fuckyeahjoshvish:

if these were made of diamond, would they crush anything you bite into dust or possibly, if a hard enough material were bitten, drive themselves up and down into your fragile skull, effectively shattering the bone like glass?

Burning questions.

(Source: thedifficulthead)

jayparkinsonmd:

There’s currently a measles outbreak occurring in Williamsburg and Borough Park in Brooklyn. There have been 34 cases, 8 of which were in adults.

Here’a brief history of measles in America. This is what effective vaccines do: 

Measles is coming back because of a quack of a doctor in the UK who admitted to publishing blatantly false data for fame and notoriety. He falsely connected autism with the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine. He’s since admitted it and has been banned for life from practicing medicine in the UK. Rightly so. The body count is up to 1155. 

Measles is also coming back because of the anti-science movement (hipsters in Williamsburg?). The anti-vacciners are on par with the Christian Scientists believing that prayer will save your diabetes. If you are not vaccinating your children, you are simply rejecting science and one of the most remarkable inventions of humankind. On the same level as rejecting cars, planes, elevators, etc.. 

The issue of vaccinating your kids has very little to do with your kids, and everything to do with protecting the health of your community. Vaccinate your kids, and you’re doing your kid, your family, and your community a social favor. Don’t vaccinate your kids, and you are selfishly anti-social putting your kids, yourself, and your community at unnecessary risk of death.

Easily preventable disease outbreaks are the fruit of ignoring science.

(via scinerds)

bpod-mrc:

24 May 2013

Culturing Connections

For decades, scientists around the world have studied cells growing in the lab as an alternative to using animals – a technique known as tissue culture. But some types of cells, such as nerves cells (neurons) deep in the brain, don’t grow happily in the unfamiliar and unrealistic environment of a plastic Petri dish. To get round this problem, researchers are developing complex techniques that ever more closely mimic the conditions of the cells’ original home. This tangle of fibres is a group of nerve cells from the hippocampus – part of the brain involved in memory – growing in the lab. Reassuringly, the cells are making plenty of connections between each other, as they would do in the brain, and can be kept alive for several months. This new approach will allow researchers to study some of the processes involved in memory and diseases such as Alzheimer’s more easily.

Written by Kat Arney

—

• Randen Patterson
• University of California Davis, USA
• Originally published under a Creative Commons Attribution license
• Published in PLoS ONE 8(4): e58996

(via scinerds)

Creedence Clearwater Revival dining at Taco Bell in 1969

(Source: birthmoviesdeath, via hodgman)

(Source: lacarpa, via sharyns-rose)