What caused this huge asteroid to disappear mysteriously? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What caused this huge asteroid to disappear mysteriously?

200,000-ton asteroids don't usually just disappear into space (okay, maybe sometimes do), but when astronomers at NASA trained the Hubble on this asteroid, they were puzzled to see it was falling apart right before their eyes, the first time they'd ever seen such a sight.

Of course, asteroids do sometimes break apart, but that's typically the result of a collision with another object in space, and this asteroid, designated P/2013 R3, hadn't experienced any recent crashes. So what do astronomers think is happening? The have a theory that the apparent breakdown of the asteroid is due to a much more gentle force: the sunlight.

P/2013 R3 first began falling apart as it neared the sun, as it moved closer to the sun, the sunlight slowly increased the asteroid's rate of rotation. This in turn upped the centrifugal force acting on the asteroid, causing it to pull itself apart from within. Scientists have theorized about this possibility for awhile now, but this is the first time that they think they might have actually seen it in action.

You can see stills of the asteroid as it falls apart over the course of several months below:

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Images: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What caused this huge asteroid to disappear mysteriously?

Internet memes turn deadly, in a surprisingly great Supernatural onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Internet memes turn deadly, in a surprisingly great Supernatural

When we saw that Supernatural was bringing back the Ghostfacers, one of the show's many nerd parodies, we weren't optimistic — but yeesh, this was a good episode. The Winchesters investigate an internet meme called #thinman that's apparently killing people, and the results are fascinating.

Spoilers ahead...

As you can see for yourself, there's a few interesting things going on in this episode:

1) The notion that #thinman derives his power from internet fame — which the episode seemed as though it was going to make literal, by having this be some kind of monster that derives its power from having people believe in it or talk about it. Hence the huge online following for #thinman. But no — instead, it's purely metaphorical, and #thinman is just trying to get lots of attention to provide cover for a regular murder spree.

2) This week's juxtaposition of someone else's problems with Sam and Dean's is surprisingly subtle. It turns out that Ed made up #thinman because his best friend Harry was finally going to quit the Ghostfacers and settle down — so Ed photoshopped a creepy killer and started an online urban legend, which then grew out of control. Ed's deception of Harry is explicitly compared to Dean's deception of Sam — but the interesting part is that Dean deceived Sam in the name of "family," which is Dean's own personal mythology. The hint that Dean's obsession with family and his willingness to do anything for family is as random and cultlike as the internet obsession with a fake supernatural killer is sort of fascinating.

3) I've been wondering for a while if this show would ever have a purely human killer who's pretending to be supernatural — forgive me if we had that already and I somehow forgot. The fact that #thinman turns out to be just a couple of disaffected wackos in a small town, killing people who annoyed them, is actually kind of brilliant and a nice spin on the show's usual theme of people dabbling in magic or mysticism and causing misery.

All in all, a pretty great episode, in which the nerd humor actually works to tell a surprising story and the Sam/Dean conflict is thrown into a new and somewhat unflattering light. Rock on.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Internet memes turn deadly, in a surprisingly great Supernatural

Being Human just rebooted the whole series. Here's why that's great. onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Being Human just rebooted the whole series. Here's why that's great.

I loved last night's episode of Being Human. Itwas super duper bold, ridiculously fan servicey, and a lot of fun. So much fun. Seriously, this show found the fun and brought it back. Thank goodness.

Up until now, I was resigned to finish out the fourth and final Being Human season with a few more vampire flashbacks, a couple more scantily clad dead girls, and a shot of Josh walking around holding his man parts. Good news, we got all of that in this one episode AND a whole new twisty plot.

Last week, Sally revealed that she was stuck in a time warp limbo, which is a thing the writers spent most of this season building up. And now we know why. Because they wanted to reboot the entire series and play around with your beloved characters — but not really damage the core plot line. OR ARE THEY?

