The Giant Mauna Kea Telescope Atop a Hawaiian Volcano

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An enormous 30m telescope has begun construction atop the volcanic peak of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. After years of planning and discussions, construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) started on October 7th, but the first light to enter the lens will not be until 2022.

The enormous telescope will provide astronomers with unparalleled power, offering ten times the resolution of the Hubble. It is designed for near-ultraviolet to mid-infrared light.

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The 30 meter diameter is made up of 492 small hexagonal mirrors that serve as part of the telescope’s new “adaptive optics” system. The results of these readings then govern a pair of deformable mirrors which adjust many times a second to cancel out the atmospheric turbulence.

Local people however are not happy with the location of the telescope as they believe that the slopes of the volcano are sacred and that nothing should be built on top of them.

The hexagonal mirror configuration is a new one to me. Very clever.

Via Interesting Engineering.

Snail Art

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I hate seeing poor little snails geting stepped on in front of my apartment, so I pimp their pads out…maybe people will notice their bright ass shells and not wanna squish them.

Came home to this little fella after a long day last night; I painted him over two months ago, and he’s still kicking it around my complex.

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I wonder how this affects predation rates from things other than human feet…

Top image via Slinkachu.
One down from top via Matt Williams.
Third and forth down from top via Slinkachu.
Bottom three via Stefan Silverud.

Via Bored Panda for lots more.

Narcolepsy/Cataplexy

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I have narcolepsy with cataplexy, and it can be very frustrating to try to explain what it’s like to people who have never seen narcolepsy in real life, and how much of a struggle it can be.

Most people think that it’s funny until they see what actually happens, or they are completely unprepared and get really scared and panic.I filmed this by accident

Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder caused by autoimmune destruction of hypocretin-producing neurons inhibiting the brain’s ability to regulate sleep-wake cycles normally.

Narcoleptics generally experience the REM stage of sleep within 5 minutes of falling asleep, while non-narcoleptics do not experience REM in the first hour or so of a sleep cycle.

Another common symptom of narcolepsy is cataplexy, a sudden and transient episode of muscle weakness accompanied by full conscious awareness, typically (though not necessarily) triggered by emotions such as laughing, crying, terror, etc. affecting roughly 70% of people who have narcolepsy.

Brave woman to be willing to promulgate this. Very illuminating.

By Sarah Elizabeth on .
Narcolepsy description quote from Wikipedia.

Canadian Town Cancels Halloween Trick-or-Treating Due to Polar Bear Siege

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The children of one small town in northern Canada are on the front lines of climate change. In Arviat (map), a hamlet of 2,300 people in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, that means no outdoor trick-or-treating this year for the first time.

Over the last several years, shore ice has diminished along the western edge of Hudson Bay, forcing the annual polar bear migration closer and closer to town. That means bear-human run-ins have become increasingly common. Arviat is now a town under siege by polar bears.

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Not your usual excuse for bringing kids indoors for Halloween, I am forced to acknowledge.

Via Slate.

The Stool Bank That Pays $40 a Day for Your Shit

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An independent non-profit stool bank called OpenBiome is willing to offer volunteers $40 per deposit [of] a sample of their poo.

The stool samples will be used for fecal transplants, to fight the deadly superbug C. difficile, which affects more than 500,000 and kills 14,000 Americans per year.

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Stool transplants are being praised by many doctors as a miracle cure for C. difficile, a bacterial infection that most commonly affects hospital patients. It causes fever, painful cramps, severe diarrhoea, and in some cases, life-threatening complications such as severe swelling of the bowel.

[E]ach 250-milligram stool sample is sold to hospitals for $250 and can be used to treat up to five patients. Fecal transplants can save, on average, $17,000 per patient when compared with antibiotic treatments.

If you’re interested in what (and why) one gets involved in the august practice of “fecal transplants”, Wikipedia has a good overview of the procedure.

Just to give you a taste (heh) of the process, while the first line of approach involves swallowing capsules with frozen feces, emergency treatment can involve stools from (ideally) a family member mixed with saline solution and piped into the patient’s stomach view a tube down their nose.

Uh, I think I almost vomited just typing that…

Bottom image of fecal bacteria magnified 10,000 times from Wikimedia Commons.
OpenBiome via Oddity Central for the full story.

Fuzzy Fungi

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640Ascomycetes

Ascomycota is a Division/Phylum of the kingdom Fungi.

This group is of particular relevance to humans as sources for medicinally important compounds, such as antibiotics and for making bread, alcoholic beverages, and cheese, but also as pathogens of humans and plants.

Familiar examples of sac fungi include morels, truffles, brewer’s yeast and baker’s yeast, dead man’s fingers, and cup fungi.

Above is a sampling of ascomycete fungi grown on agar plates.

Quoted text via Wikipedia.
Photo by David Midgley of the University of Sydney on Wikimedia Commons.