Science!
what the fuck is this science bullshit
Bilateral gynandromporphism - half female, half male.. This genetic anomaly is usually restricted to arthropods, but has been known to express itself in birds as well.
How the hell does it fly without constantly crashing?
World’s First Bionic Eye Receives FDA Approval
The new retinal prosthesis, called Argus II, can restore partial sight to people blinded by a degenerative eye disease. The Argus II works by substituting a small array of electrodes for the light-sensing cells that normally react to light by sending an electric signal toward the back of the retina. Those signals are relayed to the optic nerve behind the eye, and travel back along the nerve to the brain. In people with the genetic disease Retinitis pigmentosa, which affects about 100,000 people in the U.S. today, those light-sensing cells gradually stop working, resulting in total blindness. In addition to the electrode array, which is implanted in the retina at the back of the eye, the Argus II system consists of a small video camera attached to a pair of eyeglasses and a visual processor the user carries around their waist. Data from the video camera is sent to the visual processor and then back to the glasses, where it is transmitted wirelessly to the embedded electrodes.
Haemolacria is a physical condition that causes a person to produce tears that are partially composed of blood. It can manifest as tears that are anything from merely red-tinged to appearing to be entirely made of blood.Haemolacria is a symptom of a number of diseases, and may also be indicative of a tumor in the lacrimal apparatus. It is most often provoked by local factors such as bacterial conjunctivitis, environmental damage or injuries. Acute haemolacria can occur in fertile women and seems to be induced by hormones.
30,000 year old flower revived.
Scientists have resurrected a flower from plant tissues found frozen in Siberian permafrost, thought to be 30,000-32,000 years old. The new Silene stenophylla is healthy and fertile, and producing viable seeds.
The experiment has excited many because it proves that material trapped in the permafrost is recoverable and usable - scientists have been working to recover other species of plant and animal life from the same area, such as the woolly mammoth.
“To look at this flourishing mass of plant life you’d think David Latimer was a green-fingered genius. Truth be told, however, his bottle garden – now almost in its 53rd year – hasn’t taken up much of his time. In fact, on the last occasion he watered it Ted Heath was Prime Minister and Richard Nixon was in the White House.
For the last 40 years it has been completely sealed from the outside world. But the indoor variety of spiderworts (or Tradescantia, to give the plant species its scientific Latin name) within has thrived, filling its globular bottle home with healthy foliage.
Yesterday Mr Latimer, 80, said: ‘It’s 6ft from a window so gets a bit of sunlight. It grows towards the light so it gets turned round every so often so it grows evenly. ‘Otherwise, it’s the definition of low-maintenance. I’ve never pruned it, it just seems to have grown to the limits of the bottle.’
The bottle garden has created its own miniature ecosystem. Despite being cut off from the outside world, because it is still absorbing light it can photosynthesize the process by which plants convert sunlight into the energy they need to grow.”
So how does it work exactly?
“Bottle gardens work because their sealed space creates an entirely self-sufficient ecosystem in which plants can survive by using photosynthesis to recycle nutrients.
The only external input needed to keep the plant going is light, since this provides it with the energy it needs to create its own food and continue to grow.
Light shining on the leaves of the plant is absorbed by proteins containing chlorophylls (a green pigment).
Some of that light energy is stored in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that stores energy. The rest is used to remove electrons from the water being absorbed from the soil through the plant’s roots.
These electrons then become ‘free’ - and are used in chemical reactions that convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, releasing oxygen.
This photosynthesis process is the opposite of the cellular respiration that occurs in other organisms, including humans, where carbohydrates containing energy react with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, water, and release chemical energy.
But the eco-system also uses cellular respiration to break down decaying material shed by the plant. In this part of the process, bacteria inside the soil of the bottle garden absorbs the plant’s waste oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide which the growing plant can reuse.
And, of course, at night, when there is no sunlight to drive photosynthesis, the plant will also use cellular respiration to keep itself alive by breaking down the stored nutrients.
Because the bottle garden is a closed environment, that means its water cycle is also a self-contained process.
The water in the bottle gets taken up by plants’ roots, is released into the air during transpiration, condenses down into the potting mixture, where the cycle begins again.”
