Neatorama |
- One Animal's Body, Another Animal's Brain
- A Tongue Stud Can Give Paralyzed People Greater Control Over Mobility Devices
- See-through Pontiac
- Synchronized Robotic Desk Lamps
- Radical X-ray Art
- Gigantic Transformers Sculptures
- Superman Be The Hero Apron
- More like FAKEbook Tattoo, Am I Right?
- FujiFilm X100 Cake
- The Protein Synthesis Dance
- Pomander Walk: The Old English Street in the Heart of New York City
- This Is Made of Paper
- Jabba the Hutt in the Clouds
- In One Ear and Out the Other
- Artists Buy Entire Contents of Convenience Store, Sell Items as Pieces of Art
- It's Now Possible to Get a Ph.D. in Manga Studies
- No, Seriously, It's Not Safe to Ride in the Bike Lane
- Schwarzenegger Father's Day Ad
- Putty Creatures Thinking Putty
- The Most Memorable '80s Theme Songs
- Sparky's First And Only Batch Of Cicada Ice Cream Sold Out
- Neatorama on Flipboard
- 7-Year-Old Is an Accidental Art Sensation
- Robot With Tablet For a Head
- Top 10 Most Extreme Substances
- History of Video Games On The Simpsons
- Of All of The People In All The World in Rice
- Apple Keynote Musical
- Beet Cake Recipe
| One Animal's Body, Another Animal's Brain Posted: 09 Jun 2011 05:05 AM PDT
The idea of splicing animals together isn’t a new one The ancient Greeks fashioned a chimera out of a snake, a goat, and a lion; the Japanese made a baku out of an ox, an elephant, and a tiger. Even today, people are inventing new creatures -only now, they’re using a lot more than their imaginations. Just ask biologist Todd Streelman. Inside his lab at Georgia Tech, Streelman successfully bred a living animal with the brain of anther species. He started with a cichlid, a type of fish found in Lake Malawai, at the southern tip of Africa’s Great Rift Valley. Over the past 500,000 years, hundreds of different species of the cichlid have evolved from a single ancestor, with each new species developing a distinct set of jaws, teeth, brain, and behaviors to fit their respective environments. Streelman took two species of cichlid fish -rock-dwelling cichlids and sand-dwelling cichlids- and figured out a way to grow a sand-dweller’s brain inside the skull of a rock-dweller. From a distance, that might seem like a simple trick in cross-pollination. But it’s no small feat when you consider that the brains of the two creatures are as different as those of chimpanzees and humans.  Todd Streelman ANIMAL CROSSING How’d he do it? The trick to Streelman’s success was figuring out how (and when) the brains of different species distinguish themselves during embryonic development. In the earliest stages of life, the brain of almost every animal starts out looking the same. It begins as a small sheet of rapidly dividing cells that are not yet designed for different functions. But this sheet of cells eventually rolls into a tube, and the cells turn into different types of neurons. The neurons then slowly forms connections uniquely tailored to the creature’s lifestyle. In humans, for example, the brain develops a large cerebral cortex capable of processing language and consciousness. In various species of cichlid fish, the forebrain changes and grows depending on its future environment. More specifically, the sand-dweller’s forebrain develops a large hind region for surviving in open water, while the rock-dweller’s forebrain develops a large front region to navigate Lake Malawi’s murky, cavernous bottom. In both species, the size and shape of the forebrain is determined by the expression of a gene called Wnt1. In sand-dwellers, this gene sends out a strong signal, while in rock-dwellers, Wnt1’s signal is weak. As part of his study, Streelmen took rock-dweller embryos and placed them in water treated with lithium chloride -a salt that’s known to increase the strength of the Wnt1 signal. This caused the rear section of the rock-dweller’s brain to grow until its brain looked like that of a sand-dweller. In other words, by simply changing the expression of a single gene, Streelman was able to Frankenstein a new fish.  