Sally jumps into her past self a few moments before she's about to be murdered by her ex-fiance. And instead of falling down the stairs and becoming the cutest ghost to ever haunt the most ridiculously underpriced FULL home in Boston, she lives! And now Sally is getting another shot at life. What's the first thing Sally does after she kicks out her no-good murderous boy? Burn her sweater. You guys, I love this show.

Moving on. So of course things don't all go as planned. Sally's best friend since third grade starts dating her ex. No offense, Sally — but if your best bud starts sleeping with your ex-fiance (that you accused of hurting you) you have a bad friend. And no surprise there, he murders her friend. Meanwhile, Sally doesn't have time to feel too terribly bad about the switcheroo, because she's alive!

And after a bit of stalking, she gets Aidan and Josh back into her life. After spilling the beans that she's (sort of) from the future, Sally, Josh and Aidan wind up all living together again. And wooooo — Sally and Aidan start having movie-tent-sheet-sex that is not only impossible, but WAY TOO WARM.

Sally and Aidan are doing the nasty, and the only thing left is Josh. Sally the "guardian angel" meddles some more, and now things really start to spiral out to hell. Josh meets Nora, falls for Nora, but werewolfs it all up. Sally gets scratched in the crosshairs, and now she's a werewolf too. And things continue to get worse.

You see, because Sally interjected into Aidan and Josh's lives neither of them got to learn things the hard way. Aidan didn't kill a ton of girls, but he also didn't have to face his fears with Bishop. Josh never learned that not all werewolves can be trusted. Tons of life lessons were sidestepped, because Sally "helped out."

All of a sudden, our little ghost girl is realizing she traded her own happiness for that of her friends. When Aidan turns his back on Josh, she realizes that this isn't the vampire she loves.

Here is my question: Can Sally love this version of Aidan, but not the actual real life Sally-is-dead version? Or did she make another Aidan that she thinks she loves like a lover, but doesn't really? She does love Aidan, just not like this. Does that mean she really DOESN'T love the original Aidan sexually? Or is that swapped? I'm confused.

But it's a good confused! This was fun, and what about all the returning characters! So many faces from the first season — good characters, good times. Ray and that red-headed guy, and the girl that Aidan had to stab to death because he turned her into a blood sucker. AH! Good times, this was fun to revisit and mess around with.

Looks like the next episode will continue to be set in the past, and that's OK for now. I like watching a bottomed out Josh lose his shit all over. As for Aidan... well, he's a little more bitchy than I would like but maybe Sally's second death will snap him out of it. Probably not, though. I forsee Josh and Aidan kicking each other's future (past) asses. The showdown begins!

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Being Human just rebooted the whole series. Here's why that's great.

Scientists just revived a 30,000 year-old frozen virus in Siberia onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Scientists just revived a 30,000 year-old frozen virus in Siberia

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In what's either the beginning of a Michael Crichton movie or a scientific breakthrough, researchers have successfully revived a 30,000-year-old virus buried deep in the permafrosts of Siberia, the largest virus ever discovered.

The virus, known as Pithovirus sibericum, was revived from samples from ancient permafrost, which the researchers used to infect amoebas in their lab. Fortunately, they say that the virus is not infectious to animals or humans. Which is good, because in addition to being large, it is also apparently incredibly tough.

Via National Geographic:

Giant viruses are not just bigger but are hardier than others as well, said the researchers. This hardiness, along with a favorable environment, likely helped the newly discovered specimen stay intact for the thousands of years that it did. Viruses are often destroyed or rendered inactive by a number of factors, including light and biochemical degradation. "Among known viruses, the giant viruses tend to be very tough, almost impossible to break open," said Claverie and Abergel. "Special environments such as deep ocean sediments and permafrost are very good preservers of microbes [and viruses] because they are cold, anoxic [lacking oxygen], and in the dark."

You can read more over at National Geographic, or also check out the whole paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, here.

