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Etnobotanika, czyli magiczne rośliny. Zapewne niewiele osób wie, co to w ogóle jest etnobotanika, więc postaram się to wyjaśnić jak najprościej potrafię. Etnobotanika - dziedzina nauki zajmująca się badaniem wpływu roślin na rozwój kulturowy człowieka (rozwój cywilizacji), poprzez badanie starożytnych / prymitywnych rytuałów i ceremonii. Niestety jeszcze dzisiaj łatwo znaleźć ludzi uznających tą dziedzinę nauki za szarlataństwo. To czyści ignoranci, ponieważ nie docierają do nich fakty naukowe, a jedynie medialna nagonka na narkotyki (czy dopalacze). Nie wiedzą o tym, że właśnie dzięki etnobotanice mamy dostęp do wielu leków oraz wiedzę o ziołachleczniczych. Skupmy się najpierw nad ziołolecznictwem. Skupmy się może nad tematem:legalne zioła psychoaktywne. Póki co jest ich bardzo wiele. Zastanówmy się może najpierw - skąd wiemy o takim działaniu tych ziół? Istnieje jednak masa pasjonatów i hobbystów etnobotanicznych, którzy na własną rękę przecierają szlaki.

Waleriana po łacinie Valeriana officinalis. Strange snow: rare self-rolling snow balls found in UK. Scientists Show Bacteria Can 'Learn' And Plan Ahead. Bacteria can anticipate a future event and prepare for it, according to new research at the Weizmann Institute of Science. In a paper that appeared June 17 in Nature, Prof. Yitzhak Pilpel, doctoral student Amir Mitchell and research associate Dr. Orna Dahan of the Institute's Molecular Genetics Department, together with Prof. Martin Kupiec and Gal Romano of Tel Aviv University, examined microorganisms living in environments that change in predictable ways. Their findings show that these microorganisms' genetic networks are hard-wired to 'foresee' what comes next in the sequence of events and begin responding to the new state of affairs before its onset.

E. coli bacteria, for instance, which normally cruise harmlessly down the digestive tract, encounter a number of different environments on their way. Another microorganism that experiences consistent changes is wine yeast. Prof. How Antarctica grew its ice – and lost its hanging gardens - environment - 03 June 2009. Up to 3000 metres beneath the ice, at the coldest point on Earth, towering peaks, hanging valleys and deep gorges have been frozen in ice for 14 million years.

Now the first detailed view of this frozen landscape is revealing how the world's biggest chunk of ice – the Antarctic ice sheet – was born. The radar images suggest that Antarctica "grew" its ice cap in three stages, carving out the rock below in distinct ways as glaciers expanded, retracted, and flowed downstream. The images were collected between 2004 and 2008 by researchers who drove huge trains of caterpillar tractors in tight lines over Dome A, a plateau of ice at the heart of Antarctica.

The tractors carried radars that pinged down through the ice and sent back profiles of the frozen rock landscape below. Dome A, the highest point on the continent, is also one of the coldest places on Earth, with temperatures as low as -90 °C. Stranger than Mars By studying the images, the researchers have determined how the ice cap formed. Is Hyper Evolution Possible? A Galaxy Classic. In 1971 biologists moved 5 adult pairs of Italian wall lizards from their island home of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, and introduced them to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru.

An international team of researchers discovered that introducing these small, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, to a new environment caused them to undergo shockingly fast and large-scale evolutionary changes. Researchers returned to the islands twice a year for three years, in the spring and summer of 2004, 2005 and 2006. Captured lizards were transported to a field laboratory and measured for snout-vent length, head dimensions and body mass. Tail clips taken for DNA analysis confirmed that the Pod Mrcaru lizards were genetically identical to the source population on Pod Kopiste.

Observed changes in head morphology were caused by adaptation to a different food source explains Irschick. Examination of the lizard’s digestive tracts revealed something even more surprising. Posted by Rebecca Sato. Why did nearly all life on Earth die 250 million years ago? No mention of methane clathrates? While CO2 provided the initial warmup, many scientists believe that this then melted the frozen methane hydrates at the bottom of the world's ocean, releasing methane which led to a runaway global warming event.

The question I have is at what point does the clathrate ice begin to melt and how close are we to approaching that with our current release of CO2 into the planet's atmosphere and subsequent warming of the world's oceans? @frankenstoen: Yeah I read about that too. This is also a scenario that scientists predict today for global warming. Extinction Events That Almost Wiped Out Humans. I think the PNAS article that was supposed to be linked to is this one? : [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov] The authors actually estimate an even smaller population number for 1.2 mio. yrs. ago than is cited in this post: 18,500. However, they base their analysis on only two completed human genome sequences. The other work, about the supposed extinction event 70k yrs. ago is from 2003, just before the current technological revolution in DNA sequencing got under way.

This is not to say that the topic at hand is not a fascinating one and worthy of investigation and discussion. But it is important to know the technical limitations of a given analytical approach, the possible uncertainties can completely change the direction a discussion can or cannot take. Something only tangentially related: I'm new to io9 and not sure if this would fit the general theme. The Earth Rotates? Prove it! Hey, Esther (and everyone else, of course). If you don't already know about it, I think you might enjoy this book: The Flying Circus of Physics [www.amazon.com] (I have to say that I like the original yellow cover much more than this one) Associated web site: [www.flyingcircusofphysics.com] It contains lots of really cool questions about physics.

