The Perseid Meteor Shower Over Mt. Hood

An eclipse as seen from space. 

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hubble’s panorama of the carina nebula, some 7500 light years away from earth, and about fifty light years in length here. stars old and new illuminate clouds of cosmic dust and gas, like the clumping hydrogen from which they were born. 

the top star seen at the bisection of the first two panels, part of the eta carinae binary star system (most stars are in binary systems), is estimated  to be more than a hundred times the mass of the sun - large enough to go supernoava in about a million years. 

it also produces four million times as much light as the sun, and was once the second brightest star in the night sky. but surrounding dust and gas has dimmed our view of the star, though it’s still visible in the night sky to all but those in the most light polluted cities.

the fifth panel shows ‘the mystic mountain,’ where nascent stars in the dust cloud are spewing hot ionized gas and dust at 850,000 miles an hour. eventually, the ultraviolet radiation from these stars will blow away the dust, leaving visible the stars, like the cluster seen at the top of the panel, which were formed only half a million years ago.

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FAMOUS AUTHORS

Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.

The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.

Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.

Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.

Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.

Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.

Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.

Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.

The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.

Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.

Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.

Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.

Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

TEXTBOOKS

Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.

Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.

KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.

Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.

Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.

MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.

Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.

Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.

Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.

eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.

MATH AND SCIENCE

FullBooks.com: This site has “thousands of full-text free books,” including a large amount of scientific essays and books.

Free online textbooks, lecture notes, tutorials and videos on mathematics: NYU links to several free resources for math students.

Online Mathematics Texts: Here you can find online textbooks likeElementary Linear Algebra and Complex Variables.

Science and Engineering Books for free download: These books range in topics from nanotechnology to compressible flow.

FreeScience.info: Find over 1800 math, engineering and science books here.

Free Tech Books: Computer programmers and computer science enthusiasts can find helpful books here.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.

Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.

International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.

Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Bored.com: Bored.com has music ebooks, cooking ebooks, and over 150 philosophy titles and over 1,000 religion titles.

Ideology.us: Here you’ll find works by Rene Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, David Hume and others.

Free Books on Yoga, Religion and Philosophy: Recent uploads to this site include Practical Lessons in Yoga and Philosophy of Dreams.

The Sociology of Religion: Read this book by Max Weber, here.

Religion eBooks: Read books about the Bible, Christian books, and more.

PLAYS

ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.

Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.

Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”

ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.

MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE

Public Bookshelf: Find romance novels, mysteries and more.

The Internet Book Database of Fiction: This forum features fantasy and graphic novels, anime, J.K. Rowling and more.

Free Online Novels: Here you can find Christian novels, fantasy and graphic novels, adventure books, horror books and more.

Foxglove: This British site has free novels, satire and short stories.

Baen Free Library: Find books by Scott Gier, Keith Laumer and others.

The Road to Romance: This website has books by Patricia Cornwell and other romance novelists.

Get Free Ebooks: This site’s largest collection includes fiction books.

John T. Cullen: Read short stories from John T. Cullen here.

SF and Fantasy Books Online: Books here include Arabian Nights,Aesop’s Fables and more.

Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyber-Books: This list contains mostly fantasy books.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Project Laurens Jz Coster: Find Dutch literature here.

ATHENA Textes Francais: Search by author’s name, French books, or books written by other authors but translated into French.

Liber Liber: Download Italian books here. Browse by author, title, or subject.

Biblioteca romaneasca: Find Romanian books on this site.

Bibliolteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes: Look up authors to find a catalog of their available works on this Spanish site.

KEIMENA: This page is entirely in Greek, but if you’re looking for modern Greek literature, this is the place to access books online.

Proyecto Cervantes: Texas A&M’s Proyecto Cervantes has cataloged Cervantes’ work online.

Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum: Access many Latin texts here.

Project Runeberg: Find Scandinavian literature online here.

Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.

Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.

Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.

Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.

CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.

Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.