Image: Pithovirus sibericum/ Julia Bartoli and Chantal Abergel, IGS and CNRS-AMU via National Geographic

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Scientists just revived a 30,000 year-old frozen virus in Siberia

Cut Copy's gorgeous new music video takes 3D printing to new territory onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Cut Copy's gorgeous new music video takes 3D printing to new territory

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Australian electronic music band Cut Copy has put out a new video featuring some 200 3D-printed figurines. And as an added bonus, you can download the video as an open source BitTorrent bundle to make your own version.

The post-apocalyptic-themed video is for Cut Copy's track, "We Are Explorers." The characters, which are animated via stop motion, were all generated using a 3D printer with a UV reactive filament, allowing them to glow in the dark.

The video required two weeks of design, one week of printing, ten hours of shooting, and one week of post-production.

The band, along with the video's developer, Party, have made all the content — including the music, video, and 3D printed files — available for download here. So, to make your own version of the video, all you need is a 3D printer, some time, and a creative imagination.

[ Creative Review ]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Cut Copy's gorgeous new music video takes 3D printing to new territory

This infographic shows you the insane scale of our solar system onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com This infographic shows you the insane scale of our solar system

You may have seen graphics comparing the objects in our solar system by size, but this visualization offers a slightly different spin on the theme, by comparing objects by their total mass. Plus, it also features 460 tiny versions of former planet Pluto bouncing off of Earth like a game of interstellar marbles.

The visualization is the work of astronomer Rhys Taylor, who also previously made a similar visualization comparing the size of the gas giants in our solar system by mass. Check it out here:

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com This infographic shows you the insane scale of our solar system

Real life laser scientists photographed as B-movie heroes onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Real life laser scientists photographed as B-movie heroes

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We don't see scientists portrayed as heroes very often in pop culture these days. Usually, scientists are the ones who unleash something terrible onto the world. But when photographer Robert Shults visited the Texas Petawatt Laser, one of the world's most powerful lasers, he was determined to capture the heroism of science.

At the Texas Petawatt Laser, a team of scientists use an incredibly powerful laser to do everything from create high-energy protons for use in cancer therapies to recreating the light intensity of such environments as the center of a star or the area close to a black hole.

Shults shadowed scientists working with the laser for nine months, and came up with this striking series of black-and-white images, shot on film, that conjure a noir sensibility that recalls 1950s adventure movies. Shults has raised over $23,000 in a Kickstarter campaign to fund a book of these photos.

To find out more about Shults' work and what the photos reveal, check out the amazing article over in Smithsonian Magazine. Some of our favorite photos are below, reproduced with Shults' permission, but you can see more at the Smithsonian site, plus on Shults' own website and Flickr page.

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onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Real life laser scientists photographed as B-movie heroes

Watch a huge asteroid crash into the Moon onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Watch a huge asteroid crash into the Moon

Of course, rocks and asteroids crash into the moon all the time (there's a reason it's so cratered.) But there's something about seeing it in action — and at this size — that's pretty amazing.

So how big was the crash? So big that researchers say the flash it created was very, very briefly was around the same brightness as the North Star (the brightest ever lunar impact flash observed) and that it resulted a crater 130 feet wide. You can read more about it in this paper from astronomers led by José Madiedo at the Universidad de Sevilla and Huelva for the Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society. Or just watch this video where they explain now:

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Watch a huge asteroid crash into the Moon

Which countries do Americans perceive as their greatest enemies? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Which countries do Americans perceive as their greatest enemies?

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Over the past few years, Americans have overwhelmingly pinpointed Iran as public enemy number one. But as a recent Gallup Poll illustrates, Americans are now focusing their attention on several new perceived threats — a sure sign of the world's complex and ever-changing geopolitical balance.

According to the poll, half as many Americans now view Iran as their greatest enemy from just two years ago. The current rankings now show China (20%) at the top, followed closely by North Korea (16%) and Iran (16%). From there, it trails off to Russia (9%), Iraq (7%), Afghanistan (5%), Syria (3%) — and the United States itself (2%). These are the results, along with historical rankings (Gallup has only been doing this since 2001):

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Lots has changed in a short period of time. Back in 2005, with the U.S. nearly two years into the Gulf War, Iraq and North Korea each topped the list at 22%. A year later, Iran was up top at a 31% disapproval rating. And it has sat there until this year.

