Stygiomedusa Gigantea
For the first time ever, stygiomedusa gigantea, a gigantic jellyfish was caught on video by scientists in the Gulf of Mexico. There have only been 115 sightings of this deep sea jellyfish in the past 110 years.
That’s not a jellyfish that is a frikkin’ dementor!
(via perceptur)
Source: unexplained-events
Prickly Blue-Poppy - Meconopsis horridula
Commonly known as Prickly Blue-Poppy, and Tibetan Poppy, Meconopsis horridula (Ranunculales - Papaveraceae) is an unusual bristly poppy with gorgeous, floppy, blue, tissue-paper flowers. The epithet “horrid” obviously applies to the spiny looking stems and certainly not to the striking cobalt-blue, ivory-eyed flowers.
This is an alpine species which occurs in the Himalayan region. It has been used as a traditional Tibetan medicine to “clear away heat, relieve pain, and mobilize static blood”. Currently chemical investigations on this species has led to the isolation and structural identification of 40 compounds, including several flavonoids, alkaloids and terpenoids.
References: [1] - [2] - [3] - [4]
Photo credit: ©Nobuhiro Suhara | Locality: Osaka, Japan (2015)
(via libutron)
Trees, like animals, can also experience albinism, though it is extremely rare.
the reason it’s rare is because without chlorophyll, the plant can’t get energy, and dies shortly after sprouting unless it has some other source of food. so if you see a plant as big as the one in the picture that doesn’t have any green in its leaves, it’s getting its nutrition from the roots of a neighboring plant of the same species, feeding on the sugars created by the other plant’s photosynthesis.
albino plants are basically vampires.
DUDE
(via nevertoomanyspiders)
Source: coolthingoftheday
Urban Treehouse Uses 150 Trees To Protect Residents From Noise And Pollution
Luciano Pia, an architect in Italy, has a beautiful vision for how people and nature can live together even in a thoroughly urban landscape. 25 Verde, an apartment complex he designed in Turin, Italy, is a woven 5-story mix of lush trees and steel girders that let urban residents feel like they live in a giant urban tree-house.
Every step in the building’s design was taken with natural integration in mind. The organic and asymmetric shape of its terraces allow potted trees to “sprout” out from the building at random intervals. The ponds in the courtyard provide residents with a refreshing place to relax in the summer, and the 150 deciduous trees, which lose their leaves in the winter, allow light to filter in to the building during the darker months. The building helps keep the city’s air cleaner and isolates the residents from the urban sounds and smells surrounding them.The building, which was completed in 2012, is located at Via Chabrera 25 in Turin, Italy – you can even check it out on Google Maps‘ street view!
Via:http://www.boredpanda.com/urban-treehouse-green-architecture-25-verde-luciano-pia-turin-italy/
(via unbadgr)
Source: asylum-art
Jacob’s Well
Jacob’s Well is one of the most significant natural geologic treasures in the Texas Hill Country. It is one of the longest underwater caves in Texas and an artesian spring. Jacob’s Well surges up thousands of gallons of water per minute and acts as headwaters to the Cypress Creek that flows through Wimberley, sustaining Blue Hole and the Blanco River, recharging the Edwards Aquifer, and finally replenishing estuaries in the Gulf of Mexico.
(via sixpenceee)
Out of use tunnel near Heathrow, London
by SeriousDude
(via destroyed-and-abandoned)
Germ-killing Molecules Identified in Alligator Blood
by Curtis Abraham
Thick armour and jaws packed full of teeth aren’t the only defences that alligators and crocodiles have. They also have formidable immune systems and some of the protective molecules that enable this have now been identified. Their discovery in the blood of the American alligator might even pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics.
Crocodilians have existed on Earth for at least 37 million years. Over the course of their evolution, they have developed a very strong defence against infection. “They inflict wounds on each other from which they frequently recover without complications from infection despite the fact that the environments in which they live are less than sterile,” says Barney Bishop of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, co-author of the new study.
American alligators have an enviable innate immune system, the “primitive” first line of defence that is shared by all vertebrates. In 2008, chemists in Louisiana found that blood serum taken from the reptiles destroyed 23 strains of bacteria and depleted reserves of the HIV virus. The germ-killing molecules were identified as enzymes that break down a type of lipid…
(read more: New Scientist)
photograph by Jody Watt/Design Pics/Corbis
(via libutron)
Source: vanduobones
Mars is now known as the planet who lost an ocean’s worth of water. According to new results published today, about 4 billion years ago a primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean. Above’s an artist’s impression showing how Mars may have looked.
An international team of scientists used European Southern Observatoy’s Very Large Telescope, along with instruments at the W. M. Keck Observatory and the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, to monitor the atmosphere of the planet and map out the properties of the water in different parts of Mars’s atmosphere over a six-year period. read more here
illustration credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)
(via unbadgr)
Source: sci-universe
Since the release of LIMBO in 2010, Playdead has been working very hard on their next game, INSIDE.Damn, I loved LIMBO.
(via creepykylee)
Source: youtube.com
Back in January, our research biologists came across this octopus when pulling up a stone crab trap in Cedar Key. Octopus can get in...
Commission for https://www.deviantart.com/sweet-n-treat
Forgot to mention it on Deviantart - I’ve opened Fur Affinity account!
by Andrey
Back in January, our research biologists came across this octopus when pulling up a stone crab trap in Cedar Key. Octopus can get in...
Commission for https://www.deviantart.com/sweet-n-treat
Forgot to mention it on Deviantart - I’ve opened Fur Affinity account!
by Andrey
