Axolotls have the unique ability to regenerate most body parts. In a period of months, they can grow entire new limbs and even portions of the brain and spine.

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Axolotls have the unique ability to regenerate most body parts. In a period of months, they can grow entire new limbs and even portions of the brain and spine.
Study shows maths experts are ‘made, not born’
A new study of the brain of a maths supremo supports Darwin’s belief that intellectual excellence is largely due to “zeal and hard work” rather than inherent ability.
University of Sussex neuroscientists took fMRI scans of champion ‘mental calculator’ Yusnier Viera during arithmetical tasks that were either familiar or unfamiliar to him and found that his brain did not behave in an extraordinary or unusual way.
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Fresh Guacamole by PES (by PESfilm)
Honeycombs end up hexagonal just from a bit of physics
According to research published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, bees initially make circular cells and use their body heat to turn the wax into a viscous liquid. Then the surface tension at the 3-point junctions pulls the wax into a hexagonal shape. Apparently Charles Darwin had come up with this idea before but didn’t have enough evidence to prove it. Via Nature
NASA Successfully Tests First 3-D Printed Rocket Engine Injector
Another step toward the day when 3-D printers spit out entire spacecraft.
We’ve seen 3-D printed aircraft and drone parts, and even plans for a printable private jet. Now NASA has demonstrated another 3-D printing first: The agency has just finished successful tests of a 3-D printed rocket engine injector at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, marking one of the first steps in using additive manufacturing for space travel.
In conjunction with rocket manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne, NASA built the liquid-oxygen and gaseous-hydrogen rocket injector assembly using laser melting manufacturing. This sci-fi-sounding technique involves melting metallic powders down with high-powered laser beams, then fusing them into shape. Previous manufacturing methods for these type of injectors required more than a year. Being able to 3-D print the parts reduces the time frame to four months, at a 70 percent price reduction.
Eventually, 3-D printing is likely become a staple of the aerospace industry, as Davin Coburn describes in our July issue.
NASA has already expressed interest in putting 3-D printers in space, so astronauts could have easier access to spare parts and, most importantly, pizza.
Michael Gazarik, the associate administrator for space technology at NASA, even suggested entire spacecraft could one day be made with 3-D printing, calling it “game-changing for new mission opportunities."
Forked Fungus Beetle (Bolitotherus cornutus), male (T) and female (B), family Tenebrionidae, Mason Farm Biological Reserve, NC, USA. They live in shelf fungi, and are very cryptic, though not uncommon.
(photo/text: Patrick Coin | Flickr)
Behold! The World’s Tiniest 3-D Jigsaw Puzzle
Puzzle pieces the size of sand grains have debuted at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. These puzzle pieces haven’t been designed to frustrated jigsaw puzzle lovers, but to demonstrate a new process for reducing the size of injection molds. It may sound esoteric, but it’s a precise process used on making things from jet engine parts to Lego bricks. Read more
It’s called sonoluminescence. No one knows exactly why this occurs, but there are a lot of different hypotheses. One of the most common explanations is that when the bubble collapses, the air inside gets pressurized. Increasing the pressure on a gas increases the temperature of the gas. During sonoluminescence, the temperature inside the tiny bubbles becomes so great that the gas begins to glow. Another hypothesis is that the collapsing bubble lends energy to prolong the life of the otherwise quickly annihilating photons that are spontaneously generated in a vacuum. Sonoluminescence could also be the product of the way photons can pop into and out of existence; the sudden collapse of the bubble making the photons noticeable to those in the macro world(via I Fucking Love Science/fb)
Needle-less Vaccines to Start Human Trials
The Nanopatch, smaller than a stamp with thousands of vaccine-coated micro-projections, is set to start human trials later this year. If successful, the Nanopatch would both remove the pain and drastically cut the cost of vaccinations.
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Visualizing the Infinite Beauty of Pi and Other Numbers
Math and art may appear, superficially, like two disparate fields, but they’ve been in conversation for millennia. One recent example of the synergistic possibilities between the two comes from Canadian scientists Christian Ilies Vasile and Martin Kryzwinski. The pair have utilized the data visualization software Circos to create beautiful and colorful visual representations of mathematical constants π (pi), φ (phi), and eusing transition probabilities and color-coded digits on Archimedean spirals.
Given the endless nature of π, φ andethe task of representing them visually in a simplified form could seem daunting. However, thanks to new infographic technology and the natural form of the Archimedean spiral understanding pi’s sequencing (for the layperson anyway) becomes a thing of beauty rather than outright confusion—the technicolored vastness evoking an almost spiritual quality.
For the technical deets on how the pair created the visuals, check out the project page on Kryzwinski’s site.
Photos shown:
Progression of the first 10,000 digits of π By Cristian Ilies Vasile.
