New CDC Research Debunks Agency’s Assertion That Mercury In Vaccines Is Safe

Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) seminal vesicle

Dr. Barbara Laurinyecz

Szeged, Hungary

Technique: Confocal, Fluorescence (600x)

Is Kermit an accurate example of a frog?

Yes (except for being a muppet). Did you know that there are real frogs that DO look like Kermit? This is a glass frog I found at my research site in the rainforest in Honduras.

Around 6 million years ago, the African and Eurasian plates moved together, cutting the Mediterranean Sea off from the Atlantic. Without an influx of water from the Atlantic, evaporation began removing more water from the Mediterranean than rivers could replace. The sea dried out almost completely over the course of a couple thousand years.

About 5.3 million years ago, the Straits of Gibraltar reopened, creating a massive flood into the Mediterranean known as the Zanclean Flood. Water rushed down the straits and into the Mediterranean at speeds as high as 40 m/s (90 mph). At its peak, the Zanclean Flood is estimated to have reached rates 1000 times greater than the volumetric flow rate of the Amazon River. 

A similar breach flood occurred in the Black Sea within the past 10,000 years when the Bosporus became unblocked. That flood likely had a devastating impact on Neolithic societies in the area and may be the inspiration for the floods described in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible. (Image credit: BBC, source)

Did You Know Large Wine Bottles Have Special Names?

Wine bottle names are… odd. Once you get large enough, the wine holders become named after biblical kings:

1.5 L Magnum: Equivalent to two standard 750 ml bottles.

3.0 L Double Magnum: Equivalent to two Magnums or four standard 750 ml bottles.

4.5 L Jeroboam : Equivalent to six standard 750 ml bottles.

6.0 L Imperial: Equivalent to eight standard 750 ml bottles or two Double Magnums. Why they stopped using kings here I don’t know.

9.0 L Salmanazar: Equivalent to twelve standard 750 ml bottles or a full case of wine!

12.0 L Balthazar: Equivalent to sixteen standard 750 ml bottles or two Imperials.

15.0 L Nebuchadnezzar: Equivalent to twenty standard 750 ml bottles.

Interestingly, I looked around and could not find why the names are what they are. The names just appeared, I guess, and everyone agreed to use them.

Julie D’Aubigny was a 17th-century bisexual French opera singer and fencing master who killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death duels, performed nightly shows on the biggest and most highly-respected opera stage in the world, and once took the Holy Orders just so that she could sneak into a convent and shag a nun.

(via Feminism)

Researchers can identify you by your brain waves with 100 percent accuracy

Your responses to certain stimuli – foods, celebrities, words – might seem trivial, but they say a lot about you. In fact (with the proper clearance), these responses could gain you access into restricted areas of the Pentagon.

A team of researchers at Binghamton University, led by Assistant Professor of Psychology Sarah Laszlo and Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Zhanpeng Jin, recorded the brain activity of 50 people wearing an electroencephalogram headset while they looked at a series of 500 images designed specifically to elicit unique responses from person to person – e.g., a slice of pizza, a boat, Anne Hathaway, the word “conundrum.” They found that participants’ brains reacted differently to each image, enough that a computer system was able to identify each volunteer’s “brainprint” with 100 percent accuracy.

“When you take hundreds of these images, where every person is going to feel differently about each individual one, then you can be really accurate in identifying which person it was who looked at them just by their brain activity,” said Laszlo.

In their original study, titled “Brainprint,” published in 2015 in

Neurocomputing

, the research team was able to identify one person out of a group of 32 by that person’s responses, with only 97 percent accuracy, and that study only incorporated words, not images

Maria V. Ruiz-Blondet, Zhanpeng Jin, Sarah Laszlo. CEREBRE: A Novel Method for Very High Accuracy Event-Related Potential Biometric Identification. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2016; 11 (7): 1618 DOI: 10.1109/TIFS.2016.2543524

Woman wearing an EEG headset.Credit: Jonathan Cohen/Binghamton University

Prevalence of homosexuality in men is stable throughout time since many carry the genes

Around half of all heterosexual men and women potentially carry so-called homosexuality genes that are passed on from one generation to the next. This has helped homosexuality to be present among humans throughout history and in all cultures, even though homosexual men normally do not have many descendants who can directly inherit their genes. This idea is reported by Giorgi Chaladze of the Ilia State University in Georgia, and published in Springer’s journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. Chaladze used a computational model that, among others, includes aspects of heredity and the tendency of homosexual men to come from larger families.

