Fire Ants Form Waterproof Raft

A team of researchers at Georgia Tech has established that fire ants bind together to create a water-tight raft. This research could have application to the construction of man-made flotation devices.



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Skeletal Origami

Takayuki Hori creates beautiful origami (Oritsunagumono) with translucent material printed with animal skeletons.
"The material is then folded into the shape of the animal. The stark and eerily poignant origami prints reminds us that, much like the way the craft has been passed down from generation to generation, these animals that have accompanied us for thousands of years now face extinction."

   

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Teddy Bear Skulls

Stephanie Metz has made some cute & cuddly teddy skulls with felt. This is her blag, sorry, her artist statement about the project: "A pseudo-scientific study of the morphology of skulls: the form and structures that differentiate one breed from another and give a sense of the story of the individual. My approach is to research, document, present, and interpret evidence in a formal manner. My subject species is the teddy bear: a creature made by humans (and made ‘alive’ by imagination) whose morphological history is tied to social trends." Umm, ok, let's just say that they look "really cool" instead.

Thanks to Lloyda Valencia for the info!

The Tallest Treehouse In The World

So some crazy guy has gotten himself into the Guinness World record books by building the worlds tallest treehouse in Tennessee. In 1993, Horace Burgess claims that God told him to build and to keep building so that's what he has ended up doing! The house is supported by 6 oak tree pillars and is approximately 100 feet tall now...

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Bone Socks

Summer is approaching and I need some new shinwear to go with my shorts...

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Treehoppers Are Strange Creatures

Membracids, related to cicadas, are in the class Insecta, the order Hemiptera (“true bugs”) and the family Membracidae. Like aphids, which are also “true bugs,” adult and immature treehoppers feed on plant sap....but wtf is that on their heads??






According to Biologists, "the hollow globes & spines, probably deter predators. It would be hard to grab, much less chow down on, a beast with all those spines and excrescences. Note, though, that the ornament sports many bristles. If these are sensory bristles, and not just deterrents to predation or irritating spines, then the ornament may have an unknown tactile function."
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Iori Tomita Transparent Specimen Art

Iori Tomita uses a special technique where he turns the bodies of marine organisms translucent. He then injects dyes into their skeletons to produce these incredibly dramatic and educational biological specimens...






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AGA 2010 Aquascaping Contest

Here are the results from the AGA Aquascaping Awards 2010

1st Place-

432 Litre: Michael G.W. Wong, North Point Hong Kong

2nd Place:

400 Litre: Pasquale Buonpane, Piedimonte Matese CE Italy

3rd Place:

412 Litre: Kam Wong, North Point Hong Kong

other tanks to note:

648 Litre: Yu-Lin Chen, Hsinchu City, Taiwan

870 Litre: Chow Wai Sun, Hong Kong - China

The Transformer Owl

One owl, three versions...when I first saw this, I though whatevs, but the best bit is the '3rd version'. This owl naturally puffs itself up when pitted against other owls of the same size, but watch what happens when the owl is face to face with a bird twice its height...sheer brilliance. MotherNature at its best!

British Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010

The Shanghai Expo 2010 is looming and some of the pavilions that have gone on display are incredible. This one is from the Brit camp. "The 20 meter high cube-like structure is pierced by 60,000 slim and transparent acrylic rods.

The centerpiece of the pavilion is the seed cathedral, where visitors will be able to explore a variety of seeds of different plants featured on the end of each rod.

It has been designed by Brit architect, Thomas Heatherwick 'The cathedral represents UK's understanding of 'better city, better life,' which also reflects how biological diversity has influenced and improved people's life,' Heatherwick stated."



Photos [VIA]

First Supersonic Freefall

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner has announced he will will try to smash the nearly 50-year-old record for the highest jump this year, becoming the first person to go supersonic in freefall.

On 16 August 1960, US Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger made history by jumping out of a balloon at an altitude of some 31,333 metres. Felix aims to jump from 36,575 metres. Check out the chart below for some perspective.

The jump height is above a threshold at 19,000 metres called the Armstrong line, where the atmospheric pressure is so low that fluids start to boil. If he opens up his face mask or the suit, all the gases in his body will go out of suspension, so literally turning him into a giant fizzy soda, oozing fluid from his eyes and mouth.



Read the full article HERE.

