Get ready for custom eyeball transplants for people who absolutely must have eyes in the backs of their heads — or pretty much anywhere on their bodies. Researchers at Tufts University just published a paper where they report transplanting working eyes onto the tail of a blind tadpole. Here’s how they did it. More »
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Bizarre eyeball transplant allows tadpoles to see out of their tails
Death rates from cancer have gone down 20% since 1991, according to data in a new study published this month. This does not mean that fewer people are developing cancer, nor does it even mean that fewer people are dying of it — it just means that, year by year, fewer people are dying of the disease. Possible reasons for the shift include better therapies, and earlier diagnosis. In the chart above, and the one below (click to enlarge), you can also see over the past twenty-two years that certain cancers are killing more people — and certain ones are killing fewer. More »
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The Cancer Death Rate is Down 20%
This startlingly orange gun isn’t something from a sci-fi film set. Instead, it’s a new firearm, from UK-based Selectamark, that fires non-lethal pellets—and marks its targets with DNA for later identification. More »
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This DNA Gun Will Tag Felons for Weeks
Some of the most popular anime in Japan have never set foot on American shores. Oh sure, we have Naruto and Pokémon and Dragonball Z , but what we don’t have are the kids shows — the Japanese anime equivalent of SpongeBob SquarePants , Dora the Explorer and the like. Why? Because while you’d think they’d be the most adaptable for worldwide audiences –- kids are kids, right? –- they’re actually quite insane. Here are seven anime series that Japanese kids love that no American parent would ever let their kids watch. More »
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7 Japanese Kids’ Anime That American Kids Will Never, Ever See
The contrasting colors orange and blue appear together so often in movie posters and videogame box art as to inspire countless blog posts , tumblrs , and even their own entry on TV Tropes . Intrigued by the entertainment industry’s orange/blue affinity, Edmund Helmer — a masters student studying statistics at Stanford — decided to visualize the use of different hues in film trailers. The end result is as telling as it is beautiful. More »
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Finally, proof that all movie trailers use the same color palette
If you’re ever beset by a strange and distinct feeling that you can’t quite name, you’re not alone. Just as the English language has pulled in loanwords like “schadenfreude” to name emotions with no English equivalent, there are a number of words other languages use to describe emotions still unnamed in English. Designer Pei-Ying Lin has charted a handful of these emotions , which are ready for your linguistic consideration. More »
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A Chart of Emotions that Have No Names in the English Language
This photograph represents the meeting of two great 20th-century artists. Famed violinist Jascha Heifetz was known for his incredible technical precision, which made him the perfect subject for a series of light paintings by the photographer Gjon Mili. Mili is probably best known for his 1949 series of photographs in which he encouraged Pablo Picasso to draw with light , creating images that could be captured by the camera, but not by the human eye. For his series with Heifetz, Mili attached a light to the violinist’s bow and had him play in Mili’s darkened studio, letting the camera record the bow’s movement through a variety of pieces and styles. In this one, you can practically see music spilling over Heifetz. More »
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This incredible photograph illustrates the movements of a violinist’s bow
Celebrated geneticist James Watson, one of several researchers who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA, has just published what can only be called a cancer manifesto in Open Biology . It’s full of fairly harsh criticisms for current cancer researchers, but also suggests several ways forward in the “war on cancer.” Among other claims, Watson asserts that antioxidants like vitamin C — often recommended as cancer-prevention supplements — could be causing some forms of cancer. He also has harsh words for personalized medicine, and the laziness of cancer researchers. More »
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James Watson Says Antioxidants May Actually Be Causing Cancer
If you think you’re having a rough morning after your New Year’s festivities, an Apple Store in Paris’ opera district is still trying to determine just how much hardware was stolen after four or five armed thieves robbed the store three hours after it had closed. More »
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Last Night Armed Robbers Stole Over $1 Million Worth Of Gear From a Paris Apple Store
Enlarge / Meet the latest quantum dot assembly factory. Colorado State Quantum dots are nanoscale-sized pieces of semiconductor. Their small size ensures that quantum effects, like the Pauli exclusion principle, influence the behavior of electrons within them. This gives the dots properties that a bulk material with the same composition lacks, and it makes them appealing candidates for things like tiny lasers, photovoltaic materials, and LEDs. Another area where they’ve shown promise is medical imaging. In terms of absorbing and emitting light, quantum dots behave much like the fluorescent molecules we can use to label cells of interest. But, since their fluorescent properties depend on the shape of the particles rather than the chemical structure of a molecule, they are much less prone to undergoing reactions that destroy their fluorescence. The problem is that most semiconductors aren’t especially biocompatible, meaning additional chemical reactions need to be performed before the dots can attach to or enter cells. Some researchers have started to look towards making the dots in biological systems, figuring that the output would necessarily be biocompatible. After some successes with bacteria and yeast, they’ve moved on to a larger target: the earthworm. And it appears to work very well. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Earthworm guts become factory for nanoparticles