A Scientist And An Icon

Same country, one day apart

Source 1 // Source 2

Remember I love you.

Remember that you are worth the space you take up

Remember sunlight and late nights and slumber parties from when you were 12

Remember that life is worth living even when you think that it's not

Remember you're gonna make it through.

the holy grail

North Idaho Gothic

-The pines in the forest don’t bend, and they don’t break. No matter how heavy the rain or how strong the wind, they will stand perfectly still. Nobody asks why.

-Do not cut down the trees here. They will be back.

-The sky is blue, not a cloud to be seen. Rain falls. Nobody ever wonders why. Still, the sky is clear, and rain falls.

-Do not swim in Lake Pend Orielle. It will draw you in. Do not touch the water. The things that live in its depths are waiting.

-The towns may seem small, but you will get lost. The streets keep going, on and on, ever narrower. The buildings watch you lose your way, and they smile.

-The dogs don’t bark after nightfall. Ever. They keep their silent vigil until dawn. You wonder why, but the look in their eyes tells you everything.

-Nobody ever comes or goes. If someone does come, they won’t be here for long. They don’t know this land, or its laws. Sooner or later they will break one, and they will be gone.

-The missionaries will be at your door with a smile and you turn them away. They smile, and you turn them away. Something about the smile seems hollow, empty. You never look at their eyes, nobody does. Nobody knows what they will see, and they don’t want to find out.

-There are children’s toys littered around almost every yard, but you never see any children. Every time you look out the window, the toys have moved.

-On every street, all but one streetlamp is dead. No one goes out after nightfall, because they know what is under the dark streetlamps. If you ask them they will deny it, but they know.

-If you see a river stone with a hole in it, don’t touch it. And no matter what, never look through it. When you return home, it won’t be the same as when you left it.

-It’s quiet in the forest, but don’t let that deceive you. They are watching. You know it, because you hear the distant tinkle of windchimes and the chill on the back of your neck.

-Don’t wander. You won’t find your way back. You never will.

just making sure y'all know that I'm radically queer and inclusive. some things this includes:

trans women are regular women & should be an integral part of every women's community.

gender dysphoria is a varying and deeply personal experience (I say as a cis woman with butch dysphoria) and can exist independently of medical transition.

nonbinary people don't have to be "man/woman-aligned" (though many are). they're not binary, it says so right there.

define your gender or sexuality however makes you comfortable. all labels were made up by somebody. you have the right to have yours respected.

queer is a useful label & important to a lot of people.

aromantic & asexual people's sexuality is normal and they belong in lgbtq+ spaces.

bi/pan/m-spec women belong in wlw spaces.

whoever else it's popular to invalidate and hate these days in the name of community purism? they're my friends now. hurt them and you fight me.

guess who just followed me? I want to make sure they know they're not welcome. it's 2020, intolerance isn't cool anymore.

Giant whale sharks have hundreds of tiny teeth-like structures around their eyes

https://sciencespies.com/nature/giant-whale-sharks-have-hundreds-of-tiny-teeth-like-structures-around-their-eyes/

Giant whale sharks have hundreds of tiny teeth-like structures around their eyes

Whale sharks, the majestic creatures that also happen to be the world’s largest fish, are far more gentle than the name suggests. They swim lazily around tropical waters, filter-feeding on plankton.

Now, biologists have discovered the enigmatic giants have a curious trick up their sleeve – teeth-like scales adorning their eyeballs. It appears to be the whale sharks’ version of eyelids, and one we haven’t seen in any other vertebrate.

“Eyeballs face a potential risk of damage from mechanical, chemical and biological hazards,” the researchers write in a new paper describing the find.

“This report elaborates on adaptations of the eyes of the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), including the discovery that they are covered with dermal denticles, which is a novel mechanism of eye protection in vertebrates.”

Dermal denticles, also known as placoid scales, are the tiny tough scales that cover sharks and rays. But although they are scales as we think of them, they’re also structurally very similar to teeth, and include an inner core of pulp, a middle layer of dentine or bony tissue, and a hard enamel-like coating on top.

We already knew that many sharks – including whale sharks – are covered with these denticles. However, finding them on the eyeballs of these fish is quite the surprise.

Eye denticles of the whale shark. (Tomita et al., PLOS One, 2020)

That’s partially because it’s long been assumed whale sharks don’t have to use their sense of sight much: their eyes are incredibly small compared to the rest of their body, and they don’t have a lot of midbrain, the part of the brain that processes vision.

“However, the highly protected features of the whale shark eye, in contrast to the traditional view, seems to suggest the importance of vision in this species,” the team argues in their study.

Researchers took a CT scanner to a preserved whale shark eyeball, as well as taking ultrasounds of two captive live whale sharks at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan.

3D rendering of the morphology of each eye denticle. (Tomita et al., PLOS One, 2020)

As well as discovering the eye denticles, the researchers also elaborated on the mechanisms whale sharks use to retract their eyes back into their head. Most of the time this can be for just a short period of time, however not always. Once, a particularly unfortunate shark ended up with its eyes retracted for 10 days after it was transferred to a new aquarium from Taiwan to Atlanta, Georgia.

“It is likely that whale sharks maintain their vision during eye retraction because the pupils of the whale sharks in this study were not completely covered with surrounding white tissues when their eyes had retracted, though their visual field would be much more restricted than when their eyes are positioned normally,” explain the researchers.

“In fact, the animal that kept its eyes retracted for approximately 10 days at the Georgia Aquarium appeared to have no problem navigating the exhibit space, until its eyes returned to their normal positions suddenly and, apparently, spontaneously.”

So, while whale sharks aren’t exactly a fearsome predator of the ocean, these two eye-protecting features are a fearsome competitor to… eyelids.

The research has been published in PLOS One.

#Nature

...and it’s this dude right here 😂

nsfw (not safe for water)

alkali metals

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