Science is endothermic.

Science educator. Trying to make learning fun and engaging for biology students everywhere.

[posthumanwanderings]

Google Cardboard is a new API for creating virtual reality games with a DIY headset. In this tutorial, you'll use it to kill blobs with throwing stars!

“Welcome… to the THIRD DIMENSION!

It’s probably safe to say that everybody has been waiting for virtual reality experiences since that classic of modern cinema, “Lawnmower Man”, showed us the potential of technology. It promised us a delightful future of, um, virtual reality where we could all have telepathic powers. Or something like that.

In this tutorial, you’ll help humanity prepare for its future of telepathic abilities and virtual reality by learning to take a simple Unity game and make it work as a VR experience using Google Cardboard. You’ll find out how to:

Integrate a Cardboard camera into your projects

Modify UI elements so that they work in VR mode

Make buttons selectable in VR mode

Switch programmatically between regular and VR mode at run time

In theory, creating a VR experience is straightforward. Instead of displaying your world as a single image on screen, you display two images.

They come from two cameras placed a few inches apart, and the user views the image from the left camera with the left eye and vice versa, creating the appearance of depth.

Additionally, with some judicious use of motion sensors, you can detect the direction the user is facing. Combine that with the 3D world you’ve created, and you’ve got yourself an immersive experience.”

[read more]

[professor-awesome-sauce]

How do carbohydrates impact your health? - Richard J. Wood

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-do-carbohydrates-impact-your-health-richard-j-wood The things we eat and drink on a daily basis can impact ou...

What are simple and complex carbohydrates, and how does your body react to them?

[earthstory]

This video from the American Museum of Natural History tells the story of a specific type of microfossil called Foraminifera (or forams) and how they’re a key part of the story we tell about Earth.

[earthstory]

Needed a place to save a plate tectonic reconstruction. This is motion of the Earth’s continental plates (and some known hotspots) over the last 120 million years since Pangaea was in the process of breaking apart. Notice how India suddenly starts to double-time it to the north around 80 million years ago? That’s an upcoming post. Gif credit

[professor-awesome-sauce]

Autism and Animal Science with Dr. Temple Grandin - StarTalk Radio Show by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Explore autism and animal science with Temple Grandin and Neil Tyson. Featuring Chuck Nice, Dr. Paul Wang (Autism Speaks) and Paul Shapiro (Humane Society).

[transstudent]

Are you a trans student? Know a trans student? Our scholarship application is now open! You can access it here.

[transstudent]

It’s May! That means there are only TWO WEEKS left to submit your scholarship applications! You can apply here!

[edtechhub]

14 Great Books on The Importance of Video Games in 21st Century Learning

via Educational Technology and Mobile Learning http://ift.tt/1LXczmH

[scienceyoucanlove-deactivated20]

Are you ready for Meatout? It’s on March 20. SHARE the news & ask your friends and family to join thousands of others by pledging to GO VEGAN for (at least) one day! Details at http://www.Meatout.org/

source

[mybloodyicecream]

[aspiringdoctors-blog]

Dyingggggg

[antdonut]

Something for everybody

[impalzoo]

The North Pacific Giant Octopus is a large mollusc, like all octopuses the species is ranked as one the most intelligent invertebrates. The octopus brain, unlike the majority of invertebrate brains has folded lobes which is a characteristic of complexity. There are numerous cases of octopuses in captivity escaping tanks, destroying equipment and and also having the ability to open screw-top jars. Also, according to Oxford Dictionaries, the plural of octopus is octopuses or even octopodes, not octopi.

[chalkandwater]

A small Japanese puffer fish is the creator of one of the most spectacular animal-made structures. To impress the female puffer fish, the male labors 24 hours a day for a week to create a pattern in the sand. If the female finds his work satisfactory, she allows him to fertilize her eggs. She then lays them in the middle of the circle, leaving the male to guard the eggs alone.

Life Story (2014)

[themedicalstate]

What happens when you drink a cup of coffee

Coffee is fantastic - there’s no denying that. In fact, it is the world’s most popular beverage after water. But do you ever wonder why exactly coffee makes you feel so good? Here’s a timeline to show you what happens, in scientific terms, when you drink a cup of coffee.