Interestingly, it's not so much that China is being perceived as more enemy-like; it's just that other countries are jockeying around for position. Nuclear agreements, for example, may be fueling these sensibilities. As Gallup writes:

The drop in mentions of Iran as the greatest enemy in this year's poll has been accompanied by increases in the percentages mentioning North Korea (from 10% in 2012 to 16%), Russia (from 2% to 9%), and Syria (from less than 1% to 3%). The percentage mentioning China, however, has stayed virtually the same. Thus, China now tops the list mainly because Americans' views on the nation's enemies are more divided among several countries rather than focused on one dominant country, as in recent years.

Iran reached an agreement last November with several of the world's largest nations, including the United States, to limit its nuclear activity. Those nations in return agreed to ease some of the sanctions on Iran. That agreement may be the main reason the American public is taking a less antagonistic view of Iran. This week, Iran and the same countries agreed to a framework for continued negotiations toward a comprehensive agreement on Iran's nuclear capabilities.

In terms of subgroups, there aren't major differences in current perceptions of the greatest U.S. enemy. Slightly more older Americans and Republicans see Iran as the top enemy, while younger Americans and Democrats view North Korea as the prime troublemaker.

My own take on these results is that Americans are clearly threatened by China's assent to economic, military, and technological superpower status. It's also interesting to see Russia jump from 2% to 9% in just two years — likely an indication of Putin's ongoing authoritarianism, his attempts to re-assert Russia as a world power, and the country's perceived meddling in the Syria crisis.

Lastly, it's unfortunate that the pollsters did not include non-state actors into their questionnaire. According to the recent "Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community," some of the country's worst threats come from terrorist groups, such as Al-Qa'ida, Hezbollah, and home-grown terrorists. Indeed, as time passes, and as economic and political globalization take hold, the world's nations won't have to fear each other — they'll have to fear the asymmetric enemy.

[ Gallup | Top image: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Which countries do Americans perceive as their greatest enemies?

Aurora Borealis during a solar flare is the very best kind of madness onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Aurora Borealis during a solar flare is the very best kind of madness

This may be the most amazing shot of the northern lights, yet. Check out the way they're moving — that's no timelapse, this video was shot in realtime.

So, why are the northern lights moving so quickly in this shot? It has to do with an increase in activity on the sun. Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomer explains:

We can get aurorae from just the solar wind without a big storm from the Sun, but when there is a storm the aurora are much brighter and more active. The shape of the aurora seen from the ground depends on the shape of the Earth's magnetic field. It can form long ribbons or sheets which look like curtains of light in the sky, or it can just be a diffuse glow. The shape can change as the solar wind's magnetic field interacts with the Earth's field, and it's usually slow and stately. But it can also happen very rapidly, as you can see in the video. Then the aurora is like a living thing, writhing and shimmering.

Though there wasn't enough activity for a geomagnetic storm this time, there was still plenty to create the amazing display you see above.

Video: Skydivephil

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Aurora Borealis during a solar flare is the very best kind of madness

Ants make their rafts float by putting the buoyant babies at the bottom onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Ants make their rafts float by putting the buoyant babies at the bottom

If you decided to build a raft, where would you put your young? Would you stick them in the middle of the raft to protect them, or place them around the base of the raft to help it float? That depends on whether you're an ant.

Many species of floodplain-dwelling ants form rafts to surf the flood waters, and a new paper published in PLOS ONE looks specifically at the position of ants of different castes in those rafts. The researchers collected members of Formica selysi and examined how they form rafts when ants of different castes and different buoyant materials are available. They expected that the ants would protect the most vulnerable or valuable members of the group by placing them in the center of the raft, and they did find that the queen was always placed at the center of the raft out of the water. However, they were surprised to find that members of the brood were invariably placed at the base raft, even if there were enough adult workers to keep the brood items out of the water.

