A Moulinet is a move in fencing — particularly sabre fencing — that involves spinning the blade in a circular motion. This move is very slow and leaves the wielder vulnerable to attack, but triples the force of a downward attack, such as a slash to the shoulder.
Apoptosis is the programmed suicide of a cell, or programmed cell death (PCD). Why on earth might a cell commit suicide? There are two main reasons.
First, sometimes it’s just part of necessary development. Tadpoles have to lose their tails to become frogs. Fingers and toes are formed in the womb by the death of the tissue between them. The shedding of the uterine lining during menstruation is a form of apoptosis, as is the method of forming synapses in the brain.
Sometimes it’s to destroy cells that present a threat, such as those infected with viruses, cancer cells, or cells with DNA damage. This also occurs with immune system cells after they have taken care of the threat so that they do not further attack other parts of the body.
Mozart joined the Freemasons in 1784 and wrote several cantatas for their ceremonies. In The Magic Flute, he incorporated many of their ideals of wisdom, friendship, nature, and sacrifice. His librettist was also a former mason. Mozart died nine weeks after the opera’s premier, and some say he was killed because his opera revealed the society’s secrets.
An Oxbow Lake is formed when a river meanders so far from its path that some of the water is trapped out there, and when the river sinks again or erosion silts up the path, a small, isolated lake is formed.
Later in life, Wagner considered writing operas about Jesus Christ and Buddah
Now talk about epic.
Steelhead and rainbow trout are the same species, but rainbow are freshwater fish only, and steelhead are anadromous, meaning they go out to sea.
- Myoan.net
When Charles Gounod’s (1818-1893) opera Faust wasn’t selling tickets, the producer gave away tickets for the first three performances to people out of town and declared the performances were sold out. Wondering what all the fuss was about, the public began buying tickets, and Faust became a hit.
There’s just about every kind of person under the sun. Object Sexuals, Objectum Sexuals, Objectophiles, or Objektophils (German), are people who have sexual and romantic relationships with inanimate objects. Unlike sexual fetishists, they see the objects as their partners, not devices to enhance a relationship with another person. A growing percentage of OS-people have been found to also have Asperger’s Syndrome, an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Dr. Amy Marsh has also found that a substantial number of OS-people experience synesthesia, which is cross-sensory perception, such as hearing colors or tasting shapes.
Leaders of this group of people include Eija-Riitta Eklöf Berliner-Mauer and her relationship with the Berlin wall and Erika Eiffel, who married the Eiffel Tower, however it is often considered least desirable to form a relationship with a landmark object shared with so many people.
Find out more at the OS website.
Don’t have a compass and need one? There’s a quick and simple way to make one yourself should you happen to be in need. What you’ll need:
Take the magnet and stroke the dull end of the needle at least 60 times over the magnet. This will magnetize the needle. Stick the needle through your cork or styrofoam and place it in the center of the bowl of water. Spin the needle gently and make sure that you aren’t near anything metal or magnetized. When it settles, the sharp end of the needle will point to the North.
Try it out!
Nocturnal animals are active during the night.
Diurnal animals are active during the day.
Crepuscular animals are active at twilight, dawn, and dusk. This may be a form of anti-predator adaptation, as most predators are either nocturnal or diurnal. It could also be a way to capitalize on available light while avoiding heat stress.
Cats, Dogs, Rats, Rabbits, Capybaras, Skunks, Guinea Pigs, Red Pandas, the Common Nighthawk, the American Woodcock, and many Moths, Beetles, and other insects are all crepuscular.
The Short-Eared Owl is crepuscular on the Galapagos Islands which have buzzards (a predator), but diurnal on the islands without.
Lethologica - the inability to recall a precise word for something.
This is such a wonderful word for me. I experience this often, and I have coined a word (along with a good friend of mine) for the elusive word for which you are looking. We call it a Lexemplar — a portmanteau of Lexical Exemplar.
Researchers have discovered the less you use your brain’s frontal lobes, the more you see yourself through rose-colored glasses.
“In healthy people, the more you activate a portion of your frontal lobes, the more accurate your view of yourself is,” says Jennifer Beer, a University of Texas assistant professor of psychology.
“And the more you view yourself as desirable or better than your peers, the less you use those lobes.”
