Candiru (English and Portuguese) or cañero (Spanish), also known as toothpick or vampire fish, are a number of genera of parasitic freshwater catfish in the Trichomycteridae family. All are native to the Amazon River. Although some candiru species have been known to grow to a size of 40 centimetres (16 inches) in length, others are considerably smaller. These smaller species are known for an alleged tendency to invade and parasitize the human urethra by swimming up the urine stream. However, despite ethnological reports dating back to the late 19th century, the first documented case of the removal of a candiru from a human urethra did not occur until 1997.
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Amazing Science
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Amazing science facts - 3D_printing • aging • AI • anthropology • art • astronomy • bigdata • bioinformatics • biology • biotech • chemistry • computers • cosmology • education • environment • evolution • future • genetics • genomics • geosciences • green_energy • language • map • material_science • math • med • medicine • microscopy • nanotech • neuroscience • paleontology • photography • photonics • physics • postings • robotics • science • technology • video
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Dr. Stefan Gruenwald
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Dozens of butterfly species are endangered or threatened. A handful are shown in this photo gallery, but most don’t even have a picture on the internet. If they disappear, their beauty could be remembered as nothing more than a disembodied name. 
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Prize purse of $10 million: A 30-day contest to launch January 2013 to see which laboratory can accurately and economically sequence 100 human genomes has been tweaked to focus on the genetics of people over the age of 100. While quality, speed and accuracy of the testing is improving, the companies involved, including LIFE, Illumina and Complete Genomics, all have their own standards. http://tinyurl.com/7nlvqs2
Videos about Centenarians: http://tinyurl.com/d7ehok7
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DNA barcoding is a technique for characterizing species of organisms using a short DNA sequence from a standard and agreed-upon position in the genome. DNA barcode sequences are very short relative to the entire genome and they can be obtained reasonably quickly and cheaply. The cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 mitochondrial region (COI) is emerging as the standard barcode region for higher animals. It is 648 nucleotide base pairs long in most groups, a very short sequence relative to 3 billion base pairs in the human genome, for example.
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The entire DNA sequence of a woman who lived to 115 has been pieced together by scientists. The woman, who was the oldest in the world at the time of her death, had the mind of someone decades younger and no signs of dementia. She appeared to have some rare genetic changes in her DNA, some of them might have protected her against dementia and other diseases of later life. The woman was born prematurely and was not expected to survive. But she lived a long and healthy life, and entered a care home at the age of 105. She eventually died from a stomach tumor, having been treated for breast cancer at the age of 100.
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Right now is such an exciting time to be alive, as science and technology hurtles humanity forward at such incredible rates. Who would’ve thought ten years ago that we’d have one touch access to all the information in the world, on our phones!
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When a bacterial cell divides into two daughter cells and those two cells divide into four more daughters, then 8, then 16 and so on, the result, biologists have long assumed, is an eternally youthful population of bacteria. However, new research concludes that not only do bacteria age, but that their ability to age allows them to improve the evolutionary fitness of their population by diversifying their reproductive investment between older and more youthful daughters.
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Caenorhabditis elegans, as the roundworm is properly known, is a tiny, transparent animal just a millimeter long. In nature, it feeds on the bacteria that thrive in rotting plants and animals. It is a favorite laboratory organism for several reasons, including the comparative simplicity of its brain, which has just 302 neurons and 8,000 synapses, or neuron-to-neuron connections. These connections are pretty much the same from one individual to another, meaning that in all worms the brain is wired up in essentially the same way. Such a system is considerably easier to understand than the human brain, a structure with billions of neurons, 100,000 miles of biological wiring and 100 trillion synapses.
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The Royal Society just uploaded every article older than 70 years, and the entire collection is searchable online. Along with Newton’s first research paper, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society contain roughly 69,000 articles, including original research by Robert Boyle, William Herschel, Joseph Lister, Michael Faraday and others; Benjamin Franklin’s famous kite-lightning experiment; bizarre accounts of students hit by lightning; and ruminations on what Moon Citizens would glimpse as they looked at Earth, among many other tales.
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Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever found in the universe. It's 12 billion light years away, and holds at least 140 trillion times the amount of water in all the Earth's oceans combined.
It manifests itself as a colossal mass of water vapour, hidden in the distant APM 08279+5255 quasar. Quasars are bright and violent galactic nuclei fuelled by a supermassive black hole at their centre.
This quasar holds a black hole that's 20 billion times more massive than the sun, and after gobbling down dust and gas it belches out as much energy as a thousand trillion suns. The water vapor is spread around the black hole in a gaseous region spanning hundreds of light years.
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For decades, scientists have known that DNA consists of four basic units -- adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine. Those four bases have been taught in science textbooks and have formed the basis of the growing knowledge regarding how genes code for life. Yet in recent history, scientists have expanded that list from four to six.
