archiemcphee: Here’s an awesome little piece of history: Archaeologists in the Burnt City have discovered what appears to be an ancient prosthetic eye. What makes this discovery exceptionally awesome is the striking description of how the owner and her false eye would have appeared while she was still alive and blinking: [The eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE.  So she was an extraordinarily tall woman walking around wearing an engraved golden eye patterned with rays like a tiny sun. What an awesome sight that must have been. [via TYWKIWDBI] This Geyser of Awesome’s 12th most popular post of 2012.  Lots of people said they were going to draw what she looked like. If you have, let us know!
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archiemcphee:

Here’s an awesome little piece of history:

Archaeologists in the Burnt City have discovered what appears to be an ancient prosthetic eye. What makes this discovery exceptionally awesome is the striking description of how the owner and her false eye would have appeared while she was still alive and blinking:

[The eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE. 

So she was an extraordinarily tall woman walking around wearing an engraved golden eye patterned with rays like a tiny sun. What an awesome sight that must have been.

[via TYWKIWDBI]

This Geyser of Awesome’s 12th most popular post of 2012.  Lots of people said they were going to draw what she looked like. If you have, let us know!

jtotheizzoe:

When do we stop seeing the animal, and start seeing ourselves?

Photographer Tim Flach challenges you with that question, in his new book More Than Human. Every single one of his photos, from scary bats to naked chickens, is breathtaking. 

We are becoming aware of more examples of animal intelligence, from the language of whales to the self-awareness and empathy of the great apes. Whereas one’s emotional response to what appears to be a ponderous panda used to be thought of as folly, we are now able to appreciate a wider spectrum of animal thought and processing.

It does not mean that there is deep thought in those eyes, but it blurs the lines of where our stare stops and theirs begins.There is something. What? Who knows?

We would do well to remind ourselves not where animals are like us, but perhaps where we are like them. These photos do that for me. 

See more at Brain Pickings.

(via living-as-if)

Source: jtotheizzoe

holymoleculesbatman:

Cool facts about butterfiles

1. Butterfly wings are transparent.

How can that be? We know butterflies as perhaps the most colorful, vibrant insects around! A butterfly wing is actually formed by layers of chitin, the protein that makes up an insect’s exoskeleton. These layers are so thin you can see right through them. Thousands of tiny scales cover the transparent chitin, and these scales reflect light in different colors. As a butterfly ages, scales fall off the wings, leaving spots of transparency where the chitin layer is exposed.

2. Butterflies taste with their feet.
Taste receptors on a butterfly’s feet help it find its host plant and locate food. A female butterfly lands on different plants, drumming the leaves with her feet to make the plant release its juices. Spines on the back of her legs have chemoreceptors that detect the right match of plant chemicals. When she identified the right plant, she lays her eggs. A butterfly will also step on its food, using organs that sense dissolved sugars to taste food sources like fermenting fruit.

3. Butterflies can’t fly if they’re cold.
Butterflies need an ideal body temperature of about 85ºF to fly. Since they’re cold-blooded animals, they can’t regulate their own body temperatures. The surrounding air temperature has a big impact on their ability to function. If the air temperature falls below 55ºF, butterflies are rendered immobile, unable to flee from predators or feed. When air temperatures range between 82º-100ºF, butterflies can fly with ease. Cooler days require a butterfly to warm up its flight muscles, either be shivering or basking in the sun. And even sun-loving butterflies can get overheated when temperatures soar above 100ºF, and may seek shade to cool down.

More here

(via ofpaperandponies)

Source: holymoleculesbatman

sciencecenter: Afraid of math? That may be because for some, facing math is physically painful For many people the thought of these kinds of problems is horrible. Painful, even. A study by psychologists Ian Lyon and Sian Beilock has shown that that’s not hyperbole — some people who dislike math do so because the thought of working out things with numbers is experientially similar to physical pain. For people with “high levels of mathematics-anxiety” (HMAs), maths hurts. […] Since it’s the anticipation of mathematics that seems to get people the most, rather than the actual sums themselves, it might be worth investigating whether there’s a different way of teaching maths in schools. It could also mean taking the time to simplify the process for returning a tax return, for example. Governments often wring their hands over how many adults are effectively mathematically illiterate after leaving school, but maybe it’s not their fault they couldn’t concentrate in class. They might well have just been scared of the number seven (because, after all, seven ate nine). I always knew that mathematicians were masochists…
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sciencecenter:

Afraid of math? That may be because for some, facing math is physically painful

For many people the thought of these kinds of problems is horrible. Painful, even. A study by psychologists Ian Lyon and Sian Beilock has shown that that’s not hyperbole — some people who dislike math do so because the thought of working out things with numbers is experientially similar to physical pain. For people with “high levels of mathematics-anxiety” (HMAs), maths hurts. […]

Since it’s the anticipation of mathematics that seems to get people the most, rather than the actual sums themselves, it might be worth investigating whether there’s a different way of teaching maths in schools. It could also mean taking the time to simplify the process for returning a tax return, for example. Governments often wring their hands over how many adults are effectively mathematically illiterate after leaving school, but maybe it’s not their fault they couldn’t concentrate in class. They might well have just been scared of the number seven (because, after all, seven ate nine).