Infographic by Map Coffee

[currentsinbiology]

Quorum-sensing signals control when bacteria turn deadly

But by using a signaling system called “quorum sensing,” single-celled bacteria radically alter their behavior to suit their population. In short, some bacteria “know” how many of them are present, and act accordingly.

Once the population of quorum-sensing bacteria reaches the millions, it may change from innocuous to pathogenic, or from unhelpful to helpful. The quorum-sensing messages are carried in small molecules that the bacteria release and whose concentration bacteria can measure.

Helen Blackwell, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been making artificial compounds that mimic the natural quorum-sensing signals, including some that block a natural signal from binding to its protein target.

In research published in the journal Chemistry & Biology, Blackwell changed key building blocks in these protein targets one by one. “If that part of the protein is important, the change will have a significant effect on our signal’s activity,” she explains.

Joseph P. Gerdt, Christine E. McInnis, Trevor L. Schell, Francis M. Rossi, Helen E. Blackwell. Mutational Analysis of the Quorum-Sensing Receptor LasR Reveals Interactions that Govern Activation and Inhibition by Nonlactone Ligands. Chemistry & Biology, 2014; DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2014.08.008

[dynamicoceans]

Phyllodesmium serratum by PacificKlaus on Flickr.

[professor-awesome-sauce]

Cool.

[themedicalstate]

[themedicalstate]

How playing an instrument benefits your brain

Recent research about the mental benefits of playing music has many applications, such as music therapy for people with emotional problems, or helping to treat the symptoms of stroke survivors and Alzheimer’s patients. But it is perhaps even more significant in how much it advances our understanding of mental function, revealing the inner rhythms and complex interplay that make up the amazing orchestra of our brain.

Did you know that every time musicians pick up their instruments, there are fireworks going off all over their brain? On the outside they may look calm and focused, reading the music and making the precise and practiced movements required. But inside their brains, there’s a party going on.

From the TED-Ed lesson How playing an instrument benefits your brain - Anita Collins

Animation by Sharon Colman Graham

[scienceyoucanlove-deactivated20]

Why Does This Mummy Appear To Open And Close Her Eyes?

In Siciliy, there’s a very spooky mummy of a girl who died in 1920. Occassionally, she can be seen to open and close her eyes. Italian researchers now say there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation — and it has nothing to do with her being among the undead.

Recorded in time lapse photos and videos, the creepy phenomenon has been the subject of various speculations for some years. This week, Italian newspapers again reported that Rosalia Lombardo, a two-year-old girl who died of pneumonia in 1920, moves her eyelids several times during the day, slightly opening them to reveal intact blue eyes

One of the world’s best preserved mummies, Rosalia is the most famous among some 8,000 thousands mummies lining the catacombs beneath the Capuchin convent in Palermo, Sicily.

Nicknamed “sleeping beauty,” she looks like a 2-year-old baby taking a nap. Poking above a blanket, her peaceful face is framed by curly blond hair, while a ribbon is still tied around her head.

Although amazingly mummified, Rosalia doesn’t open and shut her eyes.

"It’s an optical illusion produced by the light that filters through the side windows, which during the day is subject to change," Dario Piombino-Mascali, curator of the Capuchin Catacombs, said in a statement Thursday.

He noted the mummy was moved slightly and shifted to a horizontal position in a humidity-free glass coffin. The new position makes it easier see Rosalia’s eyelids.

"They are not completely closed, and indeed they have never been," Piombino-Mascali said.

The anthropologist unearthed Rosalia’s real secret in 2009, when he found the mysterious formula used for her amazing preservation. While most of the mummies buried in the catacombs were treated by the monks and basically desiccated by the dry environment, Rosalia was mummified artificially.

To preserve her for eternity, Rosalia’s heartbroken father turned to embalmer Alfredo Salafia, a Sicilian taxidermist and embalmer who died in 1933. Salafia never revealed the chemicals used in his preservative.

In 2009 Piombino-Mascali found a handwritten manuscript in which Salafia listed the ingredients used to mummify Rosalia. The formula read: “one part glycerin, one part formalin saturated with both zinc sulfate and chloride, and one part of an alcohol solution saturated with salicylic acid.”

read more from io9

[onegreenplanet]

These Extreme Close-Up Photos of Animal Eyes are Just Mesmerizing