Nardia - Central Park, New York City

33,000 books line the walls in the Wine Library at the Boutique Hotel & Spa, Zurich

Ya sneaky! :)

Hugh Laurie Honored With Star On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame October 25 th 2016

(..and was about time!!!!! )

:')

In slow motion, vortex rings can be truly stunning. This video shows two bubble rings underwater as they interact with one another. Upon approach, the two low-pressure vortex cores link up in what’s known as vortex reconnection. Note how the vortex rings split and reconnect in two places – not one. According to Helmholtz’s second theorem a vortex cannot end in a fluid–it must form a closed path (or end at a boundary); that’s why both sides come apart and together this way. After reconnection, waves ripple back and forth along the distorted vortex ring; these are known as Kelvin waves. Some of those perturbations bring two sides of the enlarged vortex ring too close to one another, causing a second vortex reconnection, which pinches off a smaller vortex ring. (Image source: A. Lawrence; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh)

Note: As with many viral images, locating a true source for this video is difficult. So far the closest to an original source I’ve found is the Instagram post linked above. If you know the original source, please let me know so that I can update the credit accordingly. Thanks!

The Six Types of Middle-Earth Names

1. Characters whose Names are Secretly Insults: 

Samwise: means “Half-wise” or “Half-wit.” He is Stupid Gamgee

Faramir: Boromir’s name means “steadfast jewel”, but Faramir’s name just means “sufficient jewel.”

Sufficient.

Denethor took one look at baby Faramir and thought “eh I guess he exists or whatever” which is very in character

 2. Characters who Have Way Too Many Names

Examples include Aragorn son of Arathorn son of Arador heir of Isildur Elendil’s son, descendant of Numenor,  Thorongill,  Eagle of the Star,  Dúnadan, Strider,  Wingfoot, Longshanks, Elessar, Edhelharn, Elfstone, Estel (”Hope,”) The Chieftain of the Dúnedain, King of the West, High King of Gondor and Arnor, and Envinyatar the Renewer of the House of Telcontar

Wait I’m sorry did I say “examples” plural Cuz that was all one guy 3. Characters whose parents must’ve been prophets

-Frodo means “wise by experience.” His story is about becoming wise by experience -A lady named Elwing turns into a bird (geddit)

4. Characters whose families were so lazy that they copy-pasted the same first half of a name onto multiple people

Théoden/Théodred  Aragorn/Arathorn/Arador  Éomer/ Éomund/Éowyn/Éorl Elladan/Elrohir/Elrond/Elros/Elwing/Elenwë/Elendil/Eldarion (the laziest family) 

5.Characters whose Names are Expertly Designed so that Newbies can’t Remember Who is Who and Feel Sad

All the people mentioned in number 4 Celeborn, Celegorm, Celebrimbor, Celebrian All the rhyming dwarf names in the Hobbit Sauron and Saruman Arwen and Éowyn

6. Name so nice, you say it twice

Legoas Greenleaf: Legolas’s first name means “Greenleaf” in elvish. Legolas is Greenleaf Greenleaf (thranduil really likes green leaves ok) King Théoden’s name means King in Rohirric. Tolkien decided to name his king “King.” All hail King King  this is what the fanbase means when we say tolkien was a creative genius with language

This car race involved years of training, feats of engineering, high-profile sponsorships, competitors from around the world and a racetrack made of gold.

But the high-octane competition, described as a cross between physics and motor-sports, is invisible to the naked eye. In fact, the track itself is only a fraction of the width of a human hair, and the cars themselves are each comprised of a single molecule.

The Nanocar Race, which happened over the weekend at Le centre national de la recherché scientific in Toulouse, France, was billed as the “first-ever race of molecule-cars.”

It’s meant to generate excitement about molecular machines. Research on the tiny structures won last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and they have been lauded as the “first steps into a new world,” as The Two-Way reported.

Microscopic Cars Square Off In Big Race

Image: CNRS

Hold a buoyant sphere like a ping pong ball underwater and let it go, and you’ll find that the ball pops up out of the water. Intuitively, you would think that letting the ball go from a lower depth would make it pop up higher – after all, it has a greater distance to accelerate over, right? But it turns out that the highest jumps comes from balls that rise the shortest distance. When released at greater depths, the buoyant sphere follows a path that swerves from side to side. This oscillating path is the result of vortices being shed off the ball, first on one side and then the other. (Image and research credit: T. Truscott et al.)

(Image caption: New model mimics the connectivity of the brain by connecting three distinct brain regions on a chip. Credit: Disease Biophysics Group/Harvard University)

Multiregional brain on a chip

Harvard University researchers have developed a multiregional brain-on-a-chip that models the connectivity between three distinct regions of the brain. The in vitro model was used to extensively characterize the differences between neurons from different regions of the brain and to mimic the system’s connectivity.

The research was published in the Journal of Neurophysiology.

“The brain is so much more than individual neurons,” said Ben Maoz, co-first author of the paper and postdoctoral fellow in the Disease Biophysics Group in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). “It’s about the different types of cells and the connectivity between different regions of the brain. When modeling the brain, you need to be able to recapitulate that connectivity because there are many different diseases that attack those connections.”

“Roughly twenty-six percent of the US healthcare budget is spent on neurological and psychiatric disorders,” said Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics Building at SEAS and Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. “Tools to support the development of therapeutics to alleviate the suffering of these patients is not only the human thing to do, it is the best means of reducing this cost.“

Researchers from the Disease Biophysics Group at SEAS and the Wyss Institute modeled three regions of the brain most affected by schizophrenia  — the amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

They began by characterizing the cell composition, protein expression, metabolism, and electrical activity of neurons from each region in vitro.

“It’s no surprise that neurons in distinct regions of the brain are different but it is surprising just how different they are,” said Stephanie Dauth, co-first author of the paper and former postdoctoral fellow in the Disease Biophysics Group. “We found that the cell-type ratio, the metabolism, the protein expression and the electrical activity all differ between regions in vitro. This shows that it does make a difference which brain region’s neurons you’re working with.”

Next, the team looked at how these neurons change when they’re communicating with one another. To do that, they cultured cells from each region independently and then let the cells establish connections via guided pathways embedded in the chip.

The researchers then measured cell composition and electrical activity again and found that the cells dramatically changed when they were in contact with neurons from different regions.

“When the cells are communicating with other regions, the cellular composition of the culture changes, the electrophysiology changes, all these inherent properties of the neurons change,” said Maoz. “This shows how important it is to implement different brain regions into in vitro models, especially when studying how neurological diseases impact connected regions of the brain.”

To demonstrate the chip’s efficacy in modeling disease, the team doped different regions of the brain with the drug Phencyclidine hydrochloride — commonly known as PCP — which simulates schizophrenia. The brain-on-a-chip allowed the researchers for the first time to look at both the drug’s impact on the individual regions as well as its downstream effect on the interconnected regions in vitro.

The brain-on-a-chip could be useful for studying any number of neurological and psychiatric diseases, including drug addiction, post traumatic stress disorder, and traumatic brain injury.

"To date, the Connectome project has not recognized all of the networks in the brain,” said Parker. “In our studies, we are showing that the extracellular matrix network is an important part of distinguishing different brain regions and that, subsequently, physiological and pathophysiological processes in these brain regions are unique. This advance will not only enable the development of therapeutics, but fundamental insights as to how we think, feel, and survive.”

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