Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The World's Most Poisonous Deadly Animals


The above image shows the most venomous and poisonous animals in the world. Some of them can look innocent but has the power of instant death for people and other animals. I have compiled some information for each deadly monster.

Box Jellyfish

It lives in the oceans of Asia and Australia. Swimmers must definitely avoid the Box jellyfish. The stingers and tentacles on this animal are extremely powerful. Along with causing excruciating pain for weeks, the animal's venom is capable of stopping the heart or paralyzing the lungs. To top it off, the venom will slowly eat away at the skin.

Marbled Cone Snail

The venom of this tiny snail leads to paralysis almost immediately. Humans that have experienced a bite are succumbed by weakness, numbness, nausea and death, when the lungs ultimately stop working.

Blue Ringed Octopus

The painless bite from a Blue Ringed Octopus may seem innocuous, however the deadly neurotoxins in the animals saliva immediately begin working. Within a few minutes, a human will experience muscular weakness, numbness, followed by a cessation and breathing and ultimately death

Death Stalker Scorpion

The venom of the scorpion causes an intense and unbearable pain, then fever, followed by coma, convulsions, paralysis and death. Living area is North Africa and Middle East.

Stonefish

Highly camouflaged fish living in the waters of the Pacific throughout the Australia coast.
If contact comes with humans, the venom will cause intense pain, swelling of tissue, shock followed by death.

Sydney Funnel Web Spider
One of the most venomous creatures in the Australia outback, the Sydney Funnel Web Spider packs a powerful punch. This spider is large and very aggressive, consistently creating the most powerful venom of any spider. Protecting its burrow, the spider places a web across its entrance that passers by should not enter. From its fangs, the spider delivers a powerful neurotoxin that cause extreme pain and are capable of killing a person within 15 minutes. It's venom does not affect most mammals but has a very powerful effect on humans.

Poison Dart Frog


While running through the rain forests of Central or South America, do not pick up the Poison dart frog. The frog's skin contains a toxic chemical that sickens or kills any animal that touches or eats it. Two micrograms of this deadly toxin (enough to fit on the head of a pin) will easily kill a human being or other large mammal.

I hoped you liked this venomous animals compilation.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Interesting Phenomenon: Sine-Wave Speech

This is a interesting perceptual phenomenon which will mess with your head a little bit.

Sine wave speech is artificially degraded speech that sounds like just beeps and whistles until you have been primed to hear it as speech.

Try it here, you will be amazed!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Twining motion of vines

This movie shows the extreme nutational movements of morning glory vines. Climbing vines need to find a suitable support on which to grow. Shortly after germinating, the young plant begins what appears to be a hunting motion in which the shoot tip rotates in a nutational movement. This swinging around of the tip is thought to help the plant bump into a support. If the shoot rubs against a support with the right shape, the rubbing induces a thigmotropic response (tropism induced by touch) and the shoot begins to curl around the support. This movie shows three morning glory plants at the stage where they have just begun "looking" for a support to climb. Vines typically show the most extreme nutational movements. The images were captured at 10 min intervals.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Deadly infections increasingly able to win against antibiotics

These organisms are very small, but they are still smarter than we are.

Since commercial production of penicillin began in the 1940s, antibiotics have been the miracle drugs of modern medicine, suppressing infectious diseases that have afflicted human beings for thousands of years. But today, as a generation of Baby Boomers begins to enter a phase of life marked by the ailments of aging, we are running out of miracles against bacteria.

"Within just a few years, we could be seeing that most of our microorganisms are resistant to most of our antibiotics," said Dr. Jack Edwards, chief of infectious diseases at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

Terry Hazen, senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and director of its ecology program, is not at all surprised by the tenacity of our bacterial foes. "We are talking about 3.5 billion years of evolution," he said. "They are the dominant life on Earth."

Bacteria have invaded virtually every ecological niche on the planet. Human explorers of extreme environments such as deep wells and mines are still finding new bacterial species. "As you go deeper into the subsurface, thousands and thousands of feet, you find bacteria that have been isolated for millions of years - and you find multiple antibiotic resistance," Hazen said.

In his view, when bacteria develop resistance to modern antibiotics, they are merely rolling out old tricks they mastered eons ago in their struggle to live in harsh environments in competition with similarly resilient species.

Via SFGate.com

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Nanotubes for treating brain tumors

Dance of SuperNova Explosions

Newly released optical images of DEM L316 made with GMOS on Gemini South. These images were obtained as part of the Gemini Legacy Imaging Survey which is led by: P. Michaud, S. Fisher, and R. Carrasco from Gemini and T. Rector from the Univ. of Alaska at Anchorage

Stunning Views of Multiple Universes

For those who didn't see yet, I suggest visiting an incredible page which gives a stunning visual effect of universes one within the other beginning with the quarks to a view of Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. After viewing Milky Way at the end, maybe you will think that all this universe we have known is just an atom in another one. Why not?