We're Sleeping On How Varied Crocodilians Are In Colour And Pattern

holy shit, this is fantastic! Great job, #paleostream!

Another sketch brought to you by #paleostream

Euthecodon, a giant relative of the dwarf crocodile, catching a flamingo mid air.

Hooray! It's always a blast to discover more jurassic species! And this one's a crocodile ancestor!

Jurassic-Period Crocodile Ancestor Unearthed in Chile

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/burkesuchus-mallingrandensis-09929.html

This isn't a gator or skeletons, it's just something that makes me happy when I see it. I live for dumb stuff like this.

“Oh, I didn’t know about that. That is good.”

The (neuro)science of getting and staying motivated

There is no question that motivation is one of the hardest and yet important factors in life. It’s the difference between success and failure, goal-setting and aimlessness, well-being and unhappiness. And yet, why is it so hard to get motivated – or even if we do, to keep it up?

That is the question that scientists led by Professor Carmen Sandi at EPFL and Dr Gedi Luksys at the University of Edinburgh have sought to answer. The researchers worked off previous knowledge that told them two things: First, that people differ a lot in their capacity to engage in motivated behavior and that motivational problems like apathy are common in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. Second, to target an area of the brain called the “nucleus accumbens”.

Sitting close to the bottom of brain, the nucleus accumbens has been the subject of a lot of research. The reason is that it was quickly found to be a major player in functions like aversion, reward, reinforcement, and motivation.

To test and quantify motivation, the EPFL team designed what is known as a “monetary incentive force task”. The idea is that participants perform a task with increasing – and measurable – effort and get paid sums of money that correspond to their effort. Basically, do more and get paid more.

In this study, 43 men were scanned to measure–metabolites in the nucleus accumbens in their brains with a sophisticated brain-imaging technique called “proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy”, or 1H-MRS. This can specifically measure the abundance of neurochemicals in the brain, such as neurotransmitters and metabolites. Because of this 1H-MRS is used even in clinical settings to determine neurological disorders.

Subsequently, each participant was asked to squeeze a device that measures force – a dynamometer – to a given level of contraction in order to earn either 0.2, 0.5, or 1 Swiss franc. This procedure was repeated for a number of 120 consecutive trials, which made performance in the task quite demanding.

The idea of the experiment was that the different sums would push participants to decide if they were going to invest energy and perform the task accordingly at each trial. The scientists also ran the experiment under isolation and group conditions to investigate the influence of competition on performance.

Once they had gathered the behavioral data, the researchers processed it through a computational model that estimated the most appropriate parameters that should be measured with regard to utility, effort, and performance functions. This allowed them to interrogate whether particular neurotransmitter levels predicted specific motivational functions.

The analysis revealed that the key to performance – and, by extension, motivation – lies within the ratio of two neurotransmitters in the nucleus accumbens: glutamine and glutamate. Specifically, the ratio of glutamine to glutamate relates to our capacity for maintaining performance over a long period of time – what the researchers term “stamina”.

Another discovery was that competition seems to boost performance even from the beginning of the task. This was especially the case for individuals with low glutamine-to-glutamate ratios in the nucleus accumbens.

“The findings provide novel insights in the field of motivation neuroscience,” says Carmen Sandi. “They show that the balance between glutamine and glutamate can help predict specific, computational components of motivated performance. Our approach and data can also help us develop therapeutic strategies, including nutritional interventions, that address deficits in effort engagement by targeting metabolism.”

these all look phenominal!

Results from the #paleostream! Turnersuchus, Batrachognathus, Platyhystrix and Kundurosaurus. Some details might confuse you here. I explain below.

The Batrachognathus here are flying around a curious structure, a "Steinerne Rinne", a rare occurrence in which small, calciumhydrogencarbonat rich creeks over time turn into natural aqueducts because of moss and algae taking the Co2 out of the water. Limestone comes out and encrusts the moss.

Platyhystrix is not only shown with an osteoderm-only-sail but also producing spermatophores. Some modern day salamanders do this after a mating dance instead of the usual watery copulation.

The last scene shows a Kundurosaurus unsure about the situation it is in. It has it's nest next to a blue lava stream. Blue lava is created by high concentrations of burning sulfur on the surface.

Writers, please, please, please, I am begging you

I know we don't vibe with Mary Sues, and I know we like watching characters fail...

But if your character is the world's best assassin, they shouldn't be botching nearly every single step of every single job just because the plot demands it. If your character is one of the greatest fighters to ever live, they can't badly lose every single fight the plot throws at them and then barely win the final confrontation. If your character is a competent military strategist, they need at least a few small successes during the course of the plot. If your character is an experienced leader, they can't be constantly making the kind of missteps that realistically would cause their subordinates to lose confidence in them.

If your character is good at something. Show them being good at it.

Watercolor skull study by bakk1313 This artist on Instagram

Study clarifies mystery of crocodilian hemoglobin

The success of a croc’s ambush lies in the nanoscopic scuba tanks—hemoglobins—that course through its bloodstream, unloading oxygen from lungs to tissues at a slow but steady clip that allows it to go hours without air.

sulc.us/crochemo