Treehoppers Are Strange Creatures

Membracids, related to cicadas, are in the class Insecta, the order Hemiptera (“true bugs”) and the family Membracidae. Like aphids, which are also “true bugs,” adult and immature treehoppers feed on plant sap....but wtf is that on their heads??






According to Biologists, "the hollow globes & spines, probably deter predators. It would be hard to grab, much less chow down on, a beast with all those spines and excrescences. Note, though, that the ornament sports many bristles. If these are sensory bristles, and not just deterrents to predation or irritating spines, then the ornament may have an unknown tactile function."
[VIA]

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Iori Tomita Transparent Specimen Art

Iori Tomita uses a special technique where he turns the bodies of marine organisms translucent. He then injects dyes into their skeletons to produce these incredibly dramatic and educational biological specimens...






[VIA]

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AGA 2010 Aquascaping Contest

Here are the results from the AGA Aquascaping Awards 2010

1st Place-

432 Litre: Michael G.W. Wong, North Point Hong Kong

2nd Place:

400 Litre: Pasquale Buonpane, Piedimonte Matese CE Italy

3rd Place:

412 Litre: Kam Wong, North Point Hong Kong

other tanks to note:

648 Litre: Yu-Lin Chen, Hsinchu City, Taiwan

870 Litre: Chow Wai Sun, Hong Kong - China

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The Transformer Owl

One owl, three versions...when I first saw this, I though whatevs, but the best bit is the '3rd version'. This owl naturally puffs itself up when pitted against other owls of the same size, but watch what happens when the owl is face to face with a bird twice its height...sheer brilliance. MotherNature at its best!

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First Supersonic Freefall

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner has announced he will will try to smash the nearly 50-year-old record for the highest jump this year, becoming the first person to go supersonic in freefall.

On 16 August 1960, US Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger made history by jumping out of a balloon at an altitude of some 31,333 metres. Felix aims to jump from 36,575 metres. Check out the chart below for some perspective.

The jump height is above a threshold at 19,000 metres called the Armstrong line, where the atmospheric pressure is so low that fluids start to boil. If he opens up his face mask or the suit, all the gases in his body will go out of suspension, so literally turning him into a giant fizzy soda, oozing fluid from his eyes and mouth.



Read the full article HERE.

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Sci-Fi Surgery

The future of robotic surgery will include tiny robots that enter our bodies and do their work from the inside, with no need to open patients up or knock them out. While nanobots that swim through the blood are still in the realm of fantasy, several groups are developing devices a few millimetres in size. The first generation of "mini-medibots" may infiltrate our bodies through our ears, eyes and lungs, to deliver drugs, take tissue samples or install medical devices.

[VIA]

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