New Findings On Whale Tongues May Lead To Insight On Human Nerve Damage 47
An anonymous reader writes with this story about the discovery of stretchy nerves in whales. Drawing from the Globe & Mail's story: Researchers from the University of British Columbia have discovered that the largest animals alive – whales – have nerves in their tongues that can double in length and then recoil like a bungee cord. The researchers were studying specimens at a commercial whaling station in Iceland when they stumbled upon the discovery reported Monday in Current Biology. Researchers say it could have important implications for study into human nerve damage. "I had never seen a nerve like that," said Wayne Vogl, of UBC's Cellular and Physiological Sciences department.
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Better than bull testicles.
Beer made from smoked whale testicles: http://www.i-m.mx/velasala/bru... [i-m.mx] The web page is written in such bad English that the spelling nazis will suffer a stroke from reading it but I assure you this is no hoax.
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Oh god, it's rare to see such bad English here. Maybe they got my ex's brother to write that page ;) And can they not tell the difference between their accent and apostrophe keys? Also, what stupid stereotyping-about-Iceland-to-market-to-foreigners is this? Just letting people know: almost everyone here thinks this is an absurd product.
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Well, honestly though, how's your Icelandic? And do you know for a fact that their apostrophes and their accents are different?
I have certainly heard about some Icelandic 'delicacies' of some rotted/fermented fish which has a very ammonia flavor which nobody but Icelanders will eat.
You may think it's an absurd product, but I'm betting some guy in Iceland is going "mmmm ... smoked whale ball beer".
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Pretty sure when he said, "almost everyone here thinks ...", he is referring to his fellow Icelanders.
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Amm var (th)að ekki augljóst að ég bý á Íslandi (th)egar ég skrifaði orðið "here"? Og meira að segja fólk borða hákarl ekki oft. Og ég er meira að segja grænmetisæta.
Reyndu að lesa betur. ;)
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LOL, nei, þaà var ekki augljÃst aà "hér" þýddi Ãsland og aà þà værir Ãslensk.
En þÃkk sé Google Translate, get ég lÃta Ãt eins og hÃlfviti à tveimur tungumÃlum. Ef gert er rÃà auÃvitaà Slash dot er ekki flak Unicode. ;-)
In which case I'll look even more the moron. :-P
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What on Earth was that? I can make out portions of what you wrote through the mangled bits but not all of it.
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Yeah, sorry about that, it was an attempt to use google translate for:
"LOL, no, it wasn't obvious that 'here' meant Iceland and that you were Icelandic.
But thanks to Google Translate, I can look like an idiot in two languages. Assuming of course Slash dot doesn't wreck the unicode. ;-)"
How the hell do you get the accents to work? As your signature points out, Slashdot's support for unicode is pathetic.
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Were you trying to say:
"LOL, nei, (th)að var ekki augljóst að "here" ((væri?)) Ísland og að (th)ú værir íslensk. En ((??????)) Google Translate get ég látið eins og hálfviti á tveimur tungumálum. Ef gert er ráð fyrir auðvitað að Slashdot ((sé ekki að flækja Unicodeið?))"
That is:
"LOL, no, it wasn't clear that here is Iceland and that you were were Icelandic. But (????) Google Translate I ca
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If you want to write in Icelandic here, the only letter you need to swap out to prevent Slashdot from mangling it is thorn, just write it as TH or something.
Hmm, quick test... áéíóúöæðÁÉÍÓÚÖÆÐ - everything but the thorns should be in there.
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I'll reiterate: People here think it's a ridiculous product. The page is stupid marketing to foreigners. Yes, there are separate accent and apostrophe keys (in case you're curious, here's what an Icelandic keyboard layout looks like [wikimedia.org]). Hákarl (the fermented shark you refer to) isn't eaten commonly, it's actually fairly rarely eaten (though some people do like it). Most of the foods you'd consider weird are rarely consumed, like sheep heads, skate, etc, often associated with a particular festival or wha
Very Interesting (Score:1)
New excuse for Japan to continue whaling, but could be great for health research.
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This is obviously a story about Icelandic whaling. The Japanese aren't the only ones conducting marine biology research on whales.
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What's wrong with Icelandic whaling? [youtube.com]
(Also, I don't know how to spell ;) )
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They calls them like they sees them. They're whale biologists.
(And the fifth reason whales kill is for the sheer fun of it. )
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Yup. The important inner nervy bits (technical term) weren't so much stretchy like elastic, more stretchy like a spring.
TFA - "What the whale has developed is a beautiful system to protect its nerves, to package it in a way, probably in a corkscrew or undulated way, surrounded by elastin fibres"
So we could avoid nerve damage by preemptively replacing our at-risk nerves with stretchy whale nerves, in much the same way we could avoid bone breakage by covering our skeleton with adamantium... or some non
Japan needs more whale meat (Score:2, Informative)
I think Japan has found a reason to harvest more whales.
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Ah, the good old days of the web as it was in 1995? (*boggle*)
Have you set your browser to identify as a desktop browser?
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Bad designers think their design is far far more important than the information they are supposed to present, so they get fanatic about preventing even a single pixel being displaced, especially at the explicit request of the unsophisticated swine reading the page.
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Yeah, no kidding. I can't tell you how many web pages slavishly stick to their pre-defined widths because some hack of a designer thought it looked pretty.
Which means you horizontally scroll on small screens, and on large screens you see acres of unused space.
So much web design is utter crap ... but mobile browsing is utterly pointless. Because it turns into "here, let us forward you to a different link which doesn't have any actual content, won't show you the link you just followed, and has no mechanism
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Hear! Hear!
That is exactly the problem with modern web design.
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The mobile implementation of Slashdot itself is bad enough. Don't blame the limited screen space on your phone, either, because the tablet experience is even worse: slow, jerky and you have to re-enter your login every pea-pickin' time.
Sarcasm (Score:3)
Better link... (Score:2)
... with an actual picture of the nerve:
http://news.ubc.ca/2015/05/04/gigantic-whales-have-stretchy-bungee-cord-nerves/
Never seen a nerve like that (Score:2)
>> "I had never seen a nerve like that," said Wayne Vogl
I'm guessing he doesn't spend much time with Japanese tentacle...
Erectile tissue? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice! (Score:2)
Seems like they licked it.
The Only Suitable Whales Existed in 1986 (Score:1)
We'll have to go back in time to get them.