Sal
@Sal@mander.xyz
- Comment on 18 hours ago:
From the title I thought that the UV opsin itself was also performing the pressure sensing function… Which would be fascinating to me, as I have worked with viscosity and pressure-sensitive fluorophores in the past (BODIPYs and DCDHF), and I would love to see living things making use of this molecular sensor design.
But I now see that it is a different molecular sensor that is also present in the UV sensing cell:
Our results indicate that the ciliary opsin required for detecting UV light is not essential for pressure sensation.
So, today is not the day we find pressure-sensitive fluorescent sensors in a living organism, but that is still a fascinating finding. I will have to read more about those “TRP channels”, the “ultimate integrators of sensory stimuli”. They seem like a very interesting class of bio molecules that I still know too little about 😁
Really nice work, thanks a lot for sharing it here!!
- Comment on 18 hours ago:
That is amazing! Thanks for sharing!!
- Arboreal or terrestrial: Oviposition site of Zhangixalus frogs affects the thermal function of foam nestsonlinelibrary.wiley.com ↗Submitted 20 hours ago to herpetology@mander.xyz | 0 comments
- Comment on mycology 1 day ago:
I think that they are referring to Paxillus involotus
It is quite an interesting mushroom. It was considered “safe to eat” for a long time, but it contains an antigen that a human’s immune system can learn to attack.
The antigen is still of unknown structure but it stimulates the formation of IgG antibodies in the blood serum.
I once looked into whether this immune response builds up over many exposures, or if it is a random event that has a probability of happening for each exposure. I don’t remember finding a convincing answer… If it is a random event, then eating this mushroom could be considered a “Russian roulette” mushroom that will usually provide a nice meal, but, if unlucky, you may experience the following:
Poisoning symptoms are rapid in onset, consisting initially of vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and associated decreased blood volume. Shortly after these initial symptoms appear, hemolysis develops, resulting in reduced urine output, hemoglobin in the urine or outright absence of urine formation, and anemia. Hemolysis may lead to numerous complications including acute kidney injury, shock, acute respiratory failure, and disseminated intravascular coagulation. These complications can cause significant morbidity with fatalities having been reported.
I agree with you that this is probably unrelated to the “generally similar to humans” comment. I feel like this fantasy is a combination of the above fact mixed in with the fact that the Fungi belong to the Opisthokonts, which places them closer to animals than plants, and so they share some interesting cellular characteristics with us. This places them closer to animals than plants, but “generally similar to humans” is perhaps a bit of a stretch ^_^
But, it is just a meme about a guy being hyped about mushrooms. Hopefully people don’t expect memes to be super accurate 😁
- Comment on The Terrifying A.I. Scam That Uses Your Loved One’s Voice: A couple in the U.S. got a call from relatives who were being held ransom. Their voices—like many others these days—had been cloned 4 days ago:
I have heard of scams like this one happening to people I know for many years now in Mexico, but without AI. In its most basic form the scammer does not need to know who they are calling, because the scam relies largely in volume and the psychology of fear.
The victim picks up, someome screems something along the lines of ‘mom/dad please help’, and then the “kidnapper” takes the phone away and says that they have taken their daughter/son hostage and that they must not hang up the phone. They do this to several numbers until someone takes the bait and freaks out, often revealing additional information (like their kid’s name) in the process.
With AI the scammer could spend the time and collect information to make the scam more believable. But I don’t think that the voice is the bottleneck for these scams. Those who have experienced this (including my mom, uncle, grandma, and acquaintances) say that in the moment of shock they really do believe they hear the voice of their family member.
The AI method makes a more sophisticated class of these attacks easier to perform, but it is still a sophisticated attack that requires gathering data, and the execution will still require some form of a performance. Or… At least that’s what I think
- Comment on Why were so many people believers in the conspiracy that 9/11 was an inside job 4 weeks ago:
Fair enough. I just looked it up and if the scale in this image is correct, I agree that the size of the hole looks small in comparison. I also looked at the security video of the crash itself and it is frustrating how little we can see from it.
Since this was such an important event and there seems to be a lack of specific pieces of essential evidence - either because of bad luck or because of a cover-up - I understand the skepticism. And I am not a fan of blindly believing any official narrative. But, without any context, if I see that photo and someone tells me that a plane crashed into that building, I would find it probable simply because the shape is so similar to the photo of the Bijlmer accident that I’m familiar with. A plane crash seems to me like a very chaotic process, so I don’t have a good expectation of what the damage should look like.
Maybe I’ll look for a pentagon crash documentary some time.
- Comment on Why were so many people believers in the conspiracy that 9/11 was an inside job 4 weeks ago:
I don’t have much of an opinion on this topic, I haven’t really looked into it.
But as soon as I saw this image, the El Al Flight 1862 which crashed in the Bijlmer in Amsterdam in 1992 immediately came to mind. The shape of the hole is very similar!