Sci-Fi Surgery

The future of robotic surgery will include tiny robots that enter our bodies and do their work from the inside, with no need to open patients up or knock them out. While nanobots that swim through the blood are still in the realm of fantasy, several groups are developing devices a few millimetres in size. The first generation of "mini-medibots" may infiltrate our bodies through our ears, eyes and lungs, to deliver drugs, take tissue samples or install medical devices.

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Part Bug, Part Robot

The creation of a cyborg insect army has just taken a step closer to reality. A research team at the University of California Berkeley recently announced that it has successfully implanted electrodes into a beetle allowing scientists to control the insect's movements in flight.

The Weirdest Animals

Blobfish.
Quite possibly the ugliest animal on earth. It looks like something out of a cartoon. To survive the intense pressure at depths of 1000m and more, its body is largely made up of a jelly-like substance slightly less dense than water. The jelly allows it to float just above the sea floor without having to expend energy on swimming.

Dracula Fish.
It is just 17 millimetres-long, transparent and has hook-shaped extensions that look like teeth protruding through the skin above its mouth. Zoologists called it one of the most "extraordinary vertebrates discovered in the last few decades".

Axlotl.
The axolotl is a Mexican mole salamander, about 15-45cm in length, and one of the cleverest critters you're ever likely to meet. If the axolotl loses a limb, it will grow another. If it loses a certain part of its brain, it will grow that back, too.
Tests have shown that it will happily accept transplants from other axolotls, including eyes and portions of brain, and rewire them to work perfectly. Because of these amazing powers of regeneration, some axolotls swim about with several more limbs than are strictly necessary.

Star-nosed Mole.
The star-nosed mole best resembles a strange sci-fi amalgamation of two different creatures. It is, for the most part, a common or garden mole, with thick, dark fur and a long thick tail. But its nose seems to belong to another animal altogether.
The ring of 22 fleshy pink tentacles that wave around at the end of its snout should really be living on its own at the bottom of the sea.

Hagfish.
To escape predators, the hagfish exudes copious quantities of a viscous slime. That's the nice bit. To feed, it enters its victim through the mouth, gills or anus, and devours it from the inside out. Yep, the hagfish has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.

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Adam Morrigan - Roadkill Artist

Adam Morrigan from Gloucestershire, makes art out of roadkill, and sometimes eats it too.

Heron hat

Fox handbag

This piece is called Roadkill Mappe Mundi, made from ducklings. He did not eat them because they were too small.

Seagull

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Dont Mess With Chinese Water Deer

Although the deer are less than 2ft tall and weigh a maximum of 31lb, the males have a secret weapon - downward-pointing fangs which can grow more than 3in long.

Latest victim was Perdita, a six-year-old Jack Russell out for a walk with Georgina Robey, 12, and her tenyearold brother Daniel. Perdita suffered cuts on her back, neck and both sides of her stomach after an encounter with a mystery predator.

It was only when the children's father Loren took the dog to a vet that they realised she had apparently fallen victim to a serial-attack deer. The same vet had already treated five dogs in a similar condition.

Chinese Water Deer were first introduced into Great Britain in the 1870s and were kept in the London Zoo. In 1896, they were transferred to Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, with further additions being imported and added to the stock. In 1929 and 1930, 32 deer were transferred from Woburn to Whipsnade, also in Bedfordshire, and released into the park.
The present introduced population derives from a number of deliberate releases; the majority, however, is descended from escapees. The majority of the wild Chinese Water Deer population still resides in close proximity to Woburn Abbey. It appears that the deer’s strong preference for a particular habitat – tall reed and grass areas in rich alluvial deltas - has restricted its potential to colonize further afield.

Read more HERE.

World's Smallest Art Prize

Crossing a microscope with a camera gives you a micrograph, a tiny photograph that allows artists and scientists to show the beauty inaccessible to the naked eye. Every year the Small World competition run by Nikon celebrates this hidden world.

This years first place winner. An image of a thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) anther magnified at 20x, taken by Heiti Paves of the Tallinn Institute of Technology, Estonia. The thale cress is an important species used in the study of plant genome traits.
It made history in 2000 when it became the first plant to have its entire genetic code sequenced and now stands as a model species for understanding the molecular biology of many plant traits.
See the other winners HERE.

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