Staring Into Someone's Eyes For 10 Minutes Can Alter Your Consciousness. Forget LSD: eyes are the new high. Of course, we’re not talking about consuming them, but rather staring intensely into a pair for a prolonged period of time. Apparently, this can make people enter into an altered state of consciousness. This intriguing discovery was made by vision researcher Giovanni Caputo from the University of Urbino in Italy, but it isn’t his first staring contest study.
A few years ago, the scientist recruited 50 volunteers and got them to gaze upon their reflections in a mirror for 10 minutes in a dimly lit room. For many of them, it took less than one minute to start experiencing something trippy. Their faces began to warp and change, taking on the appearance of animals, monsters or even deceased family members; a phenomenon imaginatively named the “strange-face illusion.” But it seems the bizarre effects are even more dramatic when the mirror is swapped for another person. Read this next: Scientists Hit Back At Scottish Ban On Growing GM Crops. Crazaaay! This Is What You Look Like When You Have Sex. NSFW, even if you work in the medical field. Here's something you don't see every day! Vox has released a video compilation of what it looks like when a couple has sex and when a woman gives birth, all through the lens of an MRI machine. It's scientific, medically pornographic, and kind of creepy at the same time.
It's like watching skeletons go at it. Check out these shots from the video, so you can get used to see how things look from the perspective of an MRI. 1. MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging, has been around since the 1980s, but recent improvements in resolution and computing have made it possible to makes videos from the scans, and even provide technicians with detailed real-time moving images. 2. Ida Sabelis, a Dutch anthropologist and one of the subjects of the study said, "On a certain moment there's sounding through the microphone. 3. Yep, put that on your list of "things I never thought I'd see, and probably never want to see again. " 4. 5. What's better than one baby? 6. Why Do Cats Bring Home Dead Animals | Cats Dead Mice. It’s an all-too-familiar story for the owners of indoor-outdoor cats: You open the door to let Kitty in for dinner and what does she bring with her?
A dead rodent, of course. Such impolite behavior leaves many cat owners scratching their heads. Why, after all, would your cat need to kill her meals when that bowl of Friskies is filled to the brim? Is she just a whole lot meaner than she looks? Before determining that their cat is simply a cold-blooded killer, cat owners should understand a few facts about what's driving their pet's behavior.
Cats are, first and foremost, natural-born hunters, as recent studies of the effects that feral and indoor-outdoor cats have on bird and rodent populations have shown. Though they were first domesticated nearly 10,000 years ago, cats retain the keen hunting instincts of their wild ancestors, as well as the simple gut that allows them to digest raw meat. However, many cats don't eat their prey, and sometimes they don't even kill it. Sorry, But Your Cat Is Actually A Total Jerk. It's Just Science.
Bad news for all you cat lovers: That feline you are obsessed with is a total jerk. Sure, cats are cute, soft, lovable and an endless source of viral GIFs and memes, but in actuality, they kinda suck. Don't hate us for this blasphemy just yet. We understand your dilemma. Some people just love cats, and to be honest, we can't really blame them for that. Sure, cats are selfishly indifferent to your wellbeing, and in their minds you are their pets, not the other way around, but...look at the kitty! When you're over that adorable little ball of fuzz, maybe you'll be ready to come to terms with the fact that, even thought you adore your cat, it is a total jerk...
Your cat hears you, but she won't do what you tell her to. Your cat definitely hears you calling her name, and can even recognize your voice against a stranger's, but the truth of the matter is she doesn't care what you want. Meanwhile, when a cat wants your attention, they might try to get it by knocking some stuff off a table. There's a Scientific Reason Why It Feels So Damn Good to Cuddle. You know how soft and smooth your partner's skin feels on your fingertips when you cuddle up next to them at night or give them a massage? Research says their skin probably isn't as delicate and baby-soft as you think it is — in fact, it might just be a total illusion.
Scientists at the University College of London discovered the softness of your significant other's skin is likely a trick of the mind to keep you interested in cuddling, stroking and massaging your partner. The person being touched feels pleasure because they have sensory cells specifically attuned to this slow, comforting stroke, which, when activated, causes them to feel a warm, fuzzy, happy feeling. But this active stroking creates sensory pleasure for the toucher as well, by creating the illusion that their partners' skin is smooth and soft to the touch. "Giving pleasure is receiving pleasure," Fotopoulou told Mic.