Progression and transition for the first 1,000 digits of e.
Progression and transition for the first 1,000 digits of π, φ and e.
Progression and transition for the first 2,000 digits of e.
Progression and transition for the first 1,000 digits of the accidental similarity number.
Progression and transition for the first 1,000 digits of φ.
(Via The Creators Project)
Copper Sulfate (slow motion) - Periodic Table of Videos
Copper Sulfate and Ammonia at high speed - watch the colour change and precipitation. More chemistry in slow motion: http://bit.ly/chemslomo
Featuring Professor Martyn Poliakoff from the University of Nottingham.
via Periodic Videos.
As a flower prepares to bloom, U.S. Botanic Garden prepares to smell like death
Bizarre, lurid and simply huge, the world’s largest flower stands poised to do its Elvis act at the U.S. Botanic Garden.
As early as Monday or later in the week, its pleated crimson cape will peel back to reveal a central stalk with a secret weapon for drawing pollinators. The King may have had his gyrations, but the titan arum emits a stench designed to lure carrion insects from miles around. In this case, the stink is expected to entice thousands of humans, as word spreads that this rare event is unfolding in the garden’s ornate conservatory at the foot of the U.S. Capitol.
The garden is extending its hours until 8 p.m. so that more folks can get a view of this strange floral beast and perhaps get a whiff of its sickening scent, which doesn’t appear until after it has opened and reaches its worst the first night after flowering.
“Like a very dead elephant,” said Elliott Norman, the gardener who has been growing it since 2005, when it was the size of a pea. Its tuber alone may weigh as much as 90 pounds.
In the warm, muggy environment of the conservatory’s lush Garden Court, the flower is growing by the hour. Its height on Saturday was 5 feet 2 inches, but it had grown another five inches by midday Sunday. It was noticeably plumper too, but as a steady stream of admirers came by hoping to see and smell it in its full glory, the titan arum made it plain that it will do its thing when it is ready. It had suddenly become Washington’s version of the Royal Baby Watch.
“I was hoping to smell it,” said Nicole Dinion, 25, a member of the national rowing team who is based in Oklahoma City. She had cycled nine miles from Falls Church with her mom and step-dad to see the bloom. “I might come back tomorrow.”
Paige Gance, 22, a summer intern in the District and a recent graduate of Washington and Lee University, said she was “kinda bummed that it isn’t in bloom yet, but it’s pretty neat.” She arrived with her friend Zander Tallman, a rising senior at the same university.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get another chance to see one of these things,” she said. “Though I’m a bit nervous about how bad it smells.”
For botanical gardens, the arum’s appearance is a boon, as well as a money-spinner for those that charge admission (the U.S. Botanic Garden, at 100 Maryland Ave. SW, is part of the Capitol complex and is free to visit). Although the arum is not as rare in the West as it once was — this is the fourth display of an arum in Washington in the past 11 years (two grown by the Smithsonian) — its appearance still has the capacity to draw crowds and media attention. “It’s the Botanic Garden’s panda,” said Norman. He was speaking Friday, the day after the giant was transported very carefully from the institution’s production greenhouses in Southeast Washington. Still furled but big and weird, the arum drew smiles and some eye-bulging glances from a gathering crowd. “Are you the grower?” a middle-aged woman asked Norman as she took a picture. “Congratulations.”
While pandas appear cuddly, the titan arum has a more pernicious and suggestive quality about it. (Its botanic name is Amorphophallus). It comes from the sultry, steamy jungles of Sumatra, and once it opens, it begins to pulsate with heat, so that its rotten smell convects up and away to distant dung and carrion beetles. It is sometimes called the “corpse flower,” and while a species of palm tree has a complex, candelabra-like inflorescence that extends much farther than that of the Sumatran giant, the titan arum ranks as the biggest unbranched bloom on the planet.
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Aerogel, also know as frozen smoke, is the world’s lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. If you hold a small piece in your hand, it’s practically impossible to either see or feel, but if you poke it, it’s like styrofoam. It supports up to 4,000 times its own weight and can withstand a direct blast from two pounds of dynamite. It’s also the best insulator in existence.
The audacious plan to end hunger with 3-D printed food
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Anjan Contractor’s 3D food printer might evoke visions of the “replicator” popularized in Star Trek, from which Captain Picard was constantly interrupting himself to order tea. And indeed Contractor’s company, Systems & Materials Research Corporation, just got a six month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of his universal food synthesizer.
But Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3D printing, envisions a much more mundane—and ultimately more important—use for the technology. He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor’s vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store.
(via The audacious plan to end hunger with 3-D printed food - Quartz)
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Painting on the iPad is certainly a thing, and Seikou Yamaoka from Shizuoka, Japan is really, really good at it.