Champion of regeneration, the freshwater polyp Hydra is capable of reforming a complete individual from any fragment of its body. It is even able to remain alive when all its neurons have disappeared. Researcher the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have discovered how: cells of the epithelial type modify their genetic program by overexpressing a series of genes, among which some are involved in diverse nervous functions. Studying Hydra cellular plasticity may thus influence research in the context of neurodegenerative diseases. The results are published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Source: Hydra can modify its genetic program

“Every day, it was like every device on the menu got crushed,” Rios says. “It was all bad. Really, really bad.” The teams didn’t have time to dive deeply into the vulnerabilities they found, partly because they found so many—defenseless operating systems, generic passwords that couldn’t be changed, and so on.

The Mayo Clinic emerged from those sessions with a fresh set of security requirements for its medical device suppliers, requiring that each device be tested to meet standards before purchasing contracts were signed. Rios applauded the clinic, but he knew that only a few hospitals in the world had the resources and influence to pull that off, and he walked away from the job with an unshakable conviction: Sooner or later, hospitals would be hacked, and patients would be hurt. He’d gotten privileged glimpses into all sorts of sensitive industries, but hospitals seemed at least a decade behind the standard security curve.

“Someone is going to take it to the next level. They always do,” says Rios. “The second someone tries to do this, they’ll be able to do it. The only barrier is the goodwill of a stranger.”

Source: Hospital Gear Could Save Your Life Or Hack Your Identity – Bloomberg Business

The night i saw my first black helicopter—or heard it, because black helicopters are invisible at night—I was already growing certain that we, the sensible majority, owe plenty of so-called crackpots a few apologies. We dismissed them, shrugging off as delusions or urban legends various warnings and anecdotes that now stand revealed, in all too many instances, as either solid inside tips or spooky marvels of intuition.

The Atlantic: If You’re Not Paranoid, You’re Crazy

Compared to certain animals, humans have pretty limited vision. We see in a mere three color wavelengths (combinations of red, blue, and green), while the eyes of dragonflies, for example, process 12, giving them ultra-multicolor vision. But now, with design studioMarshmallow Laser Feast‘s new virtual reality helmets, you don’t have to wait to be reincarnated as an insect to see the world the way super-sighted animals do.

Called “In the Eyes of the Animal,” these globular helmets use virtual reality technology to create real-time artistic interpretations of how a forest might look to three of its animal inhabitants: a dragonfly, an owl, and a frog. Marshmallow Laser Feast designers Robin McNicholas, Barney Steel, and Adam Doherty used data taken from LiDAR (remote sensing technology), CT scans, and aerial drone footage to achieve these sense-hacking effects.

 

Mossy Virtual Reality Helmets Let You See the Forest as Animals Do

This is a story about viruses that became domesticated by parasitic wasps, which use them as biological weapons for corrupting the bodies of caterpillars, which in turn can steal the viral genes and incorporate them into their own genomes, where they protect the caterpillars from yet more viruses. Evolution, you have outdone yourself with this one.

The wasps in question are called braconids. There are more than 17,000 known species, and they’re all parasites. The females lay their eggs in the bodies of still-living caterpillars, which their grubs then devour alive.

As early as 1967, scientists realised that the wasps were also injecting the caterpillars with some kind of small particle, alongside their eggs. It took almost a decade to realise that those particles were viruses, which have since become known as bracoviruses. Each species of braconid wasp has its own specific bracovirus, but they all do the same thing: They suppress the caterpillar’s immune system and tweak its metabolism to favour the growing wasp. Without these viral allies, the wasp grubs would be killed by their host bodies.

So, the viruses are essential for the wasps—but the reverse is also true. Unlike most other kinds of virus, these bracoviruses cannot make copies of themselves. They are only manufactured in the ovaries of the wasps, and once they get into the caterpillars, their life cycle ends. Some might say they’re not true viruses are all. They’re almost like secretions of the wasp’s body…

Parasitic Wasps Genetically Engineer Caterpillars Using Domesticated Viruses – The Atlantic

Geometric Collages Created From Layers of Vintage File Folders and Index Cards | Colossal

Here’s a nice little piece of news (to me, anyway): for those of you who loved Grooveshark, the same music streaming/searching functionality is now available on StreamSquid.

Ellen Jewett (previously) effortlessly blends animals with elements from their environments, creating ceramic pieces that often balance unexpected species together in a singular piece. Each work is highly detailed—flowers, leaves, and vines wrapping themselves around animals from coyotes to chameleons.

By focusing on negative spaces within the animals’ bodies, Jewett strips away the weight of her objects, a quality that is usually inextricably linked to the medium of sculpture. She constructs her ceramic pieces using an additive technique, beginning with the innermost parts of the sculptures and layering outward. As periphery components of the animals’ surroundings are added to the piece, a narrative begins to form. These additional pieces Jewett describes as being beautiful, grotesque, or fantastical and add to the object’s exploration of domestication, death, growth, visibility, and wildness.

New Surrealist Sculptures by Ellen Jewett Effortlessly Combine Animals With Their Fantastical Surroundings | Colossal

For the last several years, marine photographer Alexander Semenov (previously) has lead the divers team at Moscow State University’s White Sea Biological Station located just south of the Artic Circle. Semenov directs scientific dives in extremely cold and harsh conditions to document sea creatures seldom seen anywhere else on Earth. From giant jellyfish to the tiniest of unknown sea worms, the photographer captures almost all of the creatures you see here out in the wild, without the convenience of a laboratory or studio.

It’s estimated that nearly 80% of all aquatic life in the world’s oceans has yet to be studied or even discovered. In response to this potentially vast world of unknown lifeforms, coupled with Semenov’s unceasing interest in marine biology, an ambitious trek across the world’s oceans has been planned for 2016. The Aquatilis Expedition is a proposed journey that will take a team of divers, scientists, and videographers to locations around the globe for the purposes of identifying new species, an odyssey on par with the advertures of Jacques Cousteau.

Many of Semenov’s best photos are available as prints, and he shares regular updates on both Facebook and Flickr.

Alexander Semenov Continues to Photograph the Earth’s Most Fragile Marine Wildlife Near the Arctic Circle