Interesting Science
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Toxoplasmosis
Life cycle of Toxoplasma gondii T gondii has 2 distinct life cycles. The sexual cycle occurs only in cats, the definitive host. The asexual cycle occurs in other mammals (including humans) and various strains of birds.
Toxoplasma gondii is a species of parasitic protozoa in the genus Toxoplasma . [ 1 ] The definitive host of T. gondii is the cat , but the parasite can be carried by many warm-blooded animals ( birds [ 2 ] or mammals , including humans). Toxoplasmosis , the disease of which T. gondii is the causative agent, is usually minor and self-limiting but can have serious or even fatal effects on a fetus whose mother first contracts the disease during pregnancy or on an immunocompromised human or cat. The life cycle of T. gondii has two phases. The sexual part of the life cycle ( coccidia like) takes place only in cats , both domestic and wild (family Felidae ), [ 3 ] which makes cats the parasite's primary host. The second phase, the asexual part of the life cycle, can take place in other warm-blooded animals, including cats, mice , humans , and birds .
Toxoplasma gondii - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Suicide Grasshoppers Brainwashed by Parasite Worms
September 1, 2005 Parasites were the inspiration behind the creature that terrified moviegoers in Alien. Now sci-fi screenwriters may have a new role model—parasitic worms that brainwash their victims. Scientists say hairworms, which live inside grasshoppers, pump the insects with a cocktail of chemicals that makes them commit suicide by leaping into water. The parasites then swim away from their drowning hosts to continue their life cycle. Writing this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team says their findings help explain how parasites are able to manipulate their hosts' behavior to the parasites' own ends.
[ROBERT SAPOLSKY:] In the endless sort of struggle that neurobiologists have — in terms of free will, determinism — my feeling has always been that there's not a whole lot of free will out there, and if there is, it's in the least interesting places and getting more sparse all the time. But there's a whole new realm of neuroscience which I've been thinking about, which I'm starting to do research on, that throws in another element of things going on below the surface affecting our behavior. And it's got to do with this utterly bizarre world of parasites manipulating our behavior. It turns out that this is not all that surprising. There are all sorts of parasites out there that get into some organism, and what they need to do is parasitize the organism and increase the likelihood that they, the parasite, will be fruitful and multiply, and in some cases they can manipulate the behavior of the host.
TOXO — A Conversation With Robert Sapolsky
The pineal gland (also called the pineal body , epiphysis cerebri , epiphysis , conarium or the " third eye ") is a small endocrine gland in the vertebrate brain . It produces the serotonin derivative melatonin , a hormone that affects the modulation of wake/sleep patterns and seasonal functions. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Its shape resembles a tiny pine cone (hence its name), and it is located near the centre of the brain, between the two hemispheres , tucked in a groove where the two rounded thalamic bodies join. [ edit ] Location
Pineal gland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The God Particle - National Geographic Magazine
If you were to dig a hole 300 feet straight down from the center of the charming French village of Crozet, you’d pop into a setting that calls to mind the subterranean lair of one of those James Bond villains. A garishly lit tunnel ten feet in diameter curves away into the distance, interrupted every few miles by lofty chambers crammed with heavy steel structures, cables, pipes, wires, magnets, tubes, shafts, catwalks, and enigmatic gizmos. This technological netherworld is one very big scientific instrument, specifically, a particle accelerator-an atomic peashooter more powerful than any ever built. It’s called the Large Hadron Collider, and its purpose is simple but ambitious: to crack the code of the physical world; to figure out what the universe is made of; in other words, to get to the very bottom of things. Starting sometime in the coming months, two beams of particles will race in opposite directions around the tunnel, which forms an underground ring 17 miles in circumference.
A Fibonacci spiral created by drawing circular arcs connecting the opposite corners of squares in the Fibonacci tiling; this one uses squares of sizes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and 34.
Fibonacci number - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Golden ratio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A golden rectangle with longer side a and shorter side b , when placed adjacent to a square with sides of length a , will produce a similar golden rectangle with longer side a + b and shorter side a . This illustrates the relationship .
Antimatter weapon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An antimatter weapon is a hypothetical device using antimatter as a power source, a propellant , or an explosive for a weapon . Antimatter weapons do not currently exist due to the cost of production and the limited technology available to produce and contain antimatter in sufficient quantities for it to be a useful weapon. The United States Air Force , however, has been interested in military uses — including destructive applications — of antimatter since the Cold War , when it began funding antimatter-related physics research . The primary theoretical advantage of such a weapon is that antimatter and matter collisions, though significantly limited by neutrino losses, still convert a larger fraction of the weapon's mass into explosive energy than a fusion reaction in a hydrogen bomb , which is on the order of only 0.7%. [ citation needed ]Albert Einstein's brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Einstein's brain was preserved after his death in 1955, but this fact was not revealed until 1978. Albert Einstein 's brain has often been a subject of research and speculation. Einstein's brain was removed within seven and a half hours of his death.
Nanorobotics is the emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or close to the scale of a nanometer (10 −9 meters). [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] More specifically, nanorobotics refers to the nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots , with devices ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometers and constructed of nanoscale or molecular components. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] The names nanobots , nanoids , nanites , nanomachines or nanomites have also been used to describe these devices currently under research and development. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] Nanomachines are largely in the research-and-development phase, [ 8 ] but some primitive molecular machines have been tested. An example is a sensor having a switch approximately 1.5 nanometers across, capable of counting specific molecules in a chemical sample.