the charnel house
monica | [anthropology, archaeology, classics] also some fandom, whoops
Exaleiptron - A cosmetics holder.
Aryballos - Used to store perfume or oil.
Oinochoe - A wine jug.
Olpe - Liquid pourer.
Pyxis - A woman’s trinket box.
Alabastron - Used to store perfume or massage oil.
Askos - Mainly used for storing oil and refilling oil lamps.
Lekythos - Used for storing oil, mainly olive oil.
Hydria - A water carrier.
Kalpis - A water carrier.
Amphora - Used to store dry goods such as grain and liquids, mostly wine. Most amphora used for transportation have a pointed base.
Pelike - Stored oil and wine.
Loutrophorous - Water carrier used to bathe the bride before her wedding. It was also employed during funerary rites.
New RadiologyChannel video tutorial - a knee MRI case with multiple significant injuries. Includes a discussion of the MRI features of ACL tear and the secondary signs of ACL injury on MRI and plain radiographs. Click to VIEW VIDEO
Do you identify with LGBTQ? Do you work or study in STEM? Take a survey and help to make sure the issues of this community are not overlooked!
My road through working and studying in science has been relatively easy (except for the usual academic challenges). But I’m a straight, white male, and I haven’t had to experience the explicit and systemic prejudices that so many people have to deal with every day, even in such a “progressive” field as this. But I’ve met many folks over the years who have had to deal with that, and it’s not easy for some (to make the understatement of the ever). To feel welcome, comfortable, equal and wanted in STEM fields (and in the world at large) … that’s what people deserve, and that’s the environment we should work to create.
That’s why I am so glad to hear that Jeremy Yoder and Allison Mattheis have put together this survey. By finding out how people’s careers and experiences relate to their peers, we can see where work remains to be done. It’s a great model for other groups.
Help spread the word, and if you or someone you know that works or studies in STEM wants to take the survey, visit http://bit.ly/queerSTEM
“The Ocean Conservancy has run the numbers, and over the course of a single day in September 2012, more than 500,000 volunteers from across the globe collected 10 million pounds of trash from beaches and waterways. The top three most common items collected were cigarettes and cigarette filters (2.1 million), food wrappers (1.1 million), and plastic beverage bottles (1 million).”
You can read the full article here:
Skeleton Sketches, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Harvard
- by “miked”
I really dig these sketches. The figures all a bit off and a little goofy but the composition is well thought out. They have character and I like that.
(Source: Urban Sketchers)
I feel like the orangutan is judging me…
but I kinda like it.
orang b judgin’
- by Robert Munro
Part I: Anthropology;Palaeolithic Man in Europe with Supplementary Chapter on the Transition Period
Part II: Archaeology; Terramare, and their Relation to Lacustrine Pile-Structures
The lectures were scanned in their entirety and made into a PDF. Click through for early 20th century anthropology and its concomitant subtle and not-so-subtle racism and Eurocentrism.
Excerpt:
“Huxley concludes his description with the following words:—“It is in fact a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage” ” (read more).
(Source: Internet Archive; via @jorios on Twitter)
The Majority of Primate-Specific Regulatory Sequences Are Derived from Transposable Elements
Although emerging evidence suggests that transposable elements (TEs) have contributed novel regulatory elements to the human genome, their global impact on transcriptional networks remains largely uncharacterized. Here we show that TEs have contributed to the human genome nearly half of its active elements. Using DNase I hypersensitivity data sets from ENCODE in normal, embryonic, and cancer cells, we found that 44% of open chromatin regions were in TEs and that this proportion reached 63% for primate-specific regions. We also showed that distinct subfamilies of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) contributed significantly more accessible regions than expected by chance, with up to 80% of their instances in open chromatin. Based on these results, we further characterized 2,150 TE subfamily–transcription factor pairs that were bound in vivo or enriched for specific binding motifs, and observed that TEs contributing to open chromatin had higher levels of sequence conservation. We also showed that thousands of ERV–derived sequences were activated in a cell type–specific manner, especially in embryonic and cancer cells, and we demonstrated that this activity was associated with cell type–specific expression of neighboring genes. Taken together, these results demonstrate that TEs, and in particular ERVs, have contributed hundreds of thousands of novel regulatory elements to the primate lineage and reshaped the human transcriptional landscape” (read more/open access).
(Open access source: PLoS Genetics 9(5): e1003504; top image: NIH)
To get ready for Early Life Weekend, I took a trip up to the Royal Ontario Museum’s palaeontology department and hung out with Dave Rudkin.
DAVE RUDKIN
Dave Rudkin is the Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the ROM and a truly great guy. Dave’s been busy preparing for the Gallery of Early Life, a permanent gallery opening in 2014, but he still found time to show me around the invertebrate palaeontology collections.
What I like most about Dave is that he always has time to support children’s programming, whether it’s to lend a few objects for a weekend, or just chat about palaeontology. His energy is infectious and he loves trilobites SO MUCH.
VERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY
As all y’all know, I LOVE dinosaurs, and have spent a ton of time up in vertebrate palaeontology collection (of which you can see a few photos of here), but I’ve have had merely a glimpse of the workings of the invertebrate side.
This photo set features all sorts of animals from BEFORE the dinosaurs, the time when life first evolved on Earth. The ROM is a world leader in research on first life, specifically from the Burgess Shale site, so we have an absolutely PACKED collections room full of prehistoric treasures.
He said, ‘Don’t nobody love you but me, not your momma, not your daddy, and especially not Bey.’ He turned me against my sister. Damn, I missed you.
In this emotional song, Kelly opens about a past abusive relationship that caused her to close off close friends, including Beyoncé.
SYMBOLS & MYSTICISM # 9
Eyes without a face
Workers restoring the newly relocated temple of Abu Simbel, Egypt, 1968 created by King Ramesses Il during the 12th Century B.C.
More insight on the salvage of the temple from the encroached Lake Nasser | read more.
Blockbook (ca. 1470)
Apocalypsis Sancti Johannis
Germany, about 1463–67The Morgan library
The Brain Scoop: Episode 24
De-Extinction, Part II: Yes, no, maybe so?Watch Part I where we discuss some of the science behind ‘de-extinction’.
This topic isn’t quite as black-and-white as explained in the videos - we have no way of knowing what would happen should we bring back large populations of these animals, but it’s not even certain that would be the case. The technology required to ‘de-extinct’ a species could hold the answer in ongoing conservation efforts. Bringing back a species like the gastric brooding frog could provide valuable insights into how species reproduce, and it’s impossible to say how that information could influence how we think about animal behavior and physiology, or even species conservation in the future.
Without museums like ours, we would not even be able to entertain the notion of bringing back extinct species. Museums act not only as physical repositories but genetic ones as well. When a large sample size is needed to reconstruct the DNA of the extinct passenger pigeon, scientists and researchers turn to museum collections for tissue samples. It’s another example of how impossible it is to predict the use or need for a collection as research advances and new technology emerges.
There are a lot of positive and negative implications to pursuing the science behind de-extinction: if you have any input, reblog with comments and I’ll be sure to read them!
The stapes (stirrup) is the smallest and lightest bone in the body. The stapes is the connection between the middle and inner ears. The head of the stapes connects to the incus and the footplate rest within the oval window of the cochlea. It is the third ossicle of the middle ear and part of the auditory system that transduces sound energy into mechanical energy and finally, electrical energy.