HISTORY AND CULTURE

LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.

The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.

Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.

Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.

Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.

RARE BOOKS

Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.

Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.

Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.

2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.

Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.

Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.

Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.

Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.

MYSTERY

MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.

TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.

Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.

POETRY

The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.

Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”

Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.

Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.

Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.

QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.

CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.

PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.

MISC

Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.

World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.

DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.

A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.

Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.

ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.

Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.

Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.

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Science When the Sun Don’t Shine

About once a year, somewhere on Earth, the sun is blocked by the moon. This phenomenon – called a total solar eclipse – is one of the most beautiful natural events.

Blocking the light of the sun during a total solar eclipse reveals the sun’s relatively faint, feathery atmosphere, called the corona. The corona is one of the most interesting parts of the sun. We usually study it using an instrument called a coronagraph, which uses a solid disk to make an artificial eclipse by blocking the sun’s face.

To successfully block all of the sun’s bright light – which can bend around the sharp edges of a coronagraph disk – coronagraphs must block much more than just the face of the sun.  So total solar eclipses are a rare chance to study the lower part of the corona, close to the surface of the sun.   

We have sent a team of scientists to Indonesia, where they’re preparing for an experiment during the March 8, 2016, eclipse, visible from Southeast Asia.

The scientists are measuring a certain kind of light – called polarized light – scattered by electrons in the lower corona, which will help us understand the temperature and speed of these electrons.

The March 8 eclipse is a preview of the total solar eclipse that will be visible across the US in August 2017.

Remember, you should never look directly at the sun – even if the sun is partly obscured. This also applies during a total eclipse up until the time when the sun is completely and totally blocked. More on safety: http://go.nasa.gov/1L6xpnI

For more eclipse information, check out nasa.gov/eclipse

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

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Behold NGC 6357, “cathedral to massive stars.” Credit: NASA, ESA and Jesús Maíz Apellániz (IAA, Spain). (NASA/APOD)

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Z is for Zika virus!

Science Alphabet Game!

A is for Adenine!

Reblog with the next letter.

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ELISA

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay is a plate-based assay technique used to detect substances such as proteins, peptides and hormones. 

An antigen is immobilized on a solid surface 

It is complexed with an antibody that is linked to an enzyme.

The conjugated enzyme activity is assessed via incubation with a substrate.

Which produces a product that can be measured. 

Direct ELISA

Antigen is coated directly to wells of microtitre plate 

an enzyme-labelled primary antibody that detects the antigen is added.

Advantages  

Fast and minimal steps needed.

Minimum precursor requirement makes it less error prone.

Disadvantages

The immobilization of the antigen is not specific - background interference.

Less flexibility of primary antibody.

No signal amplification –> less sensitivity.

Indirect ELISA

An enzyme labelled secondary antibody interacts with a primary antibody to increase sensitivity. 

Advantages

Offers high sensitivity and flexibility as a secondary antibody can label different primary antibodies

It is cheap (fewer labelled antibodies needed)

Disadvantages

Increased background noise from the secondary antibody.

Extra labour.

Sandwich ELISA

Capture antibody bound to surface.

Antigen-containing sample is applied and captured.

A specific antibody is added, and binds to antigen (sandwiching the antigen between 2 antibodies). 

Enzyme-linked secondary antibodies are used as detection antibodies.

Advantages  

Offers high sensitivity and a highly specific reaction due to 2 antibodies (both have to bind to the antigen).

Disadvantages

For recognition of a specific epitope, only monoclonal antibodies can be applied as matched pairs.

Procuring monoclonal antibodies is difficult and expensive.

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BRAIN EXPLOSION! Thanks, physicists. Read more: http://bit.ly/1SSG67L

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Use studying techniques to your advantage:

Got these notebooks for 5 cents so obviously going to buy more than one :D # strongnotebookgameisstrong

There’s a method to my madness I swear!! OK so on avg I seem to use up two of those 80 pg notebooks so I got two for each class. And consequently I needed the 4pack 32pg exercise books. 