This image shows the likely position of the Bijlmer plane during the crash:
The image you posted of the Pentagon seems to me consistent with what I have seen of the Bijlmer accident, and so the shape of the hole and the absence of wings in the photo does not persuade me personally that no plane was involved.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to herpetology@mander.xyz | 1 comment
- Mechanisms of extracellular electron transfer in anaerobic methanotrophic archaea - Nature Communicationswww.nature.com ↗Submitted 4 weeks ago to [deleted] | 0 comments
- Comment on Indeed it is. 4 weeks ago:
Essentially, yes.
Whether the term “molecule” technically includes or excludes a piece of metal is a bit more tricky. I lean towards “no” more than “yes” because there are some important differences between what we generally call a “molecule” and how we think about a glassy or a crystalline solid. But I think both positions are arguable. If we are not being pedantic, then essentially yeah.
- How Small-scale Jet-like Solar Events from Miniature Flux Rope Eruptions Might Produce the Solar Windarxiv.org ↗Submitted 1 month ago to astronomy@mander.xyz | 0 comments
- Comment on Self portrait 3 months ago:
This is fine ._.
- Comment on Is gravity instantaneous? 3 months ago:
OTOH my understanding of the speed of light in a medium is that it’s the result of photons being absorbed and re-emitted, and the speed of any individual photon is always exactly c.
I am an experimentalist and so if a theoretician reads this they will probably tell you that I am wrong…
I think that the description of a photon being “absorbed” and “re-emitted” could be used to describe the picture from the point of view of quantum field theory (which I don’t claim understand), because within this theory the photon/electron and even electron/electron interactions are mediated by photons that are created and annihilated during those interactions. Whenever the “photon” exists it will travel with speed c. As light travels through a material it is traveling as a wave of electrons influencing each other, similar to how water waves travel through water, and since these interactions of the electrons pushing each other are formally described by the photons popping into and out of existence I think one could correctly use the language of “absorbed” and “re-emitted”.
But personally I think that it can be a bit confusing, because the absorption and emission of light by materials is often used to mean something very different… Absorption more commonly refers to a resonant interaction in which a photon is destroyed and a molecule (or atom, or crystal, etc…) comes into an excited state. The molecule that becomes excited can remain excited for quite a long time (usually picoseconds - microseconds), and the re-emission of the light often comes in a completely different direction and even a different wavelength than the original photon. So using the language of “absorption” and “emission” in this context can also generate confusion,.
Personally when I imagine the propagation of light through a material I think about it in terms of the polarizability of the medium. When the light propagates through a medium, you don’t need a “photon”. The wave is being carried by the electrons oscillating (these are very small oscillations - unless you are using powerful lasers, then you reach the beautiful world of non-linear optics). The speed of propagation of this wave through the medium depends on how far the wave can travel through the material with every oscillation. There is a nice description of this semi-classical process in the Feyman Lectures: www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_31.html
gravity moves at the speed of light in a vacuum
Hmmm… Always? Maybe some funky things happen as the wave passes by a black hole.
- Comment on Maya warrior statue with serpent helmet discovered at Chichén Itzá 4 months ago:
That’s a really cool looking statue!
- Comment on Help identifying this? 5 months ago:
That is an interesting observation. I usually see them growing at 90 degrees but I had never really given this any thought. I will pay more attention to this when I see brackets. Thanks!
- Comment on Help identifying this? 5 months ago:
Thanks! :D
- Submitted 5 months ago to mycology@mander.xyz | 0 comments
- Submitted 5 months ago to mycology@mander.xyz | 0 comments
- Submitted 5 months ago to mycology@mander.xyz | 1 comment
- Submitted 5 months ago to mycology@mander.xyz | 0 comments
- Comment on Scarlet Caterpillar Fungus (Cordyceps militaris) 5 months ago:
Whaaat! No way! I have been actively hunting for these, but no luck yet!
- Comment on Anyone can help me ID? 5 months ago:
Ooh, I wasn’t aware of this, but you are right! From what I can find, the fungi belonging to this class tend to live in the tree passively and only transform into this form once the tree is weak and dying !
- Comment on Scarlet Waxcap (maybe?) 5 months ago:
Nice find!
- Submitted 5 months ago to mycology@mander.xyz | 2 comments
- Comment on Help identifying this? 5 months ago:
I can’t believe I didn’t notice that. Now I can’t unsee this.
- Comment on Lissotriton vulgaris 5 months ago:
Thanks!
- Comment on Deconica coprophila 5 months ago:
Could be - I am not 100% sure of the ID, Deconica coprophila is my best guess.
These mushrooms are very small though. Here is another photo where you can more clearly see how small they are:
- Comment on Deconica coprophila 5 months ago:
Yeah, these are tiny. Here you can see the size relative to a thumb!
- Comment on Help identifying this? 5 months ago:
Thanks! So far I agree, I think it is a beefsteak fungus. It seems to be an asexual “anamorphic” state.
- Submitted 5 months ago to herpetology@mander.xyz | 4 comments