Tiger. The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to 3.38 m (11.1 ft) over curves and weighing up to 388.7 kg (857 lb) in the wild. Its most recognisable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with a lighter underside. The species is classified in the genus Panthera with the lion, leopard and jaguar. Like all felids, tigers are carnivorous, and primarily prey on ungulates like deer and bovids.

They are territorial and generally solitary but social animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey requirements. This, coupled with the fact that they are indigenous to some of the more densely populated places on Earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Tigers are among the most recognisable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. Taxonomy and etymology Evolution Restoration of Panthera zdanskyi The tiger's full genome sequence was published in 2013. Subspecies Hybrids. Lots of Snow! "QUANTUM SHOT" #613Link - by A. Abrams If you've been snowed under for some time, these pictures will help you feel better "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?... " (Job, 38:22) Some translations put it as "the treasures of the snow". Well, it seems some locations get entirely too much of this good thing: Snowed under in the most epic way (somewhere in Switzerland): (original unknown) Huge vintage snow fall (would like to get some info): Norilsk, Russia, The World Capital of Snow Vicious winter blizzards in Norislk, Siberia, bring an inordinate - even obscene - amount of snow...

(images via) There is a car here, somewhere - (images via) Norilsk climate is impressive not only in winter - here is a brooding storm over the city, spring 2009: (image credit: Alexander Grishin) Norilsk citizen's pasttime (and a popular extreme sport) - they call it "Buildering": Snow being cleared from the Trans-Labrador Highway in northeastern Canada: Similar "snow walled-in" road situation, this time in Japan:

What Happened to the Hominids Who May Have Been Smarter Than Us? | Human Origins. Even if brain size accounts for just 10 to 20 percent of an IQ test score, it is possible to conjecture what kind of average scores would be made by a group of people with 30 percent larger brains. We can readily calculate that a population with a mean brain size of 1,750 cc would be expected to have an average IQ of 149. This is a score that would be labeled at the genius level. And if there was normal variability among Boskops, as among the rest of us, then perhaps 15 to 20 percent of them would be expected to score over 180. In a classroom with 35 big-headed, baby-faced Boskop kids, you would likely encounter five or six with IQ scores at the upper range of what has ever been recorded in human history.

The Boskops coexisted with our Homo sapiens forebears. They died and we lived, and we can’t answer the question why. Longer brain pathways lead to larger and deeper memory hierarchies. Perhaps the Boskops were trapped by their ability to see clearly where things would head. Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, represented as a pyramid with the more basic needs at the bottom[1] Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review.[2] Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity.

His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belongingness" and "love", "esteem", "self-actualization", and "self-transcendence" to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through. Maslow's theory was fully expressed in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality.[5] The hierarchy remains a very popular framework in sociology research, management training[6] and secondary and higher psychology instruction. Hierarchy Physiological needs Safety needs Safety and Security needs include: Weird, Rare Clouds and the Physics Behind Them | Wired Science. In August, we posted a photograph of some odd, rare clouds known as Morning Glory clouds without providing an explanation for how they form. In response to reader interest, we followed up with meteorologist Roger Smith of the University of Munich, who has studied their formation.

“Over the years we’ve developed a good understanding of them,” Smith said. “It’s no longer a mystery, but still very spectacular.” The Morning Glory phenomenon is the result of the particular configuration of the land and sea on the Cape York Peninsula, in a remote part of Australia. As moist sea air is lifted to the crest of the waves, it cools and condensation forms a cloud. “If you look at the clouds, it looks as if they are rolling backwards,” Smith said. These clouds do occur elsewhere, including Munich, where they form about once in a decade. Not many scientists study them, or really any weird clouds, because their very rarity makes them relatively unimportant for studying precipitation or climate. The Weirdest Clouds that You’ll Ever See. Nature has always been a source of inspiration for designers to look at things differently.

We all know that a tree doesn’t always have green leaves, water is not blue and clouds are certainly not always white and puffy. As designers, we need to know to look beyond the obvious when looking at things. Cloud formations such as mammatus or lenticular among others, are perfect examples of how intricate and different nature can be. There are even so called ‘ufo clouds’, which truly resemble the shape of a UFO. In this post, we take a look at some amazing photographs of the weirdest cloud formations that you’ll ever see, that are destined to inspire your design work and surely blow your mind.

To read more information about any of the photos, just click on any of the images below to be taken to its source. Voynich manuscript. The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance.[1][2] The manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912.[3] Some of the pages are missing, but about 240 remain. The text is written from left to right, and most of the pages have illustrations or diagrams.

The Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II.[4] No one has yet succeeded in deciphering the text, and it has become a famous case in the history of cryptography. The mystery of the meaning and origin of the manuscript has excited the popular imagination, making the manuscript the subject of novels and speculation. The Voynich manuscript was donated by Hans P.