So why put baby on the bottom? For one thing, the researchers observed very little mortality in these rafts, suggesting that, even after being submerged for long periods of time, the brood items are not at risk for death. The brood items also happen to be more buoyant than the adult ants, suggesting they may serve as better flotation devices. Another possibility is that it's important to keep a certain proportion of adult worker ants above the water, so that, once the need for the raft has passed, they can recover more quickly and get to back to work while the brood rests from its rafting adventure.

Photo from PLOS ONE.

Ant Brood Function as Life Preservers during Floods [PLOS ONE via PhysOrg]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Ants make their rafts float by putting the buoyant babies at the bottom

The great lakes are now frozen enough for a plane to land on the ice onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The great lakes are now frozen enough for a plane to land on the ice

Just how frozen are the great lakes right now? Frozen enough that a plane was able to successfully land on the deeply frosted over waters of Lake Huron today.

While flying over Lake Huron today, a pilot of a seven-passenger aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing when the engine stalled. The plane touched down safely on the thick ice, where safety crews met it with snowmobiles and sleds to tow the aircraft back to land.

The great lakes have been nearing a record level of frozenness — peaking last week at 89%. It still hasn't hit the record set in 1979, where the lakes hit an amazing 95% level, but it's looking possible that we could hit, or even exceed, the record this year.

Image: The great lakes as seen from space today / NOAA

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The great lakes are now frozen enough for a plane to land on the ice

That time the Nazis used mosquitoes as biological weapons onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com That time the Nazis used mosquitoes as biological weapons

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As times got tough for the Axis during the Second World War, both Germany and Japan considered — and in some cases used — biological warfare. New research reveals details about one of these plans — a scheme that saw malaria-ridden mosquitoes released into enemy territory.

It's no secret that the Nazis tried to halt Allies in Italy with a malaria epidemic attack. According to historian Frank Snowden, the Germans flooded the marshes that lay on the path into Rome by reversing the pumps that drained them. They then introduced millions of larvae of a malaria-carrying mosquitoes. British and American soldiers survived the biological attack because they were given anti-malarial drugs. Regrettably, the Italian population didn't fare so well; malaria cases rose in the area from 1,217 in 1943 to 54,929 in 1944 in a population of 245,000 (the actual numbers might have been higher). Malaria remained rife in the area until 1950 when the marshes were drained.

But now, science historian Klaus Reinhardt has uncovered some details about what happened behind the scenes, providing proof that an offensive warfare research program did in fact exist in Nazi Germany.

Back in late 1942, the leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, ordered the creation of an institute to find new remedies against diseases transmitted by lice and other insects. This was a serious problem during the war, as Wehrmacht troops were plagued by typhoid. The Nazis were also concerned about a developing typhoid epidemic at the Neuengamme concentration camp.

But according to Reinhardt, the Dachau entomological institute also conducted research into biological warfare. As Reinhardt shows in a new Endaeovour article, by 1944 the Nazis had created malaria-infected mosquitoes that could be kept alive long enough to be transported from a breeding lab to a drop-off point behind enemy lines. In fact, the Nazi scientists involved even managed to identify the particular mosquito to be used, the anopheles mosquito — a genus known for its capacity to transmit malaria to humans.

More: "The Entomological Institute of the Waffen-SS: evidence for offensive biological warfare research in the third Reich."

[ Guardian ]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com That time the Nazis used mosquitoes as biological weapons

One of the remote-controlled Lost World dinosaurs actually bit an actor onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com One of the remote-controlled Lost World dinosaurs actually bit an actor

In the second Jurassic Park movie, a pack of tiny Compsognathus swarm Peter Stormare's character, Dieter Stark. Apparently, even the remote-controlled puppet versions of these Compies were vicious little critters; some were designed to actually bite Stormare's lip.

Stan Winston Studio posted this video of how they accomplished the Compy attack, and it's a great example of what practical effects can achieve. For one thing, there is the great, frenetic thrashing of the dinosaurs' tails, but Christian Colquhoun says that the real biting effect caused even the crew to cringe.