Cichlid embryo OF MICE AND MEN While Streelman has proven that he can grow one species’ brain inside another’s body, there’s no telling if his patchwork creations can survive in their natural environments. To date, most attempts to manipulate neural development in animals have led to brains that look promising in the land but fail to function in the real world. In 2002, for instance, researchers manipulated a mouse’s genetic signals to increase the size of its cerebral cortex. The cortex grew dramatically, forming folds indicative of the intelligence in high-order mammals and humans. But the mutation proved fatal, and the mouse died before it was born. Some scientists posit that the mouse’s death may have had more to do with the complex relationship between the animal and environment and less to do with ill-suited manipulation. Georg Striedner, and evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Irvine, has found that many animals go through a phase during early development in which they’re particularly vulnerable to injury, starvation, or disease. In order for an animal to survive, something in their external world has to protect them. For instance, many species go through a prolonged period of rapid cell division before their brains become neurons. This ultimately leads to a larger brain, but it also means that the animal’s brain is not fully formed at birth. Parrots are a good example. After parrots hatch, their brains aren’t particularly developed, which forces the babies to rely on their mothers for food. That means that the mothers’ feeding behaviors must have evolved at the exact same time that parrots evolved to have larger brains. Otherwise, parrots would have never become so smart.  Cichlid fish The process of evolving new traits is clearly complicated. Labs can create animals with shiny new traits, but that doesn’t mean the animals can handle the complexity of the world around them. As for Streelman’s fish, no one knows how their manipulated brains will affect their behavior -or, for that matter, how they’ll fare in nature. In many ways, though, that isn’t the point. The goal of Streelman’s research isn’t to grow new and funky animals; it’s to learn how animals evolve. By discovering the relationship between the animal’s genome and its brain development, scientists ultimately hope to pinpoint the genetic basis of of human thought and behavior. It just may be that, along the way, creatures like the chimera and the baku become more than the stuff of ancient folklore. _______________________
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!  |
| A Tongue Stud Can Give Paralyzed People Greater Control Over Mobility Devices Posted: 09 Jun 2011 04:55 AM PDT
Link -via Gizmodo | Photo: Steve Kagan/NYT |
| Posted: 09 Jun 2011 04:44 AM PDT General Motors built two or possibly three transparent automobiles to display at the New York World's Fair of 1939-1940. The Pontiac Deluxe seven-window touring sedan (B-body) from that project is going up for sale. In between, it’s been on tour all over the country, displayed at the Smithsonian, and owned by a private citizen. Get more details on this car at Hemmings Blog. Link -via Evil Mad Linkblog |
| Synchronized Robotic Desk Lamps Posted: 09 Jun 2011 04:41 AM PDT Of course, you’ve wanted your own dancing Pixar lamp ever since you first saw it, right? Jonathan Foote created a chorus line of lamps, seen here performing at Maker Faire. Get the details on how he did it at his blog, waxing prolix. Link -via Laughing Squid |
| Posted: 09 Jun 2011 04:39 AM PDT There are quite a few creative minds who are making art using x-rays, each with their own distinctive style. Dark Roasted Blend has a roundup introducing the works of Wim Delvoye, Ben Kruisdijk, Steven Meyers, Bert Myers, George Green, Judith McMillan, Yury Shpakovski, Nick Veazey, and others, including links so that you can explore more of each artist’s work. And don’t miss the bonus story about bootleg Russian music recordings at the end! Link (Image credit: Yury Shpakovski) |
| Gigantic Transformers Sculptures Posted: 09 Jun 2011 02:54 AM PDT  Anchalee Saengtai, a female artist from Thailand, is using recycled automobile and truck parts to create very big and impressive Transformers sculptures.