The male Andean Condor is the largest raptor (or bird of prey) with a wingspan of an astounding eleven feet. Unlike the California Condor, it kills living prey rather than living strictly off of carrion. It lives in the high mountains of the South American Andes, hence its name. It is the only New World vulture to show a difference between males and females; the male has a comb and wattle absent in the females.
Compersion
We’ve gotten into some pretty philosophical territory, so now it’s time to return to some good, old-fashioned internet memes. The word compersion was popularized by people in online communites devoted to polyamory and open relationships, in order to describe the opposite of feeling jealous when your partner dates somebody else. Though a monogamous person would feel jealous seeing their partner kiss another person, a non-monogamous person could feel compersion, a sense of joy in seeing their partner happy with another person. But monogamous people can feel compersion, too, if we extend the definition out to mean any situation where you feel the opposite of jealous. If a friend wins an award you hoped to win, you can still feel compersion (though you might be a little jealous too).
From this article.
According to the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists:
Ichthyology is the scientific study of fishes. An ichthyologist is a person who devotes a career to studying some of the estimated 25,000 to 30,000 species of bony fishes, sharks, rays, and lobe-finned fishes. Areas of specialty are as varied as the people who call themselves ichthyologists, and may include study of classification, life history, anatomy, behavior, ecology or physiology, and aquarium maintenance, fish breeding, and conservation. What ichthyologists have in common is a fascination and enduring curiosity about fishes, the dominant vertebrate animals in marine and fresh waters. In addition to being the most species-rich group of vertebrates, fishes are often used as experimental models for demonstration of basic biological principles.
Aporia - You know that feeling of crazy emptiness you get when you realize that something you believed isn’t actually true? And then things feel even more weird when you realize that actually, the thing you believed might be true and might not — and you’ll never really know? That’s aporia. The term comes from ancient Greek, but is also beloved of post-structuralist theorists like Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Spivak. The reason modern theorists love the idea of aporia is that it helps to describe the feeling people have in a world of information overload, where you are often bombarded with contradictory messages that seem equally true.
- From this article
Thanks to ~ScienceCenter to pointing me towards this.
According to this magazine, scientists have recently developed the technology to fight cancer with nanoparticles. Well, with two types. The first time are gold nanorods that are able to penetrate the blood vessels around the tumor. Because of the rapid growth of the tumor, the blood vessels around it are more porous than typical, so the nanorods can target the tumor specifically. Then, by shining light on the tumor, the scientists were able to heat the nanorods just enough to start the repairing reactions of the body. A second type of nanoparticle that binds to a molecule called fibrin — one of those used in creating clots — carries chemotherapy medicine, thus targeting the medicine to the tumor.
There still remains the question of how to make these particles target only the tumor and not other clots in the body, but it’s still an exciting development!
An adjective. Of or relating to marshes. Marshy. A plant or animal that lives in a marsh.
\pə-ˈlü-dəl, ˈpal-yə-dəl\
It rhymes with “Caboodle.”
Have you seen a goldfish go belly-up, shortly to die thereafter? This ailment is not necessarily fatal. Fish go belly-up because of an over-filled swim bladder. Basically, a bad case of gas. So, what to do? Peas are a natural laxative. Shell a small handful into the tank, and if all goes well, your fish will eat them and his problem will be relieved.
Solipsism is the concept that only your mind is sure to exist. Everything else may be an illusion.
Consider the idea of The Matrix. What if you were actually a brain suspended in a vat, hooked up to electrodes and everything that you believe to experience, everyone you interact with, is simply empty input? That’s Solipsism.
The first record of this philosophy is from Gorgias of Leontini. He was a pre-Socratic sophist. Wikipedia gives his quote as:
It was more fully developed be Rene Descartes with his famous “Cogito Ergo Sum,” commonly translated as “I think, therefore I am.” This is basically the same idea. He propses that the only provable experience is that a person is, in fact, thinking, and that is the only actual proof of existence at all.
Developmental psychologists generally consider infants to be solpisistic, and only later discover the reality of other people.
There is also a dissociative mental state known as Solipsistic Syndrome. This is characterized by the actual belief that one is the only person who truly exists and detatchmet from reality. The ability to logically prove Solipsism or that the lack of the ability to logically prove the existence of other people does not indicate Solipsistic Syndrome.