JURASSIC PARK 2: THE LOST WORLD - Compy Dinosaur Attack [Stan Winston Studio via The Mary Sue]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com One of the remote-controlled Lost World dinosaurs actually bit an actor

The Real Reason Why You Pass Judgment on Other People's Taste in Books onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Real Reason Why You Pass Judgment on Other People's Taste in Books

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Of course, your own taste in reading material is beyond reproach — but those Twilight fans, they're just stuffing their brains with garbage. And meanwhile, those literary snobs are judging you for liking military science fiction, without even having read any. If this is you or someone you know, then you ought to read Laura Miller's essay on literary judgments.

Writing in Salon, Miller explains why we judge other people's taste in literature — and also, why we're so sensitive when we feel as though other people are judging ours. It's because someone, at some point, made us feel guilty for liking the things we like, and we've internalized that. She explains:

Intellectual insecurity is, alas, a pervasive problem in the literary world. You can find it among fans of easy-to-read commercial fiction who insist (on very little evidence) that the higher-brow stuff is uniformly fraudulent and dull, and you can find it among those mandarin bibliophiles who dismiss whole genres (on equally thin evidence) out of hand. One of the favorite gambits of people secretly uncertain about their own taste is identifying some popular book of incontestably lower quality than their own favorites and then running all over the Internet posting extravagant takedowns of it and taunting its fans. Yeah, I'm not crazy about "Fifty Shades of Grey," either, but I'm not going to invest that much energy in proclaiming this sentiment to the world. To do so suggests you're less interested in championing good writing than you are in grabbing any chance to feel superior to somebody else.

[This happens because] a teacher, a parent, a romantic partner, a friend, a roommate, even a co-worker has made them feel ashamed over a book or genre of books they enjoy or admire. They were told to put away the comics or teased for de-stressing with a romance novel on coffee break. Or, conversely, they might dream of being included in some tony, brainy (and possibly entirely imaginary) community of letters while at the same time worrying that they won't make the grade. There are those whose fantasies of leading a "literary" life largely involve having their own superior discrimination and erudition admired by other superior minds. The result of all this baggage is a preposterous, resentful pecking order in which readers get way too much pleasure out of pissing on other readers' preferences and/or jumping, on the slightest pretext, to the conclusion that their own are being ridiculed.

The whole essay is well worth reading. [Salon.com]

Top image: Tom Gauld.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Real Reason Why You Pass Judgment on Other People's Taste in Books

​Holmes and Watson hit a gay bar in the Sherlock s3 you didn't see onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ​Holmes and Watson hit a gay bar in the Sherlock s3 you didn't see

If you watched the third season of Sherlock on PBS, you haven't seen the whole thing. The channel makes edits some for time, some for content, and some to keep people from seeing Sherlock and John enter a gay bar during his bachelor party pub crawl. Luckily, the unedited Sherlock arrives in America tomorrow!

• Sherlock: Season 3

Sherlock returns for three new adventures, including a villain with his same mental powers, Watson's wedding and being a complete prick upon returning from the dead (not in that order. He starts by returning from the dead and being a prick, just FYI).

• Ender's Game

A gifted young boy trains to defeat the aliens who are at war with Earth. The Blu-ray contains two commentary tracks and a making of featurette, none of which include Orson Scott Card at all. Go figure!

• Doctor Who: The Moonbase

The Second Doctor stops by the moon circa 1970, only to discover a plague left there by the Cybermen in this digitally remastered adventure.

• The Returned: The Complete First Season

A seemingly random group of people wake up in a forest and return to their French village… only to discover they've been missing for several years.

• The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box

A direct-to-DVD steampunk adventure movie with a shockingly high profile cast including Lena Headey, Michael Sheen, and Sam Neill.

• DC Super Heroes: The Filmation Adventures Part 1

Including the Flash, Atom and Green Lantern cartoons, in case you prefer their adventures without Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman wasting your time.