Now, researchers from the UNC School of Medicine have discovered the seventh and eighth bases of DNA. These last two bases -- called 5-formylcytosine and 5 carboxylcytosine -- are actually versions of cytosine that have been modified by Tet proteins, molecular entities thought to play a role in DNA demethylation and stem cell reprogramming.
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Scientists within the New York Center for Astrobiology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have compiled years of research to help locate areas in outer space that have extreme potential for complex organic molecule formation. The scientists searched for methanol, a key ingredient in the synthesis of organic molecules that could lead to life. Their results have implications for determining the origins of molecules that spark life in the cosmos.
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Harvard scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute say they have for the first time partially reversed age-related degeneration in mice, resulting in new growth of the brain and testes, improved fertility, and the return of a lost cognitive function.
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Looking at tiny structures through a fancy microscope is part of nanotechnologists' recent accomplishments. However, it has so far been difficult to observe atomic structures inside individual organic molecules. However, a novel method has been developed recently, which enables researchers to take an "X-ray view" inside individual molecules. The method may facilitate the analysis of organic semiconductors and many biomolecules such as proteins.
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Medical textbooks are brought to life in 2012 by interactive graphs and figures, customized quizzes, beautiful multimedia, social media integration, and an innovative user interface.
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Wind energy continues to be an important part of renewable resources. However, other promising forms of renewable energy exist. Coastal states have a potential source of renewable energy in waves and tidal currents. Snohomish PUD is evaluating the use of tidal energy as a renewable energy source and detailed studies have been performed at seven locations in and around Puget Sound for tidal generators. These devices are similar to windmills but generate energy by using tidal currents to drive turbines located on the seabed.
Collection of videos on tidal energy: http://tinyurl.com/dxc2b7p
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A genetic algorithm (GA) is a search heuristic that mimics the process of natural evolution. This heuristic is routinely used to generate useful solutions to optimization and search problems. Genetic algorithms belong to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA), which generate solutions to optimization problems using techniques inspired by natural evolution, such as inheritance, mutation, selection, and crossover. Annual GECCO conferences are arranged to award the best genetic algorithms.
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Individual differences in intelligence are strongly associated with many important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainments, income, health and lifespan. Data from twin and family studies are consistent with a high heritability of intelligence, but this inference has been controversial. We conducted a genome-wide analysis of 3511 unrelated adults with data on 549 692 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits.
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Nothing compares with the giant crystals found in Cueva de los Cristales, or Cave of Crystals. The limestone cavern and its glittering beams were discovered in 2000 by a pair of brothers drilling nearly a thousand feet below ground in the Naica mine, one of Mexico's most productive, yielding tons of lead and silver each year. The geologic processes that create lead and silver also provide raw materials for these gigantic crystals,. But as news spread of the massive crystals' discovery, the question confronting scientists became: How did crystals ever grow so big?
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The little roundworm Strongyloides ratti has distinct parasitic and free-living adults, living in the rat small intestine and the soil, respectively. Reproductive parasitic adults have a maximum lifespan of 403 days. By contrast the maximum lifespan of free-living adults is only 5 days. Thus, the two adults of S. ratti have evolved strikingly different rates of aging. Parasitic nematode species are frequently longer-lived than free-living species, presumably reflecting different extrinsic mortality rates in their respective niches. Parasitic and free-living female Strongyloides ratti are morphologically different, yet genetically identical. The 80-fold difference in lifespan is the greatest plasticity in aging yet reported, must largely reflect evolved differences in gene expression.
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Recent research has shown that the transcription and translation of genes, or even the presence of DNA in the cell, are not necessary for the daily ("circadian") rhythms to occur. This article gives a nice summary about the history of circadian rhythms discoveries.
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The winners of the 2011 Nikon Small World photography contest range from images of insects to close-ups of computer chips.
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MIT researchers have found evidence of a massive network connecting bacteria from around the world: 10,000 unique genes flowing via horizontal gene transfer (HGT) among 2,235 bacterial genomes.
HGT is an ancient method for bacteria from different lineages to acquire and share useful genetic information they didn’t inherit from their parents. The MIT team’s work illustrates the vast scale and rapid speed with which genes can proliferate across bacterial lineages.
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Wiggle is a client-side JavaScript program for aligning stereoscopic image sets and a Flash applet for viewing them. Authoring WiggleSets requires only a JavaScript browser, and a browser with Flash plugin (6+) is all that is needed to view the output.
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An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside our solar system. A total of 755 such planets (in 605 planetary systems and 99 multiple planetary systems) have been identified as of January 30, 2012. It is now known that a substantial fraction of stars have planets, including perhaps half of all Sun-like stars. In a 2012 study, each star of the 100 billion or so in our Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to host on average at least 1.6 planets. Accordingly, at least 160 billion star-bound planets may exist in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. Unbound free-floating planetary-mass bodies in the Milky Way may number in the trillions with 100,000 objects larger than Pluto for every main-sequence star.
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