The Secret Anatomy of Toys

Jason Freeny is an artist and toy designer. He creates interesting anatomy illustrations and sculptures of toys. They are a mixture of detailed anatomy, advanced graphics, and pop iconography. Here are a few of my favorites:


Digitals:

"Kitty Anatomy"

"Pneumatic Anatomica"

"Goldfish Cracker"

Sculptures:

"Dissected Sully"

"Yoshi Anatomical Sculpt"

"Cutaway 8" Anatomical My Little Pony"

You can see lots more over at the Moist Production website.

What Hurts Worse?

The science of pain presented as a very interesting question. Which hurts worse: childbirth or getting kicked in the testicles?

Admit it, you've always wondered.

The Art of the Insides

Danny Quirk is an artist that specializes in photo realistic watercolors, painting what the camera can't capture. One of his current bodies of work has a anatomical theme that combines classic poses, in dramatic chiaroscuro lighting, with an illustration of the structures under the skin. He's been working on several media including liquid latex body art applied to some willing participants. You can see more,  purchase, and even commission artwork from Danny here:

Danny Quirk's Artwork Facebook page
Danny Quirk on Behance
dquirk1017 on Etsy
Danny Quirk's email

Lateral Neck Dissection (body painting print)

Neck, face and back dissection (body painting)

Abdominal Dissection

Superior Musculature of the Back/Musculature of the Shoulder

Neck Dissection

Anatomical Barbie

Last year, at about this time, I posted about TreeTop Barbie, a specially made Barbie doll from the Forest Canopy Lab at The Evergreen State College in Washington.that had special field work clothes made for it.

Now, meet Anatomical Barbie! Artist Jason Freeny has created this hand sculpted, anatomically accurate Barbie doll. You can see his process over at his Facebook page.

Sources and links:
MoistProduction.com blog - Jason Freeny's Artworks and Illustrations blog
The Colossal's story "Anatomical Barbie by Jason Freeny"

Love Your Insides

Giant microbes have been around for a while, and have quite a large following. Now, take a look at the new plush sensation: I Heart Guts. Yep, give the gift of guts. Your favorite organs in plushie form. Here are a few of the cute little organs:

This ovary plush is an ova achiever

I Got The Beat, the heart plush

This prostate plush is a seminal work

Don't hold your breath, hold this lungs plush

Find more guts to love over at http://iheartguts.com/

X-Ray Yoga

Interesting x-ray pictures (or even just renderings) are...well...interesting. The X-Ray Pin-up post from a while back is one of my favorite examples. When I was in my yoga class last night and finally achieving lift-off in crow pose I was totally aware of how funny I must look (because I always feel awkward and funny in crow pose). Following that train of thought, I was reminded of these x-ray yoga images I had seen over at Science Photo Library.

Lotus pose

Downward facing dog position

Side Bend

Tree pose (front)

Tree pose (side)

Scorpion pose

Namaste

Human Skeleton Rebuilt

Assemble the human skeleton.

Aaannnndd...GO!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day! Today I've got something special for you. Cake!

One of my favorite food blogs called Not So Humble Pie featured a Valentine's Day cake that is sure to make the anatomist in you clap your hands and dance around in glee. Presenting: The Bleeding Heart Cake.

Ms. Humble is actually borrowing the recipe and supporting the cause of one Lily Vanilli. Lily Vanilli is teaming up with the charity Trekstock this Valentine's Day to offer people the chance to send their own edible bleeding heart to the one they love. A single bleeding heart cake is is priced at £7 and comes in a cute perspex box tied with a pink or red ribbon with a personal note. The cake is available exclusively through their website and 20% of the proceeds go directly to charity.

If you decide to make the cake yourself Lily Vanilli also provides the recipe. The cake is simpler to make than it looks, it is basically red velvet sponge cake, cream cheese frosting, and blackcurrant & cherry "blood." So if you like baking that something special for your special someone then try this out.

