Pandas, Teeth and Bloody Fungi

Hi, Welcome (back) to weirdbeautiful. The image above is a panda cub in Wolong Nature Reserve, China, photographed by Sheila Lau. It fits with today's beautiful link of the day today is this picture of panda-handlers in Sichuan province, South West China dressed in Panda-suits as the prepare a 6-month-old-cub for release into a more naturalistic environment than the one he has previously inhabited.
-http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3423228/Researchers-dress-as-panda-parents-to-help-cub-get-used-to-its-own-species.html
The costumes are to prevent imprinting. The Sun posted a similar article back in December about China's Hetaoping Research and Conservation Centre here.



Weird link-of-the-day, is this photoessay on cracked.com with the promising title "10 Creepy plants that shouldn't exist". Perhaps the most disturbing of the list (and there is quite some competition for this accolade), is the "Bleeding Tooth Fungus", Hydnellum peckii- the life-form (for want of a better description)shown in the picture above. Ok, so fungi are not plants- they are actually more closely related to animals- but the article deserves a little room for poetic (scientific?) license, as it is so satisfyingly weird. The Bleeding Tooth Fungus is found on the floor of conifer forests; only the young "fruiting bodies" (toadstools) produce the bright red pigment- older fruiting bodies are a duller brown colour and incapable of oozing this characteristic red chemical.

One of the other plants in the "10 creepy plants..." list is the Chinese "Bat Plant", Tacca charentieri, which is a relative of the yam (more details [here]). Actually, I have seeds for both the black and the white-flowered varieties of the Chinese Bat plant- they are two of a selection of oddities obtained from jungleseeds.com. No doubt there are other suppliers.

The bleeding tooth fungus picture above is a wikipedia image attributed to B.Baldassari and to "Bernypisa" (image licence details [here]).
Thanks to Nurit for the "10 creepy plants..." link.

Island of Pigs

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

Cute link of the day today is to this wonderfully illustrated (tabloid) article about a group of pigs that have been left to their own devices on an island-Big Major Cay - in the Bahamas for several generations-
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3368057/Lucky-swines-have-own-island.html

Image of the day- Capybara

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Image of the day today is a Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) by Vigilance Prime. (this image has a GNU creative commons license -details [here])

The world's largest rodent, the Capybara is a herbivorous South American creature that can grow to 1.3 metres(over 4 feet) in length, and weigh up to 65 kg (just over 10 Stone).

Dogs detecting Bowel Cancer

Image: "Beano" by V. Neblik, 2008. This image has a creative commons attribution licence 2.0

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.
Probably just about anyone who has ever had a pet dog will tell you what amazing creatures they are. Today's first link is about the weird and amazing ability of dogs- specifically labrador retreivers - to detect signs of early bowel cancer in humans. In tests conducted by Dr Hideto Sonoda, from Kyushu University, specially trained dogs detected 37 out of 38 cases of early bowel cancer. Standard medical tests for early stage bowel cancer rely upon finding traces of blood in stool samples and only detect around 1 in 10 cases.
The full story is here-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12322790
The article also mentions that the ability of dogs to detect the scent at various concentrations varies not only between dogs but also within the same dog on different days.

Today's second link is to this article on the perils of sleep deprivation-
http://uk.health.lifestyle.yahoo.net/Lack-of-sleep-a-ticking-time-bomb-for-health.htm

Thanks to Lizzie B. for the bowel-cancer link.

Link of the day- The Brain and Meditation

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Link-of-the-day today is this article claiming that regular meditation alters the structure of the brain-
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/how-meditation-may-change-the-brain/

Genius, Quotes and... Prawns

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The shrimp Heterocarpus ensifer.


Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. At the moment, there is no shortage of scientific breakthroughs in the news. Perhaps one of the most exciting is this story about the potential use of chitosan: a substance found in the shells of prawns and crabs: to rebuild damaged human nerves and ultimately, it is hoped, offer a cure for certain paralyzed patients-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090616164002.htm


The structure of Chitosan

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"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age."
- Aldous Huxley

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One of my long-term preoccupations is with the human mind: a truly weird and beautiful thing. Consequently, I was very interested to read this article on genius, which was recently brought to my attention-

http://www.prometheussociety.org/articles/Outsiders.html

Essentially, it highlights the extreme separation of people of extremely high intelligence from the general population. IQ tests are-indisputably-unreliable and often flawed in many regards, but that clearly does not mean that they have no use. I am not sure that I fully endorse the article and its conclusions, but they are certainly thought-provoking.



In her excellent biography of Rosalin Franklin,
"Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA",
the science writer Brenda Maddox talks about the "otherness" of working in research science- the sense of separateness from society that can arise when one's work is beyond the ken of "ordinary" people and the loneliness of a life where one toils on abstract problems that perhaps -what?- 80%? 90% ? 95%? of the population cannot really grasp in outline, let alone in detail. She mentions it in the context of Franklin's struggles in her mid career and her sense of isolation. It seems to me that this overlaps with a lot of the ideas in the "outsiders" article.

The article also explains the reason that childhood prodigies are often quoted as having apparently astronomical IQ scores that later "regress towards the mean" as they age. Essentially, this is an inherent problem with the measurement of childhood intelligence and not any indication of brain decline.

Many thanks to Nurit for the genius article link.

Image of the day- Panda

Giant panda cub - Image by Colegota (this picture has a creative commons 2.5 licence- for details, click [here])


There are a lot more pictures of panda cubs and information about them here-
http://www.galenfrysinger.com/panda_nursery_china.htm