(Image Caption: An FMRI Scan Shows Regions Of The Brain That Become Active When Devoutly Religious Study

Watching a snowflake grow seems almost magical–the six-sided shape, the symmetry, the way every arm of it grows simultaneously. But it’s science that guides the snowflake, not magic. Snowflakes are ice crystals; their six-sided shape comes from how water molecules fit together. The elaborate structures and branches in a snowflake are the result of the exact temperature and humidity conditions when that part of the snowflake formed. The crystals look symmetric and seem to grow identical arms simultaneously because the temperature and humidity conditions are the same around the tiny forming crystals. And the old adage that no two snowflakes are alike doesn’t hold either. If you can control the conditions well enough, you can grow identical-twin snowflakes! (Video credit: K. Libbrecht)

If you dropped a water balloon on a bed of nails, you’d expect it to burst spectacularly. And you’d be right – some of the time. Under the right conditions, though, you’d see what a high-speed camera caught in the animation above: a pancake-shaped bounce with nary a leak. Physically, this is a scaled-up version of what happens to a water droplet when it hits a superhydrophobic surface. 

Water repellent superhydrophobic surfaces are covered in microscale roughness, much like a bed of tiny nails. When the balloon (or droplet) hits, it deforms into the gaps between posts. In the case of the water balloon, its rubbery exterior pulls back against that deformation. (For the droplet, the same effect is provided by surface tension.) That tension pulls the deformed parts of the balloon back up, causing the whole balloon to rebound off the nails in a pancake-like shape. For more, check out this video on the student balloon project or the original water droplet research. (Image credits: T. Hecksher et al., Y. Liu et al.; via The New York Times; submitted by Justin B.)

Neurotransmitters are chemicals that help in transmitting signals across a synapse. Different neurotransmitters are associated with different functions. Knowledge about these helps us to treat various neurological conditions by either stimulating or inhibiting these production. #neurology #neuroscience #psychiatry #medicine #medstudynotes #medschool #mbbs #unimed #brain #nervoussystem #physiology #medblog #medblr #medstudent https://www.instagram.com/p/BrM4ocsBqJe/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=12tojib83c32d

Trillion-Ton Iceberg Breaks Off Antarctica

Even though the towering berg weighs more than 1.1 trillion tons (1 trillion metric tons), it won't have a direct impact on sea-level rise. That's because the ice was already floating on the sea. Even so, when an iceberg like this one calves, it can speed up the collapse of the rest of the ice shelf.

One of the largest icebergs ever recorded, packing about a trillion tons of ice or enough to fill up two Lake Eries, has just split off from Antarctica, in a much anticipated, though not celebrated, calving event.

A section of the Larsen C ice shelf with an area of 2,240 square miles (5,800 square kilometers) finally broke away some time between July 10 and today (July 12), scientists with the U.K.-based MIDAS Project, an Antarctic research group, reported today.

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Science Fact Friday: Tetrodotoxin, ft. a small gif because I’m avoiding my real obligations. Why does tetrodotoxin not affect its host? More studies need to be done but at least a few species possess mutated sodium ion channels. The tetrodotoxin can’t interact efficiently with the altered channels.

Another interesting tidbit: Animals with tetrodotoxin can lose their toxicity in captivity. It is suspected that the animals accumulate the toxic bacteria as a side-effect of their diet. After several years of captivity on a tetrodotoxin-bacteria-free diet, the bacterial colonies living in the animals die, residual toxin is cleared from the system, and the animal is safe to handle.

8 of the world’s most bizarre flowers:

1.) Swaddled Babies

2.) Flying Duck Orchid

3.) Hooker’s Lips Orchid

4.) Ballerina Orchid

5.) Monkey Orchid

6.) Naked Man Orchid

7.) Laughing Bumblebee Orchid

8.) White Egret Orchid

The Portuguese man o’ war delivers a powerful sting to its prey—and sometimes to people—through venom-filled structures on its tentacles. It is not a jellyfish, but rather a colony of different types of zooids (small animals). Jean Louis Coutant engraved the plate for this illustration.

Life Continues Within the Body After Death, Evidence Shows

The body keeps working to repair itself after death, according to a provocative new study that could offer insight into how we might put the big sleep on hold.

Even after someone is declared dead, life continues in the body, suggests a surprising new study with important implications.

Gene expression — when information stored in DNA is converted into instructions for making proteinsor other molecules — actually increases in some cases after death, according to the new paper, which tracked postmortem activity and is published in the journal Open Biology.

“Not all cells are ‘dead’ when an organism dies,” senior author Peter Noble of the University of Washington and Alabama State University told Seeker. “Different cell types have different life spans, generation times and resilience to extreme stress.”  

In fact, some cells seem to fight to live after the organism has died.

“It is likely that some cells remain alive and are attempting to repair themselves, specifically stem cells,” Noble said.