Order your very own bleeding heart cake here: http://www.lilyvanilli.com/content/valentines-hearts/

If you want to make it yourself find the receipe here: http://lily-vanilli.blogspot.com/2011/02/recipe-instructions-for-bleeding-heart.html

And check out Ms. Humble's blog here: http://notsohumblepie.blogspot.com/2011/02/true-love-human-heart-cupcake.html

Body by Google

Google. Love Google. It does so much, including powering this blog. They are known for their great mapping technologies such as Google Earth. Now they tackle a new mapping challenge: The human body. Last Thursday marked the release of Body Browser.

Body Browser uses 3D graphics application programming interface WebGL running within a browser to create a three-dimensional model that allows users to zoom in and out of the human body, remove layers, and generally explore. It is searchable and clickable, giving all sorts of info on how the body is put together.

Body Browser doesn't require Java or Flash, but you will need a browser that supports WebGL. Google recommends using the most recent version of Chrome, but Safari and Firefox/4.0b1 work as well. Body Browser is still in beta and has not been officially released, but users are able to try it out and report problems and bugs. So keep an eye out for this program to become fully operational.

Enjoy!

Here's the Body Browser site: http://bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/

http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/virtualization/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228800812&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All#

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374438,00.asp

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374462,00.asp

http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/17/google-takes-a-peek-inside-your-body/

http://blog.chromium.org/2010/12/chrome-is-ready-for-business.html

Pitch Perfect

Once again, I'm going to ask you to close your eyes and picture this: your perfect mate. If you were to describe him/her to me how would you do so? Hair, eyes, and skin color? Height and build? Think about it while we go through a short sexual selection primer.

Natural selection produces changes in the genetic composition of a population from one generation to the next. These changes occur as traits become more or less common in a population due to effects on the survival and reproduction of the individuals within that population/species. There's all kinds of mechanisms and processes involved in natural selection, but we are going to focus on sexual selection. Sexual selection is a special case or adjunct to natural selection. This type of selection acts on an organism's ability to successfully attract a mate. One of the key words being "successfully". After all, you can't pass on a trait if you don't produce offspring. Sexual selection acts on the "attractiveness" of an individual to the opposite sex. I put that word in quotes because attractiveness is different in each species. In many species this type of selection leads to sexual dimorphism, where one sex looks different from the other, often as a result of ornamentation or primary sexual characteristics. In some cases a trait will go so extreme that natural selection acts upon it -- if your trait decreases your survival ability to the point where you do not live long enough to reproduce then that extreme trait gets removed from the population. The attractive trait doesn't necessarily have to be some type of bodily ornamentation. It can be courtship dances, nuptial gifts, building elaborate structures/nests, territoriality, combat skills, or any other of a host of things.  The overall point is that you have to have or do something that attracts the opposite sex in such a way that it makes you the most attractive of all while still allowing you to survive to reproduce. As with most scientific theories, it gets much more complicated than that, but I think you get the point.

So now let's go back to that picture-this-scenario and add some information based off of what we know about sexual selection and the attractiveness of the human face. We know that facial features that increase a person's attractiveness serve as subconscious cues of biologically important variables such as health. We also know that human faces show marked sexual shape dimorphism, men's faces are different shapes than women's faces. Yeah, I know, a "duh" moment right. Well, just hang with me for this one. It has been found that attractiveness for female faces is related to signs of youth, symmetry, and averageness (an odd term, I know, but basically meaning 'not weird looking'), and that these features signal health, femininity, and fertility. Male faces are considered to be more attractive with increased symmetry and averageness. But as many women will tell you, greater masculinity does not always go hand-in-hand with greater attractiveness. In this instance, I'm using the word "attractive" to relate to facial features rather than an overall impression - thing pretty boy vs. tough guy. However, many women will also tell you that both the pretty boy and the tough guy can be attractive, just not necessarily in the same way.

The shapes of the human faces themselves are also important. Highly feminine faces tend to have relatively large eyes, smaller brow ridges, smaller jaws, and fuller lips. Attractive male faces tend to have longer and wider jaws, relatively smaller top halves and eyes, and more prominent brow ridges. Those descriptions I'm taking right from the article even though they tend to conjure up a rather funny looking person in my mind's eye. Anyway, its all related to genes and hormone levels during puberty. A topic better left for another post. For this particular study it is also important to note that humans show marked height dimorphism as well. Men, in general, are taller than women.