The science of touch has evolutionary roots. We have much more to learn about the benefits of touch. Science Has Figured Out Why Bears Go Down on One Another, and It's Depressing. A couple weeks ago, an article was published in the journal Zoo Biology, written by a Croatian team of biologists who had studied a pair of captive bears over the course of ten years. Presumably, the long-term study had a lot of takeaways that deserved to be published, but this one, about one male bear (the "provider") giving the other (the "receiver") thousands of blowjobs is obviously the most pressing. The two brown bears grew up in captivity, and while we have to take the scientists at their word that they never intervened and taught them how to go down on each other, it seems safe to assume that the bears developed the behavior on their own. They write that the bears "engaged in recurrent fellatio multiple times per day until at least 10 years old," and that the act consisted of not just genital contact but "vigorous penile sucking that appeared to result in ejaculation.
" Carin Bondar. Image via TED Talks I don't see it so much as erotic; I see it more full of obscenity. Via Zazzle It would be impossible for me to summarize research psychologist Dr. Jesse Bering’s sprawling 2010 Scientific American essay, “One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot,” so I won’t even try. However, amongst the more interesting things discussed in the article—trust me, it’s a great read—is the fact that most men basically need to spill their seed, drain the vein, etc, at a bare minimum, every 72 hours.
And some gents obviously feel that itch much more acutely. Pair that notion with studies that found women’s bodies actually rejected sperm that had overstayed its welcome in the male testes (had not been flushed out) by 48 hours. So what are we to conclude? There, I said it. (Runs away.) But as the article is, as I wrote above, difficult to summarize, here are the final paragraphs, going straight to the money shot, so to speak, where Bering ties together all that had come before quite nicely: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. Is Masturbation Good For You? Microscopic footage of a needle moving across the grooves of a record. You would think that if you have an electron microscope and a record player, you’re most of the way there to being able to record close-up footage of a needle traversing the grooves of a long-player record.
Well, you would be wrong. It was actually quite a challenge, as the Applied Science YouTube channel recently demonstrated in vivid and mind-blowing detail. Among the difficulties that Ben Krasnow, the man behind the Applied Science channel, had to overcome were that a small square of the vinyl LP had to be carved out in order to fit it into the microscope chamber, and the LP had to be coated in a conductive material (evaporated silver) to avoid a circumstance whereby the electrons fired at its surface by the microscope would be absorbed, trapped, and eventually repelled. I don’t really understand any of this, but the video explains it very well.
Also a new stylus also had to be constructed, because the magnets in the original cartridge would have deflected the incoming electrons. How I Felt After 70 Days of Lying in Bed for Science. In November, we ran a story about a NASA study that was paying Andrew Iwanicki $18,000 to lie in bed for three months. This is how the remainder of the study went. I woke up on December 2, and for the first time in 70 days, I stood up.
Or at least I tried to. The nurses wheeled me over to a hospital bed that would be tilted vertically, with blood pressure cuffs hugging my arm and my finger, an ultrasound machine pointing at my heart. Then they told me, with the encouragement that you'd give a toddler learning to walk, to try standing for 15 minutes. As soon as the bed was tilted to the vertical position, my legs felt heavier than ever before. Related: "Taxi to Mars" It was no surprise my body acted this way, of course. When I last wrote about my experiences in the study, I was still in the honeymoon phase—there was a parade of researchers poking and prodding me, sure, but it was also one of the most relaxing times of my adult life.
"Hey, Drew! "Not much. How many bryophytes are there in New York and are any of them rare? | FLNPS. Nat Cleavitt Bryophytes compose a significant, although, as yet, not fully known portion of the state flora. Ketchledge (1980) remains the most recent checklist of mosses in the state and reports 461 species. Published additions to the list add another ten bryophyte species (Eckel 1987, Slack et al. 1988, Eckel & Shaw 1991, Andrus et al. 1994, Town et al. 1994). There is no published list of liverwort and hornwort taxa for the entire state of New York, but Schuster (1949) reported 132 species for central and western parts of the state. Perhaps more impressive than simple species richness are the ways that bryophytes act as crucial participants in both indicating and maintaining ecological integrity. The current list of rare moss taxa for the state (Clemants & Ketchledge 1993) is in need of revision.
Literature cited Andrus RE., Town WR. & Karlin, EF.1994. Allen B. 1991. Cleavitt NL. 2004. Clemants SE & Ketchledge EH. 1993. Eckel PM. 1987. Eckel PM & Shaw AJ. 1991. Ketchledge EH. 1980. Bryophyte Files for Bryologists | FLNPS. This section was created to aid in dissemination and exchange of information relating to the conservation of bryophytes in the United States. Bryophytes are a synthetic plant group including the mosses, liverworts and hornworts - plants that all have gametophyte-dominant life cycles.