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| Posted: 08 Jun 2011 09:44 PM PDT Superman Be The Hero Apron – $20.95 Are you on the hunt for the perfect gift for a super man in your life? You need the Superman Be The Hero Apron from the NeatoShop. A real man of steel knows his way around a kitchen! More Be The Hero Aprons available. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more super Kitchen Stuff. |
| More like FAKEbook Tattoo, Am I Right? Posted: 08 Jun 2011 08:30 PM PDT So it seems Susyj87’s briefly infamous Facebook friends tattoo was a hoax. Not only was the tattoo a fake (a transfer that only lasted a few days), but the video itself was a promo piece for a company called Pretty Social that makes custom gift items using your Facebook photos. As much as I hated the idea of a woman walking around with 152 faces permanently stamped on her arm, I hate this even more. |
| Posted: 08 Jun 2011 08:11 PM PDT It looks a tad slumpy, but I don’t doubt that a lot of work went into making this cake-based replica of the FujiFilm X100 camera. It was made by the bakery-owning wife of photographer Gary Cruz for his birthday. He has more images on Flickr if you’d like a better look. Link via Gizmodo | Image credit: garycruz |
| Posted: 08 Jun 2011 07:38 PM PDT Apparently, high school in the 70s was more far-out than I thought. According to the YouTube poster, this was from a 70s-era science class video; the lecture at the beginning was removed to highlight the wicked groovy dance-athon. I can’t say I learned anything from this, but everyone really seems to be enjoying their time in Biology II. Thanks for sharing, Adam Lukey! |
| Pomander Walk: The Old English Street in the Heart of New York City Posted: 08 Jun 2011 07:31 PM PDT Pomander Walk is a little neighborhood on Manhattan that was designed to look like an London street composed of Tudor-era houses. Inspired by a popular 1910 play called Pomander Walk, it was built by a somewhat eccentric nightclub owner in 1921:
Link | Photo by Curbed used under Creative Commons license |
| Posted: 08 Jun 2011 06:11 PM PDT Really! It’s paper. Paul Overton of Dude Craft summarizes my own thoughts on the work of paper sculptor Calvin Nicholls:
See a gallery of his amazing work at the link. link via Dude Craft |
| Posted: 08 Jun 2011 06:04 PM PDT It is a vision! But what does it mean? Offer your theological explanations in the comments. Link (Google Translate) via Geekologie | Photo: Infamy |
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| Artists Buy Entire Contents of Convenience Store, Sell Items as Pieces of Art Posted: 08 Jun 2011 05:17 PM PDT (Video Link) Five artists walked into the Fancy Grocery convenience store in New York City’s West Village and bought each and every item. By the end, Hercules, the owner, was completely depleted of his inventory and had rung up each purchase on two rolls of receipt paper. Today, those artists are exhibiting their finds at 57 Stanton Street. Among the items for sale: a Coke can for $150. Is that too much? Keep in mind that the artists cleverly inverted it, thus increasing its artistic value. Link via Super Punch |
| It's Now Possible to Get a Ph.D. in Manga Studies Posted: 08 Jun 2011 05:01 PM PDT
Link via The Mary Sue | Image: Ben Dunn |
| No, Seriously, It's Not Safe to Ride in the Bike Lane Posted: 08 Jun 2011 04:53 PM PDT (Video Link) Casey Neistat got a ticket for riding his bicycle outside of a bike lane in New York City. He argued with the police officer that sometimes he does so because there are obstructions that make it unsafe to use the designated lane. The cop didn’t care, and issued him the citation anyway. To prove his point, Mr. Neistat made this video, showing how dangerous it would be to comply with the law…by crashing his bike, over and over again into road hazards. He saved the best for last. via reddit |
| Schwarzenegger Father's Day Ad Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:40 PM PDT Golfer Luke Donald spotted this ad during his travels. Given Arnold’s recent announcement, it seems like he wouldn’t allow his image to be used for such an ad, but as AdFreak points out, Schwarzenegger is rather prolific when it comes to overseas advertising, so why not? Just look at all of these Japanese ads. (Seriously, if you haven’t clicked on that last link, you need to. Now.) |
| Putty Creatures Thinking Putty Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:38 PM PDT Putty Creatures Thinking Putty – $9.95 Are you lonely? Do you wish had someone or something to talk to? With Putty Creatures Thinking Putty from the NeatoShop you can stretch, twist, snap, and build your own army of glow in the dark followers. Who needs real friends when you have creatures that will bend to your will and are putty in your hands! Be sure to check out all fantastic Cubicle Toys available at the NeatoShop.