So far I've been relaying information (mostly) from a study I came across recently, published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, about the evolutionary origin of the shape dimorphism in human faces and how that is related to height dimorphism. In layman's terms, does the angle or tilt at which you see someone's face make them more or less attractive?

Now, picture your perfect mate not just as a set of handsome/pretty characteristics but those characteristics on a person standing right in front of you. What do you see now?

This study had participants complete two tasks designed to measure the masculinity/femininity of a face as well as rate their attractiveness. They used a 3D face modeling program that manipulated the portrayed pitch of a model - untilted (straight), tilted slightly upwards, further upwards, slightly downwards, and further downwards - while using "examples of unattractive, real, attractive, and average" faces of the sexes.

They found that the pitch of the face directly influences its perceived masculinity/femininity and affects its perceived attractiveness. They found that an upward tilted face is judged to be more masculine (or less feminine in female faces) and downward faces judged to be more feminine (or less masculine in male faces). Sure, that makes sense, especially when you factor in the height dimorphism. Think about it: A male is taller than a female, the male viewing the female from above perceives her face as tilting down, the female viewing the male from below perceives his face as tilting up. Remember those funny sounding descriptions of the attractive faces (jaws, brow ridges, etc.)? Why those shaped features? Perhaps they are due to divergent sexual selection pressures that resulted in the selection for male and female faces that had these pitch perspective differences as part of their typical proportions. Or maybe they are more related to behavior. The authors draw a parallel between the dominance/appeasement displays of other species - stretching/rearing vs. crouching/bowing. Upward tilting faces are more dominant than downward tilting faces. I gotta say, the little feminist voice in my head cringes at that one.

So, was your picture-this perfect mate tilting their head upward or downward?

Guess maybe I should practice my coy look.

Here are your links:
Burke, Darren and Danielle Sulikowski (2010) A new viewpoint on the evolution of sexually dimorphic human faces. Evolutionary Psychology: 8(4), 573-585. (link)

http://www.mq.edu.au/newsroom/control.php?page=story&item=4298&category=humanitites+%26+social+sciences
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20102311-21615.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/relationships/8153855/Attractiveness-is-all-in-tilt-of-the-head.html

Cone of Silence

Genus Conus LINNAEUS, 1758. Not really a taxa that many people give much though to, but cone shells (or cone snails) are ubber cool. There are about 500 extant species of Conus, that's the largest genus of marine invertebrates. These mollusks are found between latitude 40° North and the 40° South parallel. That means you can find them in tropical and subtropical oceans including the Indo-Pacific, Panamic, Caribbean, West African, South African, Peruvian, Patagonic, and Mediterranean Seas. You can find a few other species outside of this region but they tend to be localized in South Africa, Southern Australia, and Southern Japan. Cone snails live in the intertidal muds and sandflats, areas where the high and low tides alternate, but you can also find some offshore or in deep waters.

When picturing the structure of a cone shell, think of something like an underwater snail. They have a strong, muscular foot with a flat sole that is truncated or widely rounded at the front and pointed at the back. The foot can be striped or pimpled, but the coloring is really variable, not just due to genetics but environmental factors as well. On each side of the head they have an eye on a stalk, stalks that are wide at the bottom and narrow at the end. The mouth of this animal is very elastic and includes sharp and often hooked teeth, allowing the cone shell to swallow large prey. Being a cone shell, they are covered by a shell. This shell is spiral shaped and can have interesting patterns, and they are very desirable to shell collectors.

