One horn...like a unicorn

erickimberlinbowley:

The Loneliest Whale in the World.

In 2004, The New York Times wrote an article about the loneliest whale in the world. Scientists have been tracking her since 1992 and they discovered the problem:

She isn’t like any other baleen whale. Unlike all other whales, she doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t belong to any tribe, pack or gang. She doesn’t have a lover. She never had one. Her songs come in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. But her voice is unlike any other baleen whale. It is unique—while the rest of her kind communicate between 12 and 25hz, she sings at 52hz. You see, that’s precisely the problem. No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored. And, with every lonely song, she becomes sadder and more frustrated, her notes going deeper in despair as the years go by.

Just imagine that massive mammal, floating alone and singing—too big to connect with any of the beings it passes, feeling paradoxically small in the vast stretches of empty, open ocean.

This is the most depressing thing I’ve ever read…

(via jessicaannnielsen)

A group of stem cells in the optic tectum of a chick embryo at embryonic day 8. The cells are labeled with cy5 conjugated tomato lectin. The image is at 100x magnification. I also captured a time series of the cells signaling to each other. My research is finally working….

this is the david allan coe song. Its from a movie called heartworn highways. this film is a documentary that chronicles the texas outlaw movement. It was made in the 70’s and features coe, along with charlie daniels and steve earle hanging out with townes van zandt at his trailer in austin, texas playing songs for each other and during concerts.

This is a tomato-lectin positive stem cell that I’ve imaged. The resolution is lower than I’d like it to be for publishing purposes, but with the fluorescent dye used to image these specific cells, scanning the tissue with the laser for any longer than it takes to get lower resolution images bleaches the dye and then the image comes out extremely faded. Semi-success here I think.