"For reasons that are not entirely clear, many compounds which attack cancer cells are also harmful to brine shrimp, therefore most modern assay tests include the brine shrimp lethality test as a standard procedure."

That is just so weird.

"Their model suggests that new universes could be created spontaneously from apparently empty space. From inside the parent universe, the event would be surprisingly unspectacular.

Describing the team's work at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in St Louis, Missouri, co-author Professor Sean Carroll explained that "a universe could form inside this room and we'd never know". "

Take that, mundane reality!

But I've seen nada about Joe Internet's concerns:

• When will this tech be used in videogames?
• Can it be used for pr0n?
• Is this another step down the slippery slope to the Terminator?

"Listen. And understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. "

"Bottom trawling for fish stirs up billowing plumes of sediment that can be seen from space and destroys entire seafloor ecosystems, new imagery reveals.

The technique, used all over the world, is a way to catch fish in deeper parts of the ocean with huge, deep nets, now that many near-shore fish populations have been virtually wiped out from over-fishing. Several studies have shown the significant impact that trawling has on ecosystems, killing corals, sponges, fish and other animals.

...

"Bottom trawling is the most destructive of any actions that humans conduct in the ocean," said zoologist Les Watling of the University of Hawaii. "Ten years ago, Elliott Norse (of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute) and I calculated that, each year, worldwide, bottom trawlers drag an area equivalent to twice the lower 48 states. Most of that trawling happens in deep waters, out of sight. But now we can more clearly envision what trawling impacts down there by looking at the sediment plumes that are shallow enough for us to see from satellites.""

"The mission profile is that the machine must be insertable down a 12" diameter pipe. Once through the pipe, it is deployed within a 75' diameter tank filled with unprocessed nuclear waste, which has typically separated into liquids and nitrate/nitrite salts. The environment is immediately lethal to unprotected humans and rapidly lethal to protected humans, including radiation, corrosion and toxic threats. These tanks are being pumped out so the waste can be reprocessed for safe long-term storage before tank failure releases (more of) the waste into the environment. The problem solved by this device is breaking up the extensive salt deposits and slurrying them so that they can safely be pumped out."

"The only salmon farm in Northern Ireland has been thrown into crisis following a devastating jellyfish attack that destroyed more than 100,000 fish.

Billions of small mauve stingers flooded the cages where the fish were kept about a mile into the Irish Sea, off the Co Antrim coast, causing more than £1 million of damage and leaving the future of the company in doubt."

....

Last week's attack lasted nearly seven hours, with the small jellyfish stinging and shocking salmon held in an area covering 10 square miles and 35 feet deep.

Workers in three boats tried to reach the cages to rescue the salmon, but the extreme density of jellyfish slowed their progress through the water, and by the time they reached the cages it was too late.

Fun Facts about the Box Jellyfish

• "Four brains that operate competitively in the search for food.
• A highly complex sensory capacity and the ability to distinguish colour.
• The ability to live in inhospitable waters at a depth of up to 10,900 metres.
• A total of 24 eyes with moveable pupils giving them 360-degree visibility.
• Box jellyfish have 6-8ft long tentacles. Just 5-6ft across the body is enough to kill a human in 180 seconds.
• Venom is released on contact - even after it is dead - and each creature has 4000,000,000 venomous fibres.
• Humans who have been stung and survived have needed 30-40 milligrams of morphine. A broken leg requires between 5-10 milligrams.
• Despite decades of study scientists have been unable to unravel the mysteries of its complex venom but it is known to contain 20 different proteins."

And their population is exploding. Weee!

And as a sidenote:

"Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,' as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people."

Via MetaFilter

" A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan."

" "Globally, it's clear we are eroding soils at a rate much faster than they can form," said John Reganold, a soils scientist at Washington State University. "It's hard to get people to pay much attention to this because, frankly, most of us take soil for granted."

&nbsp The National Academy of Sciences has determined that cropland in the U.S. is being eroded at least 10 times faster than the time it takes for lost soil to be replaced."

" Strangely, Hitler was unfazed by the fact that this high-fiber diet was having the opposite effect on his digestion than what he had intended: His private physician, Dr. Theo Morell, recorded in his diary that after Hitler downed a typical vegetable platter, "constipation and colossal flatulence occurred on a scale I have seldom encountered before.""

"" Seam-carving for content-aware image resizing" makes it possible to stretch or shrink an image in a non-uniform manner that changes the composition of a scene without distorting the key objects. It also allows you to delete unwanted objects or people from a shot without obviously distorting the background."

Video of "Gigantic Jets", a form of lightning that shoots out of the top of a thundercloud into the ionosphere.