Chaladze, G. Heterosexual Male Carriers Could Explain Persistence of Homosexuality in Men: Individual-Based Simulations of an X-Linked Inheritance Model. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2016 DOI: 10.1007/s10508-016-0742-2

A whole lot of books

In 1610, after successfully rebuilding, reopening and firmly establishing the Bodleian Library, Sir Thomas Bodley made it his new goal to ensure the library’s long-term relevance. He forged an agreement with the Stationers’ Company that saw his library receive one copy of everything printed under royal license. This would guarantee that the Bodleian would continue to be at the cutting edge of literature and librarianship.

And this was when the Bodleian became, by effect, the first Legal Deposit library in the UK. From 1662, the notions were solidified and the Royal Library and the University Library of Cambridge were also party to the same privileges. Until the establishment of the British Library in 1753, the university libraries of Oxford and Cambridge - especially the Bodleian Library, which had enjoyed the legal deposit privilege the longest – served as the de facto national libraries of the United Kingdom.

But what’s the current state of Legal Deposit at the Bodleian? And, as @LowlandsLady asked us on Twitter, might it ever feel like a curse to have this multitude of books rolling into the library?

There’s nobody better to answer these questions than Jackie Raw, Head of Legal Deposit Operations in our Collections Management department. From this point on, this Tumblr post belongs to Jackie.

The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 obliges publishers to deposit, at their own cost, one copy of every printed publication that is published or distributed in the UK with the British Library and, upon request, with up to five other Legal Deposit Libraries of which the Bodleian is one.

These Legal Deposit Libraries seek to ensure that the UK published output is preserved for posterity. To do this the requesting libraries together use the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries. The Agency makes claims for titles on our behalf and, on receipt, these are recorded and distributed weekly to the libraries. By collaborating the Legal Deposit Libraries seek to develop and co-ordinate national coverage and preservation of, and access to, publications acquired by legal deposit.

A random selection of books arriving by Legal Deposit.

While the Legal Deposit system has existed in various forms since 1662, the reformed Act in 2003 extended the provision for printed material to cover non-print works. This brings new and emerging publishing media under its scope. The Regulations for this came into force in April 2013. We now have the opportunity to add e-books, e-journals, digital maps and digital music scores to our collections and to harvest and archive content from UK-published material on UK websites under the new legislation.

Again the libraries are working together to ensure coverage. The benefits of holding a collection of over 12 million physical items, much of which has been deposited under Legal Deposit, and a growing digital collection cannot be overstated.

A recent count of books arriving daily at the Bodleian Libraries.

Legal Deposit ensures the nation’s heritage is collected systematically and preserved for posterity. It supports and advances the teaching and research activities of the University of Oxford and national and international scholarship more widely by collecting, recording and making available this material and it provides, in a cost-effective way, access to a wide range of publications many of which are unlikely to be found outside of the Legal Deposit system.

However, it is also a responsibility.

Clearly there can be pressures on space, storage and transportation. There are staff levels and processing costs to consider and issues around funding limitations. On the other hand there is provision within the Act to allow libraries, other than the British Library, to be selective in what we acquire. So, by consulting and collaborating we aim to ensure as complete coverage as possible within resourcing limits without overburdening any one library with the rate at which our collections are growing.

IT’S NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK

HUZZAH! It is National Library Week, bookworms and library cats!! 

And that means it is the perfect time of year to show some love to your local (and not local) Libraries, both in person and online. So, just as we took time to make a special post on Follow a Library Day last year, we’ve created ANOTHER master post to honor all the libraries we know so far on tumblr so that you can #followalibrary!! 

