rich in a dark, opaque mineral. Tan areas are plains formed by eruption of highly fluid lavas. The color base map shown here consists of... more »

2013-05-20 21:43:08 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Indonesia by Mangiwau
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thirnbeck/7354344636/sizes/l/in/photostream/

2013-05-20 14:40:54 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

How to suck at your religion - The Oatmeal http://theoatmeal.com/comics/religion

2013-05-20 12:39:45 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Park Slope resident and Star Trek: The Next Generation star Patrick Stewart played a real-life hero on Sunday when he achieved first contact with a baby bird in his yard, and called on Twitter to help him figure out how to make it so the thing survived. But Stewart later tweeted (heh) that he'd read the bird had a better shot of surviving if he left it alone, so "bye bye birdie" became the prime directive.

2013-05-20 11:46:58 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

Horned Puffin (Fratercula corniculata)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43065226@N04/3966239147/ 

…is a species of alcid bird native to the coasts of Siberia, Alaska, and British Columbia. Like other puffins the horned puffin is a pelagic seabird and feeds primarily on fish which it catches by diving, however they will also eat squid and crustaceans as well. Like other puffin species the horned puffin has a modified tongue that allows it hold large amounts of fish to bring back to its nest.  

Phylogeny
Animalia-Chordata-Aves-Charadriiformes-Alcidae-Fratercula-corniculata

2013-05-21 13:53:38 (3 comments, 22 reshares, 28 +1s)

Darwin vectorized. [GIF]

2013-05-20 11:37:03 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

I love how G+ does not automatically refresh the stream, allowing you to do it when you're ready. Truly makes reading less frantic.
#googleplusupdate  

2013-05-20 11:27:28 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

If you're looking for a much better Great Gatsby movie, forget the 1974 and 2013 versions and check out the 2000 version, which was very well cast. See the details here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210719/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3 

You can even watch the entire movie online:
http://youtu.be/RUupvzSOA9I

2013-05-20 11:12:22 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 7 +1s)

This just in: It's still cold in Siberia. But the people are some of the best on the planet!

2013-05-20 11:04:58 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

Live Wires
Discoveries of microbial communities that transfer electrons between cells and across relatively long distances are launching a new field of microbiology.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35299/title/Live-Wires/

Today’s information age rests on a basic understanding of how electrons move. The remarkable success of computers, cell phones, and other devices, such as solar cells, depends on our ability to mediate the flow of electrons through the semiconductors and microchips that control the function of these machines and give them their intelligence. But the importance of electron flow is by no means limited to these man-made systems; electron transfer is also central to energy storage and conversion in living cells.

Organisms depend on the flow of electrons for key energy-generating cellular processes. Continuous electron flow isn... more »

2013-05-20 10:52:34 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Go Britannia, Go! 
[Major Tim Peake]: "I do play the guitar, but very badly, and I wouldn't inflict my singing on anybody." In response to questions Maj Peake praised Cdr Hadfield for the "fantastic job" he had done. "I don't think I'll be able to top the tweeting, but I will also be tweeting, to encourage a generation to take an interest in space."

2013-05-20 10:47:10 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 8 +1s)

Neurons — 360°
http://visualscience.ru/en/projects/neurons/3d-model/

Neurons are structural and functional units of the nervous system, which consist of a body, a short extension (dendrites, which are usually dichotomically branched), and a long extension (axons, which are rarely branched). In addition, axons, in contrast to dendrites, may be surrounded by myelin cells.

The most important property of neurons is their ability to receive stimuli and generate action potential in response to these stimuli. The stimuli are usually conveyed through neurotransmitters, which trigger depolarization or hyperpolarization of the neuron membrane. Neurons are interconnected and connected to other types of cells via dendrites and axons through which electrical stimuli are transmitted. Dendrites usually convey impulses
to the neuron’s cell body, whereas axons predominantlycond... more »

2013-05-20 10:42:45 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Reflection
http://alanfriedman.tumblr.com/image/15928685362

Water captures water. These raindrops act like little lenses, each recording a miniature image of the clouds above. Photo taken through the sunroof of our car following a passing thunderstorm by my daughter, Sophie Friedman.

2013-05-19 18:35:15 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 11 +1s)

I really love these Ph.d. Comics videos. This is a great video explaining how to find exoplanets...

2013-05-19 17:38:06 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

This woman. Oh jeez, how I hate her new show. But she gives great "face."
http://lucy-liu.org/

2013-05-19 16:52:21 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 14 +1s)

Island Sky by benblur
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benblur/537405788/

2013-05-19 16:47:15 (2 comments, 5 reshares, 17 +1s)

http://goo.gl/YRcWC

2013-05-19 16:36:47 (0 comments, 11 reshares, 13 +1s)

Volcan Poas, Costa Rica (by Bill in DC)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flaneur/285250806/in/faves-jillybeanss/

2013-05-19 16:14:18 (2 comments, 5 reshares, 16 +1s)

There's a god below? The Devil you say!

2013-05-19 16:01:44 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

2013-05-19 00:22:16 (1 comments, 12 reshares, 53 +1s)

http://goo.gl/iQdN0