I always knew that mathematicians were masochists…

sciencecenter: Obama’s (very tiny, very old) secret weapon to gain the Southern vote If you look at the entire 2008 election map, you’ll see that Obama didn’t carry much of the South besides North Carolina and Florida. However, if you zoom in and look at the voting by county, you’ll see something suspicious: a crescent of relatively liberal counties in a sea of red. What could possibly explain that? Did Obama stump extra hard in Alabama, but only in Selma? The answer, according to one marine biologist, is deposits of 130 million year old plankton. But why? To figure out why Craig McClain came up with his seemingly-crackpot theory, it helps to look at a map of the US from the Cretaceous period. You’ll see that the geography would have been vastly different, namely because most of the Great Plains and the Eastern Seaboard were submerged by a continuation of the Atlantic Ocean. The shoreline reached up into the Deep South, and in the shallows just offshore, massive colonies of plankton floated around, captured carbon by converting the sun’s energies, and then died and formed massive chalky deposits in the sea bed. Fast forward about 130 million years, cotton farmers in the 19th century South found these deposits made for highly fertile soil; the most productive regions from the time closely match the ancient coastline. These cotton farmers (unfortunately) brought with them slave labor, and many emancipated slaves stayed in the area, leaving a dense population of African-Americans in the modern day who in 2008 overwhelmingly voted for Obama. So while Obama can’t count on winning any Southern states this time around, he knows that he’ll still win at least a few counties. What’s the take home message? Tiny events that happened very, very long ago can still have big impacts today, in the strangest ways you can imagine.
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sciencecenter:

Obama’s (very tiny, very old) secret weapon to gain the Southern vote

If you look at the entire 2008 election map, you’ll see that Obama didn’t carry much of the South besides North Carolina and Florida. However, if you zoom in and look at the voting by county, you’ll see something suspicious: a crescent of relatively liberal counties in a sea of red. What could possibly explain that? Did Obama stump extra hard in Alabama, but only in Selma? The answer, according to one marine biologist, is deposits of 130 million year old plankton. But why?

To figure out why Craig McClain came up with his seemingly-crackpot theory, it helps to look at a map of the US from the Cretaceous period. You’ll see that the geography would have been vastly different, namely because most of the Great Plains and the Eastern Seaboard were submerged by a continuation of the Atlantic Ocean. The shoreline reached up into the Deep South, and in the shallows just offshore, massive colonies of plankton floated around, captured carbon by converting the sun’s energies, and then died and formed massive chalky deposits in the sea bed. Fast forward about 130 million years, cotton farmers in the 19th century South found these deposits made for highly fertile soil; the most productive regions from the time closely match the ancient coastline. These cotton farmers (unfortunately) brought with them slave labor, and many emancipated slaves stayed in the area, leaving a dense population of African-Americans in the modern day who in 2008 overwhelmingly voted for Obama. So while Obama can’t count on winning any Southern states this time around, he knows that he’ll still win at least a few counties.

What’s the take home message? Tiny events that happened very, very long ago can still have big impacts today, in the strangest ways you can imagine.

malformalady: The Museum of London has a new exhibition, entitled “Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men” devoted in part, to the developing medical science of surgery, and in part to the criminals who disinterred the bodies that served such an important function in early medical science. In the early 19th century, hospitals were supplied with the corpses of executed criminals. Thus the resurrection men appeared, to dig up bodies from graves and sell them to Hospitals.
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malformalady:

The Museum of London has a new exhibition, entitled “Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men” devoted in part, to the developing medical science of surgery, and in part to the criminals who disinterred the bodies that served such an important function in early medical science. In the early 19th century, hospitals were supplied with the corpses of executed criminals. Thus the resurrection men appeared, to dig up bodies from graves and sell them to Hospitals.

(via necromannequin)

Source: malformalady

‘Lies from the Pit of Hell’ congressman’s opponents mounting write-in campaign for Darwin | The Raw Story

 According to the Associated Press, University of Georgia scientists and conservative talk-radio host Neil Boortz have found themselves to be unlikely allies in an effort to boost Darwin as a write-in candidate for voters who want to lodge a protest against the ultra-conservative Broun.

James Leebens-Mack, the UGA plant biologist who started a Facebook page supporting Darwin against Broun, told Raw Story in an interview, “Quite a few folks independently came up with the idea to start a write-in campaign, very conservative and very liberal.”

Leebens-Mack said that he’d be happy if write-ins for Darwin would constitute 1 percent of the vote, which he feels would be enough “to let both the Democratic and Republican parties know that we’re not happy that Paul Broun is our only choice in the 10th Congressional District of Georgia.”

The professor, who declined to give his own party affiliation, said that the bipartisan protest arose separately from the campaign organized by Boortz, the Atlanta-based radio host, who has a massive following among Georgia conservatives.  Boortz told listeners that ideologues like Broun are bad for the Republican Party, and that they make conservatives “look like knee-dragging, still-tending, tobacco-spitting Neanderthals.”

In remarks recorded at a September 27 fundraiser at Liberty Baptist Church of Hartwell, Georgia, Broun told the assembled group, “God’s word is true.  I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

Broun is a medical doctor, but does not have admitting privileges at any hospital in the state of Georgia.

I like this idea but I must say that saying people like Broun’“look like knee-dragging, still-tending, tobacco-spitting Neanderthals.” is quite an insult to Neanderthals. People like Broun are no where near as intelligent as Neanderthals were. 

Curiosity rover checks in to Foursquare from Mars, is about to be Mayor

iheartchaos:

While roving about the surface of Mars yesterday, NASA’s Curiosity rover took a second to do really important things, like check into Foursquare. Yup, that little roving robot became the first thing to check in to Foursquare from Mars, which means it’s going to become the uncontested Mayor of Gale Crater. Dammit Curiosity, I wanted to the be first Foursquare mayor on Mars.

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