Most people, including me, find the cone snails' venom to be its most interesting feature. We're talking venom that is often fatal, or at the very least causes temporary paralysis, respiratory trouble, or swelling and inflammation (depending on the species). The composition of this venom varies depending on the species, the individual, or even between injections by the same individual. The active components are small, disulfide-rich peptides called conotoxins or conopeptides, and they cause paralysis in the victim. The specific paralytic components include alpha-, omega- and mu-conotoxins which all prevent neuronal communication, each targeting a different aspect of the process. Alpha-conotoxins target the nicotinic ligand gated channels, omega-conotoxins target the voltage-gated calcium channels, and the mu-conotoxins target the voltage-gated sodium channels. These toxins are particularly interesting to scientists, especially neurobiologists and medical researchers, because they can be used to identify specific ion channels.

To be effective the venom must be delivered from the cone shell to the prey. The cone shell itself is relatively slow and unable to swim, and yet it hunts other, faster marine organisms such as fish. The venom is synthesized in the epithelial cells of a long, convoluted venom gland and stored in the gland's lumen. When the cone snail zeros in on its prey it extends it's proboscis which is loaded with venom and tipped with a specialized radula tooth that functions as both a harpoon and hypodermic needle. The snail then shoots it (by a ballistic mechanism, we're talking around 400 miles per hour) into the prey to deliver the venom. It is known that the distal end of the venom gland dilates into an oval structure called the venom bulb and it has been suggested the this bulb functions in venom transport, perhaps like a peristaltic pump. If you look at other animals that use jet propulsion, like scallops and squid, you see that the closing of their valves requires a burst contraction of the adductor muscle. This muscle shows high levels of glycolytic enzymes as well as arginine kinase (a type of phosphagen kinase).



Figure 1 showing the venom apparatus of cone snails.
Also, Figure 1A is probably the best figure I've ever seen in a peer reviewed paper.

 A study in the Journal of Proteome Research takes a closer look at the Australian cone species Conus novaehollandiae and Conus victoriae in order to shed some light on the role of the venom bulb, or pump. Specifically they look at the levels of enzymes and kinases integral to pump function. In terms of methods they did a protein extraction and 2-dimensional gel electrophoresis, a one dimensional gel electrophoresis of the venom gland and bulb proteins, a cDNA (complementary DNA) isolation and identification of arginine kinase and BIP (immunoglobulin binding protein), and an in situ hybridization of the venom bulb using an arginine kinase specific probe.

After lots of tables and graphs, some colorful and pretty and some not-so-much, they found that the venom bulbs contain high concentrations of arginine kinase. The presence of this kinase enables the venom bulb to contract very rapidly and repeatedly. That means that the cone snail can quickly force the venom through the venom duct and out through the proboscis and into the harpooned prey. In addition to the kinase, morphological examination of the bulb showed the organ to be highly muscularized. Three distinct muscle layers are separated by a tunic-like collagen sheet and the outer muscle layer, in particular, contains radially, spirally organized collagen fibers. Ok, cool. Layered muscle. What does that matter? Well, if we go back to the squid comparison you see that squids have inner and outer surfaces of muscle lined with collagen tunics. These tunics are stronger than the muscles and prevent the muscle from stretching longitudinally during contraction. This restriction and contraction allows the squid to propel water through it's jet at very high speeds. Now, the cone's venom bulb is less complex but it is likely that the function is similar. So rather than just holding the venom, these researchers found that the venom bulb is an active participant in the injection event itself. Previous studies have shown that the venom is pressurized before injection. This study shows that repeated burst contractions of the venom bulb in combination with the relaxation of the proboscis leads to a sudden ballistic discharge of the radula tooth, where it is shot into the prey and the pressurized venom pumped in by ongoing, repeated burst contractions of the venom bulb (you got an image of that in your head right? Wow!).

Read more in the article:
Safavi-Hemami, Helena , Neil D. Young, Nicholas A. Williamson, Anthony W. Purcell (2010) Proteomic Interrogation of Venom Delivery in Marine Cone Snails: Novel Insights into the Role of the Venom Bulb. Journal of Proteome Research: 9(11), 5610–5619. (DOI: 10.1021/pr100431x)

Learn more about cone shells at these links:
http://www.coneshell.net/pages/pa_genus_conus.htm
http://www.venomdoc.com/conotoxins.html
http://grimwade.biochem.unimelb.edu.au/cone/

The Bite of the Terror Bird

Figure 1. Skull of Andalgalornis steulleti (FMNH P1435).