The 80 page notebook is used for in class notes. As soon as anything important is said it is scribbled down into the notebook.  The 4 pack 32 pg exercise book is divided to two groups: Feymann technique and Cornell method.

Feymann Technique

Right after class I grab my textbook, my notebooks and two of  my exercise books. I teach myself the lesson primarily with my notes and if I don’t understand something I turn to my textbook. If I am still lost I leave space and note that there is something I need to clarify with my professor. Even while I am doing this, I force myself to decrease the writing and increase the connections between every topic since the 32 pg is quite smaller than the 80 pg. 

Thankfully when I am done with this, my 32pg becomes the go to whenever it seems like I am in need of revising a topic since it contains relevant notes from both my textbook and my notebook in my own words. 

Cornell Method.

When exam time approaches I convert my notes into the cornell notes so that I can easily test myself with the main ideas and key questions.

There is no better way to revise than to try to make connections. That is all you are going to get tested on since it’s not that hard to spit back words on a page. Instead of being asked about photosynthesis for example, you might be told about some chemical that is sprayed on a plant that will block one process and asked about how that affects the growth of the plant overall. See what I mean? 

I usually get a whiteboard and write all of the connections out and in front of me. When THAT  is done I write it down in flashcard mode and quiz myself for the next week using the Leitner system, along with the topics that are basically just memorization.

LEITNER SYSTEM

Label 5 boxes 1-4, where 1 is for cards you don’t know and 4 is for cards you are basically a pro in. You frequently test yourself in box 1 (maybe every 30 mins, you choose) and increase the time in which you test yourself until you reach 4, where you would test yourself just once a day. 

In the beginning all of your cards go in box 1,and as you get a card right it goes up a level and if you get it wrong it goes down a level. That way you are spending more time with ideas and topics you don’t have a strong hold on, rather than spending equal time with all the topics. 

At this point I have rewritten my notes twice in my own words and then converted them into flashcard mode :) I recommend this method when it comes to the sciences or humanities. For the maths I have already done a post about it here. 

Hope this helps for those still looking for study techniques! 

-F 

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I MADE AN ART MASTERPOST

Bodies:

how to draw arms

*Hands*

How To Draw Hands

hands hands hands

more hands

another hand tutorial

How to draw butts&thighs

draw knees

draw feet

Kneeling + Sitting ref

Body anatomy help

The male torso

Muscular male with bow stock photos

Lots of Stuff

All about the human body

Pose studies

100+ anatomy references

Sitting poses

pose reference blo

realistic woman body ref

male body

Pose Maker

Poses

hundreds of pose references wowie

a guide to figure drawin

torso reference

How to draw penis

Penis ref

Kissing ref

Faces:

Drawing expressions    

Creating expression

Avoiding same face

How to draw faces

*Heads

Heads&Angles

contouring and highlightin

drawing eyes

*How To Draw Noses

drawing ears

how to draw profiles

*How To Draw Lip

lips ref

lip tutorial

Hair:

Hair tutorial

Hair+Fur

how to draw curls

*How To Draw Hair

Clothes:

Drawing clothe folding

How to draw folds

Folding ref

how to draw jeans

hat ref

*How To Draw Fabric Folds/Creases

how to draw shoes/feet

hecka lot of clothing refs

Other (Person Related):

Flower crown tutorial

Drawing horse/animal legs on humans

Anatomy of mutant humans

Mass art ref

Drawing human wings

draw wings

*How To Draw Cuts And Bruises

wings

Other (non-specific):

How to draw ice

Drawing clouds

Creature design

Tutorial masterpost (100+)

How to colour

Drawing ref masterpost (10+)

paint blood

shadow help

draw grass

I made this most for my own benefit to organize this stuff, and have no idea how to make a masterpost!

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