Check out their tumblrs below and show them some love, bookworms! (Alphabetical by url)

@alachualibrary (The Alachua County Library District)

@alt-library (By Sacramento Public Library)

@aplibrary (Abilene Public Library)

@austinpubliclibrary (Austin Public Library)

@badgerslrc (The Klamath Community College’s Learning Research Center)

@bflteens (Baker Free Library’s Tumblr For Teens)

@bibliosanvalentino (Biblioteca San Valentino [San Valentino Library])

@biodivlibrary (Biodiversity Heritage Library)

@bodleianlibs (Bodleian Libraries)

@boonelibrary (Boone County Public Library)

@brkteenlib (Brookline Public Library Teen Services Department)

@californiastatelibrary (California State Library)

@cheshirelibrary (Cheshire Public Library)

@cityoflondonlibraries (City of London Libraries)

@cmclibraryteen (Cape May County Library’s Teen Services)

@cobblibrary (Cobb County Public Library System)

@cpl-archives (Cleveland Public Library Archives)

@cplsteens (Clearwater Public Library Teens)

@darienlibrary (Darien Library)

@dcpubliclibrary (DC Public Library)

@decaturpubliclibrary (Decatur Public Library)

@delawarelibrary (Delaware County District Library)

@detroitlib (Detroit Public Library Music, Arts & Literature Department)

@douglaslibraryteens (Douglas Library For Teens)

@dplteens (Danville Public Library Teens)

@escondidolibrary (Escondido Public Library)

@fontanalib (Fontana Regional Library)

@fppld-teens (Franklin Park Library Teens)

@friscolibrary (Frisco Public Library)

@gastonlibrary (Gaston County Public Library)

@glendaleteenlibrary (Glendale Public Library Teens)

@hpldreads (Havana Public Library District)

@hpl-teens (Homewood Public Library For Teens)

@kingsbridgelibraryteens (Kingsbridge Library Teens Advisory Group)

@lanelibteens (Lane Memorial Library Teen Services)

@lawrencepubliclibrary (Lawrence Public Library)

@marioncolibraries (Marion County Public Library System)

@mrcplteens (Mansfield/Richland County Public Library Teen Zone)

@myrichlandlibrary (Mansfield/Richland County Public Library)

@necclibrary (Northern Essex Community College Libraries)

@novipubliclibrary (Novi Public Library)

@nplteens (Nashua Public Library Teens)

@orangecountylibrarysystem (Orange County Library System)

@othmeralia  (Othmer Library of Chemical History)

@petit-branch-library (Petit Branch Library)

@pflibteens (Pflugerville Public Library Teenspace)

@plainfieldlibrary (Plainfield Public Library District)

@royhartlibrary (RoyHart Community Library)

@safetyharborpubliclibrary (Safety Harbor Library Teen Zone)

@santamonicalibr (Santa Monica Public Library)

@schlowlibrary (Schlow Centre Region Library)

@smithsonianlibraries (Museum Library System)

@smlibrary (Sheppard Memorial Library)

@southeastlibrary (Southeast Branch Library)

@tampabaylibraryconsortium-blog (Tampa Bay Library Consortium)

@teenbookerie (Erie County Public Library For Teens)

@teencenterspl (The Smith Public Library Teen Center)

@teensfvrl (Fraser Valley Regional Library)

@teen-stuff-at-the-library (White Oak Library District)

@therealpasadenapubliclibrary (Pasadena Public Library)

@ucflibrary (University of Central Florida Library)

@uwmspeccoll (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries Special Collections)

@vculibraries (Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries)

@waynecountyteenzone (Wayne County Public Library’s Teen Space)

@wellingtoncitylibraries (Wellington City Libraries)

@widenerlibrary (Harvard’s Widener Library)

Whew! There’s a LOT of you. :) But we now this list is just getting started! Feel free to keep the library love going by adding any libraries we missed/don’t know of yet! (And if you’re not following US already, well, what better time to start than this week? ;) Eh? Eh?) And, of course, never hesitate to visit your Library in person. We love seeing you! :) 

Happy National Library Week, library cats!

A brief text history of Gilgamesh, put together for my students.