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| The Most Memorable '80s Theme Songs Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:15 PM PDT Flavorwire has assembled a list of the most memorable ’80s TV theme songs ever, including the one to Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, written by Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh and crooned (screeched?) by Cyndi Lauper, who goes by “Ellen Shaw” in the credits. I warn you, though, don’t follow the link unless you’re prepared to get one of them stuck in your head for the next several days. It’s a great list, to be sure, but they missed one of my favorites: |
| Sparky's First And Only Batch Of Cicada Ice Cream Sold Out Posted: 08 Jun 2011 01:11 PM PDT
Does this sound like a tasty treat to you? |
| Posted: 08 Jun 2011 10:58 AM PDT Hello Neatoramanauts! I’m excited to announce that Neatorama is now on Flipboard. If you’ve got an iPad, then chances are you already know about Flipboard. It’s a really neat app for browsing selected newspapers, magazines, blogs, as well as any Facebook and Twitter feed. Neatorama joins a cadre of other neat "Cool Curators" like Maria Popova’s Brainpicker, Boing Boing, The Cool Hunter, Cute Overload, and GOOD Magazine, amongst many others (be sure to add ‘em to your Flipboard section) If you have Flipboard for your iPad, it’s easy to add us: simply Add a Section, then find us on the Cool Curators category. Happy Flipboarding! (Thanks Mia!) |
| 7-Year-Old Is an Accidental Art Sensation Posted: 08 Jun 2011 09:47 AM PDT Leilah Poulain’s mom isn’t super-handy with Facebook. In an attempt to showcase her daughter’s painting of a penguin (above), she mistakenly uploaded the file to a public folder meant for entrants to a contest. The winner of that contest would have their artwork showcased in the Saatchi Gallery, a world-famous contemporary art gallery.
Link | Image credit: SWNS |
| Posted: 08 Jun 2011 09:21 AM PDT For those of you that treat your smart phone and tablet like it's your best friend, you may now be able to get one step closer to having an actual companion. Google and the company iRobot have teamed up to create the AVA robot which rolls on wheels and uses a tablet computer as its "head."
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| Top 10 Most Extreme Substances Posted: 08 Jun 2011 09:20 AM PDT What are the most extreme substances in the world? No, not Mountain Dew; this list compiles and gives the details on the hottest, most flammable and most acidic substances known to man. One of which can melt through twelve layers of concrete.
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| History of Video Games On The Simpsons Posted: 08 Jun 2011 09:19 AM PDT
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| Of All of The People In All The World in Rice Posted: 08 Jun 2011 09:19 AM PDT The exhibit "Of All The People in All The World" is traveling the world to show all the people exactly how many of them there are by using rice. Sometimes it's hard to get your mind around millions and billions of humans and their varying statistics. By representing each person as a single piece of rice this showcase helps people understand varying numbers such as how many people have walked on the moon and the population of the United States (pictured). See link for more in depth video.
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| Posted: 08 Jun 2011 07:34 AM PDT (Video link) If you didn’t have time to watch the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) the other day, here’s a chance to get a summary of the most important new features in OS X Lion and iOS 5 wrapped together as a song. via Pusha |
| Posted: 08 Jun 2011 07:24 AM PDT |
Recent advances in genetic research have allowed scientists to grow the brain of one animal inside he body of an entirely different species. Is this the dawning of a new era or a scene out of The Island of Dr. Moreau?
The article above, written by Adam K. Raymond, is reprinted with permission from the 
Martin Mireles has been paralyzed from the neck down for nearly twenty years. He can maneuver a mobility chair by steering it with his mouth, but a new magnetic tongue stud developed by researchers at the Northwestern University School of Medicine makes it a lot easier:
Quick! You must take out more student loans in order finance this opportunity! You can consider the career applications later.
Sorry folks, Sparky’s Homemade Ice Cream in Missouri will not be making any more cicada ice cream for the time being after receiving advice from the public health department. This will disappoint the many customers who made this unique flavor a runaway hit. It was so popular that it sold out Wednesday, June 1 before it was to make its grand debut on Thursday.
The Simpsons have been around for over twenty years. And in that time Bart, Homer and the rest of the gang have played a lot of video games. Here is a collection of every fictional video game that has appeared on The Simpsons in the show's history. It's interesting to see over time how games have changed through cartoon parody.
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