Transient Luminous Events

Red Sprites and Blue Jets

Via BuzzFeed

" Scientists at the University of Rochester and the J. Craig Venter Institute have discovered a copy of the genome of a bacterial parasite residing inside the genome of its host species.

The research, reported in today's Science, also shows that lateral gene transfer-the movement of genes between unrelated species-may happen much more frequently between bacteria and multicellular organisms than scientists previously believed, posing dramatic implications for evolution.

Such large-scale heritable gene transfers may allow species to acquire new genes and functions extremely quickly, says Jack Werren, a principal investigator of the study. If such genes provide new abilities in species that cause or transmit disease, they could provide new targets for fighting these diseases."

...

" "It didn't seem possible at first," says Werren, professor of biology at the University of Rochester and a world-leading authority on the parasite, called wolbachia. "This parasite has implanted itself inside the cells of 70 percent of the world's invertebrates, coevolving with them. And now, we've found at least one species where the parasite's entire or nearly entire genome has been absorbed and integrated into the host's. The host's genes actually hold the coding information for a completely separate species.""

"FLUX COMPRESSION GENERATOR
FLUORESCENT NANOCLUSTER
FLY-ALONG FLARE
FLY-BY-LIGHT (FLB)
FLY-BY-WIRE (FBW) CONTROL
FLYING PEANUT
FLYING RADAR TARGET (FLYRT)
FLY ON THE WALL
FLYWHEEL BATTERY
FOCAL PLANE
FOCAL PLANE ARRAY
FOCUSED LOGISTICS"

"For everyone who has since had messages beamed at them through fillings, mysterious implants or TV sets, or via hi-tech surveillance, MI5, Masonic lodges or UFOs, James Tilly Matthews is Patient Zero.

Matthews was convinced that outside the grounds of Bedlam, in a basement cellar by London Wall, a gang of villains were controlling and tormenting his mind with diabolical rays. They were using a machine called an 'Air Loom', of which Matthews was able to draw immaculate technical diagrams, and which combined recent developments in gas chemistry with the strange force of animal magnetism, or mesmerism. It incorporated keys, levers, barrels, batteries, sails, brass retorts and magnetic fluid, and worked by directing and modulating magnetically charged air currents, rather as the stops of an organ modulate its tones. It ran on a mixture of foul substances, including 'spermatic-animal-seminal rays', 'effluvia of dogs' and 'putrid human breath', and its discharges of magnetic fluid were focused to deliver thoughts, feelings and sensations directly into Matthews' brain. There were many of these mind-control settings, all classified by vivid names: 'fluid locking', 'stone making', 'thigh talking', 'lobster-cracking', 'bomb-bursting', and the dreaded 'brain-saying', whereby thoughts were forced into his brain against his will. To facilitate this process, the gang had implanted a magnet into his head. As a result of the Air Loom, Matthews was tormented constantly by delusions, physical agonies, fits of laughter and being forced to parrot whatever nonsense they chose to feed into his head. No wonder some people thought he was mad."

"Astronomers using small automated telescopes have discovered a new type of planet that is far bigger than Jupiter but weighs half as much and has the density of cork.

"It's baffling. We're never seen anything like it," said Robert Noyes, the Harvard University researcher that led the research team. "We know of rocky planets like Earth and gas giants like Jupiter. But this is different. It's four times lighter than water."

The newly-identified planet, which does not yet have a name, is located about 400 light years from Earth, in constellation Lacerta, where it orbits the binary star ADS16402. "

"Adult human brain cells can generate new tissue when implanted into in the brains of mice, new research reveals.""

"The findings indicate that the drier conditions brought about by a warming climate will cause the soil to relinquish its hold on hundreds of years of mercury accumulation, sending that mercury back into the air at levels up to 15 times greater than originally calculated. "While peat lands are typically viewed as very wet and stagnant places, they do burn in continental regions, especially late in the season when water tables are depressed," explained Turetsky. "When peat lands burn, they can release a huge amount of mercury that overwhelms regional atmospheric emissions. Our study is new in that it looks to the soil record to tell us what happens when peat soil burns, soil that has been like a sponge for mercury for a long time."

"Environmental mercury is just like a thermometer. Levels will rise in the atmosphere with climate change, but due to increasing fire activity in the north and not solely due to warming," said Jennifer Harden, a soil scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey and co-author of the study. "We're talking about mercury that has been relatively harmless, trapped in peat for hundreds of years, rapidly being spewed back into the air," Turetsky added. "Some of it will fall into lakes and streams where it could become toxic in food chains. Our findings show us that climate change is complex and will contribute to the pollution of food chains that are very far away from us.""