All plants alternate between the gametophyte (generation that produces gametes: egg and sperm) and the sporophyte (generation that produces spores). For the majority of plants (ferns, cone-bearing and seed-bearing plants) the generation that you see on the landscape is the sporophyte generation. A gametophyte-dominant life cycle has many interesting ecological ramifications including the favoring of small size and poikilohydry (allowing water content to fluctuate rather than expending energy to maintain constant turgor). A number of files are made available here for Heritage Botanists and Bryologists to encourage recognition, inclusion, and increased documentation of bryophytes at the state levels. Your Thoughts Can Release Abilities Beyond Normal Limits.
There seems to be a simple way to instantly increase a person’s level of general knowledge. Psychologists Ulrich Weger and Stephen Loughnan recently asked two groups of people to answer questions. People in one group were told that before each question, the answer would be briefly flashed on their screens — too quickly to consciously perceive, but slow enough for their unconscious to take it in. The other group was told that the flashes simply signaled the next question. In fact, for both groups, a random string of letters, not the answers, was flashed. But, remarkably, the people who thought the answers were flashed did better on the test.
Expecting to know the answers made people more likely to get the answers right. Our cognitive and physical abilities are in general limited, but our conceptions of the nature and extent of those limits may need revising. Can our thoughts improve our vision? We also tend to think that our bodies respond to physical exercise in a mechanical way. Why Adorable Puppies Can Make You Feel Violent. Cute aggression is a particularly strange phenomenon. When we see something so cute, or even think about it – like a baby kitten, stumbling across the floor – we first experience a tsunami of positivity, an overwhelming accumulation of fuzzy happiness. Then, somewhat perplexingly, this feeling sometimes coexists with the urge to squeeze the kitten to death. This effect is recognized by scientists, and a study published earlier this year in the journal Psychological Science explains that this secondary, negative response may be trying to counteract the out-of-control positive one.
The research group from Yale University coined the term “cute aggression,” and it is thought to belong to one of a series of paradoxical combinations of positive and negative emotions, which also include nervous laughter or tears of joy. These are known as “dimorphous expressions.” Cute aggression was first scientifically documented by Rebecca Dyer and Oriana Aragon in 2012. Image credit: We can't handle this. The Bug We Love to Hate. Scorned by city dwellers, the much-maligned cockroach is one of the great success stories of evolution 01-01-1993 // Richard Wolkomir Behind the U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory in Gainesville, Florida, sits a tiny house consisting of two kitchens and an attic. Shaded by oaks, framed by Spanish moss dripping from trees, it is an appealing, though somewhat strange, dwelling. Appealing, that is, for entomologist Richard Brenner and the cockroach tenants for which he built it.
The building, custom designed by Brenner, offers its teeming inhabitants all the benefits of a simulated human occupant--including the all-important moisture from, say, cooking spaghetti or bathwater. In the floors, walls, ceilings and roof are 120 sensors to measure humidity, air currents, temperature and cockroach movement. This is serious work, with serious consequences: Cockroaches, researchers are finding, not only evoke a visceral "ick" from people, they also can threaten our health.
Beyond the Human Eye: Orchid Roots: Botanical Sponges. You can crudely divide orchids into two groups: ground orchids, rooted in the soil - like Pleione species, for example - and epiphytic orchids like the one below, that often grow on the branches of trees in tropical forests. The dangling roots of the epiphytic types have a dual role, sometimes anchoring the plant and always acting as storage vessels for water that they absorb from mist and sudden tropical downpours. If you cut a section through one of these roots (above) you can see their unique structure, that allows them to absorb and store water.
The bright yellow ring of thick-walled cells at the bottom of the image above is the plant's internal plumbing - the pipes (xylem vessels) that conduct water from the roots to the leaves and flowers. Beyond that the thin-walled blue cells are the packing cells that are alive and contain some chloroplasts, like the leaves. You can see here what happens when you water an orchid root here. 7 Fascinating Facts About Bats. Here’s What Sex Looks Like From INSIDE The Vagina. IPAs Are Giving You Man Boobs. ‘Sexual depravity’ of penguins that Antarctic scientist dared not reveal. Io9.gizmodo. How Brain Implants (and Other Technology) Could Make the Death Penalty Obsolete. Love Sick: Your Body Can Literally Repel A Guy Who's Wrong For You.
The Chemist Who Hasn't Showered in 12 Years Explains Why He Doesn't Stink. What Do Cats Think About Us? You May Be Surprised. Gizmodo. Moss Reproduction. Blue Planet Biomes. Beneficial insects in the landscape: #55 Giant Water Bug (Lethocerus americanus) Lifes Little Mysteries.