Turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish, is a hydrozoan whose medusa, or jellyfish, form can revert to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage. It does this through the cell development process of trans-differentiation. Cell transdifferentiation is when the jellyfish “alters the differentiated state of the cell and transforms it into a new cell”. In this process the medusa of the immortal jellyfish is transformed into the polyps of a new polyp colony. First, the umbrella reverts itself and then the tentacles and mesoglea get resorbed. The reverted medusa then attaches itself to the substrate by the end that had been at the opposite end of the umbrella and starts giving rise to new polyps to form the new colony. Theoretically, this process can go on indefinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal.
Yesterday, my mom and I adopted a little fluffy light orange kitten with beautiful pale green eyes and a pink little nose named Peaches for our 92-yr-old neighbor Mr. Edwards. He lost his old cat in the storm last winter and has kept saying he’s wanted another one since. By some act of fate, we picked out the same exact type of cat he had before! His wife is in a nursing home and can’t remember who he is. But he is the nicest person ever and very giving, always taking walks to our house during spring and summertime to share his rooted flowers and veggies with us. Unfortunately today, he was scammed by a 19-yr-old girl to write a $900 non-refundable check (under her name) for college. Damn it. Why are old people so big hearted and gullible?
REBLOG this by January 20 for a chance to win a full set of Lime Crime Carousel Glosses! Winner will be chosen randomly & announced on January 21. International participants welcome!
Japanese Dream Recording Machine Japanese scientists have created the first step toward a device that, by scanning people’s brains, could record people’s dreams and read their mind. A science lab in Kyoto, Japan has developed a system of using MRI scanners to resolve images directly from subject’s brains. The current experiments show a subject an image and then reconstruct that image based on scans of the brain’s visual cortex. The team calibrated a computer program by scanning volunteers staring at hundreds of different still images in black, white and grey. Then, the computer program reproduces the figures and letters that the volunteers had seen, albeit more blurry than the originals. The next step for researchers will be to study how to visualize images inside people’s minds that have not been presented before - a technology that could make it possible to record people’s dreams. [Yoshiyuki Onuki, Tester]: “Although it’s somewhat science fiction-like, for example, if you’re 50-years-old and see a really good dream the day before, you could scan that and show it to your kids.” Researchers say the brain-reading technology would also open the way for people to communicate directly from their mind or control electronic devices without using their bodies - making keyboards and buttons a thing of the past. [Dr. Yukiyasu Kamitani, ATR Institute]: “Although there are many forms of communication, whether it be the Internet or whatnot, all of them are limited by the body. However, this means that we have a method of communications that can interface directly with the brain.” While the new technology opens the doors to many new possibilities, scientists warn that it could bring about new issues concerning ethics and privacy, meaning that for those wanting to “plug themselves in,” they might have to wait a bit longer.