So you're flipping through various websites and journal table of contents. You come across an article about the feeding behavior of the ancient "terror bird." I think it's pretty clear that you must stop and read it.

Andalgalornis steulleti is a member of an extinct group of large, flightless birds known as phorusrhacids. This group were predominatly a South American radiation of gruiform birds from the middle to lower Paleocene and are most closely related to extant seriemas. Phorusrhacids are called "terror birds" due to their gigantic body sizes, large skulls, and carnivorous lifestyles. The members of this group were ground predators or scavengers that were likely apex predators that dominated their environment in the absence of large carnivorous mammals. A. steulleti lived approximately 6 million years ago in Argentina, it weighed about 40kg, stood 1.4m high, and had a skull length of 370mm. This large, rigid skull was capped with a hawk-like hooked, yet curiously hollow, beak. The feeding behavior of these birds has only been speculated at up till now. This new study performed a biomechanical analysis of the skull using comparative anatomy and engineering (Finite Element Analysis [FEA]) to predict the behavior of the skull. Basically, they looked at the skull itself, compared it to other skulls, and ran it though a CT scanner for analysis.

Figure 2. Stress (Von Mises) distribution of FE models.

Now, if you look at most birds you'll notice that their skulls allow for a lot of mobility between their bones. This gives them light but strong skulls. A steulleti, on the other hand, showed rigid beams in these normally mobile areas. This gave the bird a very strong skull, particularly in the fore-aft direction. The FEA analysis worked with the 3D models created by the CT scans to simulate and compare the biomechanics of biting straight down, pulling back with the neck, and shaking the skull side to side. These are all attack and dismembering motions (lovely). One of the neat things about FEA analysis is that it gives you color images that show areas of low stress as cool-blue and high stress as white-hot (image left). The results from this analysis show that the terror bird was well adapted for driving its beak in and the pulling back. Its marks weren't so high in the shaking side to side motion. Some more comparative anatomy came in when the researchers tested bite force. They had an eagle bite down on a bite meter - bet that was fun to try to do - and they used that information to compare it to the bite of A. steulleti. Pretty close, as they are both large birds with big, hooked beaks. The results showed that the terror bird had a lower than expected bite force that was weaker than the bite of similarly sized carnivorous mammals. This weaker bite force was likely supplimented by the driving down and pulling back motion that they found with the previous test. Overall, behaviorally speaking, the bird probably located prey, stabbed it with its beak and then implimented a repeated attack-and-retreat strategy, puncturing its prey until it was eatable.

Here's the article:
Degrange, Federico J., Claudia P. Tambussi, Karen Moreno, Lawrence M. Witmer, and Stephen Wroe. (2010) Mechanical Analysis of Feeding Behavior in the Extinct 'Terror Bird' Andalgalornis steulleti (Gruiformes: Phorusrhacidae). PLoS ONE: 5(8), e11856. (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011856)

and...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100818171916.htm

X-Ray Pin-up

How do you grab some business and show off your expertise with x-rays all at the same time? Just what I thought too: X-ray Pin-up Calendar.

 

See the rest of calendar here: http://www.geekosystem.com/x-ray-pin-up-calendar/

Cobra Attack

The cobra's hood, very cool. But how does it work? A study in the Journal of Experimental Biology takes a look at just that.

Cobras belong to the Elapidae family of snakes. This is a family of venomous snakes which are found in tropical and subtropical regions around the world. Skeletally, the bones in the hood of the cobra evolved from ribs and the associated muscles evolved along with them. Scientists have taken a look at the cobra's defensive display, the "hood flare," and measured the electrical activity coming from the snakes' hood muscles to tease out which muscles are involved in the movement. This experiment found 8 muscles involved in the hood flare. Interestingly, these muscles are also present in non-hooding snakes. The muscles and the nervous system's control over them have evolved to spread the snake's hood. While this research was mostly identifying the muscles themselves, further research will delve into the evolution of these muscles in various snake species.

Here's the story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8625553.stm