Post reblogged from Schizotypal with 76,940 notes
are oranges named orange because they’re orange or is orange called orange because oranges are orange
which came first: the orange or orange
Orange was first used to refer to the fruit around 1300 but not used as a color word until around 1540.
then what was the colour called before then
I love Tumblr
Source: peewentz
Quote reblogged from Fate and its twisted dark hand with 5,696 notes
This planet doesn’t need more ‘successful’ people but is in desperate need of more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have very little to do with success - the way our culture has defined it.
(via pranaym)
Link reblogged from Howling Clementine with 44 notes
Howling Clementine: How to handle a patronising dipshit: A guide →
I received this email this morning in response to my Daily Life piece yesterday on the absence of women’s voices in media.
“Hi Clementine,
Obviously you have not listened to Lindy Burns on ABC 774 Monday to Friday from 7.00 to 10.00 PM. Prior to this gig she hosted the Drive show for…
Video reblogged from Neuroscience with 102 notes
See-through brains clarify connections
Technique to make tissue transparent offers three-dimensional view of neural networks.
A chemical treatment that turns whole organs transparent offers a big boost to the field of ‘connectomics’ — the push to map the brain’s fiendishly complicated wiring. Scientists could use the technique to view large networks of neurons with unprecedented ease and accuracy. The technology also opens up new research avenues for old brains that were saved from patients and healthy donors.
“This is probably one of the most important advances for doing neuroanatomy in decades,” says Thomas Insel, director of the US National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, which funded part of the work. Existing technology allows scientists to see neurons and their connections in microscopic detail — but only across tiny slivers of tissue. Researchers must reconstruct three-dimensional data from images of these thin slices. Aligning hundreds or even thousands of these snapshots to map long-range projections of nerve cells is laborious and error-prone, rendering fine-grain analysis of whole brains practically impossible.
The new method instead allows researchers to see directly into optically transparent whole brains or thick blocks of brain tissue. Called CLARITY, it was devised by Karl Deisseroth and his team at Stanford University in California. “You can get right down to the fine structure of the system while not losing the big picture,” says Deisseroth, who adds that his group is in the process of rendering an entire human brain transparent.
The technique, published online in Nature on 10 April, turns the brain transparent using the detergent SDS, which strips away lipids that normally block the passage of light. Other groups have tried to clarify brains in the past, but many lipid-extraction techniques dissolve proteins and thus make it harder to identify different types of neurons. Deisseroth’s group solved this problem by first infusing the brain with acrylamide, which binds proteins, nucleic acids and other biomolecules. When the acrylamide is heated, it polymerizes and forms a tissue-wide mesh that secures the molecules. The resulting brain–hydrogel hybrid showed only 8% protein loss after lipid extraction, compared to 41% with existing methods.
Applying CLARITY to whole mouse brains, the researchers viewed fluorescently labelled neurons in areas ranging from outer layers of the cortex to deep structures such as the thalamus. They also traced individual nerve fibres through 0.5-millimetre-thick slabs of formalin-preserved autopsied human brain — orders of magnitude thicker than slices currently imaged.
“The work is spectacular. The results are unlike anything else in the field,” says Van Wedeen, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a lead investigator on the US National Institutes of Health’s Human Connectome Project (HCP), which aims to chart the brain’s neuronal communication networks. The new technique, he says, could reveal important cellular details that would complement data on large-scale neuronal pathways that he and his colleagues are mapping in the HCP’s 1,200 healthy participants using magnetic resonance imaging.
Francine Benes, director of the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, says that more tests are needed to assess whether the lipid-clearing treatment alters or damages the fundamental structure of brain tissue. But she and others predict that CLARITY will pave the way for studies on healthy brain wiring, and on brain disorders and ageing.
Researchers could, for example, compare circuitry in banked tissue from people with neurological diseases and from controls whose brains were healthy. Such studies in living people are impossible, because most neuron-tracing methods require genetic engineering or injection of dye in living animals. Scientists might also revisit the many specimens in repositories that have been difficult to analyse because human brains are so large.
The hydrogel–tissue hybrid formed by CLARITY — stiffer and more chemically stable than untreated tissue — might also turn delicate and rare disease specimens into reusable resources, Deisseroth says. One could, in effect, create a library of brains that different researchers check out, study and then return.
Photoset reblogged from *sniff* *sigh* with 14,533 notes
In the scene where Jack is writing and gets mightily upset when Wendy interrupts him, the chair behind Jack vanishes and then reappears. This was intentional from Kubrick. The audience was supposed to get a subconscious feeling that something was wrong.
Source: oakenshielld
Link reblogged from Cr4Bdbgs with 7 notes
When Will Britney Spears Be Free of Conservatorship? →
It is 2013 and Britney Spears has been in a legal conservatorship for five years.
Video reblogged from hexington with 10,470 notes
Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games
Nine months after her successful Kickstarter campaign, Anita Sarkeesian unveils the much anticipated pilot episode of the Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games series, which examines how video games often portray female characters as someone who needs to be rescued.
Major props to Anita. Brilliant, informative and well-researched.
Great piece, well-researched and presented. So glad Anita made this happen!
Source: thedailywhat
Video reblogged from It's Okay To Be Smart with 300 notes
ISS: Over the Rainbow
“Somewhere, Over the Rainbow” set to images of planet Earth as seen from the International Space Station.All footage from NASA. Featuring the compositing talents of Knate Myers, David Peterson and Christoph Malin.
Audio: “Somewhere, Over the Rainbow” from the motion picture, “The Wizard of Oz.”
Hey folks, I’m at SXSW this weekend, broadening my horizons and testing the limits of my ideas and creativity, so it might be a little quiet for the next few days.
Hopefully this video will inspire you to broaden your horizons and expand your creativity in your own way. Stay curious!
Source: sagansense
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