30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Squid Skin is Like an LED Screen
Television images are sometimes displayed on giant LED (Light Emitting
Diode) hoardings. Instead of a fluorescent screen with an electron beam
scanning side to side over it, the LED screen is a large array of tiny
glowing lights, independently controllable. The lights are individually
brightened or dimmed so that, from a distance, the whole matrix
shimmers with moving pictures. The skin of a squid behaves like an LED
screen. Instead of lights, squid skin is packed with thousands of tiny
bags ...Folksonomies: biology explanations
Folksonomies: biology explanations
21 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Australopithecus afarensis' Hip Bone Indicates She Could ...
When Lucy’s hundreds of fragments were assembled, she turned out
to be a female of a new species, Australopithecus afarensis, dating back
3.2 million years. She was between 20 and 30 years old, 3.5feet tall,
weighing a scant 60 pounds, and possibly afflicted with arthritis. But
most important, she walked on two legs.
How can we tell? From the way that the femur (thighbone) connects to
the pelvis at one end and to the knee at its other. In a bipedally
walking primate like ourselves, the fem...The bone tilts to bring the knees inward, like it does in humans, but not in chimps, who waddle because they are bow-legged.