Heart muscle. Fluorescence deconvolution micrograph of a section through heart muscle (myocardium) showing contractile myosin (green), myocyte (muscle cell) nuclei (blue) and adrenoreceptors (red). Adrenoreceptors respond to adrenalin, causing a sympathetic (fight or flight) response. This makes the heart beat harder when adrenalin levels rise. Magnification: x600 when printed at 10 centimetres wide.
Faster-Ticking Clock Indicates Early Solar System May Have Evolved Faster Than We Thought
Our solar system is four and a half billion years old, but its formation may have occurred over a shorter period of time than we previously thought, says an international team of researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and universities and laboratories in the US and Japan.
Establishing chronologies of past events or determining ages of objects require having clocks that tick at different paces, according to how far back one looks. Nuclear clocks, used for dating, are based on the rate of decay of an atomic nucleus expressed by a half-life, the time it takes for half of a number of nuclei to decay, a property of each nuclear species.
Radiocarbon dating for example, invented in Chicago in the late 1940s and refined ever since, can date artifacts back to prehistoric times because the half-life of radiocarbon (carbon-14) is a few thousand years. The evaluation of ages of the history of earth or of the solar system requires extremely “slow-paced” chronometers consisting of nuclear clocks with much longer half-lives.
The activity of one of these clocks, known as nucleus samarium-146 (146Sm), was examined by Michael Paul, the Kalman and Malke Cooper Professor of Nuclear Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as researchers from the University of Notre Dame and the Argonne National Laboratory in the US and from two Japanese universities. continue reading
Dinosaurs’ flatulence influenced global warming, study suggests
In a major new climate finding, researchers have calculated that dinosaur flatulence could have put enough methane into the atmosphere to warm the planet during the hot, wet Mesozoic era.
Like gigantic, long-necked, prehistoric cows, sauropod dinosaurs roamed widely around the Earth 150 million years ago, scientists reported in the journal Current Biology on Monday.
And just like big cows, their plant digestion was aided by methane-producing microbes.
“Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources – both natural and man-made – put together,” researcher Dave Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University said.
(Source: nationalpost)
Photos: If All of Earth’s Water was put into Single Sphere
This picture shows the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth’s water in comparison to the size of the Earth. The blue sphere sitting on the United States, reaching from about Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, has a diameter of about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) , with a volume of about 332,500,000 cubic miles (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers). The sphere includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant.
Vast ice shelf in Antarctica is at risk of melting
Warmed waters are flowing underneath ice sheets, and causing them to melt from below.
(Source: mothernaturenetwork)
More mysterious animal deaths in Peru. This time dolphins and pelicans, no one knows the cause, but global warming seems to be the culprit yet again.
Art work revolving around geometric and mathematical equations is the immediate, natural impressions perceived…the themes and personal revelations based on Julien Salaud’s work. The French artist uses threads, nails, and taxidermy based on mythical creatures.
I like to think it Tacksidermy.
Monster black hole caught swallowing unlucky star
Astronomers estimate the menacing black hole’s mass to be 3 million suns.
(Source: mothernaturenetwork)