Apparently leprosy bacteria spread through your body without getting “caught” by transforming your nerve cells back into stem cells, which randomly migrate around the body as they would to form new tissues during embryonic development. The bacteria hide inside, multiply then attack new nerve cells.
It’s like they turn your cells into little zombie pizza guys who think they have to deliver delicious hot pizza to your kidneys or your bones or something but they open the box and instead of pizza it’s just all this leprosy that comes out and makes more zombie pizza guys.
What will be your baby’s eyes color?
Based on what I learned when we went over genetics in my biology classes (and what I’ve researched on my own)… this all makes no sense.
Eye colors other than Dark Brown Eyes are actually almost nonexistent in some parts of the world. Dark Brown Eyes are a very strongly dominant trait. Meaning that this “Brown + Brown” = 18.75% chance of green or 6.25% chance of blue” is only going to happen where people have a high percentage of recessive eye-color gene admixture. There are places where you’ll go in the world where, guess what, there are almost no people in the entire area (who are from the native population) who have blue/green eyes.
This doesn’t exclude mutations, but still doesn’t invalidate my point because the chances of two people with dark brown eyes (with only dark-brown eyed ancestors throughout their entire genetic history) having a child with a mutated gene to make their eyes blue is very rare. It doesn’t happen often, and isn’t even close to 6.25%
There are also different shades of all of these and it’s really hard to determine.
With Brown eyes there are different categories— the largest two they can be split into are light brown eyes and dark brown eyes.
Dark Brown eyes are most common in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Oceania, Africa, the Americas, Eastern Europe, and Southern Europe.
Light and Medium Brown Eyes (usually grouped together as “light”) are most common in various places in Europe, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Northern India, some parts of the Middle East, and a large portion of the Americas.
Then there are Amber eyes, which are a golden color. These people often think their eyes are hazel, but they actually have a solid gold color.
Then you have Blue eyes, which are a recessive trait. Blue eyes are most common in areas around the Baltic Sea and Northern Europe, but obviously they’ve spread somewhat.
Gray eyes, much like blue eyes, are also a recessive trait. Gray eyes are a bit of a “we don’t know how they work” scenario, but people believe that they may have more melanin than blue eyes. They’re most common in Northern and Eastern Europe, but will also pop up in North West Africa, the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Green eyes are actually quite the rare trait. Only 1 to 2% of people in the entire world have green eyes. They’re quite common in some parts of the world, but are otherwise very uncommon. They happen most often in Northern and Central Europe, and sometimes pop up in Southern Europe and in parts of Central Asia. For some reason or another, they’re more common for women to have than they are with men.
Hazel eyes are actually quite varied, and it’s hard to pin down what is hazel and what isn’t. They range from having light browns to greens but have plenty of admixture.
Red and Violet eyes are very rare and only naturally happen with people who have albinism. This happens because they have virtually no pigmentation in their iris, and so their blood vessels show through. Many like to state Elizabeth Taylor as someone who has “violet eyes”, but they only appeared that way because they were a very deep blue that sometimes would appear to take on a more violet hue.
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This means that it all depends on what genes each individual parent has. It is possible to have two parents with brown eyes who have a close to 0% (including mutations) chance of having a child with green or blue eyes. Some people simply don’t have the recessive genes for a child to have green or blue eyes.
If a person with dark brown eyes who has no recessive green/blue genes has a child with someone with blue eyes… Every single child will have brown eyes. Those children all now carry the recessive blue eye gene, but none of them will have blue eyes.
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Please note when speaking of these, the general native population’s genetic ancestry is taken into account. This doesn’t account for immigration and genetic admixture over time.
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Heterochromia (you didn’t think I’d pass up a chance to touch on this, did you?)
Heterochromia is a condition in which a person’s eyes are different colors.
Sometimes this only happens in a small portion of someone’s eye, such as “central heterochromia”
Sectoral heterochromia is where a part of one iris is different, but the rest is the same as the other eye.
Complete heterochromia is where one eye is an entirely different color from the other.
Heterochromia has many different causes, from certain genetic disorders, to medical chimerism (a person’s body actually being made up of two different people’s genetics in different places) and injury.
The bottom part is actually pretty helpful for figuring out how genetics will work with my characters and their parents’ traits.
Wow, that was actually very informative and interesting. I have grey eyes (which I’ve always called blue because it’s easier) so it was nice to be able to read something about them.