• Sexy Horror Double Feature

Containing Dr. Jekyll Vs. the Werewolf, and the much filthier sounding Dracula Blows His Cool.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ​Holmes and Watson hit a gay bar in the Sherlock s3 you didn't see

This sponge-filled syringe can plug a gunshot wound in just 15 seconds onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com This sponge-filled syringe can plug a gunshot wound in just 15 seconds

First responders have to work quickly when treating gun shot wounds. To help them, a U.S. company has developed a syringe that pumps expandable tablet-sized sponges into the wound, blocking it while the patient is being transported to ER.

The patent-pending device, called the XStat Rapid Hemostasis System, is meant to seal gun shot wounds in the pelvis or shoulder area. The tablets, which are standard medical sponges coated with a hemostatic agent and then compressed, expand on contact with blood, inducing an artificial and temporary form of homeostasis. In addition to blocking blood flow, the sponges provide a surface on which blood can start clotting. And because each of them have to removed eventually, they're equipped with a tiny radiopaque marker so that any left behind in the body can be scanned by an X-ray.

The device comes in two sizes (depending on the size of the wound, but it hasn't been approved for use in the US.

[ MedGadget ]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com This sponge-filled syringe can plug a gunshot wound in just 15 seconds

What is life like for imaginary friends before they've been imagined? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What is life like for imaginary friends before they've been imagined?

This wonderfully fun animated short follows a crew of aspiring imaginary friends waiting to be imagined, and the frustration one of them feels when he fears no child will ever imagine him.

Sascha Altshuler directed Unimagined Friends as a bachelor film project for the Animation Workshop, supported by a team of animators and other visual artists. The result is a wonderful blend of 2D characters and 3D animation, as the unimagined friends wait to be fully fleshed out by a child's animation—and the woman looking after the children deals with her own frustrations, ignorant of the magical world around her.

[via Kuriositas]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What is life like for imaginary friends before they've been imagined?

Did you know Lake Superior has ice caves? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Did you know Lake Superior has ice caves?

For the first time in half a decade, the ice atop Lake Superior has frozen thick enough to provide visitors safe passage to the "Sea Caves" of Wisconsin's Apostle Islands, where centuries of erosive, wave-on-sandstone action have hewn arches, chambers and passageways into the region's various cliffsides.

Photo Credit: National Park Service, via the U.S. Department of the Interior's Instagram (which, if you're not following, you really should be)

Via the U.S. Department of the Interior:

Inside the caves awaits a fairyland of needlelike icicles. The formations change from chamber to chamber and from day to day. Apostle Islands is experiencing high volume of visitors right now, so we recommend that you visit the caves during the week. Before heading to the caves, please call the Ice Line at (715) 779-3397 - extension 3, for the most current ice condition information.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Did you know Lake Superior has ice caves?

Newly discovered titanosaur was one of the largest land animals ever onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Newly discovered titanosaur was one of the largest land animals ever

Introducing Yongjinglong datangi, a titanosaur that lumbered across the fields of China during the Early Cretaceous period some 100 million years ago. The specimen discovered, a juvenile not yet fully grown, measured nearly 60 feet in length, making it one of the largest species to ever walk the Earth.

The image above illustrates an Alamosaurus, a titanosaur similar to Yongjinglong. I chose it because the researchers provided a depiction that, uh, leaves much to be desired:

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The team of palaeontologists, led by University of Pennsylvania researchers, didn't have much to go by — just three teeth, eight vertebrae, the animal's left shoulder blade, and the radius and ulna from its right leg. But that was enough to piece this bad boy together — and to conclude they were dealing with an entirely new species. It's considered one of the more advanced titanosaurs ever found.

One of the things that made it unique, aside from its tremendous size, was it's freakishly long shoulder blade. It was so long that it didn't fit in the body in a conventional way, but oriented at an angle of 50 degrees from the horizontal.

Read the entire study at PLoS.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Newly discovered titanosaur was one of the largest land animals ever